No, I’m not trying to be shocking. I just caught a little news story last week noting that a monkey in a Denver zoo died of bubonic plague.

Bubonic plague. Would that be the black death? Hmm. Not sure. Jury is out on that one. Jury is in, though, on “bleeding into the skin and other organs, which creates black patches on the skin.”

What is the appropriate response here?

1. Holy shit! or
2. figures.

It turns out not to be as rare as I had imagined (or hoped).

How to prepare? I don’t know. Don’t eat southwestern squirrels, don’t pet mice, don’t get fleas, and don’t play in infectious disease labs. That’s what I come up with so far.

The old symbol alerting us to the presence of radiation was too tame. It doesn’t tell you what to do. It doesn’t tell you how to act. At the very least, considering the era, you might expect to see a desk to hide under.

The old, gold trefoil is not being phased out. It is just being supplemented by a new symbol that the International Atomic Energy Agency — and their 1650 people polled in eleven countries over a five-year project — find the new symbol intuitive. All of the people polled understood the meaning, “Danger — Stay Away.” Technically, it probably says:

1. See the radiation.
2. It is killing you.
3. Run like a girl.
4. In the time it took you to read this storyboard, you have died.

It looks more to me like it says, “Run, Run, Run like hell.”

The new symbol “will not be visible under normal use, only if someone attempts to disassemble” devices housing large sources of ionizing radiation. You are not likely to see this symbol in use.  If you see this symbol, freak out immediately.

Are you not quite sure where to look for the next threat? How about checking out the Global Incident Map, using Google Earth to mark “terrorism events and other suspicious activity.” If that isn’t enough–too global, you can have local emergency alerts sent to you by email, cell or pager from the Emergency Email and Wireless Network. Local agencies sign on to this service to distribute information through their channels. This looks like an outsourced update of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is a free, public service.

An emergency product business in Utah has sent a couple of their marketing guys to New Orleans to demonstrate that their two-person 144-hour survival bucket has all they need to survive on the streets this week. They are calling their adventure the 261 Tour — that’s 2 people, 6 days, and 1 bucket.

In the bucket are 60 servings of vegetarian meals (to extend the shelf life of the food), a water filtration unit, cooking and eating utensils, handcrank radio / flashlight, 8-hour cooking stove, thermal blankets, supplements, and medical kit with whistle and compass.

Each day this week they will blog about what they encounter. So far, today, they are in New Orleans sleeping in their rental car.

OK, it’s a stunt, but it’s a smart stunt to see for themselves and show others how well their kit really works.

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.

An MSNBC this week suggests the following emergency kit in addition to 9 other steps to take to winterize your car. Very important point: don’t leave your car unless you know where you are and how far you need to go to get help.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the MSNBC kit to those of the sources for the article.