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Apple’s personal virtual assistant Siri is a smart cookie, but she’s veered towards the apocalyptic and apocryphal this morning, predicting the opening of the gates of hell on July 27th.

I have a plan for trouble. When it rears its ugly head again, I’m grabbing my all-hell-has-broken-loose list, dumping the items on the list into my trusty backpack and hauling ass. I figure there’s still the zombie apocalypse and the Mayan whatsit (which may well be the same thing) to worry about, so I might as well be prepared.

I’ve populated the list with things I would need in a disaster scenario: things like a sleeping bag, first-aid kit and rum. Of course, my iPad is also on the list. Oh, I’ll be taking my phone for sure — but the iPad’s large screen will be invaluable in any disaster situation as a navigation tool, for work (yes, even in a zombie apocalypse, blogs must be updated) or just keeping up with current news; mine’s a wifi+cellular, so I suppose wifi-only versions would be somewhat less useful in that last role.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “A disaster zone, Eli, is no place for an iPad.”  That’s true only if you don’t have the right gear to accompany it. The following list will show you how to turn your iPad from a liability into an asset when things go very wrong.

Vowels are dropped from names so commonly these days that it can only end with the leftover consonants becoming so jammed together that they will densify and densify into some kind of alphanumerical black hole, dragging in all words until us humans will be rendered mute, and I will be forced to shut up once and for all.

And if you thought that paragraph had nothing to do with the next gadget, you’re dead wrong. It’s called the Statc (missing vowel) and it’s a camera “tripod” consisting of nothing but a big lump of super-strong magnet (black-hole-like attraction).