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As an avid outdoorsmen and survivalist, I can say you're on the right track here but there are a few things neccesary to your survival that you're neglecting.

A non-electric cooking solution is probably something that most people should have anyway. As someone already mentioned, cooking with gas is a much better way to cook due to predictability and fast reaction to change. Gas service is available in most suburban and rural areas, however it may be impractical for those in the city. For those who are some reason bound to their electric stove, or for those who want to be prepared for emergencies, camp stoves are an excellent alternative. Cheap camp stoves can be found at walmart, like this one. That stove relies on propane for its fuel and is a bit bulky for some. For those who are interested in a portable and extremely flexible solution there are several backpacking stoves which burn just about anything. The MSR XGK Expedition advertises that it burns anything from white gas to jet fuel, including auto-grade gas and kerosene, and it only costs $109.95, really not too bad of a price for something that could be invaluable in a blackout.

While a warm meal is a wonderful "bonus" during a disaster, it's really not too much of a requirement. Considering most "disasters" seem to last around a week, one could easily survive on other forms of nutrition for that long. It's always a good idea to keep a few powerbars, clif bars, or other form of highly compacted nutritional bar around. More important than food though is water. Even if the worst case scenario were to hit and you were caught totally off guard with no food in the house, you can survive for quite some time on your lovehandles, thunder thighs, and beer (or geek) gut, as long as you've got WATER. Again for the camper/hiker/backpacker there are tons of great portable water filters out there that should make damn near anything drinkable. If you're planning on staying at home a filtration pitcher is a good thing to have, unlike faucet based filters, you can use the pitcher with water collected from any source (rainwater if need be).

But food and water are only one thing that you should be prepared with. Especially for the northerners, you should have some way of keeping warm. Now, if you're in a suburban or rural area, a woodstove may be the best way to "kill two birds with one stone", not only can they heat an entire house with flexible low-cost high-availability fuels, but in an emergency you can cook on them too. Regardless of what you're using to heat your home, there are a few simple items that can save your life in a "disaster" situation by keeping you warm. The first and maybe most important is a good sleeping bag. The body burns a ton of calories just trying to stay warm in cold weather, with food and water supplies possibly a concern, it is in anyone's best interests to stay as warm as possible. For those of you who are only looking at in-home emergencies, wal-mart sells cheap zero degree bags, and if your home should drop to below zero god help you. Anyone into camping/hiking or who would like something to keep in a car should check out a

Please do not just throw away dead batteries. Please recycle them.

I use tons of NiMH batteries in my various gadgets.

The prices aren't the best, but REI has all you probably need right here.

Battery Barn has some good prices.

Please do not just throw away dead batteries. Please recycle them.

I use tons of NiMH batteries in my various gadgets.

The prices aren't the best, but REI has all you probably need right here.

Battery Barn has some good prices.

.

Flat? I just keep one of these around.

-silverband

I've used camping headlamps for reading in bed and other nocturnal residential navigation (raiding the fridge, letting the dog out, checking out noises...oh, no don't go there,) Anyway, I think they work better than book lights.

REI has a cool one Petzl Zipka LED Headlamp that isn't big and bulky. It also has a lens kit that would address some night vision issues (red filter, etc.)

I really like how small it is and I am tempted to get one myself to replace the ancient (circa 1990) clunker I have.

I've used camping headlamps for reading in bed and other nocturnal residential navigation (raiding the fridge, letting the dog out, checking out noises...oh, no don't go there,) Anyway, I think they work better than book lights.

REI has a cool one Petzl Zipka LED Headlamp that isn't big and bulky. It also has a lens kit that would address some night vision issues (red filter, etc.)

I really like how small it is and I am tempted to get one myself to replace the ancient (circa 1990) clunker I have.

I recently picked up a petzl tikka led headlamp. It is small, takes 3 triple-a batteries and is damn bright. It uses 3 white LEDs.

Highly recommended.

spreer

Word Up, Dude!

I hear ya!

Last time I was climbing K2 there were these freakin' Black Helicopters following me! I'm positive they were tracking me via my avalanche beacon!

No matter how high I climbed, they were right there behind me! So on the down climb I took a risk and tossed the beacon off a cliff. The dumbasses followed it as it fell down the 1000m cliff! I think they think I'm dead. So now I can have a fresh start. I've changed my name, changed my Slashdot nick and everything's cool.

I wouldn't touch one of these ultra-tracking beacons with an avalache probe, let alone actually wear one!

Word Up, Dude!

I hear ya!

Last time I was climbing K2 there were these freakin' Black Helicopters following me! I'm positive they were tracking me via my avalanche beacon!

No matter how high I climbed, they were right there behind me! So on the down climb I took a risk and tossed the beacon off a cliff. The dumbasses followed it as it fell down the 1000m cliff! I think they think I'm dead. So now I can have a fresh start. I've changed my name, changed my Slashdot nick and everything's cool.

I wouldn't touch one of these ultra-tracking beacons with an avalache probe, let alone actually wear one!

When I travel, about the only tech I take is my GPS receiver chock full 'o waypoints. It runs for a few days on two NiMH AA batteries. I also take some additional AAs and keep in a solar charger. I stick that thing in the sun every chance I get (e.g. window sill, dashboard of a rental car, strapped to the top of my backpack or head).

Laptops are tougher. Get a handful of power adapters and recharge every chance you get (e.g. restaurants, exterior outlets on houses, DC-AC inverter in cars, bare wires in bases of lamp posts, etc). Also take a long some extra laptop batteries.

And don't forget your Iridium phone so you can check your email any where,any time.

When I travel, about the only tech I take is my GPS receiver chock full 'o waypoints. It runs for a few days on two NiMH AA batteries. I also take some additional AAs and keep in a solar charger. I stick that thing in the sun every chance I get (e.g. window sill, dashboard of a rental car, strapped to the top of my backpack or head).

Laptops are tougher. Get a handful of power adapters and recharge every chance you get (e.g. restaurants, exterior outlets on houses, DC-AC inverter in cars, bare wires in bases of lamp posts, etc). Also take a long some extra laptop batteries.

And don't forget your Iridium phone so you can check your email any where,any time.

When I travel, about the only tech I take is my GPS receiver chock full 'o waypoints. It runs for a few days on two NiMH AA batteries. I also take some additional AAs and keep in a solar charger. I stick that thing in the sun every chance I get (e.g. window sill, dashboard of a rental car, strapped to the top of my backpack or head).

Laptops are tougher. Get a handful of power adapters and recharge every chance you get (e.g. restaurants, exterior outlets on houses, DC-AC inverter in cars, bare wires in bases of lamp posts, etc). Also take a long some extra laptop batteries.

And don't forget your Iridium phone so you can check your email any where,any time.

You can get handhold sets of various angles and sizes online at places like REI or Mountain Gear.

Okay, I guess I could stand to lose some karma, so here goes:

The problem with "free" is that it doesn't scale well. Communism is a great idea for communes, with maybe 20 members. But sized up to the state level it fails.

Free works best in conjunction with fee. So, have a web site with free content on it, but sell subscriptions for "added value" or use it to promote offline services. Or if you're a bricks and mortar company like REI, put the catalog online for free and use it to drive customers to your physical locations.

I predict the pendulum will swing too far to the fee side, companies will lose customers, then swing back to the free side until they lose money, and so on until an optimum middle ground is found.

They sell it at REI. It's nice and light for backpacking, but pricey.

I bet it took more than one bottle of good vodka to get a set in the old days.

The Ontro product is is an expensive, extreme convenience item. Yea, I can see you'd keep a can of Ontro instant-heat coffee in the car for that once in a while when you need caffine. But if I'm skiing, I'd rather visit the lodge to warm up. And even back packing, I'd use a light weight backpackers stove. You can cook a real meal on these things, and they run on ANY sort of fuel -- gasoline, diesel, I think even denatured alcohol.

Or you can even make your own if your a backpacker-hacker.

The Ontro product is is an expensive, extreme convenience item. Yea, I can see you'd keep a can of Ontro instant-heat coffee in the car for that once in a while when you need caffine. But if I'm skiing, I'd rather visit the lodge to warm up. And even back packing, I'd use a light weight backpackers stove. You can cook a real meal on these things, and they run on ANY sort of fuel -- gasoline, diesel, I think even denatured alcohol.

Or you can even make your own if your a backpacker-hacker.

Freeze-dried astronaut ice cream, available from NASA, science museums, or camping goods store. You could even include a note about wanting to travel to the stars with her/him.

You want to contaminate a major urban water supply?

Denver: Dump it in the South Platte River.

Chicago: There are a few artificial islands offshore in Lake Michigan with pumping stations. Get someone on the payroll there.

Los Angeles: There are a few aquaeducts coming from the Colorado River in Arizona. Or you can go to the head of Glen Canyon and get a bunch of houseboating tourists and jetskiers and then the remainder can poison LA.

If you're worried about pipes, then you'd better plan on classifying every piece of paper coming out of your city planning office, traffic engineering department, county surveyor's office, fire marshall's office, etc.

You want to protect chemical plants? Congratulations: You've just forced the EPA and the state Department of Health and Environment to adopt NSA-style security rules. Considering how many of those documents end up in court records, you've just forced everything in those agencies' purview to be handled in secret tribunals instead of open court.

What's always impressed me is how I can get good road maps for free from gas stations. I can get better road maps for three bucks from AAA. I can get first-rate topo maps for a few bucks from REI or for even less from the USGS office, one of which is near just about every decent engineering college in the US. And I can drive around and look at the things on those maps with no ID save for a driver's license (checked only when I'm pulled over for traffic violations) or no ID at all if I'm not driving.

There are plenty of countries where even the worst of those maps would be tightly classified, and where I'd need an actual passport which is actually checked at checkpoints, just to leave my own city. I've been a cranky Southwestern American for long enough to become sick at the mere thought of something like that happening here.

There's quite a lot of things you could do:

• Read through the entire userfriendly.org past cartoon archive.
• Make a web page, seeing how many haikus you can write in one shift.
• Give your online help system a section for 'I can't retrieve my e-mail' with the answers to common questions
• Try to become a MVP or something similar.
• Re-code websites to be complient with new standards, like XHTML and CSS. Start a site listing all the fully standards-compliant sites you have modified.
• Fit an extra-loud ringer to the telephone, and take in a camp bed and get some sleep.
• Hear over to Everything2 and read / write some nodes.
• Play an MP3 at full blast, and sing along. Then record yourself singing, and compare the waveforms. With a bit of practice, you can pick up quite good impersonations.
• Find a user/pass combo for somewhere like this, and go through the excercises every evening.
• Redirect the calls to your mobile phone, and start going for strength-building nightly runs, either in the building or outside.
• Find a flight of steps and see how many you can hop up, without stopping or touching the hand rails. Do this every night, until you can get right up the building on either foot.
• Teach yourself to juggle.
• Scatter copies of 'Soldier of Fortune' magazine around your office. Or someone else's.
• Take in a laptop and play Baldur's Gate 2, Diablo 2 and games like that.
• F1rst P0st! Need I say more?
• Learn a high-tech-sounding internet standard like WML, and design things your company doesn't need, but that will look good, i.e. a WML e-mail access client, so your users can tap your address into thier phones, and see thier e-mail. Don't step on anyone's toes, though.
• Download Linux ISOs to your proxy's cache, during the slow period so if anyone gets them in the day, it will be faster for everyone.
• Work on a university theesis or something.
• Browse some Pr0n
• Bring in a TV and watch that.
• Pull DivXed DVDs down off the internet and watch them.
• Go through slashdotters' webpages and start your own web page, listing pages that contain interesting information.
• Learn NASM
• Read a book

If you can't find a book you like, you could try some of the following, which I have read, or am planning on reading:

• The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook - by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht - ISBN 0811825558
• How to disappear completely and never be found - ISBN 0806515597
• Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell : A User Friendly Guide to World Domination - ISBN 156592861X
• Code Breaking: A History and Exploration - Rudolf Kippenhahn - ISBN 1585670898
• Hypnotism Made Practical By Orton, Louis ISBN: 0879800798
• Hypnotism Made Easy : An Introductory Survey of Theory and Practice By Winn, Ralph ISBN: 087980078X
• Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as... Author: Ledeen, Michael Arthur ISBN: 0312263562
• Metaamagical Themas Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern Author: Hofstadter, Douglas R ISBN: 0140179968
• Just Like a Woman: What Makes Us Female - ISBN: 1860497810
• On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society By Dave Grossman - ISBN: 0316330116
• Knife Throwing : A Practical Guide - Harry K. McEvoy - ISBN: 0804810990
• Complete Gil Hibben Knife Throwing Guide By Gil Hibben - ISBN: 1886950024
• Dim-Mak: Death Point Striking - ISBN: 0873647181
• CQB (Close Quarters Battle) - Mark V. Lonsdale - ISBN 093923503X
• Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence - ISBN: 0747538352
• Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types Author: Keirsey, David - ISBN: 0960695400
• Travellers' Guide to Hell - ISBN: 1860119107
• Complete Guide to Lock Picking - Eddie the Wire - ISBN: 0915179067
• 1,001 Excuses: How to Get out of...and Away with...Anything By George D. Zgourides, Nancy Pickering - ISBN: 1559502088
• B and E Book: Burglary Techniques: Investigation By Burt Rapp ISBN: 1559500212
• Princess Bride - Author: Goldman, William - ISBN: 0747545189
• Anything you can find from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, especially:
  • Guards! Guards!
  • Men at Arms
  • Jingo
• Anything else you can get your hands on

Thats my advice, anyway.

I chose the original-model "BuckTool" from Buck Knives.

By building it with the hinges turned 90degrees, they keep the smooth finished surfaces of the handles facing outward in both open and closed modes, which means you never have any exposed edges digging into your palm when you have to grip hard. (I believe SOG uses a similar method, with the difference that the Buck tool opens with one motion.)

In addition to the main dual-teeth-pliers / wire cutters, the swing-out tools include five screwdriver blades (three straight, two Phillips), two cutting blades (one straight, one serrated -- great for opening packages), and a can opener (which I've never used). Every tool can be accessed directly. Every tool locks open. Every tool is labeled on the handles.

Flip out a working bit and reclose the handles, and the tools fits the palm perfectly. Open one handle half way (90degrees), and use it as a high-torque right-angle driver. Open one handle all the way (180degrees), and the two handles form a long extension with the working bit at the end, much like a traditional long-shaft screwdriver.

I bought mine at REI.

This is not any political or hippy thing. I've just found that I get the best service from a business where I am part owner, part worker, part consumer. Likewise, I get my best investment from boxen about which I have knowledge.

If this works, I hope there is an option for national membership. I would be willing to pay a slightly higher fee as a non-working member, or would be willing to do writing, etc. to help it fly.

If you have not tried coops, give 'em a shot. It's amazing what happens when you participate in a business. Likewise, it's depressing to go to the monthly/annual meetings and find people who are driven by their egos, rather than the vision, or the day-to-day concerns. But somehow, coops still get the job done, and often at a better price and with better service than non-coops engaged in the same business.

Its actually become popular for outdoorsmen (women too). ;Prince ton Tech has been doing this for about a year. You trade off the brilliance of a regular bulb (which lasts for 2.5 hours) for 40 hours of life - this from 2 AAs...

Before, the only way to get long lasting light was to take a big and heavy battery pack (usually 4 or 6 D cells). It may not sound like much but it made a headlamp relatively impractical for backpacking (where an extra pound. means an awful lot). I can use my headlamp for multiple trips (usually about 10 days total) and not have to bring replacement batteries -though I usually do, because 1 extra AA (I'll bring one spare) still weighs less than the old battery pack

Headlamps are fantastic though, because it frees your hands so you can do stuff like - set up a tent, see what your doing while you cook dinner, and even change a tire (not that I change tires while backpacking, but I do use my headlamp for other things as well).

Plus, LEDs are way more sturdy than regular bulbs - and while Headlamps and such are built sturdy, it becomes a worthy investment the first time you break your replacement bulb while changing it... not to mention you don't have to replace LEDs...

I think I've seen this for a few regular flashlights too - for those of you who don't want to look like the three-eyed monster while you use a flashlight.

The whole reason why a lot of the dot coms are failing is because they tried to be an extension of the existing system. It doesn't work that way. Would you use a car to drive up an escalator? No, that would be absurd. It's the same idea as trying to set up a department store strictly on the web. It just won't work. Companies who have adapted to the web and used it's strengths will survive. Take REI for example. They didn't move all their operations over to the web, that would be stupid. They leveraged the web to access a larger audience. ALA Click-And-Mortar.

Though all of human history, there have been three basic stages of economic life: hunting-and-gathering societies; agricultural societies; and industrial societies. Now, sparked by the rise of computing and the growth of the Net and the Web, something entirely new and different may be just over the horizon, something all of us are already a primitive part of, a fourth stage of social organization: information societies.

I take some issue with that because the first three phases of society were all about aquiring resources to live. Information in itself does not put food in the mouth. It can help pay for it, but it does not actually get it to your mouth. Factories still have to churn it out. Now if we start evoloving towards automating anything and everything, then I would agree that we are on the way to the "information age". Until then, I would say that we are still in the industrial age.
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc

I'll second this... I've had my 800 for a couple of months now and have been VERY happy with its performance, battery life, everything. However, as soon as I have the cash I'm upgrading to the 990... the extra resolution is nice, but I want aperture-priority and shutter-priority options.

Speaking of options, the coolest accessory I've picked up is this tiny tripod from REI... in its folded state it looks like a fat tent stake, and you can use the velcro wrap to attach it to anything cylindrical--4x4 post, stair railing, stop sign.

1. alltea.com - They sent email confirmation when the order was placed, and another at the time of shipping, which included the UPS tracking number.

2. bananarepublic.com - Shipment confirmation email containing FedEx tracking number, but they sent it as an HTML MIME part. Bah.

3. sees.com - Shipment confirmation email. This was the first to arrive (via priority mail).

4. rei.com - No email, but arrived on time.

I immediately went to the brick-and-mortar Williams-Sonoma store about a mile from my house, and bought the item I sought, after hearing that it was one of twelve they had in stock. This raised a question in my mind: would it have been so difficult for the W-S order steering logic to have discovered the availability of that item within walking distance of my shipping address? Why not prompt the customer service rep with this information, or maybe even notify the store to ship it locally? It would seem that, especially for fancy-ass businesses, this simple service (which has to be trivial to implement) would really add to the purchasing experience.

My next question was, how can an online company not assume that gift-like items (excluding things like industrial power generators or tanks) purchased in, say, the month before December 4/24/whatever have the potential to be related to the chanukka/xmas/random holiday? Given that, wouldn't it make sense to actively notify customers if there's even the slightest possibility that an order couldn't be filled in time? I think I recall See's giving a nod to this by automatically upgrading the shipping method to next-day or something a few days before xmas eve. I really would have appreciated this kind of notification from W-S, however, as soon as they discovered the January 4 shipping date.

The best part of the whole thing is, however, that the day after I picked up the item from the meatspace W-S store, another one arrived via FedEx, which will have to be reclaimed by FedEx next week. =)

-jd

Salt Lake City, where I live, is one of the top five. As far as workforce distribution goes, Salt Lake is a fairly normal city (unlike DC or San Francisco; sure, SLC has some high-tech, but not much), and here it's just kinda assumed that you're online. If you go into stores like REI (an outdoor supplies store which sells hiking, camping, rock climbing, kayaking, etc. gear), the sales people will routinely tell you to go to such-and-such a web site if you ask them for a product they don't carry. The radios and my mailbox are dripping with competing ads for *DSL and for cable-modem. Etc. It really is starting to become ubiquitous here.

At the same time, though, I'd be willing to bet that the 50% here that are wired are mostly east of I-15, and the 50% who aren't are mostly west (which is the poorer side of town). Class distinctions are alive and well in the Internet age, unfortunately.