Burglar prevention; Secustrip

Many countries have certain burglar prevention and mitigation which are not seen in other countries. One interesting door hardening devices out there is a Secustrip, made by a Dutch company. It’s a metal bar with a special shape placed on both the door and the door frame. It effectively prevents burglars from being able to stick something between the door and frame to pry the door open. This effectively reduces the chance of burglars getting entrance by prying, which is one of the most popular methods of defeating doors.

Several versions are available, for inwards and outwards swinging doors and different recess between the door and the frame. Some versions have the screw fully covered by the bars, while some models have requires special security screws on the outside.  Available in steel, aluminum and galvanized steel and in different colors.

These strips run the full length of the door and frame and does require a stiff door to work effectively. If the door is not stiff enough, a gap can be created by putting a boot on the door and flexing the door at the bottom. By no means a solution for all burglar methods, but it does make it harder.

More information can be found on the website of the manufacture (unfortunately in Dutch)

Consumerism and preparedness: just be practical

There are many different people whom prepare for emergency’s. A lot don’t, some are very casual about it and a few are more serious about it. Even in the serious categories there are many differences. Some are very practical ones and some are consumer driven. The last one is also quite active on the internet.

With preparedness and preparedness items being more and more of a regular consumer product, people act like the manufacture want them too. Manufactures try to make new models each year to satisfy the never ending crave for new things of consumers. This is not always a bad thing. A lot of things have been improved over the years.

However when it comes down to emergency preparedness, when practicability, ruggedness and simplistic plays a role, this generally does not. In the process of making ever new products, manufactures are starting to place ever more features on their products and using more exotic materials, to make them more desirable. This however does not mean it's more practical and useful. Quite often they are less practical, less rugged, and more complicated. Or at least not as time tested. This is fortunately not a problem with large scale equipment. Organisations buying large equipment are all about practical application and costs. It is however a problems when it comes down to personal equipment.

First of all I’m not saying that you should not have new equipment and technologies. Some are great, like modern communication and network enables capabilities.  But you should look at equipment primarily at the practical stand point:

- Price; you can only spend your money once, so you better make sure it’s worth it.
- Usability; things needs to be easy to use, with little instructions. People often do not use emergency equipment, so it needs to be easy to understand and use.
- Maintenance; emergency equipment is often stored for long periods of time and when they are needed, there is little time for maintenance.  So equipment which require very little maintenance are best. However all equipment need maintenance to work properly. Spare should be on hand and it’s best if they are the same as other commonly used parts on other equipment. Maintenance should be easy and require little (specialist)  tools.
- Quality; a well manufactured piece of equipment usually work a lot better than a cheaply made equipment. However don’t confuse  a nice finish with quality. They are often related, but not always the same. 
- Larger storage and operating range; Equipment should be able to be stored and used in dry, wet, cold, hot and dusty environments. So the equipment should be able to operate in a wide range of conditions. This not only applies for exposure to the elements, but also for the inputs of systems; power input (mains, battery, generators, voltage and type of sinus), water (salt, sweet, dirty), fuel (propane, petrol, diesel or a combination of these) and lubricants.

For proper equipment, look for ‘professional’ or ‘Industrial’ line/grade of equipment. Another good source of equipment are items design for third world/emergency aid. These items are generally made to be practical and nothing more.

My EDC

Not really sure why, but there is a lot of interest in what people carry on them every day, the so called Every Day Carry (EDC). The term does get widely abused for gear people only carry for certain moments. I mean a EDC for hiking, is well uhm... what you carry for hiking, hiking gear/kit? My EDC is not really exiting, not too much gear and I don't feel like getting the latest and greatest gadgets. Anyways here is my list of things I carry:

On my person:

Wallet: Tri-fold leather wallet.

Just a regular tri-fold wallet with cards and cash, the wallet is lined with foil to block RFID signals.Certain additions are a few plasters, extra passport sized photo and condoms. Shown in folded position for privacy reasons.

Keys

Keys with a small carabiner. (no keys pictures, just the carabiner. Keys can be copied using photos) The carabiner is used both to attached it to a d-ring on my pants (when available, depending on what I’m wearing) and to keep different sets of keys together. I have several key rings for home, work, running, car (car keys also has a ResQme), etc. and join them together with the carabiner. I have to many keys to carry them all. I choose a steel carabiner, because they are very durable. The alluminium ones break to often, unless you go for the large climbing style which are to big to carry.

A Swiss army knife: Victorinox Huntsman.

I have been carrying this for almost 10 years now.  It’s the ideal size for me and looks innocent enough, so nobody cares about it.. Tiny multitools are just too tiny for me and the larger ones are too large. I usually only need a blade, scissors, screw drivers, awl and bottle opener. I use the larger blade primarily for food and the smaller one for cutting all the other stuff.  The can opener and saw are only used when I’m camping with it.

A small Flashlight: Fenix LD10.

I have been carrying this light for 5-6 years now. I have one of the earliest versions of this light, without belt clip. I used to have a Fenix L1P, but with the newer CREE LED’s I decided to replace the L1P with this one. I do still use the Fenix L1P holster for my LD10, which I think is more convenient. Good thing I ordered replacements when they were still available. I prefer using AA sized batteries for most of my equipment, so this light suits that need. The light could be more simple for me, I usually only used it in low or turbo mode. Clicking to change the modes takes too much effort and I never use the SOS or strobe option. I do stick the light in my mouth when I need both hands, since I have yet to find a headlight which is as small and easy to carry.

Smartphone: Motorola Defy

One of the first waterproof smart phones you could get. I have it for almost 3 years. I have never tested it under water, but it has got wet in the rain or from sweat. Usually on my belt in a  horizontally mounted pouch (keeps it out of the way of seats belt, etc), but sometimes in a silicone cover in a pocket. Primarily used for the calendar, emails, weather forecast, traffic information and the hazardous material guide app. Since it’s still working find, I will just keep using it. 

Other items:

Casio watch, flat pack of ducttape, tissues, lip balm and tiny pack of some kind of skin care product.

In a pack I almost always carry:

External battery charger for my phone: Varta portable power pack

A simple battery pack to charge my phone with. It has reasonable capacity, a capacity indicator and the best: it was free.

First aid: Nitrile gloves and CPR mask

In a simple Ziploc bag a pair of nitrile gloves and small CPR mask.

Dust mask: Ekasty Sekur dust and welding fume mask.

A FFP2 (similar to N95) mask with a carbon layer. Carried just in case. I don’t think bigger/complex escape masks are worth the weight and size for everyday carry.

Other items:

Deodorant, tire patch kit, pen, lotion bar, key chain size LED lights and sports tape.  

Entanglement hazard: the scarf

Some people think i'm weird for tying loose end or having break away lanyards on things attached to me. Even a common item like a scarf can dangerous.

Here is a story from Fox news abaout a womam being killed due to a scarf getting caught on a escalator.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/01/30/canadian-woman-strangled-by-scarf-on-escalator/

Or a famous in the thirties dancer Isadora Duncan, whom died because of her scarf getting caught on the spokes of the open car she was in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isadora_Duncan

My car kit

If you have a car it’s good to carry some additional equipment with you. Not only useful when something happens while you were traveling, but also useful when you are somewhere and need something.

There are many methods to carry emergency equipment in your car. I prefer to stick everything in all the little pockets, nooks and crannies I can find. I do have a small cooler (winter only) and toolbag in the trunk. My car is in the ‘mini’ category, so there is limited cargo space and having equipment place in something prevents it from becoming a projectile during an accident. Here is what I carry in my car:

Emergency equipment:

First aid kit

Foam fire extinguisher (Powder extinguishers ruins cars)

Life hammer

ResQme (on car key)

Warning lights/ signaling

4x LED flares

4x Hi-Viz vests

LED warning panel

Warning triangle

LED flashlight

Traffic cone for flashlight

General repair:

Saftey goggle

2x dust masks (FFP3, similar to N99)

Nitrile gloves (medical grade)

Leather work gloves

Towing strap 4 ton

Jumpercables 25mm2 (slightly thinner than AWG 3 gauge cables)

Screwdrivers / Philips screwdriver
Multitool (Victorinox Swisstool x)
Test light

Funnels

WD-40

Silicon rescue tape

Duct tape

Electric tape

Door seal grease stick

Spare lights

Spare fuses

Tire equipment:

Full size spare tire (on rim)

Jack

Tire wrench

Tire plug kit

4 way valve tool and valve cores

Tire pressure gauge

Tire profile gauge

Recovery:

Tri-fold shovel

Traction plates

Foam pad

Survival equipment:

Trangia messtin

Pocket chainsaw
Waterfilter straw

Folding knife

Signal mirror

Signal whistle

Spare batteries

Emergency space blankets

Plastic ponchos

Candle

Lighter

Matches

Ferrosium rod

Tinder

Pillow

Blanket

Garbage bags

Toilet paper

Phone charger

Multipurpose key

Earplugs

Hand sanitation gel

Cooler with 6 pack water, food, candle’s and matches. 

Cargo

2x Short cargo straps

2x Long cargo straps

Cargo net

Winter:

Deicer

Ice scraper large with snow brush

Ice scraper small with glove

Not in this list are normal everyday gear (tissues, Umbrella, maps, GPS, glass cleaner, etc).

Simple workable solutions

I have mentioned keeping things simple before, but I found a great example when this applies. The Nigerian Dr Awojobi Oluyombo makes medical devices him self, which he can repair himself and does not require any power. A great example how people adept to a situation and finds a simple low tech method to his needs:

His paper: THE TRAVAILS OF RURAL SURGERY IN NIGERIA AND THE TRIUMPH OF PRAGMATISM:
http://www.ifrs-rural.com/THE%20TRAVAILS%20OF%20RURAL%20SURGERY.pdf

Some articles by the media:

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/nigerian-doctor-runs-his-hospital-corn-cobs-and-used-bike-parts

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/88/5/10-040510/en/

Often I think why there no not more simple, easy serviceable equipment out there. Items should be built to last and if they break it should be easy to fix.

If you are interested in medical care in extreme environments, the book'Improvised Medicine: Providing Care in Extreme Environments', by Kenneth Iserson  is a great book.

Marking your equipment

Marking your gear has many (useful) purposes:
- Identify what is yours
- Find the gear (brightly colored equipment helps)
- Put indicators or 'red flags' on your gear 

First of all make sure whatever you use does not affect your equipment in a negative way. Pay particular attention to personal protective equipment. The glue in stickers/tape and solvents in markers/paint can have effect on certain materials (especially plastics and textiles). Sometimes manufactures will sell specific stickers or markers to mark their products (helmets , rope, slings). Preferably mark your equipment on a part which is not safety related. If you have doubts, you can choose to tie strings or add zip ties with a tag to your equipment, which means there is no solvents of other chemicals interacting. (unless the string was contaminated)  

Second, make sure the markings does not get in the way. It can block the sight to parts of your equipment, both in operating the equipment, as well for inspections of your equipment (wear and tear, damages, etc). If string is used, make sure it won’t cause entanglement or choking hazards.

Third, make sure the markings can handle the environment it is being subjected to. This can be extreme temperatures, temperature swings, exposure to abrasion or even chemical exposure. For example; adding (reflective) tape to firefighting equipment can simply mean that the tape melts the first time you get close to a fire. Meaning you have to clean of the melted goo.

You can make your markings have additional function. Strategic markings can act like warning flags. For instance a visible red line when something is forgotten or a switch is set on life. Markings can also be zipper tabs, making it easier to locate and open a certain compartment. Or just a loop, so you can hang your equipment in storage. 

For finding and identifying equipment I use the following to make my gear stand out:

- Bright neon yellow reflective tape (a thick high quality version, which is also very abrasive resistant).
- Bright red cordage with reflective threads in it.
- Glow in the dark and reflective cordage. (white)
- Glow in the dark and reflective zipper pull tabs.

For safety markings or surfaces which does not allow tape of anything attach to it, without creating problems:
- Permanent markers (works best on rough surfaces, specialist markers are available for certain equipment)
- Nail polish (works best on smooth surfaces)

Note that sometimes you just can’t mark your equipment without causing a problem and sometimes you can only mark things on the inside. 

Training rescue personel; the old fashion way

Some things are sometimes best kept simple. One of these things is training people what to do. Sometimes it's explaing structures, how they are made and how to deal with them. Sometimes you want to explain how to follow procedure and why. One simpel methode is the use of models. 

Here is a nice example of a model to explain thatched roof construction and how to fight fires with thatched roofs. Patches of canvas is used to simulate the strips of thatching and is removable from the model to reveal the interieur structure. 

Or just scale models of environments with various kind infrastructure. This is very usefull on teaching how to approach a scene and how to locate everything. Nice things about this particulair setup is the fact that these are actually puzzels. Multiple models can be joint to make a bigger envionment. 

But when do you get a birds eye view of a situation in real life? One way to get the right point of view is have people crawling inside a classroom, but thats not very user friendly for the student. Another simple, yet effective solution is to just put in on top of a extra high table. 

Unintended side effects: Attachment strings and lanyards.

There are plenty of situations when you do not want to lose/drop something: In the water, working with heights or just critical equipment you need and simple can't afford to loose. One method to prevent lose, is to tie it  to something.  This can be a simple string, lanyard or something like a ‘gear keeper’ (retractable cable).

This method does have some problems:

- When the string/lanyard is long, this can cause a entanglement or strangle hazard. A brake away system which fails before this happens can prevent this danger.

- If the string connects two pieces of equipment, which need to be connected to each other be used. The string can cause the pieces of equipment to act like there are connected properly. For example: a belay/ rope backup device which need to be connected to the users using a carabiner. I have seen people attaching a rope backup device (a Petzl ASAP, warning about this on the petzl website) to the rope, but failed to connect it to the harness using the carabiner. He did not notice this, because the string cause the ASAP to follow him as it is suppose too. The string is not strong enough to replace the carabiner making the backup setup useless.

- A sting can get stuck inside various devices and defeat the working parts or cause a device to be left open (example, getting stuck at the gate of a carabiner) or a tangled up lanyard just gets in the way of a button (a swivel helps against this issue). The petzl link already methode above, also shows this danger when using the ASAP.

Note; I have no connection with Petzl, I have worked with Petzl equipment and that is why I knew these instruction of Petzl.

Cheap handcrank lights

I see a lot of people raving about hand crank lights. ‘Crank a few times and when I turn the light on, it will burn of hours’. That is simply not true. A good hand crank light, should have a build in capacitor or battery which will store the energy which has been generated. But this will generally not last more than 15 – 30 minutes, not hours. There is only so much power your arms can produce in a short period of time. Let have  a look at internals of this light and see what we find.

When you take this light apart, you will actually find working sprockets, a free wheelie and a little dynamo connected to the LED. These are connected directly to the LED and are not actually charging anything. So all the light being produced while cranking this light, is the only light you are creating when cranking. 

The switch on top of the light is the switch for the battery part of the light. There are two CR2032 (non-rechargeable) batteries, wired to the LED and the little switch. This makes up for a separate power circuit in the light to battery drive the light. 

The crank part of this light is not really impressive and will drive you nuts when the batteries have gone flat. But at least it does have a working crank system. There are even fake crank (or shake) lights, which doesn’t have a working system at all and only contain a little battery. Which means they are very large and heavy button cell lights. Just like anything else, there are no cheap ways to deal with this. Either buy a proper (expensive) one and crank/shake a lot or just get a proper battery powered one and store plenty of batteries. 

Polar pure long term storage issue

A few years ago a product called Polar Pure was available, it's a little glass bottle with iodine crystals in it. You would add water in to the bottle and  it would create a iodine solution used for purifying water. It has nice features like a trap for the crystals and temperature sensitive paint dots which indicated how much of iodine solution to add to your water. Unfortunately iodine crystals is also a raw materials for certain drugs and Polar Pure is therefor no longer available.

A great thing about this product is the fact it does not actually expires. If there is still iodine crystals in it, you can still use it. There are a few disadvantages; it wouldn't call the taste 'good' and the iodine evaporates and reacts to the environments. I stored my two bottles double packed in small Ziplocs, then together in a larger Ziploc, in a plastic box, placed in another Ziploc. Here are the result after a year without replacing the ziplocs:

Not only did the iodine effect the ziplocs and plastic box. The epoxy protecting the temperature sensitive dots has also turned dark brown, making the dots invisible. Unfortunately there isn't much I can do about this. If you also have Polar Pure stored somewhere, check them and make sure the iodine is not effecting your other equipment!

Jumpstarters

Jumpstarters (Battery boosters) are devices usually fitted with a lead 12V AGM battery, but new fancy models come with a lithium-polymer battery. Primarily used to jump start a car with a dead battery. They can be very useful in jump starting a car, since it does not require a second car to get a jump start it. However they are also useful as emergency power sources. Here are some things you need to know about them.

The battery
First of all, not all jumpstarters are created equal. The most important component is the battery. A large high capacity battery, obviously is able to provide more power than a smaller one. Make sure you buy one which is appropriate for the size of your engine and correct voltage.

12V AGM batteries versions
The smaller jumpstarters generally use a 12V 17ah AGM battery, the larger ones will have something like the 12V 22ah or two 12V 17ah for 24 Volt vehicles. Looking at jumpstarters most have the 12V 17ah written on the label. This however is not always true (and even if it's true it really isn't that much power). The battery inside might say it is, but just like many cheap (Chinese) batteries, a lot of them have inflated figures. One easy way to find out if the battery is good is by weighing them. When it comes down to lead battery, more lead is good and lead is heavy. If the battery is too light compared to similar capacity batteries, it doesn't have enough lead in it. This is usually the case with really cheap jumpstarters, which are cheaper than a cheap separate 12V 17ah battery. 

To get the most of your battery, you need a decent (build in) charger. Continues overcharging a battery is bad for the battery and dangerous. Many cheaper jump starters only have a fuse between the 12V input and nothing else. These can be recognized by charging instruction as 'Charge for X amount of time and then unplug the unit'. if you want a long life for the battery, get a jumpstarter with a smart charger and automatic shut off (sometimes it is possible to connect a cheap one to a proper seperate charger). A build in smart charger will allow you to keep the jumpstarter attached to a wall socket without any risks of overcharging and the battery will be continuously be topped off. If lead batteries are not topped off regularly there will sulfration and the battery will lose capacity and eventually become useless. A jumpstarter with a proper charge might cost more, but in the long term the battery will last longer, is more reliable and is probably cheaper then buying a cheap new one every one or two years.

A advantage of AGM battery based jumpstarters, is that you can generally just buy a AGM battery and replace the one in the pack. Some brands they recommend you to bring it to there service station for a replacement, while other allows you to do it your self. 

Lithium Polymer versions
If you do not want the heavy weight, bulkiness and maintenance of a lead battery, some new jumpstarters use a Lithium Polymer battery. These batteries are capable of delivering a lot of emergency for a short period of time. This means a relatively small capacity battery (compared to the lead alternatives) can provide the burst of power needed to jump start a car, making these versions light and small . They also have a lot less self-discharge, so you will not need to top them off every month. There are however some disadvantages of a Lithium Polymer; they are not as suitable as a 12V power source for other devices, so they generally do not have a 12V output or compressors. There are not many available, the ones I can find are:

- Startmonkey 400
- Asianbright JPR series (sold under various brand names)
- Mini jumpstarter (Not sure whom the manufacture is, but sold under various brandnames)
- Staneley LI1000 (Not listed on there website anymore)

LiFePO4 replacement for 12V AGM
There are LiFePO4 batteries (lithium based), which are suitable as a direct replacement for the 12V AGM batteries. Are these usable in a jumpstarter and does it combine the best of both worlds? Unfortunately I have not seen these placed in any jumpstarters yet and don't have answers for these questions.

Powersupply
Most lead battery based jumpstarters can also be used as an emergency power supply. You should make sure what fuse is used and not exceed the fuse rating. (usually 10 Amps) I would suggest to use as many 12V appliances as possible. Converting 12V to 110 or 220 Volt simply isn't that efficient. Make sure that you do not over discharge the 12V battery; it will damage the battery. This can be done by regularly checking the voltage gauge on the jumpstarter.

Inverter
If you want to use a device using 110 or 220 volts with a 12V jumpstarter, you will need a inverter. Build in inverters are generally really cheap. There are also many types of inverters: Block, modified sinus and pure sinus versions. The cheaper inverters are generally block or modified sinus version, which does not give a nice sinus wave for your electronics. A pure sinus wave is what comes out of you wall outlet and electronics are made to run on this type of sinus waves. Some electronics will not run (properly) if a block or modified sinus is used. However pure sinus inverters are generally a lot more expensive.

Regardless of the inverter type, there is some inefficiency. So a 100W draw from the battery does not translate in 100W output. You need to take this in to account when using this with your jumpstarter. Most 12V outlets are equipped with a 10 Amp fuse. So make the inverter and the device connected to it does not exceed the fuse rating. 

Compressors
The build in compressors in jumpstarters are generally not the quality ones. So don’t expect very high pump rates or accurate pressure gauges. Like any compressors, you need to let it cool down after 10 minutes (or whatever the manual states) to prevent overheating and damaging the compressor. A separate compressor can be more versatile, however if you want to connect a separate compressor to a jumpstarter, check if the compressors does not use more power than the fuse allows (usually 10 Amps).

First aid kit expiration date

In the past first aid kits did not had any expiration dates on them. Then with government regulations, liability issues and commercial reasons first aid items started to receive expiration dates. These dates have important functions, but can also be misunderstood. 

Medication

Some medication can be highly sensitive to age or storage conditions, but many are not. Interesting tests are done by the US military: http://www.defense.gov/news/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=44979

One important note, a quote from Army Maj. Marc Caouette, a pharmacy consultant assigned at the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency at Fort Detrick, Md. said. “The worst possible place you can keep any medications is in a wet, hot environment. It’s the worst area to maintain stability. A cool, dry place is best to store drugs.”

Bandages and other first aid items
Does gauze, dressings, tape, space blankets and other first aid items expire? if the packaging is still intact the items inside the package should be still sterile. However the items inside can degrade over time. The glue on tape can degrade and loose there stickiness or turn in to a goo. Elastic bandages can lose their elastic properties. Space blankets can start to stick and you will rip it in to piece when you try to fold the blanket out. These are also effected by the storage conditions. First aid equipment stored at a dry cool dark place at home or in a car exposed to extreme temperature swings have effects on your equipment.

Tools
While shears, tweezers and other tools generally stay useful for a long time. They are cheap and when they are dirty, especially when contaminated with blood or other body fluids are best considered to be disposable. I personally don't believe in really expensive shears, since they get dirty or get lost all the time.

Unsafe: Unsafe powerstrips

A very good example of very usafe powerstrips

The connection between the cable and sockets is fully exposed. High shock risk if you touch the bottom part.

On the other side of the cable...

Do you know what is worst? Found this at a firestation. 

Storing your backup safely

Fire, flooding, theft, hardware failure, viruses, there are many reasons why data can be lost. That’s why it’s important to back up your files. This does not only apply digital files, scanning or photographing important hard copy documents can be very useful if these documents are  somehow lost. But there are a few things to look out for.

Location

Do not store your backup in the same location as your main storage. Storing a backup in the same room can expose your backup to the same threats as your primary storage (Fire, flooding, theft, etc). Store your backup at a different location, such as your office, car, family, etc. This will generally increase the time between the backups, because they are harder to access.

Layers

Having just one backup can also cause problem. The backup drive can be compromised, especially when stored nearby your primairy storage.  I like a full back up on a hard drive, but having hard drives placed everywhere can be a bit expensive. So a backup of only the important documents is also made on a USB flash drive and stored at a separate location.

Physical protection

A backup can fail when exposed to heat, water, impact, etc. So to improve the chances of you data from these dangers, you can take several approaches to do this:
 - A sturdier hard drive; for example the ‘LaCie Rugged series ‘or ‘Freecom Though drive’ (impact resistant) or protected USB flash drive for example the ‘Corsair Flash survivor’ waterproof and impact resistant). If you have a little more to spend the IoSafe is a pretty nice solution.(Heat and waterproof.

- A proper waterproof and impact resistant hard case, with foam interior (waterproof and impact resistant)
- A data safe (waterproof, impact resistant and heat proof) Some expensive models even have a USB external port, so you won’t even need to take out the hard drive, for example the Sentry safe QE5541.

You can obviously also combine these options. Unfortunately, the better the protection, the pricier it gets.

Encryption

Having all your data stored in a single device can expose you to identity theft. So adding encryption to your data can be very useful. I would not only encrypt my backup, but also sensitive information on my computer. This also makes it easier to back up the file, by just copying over the encrypted files. Although I leave non/sensitive information open, so it won´t slow down my computer. (for example; I don’t mind if somebody knows my music playlist). There are corporate tools for this, but for most individuals I would suggest to use a program like TrueCrypt. I do recommend to look at the tutorials of TrueCrypt first, since it can be a little bit hard to understand if you just read the instructions. If you use encryption software, also add the CryptKey installers to the drive.  

Drive speed

Not essential, but having a high-speed connection on you backup drive can make backup your files a lot quicker. So if you are buying a new drive, I would suggest getting a drive with USB 3.0 (backwards compatible with 2.0) connection (or Thunderbolt, but isn't as common yet). If it’s fast, you will more likely to keep your backup up to date. 

Emergency aid; Donations and logistics

After an disaster emergency aid will start to flow to the affected area. Some are from local organization, some larger (inter)national organizations and some from private persons. One important thing is not just to send 'stuff', make sure you send the right stuff. A lot of people will basically donate things they don't use anymore. Paying off the guilty of buying things they didn’t need. Make sure whatever you are donating is actually useful. I mean things like sending winter coats to a tropical place or high heels to any disaster area is absolutely useless and actually harmful (it clogs up the logistics).

If a lot of (appropriate) items are donated don't just send items and dump it at the local emergency center and expect it to be useful. Things are useless without the required logistics and resources to use it. With logistics and resources, I mean everything between needed to get things off trucks and all the way in to the hands of those whom need it in a useful form. Buying things locally and using existing logistical systems are the quickest and most cost effective methods. Buying things means full control over the type of product, limited sorting required and pretty much ready to use. So in most cases cash donations are the best. However a lot people won’t donate money, because of all kinds of reasons.

Another thing to know is, when something is needed. Sent the right things at the right time. Having the items at the wrong time, means you are clogging the limited logistic system with things that are not needed yet. Don't be surprised to see pallet loads of items being pushed away in to any available space, including grass patches or even ditches to make space for priority items. These pallets will sit exposed for days and depending on what the contents are turn useless.

Some things about the various types of donations:

Textiles (clothing's and blankets): After a disaster a lot of textiles gets donated. This process is not just sending the bags full of clothing to a disaster area. To make textile donations effective, the clothing need to be sorted between useful and useless, cleaned and sorted to type and size. Than they need to be shipped and distributed. All these steps take a lot of man power and time. This takes too much time (=money) and old donated textiles are often sold as rages and the money is used by NGO's for the recovery effort or other emergency's.

Food: You can't just send food. For example sending just trucks loads of potatoes is useless. You can't eat them raw, so you need lots of cookware, stoves and people to turn potatoes in to something you can eat. A healthy diet is needed to keep people's immune system up, so you can't just send just a few food items. Nor does everybody eat the same due to religion, moral issues or allergies. So the challenge is to send food and required tools to feed people. What this should be depends on the situation, on the available resource, logistics and manpower. Generally food is sourced locally, because of the availability and they are familiar for the locals. But MRE type of foods can be very useful if there are limited cooking methods available.

Water: Bottled water have its place, but water purification units can be better. Bottled water needs to shipped in and leave a lot of waste. However they do provide ready to use water in a easy to distribute package. A purification unit might be bigger than a shipment of bottled water, but will produce far more water. This means a lot less distribution is needed. Freeing people and resource for other important tasks. Again what is right depends on the situation.

Good read on this subject:
http://www.emergencymgmt.com/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/the-ugly-truth-about-disaster-donations-011113.html

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/09/168946170/thanks-but-no-thanks-when-post-disaster-donations-overwhelm

Google crisis response

I like off the shelf software solutions for emergency's. Preferably with interfaces which look like software everybody is already using on a day to day basis. Making your own specialist software packages usually means very high costs, lots of time and usually a new interface to get used to. It also requires lots of bandwidth and server capacity to cope with huge increases of internet traffic, which is expensive to buy and maintain and usually overloaded when a real disaster strikes. Large company's who have lots of servers and bandwidth capacity at various locations can respond quickly to these demands.  That's why i'm very happy with solutions like Google Crisisresponce.

The Google tool in action for the Typhone Yolanda: http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/2013-yolanda/index.html (Person finder tool, donation options and maps)

Jumper cables

Every car driver will eventually end up with a flat battery. A bad battery, leaving the lights on, not having used the car for a while, etc.  A problem which can be solved with jumper cables. But jumper cables are not always as straight forward as we think. There are plenty of low quality cables and there are plenty of people whom don’t know how to connect the leads.

Thick cables are usually better. A thicker cables generally means a higher capacity. If you use a cable with not enough capacity, you won’t be able to crank the car and the cables can get hot (in worse case melt and short out the battery). However thickness of the cables can hide a few facts.

•           Some company’s uses a thick insulator, making it appear thicker than it actually is.
•           While jumper cables used to be all copper, there are now three kind of materials used for jumper cables; solid copper, solid aluminum,  and copper coated aluminum cables.  Copper is a far better conductor than aluminum, more flexible and unlike aluminum it won’t corrode. This means aluminum cables appear to be thicker (or are just as thick, but have less capacity) . Most company do not specify which kind of cables are used. However aluminum is much lighter, so you can feel the weight difference.

Good cables however are not enough. You also need proper clamps to get all the electricity from a to b. There should be maximum contact between the clamps and the battery leads. The best clamps have both sides of the clamps connected to the cable to provide maximum contact. The safest clamps are the ones with full insolation on the outside (prevents shorting while  you are connecting them).

Surge protection

Most modern cars are far more sensitive to power surges. A risk when using jumper cables. There are lots of opinions what method is best to prevent this (and some say it doesn’t matter). There are jumper cables with build in surge protection which can prevent this. They are a bit more expensive.  If you do not have such jumper cables, but do have regular cables, there are aftermarket surge protectors which can be added on existing cables.

Smart cables

One manufacture (but sold under various brand names) makes ‘Smart’ jumper cables. You can hook the clamps to any battery leads and the little box in the middle will check the polarity and connect the proper cable’s to each other. This idea appears to be nice for people whom are not sure how to connect the cables. However the 12 gauge copper coated aluminum cables are too thin and the little box also requires some power from the battery to work, so it won’t work on totally flat batteries.( I have not seen a thicker cables version yet).

Instructions

You will not believe how little people know about using jumper cables,  so add instructions to your jumper cables. Shorting a battery out can be very dangerous (and expensive). Just having a piece of paper in the same package might not be obvious enough. One thing I made are the instructions cut in to strips and attached to each end of the cable.

Stop, STOP, STOP!!!

Some driver miss the height limit signs, some also seem not to notice the 'if you hit the sign you will hit this bridge' sign (or other height bars which you will hit when you are too high), some even miss the blinking lights and stop lights. For those situations, there is another kind of stop sign: 

Unintended side effects: flame retardent

Safety measure can be complicated and can be linked to other safety issue. After having deaths due to house fire, some countries and states require flammable furniture to be treated with flame retardant. Implementing these measures means a lot of expenses on testing, implementing and enforcing these rules.  What do we know years later; hardly any real effect of house fires, but we are getting toxins in our house and bodies.  An interesting article from the NY times last year:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/arlene-blums-crusade-against-household-toxins.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

We need to be aware what kind of measure we are taking to protect our selves and what the possible side effects are. A lot of times a very obvious solution of a problem, does have unintended side effects. This does not only apply to flame retardant, but many other 'solutions' as well.