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Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

lcamtuf.coredump.cx

11–20 of 340 posts

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#11

A 10 AM Bay Area earthquake is the highest plausibility * severity event you're likely to experience around here on a day to day basis - leaving some people with a 25 mile commute back to a structure that might or might not be standing, intermittent at best communications, and potentially impassible roads. IMO if you don't have a case of water, a road map, and a change of walking-around clothes in your car around her…

The great part about preparedness planning is there is a kind of vaccination herd immunity effect at play. The more people who take minimal measures like you list, the less intensive efforts preparedness-minded have to invest into. To your example, if 90%+ drivers keep a flat of bottled water, then it makes sense to only keep a water filter at one's home instead of one in the car for long trips and one at home. Howev…

The wrecking bar also works great at deterring free riders.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#12
I love this sentence from the piece: "In the 90s, it seemed that you couldn't go wrong by getting into professional journalism, opening a video rental store or an arcade, or selling calculators, encyclopedias, disposable cameras, answering machines, and audio CDs."

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#13
post #3

Is there a plugin that makes websites like this easier to read on modern devices? The lines of text here are too long for my poor brain to parse but I don't want to have to resize my browser for each badly designed website.

The Brave browser has a great reader mode.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#15

A 10 AM Bay Area earthquake is the highest plausibility * severity event you're likely to experience around here on a day to day basis - leaving some people with a 25 mile commute back to a structure that might or might not be standing, intermittent at best communications, and potentially impassible roads. IMO if you don't have a case of water, a road map, and a change of walking-around clothes in your car around her…

I want to leave water in my car, but it gets so hot in there I'm afraid of what is leached into the water from the plastic. I've read a lot of conflicting information about this.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#16
post #3

Is there a plugin that makes websites like this easier to read on modern devices? The lines of text here are too long for my poor brain to parse but I don't want to have to resize my browser for each badly designed website.

Safari has built in Reader View in on Mac or iOS

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#17

A 10 AM Bay Area earthquake is the highest plausibility * severity event you're likely to experience around here on a day to day basis - leaving some people with a 25 mile commute back to a structure that might or might not be standing, intermittent at best communications, and potentially impassible roads. IMO if you don't have a case of water, a road map, and a change of walking-around clothes in your car around her…

Your comment got me thinking about some form of volunteer force of medics. Imagine if every 20th car that drove by had a government issued medical bag in the trunk and a driver guaranteed to have recent first aid and emergency training. And in return the driver gets some sort of tax break, or an HOV lane free pass, or whatever the appropriate incentive is. Surely some country has tried this out.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#18
post #7
post #3

Is there a plugin that makes websites like this easier to read on modern devices? The lines of text here are too long for my poor brain to parse but I don't want to have to resize my browser for each badly designed website.

Firefox has a "Reader View" mode build in. It makes ugly websites look good and easy to read. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clu...

Reader view defaults to low contrast text, but it's possible to set your own text colors with custom userContent.css:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080363

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#19
I've been in a number of major natural disasters at this point. Fukushima, Ike, Colorado's 2013 floods. I've also been in two shooting incidents (where fortunately only the shooter was hurt). My point is, I've been lucky so far because none of these posed a major problem for me. I made it out with manageable inconvenience.

However, I can only get lucky like that so many times.

So now I keep the following at home:

* 5 gallons drinking water

* Canned food for a week

* First aid kit

* Matches, lighter, Sterno cans

* Solar USB charger

* Many flashlights with spare batteries, plus a battery-powered lantern

* Hand-crank radio

* Solid liquor collection ;)

* Equipment to make a fresh cup of coffee with no electricity (Sterno, hand-crank coffee grinder, French press)

* A big bucket for, well, sanitation

I've also got my camping supplies, which includes a Coleman stove and a few small propane canisters. Having been in a few floods I will also never live in a ground-floor apartment. I also keep all this stuff boxed up in plastic crates, so if I needed to evacuate I could load up my car with all this gear in about 20 minutes and be on my way. My goal is to be able to survive a week trapped in my apartment with no utilities, or living out of my car for the same amount of time.

I bike to work and in my pannier I keep a Leatherman multitool, pocket knife, latex gloves (mostly for fixing my bike chain, but also useful in other emergencies), 3M N99 mask, flashlight, poncho, a garbage bag and a small thing of duct tape. In most of the kinds of disasters that hit Colorado, I would be able to get home, either walking or by bike. I only live about three miles from work.

Re: Doomsday planning for less crazy folk

#20
post #3

Is there a plugin that makes websites like this easier to read on modern devices? The lines of text here are too long for my poor brain to parse but I don't want to have to resize my browser for each badly designed website.

I just installed this one on Chromium. Works well.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/easyreader/boamfhe...

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