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This is the best advice and general description of this I have read yet. I would add one item to my list. A police scanner is far more valuable for gaining a fast grip on what is going on in any event from civil unrest to fire, weather, or any major event. They aren't that hard to learn and you can monitor all agencies.

For example a tornado watch is issued. When that happens in most communities a person can monitor the SKYWARN program. These are trained weather watchers who are HAM Radio operators and have direct immediate contact with NOAA. You can get up to 5 minutes heads up depending on how many are spotted.

You can in most places monitor fire, police, paramedics, State Emergency Management Agencies, Local Emergency Management, State Police, Coast Guard, Rail Roads, Utilities, and even some federal agencies including the military. A word of caution to everybody use them only as an observer. If you hear a call or report of something happening stay home. They don't need you to respond and add to the confusion. Showing up on scene with a radio makes you an ambassador of ill will very quickly.

Learn your local agencies frequencies, tower locations, and codes etc. If you live in an area that uses 154-159 MHZ systems these likely will still be working after most any disaster in some capacity and have good transmission range. The 450-460MHZ systems are a close second but require repeaters. Most repeaters have battery back ups and some have generators as well.

Agencies using the Trunking 800MHZ systems are the most likely to fail due to a computer dependency design. I think NO used the 800MHZ systems which would account for major communication failures. They should have passed out VHF radios as a back up. This was one of the harsh lessons NYC learned and they reverted back to a simple precinct assigned frequency repeater system.

You can even know what your local utility is doing during major outages. I can guesstimate if I'll have power in a few hours or a few days by hearing their damage reports. I can also know when they are fixing to restore the power :>} The more information anyone can acquire in a disaster the better equipped they are to make decisions.

Agreed!

Earlier Squantos also mentioned communications and I indicated in a response that this was a very basic ingredient and necessity I had left out. It should mst definitely be a part of the 96 hour kit as number eleven to include an AM radio (Squantos highly recommends XM), a portable scanner, and perhaps a couple of 2-ways.

Thank you my friend for the great input.