An observation I made a couple of years ago: some people gain inordinate amounts of pleasure from being prepared for things and I am one of those people. Examples, in escalating order of craziness, are r/EDC, r/bugout and r/preppers. These subreddits are preparedness-porn. I sometimes look at them and go "ooooh". (I also sometimes look at them and go "but...ugh...why...why would you even want to do that?" so the porn metaphor is surprisingly apt.)
By good fortune, I've discovered I'm somewhere on this axis of crazy in between EDC and bugout. This seems to be a fortuitous amount of crazy. I'm overly-prepared for many of life's pitfalls, but I'm unlikely to ever buy a fire steel, and I don't have a machete in my wardrobe that I sharpen every day in readiness for Armageddon.
Hypothesis: your rationalist friends live in cities and your non rationalist friends come from various things you did in life (work school family etc) and are scattered including many people not in cities
A few disorganized thoughts:
It's often easy to find water and hard to find safe water, so a water purifier might be a useful supplement or substitute. In the States, you can get one for about $30 at REI or other outdoor stores. Purification tablets also exist but I don't know how well they work.
I'm not a big fan of commercial first-aid kits; they seem heavy on stuff that'll make you slightly more comfortable in situations where you don't really need first aid, and light on stuff that'll actually help prevent or manage serious illness or injury. Probably better to skip these and go with a more targeted approach, unless you expect to be dealing with people that insist on treatment for minor trauma.
I am a big fan of gel bandages for blisters; they won't save your life but they will save your mobility, especially if you're not used to walking long distances or are stuck in the wrong shoes. I try to keep them anywhere I might find myself doing a lot of unexpected walking from, like my car, and they're an essential piece of backpacking kit.
A multitool (Leatherman or competitor) is almost never the right thing to be using, but it's very often good enough if you don't mind a li
Extra emphasis on the importance of backing up your computers' data. It must be automatic, it must be tested, and it must include everything by default (ie, tag things to exclude, don't tag things to include).
Filling an emergency or travel kit is mostly about finding items with high value-to-weight ratio. Some things they should definitely have are:
Great post.
For food, I think dehydrated potatoes are a particularly effective emergency food. They're more complete nutritionally than grains and will keep you performing longer in a tough situation.
I also like to store enough fuel to safely get to a friend or family members house in another town, if necessary. My vehicle is diesel, so storing the fuel is somewhat safer than storing gasoline.
Books can be helpful as well- especially easy to read field references for emergency medicine and survival techniques. In my opinion a good book on first aid is more important than an actual first aid kit.
Also, a hot water heater is a giant tank of drinkable water, and is always full. It can be drained from a spigot at the bottom.
For anything that requires batteries, either a hand-crank or solar panels to charge it during a long-lasting blackout.
In many minor emergencies, cash can be useful as a backup to any given backup. (And debit or credit cards as a backup to the cash.)
A deck of cards. Keeping up morale (and/or keeping the kids from driving you buggy) can make many near-horrible situations moderately tolerable, and as long as you've got light, cards don't use up any further batteries or other resources.
Would be interesting to do a cost/benefit analysis for these items. E.g. Cost of item / (Probability of emergency * cost f emergency)
My feeling is a lot of this is an interesting intellectual exercise but not actually a net benefit
A "Kelly Kettle" lets you use easily-available twigs, leaves, and similar burnable debris to boil water.
There are lots of ways to start a fire. The most common is a Bic-type lighter for a reason. A low-skill, reusable, portable option is a Fresnel lens the size and shape of a credit card.
(This is not intended as medical advice. It is a summary from my personal experience and research I've read.)
Various things can cause dehydration — overexertion, exposure, diarrhea, vomiting, blood loss. Drinking plain water for dehydration is a lousy idea; it can send you right into hyponatremia (low sodium, which in my personal experience is a huge big bunch of no fun) or hypokalemia (low potassium, which is reportedly worse).
The standard "everyone knows about it" fix for this is Gatorade — but Gatorade is full of way too much sugar. The somewh...
- Neosporin/bandaids (esp. if your cats scratch :P)
I use surgical spirit instead of antibiotic ointment. The basic idea of having something to put on little wounds is a good one, but over-the-counter antibiotic ointment might be contributing to antibiotic resistance.
Rope.
Those suture-replacement bandages.
Superglue.
Memorize some songs, especially ones that work well in groups, such as rounds. They're good distraction when you get sick of playing cards, and unlike cards they work just as well in the dark. A small, tough musical instrument like a recorder or harmonica is also good to have around.
Caffeine pills come in handy if soda is unavailable or you can't boil water to make coffee or tea.
Single use disposable toothbrushes (such as Wisp).
I'm a bit confused by the pricing. It's listed at $15.99, but lower down the FAQ gives the price as $4.99. I've seen six-packs of toothbrushes at a dollar store, so I don't see what Wisp's selling point is. Individualized packaging?
Flashlights (that you can find in the dark)
Being able to find your flashlight in the dark used to be good advice, but if you carry a cell phone you can use that to find your flashlight.
If you are often travelling over bridge by car, having a car-knife could be handy in case you go over. The device generally comes equipped with a seat belt cutter, pressurized hammer, and flashlight.
Lets have a poll:
Do you have a first aid kit at home: [pollid:644]
Do you have a fire/water safe lock box at home: [pollid:645]
Do you have some emergency equipment at home (lights+batteries, stove, medicine): [pollid:646]
For how many days do you have food, water and medicine at home: [pollid:647]
This thing for a medical emergency: http://www.amazon.com/Quikclot-Advanced-Clotting-Bleeding-Package/dp/B001BCNTHC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396508231&sr=8-3&keywords=super+clot
Hospitality
Are there cultural differences between Europe and the US? Where I live, it's usually the guests who bring their own contact solution/toothbrushs/pads/tampons if needed; the idea of asking a host for a spare toothbrush (I don't need the other things because I neither wear contact lenses nor am female) wouldn't even occur to me.
*Back up your data in the cloud
I would also suggest a portable hard copy of your most important files. If you need access to a file and have no connection, odds are good you can still use a flash drive. Just make sure it's somewhere you won't lose it (on a key ring, in your glove compartment, etc.)
For potable water, a Brita filter or similar brand (the kind you fill up and store in the fridge) may do you for the short term, but remember that their filters need to be replaced. So either keep a stash of spare filters on hand or have an alternative.
I have almost everything on this list, except canned food, which we stock up on when there's any reason to expect an emergency. We are our social circle's manifestation of Crazy Prepared. I've actually been trying to reduce the amount of emergency-preparedness we do when traveling, because carrying a backpack full of food, water, meds, and miscellaneous necessities everywhere starts to suck. I do have a fire safe and I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't, except perhaps if one's parents still hold the documents normally kept in such. Perhaps a good chunk of LW ...
Shouldn't this post be marked [Human] so that uploads and AIs don't need to spend cycles reading it?
...I'd like to think that this joke bears the more subtle point that a possible explanation for the preparedness gap in your rationalist friends is that they're trying to think like ideal rational agents, who wouldn't need to take such human considerations.
If a first-world country suffers a calamity in which half its population dies, it'll lose nine-tenths of its economic output at least.
Good point. I find it pretty hard to believe that people would start using gold instead of silver for casual transactions, but I suppose it's possible.
This post is inspired by a recent comment thread on my Facebook. I asked people to respond with whether or not they kept fire/lock boxes in their homes for their important documents (mainly to prove to a friend that this is a Thing People Do). It was pretty evenly divided, with slightly more people having them, than not. The interesting pattern I noticed was that almost ALL of my non-rationality community friends DID have them, and almost NONE of my rationality community friends did, and some hadn't even considered it.
This could be because getting a lock box is not an optimal use of time or money, OR it could be because rationalists often overlook the mundane household-y things more than the average person. I'm actually not certain which it is, so am writing this post presenting the case of why you should keep certain emergency items in the hope that either I'll get some interesting points for why you shouldn't prep that I haven't thought of yet, OR will get even better ideas in the comments.
General Case
Many LWers are concerned about x-risks that have a small chance of causing massive damage. We may or may not see this occur in our lifetime. However, there are small problems that occur every 2-3 years or so (extended blackout, being snowed in, etc), and there are mid-sized catastrophes that you might see a couple times in your life (blizzards, hurricanes, etc). It is likely that at least once in your life you will be snowed in your house and the pipes will burst or freeze (or whatever the local equivalent is, if you live in a warmer climate). Having the basic preparations ready for these occurrences is low cost (many minor emergencies require a similar set of preparations), and high payoff.
Medicine and Hospitality
This category is so minor, you probably don't consider it to be "emergency", but it's still A Thing To Prepare For. It really sucks having to go to the store when you're sick because you don't already have the medicine you need at hand. It's better to keep the basics always available, just in case. You, or a guest, are likely to be grateful that you have these on hand. Even if you personally never get sick, I consider a well-stocked medicine cabinet to be a point of hospitality. If you have people over to your place with any frequency, it is nice to have:
Medicine
Toiletries
Minor Catastrophe Preparation
These are somewhat geography dependent. Adjust for whatever catastrophes are common in your area. There are places where if you don't have 4 wheel drive, you're just not going to be able to leave your house during a snowstorm. There are places where tornadoes or earthquakes are common. There are places where a bad hurricane rolls through every couple years. If you're new to an area, make sure you know what the local "regular" emergency is.
Some of these are a bit of a harder sell, I think.