Instead of a sleeping bag and food, you should have packed and extra
starter, tools and a cell phone


wrote in message
s.com...

dead of night wrote:
Hi. I'm reading Daphne Du Maurier's short story "The Birds" right now.
In this story, a family is inside their boarded up house, attacked by
thousands of birds. They tune to their radio and learn that farther
away,in the cities, the population is under attack by hordes of large
birds. These attacks seem to be organized, military, and reasoning.
I'm interested in the radio as a tool of survival in an emergency:
weather, terror, war, epidemic, or alien. What would be some of the
best radios to own as a source of news information and survival in a
time of severe crisis and emergency?

A 2M ham HT can allow you to monitor the severe WX nets.

A VHF/UHF scanner can allow you to monitor fire and police,
though this is starting to change with digital.

MW and HF allow one to listen to local, not so local and international
news. During the civil war in Jorden the only comms were Ham radio.

After Katrina ham radio also helped with the relief efforts.

There have been several times where a ham radio has saved me
from at best serious discomfort to at worst injury or death. I have
been known to go deep into the Red River Gorge during heavy
snow to take photos. One time I had a starter fail. The temps
had dropped to the mid teens more snow was on the way. I was
very happy my ham radio worked and some friends came to retrieve
me. One of the more foolish things I have done as an adult. While
I did have a sleeping bag and food etc, it would have been a very
long and cold night.

Your question is so open ended that it is hard to present a useful
answer. In truth you may want to visit misc.survivialism where topics
like this are debated daily. Of course MS has the largest number
of net nuts on the web so be warned.

labtech1 wrote:
Instead of a sleeping bag and food, you should have packed and extra
starter, tools and a cell phone


Have you ever changed the starter on a VW bug?
In 15F weather?
In a foot of snow?

If so you are a hell of alot tougher then me.

My friends hooked a rope to their 4 wheel drive and I popped the clutch
in 2nd. Kind of interesting in a foot of snow.. Once I got the engine
running
we boogied back to Lexington.

Hint a Porshe 914 starter will fit a VW bug and you don't have to drop
the engine. VW bug starters were "missing the rear end and had to
be installed with the engine out. Major bummer.

So I would have needed to pull the engine, removed the dead starte,
drive out the
bushing in the transaxil, install the new starter, make sure it was
spaced correctly
and then reinstalled the engine.

I know I am just a lame slacker.

Terry

VW's.I have owned three of them before.The first one was a 1961 van I
bought at Steakly Chevrolet in Killeen,Texas in 1965.(when I was in the
U.S.Army,,,, GO ARMY!) The second one was a 1963 VW beetle car I bought
when I came home on a three day leave from Fort Hood,Texas in 1965.The
third one was a 1970 VW van.Those old VW's are a pain in the arse! The
clutch cables stretch and break and the balves (valves) are suppose to
be adjusted every three thousand miles.I never ever want anything to do
with VW anythings ever again.You freeze to death in the wintertime in
those old VW pieces of junk too.There is a guy near me whom wheels and
deals in old VWs,I might get over there (it's only about two miles from
me) someday and look around.
cuhulin

One night I was putt puttin around the hinterlands of Fort Hood in my
1961 VW van.You know those tall post that have the stranded steel guy
wires? I managed to get the right rear wheel of my van hung up on one of
those guy wires.I got my trusty Visegrip pliers with the wire cutter
thingy on them.(it was dark out there) I hacked away at that guy wire
untill I got the wheel unstuck and then I got the hell away from there!
cuhulin