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Emergency Gadgets Reviewed
Carl Bialik writes "When power lines go down, hand-cranked radios and standalone cellphone chargers could come in handy. Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg reviews emergency gadgets, including a $50 radio that picks up TV audio and gets 35 minutes of power from a 30-second crank. Of course, Mossberg also offers the caveat that these gadgets could be rendered useless 'should the communications infrastructure itself go down.'"
The $50 radio that picks up TV audio will be useless when the mandatory switch to digital OTA broadcasts occurs. (Unless something interesting will be broadcast on those frequencies after that point.)
If you're charging your iPod you aren't having a fucking emergency.
A radio could be quite useful, but not nearly as useful as a couple of cases of bottled water.
-Peter
A hand-cranked device that could produce 3-5 days of food and water would probably be popular.
While there may be value to hearing whats going on in an emergency, I'd be able to actually call for help should I need it.
A technicians-class FCC license is very easy to get, and small handheld tranceivers are not very expensive.
Thats MUCH more useful in an emergency than a TV. I can hear the weater broadcasts, radio, and emergency bands and much more usefully, I can actually transmit.
In short, it never ceases to amaze me how humanity devolves during disasters and make a bad situation even worse.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
What are "standalone cellphone chargers"? Surely it would be just as good to have a spare, fully charged battery rather than something running from batteries charging the cell phone battery.
Unless, of course, the charger ran solar power. Maybe they should just make a solar cell cellular phone for just this situation.
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You know, those weird dads that have the big antennas on their roofs? Every suburb has at least one. Go talk to them and learn how it works. It will be the only reliable way after a real catastrophe hits.
They review two crank radios and then extra battery cells for your cell phone and iPod? How 'bout an actual review of several hand crank radios. At the local Radio Shack they had three different ones, as does Sharper Image and other stores. Just because it says "Wall Street Journal" doesn't mean its useful.
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I staffed the Emergency Preparedness booh at out local Bad Art and Overpriced Wine Street Fair last weekend. People love to show their tech-savvy gadgets - but are you really prepared?
Buckets. Emergency tech is low tech. You are going to care less about whether your Treo works and more about clean water and a warm place to take a dump. (Store your water in jerry cans, obviously, not buckets.)
And don't wait. The entire Houston area was all out of plywood by Monday night, according to a friend of mine there.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Wow, that's getting your priorities in order.
This fucking article sucks dick. Barely any items were reviewed...what the fuck slashdot? try again.
But it doesn't matter. Police, firemen and similar people are generally trained to take care of #1 first, not to be a hero. (Now, many people do disregard this and do dangerous things, but they're usually disciplined afterwards, assuming they live.)
If you've got two police officers in a car, and you see a very angry mob beating somebody, intervening immediately is not usually the smartest thing to do. You'd be putting yourself into extreme danger, and may in fact make things worse for the person being beaten.
A much smarter response would be to stay back and call it in and get lots of reinforcements, cops in riot gear, and THEN you can go in. When you're ready, not before. If you're going to enter a battle, make sure it's a battle you're likely to win. If you're not planning to win, don't enter.
Individuals respect cop's authority. Even large crowds generally respect police. But an angry mob? No way would two smart cops do anything about that on their own beyond getting reenforcements.
Funny, it seems like I remember a thread here a few months ago telling all of us HAM radio operaters that HAM was outdated, and why bother since we have computers, etc. etc. We all claimed it was useful in emergencies and were all ignored and insulted. How times change.
Remember your water heater -- lots of clean water there. Turn off the input valve in case the water supply gets contaminated.
Get a good water filter, and possibly something to kill viruses, like iodine.
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Private citizens were stripped of their ability to protect themselves by the very people who admitted they were unable to protect anyone. And since it's been very popular to blame racism for everything else that's gone poorly in NOLA, it appears that the local government doesn't think poor black folk can be trusted with guns.
Would increasing a state's sales tax by .01% provide enough revenue to send each household one of these emergency radios as well as 2 weeks worth of MRE's, water, and a first-aid kit, every year?
What better way to help prevent the large scale suffering that so many endured during Katrina while waiting for rescue efforts.
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People who can't bother to prepare themselves are only going to eat their emergency food and sell their radios.
Like it or not, there is always going to be a large part of the population that is going to expect the government to bail their ass out of every mess they get themselves into.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
There was an article in the NYT a week or two ago. I wish i had the link. But anyway, it talked about what to have for an emergency. The last sentence said something about how most people don't know enough about firearms, and thus shouldn't have one. It didn't suggest people learn how to operate them safely, just that they not have them.
Here is my point: Person A plans ahead, is considered a bit nutty perhaps, but he has enough water to last his family months, food stores, seeds, candles, matches, flashlights, a generator, diesel and on and on, but no firearm.
Person B, who is person A's neighbor has a Mossberg Maverick Pistol Grip 12 gauge he bought for $100 used, a ton of shells. He also has the attitude that he will do anything it takes, no matter how it defies his morals or humanity, to make sure his family survives. A week after a disaster, who has more supplies, Person A or Person B. I am going to say person B has the supplies, and person A is dead from a sucking chest wound.
In a disaster, it doesn't matter what you have unless you can defend it.
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I've always been told that it's unreasonable to expect a full aid to reach you in the first 72 hours after a disaster (especially if you're in a huge shelter - getting food to thousands or tens of thousands of people at a time when infrastructure is destroyed or extremely stressed can be problematic to say the least). So, I've assembled what is called a 72 hour kit. It has:
Clothing - 1 or 2 sets of sturdy work clothing (jeans, shirt, etc.), socks, an old pair of boots/shoes, underwear, etc. Also, a good baseball cap for the sun. Mostly old clothes I don't wear any more or stuff I got from Goodwill.
Medical Kit - standard first aid kit and GOLD BOND powder. In a disaster where your clothes get wet (hurricane, flood) you will seriously want some Gold Bond to fight the chaffing or you will be useless to any relief effort in a day or two. Of course, diabetics and those on perscription medicine should keep a stash of supplies here as well.
Toiletry Kit - toothbrush, toothpaste, bar of soap + caddy, wash rag, towel, disinfectant. Mostly just older stuff I don't use any more or the wife has deemed "unpresentable" in our bathroom (well, except the toothbrush and soap... those are of course, new).
Food - enough food to keep me alive and reasonably happy for three days. I prefer stuff that doesn't need to be cooked - trail mix, granola bars, vienna sausages (when I bust out those you know it's getting bad... yuck...), etc. Some people get MREs, but I just get the grocery store stuff and replace it every once in a while.
Bottles of water - a couple of bottles of water that I rotate in and out every few months or so. I personally think two to three gallons is enough for 72 hours, but your mileage may vary.
Other essentials - pocket knife or leatherman, battery powered or crank radio, durable flashlight with lots batteries (Mag lights make decent hammers in a pinch), matches, small tool kit, etc.
All of this fits in an old backpack and sits in my closet so I can grab it and get out if I need to. All together, it probably cost less than $100, although I mostly used items I had laying around and didn't have much of a use for. The cost to rotate the trail mix and granola bars probably comes to $10/year, and I keep bottled water around the house anyways. Very low tech, but functional.
Keep in mind, it's not just hurricanes and earthquakes one should be concerned about - a semi truck that flips near your home while carrying dangerous cargo can create a need for evacuation at a moment's notice. Odds are, it will take a while for a shelter with a kitchen to be set up.
I wonder how many lives could have been saved in the recent disaster if more citizens had prepared themselves with something like this.
I can corroberate your statements about the police. My stepfather was a cop, and growing up I would periodically pepper him with annoying questions about his job. Once I asked him something about stopping fights and he said that he usually waited a few seconds before stopping the fight. When I asked him why he said it was because they would be too tired from fighting each other to fight him :)
Of course this is the same guy that had this conversation with me:
Little Me: "What would you do if you cornered a bad guy who knew KARATE!?!"
Cop: "I would say, here karate this bullet"
I think what the GP poster meant was that in an emergency, they aren't going to give a rat's ass whether they need a license or not.
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I hear the CO2 kind will get you a nice cold beer in 2-3min.
As for "emergency" gadgets I'll stick with my Leathermans and a few pounds of beef jerkey.
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You might do that as an individual. But I don't think you've ever been in a situation where you were part of a large group of people doing anything if you think that two men with guns would be able to stop them.
Mobs don't stop to think, even if the front of the mob broke up and ran, the ones behind them still have to, and the people behind THOSE ones are pushing them forward because the people behind THEM are pushing....
Once a mob forms about the only way to deal with it is to rout it, break it into pieces where the 'group think' isn't being reenforced on all sides.
The devolution and degradation of humanity happened long before the riots. It started several hundred years ago when the first slave was taken to America. That's not an excuse for the violence that was inflicted on Reginald Denny, but we should look in the mirror at our own savage behavior, that happens every day when we ignore poverty in our own country, before pointing at the relatively brief amount of "savage" behavior that happens during riots. Quite a bit of their anger is righteous.
There are still pockets of slavery in the South today and the racist tradition is alive and well. Sure, technically they're free, but poverty and social roles still enforces behavior that is very similar in functionality to slavery. My Mom was raised by a black woman. I met her a few times, and she still lives on property owned by my Mom's family (as far as I know, I try not to think of the situation). When I was growing up, my mom referred to her as grandma any time she would speak of her. She was paid a weekly stipend and lived in servant's quarters. My grandparents weren't rich, certainly not well-off enough to pay someone a decent wage. But, this type of arrangement was common, because after slavery was abolished, many black people fell into familiar roles of servant and laborer, and never managed to climb out of them. She is still alive, and while technically free, the woman has never owned anything of any significance in her entire life. I grew up in Missouri (my mom's family lives in Georgia), far enough away from the south to gain perspective on how strange the situation was, and only met her twice (my Mom was estranged from her family a large part of my childhood), but I can't help but think that this strange situation is a common thing. When she talks to anyone white, she calls them Mr. or Ms., to this day. I saw her 3 years ago at my grandfather's funeral, and I was 28, and she was around 90, and she referred to me as Mr. Jon! What year are we in?
So, it's pretty easy (for me) to understand the anger that black people feel, in light of the fact that there are still some who are living the life of modern day slaves. Note that this isn't the kind of legacy that people talk about, and I would like to believe that only having visited my Mom's family in GA twice in my 31 years absolves me of responsibility, but does it? How exactly do I pay her for what she has lost, 90 years of lost opportunity?
This is part of the problem, is that racism is an embarrassing legacy for whites, so it often is not talked about. This is the first time I've written about this part of my family legacy, and I hesitated, even though I am pseudo-anonymous, but stories like these need to be told more often, so that people understand what is really going on. It's similar to the story of the teenage girl that is raped and has an abortion. As compelling of a case as it makes for abortion, the story is not told, often because people are embarrassed and ashamed. So, the injustice remains hidden.
Besides that, running a car engine to charge the battery wastes fuel. You can run far longer with a portable generator than by burning the same amount of fuel in your car engine.