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| How to survive the hype on survival gear | |||||||||||||||
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It's wise to make basic preparations for yourself and your family, but be skeptical of advertised disaster packages. You dont need to spend thousands for a survival kit. By Jennifer Mulrean With war and terrorism threats weighing heavily on everyone, some consumers are unloading their wallets to prepare for the worst-case scenarios -- biological, chemical or nuclear attack. During February's elevated Orange terrorist threat level, one New York store sold 2,000 gas masks and 10 parachutes in one week, according to the New York Daily News. And online purveyors of survival stuff are aggressively selling gas masks, parachutes, packaged food and water rations, protective clothing and specialty medical supplies such as potassium iodide. The problem is that, while almost everything 'survival' is for sale online, its not usually on sale. When price suddenly doesnt matter Truth is, if you believe something will help you survive a terrorist attack or natural disaster, a good bargain may not be your top priority. And some marketers play right into this. Gas masks can cost hundreds of dollars and family survival kits can top $1,000. Within days of the 2001 anthrax attacks, spam pushing Cipro and other antibiotics was flooding inboxes, leading the Federal Trade Commission to issue a consumer warning against offers to treat biological threats. The Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) also warned consumers against products such as an "anthrax pesticide" selling for $100 and a steam sterilizer for postal mail selling for $2,800. Some of the products were outright scams, but the CBBB also received consumer complaints about survival kits that were overpriced or included defective gear. More recently, the CBBB's spokesperson Holly Cherico has seen questionable ads for safe rooms. "Some home-contracting businesses are now advertising themselves as security experts, saying they can come into your house and create a safe room," she says. This has particularly been a problem in the Washington D.C. area, but she suspects it will become common practice elsewhere as home contractors who may be having trouble lining up typical home remodeling jobs try to drum up work. Survival shopping tips vs. what you really need When shopping for survival products, Cherico says the Councils advice today is the same it was in the days after the 2001 attacks:
The Better Business Bureau also recommends checking with the BBB to see if it has a record of any customer complaints against the retailer. Use your local emergency preparedness groups' recommendations for what you really need to buy. That standard alone eliminates much of the higher-priced survival gear found online. Ready.gov is the Homeland Security Department's site (see link at left under Related Sites) geared toward helping Americans prepare for a potential terrorist attack. The department does recommend creating a family emergency kit that would include these basics:
The government's complete list, which you can see by clicking on the Make a kit link at left, includes more specialized items such as potassium iodide to help protect yourself from radiation exposure. How much will this cost you? The Tacoma News Tribune investigated and put the total cost for all the items at just under $400. That assumes you have a family of four and have to buy everything except the radio. (To see the newspaper's complete 87-item list, which it adapted from the government's recommendations, click on Shopping for survival under Related Sites.) Obviously, food and water are the biggest variables here, depending on your family's size and eating habits, and you may own a number of items already, such as flashlights, can openers, and yes, duct tape. You'll find a wide variety of pre-packaged survival kits online, from the "New Family of Four" kit selling on Safer America for $1,415, to the "High Rise Kit" that sells for $1,205 and includes a parachute for escaping from high-rise buildings. The family kit includes specialized gear such as gas masks and chemical suits, but Department of Homeland Security recommends just three items in the kit: potassium iodide, duct tape and a flashlight. There is no food, water or other basic medical supplies beyond the potassium iodide, though Safer America sells medical kits separately. While some kits come closer to the Homeland Security Department recommendations, be sure to check claims that the kits will suffice for three days. Again, the trickiest issue is getting enough food and water. Other things to watch While no one is claiming all, or even a majority, of the online survival-gear offers are scams, it does help to have a healthy sense of skepticism. Obvious offenders include products that won't help in the emergency they're being marketed as a solution for, products that are exorbitantly overpriced or those that are downright dangerous. Scams and useless products. In the first category, you could put many of the anthrax-related products that made news in 2001. "Military surplus" gas masks also fall into this category, because they're more of a novelty item than a true protection against chemical or biological threats. Also, unless you plan to lug the biological and chemical suits and gas masks around wherever you go, chances are you'll find out you've been exposed before you have time to put any of it on. Profiting from fear. In addition to prepackaged survival kits, this second category includes overpriced items like plain water. Saratoga Trading Co. sells cases of water for $26, which includes 64 4.23-ounce pouches. That sounds good, until you figure that to meet the Homeland Security Department's recommendation of one gallon of water per person per day, one person would have to drink thirty pouches each day -- meaning you're spending somewhere around $12 for a gallon of water. You can easily pick up gallon jugs at the local grocery store for about 99 cents each. Do that and the same $12 you'd spend for your day's worth of water pouches would cover a three-day supply for a family of four. Dangers of using some survival gear. Finally, some products may actually pose a physical threat to their users, because of a lack of training or poor product quality. The sale of parachutes as emergency high-rise escape methods is of particular concern. Parachuting experts point out that jumping from a high-rise building is extremely dangerous, more so if the jumper is inexperienced, or if the building is on fire. (A fire can create high winds that can slam jumpers back into the building they're trying to escape from.) The Parachuting Industry Association has posted a list of questions you should ask any parachute maker from whom you're considering making a purchase. One question: What is the measured rate of descent for your parachute at the maximum operating weight limitation? The correct answer: "Had better be less than 20 feet per second." You decide what acceptable risk means With the Pentagon now giving gas masks to its workers and the Department of Homeland Security raising the color-coded national terrorism threat level to "orange" as I write this, you're excused if you're having trouble finding the line between "prepared" and "paranoid." All in all, what to buy can be a very personal decision. Just don't make it an uneducated one. Before you buy survival gear, the Better Business Bureau recommends that you:
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