With Hurricane Dorian bearing down on Florida, here are links to earlier posts on hurricane preparedness.
New York during 2012 power outage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Image Credit: Hybirdd, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.
The recent blackout in New York serves as a reminder that you should be prepared and have some useful items on hand. The suggestions on this page are a bare minimum, and you probably want to be more prepared. But this page can serve as a checklist to make sure you have at least the very basics on hand.
There are a few downsides of this type of charger. The main one is that it goes through the AA batteries quite fast, so it’s not a good long-term solution. Also, it does not “use up” the batteries completely. In other words, even after you are unable to charge your phone with that battery, the battery is still good for other things, such as a flashlight or radio. Therefore, if you have some of these chargers on hand, I would recommend also getting some inexpensive AA flashlights.
Obviously, these suggestions are just the starting point for preparedness. But just having a source of light and information in an emergency will go a long ways in making an emergency more bearable. And the cost of these minimal preparations is extremely low. After you have made these basic preparations, some of my other pages will provide you with ideas of other preparations you can make for emergencies:
Some links on this page are affiliate links, meaning that this site receives a small commission if you buy after using the link. The links above are for ordering on Amazon.
With another tropical storm bearing down on the Gulf coast, here are links to earlier posts on hurricane preparedness:
Sixty years ago this month, the June 1959 issue of Electronics World carried a good basic introduction to marine direction finding (DF). The cover image shows a number of commercially made DF units, and the article explains how they work.
While the technology looks archaic, it actually still works quite well, and will continue to do so as long as there are AM radio stations on the air. While commercial direction finders are no longer readily available, virtually any AM radio will work well, as long as the antenna is directional. And if the radio has an internal loop antenna, it will be directional.
For example, the inexpensive portable shown at the right will perform very well. (It’s available at Amazon at this link, but any other inexpensive portable will work just as well.) You simply rotate the radio until the signal is the weakest. At that point, the internal antenna (usually in parallel with the top of the radio) is in a straight line with a station. You place a 
This method is surprisingly accurate. It’s very easy to find your location within a mile, and with some practice, you’ll be able to narrow it down even more. It’s not quite as accurate as GPS, but if GPS ever becomes unavailable for any reason, this is an excellent backup method. The example shown at the left is typical. By knowing the exact location of radio stations in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Benton Harbor, MI, the boat can find its location within a few hundred yards.
Radio station locations are shown on maritime and aeronautical charts. You can also find the exact locations of AM radio stations from the FCC database.
Roseville, MN, Target, 15 June 2019. OneTubeRadio.com photo.
My son and I happened to be at Target this afternoon, just in time for #TargetDown, also known as Targetgeddon. We weren’t actually buying anything–we were waiting outside the Minute Clinic for my son’s physical for summer camp. Suddenly, the lights in all of the checkout lanes started flashing in unison, and all of the cash registers went off line. The company suddenly ground to a halt. Customers, who were ready to give the store tens of thousands of dollars instead milled around the checkout lines. My son pointed out, maybe correctly, that it was a cyber attack.
No riots broke out, and everyone seemed to take the event in stride. But it was striking that even the smallest of transactions became impossible. There’s no provision in place to take money from customers without the computer functioning. According to news accounts, the outage was worldwide, meaning that the same scene was repeated in all other stores. Some stores apparently resorted to simply locking up and calling it a day on a busy Saturday.
It hasn’t always been this way. Back in an earlier lifetime, I managed a Radio Shack store. One day, as sometimes happens, the power went out. I knew that I had things in the store that people would want, so I took advantage of the situation. I put some flashlights in the window so that people could see some light emanating from the store. I moved other items, such as flashlights, batteries, and portable radios close to the counter. Within minutes, people started coming in with money to buy these things. I had record sales that evening.
Credit card imprinter. Amazon photo.
In the event of an emergency, Target has a lot of things that people will need. In addition to flashlights and batteries, they also have food. But if the power is out or the computers are down, they have absolutely no method in place for selling it.
When I kept the store open despite the power being out, I really didn’t think much of it. I’ve always thought of things like electricity and computers as luxuries. But at some point, many people started to rely upon them as necessities. I first realized this when I heard many people assume that it was impossible to make coffee without electricity. (This is not true, as I’ve documented at my How to Make Coffee Without Electricity page.)
But it’s more troubling when people needlessly turn them into necessities. With just a bit of advanced planning, a retailer could continue, at the very least, to take cash for purchases. Waffle House, for example, is famous for remaining open in the wake of emergencies. In the process, they provide a vital service to the public, and also make a profit for themselves, a win-win situation, it seems to me. As I saw today, that attitude is all too rare today in American business.
Seventy five years ago this month, the April 1944 issue of Popular Science showed this illustration of the survival items that could be dropped to airmen who were forced to make an emergency landing in the Arctic.
For a larger image, click twice on the image above from most browsers.
This simple emergency lamp was shown in the the April 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics. It consists of nothing more than a glass, a cork, and a piece of string. Cooking oil is used as the fuel.
Slightly more elaborate designs can be found in Nuclear War Survival Skills, which reports that such a lamp consumes only an ounce of fuel in eight hours, yet provides enough light for reading. Some strategically placed aluminum foil will assist with the light output.
If you’re ever stranded in the wilderness in winter with an injured companion, then this idea could be a lifesaver. The February 1944 issue of Popular Science showed how to construct this expedient sled from a Chippewa design.
The magazine explained that ash was the best wood to use, since the green wood would bend without breaking.
The sled was lashed together, and the magazine explained that if you had no cord, you could use strips of ironwood bark. Or, if you were using the sled to haul your injured companion, you could use the laces from his boots.
Seventy-five years ago this month, the February 1944 issue of Boys’ Life gave some pointers on how to keep warm on a budget. The burlap foot coverings are the same general idea as what we previously offered for expedient winter footwear. And if your jacket isn’t quite warm enough, then lining it with a few layers of newspaper will surely do the trick.
Eighty years ago, an Eveready flashlight and Eveready batteries saved another life, as recounted in this ad from the November 1938 issue of Popular Mechanics.
The story was sent in by Mrs. Camille Dearkin of 222-09 135th Avenue, Springfield Gardens, Long Island. It was one of those nights. Her one year old son was seriously ill with whooping cough, and her husband was also “down with the grippe.” And while she was going to bed, she managed to blow a fuse.
Since she didn’t know how to replace the fuse, she decided to wait until the morning. But she was awakened by her son’s terrible coughing, and rushed in the dark to the medicine cabinet to find the medicine.
Her hand was shaking in the dark as she fumbled in the medicine cabinet until she encountered what she believed was the bottle. But her shaking was such that she spilled the medicine, and she realized that she needed light to properly measure it. So in spite of her panic, she took the time to get her husband’s trusty Eveready flashlight.
When she got it, to her horror, she realized that she had taken the wrong bottle! In her hand, she was holding not the cough syrup, but a bottle of deadly poisonous disinfectant! The Eveready batteries had saved her baby’s life.
Of course, it’s probably best not to store deadly poison right next to the medicine. But if you do, make sure you keep your Eveready flashlight handy.
People frequently Google their own names and names of family members, and I always enjoy hearing from them to follow up on these old stories. So if you are the 81 year old Mr. Dearkin mentioned in this story, I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to contact me at clem.law@usa.net, as I would enjoy sharing your recollections of this event.
