I bet you didn’t know that September is National Preparedness Month.

I found out through an email that was trying to sell me something. Actually, it was an email that was trying to get me to sell you something—something, apparently, that would help you become more prepared.

The email writer, a young PR person, helpfully informed me that 273 million Americans are not prepared for an emergency. One of those would be me.

Are you similarly unprepared? It’s difficult to know how much is enough. It’s also hard to decide what is something to prepare for.

Once I prepared for a hurricane—that must have been about 18 or 19 years ago—by running tap water into bottles and holing up with my husband and nephew on the couch in front of the television.

I did not prepare for Y2K, since I had no idea how to do so. Luckily, it was a false alarm.

I couldn’t prepare for 9/11, since no one could. I did, however, prepare for the flight of the second plane out of Albuquerque bound for New York after 9/11—I sent my Swiss Army Knife home by UPS and I wore running shoes, just in case.

There’s a lot of hype around being prepared. And there is a lot of news that tries to make you scared. Let’s take the swine or H1N1 flu as an example. It turns out it’s not that bad. According to Tom Skinner at the CDC and Leonard Marcus, Ph.D. at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard School of Public Health and the Kennedy School, whom I contacted since I figured I’d better know what I’m talking about, the H1N1 is about the same as the regular flu in its symptoms and its danger. The problem is that we don’t have a vaccine yet. But when we do, which should be in a few weeks, the more people who get vaccinated the more all of us will be protected since vaccinated people won’t spread it. The flu season generally wipes out 35,000 to 36,000 American citizens already. So a new flu didn’t seem like it was worth worrying more about than the old flu.

There is a lot of entertainment value in getting scared by something and then preparing to tackle it. It allows all our boring lives to be interrupted by something dramatic. Most of us encounter such drama only in movies.

So in the interests of entertainment, as well as preparedness, I put together a list of the possibilities for which we need to be prepared. Some were just scary. Others could be disasters. I thought you might like to see what scares you the most.

Compare each category. Ask yourself what disaster you are best prepared for:

1.          Sam Yoon being elected mayor or Mayor Menino getting re-elected again.

2.          The double-parked cars on Charles and Newbury streets or the outsized new “Upper Deck” trolley tour buses.

3.         The coughing stranger who might have the H1N1 flu next to you in line at the grocery store or your shower head, which, according to a recent article in the Boston Globe, harbors all kinds of microscopic critters that could do you in.

4.         Having to occupy the same room as Congressman Joe “You Lie” Wilson or giving an award to someone else while standing next to Kanye “Cry on Jay Leno’s first show” West.

5.         Bears or wildcats in the suburbs or rats downtown.

6.         DCR officials being in charge of fixing the bridges over the Charles orMass Highway officials being in charge of fixing the bridges over the Charles.

7.         LNG tankers entering Boston Harbor or crossing on foot at Charles Circle, Rutherford Avenue, or Mass.Ave., which between 2002 and June of this year had 11          intersections at which more than ten pedestrian or bike accidents that required an ambulance had occurred.

Now that we’re all frightened, if anyone knows how to prepare for any of these disasters, just let me know.