actually, it’s 11 things that could save your life. that’s how they said it. my selected comments:
the noah, a round fiberglass sphere that one enters and seals one’s self in just before a tsunami strikes: too small and cramped. you need a 30-minute tsunami warning to just decide whether or not you want to crawl in. it just said it’s waterproof. it had better be shatterproof since tsunamis don’t just swamp you, they toss you around and crush you under tonnes of debris.
portable radiation detector: small. usefulness during a hot war with any nuke power is a no-brainer.
havfdng(sp?) not so much a motorcycle helmet as it is a head-mounted airbag. sensors tied with your body and bike will make sure it inflates during a crash or a fall before your head hits something hard: problems with aesthetics. hard to be fashionable.
ABS avalanche airbag sytem. an inflating vest that won’t just create an air bubble in the snow for you, it’s designed to make you “float” on the avalanche of snow. this is the best concept if it really guarantees you’ll float. my guess is it won’t all the time. the density of a dry snow avalanche (while mobile) is only a few times that of air. you can’t float on something like that.
skip the bullet/blastproof boxer shorts. my pick for best product is the bulletproof clipboard. you can actually see the carbon fiber fabric in it. violence in the blue- to white collar environment is an under-rated thing. could also be used to deflect a knife attack.
Bill is a common English-language name, any web page in existence can be a homepage, I can name a few places where you could find a list just like that one (Cracked and mental_floss come to mind), and William H. Gates III hasn’t been CEO of Microsoft since January of 2000, semi-retiring to part-time work as chairman in June of 2008.
No, I don’t use MSN. It’s been a while since I’ve even thought about it. The Internet is a very fragmented place.
Indeed, most people don’t have MSN as their homepage, and even if they do it has lots of country specific home pages. I can’t find the article. Googling “msn 10 things that could save your life” gives me pages telling me disability insurance or screenwash is my salvation, then this thread.
Bill is no help, his reaction to an avalanche or tsunami would be to take a stereo photograph of it.
He lives in Central Park and eats the pigeons there. He’s never been west of Central Park West or east of Fifth Avenue, so his knowledge of how the rest of the world works is limited to what the penthouse rats talk about on their cell phones.
The tsunami sphere is NO WAY big enough to hold 4 people. That said, it might hold up somewhat, fiberglass can be fairly durable. Of course, how quickly might you run out of oxygen??
The water filtration bottle looks useful also. It’d be better if it could also filter salt from water (not sure if that’s even possible) in case you’re stuck in a lifeboat somewhere…
The blast boxers might also be a good thing to have if you’re somewhere where IEDs or land-mines are a problem. Or the day you go to tell your wife you’ve been cheating on her…
The rest of the stuff is pretty esoteric and of hopefully limited usefulness!