I like the name. I am guessing Shomer-Tec got a boost after the Big Lebowski came out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPo9OBrIOi4

Thank you!

cash is king.

towns out here are often a hundred miles or more between. recently my neighbors were traveling thru a good-size town, stopped for the night and found in the morning that power was out in the whole town. credit cards were worthless. without cash they couldn't have purchased fuel to leave.

moral: always carry a few hundred in your wallet or anywhere else you like (preferably in 20 dollar bills)

I loved the BBC reporters John Simpsons 'get out of jail' phrase that magically solved beauracratic problems in the third world: " we are rich and willing to pay". :-)
qjs

Other places to stash handy cash; keychain, jacket pocket, car, lunch bag...

I had one; the plastic buckle broke. Actually I think I then brought a new one, and the buckle broke on that too. It was a while ago, so maybe they've improved. I was wearing it every day, not just on holidays.

Nowadays a microSD card will fit, and can contain vast amounts of data. Think insurance documents as well as ID, and photographs of your loved ones. You can also get SD-to-USB adaptors that are small enough that you won't notice one packed in a bag.

Of course paper backup is good for the essentials.

+1 on the microSd card. And its worth learning how to encrypt the data.

There's a lot of commercial encryption out there that's very poor. For example, it's trivially easy to crack passwords for many encrypted ZIP files. I'm a big fan of TrueCrypt, and it's free.

Make sure to use strong passwords with whatever encryption you use, and keep those passwords secure.

7-Zip uses AES with a 256-bit key. That's pretty good. I use it because the compression is helpful. When I tried using TrueCrypt for general backup, I had trouble fitting what I needed into a 4GB volume, and anything bigger wouldn't be accepted by the microSD card (because they use FAT).

I classified my data and the only things that really need encrypted fit in a small volume. You could easily separate into multiple smaller volumes or format the microSD in ext rather than FAT.

I used a small volume to make syncing to my phone easier, EDS lite will open a truecrypt volume, the OpenDocument or AndrOpenoffice to read the files.