I got a couple of these items - somewhat to my surprise, I might add, I didn't know my relatives realised I was into "survival". One was a gold-plated whistle with hand-carved wooden handle, and the other was Chris McNab's "SAS Handbook of Living Off the Land" (whichI wasn't overly impressed with, I'm afraid - see my review in the "Lending Library" forum).

But one gift I got that wasn't (intentionally) survival related was a collection of stories and photographs put out by the Halifax (Canada) Chronicle-Herald in the aftermath of Hurricane Juan, which killed two people (one of them a paramedic responding to a call) and knocked out electrical power to one-third of the province.

Two stories of interest caught my eye:

1. At least two people who owned gas-driven generators spent days (at their own expense) hauling the generator from door to door in their neighbourhood to run the neighbours freezers (4 hours a day, 2 hours at a time) to prevent the food from spoiling before it could be used. One of them scrounged two long extension cords and was able to run 3 freezers simultaneously. How they figured out that running the freezer for 2 hours every 12 hours was sufficient to keep meat and other perishables from spoiling, I don't know - I suppose they just crossed their fingers and hoped. But it was kind of inspiring to me that people in those circumstances would react this way, when they could have just used the generator to run their own home.

2. Many people stocked up on food supplies before Juan hit, but unfortunately for them, they stocked up on perishables like meat. Most of these "emergency rations" had to be thrown out within days. Why people assumed that the electrical power wouldn't go out in a hurricane (or at best, that it would come back on line before the grocery stores re-opened) is beyond me, but it's a good lesson - that most people need to think their survival strategies through a little more thoroughly. <img src="images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />