Hurricane season will begin in less than one month, and since Mother Nature doesn't pay a hell of a lot of attention to the calendar, it might be worth starting some discussions early.

When I get word that a storm is heading Miami-way, one of my prep items is to gather personal essentials into an easily transportable bag in case I need to evacuate. My home is only outside the flood zone by a short block, and I have an aesthetically pleasing but precariously angled date palm right beside the living room. In addition to the life support bag (clothes, medication, etc.), I gather a few of my most important belongings before things get too hairy, just in case. A waterproof gym bag holds the family photos, life mementos, and childhood talismans, all wrapped in plastic.

Having a laptop as my primary computer helps keep my information in an easily transportable form, and I always make emergency DVD backups of my data just in case. But what if that fails me? This Ars Technica essay discusses some ways to use a USB stick to store your emergency information, and this New York Times article goes into a lot more detail. Since USB drives are relatively inexpensive and work on PCs, Macs, and Linux systems, you should be able to access your insurance information, digital photos of your pre-storm home and belongings, and financial information easily, even if you are away from home. Of course, you will have to write it up, scan the documents, and do all the other work of collecting your data. I can't help you with that.

The extreme extension of this idea is the MedicAlert E-HealthKEY. This USB keychain keeps an encrypted identification key which will allow medical personnel to access your medical records through the MedicAlert system. It sounds similar to the RFID system implanted in pets, but without all the Number of the Beast resonances. I'm not quite ready to go that far, though. Keeping my passwords and account numbers (yes, encrypted) is good enough for me, for now.

Of course, personal safety should remain paramount, and it is clearly more important to ensure adequate stocks of batteries, food, water, and so on. But why not take a little extra time to prepare your information, and maybe make your post-storm life a little easier?