August 19, 2007

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS UPDATE: I mentioned this earlier, but with hurricane season underway people always start thinking about disaster preparedness again -- even when they live out of hurricane zones. Anyway, the Popular Mechanics guide to disaster preparedness is now online for your perusal.

Meanwhile, you can find some previous InstaPundit posts on the topic here, here, here, here, and here. And here's a column I wrote on the subject last year. And a huge disaster preparedness list. And here's a guide to emergency preparedness from Consumer Reports.

Also, here's an item from Wired on the topic. One piece of advice: People tend to focus on buying stuff, stockpiling food, etc. That's good -- you won't be able to run down to Wal-Mart when you really need emergency supplies -- but you should also focus on having a plan, and acquiring some skills, for when things go wrong. A full pantry and some radios and flashlights (and guns, and cash, and bottled water) is very important, but it's what we lawyers call a necessary but not sufficient element of disaster planning. More on that here.

UPDATE: A lot of the stuff on the big list above is out of stock. Try this hurricane preparedness list or this emergency survival kit gear list. Plus, some basic disaster survival items. And Col. Douglas Mortimer emails that no home should be without one of these. Well, duh.