Have many of you seen the Seseme Street emergency preparedness commercials? There's three or four of them with assorted muppets taking about what should be in an emergency kit, preparing a family emergency plan, and the like. They are on youtube somewhere, but I can't access it from work.

The next issue of Popular Mechanics is all about emergency preparedness and we've all noted an increase is news/magazine articles on the subject.

I'm in contact with edible wild plant teaches nationwide and we've all seen a huge jump in demand for our classes. I always ask my students why they are taking the class and 80% of them answer they are there because they are afraid of what's happening in the world and want to be prepared.

Here at work people who used to laugh at stuff have now been coming to me for advice on flashlights, radios, generators, etc...

So, I think the number of prepared people is currently climbing. There's always going to be some who refuse to take that sort of responsibility.

As I said earlier the trick is to convince people it's cheap, easy, and all the cool people are doing it. Maybe "People" magazine needs to do an article on the emergency gear of the stars or Oprah needs to talk about her collection of ham radios and shotguns...

Perhaps if we starting contacting tv producers and magazine editors to request more such shows/articles would help.

-Blast