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In a previous post, I talked about the basics for starting food storage, namely having enough food and water on hard to last two weeks and three months, respectively.

Now I’ll go over some of the emergency equipment that I think is essential during a prolonged disaster.

Essential Equipment

Among the most essential equipment to have during an emergency is a camp stove and fuel. During a disaster it is possible that your electricity and/or natural gas supply could be compromised. If that happens, how are you going to cook your food? Or boil water? Unless you live in a place that has a ready supply of firewood, you could be left out in the cold.

After doing some research, I’ve decided that the best equipment for myself is a Coleman dual fuel camp stove. It is small enough that it can be put into the car, should I need to evacuate. It also has great flexibility in that it can use regular unleaded gasoline to power the burners. Compared to a propane burning camp stove, I figure that unleaded gasoline will be easier to get than propane during a disaster. In addition to the stove, storing 3 months worth of fuel, and at least two weeks worth, would be a really good idea.

Coleman 2 Burner Dual Fuel Stove

Another absolute essential is a flash light, or other light source. This is something you should have around, even if you aren’t worried about a disaster. I like this hand cranked LED model. You use the hand crank to charge up the batteries, and if the batteries are completely dead, you can power the LEDs directly from the hand crank. Nice! It’s important to choose a light source that doesn’t require batteries, that’s one more thing to worry about storing, and another thing to worry about acquiring during a long disaster

Garrity hand crank LED flashlight

The next essential item to have during an emergency is a hand cranked grain mill. In order to use your stored grains, you’ll need to be able to make your own flour, and without electricity, it better be hand powered. This is probably the most low-tech thing I’ve ever gotten, but I think it will be absolutelynecessary during a prolonged disaster.

Back to Basics Grain Mill

Summary

There are a few essential tools to have around during an emergency:

• Backup stove & fuel
• Flashlight that doesn’t rely on batteries
• Hand powered grain mill

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about making sure that I am prepared for a major disaster. With a report recently from the USGS saying that a large scale earthquake along the California coast is imminent, as well as continued council from the First Presidency, I think now is a great time to make sure I’m self-sustained in the event of a crisis.

I’ll be writing a few posts about the different things that I am doing to prepare for an emergency. I hope that everyone that reads these posts will think about their emergency preparedness (or lack thereof) and come up with a plan that works for you.

Food & Water

Food and water are the most important things needed in an emergency. During a disaster, you might not be able to rely on a grocery store to have the life sustaining items that you can’t live without. Thinking back to the Katrina disaster, I realized that I can’t rely on the government either. So you need to store all the food and water that you can in order to be ready.

My Church councils that we should keep 2 weeks worth of water and 3 months worth of food on hand at all times. That’s figuring that water is so important that the civic services will be restored within two weeks. I personally think that isn’t enough, if earthquakes break water mains in critical areas, it could take a long time to repair.

• 1 Gallon of water, per person, per day = 14 gallons of water
• 25 lbs of grain, and 5 lbs of beans, per person, per day = 75 lbs of grains, and 15 lbs of beans
• See providentliving.org
  

That’s the minimum needed to sustain life. But that will be extremely boring, I couldn’t eat bread and beans alone for three months! Also, I think it’s good to eat food that you are comfortable with and is similar to what you normally eat. In the event of a disaster, changing your food supply could result in some serious consequences that will only add to your problems. For example, changing your diet significantly can lead to constipation or diarrhea. The latter will make you dehydrated, wasting precious water.

Also be sure to think about the items that you need in order to use the food storage you have. For example, you may need to use sugar, yeasts, shortening, and other ingredients to make bread and cakes. A good tip might be to buy an extra of everything you normally buy at the store. Over time, you will slowly build up your storage supplies.

Next Article: Equipment

Miss the Total Eclipse today? Yeah, me too. But I found a nice video from the Exploratorium on scene from China. The actual eclipse is right around 37 minutes on the video.

One thing that I would have wanted to see is what things look like around on the ground when the eclipse happens. I don’t think you could really take it all in, unless you were there though. Hopefully some time I’ll get to see that for myself

Checkout this NASA site for more info on Solar Eclipses, and when the next one will be!

Just felt the biggest earthquake I’ve felt in awhile. 5.4 out of Chino.

For the last decade my favorite band has been Garbage. But, after hearing my new favorite song, I think it’s finally time to change the rankings. So without further wait, my new favorite band is:

Metric

They’ve now released three albums, and I love them all. Check out the song that finally tipped the charts, “Grow Up”. For more info check out the band’s All Music Guide entry or their Facebook site.

I’ve been reading several reports that Microsoft will be bringing Netflix streaming to the Xbox 360 sometime this year. What a great value-add feature for the Xbox 360. I’m actually surprised that Microsoft pulled it off, and isn’t even charging anyone extra to use it, besides the Xbox Live Gold subscription. I had been considering getting rid of my subscription, but I think I’ll keep it for now and see how it goes.

Rock on! Now Netflix, just needs some worthwhile streaming movies.

Also, no word on if any of those movies will be in HD. I highly doubt it, at least for now, as Netflix doesn’t stream HD anywhere yet.

The body of this car is built with and aluminum frame connected to hydraulic and electric motors, and all wrapped in a fabric skin. It allows the car to change shape at will. Pretty amazing! This car is headed for the BMW Museum in Munich, and won’t see actual production.

[ From Wired Autopia ]

I just read an article on Ars Technica about this little set top box from Roku. It lets you connect your Netflix subscription to your TV and watch any of the 10,000 streaming movies that Netflix has available. The unit only costs $99 and doesn’t require any changes to your Netflix subscription. You’re good to go with a basic $8.99/mo subscription.

The box appears to have all the ports (HDMI, component, and optical audio) necessary for HD content too! Although Netflix doesn’t have any streaming HD content yet.

Flash forward a few years from now, and I bet I’ll be able to get rid of my satellite or cable TV boxes and just stream everything via Netflix. Now, that would be awesome.

[ From Ars Technica ]

<rant>

I should start this mini review with a disclaimer: I had high hopes for 2K Sports’ MLB series after I read that EA’s Ben Brinkman (who had worked on MVP Baseball) was coming over to 2K to work on MLB. Unfortunately, now that I’ve been playing MLB 2K8 on my Xbox 360 for the past week and a half, I have to say that I’m extremely disappointed.

There are so many problems with this game it isn’t funny. I’m sick and tired of waiting all season for a new baseball game only to find that the new one is just as crappy as the last. Especially after they hype it up all year, talking about how great it’s going to be. This game gets an F in my book.

My personal commentary on the series is this: They’ve lost sight of what really matters in a baseball game, and that’s just freakin’ PLAYING BASEBALL. They spend way too much time on new features (like the stupid baseball card simulator) and making the uniforms ripple in the wind, and not enough time just making the game work. Until they refocus on game play, this series will continue to suck, year after year.

The good:

• Graphics look good
• Presentation looks nice as well
• Current rosters
• You can play baseball
• ESPN News is integrated into the bottom of the screen, just like a real broadcast

The bad:

• Tons and tons of bugs:
  • Mid-game announcements routinely get things wrong: like announcers talking about hitting an inside the park homer, yet I’ve never hit one
  • Presentation stats are often wrong: when I went to the post season in Franchise mode the first game showed that the pitchers had a 0-0 win-loss record (like they would in the first post season game), but they showed ERAs and strike outs from the regular season
  • Half the time the new pitching system won’t recognize my controller inputs and will fail to execute the second half of a pitch, resulting in an extremely annoying meatball
• The new pitching systems SUCKS big time. I’m almost always throwing meatballs.
• Base running controls suck more than they did last time, especially with more than one runner on base. I’m constantly sending runners to the wrong place. Oh and this time it takes twice as long for the runner to stop and go back to a base
• I still hit more homers and doubles than base hits
• The AI seems to throw way more strikes than balls
• That could be because its twice as hard to figure out if a pitch will be a ball than last time
• Fielding a player in the first couple seconds is weird, often I’ll be controlling the wrong guy by default and will miss a routine ground ball.
• After a visit to the mound I’ll hit A to skip the cutscene, but the game will both skip the cut scene and throw a meatball pitch down the center of the plate (when using the 2K7 pitching controls)

</rant>

Whoa, check out this crazy attempted landing of an A320 aircraft at Hamburg airport in Germany. It’s amazing the pilot got so close to the ground, he was way past the front of the runway by the time he touched down. According to someone in the comments the winds were clocked gusting to 150 mph (130 knots)!

More pictures at this German forum.

[ From Jeremy Zawodny's blog ]