All killer, no filler.

Emergency radio is radio reduced to its essence: only the news that could possibly kill you. Is there any other reason to listen to the radio?

Music? Between Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, iTunes, and whatever you managed to steal in Napster’s heyday, there’s no reason to sit through some Clear Channel-decreed diet of acceptable pablum - much less to endure the annoying DJs and the even more annoying, endless radio commercials.

Talk? Only if you don’t get enough petty political viciousness from your family on Facebook.

Sports? Anybody who says it’s more exciting to listen to a game than watch it is lying, so nobody knows they’re just too cheap to pay for cable.

Entertainment? If you’re among the select few who can tolerate the likes of Ira Glass and the cutesy collegiate navel-gazing “storytellers” of public radio, get that shit in podcast form and never be ambushed by a pledge drive ever again. Otherwise, everybody who was ever funny on the radio, from Jack Benny to the Car Talk guys, is now off the radio. You should be, too.

News? The vast majority serves only to destroy your faith in humanity and confirm your own depressing impotence to do anything about it. The only news that really matters is the kind telling you “Hey, something deadly is coming, better move your ass if you want to save it.”

That’s what this Oregon Scientific Digital Handheld Emergency Alert Radio does. It receives the National Weather Service’s weather band channels for 24/7 forecast updates. The alert function lets you know when there’s a Weather Emergency or Civil Emergency in your area. It’s even got a solar panel and a hand crank to charge it, a USB port for charging your phone, and a flashlight: let’s see that smug Ira Glass do that.

The analog version of this very radio is one of the top-selling emergency radios on the market - and we’re offering the digital version at half the price of the analog one instead of double the price, like it usually is. It’s really only got one drawback: it also receives regular AM/FM radio. Hey, nothing’s perfect.