Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Condensing Your Life on to a USB Flash Drive?

Posted by Cliff on from the what-to-take-and-what-to-put-it-on-to dept.

Fear the Clam asks: "My wife and I figure that if we plan for the worst, it'll never happen, so we've been putting together 'If public transportation bites it and we have two minutes to grab our stuff and start walking, never to return to NYC' getaway knapsacks. With luck they'll live in the closet forever. Coincidently, this morning the New York Times has an article about what to take when you have to leave home in a big hurry [DNA verification required], and they suggest making a list of all of things like Social Security and credit card numbers, scanning birth certificates, marriage license and tax returns, and saving it all on a USB flash drive. Since this would be a complete identity kit, encryption is of utmost importance. What's the best solution? A flash drive that claims to encrypt or a platform-independent, self-extracting, encrypted file on a regular drive? Any suggestions for sturdy drives?" Of course, the choice of USB flash drive covers only a part of the problem. What other data would you put on this piece of "contingency hardware", and how would you protect the drive itself in case you did have to "swim for it"?

17 of 888 comments (clear)

  1. Living in the other target city (DC) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My philosophy is that if DC is in such shape that I can never return, I really don't care about carrying around any personl data or very much anything else other than my life. We were having a discussion at work about whether our web backups could survive a nuclear attack... but if there's a nuclear attack, our website is the least of my concerns.

    1. Re:Living in the other target city (DC) by cowscows · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, yes, your life is very important, but it's certainly not a bad idea to grab what you can. Taking a little bit of stuff doesn't mean you're valuing it over your life. Grabbing an already prepared USB drive full of personal documents isn't stupid in the same way as, say, staying home to guard your comic book collection from looters.

      If DC is your home, and it gets wiped off the map, let's just hope that you survive. And if you do survive, you'd certainly be glad to have anything that you did manage to bring with you.

      --

      One time I threw a brick at a duck.

    2. Re:Living in the other target city (DC) by nelsonal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If the brown hits the rotaries that bad (city destruction by nuclear or biological), I'm depending on the wetware storage of rural survival skills (subsistance farming and animal husbandry) rather than some now useless bits stored in silicon.

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    3. Re:Living in the other target city (DC) by Total_Wimp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My philosophy is that if DC is in such shape that I can never return, I really don't care about carrying around any personl data or very much anything else other than my life.

      People tend to think of the "worse case scenerio," but it often falls short of this. Yes, escape with your life, but remember that at some point you'll likely want to rebuild it in a civilized society.

      The living victims of the Tsunami, Katrina and Cherynobl all had to rebuild their lives. The living victims of Hiroshima and Dresden all had to rebuild their lives. Even the jews who survived Aushwitz had to rebuild their lives.

      Short of total world destruction or your personal death, you will need to rebuild yours as well. It would be easier to do if you could convince your insurance company to cut you a check for your obliterated house.

      TW

    4. Re:Living in the other target city (DC) by leuk_he · · Score: 3, Insightful

      you could probably walk to areas with mostly intact infrastructure in an hour or two.

      Walk seems to be correct. However since the army will be al over it, and there is more terrorist threat, you will be shot trying to leave a suspect area. By foot is most dangerous, a bus might be more appropiate.

      If you do not believe me look a New Orleans. Many people failed to leave the area in the days after because roads were close by men with guns. And in that case there was no terrorist threath.

      So make sure you have a stash of money to buy your way out of a disaster area. That is worth far more than your encrypted /sealed usb stick.

      Storing that data encrypted on the internet on a offshore site might help you not to worry about picking up that usb stick.

    5. Re:Living in the other target city (DC) by Pieroxy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That is a bit shortsighted. There are plenty of minor disasters that could destroy a great deal of your life and that would be sad. The one thing every people I know (or I've heard of) that had their house burn down complained about was that they lost all memories of 'before'. Not mentioning all the burnt paperwork of course, but this is just paperwork and it takes only time and effort to make it up again. Pics, Videos and sometimes an old piece of music not distributed anymore were at the top of the list.

      Burning that and sending it to your parents and in laws is a minor charge and can prove usefull. Even only for a regular robbery.

      Of course, if the earth was to explode, I woudn't care about that stuff anymore. But life is not all black and white. Most of the time, it is grayish.

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
    6. Re:Living in the other target city (DC) by JabberWokky · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I do wonder how many people have the skill set to survive. I know how to build a timber frame house, field dress and smoke an animal, understand basic sanitation issues (how far to build your outhouse from your water supply), etc. Some of it is from reenactment, some is interest in early tech, some from Scouting, most out of curiosity. But I have no idea if I could survive; my bugout kit is aimed at a disaster where modern society survives and I won't need a two man saw or years worth of ammo. Regional natural disasters, basically.

      I do assume that even in a mild emergency a USB key would be useless. Heck, the Florida storm shelters are pretty much the best case emergency situation and a USB key is pointless while there. A good marine ziplock bag (or just a freezer bag) stuffed with some documents and tucked into a small bag you carry with you is a hell of a lot more useful. Keep them stored at all times in a waterproof bag and you might get lucky and avoid having them turned to pulp when the fire department floods your house to put out the fire in the next room over. Mine are in a freezer bag in the file cabinet I keep my records in. Need to leave? Grab the bag out of the folder.

      If your house burns down you have aid workers helping you replace your documents, and I don't see that having them scanned on a USB key is any better than photocopying them and handing or mailing them to a trusted friend or family. And if you don't have someone you can trust like that, that's step one, way before you get a USB key.

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  2. What's the best solution? by John+Hasler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Paper.

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  3. Encryption by PsychicX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As far as encryption goes, for god's sake don't rely on anything the manufacturers ship. That stuff is meant to protect you from your average luser seeing files, not anybody who is honestly interested. Use Blowfish or Twofish for proper 2 way encryption.

  4. Computer Acess? by dclaw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Would it not be better to simply keep a set of laminated copies of all those documents? In the case that you don't have access to a computer when you need it? There isn't always going to be a Kinko's or internet cafe nearby when you're in the midst of a terrorist attack or natural disaster the magnitude of which you are speaking.

    --
    feeling lonely? grab a balled up pillow for company
  5. Safe Deposit Box? by LlamaDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Technology isn't the answer to everything. Why not just take your important stuff, or good copies of said stuff, and put it in a safe deposit box? Then you just have to take your key with you when you run out of your house. And even if you lose your key, they can drill it open for a (hefty) fee.

    Really, why make it so complex by trying to put everything on USB drive and trying to figure out what encryption's best and scanning everything and...and...and... It's a waste of time.

  6. Re:Linus Torvalds' Solution by LWATCDR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually that is not that bad of an idea.
    Encrypt it and send it to your gmail account, your Yahoo briefcase, and maybe your hotmail account. Not to mention storing it on your USB drive.
    BTW your best bet for security for your USB drive is physical security. If you are really worried about someone taking it carry a spare full of fake data.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  7. Re:contents by MickLinux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Add in diplomas, as many different PDF resumes as jobs you might be interested in, 1 PDF CV each, baptismal certificates... ... working copies of MS Word and MS Excel, a simple text editor, Acrobat Reader, viruses, worms, trojan horses, Windows .DLL files, and ...

    all of which leads me to the following question.

    Why not just upload encrypted versions of this info to your YAHOO mail, and have it there in a folder "personal stuff", as attachments? That way, you don't depend on just the USB drive? Yeah, the USB would also be good for redundancy, but the easiest access is probably by YAHOO mail, and it automatically scans for malware as it goes.

    --
    Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
  8. Family photos. by OgGreeb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When they interview many of the Katrina NOLA refugees, a common regret is that they've lost family pictures. At this point there is no reason not to start scanning paper-based photos in high-resolution. I've been pursuing a long term project of scanning documents, family photos, certificates and so on -- and making two sets of copies of the DVD archives. One set goes to a safe-deposit box and the other gets sent out of state to a relative in Ohio (I'm in Maryland). Each disk has a printed list of contents attached to it.

    Apart from my wanting these images to survive, they are an important part of my children's and my extended family's legacy.

    --
    -- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD //www.digimark.net/
  9. Re:contents by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'd also include the following.

    • Street-level maps of the city and surrounding regions.
    • Medical history, for those with medical issues.
    • Any actual medications that have a decent enough shelf life to store for a while.
    • A pair of contacts or glasses if you need them.
    • Dust mask (at least).
    • Minimal first aid kit.
    • As an amateur radio operator I would definitely have a repeater guide to access repeaters while traveling. It's a sure thing the cell service will be down or overloaded. I'd also include a small wide-band receive transceiver, like the Yaesu VX-2R.
    • You know those kinetic flashlights we see advertised here at Slashdot by ThinkGeek all the time? Definitely one of those.
    • Ditto with a human-powered radio.
    • Some sort of food (granola bars at least).
    • A water purifier. There are water purifiers that are like a thick straw. You can put it in any water source and as you suck water through the "straw" it is purified.
    • A couple "space blankets".
    • A hard-copy of War of the Worlds. Putting it on the USB drive doesn't count.


      Dan East
    --
    Better known as 318230.
  10. Re:Just Plain Stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Okay, you're both an idiot and an asshole. Congratulations.

    Nobody said anything about a nuclear war, you fucking moron. Nobody's really afraid of a nuclear war any more. What people are afraid of, and with good reason, are things like hurricanes, tsunamis and 9/11s. In the case of a hurricane, you'll have several days' notice; in the case of a tsunami, you'll have hours. In the case of a 9/11, you'll have no warning at all, but if you're a survivor you might want or need to get out of town after the fact. If the attack includes a nuclear or radiological component, you might need to get out of town in order to be safe.

    Hurricane Katrina taught like five million people to be prepared. Here's a guy who's trying to be prepared, and your upbraiding him? You fucking moron. You motherfucking moron.

  11. Other small valuable items by Simonetta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would include some condoms (about 8), a few packs of cigarettes (even if you don't smoke, they are fantastic for bartering with nicotine addicts, and an emergency contraception kit of a few birth-control pills, like a unit of Plan B (an actual American product sold for post-coital contraception.) If you are a male, this seems absurd. But if you meet women in an emergency situation who do need this (inquire very discretely), they will be your friends and allies to their dying day.
          If you can find one, a hand-crank flashlight with super-bright white LED bulbs and a hand-crank radio would be good too. An unusual item that might be useful would be a software program for the USB keychain that has a 10000-word English/Spanish dictionary/phrase book. A PDF file of wild edible plants (with photos and drawings) would be more useful than a cannibal cookbook.