Check out the 4100 lumen flashlight they sell at wicked laser… it can also start fires.

One kind of emergency not all parts of the country experience is extreme temperatures. Couple of weeks ago we had temps over 100 for four days, peaking at 110, with little relief overnight. Along with the heat advisories were power advisories, as millions of people fired the aircon up to max. So I froze a dozen small (mineral-water size) plastic bottles of drinking water, as a device to take care of overheating and dehydration in synergy.

That’s a California cold pack. Heat, we gotcha covered.

The little rubber-duckie antenna is probably part of the range problem. I noticed in the listing that people often bought a 15.6 whip antenna with it. That’d give it a real boost on the high band, moderate on the low.

First I’ve heard of the Beartooth, but it closely resembles a product I saw last year. I was amused that it (the other one) had a video full of vignettes of people using it, and a recurring one was a stoner running out of dope and frantically texting his dealer over an encrypted link. In the final scene there’s a knock at the door and smiles all around. Lifelike, but ballsy. I admire that.

And that light saberlaser, wow, that’s a pilot blinder. And the styling, nothing martial there. You’re right they oughta be outlawed, though I’m not so sure they should wait until you get one. Barn door, etc.

Tampons and pads. Beyond their normal use, these are great for controlling wound bleeding, pads for lacerations, tampons for large punctures.

Butterfly bandages or SteriStrips for sutures. Can be held in place with liquid bandages or superglue. Really.

Purified water and/or antiseptic liquid for wound irrigation.

Blood clotting bandages.

Chemical hot packs, like the ones you put into gloves while skiing.

Cold packs too.

Honey packets. Good for a sugar boost and to cover abrasions (not for lacerations or punctures).

In two decades we have been under mandatory evac once, voluntary twice, from fires; and enjoyed a hundred year flood.

This is good time to review the bug-out bag. Ours are full-on backpacks, provisioned as if we were going camping for a week: tents, sleeping bags, stoves, water bottles, purifier, first aid, spare clothes, the works. I try to restock the food every year or two.
We keep important documents together in a 3-ring binder in a fire-proof safe. A watertight pelican case sits near-by.

Robert’s scanner suggestion is excellent. I have a hand-held battery operated one that I have used during previous emergencies. Great way to get info. Important local frequencies can be found online, as can active scanners. I’ve often used radioreference.com to listen in on developing news. Going to look into the USB receiver Robert recommends.

but the range is horrible… I knew better than to expect the 10 miles they often claim, but it wasn’t much more than a mile…

I did look into Beartooth, but that really only is effective if a good percentage of other people have them in your area…

Aside from my plan to become the post-apocalyptic Battery King (in a land of “device” junkies!), I paid attention to medical supplies. I think that the typical household “first aid” kit is a dangerous joke, a box of band-aids and creams and aspirin…it’s first aid for inconvenience and discomfort. So I built something a bit more useful:

PerSys Medical Israeli Emergency Bandage 4″ for those bone-deep lacerations.

5ive Star Gear First Aid Trauma Kit, Olive Drab Canvas Bag o’Bandages, Serious.

Adventure Medical Kits Professional Trauma Pak with QuikClot for gaping chest wounds. Don’t think about it.

SAM Rolled Splint 36″, Orange/Blue cause a broken bone can kill.

And so on.

Another trading item:

Emergency Mylar Thermal Blanket 10 pack just kidding about trading blankets, more likely to hand these out to shivering people.

Then there’s this beauty, the “Red Cross” radio with the solar cells and the hand crank and the lithium battery to recharge your stuff through a micro USB port.
American Red Cross FRX3 Hand Crank NOAA AM/FM Weather Alert Radio with Smartphone Charger what can I add to that title?

A 16,000 mAH rechargeable like the Anker, Amazon page gone now. Bag of USB cables and a couple of adapters, power and connector. An 8-port USB block to recharge me and my gang’s devices all at once.

In the category of excessively geeky, but who knows what might come in handy?, there’s the software-defined radio in a USB stick that plugs into my tablet:
NooElec NESDR Mini 2+ 0.5PPM TCXO RTL-SDR & ADS-B USB Receiver Set w/ Antenna, Suction Mount, Female SMA Adapter & Remote Control, RTL2832U & R820T2 Tuner. Low-Cost Software Defined Radio. along with the apps that make it a scanner or an aircraft tracker or a digital TV receiver or an AM/FM/NOAA receiver, basically anything from 25MHz to ~2GHz in all the modulations. (I considered, but eventually skipped, the transceiver models, that let you set up local, encrypted networks. Some day…)

I win.
(Don’t try to tell me you’ve got a portable laser, I won’t buy it!)

They are also handy on long trips away from power…

We have done minor prepping for the possibility of an extended loss of services- emergency food and water- and a collection of large capacity rechargeable batteries ( like these ), Couple of hand crank radios and first aid kits… water purification tablets and filters. I may also get a solar charger like this so I can keep playing angry birds while civilization collapses.

I suppose I should pack all that in one of our back-packs in case it becomes necessary to evacuate, but I cant think of many plausible scenarios where shelter-in-place wouldn’t be the best bet.

Prepping for a nuclear war is pointless – especially given our proximity to DC…

The only scenario where prepping for extremely long term self sufficiency seems reasonable is something like a Carrington Event knocking out electronics and power systems for months-years. That WILL happen at some point, but we really don’t know how common it is.

If I lived near the faults in California then I definitely would want to have a bug-out bag packed with as many supplies as I could carry… that has to be a SERIOUS concern for Robert S., I imagine…

I am not too worried about a zombie apocalypse- I figure it is unlikely, and from watching the Walking Dead series, it looks like it would be pretty cathartic…

Which reminds me- I need to buy a crossbow…