So what would you have likely taken on board that would have helped when this emergency occurred at sea?

What could/should you reasonably take on board -- knowing the odds of this occurring on your cruise are very low?

No power. No refrigeration. 4500 passengers. Many (most?) rooms with no windows to bring in light. Toilets malfunctioning (most apparently are working -- thank goodness).

Waiting for helicopters to drop Spam and Pop-Tarts....

The pitch-black dark room (and corridors?) would get to me.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101111/ap_on_bi_ge/us_cruise_ship_fire


Lines for cold food stretch for hours. Navy helicopters flew in Spam, Pop Tarts and canned crab meat and other goods for the passengers and crew...

...Gina Calzada, 43, of Henderson, Nev., said her diabetic sister, Vicky Alvarez, called her Wednesday on her cell phone and started sobbing. She said she has not been able to take her insulin for her diabetes because she is not eating enough.

She told Calzada all that she had eaten was some bread, cucumbers and lettuce.

"She said it stinks of rotten food and smoke," Calzada said. "It's dark, and it's cold.'"

Alvarez's husband said that when he went looking for food for his wife, a crew member told him to give her a Tic-Tac.

Carnival officials said they could not confirm Alvarez's report.

A flashlight.

Whenever and wherever I travel, I keep a mini-mag light with me, along with spare batteries (and bulb in the handle, as is standard). At night, it says on the nightstand next to my eyeglasses, within reach at all times.

I don't travel much anymore, but today I think I would add (not substitute) a LED head lamp.

A good bottle of malt whisky and a fishing rod. The Spam would have made for some good fish bait.

With 3500 folks on board there is always going to be some whingers & whiners especially from the those who have trouble taking the silver spoons out of their mouths before making their utterances.

A compact assortment of canned food heavily fortified with animal products, crackers, mayo packets, real cheese spread (heavily laced with pimientos), DeDe Brand Thai coffee, and one of those newer little compact Esbit cook kits with the built-in windscreen, 2 cup+ cooking pot, lid, and a bunch of the fuel tabs. This is what I have in my truck with me at all times. I can survive WW 10 with a cracker spread with tuna salad and pimiento cheese spread, or bbq Vienna sausages. Actually, I have survived WW 10 (grad school) on these rations.

Standard travel kit ( even for cruise boats) includes:

Fleece jacket
flashlight
book
power bars
caffeine source
camera
tiny FAK
cash
tiny sak

There's not alot of difference between this love boat scenario and ones we have covered before, e.g. evacuating Las Vegas after a total power meltdown. I prefer to look at it from the ship captain's perspective rather than my own survival or comfort: several thousand passengers, mostly elderly, a certain percentage will have pre-existing medical conditions that would be exacerbated by the power loss. Parallel with sending an SOS and getting assistance, the crew must triage and sustain these passengers immediately. We aren't hearing about any fatalities, which is the metric of success or failure in most disasters, isn't it? They are on the motherf*cker...

The woman who complained she hadn't had enough to eat to take her diabetes medication might not have had as much to eat as she usually would, but she was alive, awake, and witting enough to tweet out her complaint to relatives on shore. Something tells me the woman may have never had enough to eat in the first place, but that is probably unnecessarily cruel.

Stay away from cruise ships and similar gatherings. There are far better ways of spending your leisure time - my preferences run to backpacking, bike touring, and similar enterprises where you can more easily retain control of the situation.

Once again I say, "Common sense is the new Gifted."

Plastic bags and baby wipes.

This is about all you can get onto a cruise ship anyway. They run you through airport-like customs upon embark and debarkation. It would be nice to have bottled water with the possibility of water-borne pathogens that cruises are susceptible to...especially when equipment is down.