Some people may not be totally familiar with urban living. NYC is the ultimate urban environment, where most people must live at a bare minimum simply because it's not possible to live anyway else. There's not enough room or money to live with with a generator or solar battery charger in the closet. You might want to be prepared for every different disaster scenario, but you just can't. Seriously, people decide to get a 13" laptop instead of a 17" laptop because the latter takes up too much room in their apartment. They don't count square feet. They count square inches.

I thought this article posted above was quite inspiring:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424..._MoreIn_NewYork

I was asking myself if I could make a generator for my cell phone from stuff I have in my relatively large house. I am embarrassed to say I can't, or at least I don't have the know-how. I'm not even sure if I could rig it with stuff in the 10 closest houses around me. Meanwhile, these people with limited resources in NYC found a way to do it.

Now, I may have misread some posts above that seem to be unduly negative. If I didn't misread, then come on. I'm sure plenty of people in Hurricane Sandy are worthy of harsh criticism. The folks in that article are not.