" consider getting a decent HF radio"

More likely, walk across the street and use my neighbor's. He's the one at fault for turning me to the dark side of the force called ham radio so many years ago. ;)

Yeah, it's completely a result of my ending up living in a small town where I own an old (just turned 100 years) house with a fireplace, a well, etc. Also that I have to drive a ways to work.

If I were in, say, near north Chicago, I'd probably be living in an apartment, and if I was working where it was an option I'd take public transit.

Having a car in a big city can be a liability.

I've got a ball valve for whole house shut off, and I'm assuming that we have at least a little forewarning.

I'm worried more about contamination from pipeline infiltration by ground water due to low pressure than I am about backsiphoning. My inlet is pretty deep compared to how deep the mains are, so the damage would have to be in the run to the house to drain more than half of it or so.

We've had a situation where the mains were dry (due to them being worked on recently) and until you cracked a tap or activated the float valve in a toilet to allow air in you didn't get much backflow.

They weren't free of it. The mice had only one fifth of the carbon 14 normally in them.

That's quite an improvement and allowed tracking of tagged substances. But it's still a long way from free or near enough to do truly low radiation studies. It also doesn't address the other radio-isotopes.

It's extremely experimentally difficult to raise animals free of radionuclides. Everything they eat drink or breathe has to be isotopically free of multiple radionuclides. You have to do that for at least a couple generations so that mothers don't pass on so much of the radionuclides from their own blood and tissues to the developing fetuses inside them, or the eggs they lay.

It's been proposed to set up a laboratory to do this for the purpose of setting baselines for radiation standards by comparing what the effect of nearly zero radiation on life is.

The cost would be quite high and as yet there hasn't been a lot of support for it especially from the UN.

A house with some fairly long term storage foods in the pantry. 50 gallons if water in the water heater. An old 5 foot diameter well in the back yard. Probably 20 gallons of diesel/fuel oil and 40 of gasoline in various tanks. A chainsaw and various trees/stacked up lumber. Generator that can be gotten running in a day or so (round to it problem). Pack of 40 or so AA batteries and a radio that uses them. A couple of 4 wheel drive vehicles.

A local doctor's office and a doctor who lines in the same small town.

Various generators in the town that can power gasoline/diesel pumps.
I think we've got it easily covered for weeks. This town's been snowed in/iced in and without power for over a week a number of times in the past 50 years.

A 2 meter/440 MHz handheld amateur radio.

And that's without making any particular preparations. Give me a few hours and I can at least quadruple the period just by filling up some tanks for fuel.

Of course, that assumes the house and garage haven't been bullseyed/I'm not injured in the storm.

Medicines might get short after a bit, but they aren't short term life threatening things.

Internet or cell phone? Gimme a break.

Waaaaaay down the priority list. Those are almost as low as TV, and I've not bothered to hook up my TV for several years.

"I was assuming the parent poster wasn't so much a terrorist as a mischievous prankster"

How do you tell the difference? A dirty bomb is mostly a weapon of mass distraction. The response is likely what shuts down an important area, rather than the actual danger.

Doing it with a sizable number of relatively harmless sources spread out over a block or two will keep them guessing what the danger and scope is for a bit, even if each one isn't particularly dangerous. It doesn't have the extended clean up phase, but they still have to evacuate, check people as they exit, and then determine what the devil is going on. It also gets a lot of attention.

The individuals who placed them can just claim it was a prank that got out of hand. You'll probably still get jailed, but it'd be hard to justify a life term for it.

At the same time, AQAP, for example issues a claim of responsibility. No one is really sure what the straight of it is. More confusion, disruption and doubt.

Maybe they can still link those who placed the sources to a higher level group, but it's still a lot easier to recruit pranksters than hard core murderers.

You can also use several of this sort of incident to get people to stop reacting to it (alert fatigue), and then release something that initially looks similar to the detectors but is really much more dangerous.

Is that "fact" like the three copies of Windows 8 that Microsoft counts me as having "bought"?

I bought three 802.11AC routers from Newegg and automagically had three copies of Win8 added to my cart which were included in the price, but also had an automatic rebate that was applied immediately. That was just before MS came out with the surprisingly large sales figures. I was only one of many.

Just because it's said by a company you rather like doesn't mean it's not misleading. For example, how much credence would you give something similar said by Apple?

"Are all these nifty, analytics-intensive features enough to change the larger fortunes of Google Plus?"

No.

Try to adapt what is available and economical to accomplish what is needed.

It's that you were able to do the job well and efficiently that counts.

Whether you do it with the newest raddest paid-too-much-for-that is of a lot less consequence.

There are times when the newest and best is what's needed, either due to performance constraints or user desire. But often the way to tell compulsive pioneers is the arrows in their backs.

That said, make sure you're up to date on being able to use the new. Knowing how to, but using the tried and true is a choice. If you don't know the new technologies, then you really are locked in to the old and growing stodgy.

Huh. I didn't know that RMS was a "conservative". He'll be so surprised.

"And, notable, Larry Page is (at this writing) on stage, with an unannounced Q & A session."

Someone ask him how the frack we can change back to the old google plus design. Changing the stream settings seems to just make the new layout single column and thus suck even more.

And their documentation doesn't seem to say jack.

You just made zombie Baby Hitler cry.

"Guro images involving furries demanding giant penises,getting said penises in ways they clearly did not find favorable"

Somehow, I bet there would be a market for those. (It's sort of an extension of rule 34)

Welcome to fandom of all kinds. From fantasy chainmail bikinis with "modifications" to anime drawings that defy the laws of physics (let alone any form of taste).

It comes from having human beings that don't necessarily have a whole lot of social skills and do have a whole lot of androgens.

Imagine what the fandom for lingerie football must be like.

Every fandom has its "Erma Felna with a crowbar" stories.

The only reason I have a 6 digit ID is because I hung around as an AC for some time before bothering to register. :)

"modify your life such that it now revolves around that show, and you feel compelled to convert others to your obcesson"

So, what were you saying about Chicago Cubs fans here in central Illinois?