FWIW my local family emergency comm plan relies on simple ham frequencies. We have enough siblings with their ham tickets that all that's necessary is to pick some discrete frequencies / repeaters and check in (or not). And keep our HTs charged up and handy. We still all hope to call out of region to a safe number and check in, but we hope the local ham communication will be durable and useful to us.

When the big one hits in Seattle I'll have immediate family isolated in North Seattle, south of the collapsed bridges across the Montlake cut, and all over the Eastside of Lake Washington. My family is either retired, works in downtown Seattle, or works at a common location on the Eastside. We Eastside brothers have a plan to touch base with each other and coordinate family communication and LD calls out of the region, the downtown workers can all evac to another brother's home south of the Montlake cut. My retired parents are in North Seattle, but they have potential assistance from neighbors and siblings within a mile or two. Actually I'm the most exposed, 1/4 mile from the Seattle fault, and probably one of the longest walks home. But we're all off the soil that will liquify or landslide and above the brown line (lahar zones). The most difficult is a mother-in-law living 15 miles away in a senior center, but that facility's performance during the Dec 2006 wind storm was excellent.

Needless to say, we all have mutual assistance plans, in the event any/all of our homes/shelters are kaput, we know to go to our next closest family member (marked maps in the car and in BOBs).

All in all, a little prep and planning may give you peace of mind in an actual event, to the extent you can help those around you in more serious distress. I sure will be worrying about my wife and kids and family, but hope to have enough info soon enough that I can focus on others.

> one of the few advantages of age seems to be the ability to
> "pace" yourself better

To say nothing of the _requirement_ that you pace yourself. :->

Actually, i'm not sure if i could get to my present abode by walking home if something happened to the bridges.. so i proably should try and find other places i could go if need be..

The reality for me is that I'm not willing to every-day carry more than one device, so that device needs to do as much as possible. My phone doesn't do GPS so the result is that I don't have GPS unless I know in advance I'm going to need it. In practice I don't have much problem with battery life.

I think this ( EDC options) needs a separate thread. Is it best to have a "combo" gadget or an arsenal of different gadgets.

One day we were on a field (business) trip and had to take pictures. Camera was not with us and had to depend on the Nokia N-73 camera. Not bad for the job but battery went dead after 30 pictures. We still had to go to meetings ..etc. and there was no chance to charge the cell phone.

My old and faithful Nokia "Caveman" ( heh heh heh ) is always in the glove compartment ready for service. So I used it for the rest of the day; and only had chance to charge the primary cell phone at home at night.

My son follows a different strategy. He has one cell phone with camera, but has two spare batteries always nearby.

Its interesing to read everyone's EDC startegies. But as I said, it seems to need a seperate thread.

Sounds good, I think I'll go ahead and start one.