Reddit reviews The American Red Cross FRX3 Hand Crank NOAA AM / FM Weather Alert Radio with Smartphone Charger, ARCFRX3WXR
We found 8 Reddit comments about The American Red Cross FRX3 Hand Crank NOAA AM / FM Weather Alert Radio with Smartphone Charger, ARCFRX3WXR. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Receives AM/FM & Weather band AlertsCharges your smartphone via USBMultiple power options; rechargeable batteries, hand crank, solar power, and AAA batteriesLED flashlight & emergency beaconAux-input
Never been through a storm here but just some general answers to your questions:
> Other than getting their stuff together, any special advice for pets? Shelters probably won't be open to three cats, two big dogs, and a bunny, most of whom are disabled in one way or another.
Red Cross does provide animal & human shelters. Make sure to get chips and recent pictures of your pets (and you with your pets) for when you pick them up.
> Without regular broadcast television to feed those old battery operated sets, how do you get info once power and cell service are gone?
Emergency radios. Preferably crank radios like this one: Crank Radio
> How long does the power usually stay out?
Varies on where you live but plan for about 3 to 4 days.
> How do you protect your shit if you do gtfo.
How do you protect it when you go on vacation? You secure it the best you can and just have faith people don't go full looting asshole.
> How do you deal with window A/C units?
You take them out if you are boarding up or evacuating and secure the windows. How do you handle them when you go out of town and don't board up your windows?
> At what point do you board up windows, and how?
Most cases it is plywood cut to the size of your window frame and screw them in the frame. Some houses have shutters or bermuda shades you can close to secure the windows.
Being in an apartment I can appreciate that space is tight. If you're looking to have enough calories to survive for a while, the all around best option is white rice. Grab 2 50 lb bags of the stuff, find 3 food grade 5 gallon buckets with lids. Dump them, put the lids on, stack them vertically in a closet. Yeah, doing them up in Mylar inside of the buckets and adding O2 absorbers is a much better way of storing them, but they'll still last for a decade or so stored this way. That's 160,000 calories stored for probably less than $50 in US money. May be more or less equivalency for you. So long as you have water and some kind of way to heat, you can enjoy nice, bland, non-nutritious calories for a good long while. Have some multivitamins and spices on hand.
Hopefully you can also have propane tanks. I'm not sure what apartments look like there, but here they frequently come with a patio and a basement storage area. If you can have propane tanks, you can get a propane burner along with a High Pressure Hose so that you can use normal propane tanks. (Note: I didn't dig too deep into direct compatibility of those two items. I just listed them as an example so you could see what I was talking about.)
Water in an apartment is more iffy. Assuming you have a bath tub, get a Water Bob. It's an easy 100 gallons of water if you have time to fill it before/if water lines go out. With more space you could do more, but once that's full also fill every container and glass in the house and cover them with cling wrap to stop evaporation. Normally I'd advise a tarp and an extra 5 gallon bucket to catch rainwater... but I'd imagine there might be the risk of airborne radioactive particles coming down so I don't know how relevant that advice would be here.
The other major thing is that you'll want to have a radio that you know will work. I'm not sure of the range of an EMP from a nuke, but it might be worth looking into that and also how to construct a faraday cage. Then get yourself a hand crank radio along with batteries and store them in there. You'll need to know what's safe and what's not, and realistically you're going to be relying on your government a bit for that. Your job, assuming you're out of the immediate kill radius, is to ensure that you and your family have water, food, shelter, and know what to do to stay safe.
So far as avoiding radiation... surrounding yourself with dirt or water are the best ways to stop it from getting to you. The deeper the better. There probably aren't a lot of options for that in an apartment complex, but knowing that is important so that you can react to whatever the situation is. The other thing is that you'll want to have a supply of Potassium Iodide tablets. If you are exposed to radiation, other than getting the radioactive particles off of you (strip clothes, thoroughly rinse off) those are your primary recourse.
Best of luck. I hope our crazy guy doesn't trigger your crazy guy into doing anything that forces you to need this.
Hey, I'm a SF Neighborhood Emergency response volunteer. Here's what you need:
Nice to have:
I'd maybe upgrade to the FRX3 for your radio.
That's cool.
Reminds me of this: http://www.amazon.com/American-Turbine-Weather-Smartphone-Charger/dp/B007KFLVTM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369806914&sr=8-2&keywords=eton
This one is a #1 seller on Amazon and will also charge a phone.
Este fue el que compré
Me too. And I got one of these things: American Red Cross FRX3 Hand Crank NOAA AM/FM Weather Alert Radio with Smartphone Charger https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007KFLVTM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_YQF1xbMDYE74Y
I'm like totally prepared.