https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mis...s-area-n1264199

He texted a picture to his friend who looked at aerial photos to pinpoint a general area.

My first thought would be to check the EXIF data to see if he had the GPS on the phone set.

What are your preps for the Summer weather season?

Today I sawed up some old cedar fence boards lying around the place, converting them into excellent started kindling. One of the events I more or less plan for in southern California is the possibility of a significant earthquake, one that will leave my home un- or partially inhabitable with no significant utilities and a disrupted street system. In that case , we will SIP and use a lot of our camping gear, depending upon the condition of the home. In tht case our rarely used fireplace could become extremely useful

As I was sawing up the planks and tucking them into a water tight container, I thought, "This is either an extremely far sighted undertaking or a complete waste of time..." Who knows??

Commercial kits are great - an easy solution for those who want a buy it and be done solution. But:

Building your own 72 hour pack has these advantages:
1. Almost always a better, bigger pack
2. You can personalize the gear for your situation
3. Most pre-stuffed packs have little room for anything else. Wanna bring a jacket and your laptop...then you're out of luck.
4. You can avoid toting cheap, heavy gear by not adding it.
5. It'll force you to think...

Another thread gave me an idea. I enjoy building kits of all kinds, both on-topic for this forum and very much off-topic. I thought I'd share with you the kinds of kits I've built.

On Topic Kits:

• Comprehensive car kits -- there's one in my car and one in Mrs. Magnet's car. They are designed to serve alone or as the core of our larger emergency supplies.
• Emergency bins -- kept in our garage, designed to supplement the car kits in a bug-out or bug-in situation. Supplies are rotated through here: for example, I'll buy a new bottle of ibuprofen, put it in the emergency bin, take the one that was in there and put it in the bathroom when that bottle is empty, maintaining freshness for those items we use regularly.
• Lightweight car kits -- Eldest and Center Offspring both own their own vehicles. I've worked with them individually to design lightweight, low-bulk kits for their cars appropriate to their needs and locations.
• Laptop bag kit -- TSA safe and designed to be unobtrusive anywhere I can bring my laptop, but still providing me with tools to solve a wide array of problems large and small.
• Hiking / outdoor range backpack kit -- This bag has plenty of room for water, lunch, and so on, while still giving me good tools for treating injuries, providing shelter, making a fire, and so on.
• Gunshot wound kits -- carried on-body at the range, with a spare in my range bag. I've built a smaller one designed around day-to-day concealed carry, and I'm not entirely satisfied with it.

A couple of examples of kits that are less on-topic: Our close friend and neighbor is a single mom, and nobody in her family is what I'd think of as "handy." Over the years I've put together a bag of tools designed around the common problems I'm asked to help out with around her house. I also have a "go bag" for IT problems; I'm not an IT consultant any more but I am regularly asked to help the neighbor mentioned above and other friends with IT issues, so having a bag ready to go with All The Cables has been very handy.