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preparedness

Use Nextdoor to prepare your neighborhood for disaster

We don't know where, we don't know when, but we do know for sure that disaster will strike. The only thing we can do is prepare for a day we hope never arrives: the day something turns our world upside-down, as Sandy has done for so many people in New York, New Jersey, and other parts of the East Coast.

You can help your neighborhood get ready for whatever calamity fate may have in store by creating a neighbor social network that links to emergency-preparedness information customized to your locality. The free Nextdoor private social network launched recently … Read more

Obama signs order outlining emergency Internet control

President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week that could give the U.S. government control over the Internet.

With the wordy title "Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions," this order was designed to empower certain governmental agencies with control over telecommunications and the Web during natural disasters and security emergencies.

Here's the rationale behind the order:

The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions. Survivable, resilient, enduring, and effective communications, both domestic and international, … Read more

Stay prepared with the American Red Cross Axis Safety Hub

I am not the type who's well-prepared (my fridge is almost always empty), nor do I want to scare people into getting things that they don't really need.

However, I ran across the American Red Cross Axis from Eton the other day and thought it was a really handy device to have around the house, or in your car.

It's hard to classify the Eton Axis as one specific type of device because it's many things in one. It's a radio (AM/FM/NOAA Weather), a flashlight, and a cell phone charger. Best of all, … Read more

Assembling the IT emergency kit

Much of the world is consumed watching the coverage of the enormous disaster that recently struck Japan. As if a massive earthquake and subsequent major tsunami didn't cause enough death and destruction, they unleashed a cascade of failures that led to serious nuclear power plant accidents that have yet to be contained, and that threaten lives and indeed the inhabitability of an entire area of Japan. It's simply horrific.

We humans think that we're in control of, well, everything. We have plans and lists and goals and policies and fallback positions. Then something like this comes along … Read more

Meet Vine, Microsoft's superhero software

With a new product called Vine, Microsoft is tackling the issue that, in the Digital Age, contact management is no longer static--where you are and what you're doing at a given moment can matter just as much as what your cell phone number is. But instead of focusing on roving business travelers, Vine's slant is community management and emergency preparedness. It's in a private beta test right now.

Here's how it works. You download a "dashboard" application, and then you log in with your Windows Live account. Its interface takes the form of a … Read more

Disaster preparedness: Time is always running out

In the late 1970s, while attending the University of Miami in Florida, I became involved in the survivalist movement. I had been a Boy Scout--"Be Prepared," you know--so the survivalist attitude of "prepare for the worst" was an easy transition.

The members of the local survivalist community (at least the ones I knew) were good people: a high proportion of police officers and business professionals along with students like myself. What they had in common was a belief that something bad could happen to the United States.

The possible disasters included full-scale wars (nuclear, biological … Read more