Rusted Sky

But I followed a link and found the following...

Cold Fury ? Blog Archive ? Tom Ridge’s Duct Tape

You know, it never occurred to any of our leftist friends in the blogosphere or the MSM, that maybe Secretary Ridge went to the trouble of preparing a readiness web site with emergency kit lists, in the public interest. It never occurred to them that it could be anything other than partisan fear mongering.

Well, shame on them. Do you think anybody might have taken Ridge’s pronouncements and urging to be prepared, had his every comment not been met with mockery, allegations of political dirty tricks, and the relentless cry of “duct tape duct tape”?

Matter of fact, here’s some icing on the cake. Here’s a spectacularly ill-informed lefty mocking out DHS for not taking seriously it’s duty to tell people to prepare for disasters. You’re shitting me, right? When a cabinet secretary puts out a 12 page list of simple things to do to prep for disasters, and you spend two years mocking it as a fear mongering, politically motivated directive to buy duct tape, it seems to me you have few grounds to accuse others of having not taken the threats seriously.

You remember the duct tape - but after having laughed at how stupid an idea that was (never mind that duct tape's pretty damn useful, and plastic sheeting can be turned into rain gear, shelter, and water collection and storage devices) did you bother to go to Ready.Gov and look at their suggestions?

Of course not. I didn't either. By happenstance after 9/11 my wife looked at me and asked "Shouldn't we get some fresh water?" (We had two 5 gallon bottles for the disaster that was supposed to befall us on 1/1/2001 or was that 1/1/2000? I forget....) So we did. As far as the rest of the stuff went, we've got camping gear and propane stoves, tents, and about two weeks supply of food. We're not downwind of any urban areas, so the chem, bio and radiological stuff we pretty much ignored. Ready.Gov concentrates on the possibilities of terrorist attack and the destruction and disruption of that sort of attack, of course.

And I'll admit it's a hell of a lot easier to make fun of the folks telling you to prepare for the worst than actually think ahead and PREPARE. But just because it's funny doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.

And that doesn't mean it's all sorts of hard to get stuff. Just take a look.

It's easy to laugh. And none of this would prevent a disaster, of course. But it isn't designed to. It's supposed to buy time.

J.