Truthfully it is a ploy.  One more urban myth to make us afraid of our own shadows and feed our fear to the point that it seems pointless to do anything sensible for our self protection.

A woman was fueling her car at a local gas station when a man approached her and offered his services as a painter.  While she wasn’t in the market for a painter at the time, the woman did take his business card.  They both returned to their respective cars.  She drove away alone and he got into a car with another man and they followed her out of the gas station.

Almost immediately the woman began to feel dizzy and had difficulty catching her breath.   She notice that both men were right behind her and realizing that something was seriously wrong she veered into the driveway of a home and started to pound on her horn.  Someone came out.  The men left.  The woman felt ill for a while longer and called the police.

Apparently there was a substance called Burundanga.  Four times more dangerous than any of the currently known date rape drugs this can be impregnated into cards and absorbed through the skin - something that can happen very quickly. So the moral of this story is that it is not safe to accept a card from a stranger when you are alone.

The good news is that although Burundanga is real and  is in fact a street version of a drug called Scopolamine, it cannot be administered in this fashion and is rarely seen outside of Columbia and South Central America where is it associated with Voo Doo Powder or a Zombie drug.

Now call me radical, but I happen to think that if you’re driving a car you should be paying close attention to everything about it.  After all if you’re working with power tools - people will remind you to pay attention.  If you’re looking after children, people will tell you to pay attention.  So - how come when you’re driving a car - something that can easily involve power tools (a big one) and children (your hapless passengers) is it OK to NOT PAY ATTENTION to what speed you’re going?

What a crock.  Cruise control is right up there with cell phones as far as I’m concerned and not only should you not use it on bad roads, i would personally urge every member of the driving public to NEVER use cruise control.  Pay attention instead.

As I write this – fires are raging out of control in Southern California. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.  And that’s just brush and forest fires- what about the thousands of accidental fires in homes and other occupied building that occur every day.
What if we had another influenza pandemic, something that lurks more prominently in the minds of many since the many recent outbreaks of bird flu – all over the world.
What about nuclear accidents? Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are not the end. It will happen again.

So far, I’ve only mentioned acts of nature and negligence.  The world is a darker place than it used to be and horrific emergencies can and are caused by the deliberate acts of criminals.  There can be explosions that shut down major urban systems – sucking every ounce of capacity from local emergency systems. Let’s stop short of deliberate acts of biological and chemical sabotage.

My point with all this is that we totally take for granted the ability of our systems and our government to protect and care for us and in doing so, we have, at least mentally, shifted a responsibility over to others which is intrinsically ours.  It is the responsibility of caring for ourselves, our dependents, our homes and our possessions in the event of an emergency, big, small or catastrophic.

Honestly, I’m as guilty as the next person, probably because out of sight is out of mind (well, mine at least)  When it comes to planning to live for a few days or even longer, without all the conveniences we take for granted  most of us don’t have a clue where to start.

There are two things you can have that will make a huge difference on your family’s ability to cope with any disaster. - A family emergency plan and a family emergency kit.

Now would be a pretty good time to think about getting that together -  more to come on this subject

Lot’s of stuff to still get ready.