You must live in the South too... I was overjoyed when I read the refridgeration part of the article.

In a SHTF situation... we will have fuel to burn... trees, fences, debris from our neighbor's fences/home/trees, neighbor's annoying dog, etc. Maybe in barren areas there would be a lakc of fuel... but I think most of us probably have abundant fuel for a long time.

But cooling... that is unique. A good sized chunk of ice can do wonders. If you have half a dozen of these things set up, you could make a few blocks of ice every night, if you have a cooler to put them in they can be saved for a surprising length of time, several days. You can slowly fill the cooler with home-made ice.... then you can save meat and other foods for a while if you don't have time to smoke them right away.

This is a miraculous device.

I was also thinking... couldn't a put a giant one of these on top of my house as an airconditioner at night, then just find some way to turn it off during the day by using a system of pulleys to draw a large piece of cloth over it?
Hey, if it rains, you can take the cloth off and use it to collect rainwater! Maybe it would pasteurize it at the same time?

... some ideas, the world just isn't ready for...