The Ad Council has two interesting campaigns that have been running this year.

• The campaign on Emergency Preparedness is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, and it leads to Ready.gov.  You can watch, listen, read, and interact with the various ads and get the absolute basic introduction to emergency preparedness.

• Another campaign on Global Warming is sponsored by Environmental Defense, and it leads to Fight Global Warming.

I would like to see these two campaigns combined.  Preparing for the long emergency of global warming should be on all our minds, but I suppose it will take a while before government agencies admit that to the point that we see public service ads suggesting what we can do to prepare.

Ready.gov tells us our main concerns should be fresh water, food, clean air, and warmth. They recommend these basic supplies for an emergency kit:

• Water, one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation
• Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
• Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert and extra batteries for both
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• First aid kit
• Whistle to signal for help
• Dust mask, to help filter contaminated air and plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
• Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties for personal sanitation
• Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
• Can opener for food (if kit contains canned food)
• Local maps

They go on to suggest extras that might be relevant based on situation, but I’m still thinking about what are the most important basics for any disaster or emergency situation.

These items make a basic, no-frills emergency kit.

To follow yesterday’s idea of Homeland Security through eating local, the US Department of Agriculture is playing a little 1984 Big Brother doublespeak mind game with “hunger” by renaming it “very low food security.” Twelve percent of Americans (35 million people) suffer from this condition. TWELVE PERCENT. They way the Department of Agriculture redefines the issue, “very low food security” is a result of lack of money to buy food. These Americans just have “multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.” “Hunger,” on the other hand, is a more serious condition “beyond the usual uneasiness.” Usual? Usual to those writing the report? Usual as in, they’re used to it so don’t worry?

The annual USDA report used to be released in October. One presidential candidate from Texas in 1999 said he believed the report was fabricated and aimed at his candidacy. This year the report was released mid-November, just before Thanksgiving–and a week after mid-term elections.

I wonder how much money was spent as the Committee on National Statistic of the National Academies to “to ensure that the measurement methods USDA uses to assess households’ access — or lack of access — to adequate food and the language used to describe those conditions are conceptually and operationally sound.” Not everyone is happy about the latest addition to US doublespeak.

So, if you hear the words “food security,” it might not mean what you think it does.

On NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday this week, several guests talked about How Food Finds Its Way to Your Plate. After an interesting discussion of processed foods in our diets (particularly corn and soy), they talked about local foods.

“What about terrorism?”

[This is 38.5 minutes in, if you want to listen to this section.]

Concentrated corporate agriculture, the guest says, leaves our system more a target. The Department of Homeland Security ran a war simulation on how the U.S. would respond to an act of agricultural terrorism. Officials concluded that intense concentration of agriculture and long-distance shipping make us quite vulnerable to both malicious and accidental food contamination. Eating local decentralizes that target.

Then, one guest mentions a poster she has in her office from the New York Farm Bureau:

Homeland Security. Buy local. It matters.

Apparently farmers aren’t all that impressed by the security of imported agricultural products. Earlier this Fall, in the New York Farm Bureau’s newsletter Grassroots, an author wrote in Talking Points:

“homeland security.”

Actually, it’s a great idea. Maybe we should try it.

Yes, wouldn’t that be a good idea. Better yet, let’s you and I buy local, encourage our local economies, and make this less an issue.

Print your own “Homeland Security – Buy Local” poster from the New York Farm Bureau.

When I go to the National Flood Insurance Program site (which I found by clicking on a Google Ad Sense ad), I can find the risk of flood in my exact location.

The five types of flood risk they mention are:

• tropical storm,
• dams and levees,
• new development,
• flash flood, and
• snow melt.

Despite my being at no risk of tropical storm, dams / levees, or new development and the extreme unlikelihood of my house meeting flash flood or snow melt, given that I live on a slightly high hill, I am returned with an assessment of “Low to Moderate Risk” and told it would be a good idea to get flood insurance.

Then, I can follow a link to view my flood risk map at FEMA. COME ON! Who trusts them? The interactive map didn’t work for me, but it’s an interesting idea. I’ll bet they sell some insurance this way.  I bet I won’t be buying any.