When a wildfire is close, the best thing you can do is gather your family, pets, and go-bag and get out. But how long does that take? And how do you know when it's time to go? With much of California still burning after last week's lightning storms, CalFire's fire tracker says over 1 million acres have burned so far. Many Californians are facing choices about when to evacuate, where to go, and what to bring along. Over the weekend, I spoke via Zoom with Ralph McLaughlin, a native Californian

There's a new app in town, and it might be able to help you accurately evaluate your risk of contracting COVID-19 without violating your privacy. It's called Hunala, and it was designed by Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale. The idea behind Hunala is to leverage Dr. Christakis' experience with sociology and network science to forecast a person's risk of contracting COVID-19 based on their behavior, location, symptoms, and social networ

For a few weeks now, we’ve had our eye on the Three Gorges Dam, a true feat of human engineering, and the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. The Three Gorges Dam generates 2% of China’s electricity, and that’s remarkable, but it’s not why we’ve been watching the dam. China has experienced a lot of rain lately. And even though it’s very hard to know what’s actually happening with the dam and what the risks are, folks have been worried about what all that rain could do. First

Because of the numerous supply chain problems with everything from food to consumer goods, many of us have been carefully planning our purchases ahead of time in a multistep process that involves budgeting, prioritization, checking inventories for in-stock notices, and using upgraded shipping options to avoid USPS delays. Well, now we can add cars to the growing list of goods for which we need these pandemic-specific shopping techniques. The entire US is facing a temporary car shortage, broug

Publisher Simon and Schuster would like you to believe that Bunker: Building for the End Times is a study in the most extreme forms of prepping. The book’s jacket promises it will be “chilling” and “eerily prescient.” The cover itself pictures a set of concrete steps that open on a possibly-post-apocalyptic world. When Simon and Schuster sent us an early copy of the book, which goes on sale on August 4, for review, this was the first thing I noticed. It looked like the end times were