If you’ve been in the path of or affected by Hurricane Ian, please check in here as you can.

This is an interesting sign of the way technology is headed. The new iPhone 14 has a feature that provides for emergency texts via satellite when out of range of a cellular or wifi connection.

Details here: Use Emergency SOS via satellite on your iPhone 14

There is also the suggestion that this may eventually be a paid service: "Service is included for free for two years with the activation of any iPhone 14 model. Connection and response times vary based on location, site conditions, and other factors."

It's not a substitute for a real PLB. (Yet?) On the other hand, there's probably 2 billion more people that have an iPhone than have a PLB.

This is definitely early days for this feature. Unclear how good it is right now. But just imagine what we may have in 5 years!

You know I created this sub forum many years ago, thinking it was a great place to discuss hypothetical situations such as an entire capital city having no drinking water. Of course back then the whole thing was hypothetical, I didn’t think realistically that it could happen outside of a local scale.

I would say that this ranks higher than even a wide scale power black out in terms of SHTF levels of bad.

It’s really hard to overstate how much you need water for just routine living. We’ve always maintained a supply of drinking water and utility water, sufficient for about three days, longer if we use only “outdoor plumbing” so to speak.

I’m not really sure how I would maintain a reasonable supply of water if I didn’t have the benefit of storage space. I guess the message here is no matter where you live try to maintain a good source of your own water to drink.

Anybody have any suggestions? Physically she's in good shape. Long term memory is good. Decision making is weak. Short term memory is the big problem.

Having adopted a pet recently, I am looking to update my prep to include the furry friend. I feel like I have a good handle on how to prepare for the most common scenarios such as medical emergencies and lost pets, and for the least common scenarios as such bug out during a massive disaster. But then I'm noticing there are some "in between" scenarios that I am not sure how to assess.

For example, some people are concerned about car accidents with a pet in the car or becoming otherwise incapacitated with a pet somewhere (either in the car or at home). One source advocates having some sort of info tube with the pet's info & pictures so responders to the scene can search for the dog should it get loose from the crash site. There are services that sell a "I have a dog at home" card so whoever goes through your wallet will find it and alert the service to help take care of your dog. I've also seen signs that go on the door ("in case of emergency, save my dog located in this or that spot, contact this or that person"). All these assume that whoever sees these items will respond appropriately.

What can we expect from paramedics, firemen, police, etc. who show up to accident scenes or house fires? I have no doubt these are all well-intentioned people, but will the paramedic do a thorough search of the inner compartments of your wallet to find the "I have a dog at home" card and then act on it? I feel like they must follow certain rules (e.g., look for health-related & basic ID info only).