You know that annoying Bbeeeeeeeeeeep from the TV and radio that is supposed to warn you when something bad is happening??? well turns out its mostly annoying and not really effective.  In an age of blackberries and text messages the basic emergency broadcasting system up to 75 million Americans will not be reached by the system due to lack of accountability and the reluctance to embrace new ways of communication.  Thanks for NPR’s A Way With Words you can read the article below, or CLICK HERE for the pod cast. P.S The Podcast is much more detailed plus you don’t have to use your eyes to read….reading…ha.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has made little progress on an emergency-alert system despite a 2006 executive order that called for improvements in the system in light of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, congressional investigators said Wednesday.

The system — officially called the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System — also remains “largely unchanged” since a review completed in 2007 by the Government Accountability Office, the GAO’s director of physical infrastructure, Mark L. Goldstein, told lawmakers in prepared remarks.

Even though FEMA has some projects under way, Goldstein said the GAO “found the reliability of a national-level relay system — which would be critical if the president were to issue a national-level alert — remains questionable due to (1) a lack of redundancy, (2) gaps in coverage, (3) a lack of testing and training, and (4) limitations in how alerts are disseminated to the public.”

No Alerts

The original emergency-alert system was put in place during the Cold War. It works on a daisy-chain principle: The government would send out a message to stations in an emergency, and those stations would then transmit that message to stations across the region. If there are problems in the system, however, the message won’t be transmitted, Goldstein told NPR’s Robert Siegel.

Goldstein says the way things stand now, in the event of an emergency many parts of the country will be without information. The GAO has been “very concerned about it,” Goldstein says.

“If there is an emergency, and disaster strikes a major city where there’s part of the emergency-alert system in place, many other stations will never get the alert that’s supposed to be given to them,” he says. “During the day, only about 75 percent of the country would receive an alert; at night, when there’s less interference, it’s about 82 percent.”

FEMA Records

Goldstein says FEMA, which runs the program for the Department of Homeland Security, maintains inadequate records, leaving questions about how much has been spent on the program so far.

“In fact, one of the findings of the report is that nobody really can tell what pilot projects that FEMA put in place actually were completed, what kinds of lessons were learned and whether any information that came out of those pilots were used to improve the system,” he says.

Goldstein acknowledges that perhaps the system needs to be rethought because 90 percent of alerts are issued for weather emergencies. He says the president has never sent out a national alert. But, he says, not all stations follow through when there is an emergency.

“So the question does remain that for … all sorts of risk populations, people with disabilities … or people who don’t speak English that there is not necessarily sufficient capability in the system that everyone’s going to be warned if there needs to be such a warning,” Goldstein says.

Many up and coming areas of new hip urban communities are filled with dogs, most of them tiny little ones that pose no real threat.  But if you are a big dog owner like me, you know that with dog ownership comes the responsibility of safely training and handling your dog, conversely you should know what to do when these animals pose a threat to your safety.

In the city during a post WTSHTF situation the chances are there will be many loose or stray dogs trying to survive just like the rest of us.  Its expected that many of these animals will show an unusual amount of aggression towards the people it interacts with based on the stresses of our collective situation.

I’m a dog lover, always have been, so I can not promote the stance of shooting anything that gets too close, that’s just not how I roll.  But lets make the assumption that you have already done the right things in trying to avoid a physical altercation with an animal ( we are not covering these in this post, we are sticking to the worst case), and none of those tactics work, you will be forced to disable the animal like you would any other threat.

Obviously if you have a side arm etc, and feel like your life is endanger use it, but if you are unarmed here is what you should do:

Since dogs use their mouths are their primary weapon you need to treat disabling this weapon as a priority.  Yes, that’s right, stick your fist or arm straight in the dogs mouth.  If you have a jacket or shirt, you can wrap this around your arm to help buffer the damage done by the dogs teeth.  Now its worth noting that dogs, like many animals have an amazing ability to resists something being pulled from their jaws but they are not very good at the opposite; controlling something being shoved into their mouths.

Once you have secured your arm or fist in the dogs mouth you should not struggle, that is unless you want to loose your arm, use this opportunity to attempt to block the dogs airway by pushing your arms firmly deeper into the dogs throat.  This alone may be enough to choke the dog if done right.  If this does not stop the attack you should use your bitten arm as a distraction, leaving it in the mouth of the dog while you attack its other weaknesses.  Like with humans the dogs face houses its most easily accessible weaknesses ( to quote Dwight from “The Office”, “the eyes are the groin of the face”), while the dog is focused on keeping your arms in its mouth use your fingers, thumbs or any sharp available object to poke the eyes of the dog until it releases.  Coupling this defense with strikes directly to the snout can immobilize a dog in seconds.

If the dog happens to not accept your arm or you did not act fast enough, chances are he is going for your neck or ears, If you need to take a passive defensive stance against a dog attack you best bet it to curl up into a ball, while laying still and cover your ears with your forearms or hands, waiting for an opportunity to fight back.
If the dog happens to be a pitbull with lipstick, immediately cover your years, turn off the TV or just picture her naked and you should be fine….get it, a Sarah Palin joke…god I’m topical. Wink.