He was someone I watched regularly on TechTV and while I have always been interested in survival tools and techniques, what his family went through gave me the "official" blessing of my wife to talk openly about it as if I weren't nuts, and to spend some money on kits.

A year later I read ETS forums almost every day, have both car and personal kits established and have started camping trips, something I've wanted to do for a long time. I'm sure the ETS forums picked up a lot of new members a year ago.

There are some interesting follow-up articles posted here and here in the last week.