It's rare that a disaster will result widespread firefights. Looting, yes, but not shooting. The last disaster I remeber invoving widespread firefights was the '92 LA riots. Most of the lead exchanged was in K-town where the Korean-American community had bunkered down and was under siege by the looters.

Oh...a challenge.
-Blast

I don't know.

2 weeks ago an F2 tornado hit a small town a couple of hours away from me. The Red Cross came and went within 24 hours because paramedics took care of all the injuries and everyone was bunked in safely with friends and relatives. 2 weeks later and they're just this week being allowed to go back into their homes for resupply.

Some of us are one tight budgets and 6 weeks of rations would go a long way to help to feed houseguests during an extended stay. MREs or the like would also be more economical than eating out for every meal if you're stuck in a hotel. Been there, done that, and we were ever so thankful to have our camping gear and food with us.

Besides, 2 weeks co-habitating with the in-laws or in a shelter might make living in a tent in the backyard more appealing.

I'll make the popcorn!!

Lol. Wow. That's a LOT of black. I'll let them take the lead and follow them doing mop up.

Excellent advice Mark. I wasn't aware about thumb drives not being archival, I'll get right on backing it up. What about using DVDs for long term storage? We have cash and quarters in our bags, so we have that covered. I have added a cheap pay as you go cell to the babys bag, I'll just have to add money every few minutes every few minutes, giving the little woman an extra means of communication, especially if we get seperated. There's a charger of ofcourse, but considering that there may be no power I'll be looking for a few spare batteries for it. We haves toys for the baby and some of us have read and recorder her favorite books and stories and put them on a small stick mp3 to help keep her amused and cut out external noise. We have toys and have considered a small (7 inch) tablet also. Thanks again mark. I've sent all your suggestions to the boss and she likes them as well. Thanks.

Most CDs/ DVDs / BluRay are not archival either, though there are archival quality ones on the market but those are typically out our your and mine's budget.

For backups, I backup multiple different ways, sync'ed between multiple devices, hard drive in an external case, USB flash or other flash device, cd/dvd/bluray.

I used to keep some offsite but I kept having to explain to my parents that I intended to leave those there but she would still tell me once every couple weeks that I forgot something.

Thanks Eugene. That's kind of troubling. Be nice to have information I can access when I'm old and infirm. I had thought a flashdrives would do the job, but better safe then sorry.

With regards to the prepaid cell, during previous inidents the cell networks were overloaded. Text (SMS) messages were the only thing that reliably got through. If the cell doesn't have a querty keyboard, learning how to text on a 12-key numpad will be valuable. There is a fairly steep learning curve w/o using T9 predictive text. I've never mastered T9 myself.

I have three ways to charge our phones in case of no available power.
1) Car charger (of course)
2) Battery pack with replaceable batteries and a spare pack of batteries. I got my Wife a 6AA battery pack for travel as her phone is a battery hog. It's good for two charges of her phone or three of mine. Alkaline shelf lives have reached the point where they are now viable for emergency use, but you still can't store them in the device. EDIT: TSA was interested quite in that battery pack during her last trip.
3) Emergency radio has a hand crank and a USB port on it. Charging a phone is slower then molasses in a winter, but it works regardless of the conditions (no car, no batteries, no sun, etc.

Very true mark. I still use a 12 key pad and text extensively at times. Those tiny qwerty boards were never meant for hands as big as mine. Wife has a smart phone so a refresher course on the 12 key may be in order. I had completely forgotten that our hand crank can recharge cell phones. Good catch there. Thanks again.