Contagion? NZ Flu was a good fire drill

This weekend while perusing my twitter feed, I ran across stories of a strange flu-outbreak on a flight to New Zealand. I immediately found it strange that a bunch of people on the same plane broke out with symptoms and was, to be honest, a bit concerned that some new strain of flu could potentially be breaking free from SE Asia. Probably didn't help that I recently watched Contagion. But the NZ authorities took measures immediately to quarantine the flight. I still thought about the upstream issues (the departure airport, local area there, flights elsewhere from there, etc). But if all of these sypmtomatic folks broke out over the course of a flight, people would know quickly if they had the disease and be more easily quarantined. So news was slim and time was ticking...

Whew! Concerns Overblown! Now the kiwis say they went overboard but to err on the side of caution. This bothers me a bit and here's why. They did what they SHOULD HAVE DONE! You don't decide that you're overreacting to an event that has explosive potential during the event. You knock the everliving bejesus out of it (Mississippi for attack it really hard) and then address that in the after action report. Some worry that the public will be desensitized to the reaction by this overreaction. I say keep it coming, we need all the practice (with little impact) that we can get when something that ends up being relatively harmless happens.

You play like you practice and I'm proud of NZ for playing pretty well (even though they didn't know it was a scrimmage). I'm glad everyone is OK but this really drives home that we should all be ready to take action in the event that something like a pandemic breaks on our shores.

Here's another article from The Sydney Morning Herald

Syria: Prayers & Source for Info

My prayers include a special mention and meditation for the people of Syria. They are going through a situation that is unimaginable to the latte-drinking crowd to which most of us belong. I'm trying to wrap my head around it. The mainstream media is barely talking about Syria, with an occasional mention on "the bottom line". However, Andy Carvin of NPR is on the ground and tweeting up a storm. He is sending out some pretty wild original stuff. But he is retweeting things for which you should take a moment to prepare yourself. But this stuff is happening... so we should ALL look. Don't ignore what's going on and then take some action based on what you see and hear. I leave it up to you to decide what to do and even how to feel about what you see. But take some time to find out about some of the horrible things going on in our world right now. It will put in perspective the "bad day" you think you had today. Here is a link to Andy's twitter profile @acarvin.

Whatever your beliefs, keep these people in your prayers. Or keep the people in Egypt, Sudan, or anywhere else where atrocities are happening in them.

Why I carry knives

My wife always asks me why I carry my Barrage from Benchmade on me all the time and keep my Benchmade Houdini Pro in my car. She thinks I'm a bit of a knife/gun/___ nut. Here's a timely reason from Blade Mag. So far, I've only convinced her to carry an old Swiss Army Knife in her glove box. I haven't gotten a response from her yet, but this might be what it takes to get the Houdini moved over to her truck - and stationed within arms reach in case SHE is the one who is stuck in an accident.

Eliz, if you're reading this... this is why I do all of the "nutso" things I do in the name of a little preparedness. Being ready before an emergency is the only way to actually be ready. I love you and I want to keep you around. If one other person reads this and takes action to prepare to deal with the many small tasks and potential emergencies for which a knife is well-suited or in the extreme saves a life, then this post did more than I could hope for.

In the near future, I will try to post a little about the small things I do to be prepared in my daily life.