If your memories extend way back to the summer of ’06, by gum, then you might recall “ReallyReady.org”:http://www.fas.org/reallyready/index.html, the Federation of American Scientists’ effort to improve on a certain U.S. Department of Homeland Security “website with a similar name”:http://www.ready.gov/. All built by a summer intern.

The _Washington Post_ wrote it up “here”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/09/AR2006080901706.html. The momentarily most famous summer intern in America wrote “her own, fuller version”:http://www.sts.virginia.edu/wip/contents/alumniandfriends/papers/Hesaltine_06_e.pdf of the story, too.

You remember all this, right? Good.

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Well, there’s another entrant in the race for most compelling online source of emergency information: the website of Israel’s “Home Front Command”:http://www.oref.org.il/14-he/PAKAR.aspx, conveniently available in four languages. Drop-down boxes (on the left side of the page in the “English version”:http://www.oref.org.il/14-en/PAKAR.aspx) lead to straightforward explanations of what to do in case of earthquake, fire, flood, terrorist attack, or ballistic missile warning. Not necessarily in that order.

Also very handy is this “map”:http://www.oref.org.il/670-en/PAKAR.aspx indicating how much time there is to reach a protected space after a missile warning, depending on locality. There’s even a version with “cheery little clip-art figures”:http://www.oref.org.il/sip_storage/FILES/7/1077.jpg that you can print out, carry around, or perhaps “stick on the fridge”:http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2009/05/on-every-fridge-in-israel/. All very practical.