This week Google announced that on July 1 it is shutting down the most popular RSS stream blog reader in the world, Google Reader. A whole bunch of you probably get to this blog from there.

I’m sure most people who signed up for the service assumed it would be around as long as Google would, close to forever. But the company is chopping anything that’s not a profit center, so your calendar and Gmail could be next if you rely on them daily.

Which brings us to an important question: do you have a backup plan for products or services you use regularly when you travel?

* What’s your second way of getting cash if your debit card is lost, stolen, or eaten by a machine?

* What second or third credit card will you use when your first one is lost, stolen, downgraded (by credit limit) or copied by a cyber thief and disabled?

* How will you keep in touch with the important people in your life if you lose your phone?

* What will you do if Facebook shuts down or starts charging? If there’s a Twitter outage that lasts for days?

* What if Skype goes down or Google shuts down Google Voice?

* What’s your secondary e-mail address when the first one gets shut off or hacked? Do you trust Google enough to rely on gmail?

* Where are you storing all those photos you’re taking in case you lose the laptop, tablet, or phone where they’re stored?

I can’t say I’m 100% prepared for every scenario, especially considering I almost never buy travel insurance. And if Paypal goes under, I’m in big trouble since that’s how most advertisers pay me.

But if you spend 10 bucks on Nomadic Matt’s book you’ll get ideas on what to do on the money side (with specific recommendations).

As for me, stay tuned next week if you read this blog’s RSS stream somewhere because I’m dropping Google’s Feedburner like a hot potato this weekend. It’s been a long time since I trusted that company anyway and based on how they’re treating customers, I don’t have much faith that Feedburner is reliable for the long term.

There’s a lot of trouble in the world. But an expert on handling danger says almost every region is getting tamer for travelers.

Ummm, you probably don’t need to pack that.

If you watch Fox News every day, you’re liable to think the world out there is a super-scary place. Better buy that newly built home in a gated community and shut the garage tight.

Reality is much different. The current issue of Outside magazine has a great interview with Robert Young Pelton, who besides being a respected war zone consultant and author of The World’s Most Dangerous Places, apparently has a perforated metal business card that converts to a shiv. (Scarier part of that revelation: it’s never been noticed or confiscated by airport security. Anywhere.)

The whole interview is great, so go check it out, but here’s the killer exchange for would-be world travelers looking to reassure mom:

“People don’t believe me, but there aren’t wars anymore. When I first wrote the book, you had real wars, with tanks shooting at each other. Now there’s more democracy, less dictatorship. The first edition had 26 countries, and now I’m going to have a hard time covering 12 in the next edition.

A lot of these countries that used to be holy-shit, ass-puckering places are now sort of like, ‘Don’t go there,’ ‘Watch out,’ ‘Don’t go out at night.’

So yes, you should probably avoid Afghanistan and Somalia, present Syria and parts of Sudan. Walking into a drug gang inner city area is always a bad idea, but especially bad in Ciudad Juarez, Tegucigalpa, or Guatemala City. Walking down the street holding a cartoon of a key religious figure is probably not going to end well in countries where you can only see the eyes of the local women.

Time to Stop Acting Like Cowards

Otherwise, let’s finally bury the stupid idea that Canadians are safer than Americans so they have to wear a maple leaf on their backpack like it provides some kind of force field. Let’s stop publishing or reading articles about what women need to do to be able to travel alone without getting raped or killed. Let’s stop avoiding perfectly beautiful places filled with wonderful cities because 10 years ago there was something really bad on the 24-hour news channels. And let’s all make a pact to stop listening to advice from people whose don’t travel. Or those who think a Caribbean cruise balcony berth gives them the right to give you advice about State Department warnings.

I don’t think of myself as all that old, but I’m seeing Ankor Wat for the first time this summer because all three times I was in the neighborhood before there was a coup, a war, or a real threat of getting maimed by a land mine. Nobody in their right mind was going to Peru when I first started backpacking. Colombia, Guatemala, Eastern Turkey, Sri Lanka, and a few Stans were all on the “no-go” list for any sane traveler. There was a war in Croatia for Christ’s sake. Yes, that place where all the billionaires’ yachts are now docked. Bombs were going off regularly in Northern Ireland. Half of Africa seemed to be fighting at any given time.

Do your homework, yes, but if only 9 countries out of nearly 200 require some real paranoia these days, I think you’re going to be okay.

Watch for the 6th edition of Pelton’s book and don’t buy the old one to save a buck: it came out in 2003—when the world was scarier.

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See the Travel Dangers page on ContrarianTraveler.com. (Here’s a fun exercise: put “travel dangers” in Google and see what comes up ahead of this. It’s usually something from Fox News.)

See Robert Young Pelton’s Come Back Alive site.

Coming to Barcelona? Bring a good money belt.

• More people died in the U.S. last year from “accidental discharge of a firearm” than died in the whole world from airplane crashes.

• Guatemala’s crime rate is higher than Mexico’s by a wide margin.

• Eight of the top-10 worst cities for pickpockets are in Europe. (And all of the top 5.)

• The top-selling beer in the world is not Budweiser—it’s Snow Beer.

• “Budget” airlines Southwest and JetBlue have more legroom (average seat pitch) than British Airways, United, or Delta.

• Turkey gets more international visitors each year than Canada, Mexico, Holland, Greece, or Egypt. Malaysia gets more visitors than Thailand, Indonesia/Bali, or Japan.

• The U.S. stock market has historically dropped 6.5% in the year after a Republican wins the presidency, but climbed 9.1% when a Democrat wins reelection.

Surprised by any of those?

Our assumptions are shaped by many things: the people around us, where we get our news, the anecdotes we’ve heard, forwarded e-mails, what our parents taught us. Some people cling to these assumptions like a badge of honor, brandishing them in arguments like it would be blasphemy to expose them to factual scrutiny. There are whole TV networks and political campaigns that rely on this impermeable wall of assumption. Tell the right story and you know it will be believed by the base, real facts be damned.

Now here’s the really thorny issue to consider as you travel around the world. What would you believe about God or religion if you had grown up in a remote jungle in Peru? With the nomads of Algeria? In a devout Hindu home in a rural village in southern India? In a family that sent all the boys for a stint in the next-door Buddhist monastery in Thailand?

We are all shaped by the forces around us. The key to being a free thinker is to question why you believe what you believe—and determine if it’s real or something pushed into your brain by someone with an agenda.

 [Flickr photo by ponglest]

I’m proud to join in the Passports with Purpose effort for a third year. If you’re not familiar with this campaign already, you can go read about it here. The short version is that 100+ bloggers talk up this event, get sponsors to participate with prizes, and send 100% of the money raised to a project that will make a huge impact somewhere.

Two years ago we built a school in Cambodia and staffed it with almost $30,000 from generous readers. The school, built through our partnership with American Assistance for Cambodia is now complete. In 2011 we doubled that and raised $64,128, enough to build an entire village in India. Construction is now underway.

This year we’re banding together to build two libraries in Zambia, Africa through Room to Read. By helping the cause, you can truly change children’s lives and give them a shot at a brighter future.

The best part is, you don’t have to just kick in money out of the goodness of your heart. You’re welcome to, but this is set up as a raffle system where each donation of $10 and above gets you in the running for a prize you choose. Donate more among various prizes and you’ll have more chances. (I’ve personally won something three times. Last year it was a $200 car service ride from Groundlink. Sweet!)

You could get this bag for a $10 donation

I’m proud to say my sponsor is a company near and dear to travelers trying to keep their valuables away from thieves: Pacsafe. This company makes a lot of cool bags and gadgets that put multiple hurdles in front of people trying to get their fingers on your goods. For Passports with Purpose, Pacsafe is giving away one of their cool VentureSafe 200 daypacks. This is an anti-theft day bag that features slash-proof mesh built in, locking buckles, and lots of small features that will frustrate bad guys looking for an easy score. (There’s a video demo at that link.)

Add up all the value of all the electronics you’re carrying around when sightseeing and you’ll probably see why you could use this. It holds 20 liters worth of stuff and will give you years of hard-core use. Their products come with a two-year warranty and I’ve got items that still work like new after five years of travel.

Follow this link to make a donation, either choosing this Pacsafe bag or going for one of the many other great prizes: gear, hotels, gadgets, and more. This one’s open to anyone on the globe as the sponsor has agreed to ship internationally to the winner.

Thanks in advance for your generosity!

You don’t want to be around when this poster comes down…

Ask anyone who travels to foreign countries regularly and they’ve likely heard this question more times than they can count. Sometimes it’s asked by a close relative or friend, just as often by complete strangers. Other times it’s not stated, just implied with raised eyebrows.

The less the person asking has traveled (or in my experience, the more their travel has been comprised of cruise trips), the more likely they are to ask it. When your range of travel experience is limited to controlled situations like theme parks, you tend to see what you don’t know as automatically suspect. If you watch a lot 0f 24-hour TV news, especially Fox, you tend to see the whole world as downright scary.

In nearly two decades of solid travel, I’ve almost never faced real danger abroad. That includes travel in the Middle East, trips to Guatemala and Honduras, living for a year less than 25 miles from the North Korean border, and a year of living in Mexico. My closest calls with death have mostly come on the home turf—which is statistically typical for most people. My greatest fear is being hit by some soccer mom in a big SUV who is jabbering on her phone or texting instead of looking where her giant hunk of metal is heading on the road. (Odds of dying in a car crash: 88 to 1.)

In the end, what will probably get me is heart disease (6 to 1 odds) or cancer (7 to 1): these are the odds-on favorites. Terrorist attacks and plane crashes are about as likely as being struck by lightning. Sure, it happens, but not very often. If we had as many people dying in plane crashes as from car crashes or from domestic gun violence (odds of 306 to 1), there would be a jet going down in flames every single day. Or to put it another way, we’d have to have a 9/11-level terrorist attack every month.

Texas strip mall

Knowledge is Power

The best way to counter any fears, however, is to be informed. I’ve met clueless backpackers in a country that didn’t even know there was a volatile election coming up, or that 100,000 people were protesting in the streets one town over. Ignorance is bliss, but it won’t protect you from bullets or tear gas. (A trip to Syria anyone?)

Here is a load of resources to consult if you’ve got questions about the situation in your destination. Always consider the source though. The govenment-issued reports—especially the U.S. ones—tend to err on the side of caution. They have diplomat families to protect and would much rather be safe than sorry. I would trust them much more if they compared the risk of violence abroad to the risk in say, Washington D.C. But they’ll never go there. Also take the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree posts with a bit of skepticism in the other direction. Grizzled long-term backpackers who have seen it all are much braver and carefree than your typical first-time traveler. And they’re more savvy about staying out of trouble.

Official Government Sites

U.S. State Department Travel Advisories
Overseas Security Advisory Council
Australian Government Travel Advisories
Canadian Government Travel Advisories
UK Travel Advisory Site

Scary Places Reports

Polo’s Bastards
Come Back Alive Danger Finder

Message Boards

Lonely Planet Thorn Tree
BootsnAll
Fodors

I’ve consistently found the BBC to be the best source of real international news you can get quickly for free. The Economist provides more depth if you’re willing to subscribe and The Week gives you a good feel for what’s happening around the world each week.

Most cities have an English-language newspaper you can find online. That will give you a real sense of things that don’t make the international news but may be very important locally—like a big transit strike. Usually just putting “English newspaper [city]” will do it. Or try thePaperboy.com.

For current health dangers where you’re going, check in with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, Intl. Society of Travel Medicine, and TripPrep.com.

Remember though, there are always plenty of perfectly good reasons to not go where you’re thinking of going. The easy action is to just open a bag of Doritos and grab the remote instead. Sooner or later you need to accomplish more than just eat-sleep-work-death. You have to get up and go.

P.S. – A bonus if you got this far: the odds of dying from a shark attack in Florida are 1 in 17,241,109. Makes the lottery look like a sure thing in comparison.

P.P.S – You can use a gun owner’s ID to vote in Texas, but not a university student I.D. And you’re scared of going to where?

[Photos from Flickr Creative Commons. Click on picture for photographer credits.]