3 Gifts For Casual Climate Change Preppers

If you're a little paranoid that a cataclysmic climate event is around the corner, you're going to want to be prepared.


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3 Gifts For Casual Climate Change Preppers

3 Gifts For Casual Climate Change Preppers Image:

By Ariel Schwartz

If you're a little paranoid that a cataclysmic climate event is around the corner, you're going to want to be prepared. Put these items on your wishlist and you can survive whatever is coming.

If you've seen National Geographic's Doomsday Preppers, you have probably at some point had fleeting thoughts about how woefully unprepared you are for the day that nuclear war, an international pandemic, global financial collapse, and chemical terrorism simultaneously ravage the world. Most people don't go so far as to take vacations in their underground bunker (like one prepper documented on the show), but there's nothing wrong with thinking about what you might need in the event of disasters that are already on the horizon, like climate change. Below, a handful of gift suggestions for the casual climate change prepper in your life.

Back to the Roots Mushroom Kit

Sure, climate change might cause crop-threatening droughts and leave us with skyrocketing food prices, but you know what might grow really well in our warming world? Mushrooms! Embrace the trend with a Back to the Roots mushroom kit, which can grow up to 1-1/2 pounds of pearl oyster mushrooms. The indoor kit just requires that growers mist the mushroom twice a day to get full-fledged mushrooms in as little as 10 days. All soil included is made of recycled coffee grounds. If you want to make sure that your friends are equipped with tasty mushrooms when the apocalypse hits, buy the $19.95 kit here.

Fenix ReadySet Solar Kit

It's 2030 and the power is out due to yet another weather disaster. Ideally you and your loved ones have a generator, but in emergency situations, it's always helpful to have an off-the-grid power source like the Fenix ReadySet Solar Kit, an approximately $300 kit consisting of a battery, 15-watt solar panel, 3-watt high-efficiency LED light, and USB universal clip charger.

The battery, designed on an open platform, can be charged via the enclosed solar panel (or most other solar panels, the Fenix Velo bicycle generator, and from the grid. As cofounder Mike Lin explained to us last year, "The iPhone, the Android phone are useful because of the apps they can run. Instead of software apps, ReadySet is made more useful by all the cool things you can plug into it like maybe the next really cool water purifier. We know we can't do it all ourselves." The ReadySet has proven so popular that Fenix is putting orders on hold for the time being. But if your climate change-prepping loved one can stand an IOU, you can fill out a notification form for when the product goes back on sale here.

LifeStraw

In drought and flood situations, clean water can be hard to come by. The $19.99 LifeStraw personal water filter makes sure that your gift recipient will have safe drinking water when all that stored bottled water runs out. The filter, designed by Swiss-based Vestergaard Frandsen, is compact, weighing 2 ounces and measuring under 9 inches in length. It's also powerful: The LifeStraw can filter over 1,000 liters to 0.2 microns, removing over 99.9% of waterborne bacteria and 99.9% of waterborne protozoan cysts. Thirsty owners need only place the lower part of the straw in a drinking source (river, lake, etc.), sip through the top part, and blow into the device at the end to clear out its filter. Buy the LifeStraw personal water filter here. A list of other online retailers is also available.




Fast Company Copyright 2012 by Fast Company. Reprinted with permission.


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