What if the Red Cross has a Geek Squad?

[vrimj]

One of the things that I really enjoy about exercises is not so much that they feed us lunch, although that is nice, it is that there is a lunch line. While it is often dull, on occasion you stand next to someone who needs what you have to offer or vice versa

Comments

[tevarin]

Wow. Sounds like a really cool and potentially very helpful project. Go you :)

[vrimj]

Thanks, what sort of thing would you be interested in if you were still in Florida?

[tevarin]

Hmm. Knowing who to call in order to volunteer in an emergency. Learning alternate evacuation routes in the event of a flood. Learning how to clean/disinfect drinking water. Learning emergency first aid.

[kwanboa]

Roy Harms, who runs METROCON, might indeed be interested in this as it's a con run during the summer in Tampa. As it's in two and a half weeks, no dang way could you get it on the go this year (METRO is sinply too huge at this point) but I can get the subject brought up to him next month.

[vrimj]

Do you think it might work for Ancient City III?

[freyley]

Did you see interdictor during New Orleans?

[vrimj]

No I missed that, that is interesting...

[freyley]

Well, if you want to connect EM with IT, you want to talk to (big) ISPs and datacenters, many of which have emergency preparedness folks. Half of the difficulty of engineering an ISP or datacenter is making sure that it is always available. They do a really good job most places. Datacenters often aren't satisfied with a single generator, and the bad datacenters are still likely going to be up for hours into a disaster.

[vrimj]

Well these are people we can get to play with us already. The problem is not so much the big infrastructure things it is that often we need basic geeks to help do things like set up wireless at field operations centers or deal with digital photos

In addition your basic gaming geek even without tech skill is someone who typically spends a fair amount of time each week figuring out how to do things and solve problems with limited resources, which is basically what being there pos-disaster as a community responder is about. Figuring out what needs to be done and communicating it if and dealing with what you can.

Connections

[wineandthedark]

I have to concur with you on the RPG modules. That would be highly beneficial, especially when one group is sitting around doing nothing. Sometimes, a nasty GM is worth their weight in gold when it comes to disaster scenarios.

Re: Connections

[vrimj]

Well I was thinking more as a way to teach diaster prepardness to the public that isn't diadatic or dull. Sure people would add vampires, but a post hurriance senerio well done might be fun to play and will teach "be prepared" way better then PSAs

[vrimj]

Other good ideas from offline- Check out the SCA history of volunteer service and lots of people with skills might interface interstingly with the Red Cross for some mass care stuff

Burners for communcations hacks