ClusterFlake 2014

DisasterMan was in the South to witness "ClusterFlake" firsthand. In fairness to them:

1. It wasn't the 2-3" of snow that was the problem. It was the ice that screwed up traffic.
2. Significant snow is so rare there that it's not worth spending money on plows, sand trucks, and other things to prep for it.
3. In Alabama, the forecasters really did get it wrong, saying it would fall farther south.

In Georgia, however, despite what the Governor claimed, the forecasters gave plenty of warning of where it would fall and how much. State and local officials just didn't listen. When the National Weather Service was saying to only travel in an emergency, why did they open the schools??

Anyway, it's easy to scoff at anyone farther south than you, but Japan has us all beat. You think you've got it rough? How about 50 feet of snow? Amazing pics here.

Raise Your Glass

Wine is not usually listed as a disaster kit item. It's notable, however, that before clean drinking water became widely available, it was safer to drink beer or wine, because the alchohol kills pathogens.

Also, a number of scientific studies have found that, in moderation, alchohol consumption can actually benefit health, wine in particular. And, of course, in a stressful situation like a disaster, its psychological benefit should not be underestimated. :-)

So, let's say you're in an emergency situation, and you don't have a supply on hand (or have already used it up). Who you gonna call?

Breaking News

Todays' Washington Post Express

Sandy Twits

Today in the Twitter-verse:

     @lindsaylohan: WHY is everyone in SUCH a panic about hurricane (i'm calling it Sally)..? Stop projecting negativity! Think positive and pray for peace.

Oh wait, she and others have renamed it now:

    "It was nicknamed Hurricane Sassy during a Tyler Oakley twitcam on October 28, 2012 by Tyler Oakley, Alexander Gold, Lindsay Lohan, and Nikki Wood..."

More tweets:

Frankenstorm

Hurricane Sandy is combining with another storm to become a much stronger “Frankenstorm.” For more info, click on the Storm Center tabs above.

While there’s real danger, some of the media have gone overboard with the hype. As one columnist put it, a Fox News meteorologist “went berserk,” saying “worst case scenario” three times, as well as “extensive, catastrophic damage”; “power outages that could last weeks for millions of people”; and “our mouths dropped at the latest tracking.”

Update: Kudos to Jim Vance, 40-year DC news anchor, for preaching it like it is:

"Lot of people are on the edge, or already over the edge, of being freaked out by this thing. There are ... good reasons to chill out and make the best of this:

"We ain't no punks up in here! We know bad weather. We dealt with Snowmaggedon, we handled the derecho, we survived Irene a few years back. Some of us remember Agnes, which was a mother of all storms. We're still here. We're still standing. As we will be after this one is a memory."

Getting back to the hype, here's a snarky version from The Weekly World News:

Rest in Peace. Please.

FEMA has declared October to be Zombie Awareness Month.

[Sigh.] I love the zombie genre, but it's been beaten to death. People have run out of new ideas. It's jumped the shark. Even using it to promote emergency preparedness was already done by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) almost a year and a half ago. It's just not fresh or clever anymore.

Maybe it's time to put a bullet in the head of the zombie genre and let it die.

Update:
Perhaps I spoke to soon. This video about CPR is well done and kinda funny.

Bite Me

This is not the recommended way to carry a grenade.

“Terrorism expert Chris Dobson called it 'a chilling indication of what our soldiers are up against.'”

Call me crazy, but I'm not too worried about this guy.

Related posts: Idiot Terrorists

Source: Armed to the Teeth, The Sun (UK)

Big Bang Theory

A team of British physics students calculated the size of explosive needed to carry out the scenario in the movie Armageddon, in which an asteroid was blown apart to prevent it from hitting the Earth -- at the last minute, of course. They found it would take a 96 petaton bomb -- about two billion times more powerful than the largest nuke ever detonated. (It would take less to nudge one away from its path if it's done while it's farther away.)

NewsLI.com (Long Island) has advice on how to prepare for an asteroid "attack":