Shear Thickening Fluids (STFs) may be “liquid” in a strict sense – but they’re used in fabrics. Developed by Professor Norman Wagner and his research team, including students, of the University of Delaware, as a joint project between the University of Delaware Center for Composite Materials and the United States Army Research Lab. They’re amazing [...]
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Picked up this Utilikey 6-in-1 tool at one of the local outlets of the Container Store. It weighs half an ounce (0.5 oz; 14 mg.) and has six features: – Flat Screwdriver – Phillips Screwdriver – Micro Eyeglass Screwdriver – Straight Blade Knife – Serrated Blade Knife – Bottle Opener It locks and unlock easily, [...]
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Handled garden tarp from Cool Tools . While the primary purpose is for gardening, these strike me as useful for many types of improvised hauling common in disasters. Not least dirt, sand and gravel for sandbags in floods.via Cool Tools: Burden Cloth.
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Unplggd has a flashlight roundup- several are plugin-constant standby – one solar powered, one hand-cranked. All worth a look. However, I’m not giving away my Safe-Light anytime soon , and in fact have been considering purchasing them in bulk. Have done some stupid things – like drive long distances without a flashlight or jumper cables [...]
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Their focus, of course, is different from ours, but Toolmonger is an incredible site – often showing emergency response/reconstruction tools we’d never hear of otherwise. Here’s one the Rol-La-Tank: (or Fol-Da-Tank, which might be the company name, or the name of the product line). They’ve got both URL’s Foldatank.com and Fol-Da-Tank – this should give [...]
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In watching the deluge in the Midwest, I’m remembering a description of the post-Katrina proliferation of dragonflies – a fortuitous turn that stopped the mosquito population from getting out of control. One robust response is mosquito netting, and this piece is from his excellent blog Cool Tools: sanctum video I hate mosquitoes. Serious gut-tightening allergic [...]
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Liquid Reflector is a reflective paint – available in five colors and a clear version, and, according to the manufacturer, yields a fine surface and high reflectivity. (Note: the reflected light is white, regardless of the visible color on the surface). We’d like to test some of this – see how it holds up – [...]
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The Atlas Ascender – is a powered rope or cable ascender/descender capable of, for instance,equipment haulingmilitary special operations (rapidly and quietly scaling a buildingrescue operations (capable of retrieving casualty in litter and rescuer) This image doesn’t do it justice. There’s a video clip on the Atlas site . The inventor was an MIT student when he [...]
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The same messages can be communicated by signalling the letter "K" in Morse code via signal lamp. (While a proper signal lamp may be ideal, a flashlight, probably best employing red LEDs, will certainly fit the bill).
In Morse, the letter "K" is represent as Dash - Dot -- Dash.
The ICS also has a subset, the Medical Signal Code, which uses three-character phrases to communicate brief medical messages.