Black Umbrella: be prepared for a disaster worse than the Madoff Ponzi scheme

I couldn’t resist watching the recent interview with Ruth Madoff and her son. In fact, I may have actually watched two: one on 60 Minutes and one somewhere else. There were some unintentionally hilarious parts. My favorite was when Madoff mère et fils noted that they would not be profiting from sales of the book, "Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family,” which is based on interviews with them. Catherine Hooper, however, does stand to profit.

She’s not the author, by the way. She’s the idea gal behind the book. And she’s Andrew Madoff’s fiancé. (As long as no ill-gotten gains are gotten by the Madoffs….)

Hooper’s also the founder and CEO of Black Umbrella, which sells emergency prepared-ness services and goods. Having an Emergency/Safety Plan – your own personal ESP – is “an umbrella for a different kind of bad day.” Different, I guess, from it raining cats and dogs. Or for the day you wake up and realize that you got swindled out of all of your retirement money by a Ponzi schemer.

Now, I’m not putting down the idea of being prepared. (I was, after all, a Girl Scout at one point in time.) I keep batteries around. When we’re having a hurricane, I fill the bath tub and the soup pot with water so we can, in worst case, keep flushing the toilets. I have candles. And matches. Peanut butter and crackers.

I back up my files on Carbonite. I have thumb drives.

I should probably have a printed list of the phone numbers that are on my BlackBerry.

I have a list of “25 documents everyone needs to have”, which I really should act on one of these days.

I do recognize the need.

When, a couple of years ago, there was some panic in Boston over what some folks thought were bombs under bridges – they were just an attention getting device for some hipster cartoon show – I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how I was going to get to my niece’s grammar school in Charlestown to rescue her if someone blew up the bridge between Charlestown and Boston.

At that point, I began thinking that it might not be a bad idea if everyone in the family had a plan if SOMETHING REALLY BAD happened in Boston. But I never got around to putting anything together, other than to go through the brief mental exercise of deciding that the best thing to do – assuming that there were phones anywhere – would be to call my brother Tom, the only sib who’s not in this area. If Flagstaff, Arizona is destroyed, too, well, I guess the problems of a few of us in Boston won’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Still, pulling together an emergency preparedness plan does seem like something that most of us could handle on our own, without the help of professional services like Black Umbrella.

How many people are there out there who are going to pay$750 for a “Level One Plan” that includes a waterproof hard copy of phone numbers, and a plan (with maps) to meet up if you can’t go home again?

Or $1,450 for Level Two, which includes document organization and storage, a preparedness drill, and a Go Pack.

Wait! I just looked at the small print. Those Go Pack’s are priced separately.

So, for $250 you can get a Seed Pack containing:

• 11" x 20" 600 Denier Nylon Round Duffel
• Etón FR160 Radio
• Gerber Suspension Multitool
• Inova X5 Flashlight
• Potable Aqua Chlorine Dioxide tablets, 20-pack
• Reliance Fold-A-Jug 1 gal.
• Uvex Fury Goggles
• AMK First Aid 2.0
• Paracord - Black 100 yd.
• Write-in-the-Rain Notebook
• CLC Rain Poncho
• Heatsheets Survival Blanket 2-person
• 2 x Surefire CR123A Lithium Batteries
• Bic Lighter
• Candle
• 3M N95 Face Mask
• Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Soap
• Latex Dipped String Work Gloves
• AMK Foam Hand Sanitizer
• Sharpie Magnum
• 2 x AMK Mini Duct Tape Rolls
• Pen
• Pencil

Interestingly, there are no seeds in the Seed Pack.

How about a change of undies? A change of socks?

But I guess we’re not talking long term survival here. There’s just one candle, and one bar of Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Soap. If things get really bad, that and the hand sanitizer won’t keep you clean for all that long. It’ll be back to nature for all of us. And one candle? We’d all be cursing the dark soon enough.

At any rate, you can easily add-on to the Seed Pack. You’d no doubt want to upgrade from the cheapo-depot comes-with radio to the Etón Raptor for an extra $119 (well worth getting it from Black Umbrella, despite the twenty bucks you’d save if you bought it for yourself on Amazon). And while the Seed Pack does include a duffle bag, you’d probably want to trade up to the 50-liter Simms Guide Backpack (apparently not marked-up at $189).

There are a number of other reasons to go with Guide Backpack, since you’d probably want to carry a lot more than the 11” x 20” duffle bag holds.

For starters, the larger bag can easily hold a couple of real knives. Crocodile Dundee sorts of knives - not just the poor-man’s multi-tool that comes with the Seed Pack. (Am I the only one imagining Master of the Universe Wall Streets hunting squirrel in Central Park, and trying to bag pigeons in Columbus Circle?)

Plus your thumb drive, radiation ward-off tablets, and Rad(iation)Stickers, for those too cheap to spring for the NukAlert:

More than just a radiation detector, the NukAlert™ is a patented personal radiation meter, monitor and alarm. Small enough to attach to a key chain, the device operates non-stop, 24/7 and will promptly warn you of the presence of unseen, but acutely dangerous levels of radiation….It will be very reassuring to know, with confidence, when you and your family are out of the worst danger.

But in order for you to get your bang for the buck here, don’t you have to been exposed to an “acutely dangerous level of radiation”? (We’re in the clear, now, kids. What? You say you’re melting?)

In truth, there are all kinds of bad things that could happen.

As the weather patterns change, we’re more likely to be hit with “100 Year Storms.” (And I live on reclaimed ocean.)

Some cyber terrorist could figure out a way to shut the whole shebang down – not just our iTunes and YouTube, but the financial system and everything else that uses computers. (Think lights out.)

An asteroid could hit the Atlantic and set off a colossal tsunami.

Someone could set off a dirty bomb – or light up an LNG tanker - in a big city. In a big city with a port. (Gulp.)

The nihilist crazies in Iran may decide to wage nuclear war on the Western world.

So it’s good to do a bit of “what if” thinking.

Bad storms I do believe I could weather. After all, I do have Blizzard of ‘78 experience under my belt.

Cyber terrorism that shut down the net? If I survived the follow-on panic and riots in the streets – admittedly a whopping big if – I’m a pre-digital native, and actually remember how things were done in the olden days (e.g., reading a paper-based book).

But if what’s going to happen is so terrible that the only ones who stand a chance of making it are survivalists, cops, criminals and hedge fund managers who get the upgraded real knife in their Go Packs this Christmas. If marauders are abroad in the land, and –once the super markets are all pillaged – we’re living off the land… Well, I’d just as soon be gone in the first puff.

Bad as it is, I rather like civilization as we know it.

For those who feel otherwise, plan on!

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P.S,  My read on the Madoffs:

Personally, I don’t believe that Ruthie knew for a New York minute what Bernie was up to. She certainly comes across as a not-bad person who’s life, she now realizes, was a big, fat sham, and is now a big, fat shambles. And I wouldn’t wish the death of a child on the worst person in the world, which this woman is clearly not.

I don’t think the sons knew-knew, either. But it’s hard to get by the probabililty (somewhere north of zero) that they had an inkling that something was a bit off about their father’s business. Come on, they were in the biz. Didn’t they ever look at those returns and speculate just a teeny-tiny bit about how good old dad did it? But there’s knowing, and then there’s KNOWING (c.f., Joe Paterno). And I bet these guys didn’t really know the full truth about what Bernie was up to.  We’re all capable of denial, some more capable than others.