Last Earth Distro

Wyoming Considering So-Called “Doomsday Bill”

2012-02-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

Thanks Technoccult!

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Klint Finley

State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.
House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.
The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.

Casper Tribune: Wyoming House advances doomsday bill

This may sound like wingnut survivalist paranoia, but this is pretty interesting. Much of the state quite vulnerable to system shocks. Services ranging from food shipping to postal mail processing depend on out of state resources. The state is extremely petroleum dependent, so gas shortages would hit people hard. I’ve been told that although Wyoming produces huge amounts of coal, but is highly dependent on out of state resources for electricity (but I’m not sure that’s true).

Have any other states proposed official bills for state resilience?

Rapid Climate Shift

2012-02-25T12:47:00.001-08:00

From Wikipedia:

An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to transition to a new state at a rate that is determined by the climate system itself, and which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing.^[1] Past events include the end of the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse,^[2] Younger Dryas,^[3] Dansgaard-Oeschger events, and possibly also the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum.^[4] The term is also used within the context of global warming to describe sudden climate change that is detectable over the time-scale of a human lifetime. One proposed reason for the observed abrupt climate change is that feedback loops within the climate system both enhance small perturbations and cause a variety of stable states.^[5]

Timescales of events described as 'abrupt' may vary dramatically. Changes recorded in the climate of Greenland at the end of the Younger Dryas, as measured by ice-cores, imply a sudden warming of +10°C within a timescale of a few years.^[6] Other abrupt changes are the +4 °C on Greenland 11,270 years ago^[7] or the abrupt +6 °C warming 22 000 years ago on Antarctica.^[8] By contrast, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum may have initiated anywhere between a few decades and several thousand years.

___________________________

From the Arlington Institute:

RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE

The global warming debate, despite having vociferous proponents on each side, appears to have been decided. Global warming is very real, and it is the preeminent danger to human civilization today. The rising global temperature threatens to create catastrophic weather systems, crop failures, disease outbreaks, and water shortages worldwide.

Emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are trapping heat within the Earths’ atmosphere, slowly increasing the overall temperature.These emissions are the byproduct of our modern way of life, and to halt them would require a voluntary shift in the very structure of our society, a move unprecedented in human history.

To not take action, however, would be to alter the very chemical composition of our planet. Life on Earth evolved over hundreds of millions of years to survive within very specific conditions, and those conditions are changing…

Post-Crash Fascism: Planning for the Apocalypse

2012-02-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

STEVEN MEISEL / VOGUE ITALIA

Climate change is happening faster than initially predicted, and its impacts are already upon us in the form of more extreme weather events, desertification, ocean acidification, melting glaciers and incrementally rising sea levels.

The scientists who construct the computer models that analyze climate data believe that even if we stop dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, CO2 levels are already so high that we are locked into a significant increase in global temperatures. Disruptive climate change is a certainty even if we make the economic shift away from fossil fuels.

Incipient climate change is already starting to express itself in the realm of politics.

Climate change arrives in a world primed for crisis. The current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already-existing crises of poverty and violence. I call this collision of political, economic and environmental disasters the catastrophic convergence. By catastrophic convergence, I do not merely mean that several disasters happen simultaneously, one atop another. Rather, I argue that problems compound and amplify each other, one expressing itself through another.

Societies, like people, deal with new challenges in ways that are conditioned by the traumas of their past. Thus, damaged societies, like damaged people, often respond to new crises in ways that are irrational, shortsighted, and self-destructive. In the case of climate change, the prior traumas that set the stage for bad adaptation, the destructive social response, are Cold War–era militarism and the economic pathologies of neoliberal capitalism. Over the last 40 years, both of these forces have distorted the state’s relationship to society – removing and undermining the state’s collectivist, regulatory and redistributive functions, while overdeveloping its repressive and military capacities. This, I argue, inhibits society’s ability to avoid violent dislocations as climate change kicks in.

planning for apocalypse

A slew of government reports have discussed the social and military problems posed by climate change. In 2008. Congress mandated that the upcoming 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review – the policy document laying out the guiding principles of US military strategy and doctrine – consider the national-security impacts of climate change. The first of these investigations to make news, a 2004 Pentagon-commissioned study called “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” was authored by Peter Schwartz, a CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.The report was made at the behest of octogenarian military theorist cum imperial soothsayer Andrew Marshall. Known to his followers as Yoda, after the wrinkled, dwarflike puppet of Star Wars fame, Marshall got his start at the RAND Corporation in 1949 as a specialist on nuclear Armageddon and its alleged survivability. He moved from RAND to the Pentagon during Richard Nixon’s presidency and served every president since. (It is interesting to note the presence of atomic-era Cold Warrior physicists among both the climate-change denialists and the military adaptationists. In his book How to Cool the Planet, Jeff Goodell remarks on the same set’s infatuation with the high-tech solutions promised by geoengineering, in particular Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s Lowell Wood, a tie-dye wearing disciple of Edward Teller.)

Schwartz and Randall’s report correctly treats global warming as a potentially nonlinear process. And they forecast a new Dark Ages:

Nations without the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves … As famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due to the abrupt climate change, many countries’ needs will exceed their carrying capacity. This will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression in order to reclaim balance … Europe will be struggling internally, large numbers of refugees washing up on its shores and Asia in serious crisis over food and water. Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life. Once again, warfare would define human life.

In 2007, there came more reports on climate and security. One, from the Pentagon-connected think tank CNA Corporation, convened an advisory board of high-ranking former military officers to examine the issues – among them General Gordon Sullivan, former chief of staff, US Army; Admiral Donald Pilling, former vice chief of naval operations; Admiral Joseph Prueher, former commander in chief of the US Pacific Command; and General Anthony Zinni, retired US Marine Corps and former commander in chief of US Central Command. That report envisioned permanent counterinsurgency on a global scale. Here is one salient excerpt:

Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability … Unlike most conventional security threats that involve a single entity acting in specific ways at different points in time, climate change has the potential to result in multiple chronic conditions, occurring globally within the same time frame. Economic and environmental conditions in these already fragile areas will further erode as food production declines, diseases increase, clean water becomes increasingly scarce, and populations migrate in search of resources. Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflict, extremism, and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies. The US may be drawn more frequently into these situations to help to provide relief, rescue, and logistics, or to stabilize conditions before conflicts arise.

Another section notes:

When a government can no longer deliver services to its people, ensure domestic order, and protect the nation’s borders from invasion, conditions are ripe for turmoil, extremism and terrorism to fill the vacuum … the greatest concern will be movement of asylum seekers and refugees who due to ecological devastation become settlers.

In closing the report notes, “Abrupt climate changes could make future adaptation extremely difficult, even for the most developed countries.”

Another report from 2007, the most scientifically literate of the lot, titled The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, was produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security. Its prominent authors included Kurt Campbell, former deputy assistant secretary of defense; Leon Fuerth, former national security advisor to Vice President Al Gore; John Podesta, former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton; and James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Age of Consequences laid out three plausible scenarios for climate change, each pertaining to different global average-temperature changes. The authors relied on the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but noted, “Recent observations indicate that projections from climate models have been too conservative; the effects of climate change are unfolding faster and more dramatically than expected.” The report conceives of future problems not in terms of interstate resource wars but as state collapse caused by “disease, uncontrolled migration, and crop failure, that … overwhelm the traditional instruments of national security (the military in particular) and other elements of state power and authority.” Green ex-spook James Woolsey authored the report’s final section laying out the worst-case scenario. He writes:

In a world that sees two meter sea level rise, with continued flooding ahead, it will take extraordinary effort for the United States, or indeed any country, to look beyond its own salvation. All of the ways in which human beings have dealt with natural disasters in the past … could come together in one conflagration: rage at government’s inability to deal with the abrupt and unpredictable crises; religious fervor, perhaps even a dramatic rise in millennial end-of-days cults; hostility and violence toward migrants and minority groups, at a time of demographic change and increased global migration; and intra- and interstate conflict over resources, particularly food and fresh water. Altruism and generosity would likely be blunted.

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Top 10 Real Foods to Store Without Electricity

2012-02-17T21:04:00.000-08:00

One question that I’ve been seeing a lot in preparedness discussions is how to make real, “living” food a part of your storage plans. Many food storage lists include large amounts of heavily processed food items because they are cheaper, readily available, and have amazing shelf lives.

That’s all well and fine, but you’re supposed to rotate your food storage items regularly by eating out out your storage, and I am not eager to live off of MRE’s, freeze dried meals with hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and commercially canned goods that may contain mold or other questionable ingredients. (We do keep some MREs and freeze dried meals, but they do not make up the bulk of our storage.)

So what are some of the best options for “real food” storage foods? Here are my top ten choices for foods that can be stored at room temperature for extended periods:

1. Lacto-fermented vegetables

: Large containers of properly fermented vegetables can last for months, if not over a year, in cool conditions (for instance, an unheated basement). Captain Cook used kraut on his ships to prevent scurvy, as did other sailors. My husband remembers my mom talking about how they would preserve large crocks (15-20 gallons or more) or kraut from season to season. She said it would sometimes taste a little different but it was still good. In my own experience, this past season I keep two one gallon crocks of kraut in my basement from October until May – seven months – and the quality was still acceptable at that time.

In this photo, you can see that there was mold growth on the top of the kraut container (here’s the original post on how I made the sauerkraut).

Once the airlock bag was removed and the sides wiped down, you can see that the kraut underneath was not moldy.

The kraut around the edges was a little softer, but the center was still fairly crisp.

The flavor was a little more tangy/bubbly than younger kraut. At this point I repackaged it into smaller containers and put it in the fridge and freezer. Sauerkraut is very high in vitamin C, and is also a good source of vitamin K, which is often deficient in modern diets. Home canned fruits and vegetables are also acceptable, but they are not quite the nutritional powerhouses that lacto-fermented products are. If you decide to purchase canned food items, make sure to buy from a reputable source.

2. Live Culture Dairy

- If you keep a yogurt culture that works at room temperature (such as viili from Cultures for Health, which I use), you can use it to culture powdered milkwithout a yogurt maker. While powdered milk is not ideal, it does store without refrigeration. Culturing makes the nutrients much more digestible. Milk kefir is also an option for a drinkable product. Milk kefir grains can also be used to culture coconut milk, if they are are occasionally revitalized in milk. Kefir provides protein, minerals and B vitamins. Traditional hard cheeses (such as Parmeson) may also last for months in cool dry temps.

3. Whole grains

- Whole grains (in general) have excellent shelf lives, much longer than milled flours. Places like Emergency Essentials (listed on my sidebar) sell grains and grain mills (electric powered and hand powered). If you keep a sourdough culture, you can use it to make many baked goods, not just bread, such assourdough crackers. Again, using sourdough culturing makes the nutrients in the grain more available. Grains can also be sprouted and used to make a simple essene bread, which is very filling and nutritious.

4. Chia seeds

- Chia seeds have a shelf life of 4 to 5 years for dried seeds. They have omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids, fiber, B vitamins, calcium and protein. They can be used to make drinks and no-cook puddings, as well as adding nutrition to baked goods and smoothies.

5. Sprouting seeds

- Sprouting seeds also have a great storage life, generally 2 years or more. They are generally high in vitamin C, and may also contain other antioxidants and essential nutrients. They also provide fresh, growing food in a hurry when it may be in short supply. Sprouting seeds are easy to use. You can grow them in handysprouting kits, or in sprouting bags or even nylon stockings. Mary Bell (in theDehydrator Cookbook) suggests bringing sprouting seeds with you while camping. She says to soak them overnight in a bag of water, and then place them in a section of nylon sock attached to your backpack. Rinse daily, and in a few days you’ll have live, crunchy additions to your trail rations.

6. High Quality Saturated Fat

- Coconut oil, lard and tallow will all keep for at least 12-18 months (most likely longer) in sealed, airtight containers kept in a cool area. Your body needshealthy fats. Your brain is largely made up of fat, as is protective coating on your lungs, and many other critical body systems. Fats are energy dense, which is also critical during emergency situations.

7. Dried Legumes

- Dried beans have a great shelf. They will keep around a year in just the plastic bags from the store, 10 to even 30 years if sealed in airtight containers with oxygen removed. Utah State University Cooperative Extension states: “Dry beans average about 22% protein in the seed, the highest protein content of any seed crop. They contain all essential amino acids, except methionine. Methionine can be obtained from corn, rice, or meat. Beans are an excellent source of fiber, starch, minerals and some vitamins. ”

8. Real Salt

- Unrefined salt has many trace minerals that are essential to health. In my experience, the unrefined salts (Real Salt, grey sea salt, pink salt, etc.) have a “saltier” more robust flavor, meaning you can use less to achieve the same result. Salt can also be used to preserve food (such as fermenting vegetables, above, and meats). Since ancient times, salt has been also used as a valuable trade commodity.

9. Bulk Spices, Herbs and Teas

- Don’t underestimate the power of herbs and spices. As well as being high in antioxidants and anti-inflammatories, many of them have preservative properties as well. The New Agriculturalist explains:

“Cinnamon is just one of a large number of spices that have long been known to preserve food. Recent research has tried to find out exactly how effective the spice can be, over what time period, and in suppressing which bacteria. At Kansas State University, microbiologists have been testing the effectiveness of cinnamon and other spices in eliminating one of the most virulent bacterial causes of food poisoning, E.coli type 0157. Complications arising from the bacteria can include anaemia and kidney problems, and a serious outbreak can lead to fatalities. The Kansas researchers found that cinnamon added to apple juice that had been contaminated withE.coli, was able to kill 99.5% of the bacteria within three days, at room temperature. They also did tests on meat and sausage, and found that cinnamon, cloves and garlic all had a powerful ability to stop the growth of the bacteria. Other microbiologists in Tennessee have found that oils extracted from oregano, coriander and basil, also have strong anti-microbial properties. In future we may see more natural preservatives supplementing the synthetic compounds currently in use.”

I store my spices and herbs in glass jars out of direct light (sometimes using the sock trick). I buy in bulk (generally from Frontier or Mountain Rose Herbs, listed on the sidebar), store a small amount in the cupboard and the rest in the bulk food storage. Both stores sell small, inexpensive glass shaker jars to repackage your spices for easy use. Larger spices, such as cinnamon sticks or other “chunky” spices, can be vacuumed sealed in mason jars to extend shelf life. Under cool, dry conditions out of direct light, spices should have a shelf of two years. They can still be used after this time, but potency will diminish. Spices could also be used as a trade commodity.

10. Sweeteners, Including Refined White Sugar, Raw Sugar, Honey and Maple Syrup

- I’m sure some foodies will cringe at the inclusion of white sugar, but it is less expensive than the other options and has a great shelf life (white sugar will last indefinitely if kept in a sealed container in a cool, dry location). It can be used as a preservative for fruits. Sugar can be used to heal wounds (as can honey). (More details on the sugar for wound healing here.) I use sugar to brew mykombucha, too. Raw sugar can store as well as regular sugar, but may be cost prohibitive for many.

Honey can store easily for over a year, possibly decades. They have found edible honey in tombs over 1000 years old. To store honey, Honey.com states:

Processed honey should be stored between 64-75°F (18-24°C).1 Honey can be exposed to higher temperatures for brief periods; however, heat damage is cumulative so heat exposure should be limited. It is best to minimize temperature fluctuations and avoid storing honey near heat sources.
The recommended storage temperature for unprocessed honey is below 50°F (10°C). The ideal temperature for both unprocessed and processed honey is below 32°F (0°C). Cooler temperatures best preserve the aroma, flavor and color of unprocessed honey.

Maple syrup has the shortest shelf life – around one year in glass bottles without freezing or refrigeration.

There are many other food options, but these are my top choices for foods that store a long time without refrigeration. I’ll be covering various food preservation techniques in more detail in the coming months (it’s my thing , including drying, canning, freezing, fermenting, preserving in alcohol and whatever else I can think of trying.

In addition to food, water is critical. We just bought a new Berkley water filter, and I’ll be writing a review of that soon, along with with other tips for storing water. We’ve got the Berkley on the counter right now, filtering our tap water. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to try mud puddle water, but I’m considering it…

An Emergency Chemical Light That Lasts Forever – With No Chemical

2012-02-11T01:23:00.000-08:00

Interesting little gizmo... I've always wondered if there was a way to make glow-sticks reusable. May have to add a few of these to my bug-out bag. My mother recently joined the prepper crowd and refuses to call hers a bug-out bag, preferring the G.O.O.D. vibes instead. (Get Out Of Dodge). I have to admit it's a bit more upbeat.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Bug-Out Bags:

A bug-out bag^[1]^[2] is a portable kit that contains the items one would require to survive for seventy-two hours^[3]^[4] when evacuating from a disaster. It is also known as a 72-hour kit,^[5] a grab bag,^[6] a battle box, and other popular names include "Personal Emergency Relocation Kits" (PERKs) GO Bag and GOOD (Get Out Of Dodge)^[7] bag. The focus is on evacuation, rather than long-term survival, distinguishing the bug-out bag from a survival kit, a boating or aviation emergency kit, or a fixed-site disaster supplies kit. The kits are also popular in the survivalism subculture.^[8]

The term "bug-out bag" is related to, and possibly derived from, the "bail-out bag" emergency kit many military aviators carry. The concept passed into wide usage among other military and law enforcement personnel, though the "bail-out bag" is as likely to include emergency gear for going into an emergency situation as for escaping an emergency.^[9]

Poon Lim or Lim Poon BEM (March 8, 1918 – January 4, 1991) was a Chinese sailor who survived 133 days alone in the South Atlantic.

2012-02-11T01:16:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia:

Poon Lim or Lim Poon BEM (March 8, 1918 – January 4, 1991) was a Chinese sailor who survived 133 days alone in the South Atlantic.

Lim was born in Hainan, China. In 1942, during World War II, he was working as second steward on the British merchant ship SS Ben Lomond, which was on its way from Cape Town to Dutch Guiana. The ship was armed but slow moving and was sailing alone instead of being in a convoy.

On November 23, the German U-boat U-172 intercepted and torpedoed the ship in position 00.30°N 38.45°W, some 750 miles east of theAmazon. As the ship was sinking, Poon Lim took a life jacket and jumped overboard before the ship's boilers exploded.^[3] Although accounts differ, out of the crew of 55, a total of 11 other sailors may have eventually been rescued.

After approximately two hours in the water, he found an 8' square wooden raft and climbed into it. The raft had several tins of biscuits, a forty litre jug of water, some chocolate, a bag of sugar lumps, some flares, two smoke pots and an electric torch.

Poon Lim initially kept himself alive by drinking the water and eating the food on the raft, but later resorted to catching rainwater in a canvas life jacket covering and fishing. He could not swim very well and often tied a rope from the boat to his wrist, in case he fell into the ocean. He took a wire from the electric torch and made it into a fishhook, and used hemp rope as a fishing line. He also dug a nail out of the boards on the wooden raft and bent it into a hook for larger fish. When he captured a fish, he would cut it open with a knife he fashioned out of abiscuit tin and dry it on a hemp line over the raft. Once, a large storm hit and spoiled his fish and fouled his water. Poon, barely alive, caught a bird and drank its blood to survive.

When he saw sharks, he did not swim. Instead he set out to catch one. He used the remnants of the next bird he caught as bait. The first shark to pick up the taste was only a few feet long. He gulped the bait and hit the line with full force, but in preparation Poon Lim had braided the line so it would have double thickness. He also had wrapped his hands in canvas to enable him to make the catch. But the shark attacked him after he brought it aboard the raft. He used the water jug half-filled with seawater as a weapon. After his victory, Poon Lim cut open the shark and sucked its blood from its liver. Since it hadn't rained, he was out of water and this quenched his thirst. He sliced the fins end let them dry in the sun, a Hainan delicacy.

On two occasions other vessels passed nearby: first a freighter, then a squad of United States Navy patrol planes. Poon contended that the freighter saw him but did not pick him up because he was Chinese. The Navy planes did see him, and one dropped a marker buoy in the water. Unfortunately for Poon, a large storm hit the area at the same time and he was lost again. He was also once spotted by a German U-boat, which had been doing gunnery drills by targeting seagulls.

At first, he counted the days by tying knots in a rope, but later decided that there was no point in counting the days and simply began counting full moons.

[edit]Land

On April 5, 1943, after 133 days in the life raft, Poon Lim neared land and a river inlet. A few days earlier, he had known that he was close to the land because the colour of the water had changed; it was no longer the oceanic deep blue. Three Brazilian fishermen rescued him and took him to Belém three days later.

During his ordeal, Poon Lim had lost 9 kg, but was able to walk unaided upon being rescued. He spent four weeks in a Brazilian hospital and the British Consul arranged for him to return to Britain via Miami and New York.

When told no one had ever survived longer on a raft at sea, Poon Lim replied, "I hope no one will ever have to break that record."^[4] People have lived longer lost at sea, the current record being 10 months for 3 Mexican sailors in a disabled fishing boat.^[5] However, as of 2011, no one has broken Poon Lim's record on a life raft.

[edit]Aftermath

King George VI bestowed a British Empire Medal (BEM) on him, and the Royal Navy incorporated his tale into manuals of survival techniques. After the war, Poon Lim decided to emigrate to the United States, but the quota for Chinese immigrants had been reached. However, because of his fame and the aid of Senator Warren Magnuson, he received a special dispensation and eventually gained citizenship.^[6]

[edit]Death

Poon Lim died in Brooklyn on January 4, 1991.^[7]

[edit]Cultural References

The science fiction novel The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester was inspired by a newspaper report about Poon Lim.

Prepping Heads for the Mainstream, Not Just for Closet Paranoids Anymore, or, This Ain't Your Mama's Collapse.

2012-02-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

By Jim Forsyth

Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:44am EST

(Reuters) - When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.

"In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared."

Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.

They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.

Preppers, though are, worried about no government.

Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a "survival center," complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency, she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency could come soon.

"I think this economy is about to fall apart," she said.

A wide range of vendors market products to preppers, mainly online. They sell everything from water tanks to guns to survival skills.

Conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck seems to preach preppers' message when he tells listeners: "It's never too late to prepare for the end of the world as we know it."

"Unfortunately, given the increasing complexity and fragility of our modern technological society, the chances of a societal collapse are increasing year after year," said author James Wesley Rawles, whose Survival Blog is considered the guiding light of the prepper movement.

A former Army intelligence officer, Rawles has written fiction and non-fiction books on end-of-civilization topics, including "How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It," which is also known as the preppers' Bible.

"We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots," he told Reuters. "The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures."

A sense of "suffering and being afraid" is usually at the root of this kind of thinking, according to Cathy Gutierrez, an expert on end-times beliefs at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Such feelings are not unnatural in a time of economic recession and concerns about a growing national debt, she said.

"With our current dependence on things from the electric grid to the Internet, things that people have absolutely no control over, there is a feeling that a collapse scenario can easily emerge, with a belief that the end is coming, and it is all out of the individual's control," she told Reuters.

She compared the major technological developments of the past decade to the Industrial Revolution of the 1830s and 1840s, which led to the growth of the Millerites, the 19th-Century equivalent of the preppers. Followers of charismatic preacher Joseph Miller, many sold everything and gathered in 1844 for what they believed would be the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Many of today's preppers receive inspiration from the Internet, devouring information posted on websites like that run by attorney Michael T. Snider, who writes The Economic Collapse blog out of his home in northern Idaho.

"Modern preppers are much different from the survivalists of the old days," he said. "You could be living next door to a prepper and never even know it. Many suburbanites are turning spare rooms into food pantries and are going for survival training on the weekends."

Like other preppers, Snider is worried about the end of a functioning U.S. economy. He points out that tens of millions of Americans are on food stamps and that many U.S. children are living in poverty.

"Most people have a gut feeling that something has gone terribly wrong, but that doesn't mean that they understand what is happening," he said. "A lot of Americans sense that a massive economic storm is coming and they want to be prepared for it."

So, assuming there is no collapse of society -- which the preppers call "uncivilization" -- what is the future of the preppers?

Gutierrez said that unlike the Millerites -- or followers of radio preacher Harold Camping, who predicted the world would end last year -- preppers are not setting a date for the coming destruction. The Mayan Calendar predicts doom this December.

"The minute you set a date, you are courting disconfirmation," she said.

Tegeler, who recalls being hit by tornadoes and floods in her southwestern Virginia home, said that none of her "survival center" products will go to waste.

"I think it's silly not to be prepared," she said. "After all, anything can happen."

(Reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Greg McCune)

Gay Pride, Gun Pride

2012-01-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

by Robert W. Hunnicutt • January 24, 2012

There was rumor going around the SHOT Show this year that the Pink Pistols, a gay 2nd Amendment group, would have a stand. That proved not to be the case, so far as I could tell, but it did raise a question.

What do gay rights and gun rights have in common? More than you might think, I would say.

Gay activists and gun activists have, in a similar time frame, both piled up a long list of notable legal and political victories.

We won the Heller v. D.C. (2008) case before the Supreme Court, striking down the District of Columbia handgun ban. Similarly, the high court struck down laws against consensual sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas (2003).

Every state but Illinois now has some level of legal concealed carry, and concealed carry rights are continually being expanded. The list of states that recognize gay marriage or civil unions continues to grow, and no realist can deny that ultimately, the whole country will have them. Homosexuals can now serve openly in the armed services, and in most places can adopt children.

Whether all that’s good or bad you can argue deep into the night, but you can’t fail to notice that gun rights and gay rights have burgeoned at the same time. And that’s not an accident, though I am confident it has been a big surprise to many.

To use a pompous academic term, homosexuality and gun ownership were both until recently “transgressive” personal choices that challenged established social norms. Being gay may have been more transgressive in Yazoo City, Miss. and owning a gun more so in Cambridge, Mass., but both were on the fringes 50 years ago.

Social norms, whether about race, marriage, sexuality, childrearing, dress, language or workplace relations, have been demolished since those days, and that demolition has been regarded as a great thing by those of progressive mindset.

What they failed to appreciate was that social norms are of a piece, and if you demolish them in the area of personal sexuality, you’re tearing them down just as much when it comes to personal defense. You can’t let some people off the chain and keep others chained.

If you say that gays have the right to seek personal fulfillment, you can’t then say that gun owners have no such right. Personal possibilities can’t be expanded in just one direction; they spread out unpredictably, like paint surging out of a spilled can.

Somewhere along the line, gun owners decided to get loud and proud. I can promise you, having worked there for 20 years, that idea didn’t come from the NRA. It also didn’t come from the gun industry, which until very recently, didn’t really want black guns at the SHOT Show.

Gun owners got loud and proud quite on their own, one bumper sticker or T-shirt or viral video at a time, and they may have learned how, at least in part, from guys cavorting on parade floats, dressed like the Village People.

Just as there are flamboyant gay icons like Elton John or the ice skater Johnny Weir, we have our own outrageous figures like Ted Nugent or Toby Keith. A society that tolerates the one has to tolerate the other. We worry a lot about political correctness, but the truth of the matter is that popular culture has probably never been more wide-open, at both extremes of the political spectrum.

TV fare like Modern Family features homosexual characters, portrayed in a positive light, while cable TV is full of gun-related shows like Sons of Guns or Top Shot. Were either of them imaginable in the 1960s, or even the 1980s?

So I would argue that the general expansion of personal possibilities has expanded possibilities for us, too. And that’s a good, thing, no matter how you may feel about Liza Minelli. It may not be easy to see or accept, but there’s a straight line connecting the guy in the assless chaps to you in your “Infidel” T-shirt. Both of you drive some people nuts, and both of you are freer to be who you want to be than ever before.

How to Get Emergency 120 Volt AC Power Anywhere

2012-01-21T15:43:00.000-08:00

Instructions

- 1
  If you want some standard house power (120 volt 60Hz AC power) out in the woods or something, you'll need to do this whole process ahead of time before you leave. Otherwise you can actually wait for a storm to hit or whatever and then do it but it's a good idea to do it ahead of time anyway because one of the steps is to go to your local car battery selling location and buy a battery or two. If they're out of power, they're probably not open for business so you should probably pick up the gear ahead of time.
- 2
  Before you go battery shopping though, first you need to know what type and how many to buy. So first, make a list of what you'll need to power. Keep it limited to what you absolutely need. If you can get behind your refrigerator to the plug, then that's probably a good one but I'll warn you right now, it probably will need more power than you can supply using this method.
- 3
  Once you have your list, find the power requirements of the devices on your list. Most devices will list the watts or amps on a black plate where the power cord enters the device. You need the watts so if is say 0.8A that's 0.8 amps which means you need to multiply it by 120 volts to get the wattage. So that would be a 96 watt device. Now add up all the values. Let's say you have a 100 watt lamp and 800 watt mini-air conditioner, and 60 watt laptop you want to run. That would be 960 watts total. Keep that number in mind for shopping.
- 4
  Now the question is, do you need one or ten batteries? Well, it depends how many watts you'll be using and for how long. Batteries are rated in amp hours and you have watts. But that's no problem. Batteries run at 12 volts so divide your total watts from before by 12. My example of the 960 watt total would mean I need 80 amps. One single car battery can usually output over 700 amps so the actual current isn't an issue. How long the batteries will last before running out is the real problem. Most car batteries are around 100 amp hours which means it can last 1 hour if something is pulling 100 amps and then it would be empty. Or it can run something at 1 amp for 100 hours or 25 amps for 4 hours. So as you calculate, add batteries in groups of 100 amp hours just as a rough estimate.
- 5
  I could power my 960 watt example for just over an hour. Well I want to use it all day so I'd either need to buy A LOT of car batteries or switch out the air conditioner for a 200 watt fan instead. Also take into account usage. If you're only going to use your fan for half the day or keep it at half speed, count it as half the watts or amps. So if you need to just run 200 watts, it will be drawing 17 amps so one car battery could run it for (100AH divided by 17 amps equals) 5.8 hours before the battery runs out.
- 6
  Before you set the amps estimate in stone though, remember that most devices, especially electronics, pull less than they say they do. So you can cut a little bit off that estimate. You'll also turn everything off if you have to leave for a short time so it will last longer that way too. With a final estimate of 10 amps total needed over two days for example, I'd probably only buy 2 car batteries even though 10 amps for 12 hours a day times two days is 240AH and 3 batteries would be 300AH. If you hate math and numbers and estimating, you can just buy one or two batteries and run them until they're empty too. That or go get one out of your car when the others run out but that will reset your clock and radio settings and possibly even stored settings like air/fuel mixes and automatic shifting settings. It won't break anything in your car though to leave it without a battery so if it comes to that, do it.
- 7
  As for which battery to buy, it really doesn't matter so go cheap. It's not worth it to get some high end batteries from a good brand name. The only fancy feature you should look for are deep cycle batteries (commonly used in marine/boating systems) because they maintain 12 volts for longer instead of slowly fading. If you can't find any, a normal battery will work fine though. At Walmart they have very cheap batteries. In fact, last I saw they have a riding lawn mower battery for just $20! It's at least half the capacity of a car battery but you might be able to find a car battery for $40 so you might as well go for the full sized one. You can also get generic ones from hardware stores for cheap. So according to your estimate or according to your budget, buy as many batteries as you need.
- 8
  Here's the rest of the shopping list while you're there. If you don't have a set or two of jumper cables, you'll need one pair for every extra battery you buy in order to connect them to each other. So if you buy 3 batteries, you'll need one pair of cables. If you buy 5, you'll need 4. Now that you have the power, you need the device that will turn it from 12 volt DC to 120 volts AC. If you know electronics, you already know that that's called an inverter. Walmart and some hardware stores, won't have a good enough equipment. They rarely if ever have an inverter that can supply more than 400 watts. According to your estimation in step 3, that may be enough but more than likely, you'll need 800 watts or even 1600 watts. Be aware that running 750 watts on an 800 watt inverter will often set off the alarm and/or shut it off so don't cut it too close. An 800 watt inverter usually won't be able to run any household heater or any hairdryer so you may want to go bigger. Luckily, most auto part stores have 800 and 1600 watt inverters in stock at all times. Advance Auto Parts for sure has them and most other chains do too. Occasionally I see some at hardware stores too so do look around.
- 9
  So you've got the batteries, the jumper cables to link them together, and a properly capable inverter. Now just make sure you have a power strip if necessary and that's about all you need. To hook it all together, plug the power strip into the inverter and keep it switched off. There should be jumper cable clamps on cables attached to rings that screw into terminals on the inverter so attach those. Clamp them onto the battery terminals with the black cable to negative and red to positive, or as marked if they're not color coded. The connect any other batteries, positive to positive and negative to negative, with the jumper cables for any other batteries. If you accidentally cross them to opposite terminals, you'll melt the jumper cables. The order should be battery, jumper cables, battery, jumper cables, etc, then battery, inverter hookup cables, and inverter, all linked together with all the negatives together and all the positives together.
- 10
  Now just flip the inverter on and it should be supplying power. If it sounds like it's on, plug something inexpensive and simple into the power strip like a lamp, not a computer. If the lamp turns on, then everything is working and you can add the rest of your appliances as needed. Just remember the capacity and time limit. If you hear an alarm-like noise or everything shuts off, you overloaded the inverter by pulling too much power at one time or the batteries are close to running out. Most inverters will work down to an extremely low 10.4 volts though and car batteries don't get that low until they're extremely depleted.
- 11
  Now enjoy being the only one on the block with lights and TV and video games and computers and whatever else. Your TV will turn on but cable TV probably won't work. Satellite TV probably will if you can also power your dish if necessary. Broadcast TV through an antenna might work if the power isn't out at the transmission tower. DSL internet has a small chance of working because of the way the phone infrastructure was set up but cable probably won't. Either way, modems barely take up any power so you might as well try. Just remember to use the power sparingly and be very careful not to short out the terminals or disconnect them from the inverter. And finally, get your hands on a car battery recharger when the power comes back on and recharge all the batteries.

15 Tales of Survival

2012-01-19T19:33:00.000-08:00

Entertaining, if brief, little summaries of some fantastic survival stories.

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates attempted to scale the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. In the midst of a blizzard, Simpson fell and broke his leg leaving it to Yates to get the duo down to safety. Yates lowered them bit-by-bit until their anchor slipped and left them dangling precariously. After a silent hour of deliberation, Yates presumed Simpson to be dead and cut his rope. Simpson fell onto an ice brige below where despite massive injury, dehydration and hypothermia, he managed to crawl five miles over the course of three days where he was reunited with Yates at base camp.

Animated Knots

2012-01-01T22:04:00.001-08:00


Bowline	Clove Hitch

Figure Eight	Fisherman's Knot

Larks Head	Square Knot

Rolling Hitch	Sheepshank

Sheet Bend	Double Sheet Bend

Left Handed Sheet Bend	Thief Knot

Overhand Knot	Timber Hitch

Emergency Food Storage Solutions FAQ Page

2011-12-27T12:57:00.000-08:00

	Preparedness FAQs		How To FAQs
	FAQ by our Customers		How do I Build a Hand Pump
	Where do I get Mylar Bags		Build A Vacuum Sealer For $2.00
	Where do I get Oxygen Absorbers		Build A Solar Water Heater
	Q&A about Water Storage!		Build A Solar Batch Water Heater
	Q&A about Wheat Storage!		Build A Solar Water Still
	How to Sprout		Build A Solar Water Puddle
	Emergency Preparedness Checklist!		Make Your Own Water Filter
	Recipes!		Build A Backyard Greenhouse
			Build your own Generator (on the cheap)
			Build your own Backpack Stove
	Free Food Storage Planning Software		Build an Adobe Oven
			Build a Solar Box Cooker
			Build an Easy Lid Cooker
			Build A Pizza Box Solar Oven
			Build Your Own Solar Food Dryers
			Build Your Own Food Dehydrator
			Build An Underground Shelter
			Build a Garbage Can Root Cellar
			Build An Underground Storage Cellar
			Make Your Own Fire Starters
			How to Make Chlorine Bleach
			Information on how to preserve grains with dry ice.

Who Is Paladin Press?

2011-12-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

Paladin Press is running a nice little 'getting-to-know-ya' series on their employees. Check it out over at their blog.

For the next several weeks, Paladin Planet will be running a series featuring short profiles of various Paladin employees. The profiles are intended to put a face on the various people involved in the acquisition, production, marketing, sales, and distribution of Paladin books and videos. Once an employee is profiled here, we'll move their information to our Facebook page. The first in the series is owner and publisher Peder Lund... Read More

How to make a Low Cost 802.11A Directional Antenna using an old, obsolete PrimeStar Dish

2011-12-15T00:12:00.000-08:00

{Forgive the spelling errors below, I just lifted it from Cornell's site} Check out our radio experimentation books and pamphlets over at Last Earth Distro's retail site.

Our workgroup had been seeking a low cost temporary solution for a point-to-point link to an offsite facility. We needed greater than 10Mbps throughput and thought 802.11a wireless might offer some promise.

At the present moment (June 2002) no manufacturers offer low-cost devices with detactable antennae. This significantly limits range of 802.11a to around 300 Meters under the best conditions. Directional antenna are needed to focus the send/receive energy at further distance.

Inspired by the work of Rob Frohne and his Primestar Wireless Antenna Page - http://www.wwc.edu/~frohro/Airport/Primestar/Primestar.html . I decided the solution was to integrate the low-cost Access Point, directly into an obsolete PrimeStar TV Dish.

After a little experimentation and engineering (the feed horn is a particularly important component). I found that simple modification of a US standard aluminum soda can would work. I obviously have a few mounting and water-proofing details the work-out.

Much to my shock, It Worked!!! I was able to get to the end of my test range easily (~1000ft), and my latop was registering 60% signal strength and 24Mbps connectivity. Now onto the actual installation...

I guess that the side-to-front gain is around 9-10db. The large area of the Primestar dish seemed to help pick-up the much lower energy laptop card well (I had tried previously with a Dish Network dish).

A rough design of the feed horn,
a sode can is 2.5inches, a bit
too big.

Cut top off can, cut
antenna hole 0.6" from
end

Netgear HE102 ready to install.
OBTW, the foil also helps one
ground the can, which is needed.

Original PrimeStar feed horn.
in final install I will modify
it and use its mounting.

For this test, I wrapped the
the unit in foil to eliminate
its effect.

Installed as close as possible to
original location

OK, packing tape will do the
job for now... It works for me.

Fully outfitted PrimeStar Dish
ready for testing...

My test range, I am limited to
around 1000ft.

June 29, 2002 Dean Eckstrom

Lifesaver Bottles and the Water Cone

2011-12-14T19:43:00.000-08:00

These are pretty damn cool... Not as cool as the lifecone or water cone or whatever it's called.

The world's first portable nano-filtration technology. Providing a simple, reliable source of sterile drinking water anywhere.

Survivalist Holiday Season and Shopping for Preppers

2011-12-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

I dug this one out of a survivaltopics forum post from a few years back. It's got some all-around good advice, though I would of course substitute local stores for his big-box recommendations, even if you have to pay a bit more for the same items. They're usually higher quality brands and the money gets recycled in your local community, so that's where the real savings occur.

Of course, if you're shopping for books for Prepper-types this holiday season, we've got you covered. If you're in need of an Eastern Washington Independent Bookstore, wander into Earthlight Books in Walla Walla, Washington and ask my father David what he's got in stock and pick up a Last Earth Distro Catalog while you're at it.

If you're seeking a Western Washington Independent Bookstore specializing in Counterculture and Survivalist Books, drop in to Last Word Books & Press in Olympia, Washington. Last Earth Distro has a little retail corner there, and they've got tons of other fine literature for the clandestine bibliophile.

Otherwise, if you're needing to equip a gear-head, hop on over to The Survival Center: America's Premier Preparedness Center In Continuous Operation Since the early 1970's: Supplier of Family Preparedness, Health, and Survival Supplies - Their warehouse is in McKenna, Washington, just a hop, skip and a jump past Lacey, right next door to the Rampthan Compound. :)

-The Lone Haranguer

From:

11-15-2009

Celticwarrior

Super Moderator

FireSteel Tube Armageddon

Join Date: Jan 2009

Location: Michigan

Posts: 9,414

Survivalist Holiday Season

Ahh, the holidays are here. Thanksgiving (well, for the American contingent at least) marks the beginning of the holiday season, and as such, it is a perfect feeding ground for survivalists. Think about all the bargains just for us (yeah, they weren't made that way, but we adapt!)

1) Food. This is the time to stock up on the pantry, folks. Your local superstore, grocery store and Save-a-lot (not to mention Wallyworld, etc.) will have BIG bargains on canned goods. 25 cent cans of corn, green beans, peas, carrots, yams, cranberry sauce, mushrooms, those cute little french fried onion curls, fruit cocktail, etc. Now is the time to put that stuff up. Look at the price of turkey! When would be a better time to buy a bunch of turkey breasts, slice 'em thin and make jerky than right now when they are just pennies per pound? Heck, you might want to can and freeze some of that too. Also, it's hunting season. If you DON'T hunt (and what's wrong with you if you don't? FREE MEAT!!), call up some of your buddies who DO, and see if they would be willing to pass on some of that yummy venison your way. Hard candy: Halloween is big for chocolate, which doesn't store or travel well. Christmas is the time for hard candy, like mints and fruit bits, and such. They are good all year 'round, but cheapest to buy now. Hickory Farms, Swiss Colony and all the others like that have their big Food Boxes for sale this season in virtually every mall, plus catalogs and the Net. Get some for yourself, but get a few for those Non-Prepper friends. Tell them that it's a good way to start thinking about keeping "a little something" on hand for emergencies. Heck, those meat logs and cheese wheels are delicious all year, but it's especially nice to pull that out when the power goes out and you have nothing but peanut butter in the pantry. Warn them that unlike traditional smoked and cured meats, those logs won't last without refrigeration for more than a couple of months, unless they store them in the freezer. While you are at it, pick up a couple of the cheese wheels that have the parrafin wax coating on them. THOSE will last a good long time untouched. Once you break the wax though, it's back to the fridge or mold will take over just like any cheese. Get smaller ones (1 1/2 lb or so) or waxed blocks (under 1 lb) for best usage. Cookies, crackers and popcorn in tins are big this time of year, and store really well unopened. They are also great Intro To Prepping 101 gifts for your friends and family.

2) The "Under $10 Gift Aisle". You know it, you love it. Target, Wallyworld, Kmart, your local discount store like Big Lots or Family Dollar, or drugstores like CVS, RiteAid and Walgreens. They ALL have a space set aside for those cheap gift items that are meant for the people you are obligated to buy something for but don't want to spend a lot of money on. Great. While you are there, pick up a few things for yourself (the "one for you, one for me" method! ) Shamwows (great camping/backpacking towels), Snuggies (those half-robe, half blanket things? Great as a car blanket for emergencies), PastaMagic (or the many other similar versions---basically a thermos tube that you pour pasta and hot water into. It cooks fast because of steam pressure in the closed container. It has a strainer lid to pour off the water when done. Great for Ramen and other noodles when camping/backpacking.), Fleece Blankets (these things are good at home, in the car, up camping, in a BOB. Throw-sized warm blankets, and during the holidays you see them for $5 to $10 bucks in almost every store!), 12vDC Appliances (all sorts of goodies made for the commuter. Hands free kits for your phone, chargers for everything, coffee cups that plug in and warm your coffee...which can also melt snow if you were stranded along the road, without starting your car heater!), small kitchen appliances (toasters, coffee pots, hot plates, etc. that can run efficiently off of a generator in an emergency). With it being hunting season, you can also pick up great bargains on ammo, disposable hot packs, and multi-packs of 1 lb. propane tanks, as well as several other goodies at your local sporting goods dept. or superstore.

3) Gift cards. Just like money, these things can be a life saver if you are out of cash and need something fast. They are also great "Prepper gifts". Nothing says "just in case" like having that card in your wallet if you need it. Gas cards, fast food cards like McDonalds, and grocery store cards are great and always useful and appreciated. However, you can take that to another level and get cards for Cabela's/Bass Pro Shops for hunting/camping gear, or gift certificates and a catalog from places like Emergency Essentials or Nitro-pak, with enough to buy a 3 day kit or a FD/Dehydrated Food starter pack. People won't usually spend their own money to try something like that out, but they will spend yours without a doubt.

4) Entertainment. Check out the bargains on DVD players and small 12v TVs for camping, game systems and video games of all types, movies and CDs on sale, and Toys R Us/FAO Schwartz or Wallyworld/Kmart type stores have TONS of small stocking stuffer games (great for backpacks and BOBs) and deals on board games for those nights around the fireplace when the power is out, or those simulated TSHTF drills. Books and other diversions are often on sale this time of year too.

5) Gifts. This is the time of year you get to be someone's Secret Santa. Your kids, your spouse, your co-workers or friends. All of them are potential "Preppers" if you give them the right gifts. Look for ways to get them involved with a gift that has a purpose, but says "start thinking about if things go wrong...what will you do?". Car emergency and tool kits, a 3 day "earthquake/hurricane" kit, hobby kits like leatherworking, electronics, or other crafts, some of the items I listed above like the $10 or less or the Meat and Cheese gifts, or a good book on the subject of survival. Could be a good manual like the SAS guide or Worst Case Scenario book, or it could be a novel with a survival twist, like The Stand or Lucifer's Hammer, or it could be a non-fiction book like One Man's Wilderness, Into the Wild, or Perfect Storm. Maybe one of the gift cards I mentioned. As long as you let them know that you are thinking of them not just today when the sun is shining and all is well, but in case something goes wrong and you are not there at the moment, any good gift can be a Prepper gift.

Hope this has inspired a few to go out and get some things, for themselves and others, this holiday season. If you are going to spend money anyway, why not spend it wisely and to a good purpose.

__________________
"A free citizenry should never abide a government that seeks control over it's populous rather than service to them" -- Celticwarrior

Last edited by Celticwarrior; 11-15-2009 at 20:12.

How to eat wild stuff and not get poisoned

2011-12-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

(how-to)

by haqiqat

Thu Jun 16 2011 at 6:19:04

Let's play pretend for a moment. Are you with me?

Let's pretend you can't go down to the supermarket for food to eat.

In fact, let's pretend that there is not a supermarket for one hundred miles in any direction, and you don't have any food with you. In this pretend land, you are stranded in the wilderness. Perhaps your GPS navigation unit directed you to detour onto a closed mining road in the middle of nowhere, and you didn't have the sense to second-guess it until your rental car got stuck in seasonal mud, and you decide to head out into the woods instead of following the road back.

Does this seem unlikely? It's happened twice in 2011 so far. Don't discount the possibility.

What this guide is:
This is a guide to wild things that are 100% safe to eat.

What this guide is not:
This is NOT a guide to figuring out if something may or may not be safe to eat. It does not cover plant identification, edge cases, things that are poisonous unless processed in a specific way, etc. If that's what you're looking for, I would suggest starting in chapters 8, 9, and 10 of the US Army Field Manual 21-76.

Berries
This is very easy to make 100% foolproof. Unless you are in the Amazon basin, where it is reported that there is a potentially toxic exception to this rule, aggregate berries are all safe to eat. Aggregate berries look like raspberries, blackberries, and Boysenberries - clusters of smaller "droplets" that may or may not have hair, seeds, or tiny leaves mixed in.

Unless you are completely sure, do not eat non-aggregate berries - berries that are shaped like blueberries or gooseberries. In contrast with aggregate berries, which are a sure bet, upwards of 90% of white non-aggregate berries are poisonous; more black/blue berries are edible than red berries, but this will be dependent on what species are found in the area. Depending on the biome and season, you're much better off going hungry than playing berry-roulette, and just because animals eat a berry doesn't mean it's not poisonous to people!

Green Stuff
Most "green stuff" is not outright toxic, but can definitely cause you some distress. It's not a great idea to eat random handfuls of leaves or grass or moss. It probably won't kill you, but it can definitely cause you to wish you were dead. I've avoided listing anything that requires very much knowledge of plants or identification characteristics.

Note: You should use caution when eating any plant, particularly plants found in the water - they can harbor any creepy crawly that may have been living in the water, includinggiardia cryptosporidium among others. When in doubt, boil the hell out of it.

The lateral roots (rhizomes) of the common cattail are edible raw and high in nutrition, though they are tough and stringy. In fact, all parts of the plant are edible, including the flower spike at the top if you can get to it before it opens up and starts to grow hair. Not having the corndog-looking top does make them a bid harder to separate from the other reeds, so if you aren't sure, don't eat it.

Acorn meal (the yellow-orange stuff inside of acorns) is a great food, assuming there are acorns around. Don't gather fallen acorns, they very often are rotten inside or full of foul-tasting worms and worm poop. If no ripe, hanging acorns are available to pick or shake down, check each fallen acorn, including under the cap, for an entry hole made by the worms. Discard wormy acorns, unless you're hungry enough to eat them anyway. Smash acorns open with a rock (or something) and eat the acorn meal raw, or make a paste and cook it to try to improve the taste. If they are bitter, you can leech them in water for a while.

Most nuts with shells are edible, but don't mess around with any that you don't immediately recognize from the big dish on the coffee table during the holidays. Don't eat wild cashews, the fruit is quite poisonous, as are the nuts unless properly roasted.

Mushrooms
Don't touch them unless you really know what you're doing. Seriously. If you don't know what you're doing, you're better off risking starvation than messing around with mushrooms.

Critters
Never eat wild critters raw! Always skin and dress them! And the best way to cook them is to boil the hell out of them, both to kill parasites and bacteria, and also to save all the nutrients you can rather than letting them drip out.

If it has fur, you can eat it, providing you:

Avoid livers, spinal cords, and brains unless you're sure you know what you're supposed to be looking to avoid.
Avoid intestines and stomachs in non-herbivores. The stomach contents of strict herbivores can be eaten, if you're hungry enough to try. Lungs are delicious boiled, as are eyeballs. Discard small organs if you don't know what they are. Bone marrow is a good source of nutrition, but again, don't mess around with the spine.

If it has feathers:

Follow the same rules as with furred creatures, but do not eat organs, stomach contents, or gizzards of wild birds. These parts are potentially chock full of parasites, and birds eat plenty of stuff (like non-aggregate berries) that are not good for you to eat.
Do not eat the skin or outer layer of fat, particularly with seabirds. The skin and outer layer of fat concentrate toxins and parasites in wild birds. These are not like KFC chickens, skin and dress them just like any other critter.

If it has scales and doesn't live in the water:

Eat the meat, don't mess around with the rest.
Particularly for smaller scaled critters, if the skin seems greasy, oily, or foul-smelling, don't mess around with it at all. This is probably mucous that falls between irritating and toxic, and will get all over everything no matter how you try to cook it.
If it's a snake, you are in luck. Snakes are basically a tube of pure lean meat that is full of goop, though sometimes they have a poison injector on the end. Make sure you cut well back from the head, as in some species the poison glands can extend beyond what looks like the limit of the head and into what looks like the "neck".

If it has scales and lives in the water (and it's not a snake):

There are no poisonous freshwater fish, and very few poisonous saltwater fish. Don't mess around with pufferfish or any brightly colored saltwater fish. Don't mess around with turtles, unless you can identify and therefore not eat box turtles. They eat the mushrooms that you aren't supposed to eat, and can become toxic themselves.
Fish under two inches can be cooked and eaten whole.
Fish over two inches should be gutted and cleaned out.
Never eat fish raw in a survival situation. Don't eat fish guts, don't eat fish gills, don't eat fish eyes or brains. What's left is fair game - they're basically two slabs of meat held together by a convenient skeleton.

If it doesn't have fur, feathers, or scales:

Don't mess with it. Seriously. Leave it alone. There's a good chance it's pretty dangerous in some way, and we're assuming for the purposes of guaranteed safety that you are clueless. Sorry.
Some of the few exceptions to this rule are crayfish, lobsters, clams, and other things that are immediately recognizable as food. Don't eat them raw, even oysters - always boil the hell out of them. Don't eat mussels or other saltwater mud-dwellers in the summer months in the tropics, or during red tides.
Frogs are another exception to this rule. They are basically the opposite of a snake. They are a big bag of goop with a couple of edible legs attached.Stay away from non-green frogs, particularly in the tropics.

That about wraps it up. Yes, I realize that there are about a hojillion readily identifiable fruits, plants, herbs, and properly labeled cans of food to be found all over the world. This is for people who don't even want to bother with learning to discern leaf shapes, let alone flower colors, stalk layers, fruit differentiation, odor, etc. and so forth. I have also left out the identification of common fruits, though it would have probably padded the writeup a bit, particularly the tropical fruits for my less-adventurous temperate readers. And also, yes, I realize that discarding all of those organs and other bits from critters is a waste of potential nutrients, but if I'm not talking about leaf shapes, why would I talk about liver flukes or discolored spinal cord? In conclusion, I leave you with these two very general and always applicable tips:

If you don't know what it is and it's not on the list, don't mess with it.
Even if you know what it is, if it IS an animal, or has been messed with by an animal, boil the hell out of it.

References include USA FM 21-76, various US Mil survival schools, and plenty of time in the back country.

I was saved from the error of classifying frogs with the scaly things by the intrepid DonJaime, though, as even he admits, this ruins the fairly elegant rule set. Alas.

doyle insists you needn't boil mulberries. And really, you needn't boil berries or fruits in general, unless you suspect that a critter got to them first.

Impressive Wilderness Survival or Elaborate Hoax? The Long, Strange History of Fake Survivalism

2011-11-29T06:28:00.000-08:00

The great thing about a show like Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel is that you can watch other people sink into quicksand in the Moab Desert, bite the heads off snakes and get dumped into a piranha-infested jungle river -- all from the comfort of your own La-Z-Boy recliner!

Bear Grylls: Knowles' descendant?

Of course, since it's a so-called "reality" show, the action should bear some resemblance to actual events. Man vs. Wild's British star, former Special Forces op Bear Grylls, has had some credibility problems lately. The producers claim that their rugged hero "strands himself in popular wilderness destinations where tourists often find themselves lost or in danger," but according to an eye-popping story in the UK-based Daily Mail, Grylls was spending some of his evenings ensconced in luxury hotels, where the amenities included Internet access and blueberry pancake breakfasts.

On a trip to California where he was supposedly surviving on "just a water bottle, a cup and a flint for making fire," he had room service. And was he really stranded on a remote Hawaiian archipelago as a "real-life Robinson Crusoe"? Naw, the paper said, he had the keys to a motel room. Even the "wild mustangs" he lassoed in the Sierra Nevadas were tame and delivered by trailer.

When I heard Grylls' sad story last year it was rather serendipitous, because I'd spent the last eight months working on a biography of a man who, long before television, was the prototype reality show contestant. And he was charged with being a fraud, too!

Knowles disappears into the forest, August 1913. / Naked in the Woods

My book is entitled Naked in the Woods: Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of Frontier Fakery (Da Capo), and it tells the story of a former trapper and hunting guide who, in August of 1913, left his clothes behind and disappeared into the forests of Maine for two months to prove he could live off the land. It was a publicity stunt for the struggling Boston Postnewspaper, and it couldn't have been better timed.

In 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes was being serialized to tumultuous applause, and Jack London's Call of the Wild was still a bestseller. The frontier had been closed, and Americans were leaving the farm for industrial jobs in the big cities. Were we losing our connection to nature? Not if Joe Knowles could help it.

"When I emerge in October, I shall be sufficiently clothed to walk the city streets," he proclaimed in the Post. "From cap to heels, I shall be fitted out with at least one [outfit], and may possibly have a variety to suit weather conditions." He said he expected to dine regularly on broiled frog's legs, and promised to send out regular birch bark dispatches to the newspaper, written in charcoal taken from his cooking fires.

One of Knowles' charcoal sketches from his (disputed) ordeal in the wilderness. / Naked in the Woods

The dispatches told of many adventures, and were illustrated with his vivid sketches. He trapped a bear, and emerged wearing its skin to a huge welcome. As many as 200,000 people thronged to catch a glimpse of the Nature Man on his first day back in civilization. Co-eds lined up to pinch his muscles, and Harvard's director of physical education proclaimed him the most perfect specimen of his age.

The crowds greet the Nature Man in Boston, circa October 1913. / Naked in the Woods

But just as Knowles was embarking on a lucrative vaudeville career (making fire on stage was among his tricks) the rival Boston American bannered that he was a fake. Instead of a crude lean-to, he'd been staying at a comfortably appointed cabin, eating canned beans. The bearskin was bought from a trapper, the American said, and it had bullet holes in it.

Knowles fired back with a spirited defense, and the back and forth was a tonic for the circulation departments of both papers. It was small wonder then, that when tempers cooled a bit the Hearst papers (which included the American) made Knowles a lucrative offer of their own. He went into the woods twice more, with the first trip (on the California/Oregon border) interrupted by the start of World War I and the second in the Adirondacks aborted by the Eve to the Nature Man's Adam (the comely Elaine Hammerstein, star of stage and screen).

Knowles in his bearskin: Were there bullet holes? / Naked in the Woods

Bear Grylls is still working. He puts faces in front of screens, as Knowles got them reading the newspapers. And natural fakery continues unabated. As the Guardian newspaper's George Monbiot reports in "Planet of the Fakes": "Natural history programs lie more frequently than any other documentaries. They film animals in cages and pretend they have been filmed in the wild. They import tame predators, and release them to hunt wild prey. They cut between uneventful sequences to suggest that animals are interacting. Most of the soundtrack is added to the film in the studio: the noise of antlers clashing is likely to be the noise of technicians dueling with broomsticks."

What's worse, the programs make it appear that the animals live in pristine wilderness, when in reality their habitats are ever shrinking and hemmed in by humanity.

Oh well, it's all about production values, isn't it? Joe Knowles never had kids, but he certainly had many descendants.

2005 Interview with Michael Hoy, Editor and Founder of Loompanics, Unlimited

2011-11-24T16:47:00.000-08:00

Originally published at Sunni's Salon, by Sunni Maravillosa. Please see the contact page for reprint information. Thanks Sunni, for the rights to republish this interview in full! - The Lone Haranguer at Last Earth Distro.
Long live independent, radical booksellers, publishers and printers in the Pacific Northwest!
We are one of the entities who helped buy out Loompanics back in 2005 when they closed their doors, and we have a lot of their titles available still. Please contact us at lastearthdistro@gmail.com for more details.

with Mike Hoy

SUNNI: Hi Mike. Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview. How's life in beautiful, wet Washington these days?

MIKE: Life is good in beautiful, wet Washington. Actually, Port Townsend gets about half the rain Seattle does.

SUNNI: Ah, so you're not in the rain belt. I'd heard how gray and rainy the Seattle area is, but it wasn't until I was there -- all too briefly, earlier this year -- that I experienced it for myself. I think maybe the sun was out for about three hours total, in the four or five days I was there ... Is the weather responsible for all the coffee addicts around there? [laughing]

MIKE: Weather in Seattle is usually quite nice in the summer -- most of the rain comes in the winter months, when we get rain instead of snow. I don't know what the story on coffee is -- me, I like just plain coffee, and I think Starbucks et al suck out loud.

SUNNI: I prefer unflavored coffee too, but with cream. And yeah, Starbucks coffee isn't all that great. Maybe it was the mermaid -- the version with her breasts showing -- that's more responsible than they realize for their early success ... [laughing]

MIKE: [laughs] I have never understood the concept of "flavored coffee." Coffee is the flavor that I want. I would no more put chocolate syrup or something in a cup of coffee than I would put it in a glass of beer.

SUNNI: Exactly! You know, you're the first person I've interviewed whom I don't really know at all. In preparing for our conversation, I read a quasi-interview on the Loompanics web site, but it reveals very little about you, the brain trust behind Loompanics. What would you like people to know about you?

MIKE: Well, once upon a time, I was an accountant working for a CPA firm. It didn't suit me, so I went off on my own trip. Politically, I first became aware in the tenth grade or so, when I was a Goldwater Republican. Then I was into Ayn Rand for a while, before settling on anarcho-libertarianism. Actually, I am a political solipsist, the anarchists have too many rules for me, and as for the Libertarians, what a bunch of uptight corporate-sucking wimps they are -- yech!

SUNNI: Anarchists have too many rules? [laughing] Okay Mike, I'll bite -- what do you mean?

MIKE: You should see them! Zines such as The Match and Anarchy and so on, are always denouncing other fellow anarchist absolutists for not being proper anarchists. You should check them out. A while back, the anarchist guru Murray Bookchin let out a screed titled Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, which is typical of this genre. If you aren't the right kind of anarchist, then fuck you and the horse you rode in on. [laughs] Really, you should look into this -- it can provide a few brief moments of entertainment before you shout, "A pox on all your houses."

SUNNI: I will -- and thanks for the tip! The story behind the Loompanics name is amusing, and tantalizing with its mention of "all your publishing projects". What are some of those other projects?

MIKE: My pre-Loompanics catalog publishing projects included an index to National Lampoon magazine, a collection of paintings by the SF/Fantasy artist Stephen Fabian, and a little manual titled Slugs, on which foreign coins worked best in parking meters, and where to get them cheap.

SUNNI: What an interesting, diverse set of projects! So, how long has Loomps been around? How many books have you published?

MIKE: The first Loompanics Catalog came out in fall of 1975, so this marks my thirtieth year. I would guess that I have published around 300 books by now.

SUNNI: Congrats on thirty years in the business! That's no small accomplishment, especially these days. From all the language on the Loomps site cautioning customers about books being seized, one might think that's a serious liability for your business. How often does that happen? Is any particular country noteworthy for its five-finger treatment of your orders? What book or books seem to be seized most often?

MIKE: Books are seized by government bodies far less often than, say, 20 years ago. Canada used to be particularly bad. Right now Australia is probably the worst. Just about any book on drugs is likely to rouse the ire of those who would protect us from thinking for ourselves. American prisoners often have their books confiscated, as well -- that is why we warn them about it. Various prisons have offered various rationales for not allowing books about sex, drugs, knife fighting, lock picking, etc.

SUNNI: Interesting ... I would've guessed former Soviet countries and South American ones to be worse than supposedly freer ones. That drugs are so scary to them isn't so surprising, unfortunately. Which has had a larger impact on the books you choose to publish, Mike -- the Hit Man lawsuit against Paladin Press, or the USA Patriot Act?

MIKE: The Hit Man lawsuit against Paladin Press has had a chilling effect amongst small press publishers, not just in what people will publish, but in what people are able to sell, since as a result, Paladin dropped about 50 titles from their line. The USA Patriot Act doesn't scare me much, insofar as being a publisher goes, but the draconian cloud of the entire Act scares the hell out of me as a citizen.

SUNNI: One might think that the current political climate would have a chilling effect on your business; but it's also possible that more people are becoming interested in some of your diverse topics -- and that they, and long-time customers alike, are buying your books in anticipation of a day when books like yours aren't allowed to be sold. What do your sales trends -- and what you're hearing from your customers -- indicate?

MIKE: I don't think the current political climate has had an effect on our sales one way or the other -- unlike, say, the Y2K scare, which greatly increased the sale of survival and independent living books. For the past 5 years or so, our sales have been dropping, but I think it is just the lousy economy in general that accounts for this. If you measure the American economy the way Wall Street does -- by toting up corporate profits -- they tell you the economy is booming, that we are in a recovery, etc. But if you measure the American economy according to the disposable income the average Joe has in his pocket after downsizing, taxes, etc., you will find a different story. We often have customers tell us that they really appreciate the job we are doing, and occasionally someone will tell us that our catalog isn't as good as when we had dozens of explosives manuals in it.

SUNNI: I can see that; I miss the explosives titles myself. It also strikes me that part of the picture might be the unevenness of the books you publish. I don't mean the variety -- that's great -- but the quality of the books themselves. For example, I know Claire Wolfe's books are going to be solid; but a self-employment book you recently published was a great disappointment to me -- it didn't have much that common sense wouldn't tell someone, or that a few hours of web research could provide. I've heard similar things from others, too ... I'm not intending to beat up on you, Mike, but trying to offer some food for thought. I'd imagine it's harder to get really good writers too, with the increase in self-publishing we've seen in the past few years. Is that consistent with your experience?

MIKE: Well, it's always been hard to find good writers, and not every book is as perfect as I would like it to be. I actually like the increase in self-publishing, because we can pick up the good stuff as retail items. But instead of self-publishing, what we are seeing a lot of times these days is vanity publishing, i.e., subsidized publishing. For the most part, these publishers are very unfriendly to booksellers, offering only minuscule discounts. I know of a few cases where I have seen a good book that I just simply cannot offer in the catalog because I can't make a profit on them. At least one such author has told us that he would have been better off with a small press publisher than with the vanity publisher he had bring his book out.

SUNNI: Ah, okay. We touched on this briefly earlier, but I didn't realize until we started talking that a lot of Loompanics' diversity comes directly from you. What are some of the books that have had a strong impact on you?

MIKE: The early National Lampoon, of course, the Firesign Theatre, and The Whole Earth Catalog, to name just some. Also, science fiction in general, when I was in my early teens. If I had to pick just one thing that inspired me the most, it would be The Whole Earth Catalog -- a truly paradigm-rattling publication!

SUNNI: I imagine you heard about Laissez Faire Books' decision not to carry Vin Suprynowicz's novel The Black Arrow. What's your take on that?

MIKE: My take on it is that I am not at all surprised. The organized "libertarians" are so pusillanimous and life-hating that this is exactly what anyone with a brain should expect from them. I have seen some libertarians trying to excuse this egregious action by calling it a "business" decision -- that Laissez Faire was somehow following their customers' demands by refusing to sell a novel by a writer who is right now arguably the single most brilliant exponent of the rights of the individual against the forces of conformity. What a bunch of baloney!

Laissez Faire, like all the major "libertarian" propaganda outlets, is not a business at all -- it is a charity. Kathy, or whoever is responsible for that decision [Kathleen Hiserodt], is not serving her customers, but is sucking up to whom she perceives to be her donors. She is afraid of offending someone who might give her money. It is the same among all the "libertarians". I mean, doesn't it strike you as odd that the bunch of people who proclaim themselves as knowing more about economics and business and the market than everybody else on earth avoid the marketplace like poison? They have all gone to the government and asked to be granted non-profit status -- i.e., they have asked the government to protect them from the very economic forces they claim to advocate. Why don't the "libertarians" quit running their mouths and show us by example how much they love the marketplace?

SUNNI: [laughing] Don't hold back, Mike -- tell me what you really think! Seriously, I think you've hit on something that's a problem with a lot of libertarian think tanks -- they claim that being able to deduct contributions from one's taxes is important in order to get funding. Through my work at Free-Market.Net, I've seen a difference that offering tax deductions can make to a charitable organization. It seems to be a good tactical decision, but you're right, it isn't the most principled one. But why do pro-freedom people expect that tax deduction? If we're going to dismantle the system, let's get started already ... and getting back to the subject, if people aren't willing to pay straight up for what an organization wants to do, why should they do it? I think it's a case of "too many chiefs, and not enough Indians".

MIKE: Yeah, why don't they "get funding" by engaging in honest trade, which they claim is their most deeply held principle? Nobody has ever done more to discredit an ideology by espousing it than the "libertarians".

SUNNI: That seems to be the case for a non-trival number of them, sadly. How do you balance what your customers seem to want from Loompanics with your personal views? Is the customer always right, or do you reserve the right to reject book proposals or other material for personal reasons? Is there any subject that you would flat-out refuse to publish on?

MIKE: Actually, I don't "balance" my views with anything when I am selecting books for the catalog. If I like a book, I will put it in the catalog -- as long as it will sell. Over time, I have had to drop some truly outstanding titles, simply because hardly anyone ever bought them -- e.g.,The Thinking Body, a book written for dancers that really showed you how to integrate your mind and body. There is not much point in having even a truly outstanding book in a catalog, if it is not selling.

My rejecting proposals or books has more to do with space limitations than with any personal squeamishness. Of course, I reject books that I think are stupid, e.g., most religious tracts, or books advocating institutional solutions to personal problems, or books that contain false information. For example, lots and lots of my customers have asked that Loompanics carry The Anarchist Cookbook, but I refuse to sell it because I think the book is full of falsehoods and bullshit. Over the decades, I have often been asked if there is any subject that I would refuse to publish on, and the only thing I have been able to come up with is that I would not publish a book on how to bomb abortion clinics, or otherwise interfere with abortion clinics. Although any such book would necessarily contain material on general explosives and infiltration techniques, I just plain think it is mean-spirited to single out abortion providers.

SUNNI: You're right, it is, especially when there are so many other, more deserving targets. The quasi-interview I mentioned a bit ago contains the statement "America needs to loosen up". That seems to be even more true now ... what kind of loosening up would you recommend first?

MIKE: In my opinion, America needs to loosen up the most about drugs in general, and marijuana in particular. The cannabis plant is the single most useful plant that exists on this planet, and it is truly insane to throw people in jail for possessing it.

SUNNI: Yep. How do you think "we, the people" have morphed from being a hardy, self-reliant lot into a bunch of busybodies who are more interested in what our neighbors may be doing than taking care of our own lives? I mean mainstream Americans mostly, not the pro-freedom rabble, with some exceptions.

MIKE: That is puzzling to me, because now the baby boomers are running the country, and just about all of us smoked dope when we were young, and know it is not only harmless, but beneficial. Now it's asshole boomer parents who are leading the anti-dope crusades. If I had a dollar for every party I was at in the 70s where we were passing a joint around and telling each other, "Sss [inhalation sound] ... Wow, man! In about like 20 years, man, our generation is gonna be the Congress and we will be passing the laws, and, like ... sss... we can get rid of the whole pig trip, man ...", I could buy a lot of albums, man. [laughs] It just goes to show you that it takes a pig to be a pig, and if you become a pig, then you are going to be a pig, regardless if you were a nice guy before you became a pig. Pigs is pigs!

SUNNI: [laughing] And pigs will never fly ... While we're comparing past and present, Mike, what do you make of the observation that The Onion seems to be more in the prediction business than satire these days?

MIKE: I'm not sure what you mean; I'm not familiar with The Onion.

SUNNI: Oh! I guess I assumed that since you're a Lampoon fan you'd know about The Onion -- it's available online and as a print zine, and it features some pretty wicked political satire. Here are some headlines: from this week's issue, Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth; from last week, God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again, and an amusing Virgo horoscope: "Despite your claims of historical importance and the need to remember America's fallen heroes, the authorities continue to refuse to grant you the permits required by your avid group of drug-war re-enactors." You might want to check it out. Out of all the books that Loompanics has published, what one are you proudest of having published?

MIKE: That is a very difficult question to answer -- I like 'em all. But to single out just a few, let's say: The Art & Science of Dumpster Diving, Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture, Travel Trailer Homesteading Under $5,000, Guerrilla Capitalism, Eat Well for 99 Cents a Meal, Methods of Disguise, Understanding U.S. Identity Documents ... where can I stop? I guess if I had to pick just one, I would say Guerrilla Capitalism, a how-to-do-it book on dodging taxes in the underground economy. I think that one most fully lays out what Loompanics is all about. It is out of print now, but most of the material has been recycled into Deep Inside the Underground Economy.

SUNNI: That sounds interesting; I'll have to check into that one. And I'd agree on Dumpster Diving -- that's a very good book. What kinds of things do you do for fun, Mike? Washington is so pretty, especially the western part of the state, with all the evergreens. When you're not busy with Loompanics, do you enjoy the outdoors? If so, what activities do you like?

MIKE: Washington is beautiful -- I have fallen in love with Port Townsend, and don't see myself ever leaving here. For outdoor fun, I love walking -- not hiking, where you have to have equipment. Other fun things I do are: I read a tremendous amount, I love good movies, and I piddle around with miniatures -- I recently finished a basement recreation room that fits on two bookshelves -- took me almost 5 years to get it right. I am also a fan of old-time radio shows and have quite a collection of adventure, western, and horror shows. And, oh, yeah, I collect jokers from decks of cards. I have about 1,400.

SUNNI: Needing equipment to walk is stupid, I agree. Is there anything special about the jokers you collect, or will you take any old joker a customer might want to send you after reading this?

MIKE: [laughs] Well, I didn't mean this to be a call for jokers! I specialize in what I call true jokers -- i.e., the court jester type, which I think is descended from the fool in medieval Tarot decks.

SUNNI: What do you see as the greatest challenge facing individualists today?

MIKE: The biggest challenge facing individuals -- as opposed to individualists -- is how to keep your head straight in the maw of conformist forces, most of which these days are coming from the private sector rather that the public sector. Loompanics has just published the latest book by one of the most brilliant writers working today, Claire Wolfe: How to Kill the Job Culture Before It Kills You: Living a Life of Autonomy in a Wage-Slave Society, that goes a long way towards effectively grappling with this problem.

SUNNI: Your answer hit upon why I chose the word individualist instead of individuals, Mike. Everybody is an individual, but not everyone values his or her individuality sufficiently to embrace it. Even individualists can have problems sometimes with conformist forces. I suppose it's a never-ending struggle between our need for autonomy and independence and our social nature.

MIKE: I think the school system, especially the public school system, is really dumbing kids down, even more than ever before. Their ideal is for no one to be an individual, but to make all kids want to see themselves as part of a group. I'm sure glad I'm not in grade school or high school right now! [laughs] Well, if I was in high school, I could just quit, but if I was in the 3rd grade, I would be one of the kids who they would dope down with Prozac and Ritalin, and other chemical straitjackets. If we had had all this fascist shit when I was a child, they would have deliberately destroyed my brain with drugs -- as part of the War on Drugs!

SUNNI: I think most freedom lovers have a similar story, don't you? We never seem to fit in, sometimes even with other freedom lovers. But, speaking of being young, who inspired and motivated you when you were young? Who do you count among your heroes?

MIKE: I have been inspired and motivated by lots of people, including Edgar Allan Poe, Ayn Rand, especially the brilliant and late Michael O'Donohue, and Lysander Spooner. My heroes include Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Paul Krassner, Michael O'Donohue, Lysander Spooner, Durk & Sandy, Pedr Lund of Paladin Press, my late father when he was young and strong, and Stewart Brand of The Whole Earth Catalog.

SUNNI: Lots of good folks in there. Before we wind up the conversation here, what new books do you have in the pipeline at Loompanics? Are you working on any other new projects that you're excited about?

MIKE: Claire Wolfe's book How to Kill the Job Culture Before It Kills You will be out this week. Other books in the pipeline include another underground economy book, and a book about modern-day train robbing.

SUNNI: Great stuff! I gotta tell you, Mike, as I was looking through your catalog I had several ideas for book projects to pitch to you ... maybe I'll actually write up one or two for you to laugh at ... [laughing]

MIKE: I am always looking for interesting book projects, Sunni, so feel free to send in some ideas!

SUNNI: Thanks, Mike. We'll see what happens ... Right now my children are my first priority, and I am perpetually short on time to do all I want. Thank you very much for all your time today. It's been a pleasure getting to know you, and kicking around some issues with a fellow individualist and free thinker. I'm hoping next time I'm out that way I'll be able to meet you and Gia in person -- coffees or beer will be on me.

MIKE: Thank you. It has been my pleasure. I would love to actually get together in person with you! Keep up the good work.

Wikipedia's Page on Food Preservation

2011-11-22T07:56:00.000-08:00

'Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food to stop or slow down spoilage (loss of quality, edibility or nutritional value) and thus allow for longer storage.

Preservation usually involves preventing the growth of bacteria, yeasts, fungi, and other micro-organisms (although some methods work by introducing benign bacteria, or fungi to the food), as well as retarding the oxidation of fats which cause rancidity. Food preservation can also include processes which inhibit visual deterioration that can occur during food preparation; such as the enzymatic browning reaction in apples after they are cut.

Many processes designed to preserve food will involve a number of food preservation methods. Preserving fruit, by turning it into jam, for example, involves boiling (to reduce the fruit’s moisture content and to kill bacteria, yeasts, etc.), sugaring (to prevent their re-growth) and sealing within an airtight jar (to prevent recontamination). There are many traditional methods of preserving food that limit the energy inputs and reduce carbon footprint.^[1]

Maintaining or creating nutritional value, texture and flavour is an important aspect of food preservation, although, historically, some methods drastically altered the character of the food being preserved. In many cases these changes have now come to be seen as desirable qualities – cheese, yoghurt and pickled onions being common examples.

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