Distracted driving

A great example of distracted driving; hitting the back of a tram.

We Fight Like We Train — NEJM

Short article about the hospital response at the Boston bombing, reminding us about being trained and prepared for emergencies: We Fight Like We Train — NEJM

Recommend blog for rescue personnel

I wrote a blog post about car safety 3 weeks ago. Today i noticed a similar blog post from Ian Dunbar, written from from a different perspective. Ian Dunbar is the Rescue Consultant of Holmatro (manufacture of rescue equipment). I'm recommending consumers to check safety ratings before buying. Ian looks at it from the NCAP influencing manufacture. Obviously both consumer and manufacture choice are related.

Ian's blog is interesting for rescue's. Primary focusing on road traffic accident incident. Fairly basic skills, but useful.

What would you grab during a fire?

There is website and book dedicated to this question: http://theburninghouse.com/

People are primary choosing emotional things, instead of survival things.

Obviously if your are on this website, you might already have an emergency bag with more practical things, but sometimes it's also good to think about the things we are emotionally attached to. We are in the end just humans.

Sometimes you can over do safety signs

Sometimes you can over do safety signs. Or do people expect cold coffee? 

LED Roadflare

LED road flares are devices made to replace the traditional pyro road flare's  It's made to attract attention on the road in case of emergency. The ones I have are identical in construction as the powerflares (www.powerflare.com), but not marked as such.  I know them from the days I was working at the fire department and know how effective they are in the dark.

Currently not working for a emergency service, but i do have 4 powerflares in mine car. Just in case I need to stop on a dark road. Why 4? I need 3 to place a line diagonal and 1 in line with the car, to mark off a lane. When you only place one, you are not telling traffic what to do. You need to guide them to the next lane. If you are on the hard shoulder, beware that lots of traffic will be driving up to a meter on the hard shoulder.

When placing flare, make sure you are visible by wearing a safety vest and walk towards the incoming traffic. This allows you to see incoming cars. After placing the flares, get behind the barrier. If the traffic is to dangerous, get behind barrier immediately. Remember; safety first. If it's too dangerous, leave it as it is and go behind the barrier.

The one i'm reviewing is a version without any branding on it, so i do not know which manufacture it comes from. It does look and feel identical to the powerflares.  The version i'm using is the 'Amber' colored, non-rechargeable version powered by a CR123 lithium battery.

Things i look for in a roadflare
- Brightly colored, so I can find it.
- Small and compact for easy storage.
- Weatherproof
- Reliable and effective.
- Lithium battery powered for cold weather performance.
- Simple and not stuffed of things i don't need.

The LED flare in use:
- The 'on' button is not marked with any color  The button is molded with the rest of the material, making it very hard to see. Advise; take a sharpy and mark it.
- The 'on' button is a bit small and not as easily switch on with gloves.
- It has a lot of settings, most of them I don't need. 
- Great in the darkness, hardly visible during the day.
- The rubberish material get dirty quickly.
- The magnets are strong enough to stick to your car, on the metal parts that is. Obviously they will not stick on a plastic bumper.

- Being crush proof, it can be used as a emergency wheel chock.

Other things to be aware of
- It does not have any height, so some people will just drive over them and/or ignore them.
- Placing flares higher will make them more visible.
- During the day you will need something else. They are hardly visible during the day.
- In many country's LED flare use is not written down in the law.
- Choose the right color  as a civilian the 'Amber' colored one is the best. The other colors might cause legal issues.

Conclusion
- Great safety device for on the road, but only works well in the dark.
- They work best if you use several at the same time, to 'guide' the traffic.
- Lack of height, means a lack of a physical barrier allowing people to drive over them.
- Expensive to buy several ones.
- Well build.
- Mark the 'on' button with a sharpy.

Trust, but do check

In most dangerous jobs and situations people are trained to work in pairs and check each other; the buddy check. This check is to make sure you did not do something stupid or forgot something. Humans are just humans and humans make mistakes.

Always take your buddy check seriously. I have had seen people failing in doing there buddy check, resulting in climbing harness buckles not being doubled backed, screw carabiners left open, incorrect attaching them self to ropes and having twisted harness causing side ways loads on there equipment. 

During work or hobbies this might be due to work stress, haste, distractions, excitement or carelessness. I have had people saying 'I trust you' and skip the buddy check. Don't skip it! Humans makes mistakes. regardless of you experience. Most mistakes are made by beginners or by highly experience people. Highly experience people loose there attention on safety, because of there experience and the countless time it went well. Two people seriously checking each other should reduce the chance of making human mistakes, so do your buddy check properly and stay safe!

Opening your Wifi during emergency's

During the Boston bombing the Disaster Tech Lab tweetet: "If you live or run a business in #Boston near bombsite (please) open your wifi for people to use. Communications are important!"

With a huge increase of (tele)communication during any mayor incident, increasing the ability to communicate can have a positive impact for people to communicate to there loved ones, information getting to the first responders and emergency services to communicate with each other.  However keeping communication lines open can also mean, keeping them open for the ones that want to harm us. With wide spread use of smartphones, a terrorist might use smartphones as a means to activate a device.

With terrorist already targeting first responders with secondary devices in the middle east, what would be a good strategic to deal with this? There are no real good answer to this question, it depends. But keeping this question in mind and you might be able to find a answer in the future.

If you do decide open up your Wifi, make sure others can not access your data in your network. Open networks can obviously be dangerous for your data safety.

You can only spend your money once.

A few years back, when I was attending a class about crisis management the professor stated that there are many people against putting a money aspect on a human life. However you can quantify the cost of measures to safe/extend human life and you can only spend your money once. A very important point of him.

With the limited amount of funds and the current budget cuts, there is a need to invest the money in measures which are the most cost effective in extending an health human life. This applies to all levels of safety organizations and emergency response; National, regional, local and even individual persons. These seems very logical, however it is not. Human perspective and simple statistics usually don't match. The media is playing a huge part in changing our perspective. If you are a professional in the safety or security field, you have fought the influence of perspective. Politicians are pushing organisations to prioritise differently.

Examples of the difference between perception and statistics are for instance crime and dangers of the modern world. In most western countries, crime was on the decrease and the average life expectancy has been rising. However the perspective is an increase in crime and having more risks to life.

This does not mean we should ignore current human perspective. Human perspective is an important factor, especially when dealing human emotions.  Balancing these things out is an on-going challenge.

When we apply this to our self’s, are we preparing for the most likely events or for our not always accurate perspective? Are we putting our money in the most cost effective ways to keep us safe and having a long healthy life?

Recommended reading:The field guide to understanding human error, by Sidney Dekker

Understand why people makes mistakes. The field guide to understanding human error, by Sidney Dekker is a great book for people researching human mistake and people whom want to know more about human error.

Spending all your money on supplies and ‘preps’.

I’m always surprised by ‘preppers’ spending all their money on ‘preps’. 'Money will be useless after event X or Y'. If you don’t have any debts and your ‘preps’ are for self-sustaining living, why not?

However I also see people spending all their money on 'preps' and complaining about their mortgage. If you have a mortgage, don’t expect it to be gone all of a sudden. You still have to pay your mortgage after a bank has collapsed. Your mortgage is just an item banks can bundle and sell to others.

If you can’t pay your mortgage, your will be eventually be kicked out of your house your 'preps' included. What do you do when a event starts slowly and you don't have the money to move or safely store you stuff. If you have some stuff, sure you can leave it at families and friends houses, but I doubt many people have spare space for months of supplies from someone else. The chance of loosing your job is far greater then an apocalypse. Spending all your money on supplies is putting all your eggs in one basket. Preparing is perfectly fine, but when you over do it, you are not prepared  for more normal problems.

Smoke/heat/Co detector replace by date

Most of us know they should check there smoke/heat/CO detectors once in a while (some manufactures say at least once a week, some once every two weeks, some once a month) by pressing the little test button. I don't actually know anybody doing that, that regularly. So check if this post reminds you to do so.

There is one more things people need to realize: detectors have a replace by date. No, not just the battery, the detector it self. The sensors inside these detectors age and become less sensitive, so you can't continue using them forever. Unlike an empty battery there is usually no audible warning for this, just check the little label on the back. Most modern units have a replacement date or date of manufacture printed on them (check owners manual for the amount of years it should last).

Fun mountain safety video

Fun mountain safety video from Italy with text in 3 languages  but the cartoon is fairly understandable even if you can't read it:

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Drowning in the real world does not look like what you see in 'Baywatch'. A very good read on recognizing drowning:

http://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/

The Civil Defence Emergency Handbook from Singapore

The Singapore Civil Defence force has been publishing their 'The Civil Defence Emergency Handbook'. I think this is one of the best public publications to educate and prepare civilians for emergency's. It's a very extensive and easy to read handbook. I think it's a great example for other country for a good emergency handbook for there citizens. It's even a good book for people in other countries to add in there emergency kit (Bug out bag, grab-bag, 72 hour back, emergency bags, etc.). It's probably to basic for people with a high interest in preparedness, but very good for most people.

Available in 4 languages (English, Mandarin, Bahasa Melayu and Tamil) so most people living in Singapore should be able to read it. If not there are many pictures, which also makes it much more fun to read. There is even a version with manga comic for Children.

The Civil Defence Emergency Handbook and many other posters and leaflets can be downloaded from there website: http://www.scdf.gov.sg/content/scdf_internet/en/community-and-volunteers/publications.html

Signs at the right place: Signs near other objects

I'm not sure who took this picture, but it does makes things clear...

Water filters, what to look for.

I used to have a 'thing' with water filters, so I tried and tested a lot of them.

The one's I have owned and used:
- Katadyn Mini, with the external carbon filter element.
- First Need water filter, old model.
- Nerox gravity filter
- Katadyn CAMP
- Gatekeeper
- Pre-mac personal water purifier (PWP)
- Katadyn Pocket
- MSR waterworks
- MSR Mini waterworks II
- MSR Mini waterworks EX
- Katadyn Mybottle
- Tulip water filter (have not used this one, just own it)

(DIY, Millbanks, note included on the list)

I could have had more, I just can't remember. Having had so many water filters, there are a few things I can tell you about them:

Filter types and maintenance
There are two main types of water filters: Ceramic and fiberglass  There are also others, but the manufactures are bit silent on the used type of filter material (example: First Need). Hollow fiber technology has also started to appear, but primarily in smaller sized filters.

Fiberglass cannot be scrubbed clean. You can flush it and with some models backwash it. When badly clogged this however might not do this trick. This makes it hard to determine when the filter will be unusable. However the fiberglass is pleated and there has a very large surface area, making the flow rate fairly high.

With ceramic you actually scrub of a layer of the ceramic, exposing a new fresh layer of ceramic to work with. However I have found that just wiping the dirt off, works too depending on the dirt. Wiping obviously creates less wear on the filter then scrubbing. Since it's only the surface which filters the water, these are low on surface area and relatively slow.

For storage, dry the filters first and make sure not to expose the filter to freezing conditions.
As with everything with o-rings, keep them lubricated and keep a few spare o-ring.

Pumping (or not):

Pumps/filter size; size and type
Small pump and small filter with tiny amount of surface area = little water for a lot of work.
Big pump and large filter with loads of surface area = more water for less work.

I started out with a Katadyn Mini. It really has a mini pump and filter inside. OK for making suspicious tap water safe, but for any large quantity it quickly becomes too much of an effort. The small pump and filter just requires a lot of manual labor and the small filter gets dirty fairly quickly. The advantage of carrying a small and light filter has to be paid in the form of a lot of labor when you pump. All mine other (bigger) pump filters where much easier. What the balance is between weight/size versus labor is yours to make. I prefer the bigger ones.

Types of pumps:
There are long rod type of pumps, you have the short and fat pumps with lever action and you have the two in double action versions. I can't really say which ones are better. Single actions pumps are more simple in construction, but takes a little longer. If the filter screws directly on a bottle, a pump in the middle (right in the middle of the bottle) is best. If it's off set, you really need to hold the bottle steady. I do like the lever action pumps like on the Waterworks models of MSR.

Squeezing
Squeeze bottles are interesting. You don't filter water in advanced, but filter it when you drink. This creates a few issues. Squeezing a bottle to filter water for other purposes then drinking is a lot of work and is hard work for your hands. So what do you do, when you need to carry more water? Fill you other containers with dirty water? It also seems to be impossible to filter all the water from the bottle. There is too much airspace left, to be able to filter the last 1/3 - 1/4 of the water.

Gravity
Mine favorite (I’m lazy). Fill the container and wait. Just check if no dirty water is on the outside and following the hose on the outside down to your clean water supply. Easy, simple and let you do other stuff.

There are three different types of gravity filters:
- Filters mounted in large fixed containers (large stainless containers, plastic containers or even buckets): Best for (semi) permanent use. They are sturdy, simple and just easy to use. Most vesions allow multiple filter elements to be installed to speed up the filter process. They are however very large and relatively heavy.
- Filters mounted in a waterbag (or in line). A more portable alternative to the large fixed containers. Best are the ones which connect to a clean water bag (a open container allows for contamination).
- Siphon type water filters: creating the vacuum to get it running can be a little hard. Sucking on the hose might not be the most hygienic method. Some do have a little balloon bellow to get them started. They can be used with any water container large enough to hold the filter. If there is a balloon bellow, it is a additional part which can fail.

Hoses
What about the hoses? Is just hose a hose right? On most modern filter the hose is nothing to worry about, but I have also had filters with weak hoses which will kink very easily. Highly flexible latex(ish) hose will kink way to easily. Kink = no water. The modern thick walled ones won't. Make sure you get the thick walled ones.

Hygiene
The filter design can help with keeping clean and dirty separated. Wrapping the dirty and clean water hoses together is a big No-No. This allows the dirty water droplets to come in contact with the clean hose. This will contaminate your clean water. This is not a big problem with non-biological threats, but with biological dangers, they can grow in quantity and become a hazard in your clean water supply. Especially in a warm wet bag.

I have seen a few solutions from manufactures:
- No clean water hose at all, just a tap (lots of Katadyn models)
- Attach directly to a water bottle/bladder, with a cover when the bottle is not attached (MSR)

I like the last one the most. Having just a tab means you have to somehow hold a bottle stable and pump at the same time.

Silver
Silver impregnation prevents bacteria from growing inside the filter. This a great feature specially for long term use. For short term use you can use a filter without, but it's best to pump some lightly chlorinated water to kill the bacteria, before frying and storing the filter.

Carbon element
Many filters are equipped with a carbon element. The carbon is used to absorb chemicals and other impurities. There solid carbon cores and the granulate versions. The granulate versions are more effective, but need to replaced regularly, after a certain amount of water or when a certain time has past.

So which one should you get?
Well that's up to you. If you buy a certified filter it should work, other then that. It's all personal preferences. If the filter is small, know that it takes a lot of labor to get it working.

Review of the ResQme tool

The ResQme tool contains:
- A windows punch
- A seat-belt cutter
The tool is mounted on a key-chain which is mounted on the blade cover. When you pull on the tool the tool separates from the blade cover and key-chain  Great idea to let the driver to just pull it off the car keys to use in an emergency.

Things i look for in a car escape tool:
- Brightly colored, so I can find it.
- Can be placed on a handy location, which you can reach even when up side down.
- Reliable and effective.
- Simple and not stuffed with things i don't need. (I have seen copies with LED lights and whistles)

I have owned a total of 4 of these ResQme's and i have found the following:

ResQme in use
- If you put the window punch gently on the window and use little force to push down on the window, the punch might activate, but not destroy the window. Don't be too gently, just hit the glass. This allows for more successful results. (Warning: if you use to much force you will push the glass piece towards the other side of the window. Make sure nobody can be injured on the other side. This is particular a issue when used to rescue others)
- Cut the seat-belt in a 45 degree angle to minimize the chance of the webbing being bunching up and blocking the cutting action. A 90 degree cutting angles causes bunching up of the webbing.
- On one of mine ResQme the spring failed and the center punch stopped working. I have emailed ResQme about this issue and offer to send mine to them for inspection, but did not get a reply. Users beware! Check you equipment regularly!

Other things to be aware of
- The ResQme is to small to use with gloves and the build quality isn't good enough for professional use.
- The ResQme on you car keys are great, if you have the old fashion car key. This might be a issue with key-less entry and start systems on some newer vehicles.
- It can be big enough to be annoying on a key-chain.

Comparison with a life-hammer
The obvious competition of the ResQme is the life-hammer or similar products.
- A life hammer is generally bigger, making it harder to find a good spot to mount.
- Having no moving parts, it's more reliable.
- Being bigger it's easier to spot.
- It has the same issue with webbing bunching up when used in the wrong angle.
- More danger of glass thrown out the other side, in use.

Conclusion:
I have both the ResQme and a life-hammer in mine car. Both do the job well. The advantage of the ResQme is size, but the drawback is reliability. When you use it, failure is not a option. However it did fail on me once...

Signs at the right place: Signs near the floor

Emergency exit sign mounted near the floor (Shanghai, China). Finally an emergency exit sign which people can actually see during a fire.

Making signs stand out more

Signs can be missed easily. Especially when it's just a few words on a white piece of paper. Sometimes a little humor helps:

"Kein Zutritt mit Einsatzkleidung" (No entrance with turnout clothing)

Protecting your RFID card

RFID card are increasingly used for access control. However just like any other RFID system, if you don't shield them, they can be read and copied by others. An nice solution for this problem is this cardholder.

It has a metal plate on the back to shield the RFID chip, while keeping one side of the exterior visible. So you can still see the picture of the person. The plastic card holder is attached to this plate with a hinge and a spring keeps them to each other. When you squeeze the tabs on the end, the shielding plate is pushed away from the card and allows the card to be read. This system allows the user to keep their cards shielded and only exposing the RFID chip for reading, when it’s needed. A retractable belt clip is supplied to prevent loss.

O-rings and seals

If you prepare for emergency's, don't forget o-rings and seals. They very useful when something at home fails or you emergency equipment fails. Plumbing, natural gas lines, stoves and water filters all have o-rings ans seals. Get a few assortment packs of various types.

What is a practical respirator for emergencies?

Since 9/11 a lot of people have been buying various kinds of respirators to prepare for emergencies.

I have seen 4 different solutions from people:
- Regular N95(US) / FFP2(EU) dust masks.
- Surplus military gasmasks.
- Escape masks
- Brand new military/industrial masks

Dust masks
Regular dust masks N95(US) / FFP2(EU) (these are rating are not identical, but similar or higher grade will give good protection against dust and some biological hazards (viruses and bacteria need something to carry them through air). It does not protect against vapors.

Surplus military masks
Surplus military masks where design to give a good protection from CBRN hazards. However surplus masks are generally outdated. Rubber material will degrade and become porous. They might be airtight, but not vapor tight anymore. So protection against chemicals is compromised. The filter canisters can also be comprised by long storage (moisture and temperature).

Other problems with surplus masks:
- The cheap and very common Russian/East German GP-5 and similar masks are using real glass eye pieces. Creating a hazard for your eyes when they shatter.
- Real old masks might use asbestos as part of the filter canisters.
- Some specialist canisters are reactive (using chemicals to neutralize certain threats), but these can turn hazardous with time.
-When in use make sure the plugs are removed from both ends of the canisters (some canisters do not use plugs, but are vacuum sealed). A few people die each year, because they forgot.
- All military masks are made for military use. The amount of PPM (parts per million) of chemicals from a military chemical attack is usually much lower than a civilian chemical incident. Therefor the canisters can be saturated much quicker then expected.

In general they are to big to carry, performance of old masks are not know and may just give a false sense of safety.

GP-5 mask with glass lenses

Escape masks
Escape masks are widely used in chemical industry and usually carried on the person or mounted on strategic placed on walls. Protection from these masks varies a lot, due to the differences in chemicals in chemical industry. Mostly filter masks, but some SCBA variants are available too. These masks are only for escaping and therefor only provide protection for a limited time. When you buy one, do a lot of research on what threats you expect and buy the appropriate one.

These masks are more portable then full sized gasmask, however fairly big to carry. So not very practical for a normal person to carry everyday. They can also be fairly expensive.

Brand new military/industrial masks
These can be harder to get and are expensive, but give good protection against the agents it's design to protect from. Military mask can still have problems from being saturated by civilian chemicals due to the higher PPM's during use. Again fairly big and this time also expensive.

Regardless which option people choose, you should do the following:

- It's recommended to shave off any facial hairs to create a proper seal.
- Learn how to use them.
- Make sure you buy the right size.

Which protection level to choose from?
Some people choose a very high level of breathing protection. However breathing protection without skin protection is a bit useless. Skin protection is useless without decontamination equipment and you do not know when to decontaminate if you can't measure the threat. So this means either carry everything with you which is totally impractical or scale down and choose something more practical.

Mine recommendation:
If you do not carry a respirator with you, you can't use it. Mine recommended option would be a disposable particulate welding respirator. These are based on N95 / FFP2 type of masks, but also include a carbon layer. They are very cheap, light and small (especially the folding ones). Making the easy to carry and accessible for everybody. The often include a valve, making them reasonable comfortable to wear. I remember seeing somebody on NGC 'Doomday preppers' putting carbon between two masks to make there own. But since they actually make these, don't bother making it yourself. If you need a respirator with a higher protection level, you will need a lot more than just a respirator. Very few people will carry HAZMAT equipment everyday. Besides, don't stay in contaminated area's, a mask is just for getting out.

Sometimes it's better to spend a little more...

Cheap is not always cheerful. Sometimes cheap things can be dangerous. This charger heated, starting to melt the side and popped open:

Another reminder not to cheap out on things and buy quality.

Priorities :)

Turning a preparedness message in to action is hard.

A few years ago while at a congress about emergency preparedness they asked the public (professionals in crisis communication and crisis management) ; whom has an emergency kit? I could not see any hands going up at all. So if the professionals don’t prepare, why would the public do?

The governments is trying to get people to prepare for emergency's using all kinds of campaigns. The assumption is, that communication this message would increase the preparedness of all the citizens. All kinds of research is showing this is not the case. In some cases this might be even counterproductive. The government giving emergency response a high priority seams to let citizens think that the government can handle things. So why does campaigns do not work?

1. Unrealistic optimism; 'it won't happen to me' or 'it won't be that bad'. (Larsson and Enander 1997: 11) (Sattler, Kaiser and Hittner 2000: 1414-1415) (Paton and Johnson 2001:1) (Guion, Scammon and Borders 2007:24).

2. Most preparedness campaigns are to general and people don't know what to prepare for. (Guion, Scammon and Borders 2007:24).

3. Sometimes the threat seems to be too big and people think preparing for it is useless. (Guion, Scammon and Borders 2007:24).

4. The government, being the government also has a image problem. There are plenty of people who just don't trust the government. This includes the preparedness message it is trying to communicate.  This requires constant maintenance of you perception to be trusted by people(Wray e.a. 2006:48-49).

So how much should the government invest in trying to educate people to prepare? Statistics is showing very poor results. People might be aware, but it does not change there preparedness.

Recommend reading and sources:

David N. Sattler, Charles F. Kaiser and James B. Hittner, Disaster Preparedness: Relationships Among Prior Experience, Personal Characteristics, and Distress. Journal of Applied Social Psyhchology. 2000, 30, 7, pp1396-1420

Gerry Larsson en Ann Enander, Preparing for disaster: public attitudes and actions. Disaster prevention and management, volume 6, number 1, year 1997. p11-21.

Guion T. Deirde, Scammon L. Debra and Borders Aberdeen Leila, Weathering the storm: A social markering perspective on disaster preparedness and response with the lessons from hurricane Katrina. American Marketing Association. Vol 26, 2007, p20-32

Paton Douglas, Disaster preparedness: A social-cognitive perspective. Disaster prevention and management. volume 12, number 3, year 2003. p210-216.

Paton Douglas and Johnston David, Disasters and communiies: vulnerability, resilience and preparedness. Disaster prevention and management. volume 10, number 4, year 2001. p270-277.

Wray Ricardo, Rivers Jennifer, Whitowrth Amanda and Jupka Keri, Public perceptions about trust in emergency risk communication, qualitative research findings. International journal of mass emergencies and disasters. March 2006, vol. 24, No. 1, p45-75.

Should boring safety videos be made fun?

Should boring safety videos be made fun? I'm not sure. If they all are, then it just dull again. But lets face it, how many people pay attention during a pre-flight safety instructions?

Well in New Zealand they made one, which is even viewed outside an plane:

Dumb ways to die

A fun Australian campaign about  rail safety:

Prevent copies of your passport being used for identity theft.

Identity theft can cause a lot of long term problems. With all kinds of companies requesting a copy of you identify papers, increasing the risk of you identification information being leaked. The Dutch government has a tip to prevent this.

If you have to leave a copy of your passport, do the following: 

1. Write down with big letters on the copy; Copy for ‘Company x’ ‘Date’.

2. Cross out the social security number (in Dutch law, companies are not allowed to ask for it, this might vary from country) 

3. Also cross out your social security number on the strip under need the passport. The code under need in the strip has the number included. 

These measure makes it far more obvious that any stolen versions of this copy look suspicious and prevents people from using your social security number.

Picture from http://www.overheid.nl/identiteitsfraude

Car safety: consumer awareness

On the lead causes of death, after the many kinds of health issues and unintentional injuries. Car accident is a fairly high cause of death. Which place it takes on primary death causes, depends on your location.

Driving behavior (thus also human error)  causes most accidents. However you might be able to give yourself a better survival chance by buying a safer car. There are many New Car Assessment Programs (NCAP) to look at. Obviously the most relevant one, is the NCAP based near your location. However it never hurts to look at others either.

Car safety technology has been improving significantly. So most new cars perform much better than old cars. Just 10 years difference can mean a huge difference in safety. Despite some old ones looking more sturdy.

A video to get you thinking (50 years difference):

Most NCAP programs do not compare different size cars with each other. Too many variables to test for. However a bigger car has more mass and the consensus is that a bigger car usually wins in a collision.  The IIHS did do some interesting tests:

However when you compare a new small car versus a big old car, this might not be that simple:

So when buying a car, don’t forget to look at the safety ratings. Will it keep you alive during a crash? Not always, but it does help.

Links to NCAP sites:

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety; http://www.iihs.org/

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: http://www.safercar.gov/

European New Car Assessment Program: http://www.euroncap.com/

New Car Assessment Program for Southeast Asia: http://www.aseancap.org

Latin New Car Assessment Program: http://www.latinncap.com

Korean New Car Assessment Program: http://www.car.go.kr/

New Car Assessment Japan Safety Information Group: http://www.nasva.go.jp/mamoru/en/

Chinese New Car Assessment Program:  http://www.c-ncap.org/

Australasian New Car Assessment Program: http://www.ancap.com.au/

Are you saving your documents and data safely from fire?

Fireproof safes are a great place to store important documents and data. However I noticed lots of people don’t know the about all the differences between  fireproof safes. Most important thing to know; there are two basic kinds of fire safes:

-          Document safes
-          Data safes

Documents are obviously made from paper. Even in an airtight container, paper will char and become damaged. So a document safe is design to keep paper below its charring temperature. The basic industry test is to expose the safe  30 minute to 1,000 °C of heat, while keeping the interior temperature at no greater than 177 °C (351 °F). These standards are greater for higher grades of fireproof safes. When using a document safe, be aware of plastics. Having plastics inside the safe to organize the documents, means that you might be laminating your documents during a fire.

Data saved on flash drives, Hard drives, DVD’s, etc. are more sensitive for heat. So the requirements for a data safe is different. The safe is tested the same way as the document safe, except the interior now should not be greater than 55 °C (131 °F).  So you can safely store paper in a data save, but not vice versa.

Choose the right one for your purpose and keep you stuff safe.

Preparedness priority’s

There are many priority lists for emergency preparedness. Some are about the ‘3’s’.(3 minutes with air, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food). Some are based on what get you need  first: (First aid), shelter, water, food and fire. (position of one of these depends on the situation and location).

If your goal is to have a long healthy life, then you might need to look at statistics. Lists of causes of death can be found anywhere. For instance:

-          CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

-          WHO: http://who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/

So what does statistics say: top 10 of death causes are health based problems. (exception in the middle-income countries where road traffic accidents takes 7th place, the rest are still health related)

So first priority: Get healthy, get in shape!

Emergency dynamo/sun powered radio

This is a repost of a article i wrote for the website www.outdoors-magazine.com and was published on 21 march 2006. (http://outdoors.magazine.free.fr/spip.php?article266)

A review of a dynamo/sun powered radio.

Dynamo/sun powered radio

Being able to receive information can be very important. Both when you just hiking or during an emergency. Knowing what weather is coming and having plenty of updates on it, keeps you out of trouble. In an emergency, information becomes even more important. During larger disasters it’s good to know where government shelters are, what happened and what you should and shouldn’t do.

In mine country and many others, emergency broadcast of emergency information is done by TV and FM radio. This makes it very important to have a TV or FM radio. A FM radio is much more practical due to the much smaller size and much lower power consumption. Unfortunately both of these devices take electricity to work. This is not always available. Batteries will work for a long period, but will eventually run out. Also batteries can leak and loose there energy during storage.

The radio

I first spotted this FM/AM radio in a shop when I was a little kid. It has a solar panel, a hand cranked dynamo, place for 2x AA batteries and a hole to attach a 3.5 volt adapter with. I can still remember thinking it was very "cool", but way out of budget too. So many years went by. Than it reappeared on my radar screen, having emergency preparedness as my hobby, this little radio became more than just "cool", but the shop I first spotted it, stopped selling them for years. But than when I was surfing on an advertising website, I spotted 2 for a good price! So I bought them. Manufacture is unknown to me.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of them. When I was thinking of buying them I was wondering how well they would perform. I own a solar battery charger, which has yet to charge any battery to a capacity so any electric device would react to it. Also you hear that many of these things are more a gadget than an actually well functioning device. So I expected the worst...

Thankfully this radio turns out to work very well! The reception is very good. You can hear most of the mayor channels well with the antenna in storage mode. With the antenna pulled out, the reception becomes even better. Surprising, since the design is pretty old (on the market approximate in 1990). I expected a much worse reception, but it performed just as well as my digital world receiver on FM bands. The scale on the reception knob is a little bit weird.

The quality of the sound is pretty much what you can expect from a small single speaker radio. It’s good on normal volumes, but sounds horrible when you put it on max. Although I wouldn’t know why I would want that.

The hand crank

In deployed mode. It folds up and stores a little more compact.

The mode I use most frequently is the hand crank. 30 seconds of cranking gets you about 5 minutes of music. But it really depends on how hard you crank it. I’m pretty happy with this option, it works quite well. There is however a complaint; the noise! The crank is connected to various gears to power the little dynamo on much higher speed. But it also causes the radio to sound like a kitchen blender when cranking it.

The solar panel

One of them has a crack on top.

I never really used the solar option. So I can’t really say much about it. It’s not really that sunny in my country and cranking it, is much quicker. Although it might have helped... I can’t really tell.

The is another option to charge the internal battery, by using a adapter. There is a warning that this should not be done for more than 2 hours. So this battery charger is probably not "intelligent". I never used it because I don’t actually own such an adapter.

battery compartment

Also visible are the headphone and adapter inlets.

The battery also works well, really not much to say about. Just load 2 AA’s and put the radio one. I only used it to test whether this function actually work. I don’t use it nominally with this radio.

The body of this radio is made from hard plastic. And has a lanyard attached to it. Nothing really special, it’s a bit square and lacking on the design section. But I don’t really care. The size is a little larger than small world receivers. The weight isn’t too bad either.

Conclusion: This radio brought me confidence in hand cranked devices. The retail price is approximate 25 dollars. It works well, but noisy when cranking it and the turner isn’t that precise. There is a version on the market with a light attached to it, since i don’t own one of them i can’t comment on how well that one works.

2013 Update: The radio is still going strong. I'm primarily using it on NiMH AA batteries, so i can't really say how good the internal battery is. It's still working in cranking mode. 

Air Crew Survival Pack MK4

This is a repost of a article i wrote for the website www.outdoors-magazine.com and was published on 19 may 2006. (http://outdoors.magazine.free.fr/spip.php?article269)

The Air Crew Survival Pack MK4

The Air Crew Survival Pack MK4 is a survival kit normally stored in the ejection seat of RAF aircraft. This allows it to be bigger than personal/pocket survival kit, but not by much, since there really isn’t much addition space in the ejection seat. This kit is also for sale to civilians. Manufactured by BCB.

Note: Although mine Air Crew Survival Pack MK4 is relative new, this article might not. So the contents might have change when you read this.

The kit is stored in a cloth bag with Velcro closures. There is a main flap closed with Velcro. After opening the flap you see 2 thin flaps from the left and right, they join together in the middle with Velcro. They keep the contents from flying away when you have opened the main flap. You can also use the 2 smaller straps to act as a handle, by closing the main flap first and fix the 2 smaller straps over the main flap with the Velcro. No belt loops or clips to secure the kit on to you.

the cloth bag opened

Inside the bag are 3 separately vacuum packed parts. Two of the vacuum packs are OD coloured tin like foil and one has a clear plastic vacuum package. All vacuum packages have "V" notch made in to them, so you can open them without a knife. Having 3 separate parts, makes it easier to transfer the kit in to the pockets you have. Which is much handier than having a small bag in you hands all the time. Also it prevents you from damaging or loose the contents in other parts of the kit.

The V notches on the packages

Part A

Part A contents

Part "A" contains a tin: with the following contents:
2x Needles
2x protective Unlubricated
2x tampons
20x water-purification tablets
cotton wool
Flint and steel
Fire making blocks.

The tin is wrapped with electrician tape, with pull tap for easy access. The inside of the lid is reflective, so it can be used as a backup mirror. The needles are taped to the bottom.

It’s interesting to see both tampons and cotton-wool in this "A" part of the kit. Tampons are made from compressed cotton-wool, packed inside a waterproof wrapper. So why is there another piece of cotton-wool for? It’s probably a decision made because there was a little space left, not enough for a tampon, but enough for the little ball of compressed cotton-wool. Another reason can be the easier handling. When you’re really cold, you usually need to be able to make fire with very cold hands. Removing the plastic packaging, removing the outer layer of a tampon, unrolling the compressed cotton-wool and pulling the fibres apart might be a little to hard in such a situation. I would personally prefer tinder that burns longer than just plain cotton-wool.

The flint and steel is the standard BCB ferrosium rod. A thin rod, with a metal support on the back and a hacksaw with a sharpened edge. It does not perform as-well as larger rods and is very hard to use one handed.

The fire making blocks appears to be Esbit, 3 blocks are supplied. It’s good material to get a fire going. It can not be lighted by the "flint and steel" (ferrosium rod) directly.

The condoms supplied to be used as watercontainer really isn’t mine personal first choice. They are very hard to use and very fragile. But there really isn’t much else such small that can carry a litre of water. This kit however is large enough to contain a larger water carrier.

Part B

Part B contents

Part "B" contains:
Sleeping bag
nylon cord
compass
candle
4x suspender clips
fishing kit
snare wire
wiresaw
razorblade
elastic band
instruction sheet.

This part is not very space efficiently packed. There is a lot of additional vacuum material left. This takes up a lot of space. They could have done a better job at vacuum the package more smoothly, so the left over materials could be easily folded away.

The main bulk of this kit is the "sleeping" bag, a huge transparent plastic bag, large enough to sleep in. But it is also waterproof, so you will get wet from your own sweat. It can probably be used to act as a condensation bag, to extract water from trees. Although the thin plastic can be a little fragile for that. Other uses for the bag is just waterproofing kit and to act as a tarp.

The nylon cord is not the standard little amount of white coloured cord you get with most BCB kits, but it is thicker (i guess 3mm) and in an OD colour. It appears to have one white coloured inner strand. The ends of this cord are not melted and will raffle. I use similar cord for mine guide lines on mine tarp.

The compass is also not the BCB standard, but it’s a small silva button compass. It’s smaller than the one from BCB. It’s nothing really special, it point north and has a little lanyard hole. No glow in the dark or other nice features.

The candle is a standard tea candle. Very bulky in the kit and also a risk of it melting in you kit in hot environment. Mine shows signs of being melted once in its life.

The suspender clips are mend to be used with the survival bag or blanket. It will stretch the plastic when used. I personally would rather use the trick with a little round rock in the corners to tie it to something.

The fishing kit is not standard BCB. It actually has 2 flies in them, but the rest isn’t really much. Just a few tiny hooks with nylon trace, 5 split shots and 2 swivels. The fishing line must be improvised from the inner-cord from the supplied cord or from inner strands from parachute-cord.

The snare wire is the standard little roll of brass wire.

The wiresaw is well taped in with electrician tape, this prevents it from damaging the rest of the kit. But also makes it very hard to access.

The instructions were not very long, just some explanations about the kit and the uses for the parts. It actually says it can be burned, after you have read and remembered what’s on it.

The wiresaw wrapped in tape.

slightly unwrapped in this photo

Part C

Part "c" contains
Foil Blanket.

I did not open this part, since it’s just a space blanket, with a OD coloured side. Keeping it for sealed for a homemade kit.

First thing you notice is the lack of signalling equipment. (Most) pilots have them in there flight suits, but if your not a pilot with this kit, this becomes a problem. Also no medical stuff in this kit either. There isn’t really a knife in the kit, just a razor blade. That’s probably because a knife is carried on the pilot.

Conclusion: This kit is not mend as a stand alone type of kit, so it does not and will not provide you with everything you want in a survival kit. Remember that when you carry this kit. I would highly advice you to add a knife, signal equipment, carry a First Aid Kit (FAK) and other things if you do not have a knife, FAK and signalling equipment on you.

The kit it self is not as "cheap" as other BCB kits, but not the highest quality either. Some parts are found in normal BCB kits, but some are also a upgrade. This kit is a good base for a better kit and actually not bad for it’s intended use.

Manufacture website here

Other great reviews of pouch sized kits can be found here