Personal security

These Tools Can Save Your Life

The worst time to realize you need a piece of emergency equipment is when you are in the middle of an emergency. Buying detectors and escape gear isn’t fun, but it is part of being an adult human tasked with keeping oneself, loved ones, and pets alive. This is by no means a comprehensive list of stuff you need to have around—for that check out the National Safety Council—but rather stuff that our own staff has found a little too easy to overlook in the past. (Fortunately, not to the point of disaster.)

Carbon Monoxide Detector

When a carbon monoxide detector started screeching in my college group house, my roommates and I were confused—we’d never noticed the little white box before. Later, a firefighter who responded to our 911 call told us we were lucky our landlord had installed one. “You’ve got a lot of CO in there,” she told us, grimly, of the odorless, colorless, poisonous gas that was spreading through our home due to a furnace malfunction...