Honey, Stock Up the Iodine

(This column appears in today's Philadelphia City Paper.)

Ten 5-gallon collapsible water containers.
Three months' worth of canned food.
Flashlights.
Emergency crank radio
Personal radiation detector
Key-ring photon light.
First-aid kit.
Bleach.
Latex gloves.
Key-chain whistle.
Potassium iodine pills.
Quick Escape Mask.
Relenza.
Ibuprofen.
U.V. air purifier.
Plastic barrier sheeting.

These are the things I sometimes think about asking my wife to buy on her next trip to Target.

I don't even know if Target carries potassium iodine pills — which are handy in the event of a radiological attack.

(Then again, maybe there's a Target brand.)

I've even gone as far as to print out this list, which comes from Slate magazine's "Survivalist" series. In it, journalist David Shenk walks you through various natural and man-made disasters with large helpings of practical advice, even if the situation ("360 million deaths globally") at times borders on the extreme.

Just last week, as I sat here late on a Tuesday night, waiting for final proof pages to make their way to my desk, I freaked myself out by reading the latest "Survivalist" entry on "How to Survive Avian Flu, Smallpox or Plague." The most horrifying details weren't about the actual diseases, but the traumatic rips in the social fabric we all take for granted. Things like wearing a mask to go food shopping — that is, if your local Super Fresh still has food. Wiping down your mail and copy of City Paper with a rag and bleach. (That is, if we're still filling the orange boxes every Thursday.) Home-schooling your kids ... for two years.

Listening to the rain pelt the windows of my office, Shenk's advice about buying a rural cabin far, far away seemed like a good one. The H5N1 strain can't get you there, can it?

Still, I didn't give my wife the list the next morning.

If memory serves, I instead complained about a certain marinade she used on a chicken dish the week before.

Clearly, avian flu wasn't on my mind.

That's the thing — nobody's thinking about avian flu unless someone shoves a photo of a dead chicken in your face. We read something like "The Survivalist," then get back to our regularly scheduled lives.

Admirably, the city of Philadelphia is trying put the dead chicken in our face on a regular basis with their new "Ready — or Not?" campaign, featuring spot ads and a new Web site (ReadyRegion.org).

I just wonder if the chicken is dead enough, you know? I poked around the site and failed to find anything truly useful, aside from a hotline number. The "current advisory" link points you to a page that tells you: "There are currently no impending threats." (I beg to differ; see our cover story this week.) Maybe the Web site is beside the point; maybe it's the idea of "Ready — or Not?" spokesperson David Morse reminding us about the dead chicken from time to time.

Meanwhile, it's tempting to dismiss the campaign as a Homeland Security scheme to "keep 'em afraid, keep 'em compliant."

I think that's what keeps me from handing this shopping list to my wife. Not that she'll mock me (she has plenty of other material to draw from). But that I might be buying right into some good ol' fashioned GOP midterm election fear-mongerin'.

I've decided to give that list to her anyway.

Because the things that really worry me — or should worry most of us — have nothing to do with Bush or the fact that the rest of the world thinks we're doodyheads. It's the flu. The earthquakes (actually possible here in Philly). The hurricanes. The Wrath of God-type stuff.

Ryan Singel at Wired News recently crunched numbers and built a Homeland Security-esque alert system, with threats rated from "severe" to "low." Acts of terrorism? Very "low." Driving off the road? "Severe." Dying from the flu is "elevated," while walking down the street is "high."

So go ahead. Listen to David Morse. Get your "go bag" on, stock up on the canned goods and don't worry about playing into the evil hands of the Bush administration. This has nothing to do with them.

One last survival tip for you:

Never complain about your wife's chicken marinade.