Russians will Adopt 9x19 mm Handgun

The Firearms Blog is reporting that the Russians are planning on adopting a new caliber and new handgun to replace the Makarov. The adoption of a high capacity auto with accessory rails doesn't surprise me. However, the adoption of the 9 mm Parabellum--the same round as used by NATO and the U.S.--does. However, it probably should be interpreted as a belated acknowledgment that 9x19mm is the most widely used combat pistol round in the world, and found almost everywhere.

In a happy world, this would result in seeing Russian Makarovs and 9x18mm ammunition showing up in the surplus firearms market. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Second Mayan Inscription Confirms December 2012 End Date

For those readers who are interested, it appears that archaeologists have located a second inscription confirming December 21, 2012, as the end of the Mayan calender cycle. From the Daily Mail:

Archaeologists have found carvings in a stone staircase at the La Corona dig site in Guatemala which confirm the ‘end date’ of the Maya calendar, December 21, 2012.

It is only the second known inscription which confirms this 'end date'.

* * *

The 1,300-year-old inscription is described as one of the most significant hieroglyphic finds in decades.

Most of the inscription, carved into a stone abandoned by looters, deals with political history - but there is a reference to 'the end' in a passage about a king's return.

‘This was a time of great political turmoil in the Maya region and this king felt compelled to allude to a larger cycle of time that happens to end in 2012,’ says David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin, who led a dig at the site.

Photos and more at the link.

AK-12 Prototype Testing

The Firearm Blog has linked to a video showing testing of the AK-12 prototypes.

Solar Flare Burns Away Atmosphere of Exo-Planet

Interesting (unless it should happen to us). From the Daily Mail:

A few hours before Hubble observed the planet for the second time, Swift recorded a powerful flash of radiation coming from the surface of the star, in which the star briefly became 4 times brighter in X-rays.

Co-author Peter Wheatley, from the University of Warwick, said: 'X-ray emissions are a small part of the star's total output, but it is the part that it is energetic enough to drive the evaporation of the atmosphere.

'This was the brightest X-ray flare from HD 189733A of several observed to date, and it seems very likely that the impact of this flare on the planet drove the evaporation seen a few hours later with Hubble.'

X-rays are energetic enough to heat the gas in the upper atmosphere to tens of thousands of degrees, hot enough to escape the gravitational pull of the giant planet.

A similar process occurs, albeit less dramatically, when a space weather event such as a solar flare hits the Earth's ionosphere, disrupting communications.

Something Energetic Occurred in 774 A.D. -- A Supernova?

I had recently posted a link to an article discussing an unusual spike in Carbon-14 levels in 774 A.D. without any known explanation. Now a possible answer from an ancient manuscript:

An eerie "red crucifix" seen in Britain's evening sky in ad 774 may be a previously unrecognized supernova explosion — and could explain a mysterious spike in carbon-14 levels in that year's growth rings in Japanese cedar trees. The link is suggested today in a Nature Correspondence by a US undergraduate student with a broad interdisciplinary background and a curious mind1.

A few weeks ago, Jonathon Allen, a biochemistry major at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was listening to the Nature podcast when he heard about a team of researchers in Japan who had found an odd spike in carbon-14 levels in tree rings. The spike probably came from a burst of high-energy radiation striking the upper atmosphere, increasing the rate at which carbon-14 is formed (see 'Mysterious radiation burst recorded in tree rings').

But there was a problem: the only known causes of such radiation are supernova explosions or gigantic solar flares, and the researchers knew of no such events in ad 774 or 775, the dates indicated by the tree rings.

Intrigued, Allen hit the Internet. "I just did a quick Google search," he says.

His long-standing interest in history was helpful, he notes. "I knew that going that far back, there's very limited written history," he says. "The only things I'd ever seen or heard of were religious texts and 'chronicles' that listed kings and queens, wars and things of that nature."

His search found the eighth-century entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at the Avalon Project, an online library of historical and legal documents hosted by Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Scrolling down to the year ad 774, Allen found a reference to a "red crucifix" that appeared in the heavens "after sunset".

DOJ Refuses to Prosecute Contempt Charges Against Holder...

... before they even receive the request.

The Department of Justice, following longstanding practice by prior administrations, is declining to prosecute Attorney General Eric Holder for being in contempt of Congress, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said Thursday in a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

* * *


In response, Republicans noted that they had not yet transmitted the contempt proceeding to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, whom federal law accords the authority to determine whether to prosecute.

Yet another example of how powerless Congress had let itself become.

Fomenting Racial Hatred.

The Ulsterman Report has indicated that increased racial tensions, and even violence, will feature in this election cycle. With that in mind:

General T.A.C.O. (Taking All Capitalists Out) of the New Black Panther Party had some less than encouraging words for white people this week. Mr. Taco, speaking on NBPP Radio on Sunday, decided to let white America know that the NBPP will “hunt” their “pink asses down.” Hunting white people down will serve to accomplish General Taco’s other stated goal of “destroying white supremacy and capitalism.”

Gen. Taco also justifies his killing of white people because of their “history” of pushing “crack, AIDS and unemployment“ on black men and women in order to ”exterminate” them.

 (Full story and video here). The actual statement is worse than reported in the quote above.

(H/t Weasel Zippers).

A Sign of the Times...

Stockton, Cal., headed toward bankruptcy filing. (Full story here).

Assad Says Syria Is Now At War

This is a big concession on his part:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared on Tuesday that his country was at war and ordered his new government to spare no effort to achieve victory, as the worst fighting of the 16-month conflict reached the outskirts of the capital.

Video published by activists recorded heavy gunfire and explosions in suburbs of Damascus. A trail of fresh blood on a sidewalk in the suburb of Qudsiya led into a building where one casualty was taken. A naked man writhed in pain, his body pierced by shrapnel.

Syria's state news agency SANA said "armed terrorist groups" had blocked the old road from Damascus to Beirut.

The declaration that Syria is at war marks a change of rhetoric from Assad, who had long dismissed the uprising against him as the work of scattered militants funded from abroad.

"We live in a real state of war from all angles," Assad told a cabinet he appointed on Tuesday in a speech broadcast on state television.

"When we are in a war, all policies and all sides and all sectors need to be directed at winning this war."

(Full story here) (H/t Drudge Report).

Genes Reveal Grain of Truth to Queen of Sheba Story

From the New Scientist:

Luca Pagani of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, examined samples of Ethiopian genomes and noticed that some individuals had components of both African and non-African lineages. Delving deeper, Pagani and his colleagues discovered that the non-African genetic components had much more in common with people living in Syria and around the eastern Mediterranean than in the nearer Arabian peninsula. What's more, the gene flow probably took place around 3000 years ago [when Solomon and the Queen of Sheba are supposed to have met].

The finding is backed by linguistic research, which shows that one of the four language families of Ethiopia migrated from the same region about 3000 years ago. "Middle Eastern language came to Ethiopia along with Middle Eastern genes," Pagani says. "And that is when the Queen of Sheba legend is supposed to have happened."

China Positioning Itself to Bypass Dollar

Zero Hedge reports that Chile is the latest country to agree to currency swaps with China. So, another country that no longer views the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. From the story:

So to summarize, the list of countries that China is transacting with directly (that we know of), and bypassing the USD entirely, is as follows:

• Japan
• Russia
• Iran
• India
• Brazil
• and now, Chile

In other words, it looks like the BRICs already have their "bilateral" arranagements all sorted out, and are now quietly moving into other suppliers of key resources with swap deals, all without any mention of the word "dollar."

How soon until China re-dips its toe in Europe with a modest "bailout" nobody can refuse in exchange for a simple caveat: you get paid in renminbi?

Of course, like any other commodity, once the demand for dollars declines, so will the value.

Germany's Economy Showing Signs of Weakness

The Daily Express' web site reports:

ITALY ­yesterday raised the stakes for the future of the euro by warning there is just one week to save the single currency.

Its prime minister Mario Monti painted an apocalyptic picture of what would follow if EU leaders failed to deal with the debt crisis at a summit of all 27 states in Brussels next week.

New fears have emerged that the eurozone’s biggest economy Germany could be slipping into recession which would be a blow to saving the single currency.

A key measure of German business optimism fell this month by more than market analysts had expected.

Earlier this week, a separate survey indicated that Germany’s manufacturing sector was also slowing down.

Weaker economic conditions could undermine its ability and the willingness of its already resentful public to help their debt-laden eurozone partners.

Uh, oh. The German bank may be closed.

Collapse of Euro "Very Likely"

Der Spiegel reports:

Investment experts at Deutsche Bank now feel that a collapse of the common currency is "a very likely scenario." German companies are preparing themselves for the possibility that their business contacts in Madrid and Barcelona could soon be paying with pesetas again. And in Italy, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is thinking of running a new election campaign, possibly this year, on a return-to-the-lira platform.

Nothing seems impossible anymore, not even a scenario in which all members of the currency zone dust off their old coins and bills -- bidding farewell to the euro, and instead welcoming back the guilder, deutsche mark and drachma.

It would be a dream for nationalist politicians, and a nightmare for the economy. Everything that has grown together in two decades of euro history would have to be painstakingly torn apart. Millions of contracts, business relationships and partnerships would have to be reassessed, while thousands of companies would need protection from bankruptcy. All of Europe would plunge into a deep recession. Governments, which would be forced to borrow additional billions to meet their needs, would face the choice between two unattractive options: either to drastically increase taxes or to impose significant financial burdens on their citizens in the form of higher inflation.

A horrific scenario would become a reality, a prospect so frightening that it ought to convince every European leader to seek a consensus as quickly as possible. But there can be no talk of consensus today. On the contrary, as the economic crisis worsens in southern Europe, the fronts between governments are only becoming more rigid.

The Italians and Spaniards want Germany to issue stronger guarantees for their debts. But the Germans are only willing to do so if all euro countries transfer more power to Brussels -- steps the southern member states, for their part, don't want to take.

The article goes on to state:

Until now, the defenders of the euro have been able to resort to the massive funds of the ECB, if necessary. If things got tight, the monetary watchdogs could inject new money into the market.

But now even the ECB has largely exhausted its resources. It has already bought up so much of the sovereign debt of ailing countries that any additional shopping spree threatens to backfire, causing interest rates to explode instead of fall. At the same time, the conflict between Northern and Southern Europe in the ECB Governing Council is heating up. Last week, the head of Spain's central bank managed to convince the ECB to ease its rules to allow Spanish banks to use even weaker collateral than before in exchange for borrowing money from the ECB. This could set off a tiff with the central bankers from the donor countries, who are loath to look on as the risks in the central bank's balance sheet continue to grow.

Although it's a lengthy piece, read the whole thing.

Turkey Toughens Its Response to Syria

From Voice of America:

Turkey has toughened its response to Syria's downing of a Turkish military jet last week, saying it will ask fellow NATO members to consider the incident a Syrian attack on the whole alliance.

NATO envoys are due to meet Tuesday at Turkey's request, to discuss a reaction to the attack on the Turkish reconnaissance aircraft near the Syrian-Turkish maritime border. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc Monday said Ankara called the meeting under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that an attack on one alliance member shall be considered an attack against all members.

NATO previously said Turkey requested the meeting by invoking Article 4 of the treaty that allows one member to hold consultations with others if it feels its security has been threatened.

Speaking after a Turkish Cabinet meeting, Arinc said Ankara has the right to retaliate under international law for what he called Syria's "hostile" act against the unarmed military jet. He accused Syrian forces of deliberately shooting down the aircraft in international airspace over the Mediterranean. But Arinc also said Turkey does not want to go to war over the incident, which left two Turkish pilots missing.

The article mentions, however, that Turkey has admitted that its fighter was briefly in Syrian airspace. This might be enough of an excuse for NATO to decide not to support Turkey in retaliating against Syria.

Gear Check -- Eco Sox

We're foot—slog—slog—slog—sloggin' over Africa —
Foot—foot—foot—foot—sloggin' over Africa —
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again!)
                There's no discharge in the war!

Seven—six—eleven—five—nine-an'-twenty mile to-day —
Four—eleven—seventeen—thirty-two the day before —
(Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up an' down again!)
                There's no discharge in the war!

--Rudyard Kipling

Socks may be mundane, but are critical for maintaining the health of your feet. Dr. Bryan C. Satterwhite explains:

Socks are an important aspect of foot health. Your feet are the only part of your body that is in constant contact with the ground. Your feet endure tremendous stresses throughout the day. For this reason, your feet need extra attention and care. Socks can provide a vital part of protection as they are the primary interface between your foot and the ground. 

Socks provide padding, moisture absorption, and a reduction in friction. Socks also provide warmth in cold, and in some cases anti-microbial protection (socks that resist bacteria). Due to the significant stresses that your feet undergo throughout the day a good pair of socks can mean the difference between feet that function well and feet that encounter multiple problems. 

There are many different types of socks from cotton to polyester to anti-microbial. Socks are improving with technology and the point is clear, socks are important not only to foot health, but your health.

(Source).


One brand of socks that came to my attention about 1-1/2 years ago were Eco Sox. What caught my attention initially was that they were made from bamboo viscose fibers. What got me to buy a pair was that they were very soft to the touch, especially compared to other hiking socks that I had purchased from REI and Big 5.

While I probably should care more about how bamboo fabric is "environmentally friendly," the truth is that what was important to me was the superior wicking and odor control. The Eco Sox web-site claims:

Soft, warm, and odorless are three adjectives commonly used to describe viscose bamboo. Viscose is the derivative of hard bamboo stalks that are manufactured into a cozy fiber. It has a soft and buttery feel and can absorb 3-4 times as much moisture as cotton. It is also great at helping to fight odors. When compared to cotton, viscose bamboo material is much softer, much more absorbent which makes it warmer, and helps fight against odors, rather than harboring odors like cotton

My experience over the last year and a half confirms the claims stated above. While I haven't had the opportunity to try them out on long hikes, I have used them for short hikes (including deer hunting last fall) and walks, and plenty of daily wear over the last year.

Most of the pairs that I have bought have been Eco Sox standard hiking socks. I have also tried their lightweight hikers, and athletic socks.

The standard hiking socks have stood up very well. They are soft and cushioning enough that I only need to wear one set of socks and have had no trouble with blisters. These are the style I wore while hunting. The weight is about that of a standard cotton athletic sock or heavy dress sock, but they seem to be about as warm and cushioning as a moderate to heavy hiking sock. And, as claimed, they seem to better at absorbing odors than standard hiking socks.

I started trying the lightweight hikers later, and while I haven't put them to as much use in hiking, they have held up very well for daily wear. I expect for hiking in warmer weather, or day hikes, these would perform very well. They are certainly lighter weight and would probably be cooler when hiking or walking in hot weather.

I had also purchased some white athletic style socks for wearing with walking shoes, cycling, etc. These, however, have been a disappointment. Although reasonably comfortable, I've had problems with the fabric pulling apart on the toes where the Eco Sox name has been knit or dyed into the fabric, after only limited use. Accordingly, I cannot recommend the white athletic style socks.

I found Eco Sox for sale at Big 5, although they may be available at other stores. I have not seen them at REI or Cabelas. They generally run about $7 per pair, which is certainly comparable to other hiking socks.

In sum, I would recommend the hiking and lightweight hiking socks. I cannot recommend the athletic socks because of durability issues. The fabric lives up to the manufacturers description of superior warmth, moisture and odor absorption.

Who are Gog and Magog? (Updated)

The terms Gog and Magog show up in two locations in the Bible. The first is Ezekiel 38, where they lead a Middle-Eastern coalition of troops to attack Israel, but are destroyed by an earthquake and, due to the treatment of the remains, nuclear weapons.

The second is at the end of the Book of Revelations, when, after a thousand years of peace, Gog and Magog lead an army against the City of God and are destroyed by fire from heaven. This ends The Millennium and leads into the resurrection of the wicked and final judgment.

It is important to note that these do not describe the same events. Ezekiel described a war prior to the Second Coming (although, whether it is the Battle of Armageddon or earlier is debated), whereas Revelations is clearly set much later.

During the Cold War, and continuing into today, many Biblical scholars interpreted Gog and Magog to refer to the former Soviet Union and their respective peoples. There were two primary reasons for this. First, Ezekiel relates that Gog and Magog would descend on Israel from "the north parts." So, it was a simple matter of drawing a straight line north. Second, Gog and Magog are identified with the Scythians, which are generally associated with the peoples of the lower Russian steppes.

Both of these are over simplifications. The Scythians were nomadic peoples that originated in what is now modern-day Iran, and spread eastward and northward across northern Iraq and Iran, into Eastern Turkey and northward in the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and northward. The peoples most closely associated with that same region now are the Kurds.

The allies of Gog and Magog are also interesting, because several represent peoples and tribes that eventually settled into what is modern day Turkey and Armenia.

Joel Richardson had previously published a book explaining his theory that the Anti-Christ will, in fact, be Middle-Eastern. World Net Daily has an article based Richardson's latest book explaining who are Gog and Magog and their allies. (Link here).

Update: Just want to emphasize the article written by Dr. Goodman and referenced in his comment to this post.

Securing and Holding Rural Terrain

For you military/history buffs out there, an article that can be downloaded from the Small Wars Journal, discussing tactics developed from the Rhodesian conflict and how it can updated to modern day counter-insurgency operations.

Syrian Conflict May Be Spreading

The Telegraph reports that Turkey is contemplating "decisive" action after Syria shot down one of Turkey's fighter aircraft.

Mr Erdogan promised that Turkey's response would be both "decisive" and carried out with "determination". Although he did not divulge what steps he was contemplating, a senior member of his ruling party had earlier declared that if the aircraft was shown to have been shot down by Syria it would amount to a "declaration of war".

Syria confirmed that it had brought down the aircraft, saying in a statement: "Our air defences confronted a target that penetrated our air space over our territorial waters pre-afternoon on Friday and shot it down. It turned out to be a Turkish military plane."

* * *

The incident represented the fulfilment of one of the international community's greatest fears after months of predictions that the Syrian conflict could easily burst its borders.

Western powers, and particularly the United States, are likely to come under pressure to support Turkey should it choose to retaliate with military force. Mr Erdogan's government has long warned that it would not tolerate any Syrian challenge to its security.

Free Kindle Book--Simple Emergency Food Storage

I was checking through the free best sellers for Kindle, and noticed one called Simple Emergency Food Storage. Act quickly while it is still free.

Post Apocalypse Dubai

An artist's impression of what post-Apocalypse Dubai would look like, complete with exotic animals, but sans people. Check out the other photos.

Outer Limit on TEOTWAWKI

I'm reading the book, How Civilizations Die (And Why Islam Is Dying Too) by David Goldman. His premise is that civilizations and nations die when they cease to have children, and that a civilization ceases to have children when they become nihilistic and hedonistic. Essentially, lovers of life more than God.

I have posted about the impact of the birth dearth before, and Goldman's books reflects many thoughts I've had on the subject (although he certainly has put more research and thought into the topic than I have). One of the crucial points, he makes, however, is that many nations (most of those in Europe, the Muslim Middle-East, and Japan) will reach a tipping point in 30 to 50 years where the number of elderly will outnumber the working population, and the number of women able to bear children will decline to a point where the population will simply crash. He notes that countries as diverse as Japan, Germany, and Iran will simply cease to exist within 200 years as their populations will drop below 10% of their current population.

A secondary premise in his book is that not all nations or civilizations go quietly into that good night, but decide to get theirs while they still can. His prediction is that this is what will occur to the Muslim Middle-East, and in particular, Iran. However, these nations will have to act before they are so weakened that they no longer can act aggressively.

Accepting this premise, and ignoring the possibility of black swan events such as a major volcanic eruption, a new plague of some sort, and so on, it appears then that 30 to 50 years would be the outer time frame for the wide spread war and destruction that is predicted in the Bible. It is interesting that of one of the few nations bucking the trend is Israel, which is still well above the replacement level of children. Bluntly, Israeli Jews are out reproducing their Muslim neighbors (including the Palestinians). Thus, as Israel's enemies stare into the brink of declining populations with no hope of escaping the concomitant economic trap, they may decide to attack Israel while they still have the power to do so.

There are some bright points. First, Goldman sees the United States as one of the few Western nations to escape the population trap, mostly due to America's greater religious faith (particularly, Christianity). Second, those groups within the United States and Israel having the largest families are conservative Christians and Jews. The sexual revolution spelled the doom of the liberal left.

China and India present different issues. First, China suffers from many of the problems of a Communist Dictatorship, yet has a vibrant and growing population of Christians. Goldman states that 10% of Chinese self-identify as Christians. Second, Goldman views India as a natural ally of the United States due to its real commitment to democratic principles and rule of law. Although he does not discuss it in much detail, he appears to believe that India will also be one of the nations that will escape the birth dearth. Thus, the coming century may well be less of an Chinese century, and more of an Indian century. It would certainly be a great victory for one of the oldest (if not the oldest) civilization extant.

One of the points this book has raised, and I've seen articles elsewhere, is that this time represents a golden age for the expansion of the Church, at least those that are protestant and evangelical. As he notes, not withstanding crackdowns by Chinese authorities, some 10% or more of the population self-identify as Christians. Evangelical Christianity is spreading rapidly in Africa and South America. Even, under the radar, Christianity is spreading into Islamic nations.

As I've noted before, the future belongs to those that have children. And that, in essence, is the message of Goldman's book.

"Neo-Survivalist" and ""Radical Survivalism" (Updated)

I came across a couple new websites that I wanted to mention. The first is called Neo-Survivalist. It looks like the posting is somewhat sporadic--most are from 2010, and then there is a gap until the first of this year, and then another gap. However, there are some how-to guides and miscellaneous articles.

The second is a webzine called Radical Survivalism. Somewhat similar to what I am attempting to do with my blog, it appears to be a collection of articles or references to articles from around the web on news and ideas related to prepping and survivalism.

I just came across these, so these are just my initial impressions. So check them out yourself.

Updated: Neo-Survivalist moved (or someone started a new blog under the same name at) Blogger.

"What Peak Oil?"

A guest post at Zero Hedge discusses the myth of peak oil. He writes:

The oil in the ground will run out some day. But as the discovery of proven reserves continues to significantly outpace the rate of extraction, the claims that we’re facing immediate shortages looks trashy.

Some may try to cast doubt on these figures, saying that BP are counting inaccessible reserves, and that we must accept that while there are huge quantities of shale oil in the ground, the era of cheap and readily accessible oil is over. They might cite the idea that oil prices are much higher than they were ten years ago. Yet this is mostly a monetary phenomenon resulting from excessive money creation beyond the economy’s productive capacity. Priced in gold, oil is still very cheap — almost as cheap as it has ever been[.]

"Are Revolvers Still Relevant?" (Updated)

A good article on whether revolvers are still relevant at Gun Nuts Media. I've discussed the advantages and disadvantages to both previously.

Updated (7/17/2014): Gun Nuts Media apparently has taken down the article I cited to above. However, they later posted a different article arguing that revolvers are obsolete. Their basic argument is (1) revolvers are harder to shoot well; (2) revolvers are not mechanically simpler; and (3) they are not more reliable than modern semi-auto pistols.

I will concede point 1 when it comes to snub-nose revolvers. I don't believe it is necessarily true as to full size handguns, however.

It is also true that revolvers are mechanically more complex than most modern semi-auto pistols. However, that misses the point which is that the revolver is generally simpler to use. That is, point and shoot. Open the cylinder to reload. It is forgiving of limp-wristing, bent arms, and doesn't require special drills to deal with ejection or feeding problems.

The reliability issue is very dependent on the facts. With a modern semi-auto, using good factory ammunition, and assuming no problems with stance, the semi-auto pistol is very reliable. However, I have shot several that hiccup on certain brands of ammunition. Most older semi-auto pistols (including the 1911) will not reliably feed hollow-point bullets.

Where the revolver falls down is reloading and magazine capacity. The revolver is slow to reload, even using speed loaders. It holds half or less of the number of rounds of a typical semi-auto pistol. (Although the disparity is less as you get into small handguns).

Advanced Survival Guide has an article discussing why they decided to ditch the semi-auto pistol in favor of the revolver which is also worth a read.

Free Kindle Book--Vertical Gardening

Amazon has Vertical Gardening by Don Evans for free today.

Electricity Issues Add to Greek Woes

I missed this from earlier this week:

Greece faces the threat of rolling power blackouts as the economic crisis leaves utilities without cash to pay for natural-gas imports and operate power stations.

Regulators will meet with Greece’s power market operator as early as today to discuss an emergency loan of 300 million euros ($375 million) to cover payments for gas imports from Russia’s OAO Gazprom (GAZP), Turkey’s Botas AS and Italy’s Eni SpA. (ENI) The country’s largest power producer is almost out of money and likely to default after unpaid accounts jumped more than 50 percent in a year, according to Standard & Poor’s.

As Greece prepares for a second national election in six weeks, a vote that may determine whether it remains in the euro, the collapse of the energy sector has emerged as a risk for a country that imports most of its oil and gas. At the start of the main vacation season, power cuts that leave tourists trapped in dark hotels without air conditioning would be a further blow to an economy in its fifth year of recession.

“Blackout is definitely a risk,” Olivier Jakob, managing director of Zug, Switzerland-based energy consultant Petromatrix GmbH, said in a telephone interview. “Greece is going to face higher costs because suppliers will want to have better creditor protection. And if the country cannot pay the bill, well, it’s a real problem.”

Public Power Corp SA (PPC), the biggest electricity producer, is on the verge of default, Standard & Poor’s analysts Nicolas Rivier and Vittoria Ferraris said in a June 7 report. PPC, as the Athens-based company is known, has seen cash flow drop as unemployment and falling wages leave many Greeks unable to pay power bills. A lack of cash to pay operating expenses may force the closure of some power stations.

 (Full story here).

In his book, The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse, FerFal describes in post-financial collapse Argentina, rolling blackouts and brownouts were common, as was the sporadic loss of other utilities, such as water. Thus, the need for temporary cooking/heating/light sources and storing at least a few days worth of water at all times.

Man Builds Motorcycle from Car, While Stranded in Desert

Although this is from a recent post at the Auto Blog, it apparently refers to an incident in 2003. From the post:

... a Frenchman named Emile who reportedly found himself stranded in the deserts of Northwest Africa after breaking a frame rail and a suspension swingarm underneath his Citroën 2CV.

What to do? Why, disassemble the broken hulk and build yourself a motorcycle from its pile of parts, of course! As the story goes, Emile was able to use the inventive machine to escape the desert, though not before convincing the local authorities that he wasn't an insurgent and paying a fine for importing a non-conforming vehicle...

Since Emile was the only soul in the area, nobody has been able to confirm the veracity of the events that led to the little French runabout's conversion into a makeshift motorcycle. That said, judging by the images you can see here (apparently from the March 2003 issue of 2CV Magazine), this Citroën-bred two-wheeler does indeed exist, and it was definitely fashioned from parts scavenged from an old 2CV.

It looks like something from Mad Max.

The Flash Bang Holster

 Women have different options (or perhaps, more correctly, additional options) for concealed carry than men (e.g., inside the thigh carry).

Anyway, here is a link to a Fox News video on a new concealed carry rig for women--a holster that hooks onto a woman's bra, so that the gun is essentially hidden under the breasts. All she has to do is reach up under her shirt and draw the weapon. The holster is, appropriately, called the "Flash Bang."

Here is the link to the manufacturer's web site. And a review by the Survival Mom.

Online Military Medical Textbooks

I came across a website for the Borden Institute that has on-line and/or PDF copies of military medical textbooks. If you go to the "other publications" section, you can download electronic copies of Emergency War Surgery. They have a zipped copy for easy download.

11 Lost Civilizations and How They Might Have Ended

Fox News has a slideshow showcasing "11 lost civilizations and how they might have fallen."

China Flexing Its Muscles in the South China Sea

From MSNBC:

In the early years of China's rise to economic and military prowess, the guiding principle for its government was Deng Xiaoping's maxim: "Hide Your Strength, Bide Your Time."

Now, more than three decades after paramount leader Deng launched his reforms, that policy has seemingly lapsed or simply become unworkable as China's military muscle becomes too expansive to conceal and its ambitions too pressing to postpone.

The current squabble with Southeast Asian nations over territorial claims in the energy-rich South China Sea is a prime manifestation of this change, especially the standoff with the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal.

"This is not what we saw 20 years ago," said Ross Babbage, a defense analyst and founder of the Canberra-based Kokoda Foundation, an independent security policy unit.

"China is a completely different actor now. Security planners are wondering if it is like this now, what is it going to be like in 20 years' time?"

As China also continues to modernize its navy at breakneck speed, a growing sense of unease over Beijing's long-term ambitions has galvanized the exact response Deng was anxious to avoid, regional security experts say.

In what is widely interpreted as a counter to China's growing influence, the United States is pushing ahead with a muscular realignment of its forces towards the Asia-Pacific region, despite Washington's fatigue with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Pentagon's steep budget cuts.

Read the whole thing. The article goes on to discuss some of China's military developments, including warships specifically designed to mitigate the advantages in naval power that the U.S. enjoys. Unfortunately, the U.S. is in a difficult position to enter an arms race with China because of excessive sovereign debt, a poor economy, and the fact that China manufactures much of the military hardware used in the U.S.

The latter is a critical difference between China and the Soviet Union. In the 1940's and into the 1950's, there was, for the most part, technological parity between the Soviet Union and the U.S. However, the U.S. rapidly pulled ahead, and by the mid-60s an 70's enjoyed a clear technological advantage. The proof of that advantage has been borne out anytime Soviet and American equipment has faced off, such as the various wars in the Middle-East.

By the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was incapable of manufacturing the necessary high technology items to complete with the U.S. Not so with China because we (the West generally) have exported technological know-how and manufacturing to China. In fact, China is, in many cases, in a better position vis-a-vis heavy industry and many electronic components than is the U.S.

I see three-fold motivation here (and I don't believe that they are necessarily both held by the same factions within China). First, there are probably some that believe it is time for China to flex it power in order to dominate its neighbors and secure primary access to sea routes and natural resources. Second, these incidents are a useful test of American resolve and reactions (not just political, but also technological and tactical--see what we deploy, how effective it is, measure and record radar and other signals, test the sensitivity of sensors, etc.). Third, and related to the second, if the U.S. doesn't show much resolve, it weakens the faith that the U.S. allies or putative allies have in the U.S., and makes it easier for China to dominate them.

The unintended consequence, however, is that China's actions may strengthen the resolve of some neighboring states to take a more aggressive stance independent of the U.S., e.g., Japan, Australia, and India.

Sometimes You Just Have to Leave

The debate over "bugging-out" and "bugging-in" is somewhat of an artificial argument. Some disasters and events are such that it is better to leave your home, while with others it may just be better to sit tight. And sometimes, it may be a toss-up. 

Wild-fires fall into the "get your butt out of there" category. From the Daily Mail:

The massive wildfires sweeping through Colorado and New Mexico have claimed their first confirmed victim, as a woman was found burned to death in her remote home.

Linda Steadman, 62, was reported missing after the fire started on Saturday, and her remains were discovered on Monday at her house in Larimer County, Colorado.

Her home received two evacuation notices that appeared to go to her answering machine, and a firefighter who tried to get past a locked gate to her home to warn her was chased out by flames that he later saw engulf the house.

Meteorite Strike May Have Wiped Out Mammoths, Early Human Culture

The Daily Mail reports about discovery of new evidence pointing to a meteor strike approximately 12,000 years ago that may have plunged the world into a cold snap, and led to the end of various large fauna and the Clovis culture. Some highlights:

Scientists have found compelling evidence that a meteorite storm hit the earth more than 12,000 years ago, and is likely to have been responsible for the extinction of a prehistoric people and giant animals including mammoths.

Evidence of the meteorite’s intense heat was found on two continents. The researchers believe the huge cosmic impact triggered a vicious cold snap, which caused widespread destruction.

The international team found a substance known as melt glass, which forms at temperatures of 1,7000 to 2,200 degrees Celcius and can result from a ‘cosmic body’ hitting the earth.The material was found in a thin layer of rock in Pennsylvania and South Carolina in the US, along with Syria. Tests confirmed the material was not of cosmic, volcanic or human-made origin.

‘The extreme temperatures required are equal to those of an atomic bomb blast, high enough to make sand melt and boil,’ said James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara.

The melt-glass appears identical to other material found in Meteor Crater in Arizona, and the Australasian tektite field, and also matches melt-glass produced by the 1945 Trinity nuclear airburst in New Mexico in the US, Professor Kennett said.

The team's findings support the controversial theory that an asteroid impact occurred 12,900 years ago and triggered the start of an unusual cold period on Earth, leading to widespread extinction of human and animal life.

In the cold period, known as the Younger Dryas, North American megafauna including mammoths and giant ground sloths disappeared forever, along with a prehistoric civilisation called the Clovis culture.

The Clovis people had nothing that could be considered a civilization--they didn't build cities or have a written language--but they are known because of their advances in fashioning stone spear points.

I find this article interesting for two reasons. First, it is yet another assault on uniformitarianism, which was used as an argument against many of the disasters set forth in scriptures, and still informs much of the environmental debate. Second, it illustrates that great disasters have occurred relatively recently. These are not things that only happened millions of years ago, but could occur again at any time.

U.S. Students Survive 9 Days in New Zealand Wilderness

This was a pretty big story today, so you may have already seen it. Nevertheless, here are the reports from Fox News and the Daily Mail.

The two reports are basically the same, so I'll quote the highlights from the Fox News story:

Two U.S. students trapped in the New Zealand wilderness by a snowstorm trekked back out to safety after surviving their nine-day ordeal by rationing their meager supplies of trail mix and warming themselves in hot springs.

* * *

The two students, on a foreign study program in New Zealand with University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, had planned to hike and camp for a few days at some hot springs on the country's South Island. But heavy rains and a snowstorm during the Southern Hemisphere winter prevented the couple from being able to cross a river and return.

"Unfortunately it rained and rained, day after day, and snowed," Alec Brown wrote in an email to The Associated Press Monday.

He said the nights were tough to take because the rain and sleet pounded down on the tarpaulin covering their sleeping hammock and the river roared -- reminding them all the time of their predicament.

When they realized they were going to be stuck they started rationing: "a biscuit and jelly one day," Brown wrote "and even less another."

* * *

The couple didn't take much food -- some carrots, rice, peanut butter and trail mix, according to Police Sgt. Sean Judd, who coordinated rescue attempts.

After the river receded, the two were able to cross the river and hike out to where they met up with searchers.

Brown said he relied on his past experience hiking and camping and felt confident in the couple's ability to survive.

"I believe when you go into the bush you take your life into your own hands and need to be prepared to handle whatever conditions occur," he said. "We could have been more prepared, but in the end we were prepared enough to walk ourselves out."

The choice of food high in protein and carbohydrates were good choices for what was probably planned to be a relatively short duration hike, giving both quick and long term energy.

Delusions About Survivalists and Preppers

There are some seriously sick people out there who think that the only reason that survivalists and preppers are into preparing is because of paranoid delusions. I think that they are instead projecting their own bias, beliefs, and mental issues onto a benign group of people--the preppers. From the Edmonton Sun:

Motivations for survivalists are as varied as the causes they get behind.

Stephen Kent is a University of Alberta professor specializing in sociology and religion.

"A lot of people can conflate reality with fantasy, with fear and what comes out is a dire picture about the future and the frightened image in what their place in it is," Kent said.

There are subcultures within the subculture of survivalism.

Lack of education, receiving news from only one source, and apocalyptic entertainment all play into fears, added Kent.

"These survivalists run the gamut from sincere but deluded people with personality disorders to people whose childhood experiences have been violent, religiously violent, in terms of God's love," Kent said.

* * *

Predictions about electronic failures in 2000 and the Church of the Triumphant's predictions on soviet missile launches in the 1960s may have fallen flat, but Kent said there are legitimate concerns people should be prepared for.

As dams broke in the Northwest United States in the 1980s flooding the towns settled beneath, communities with higher percentages of Mormons bounced back quicker.

"Good Mormons stock about a year's worth of food," Kent said. "It doesn't pay off often, but it has paid off sometimes."

He said there have been examples where even in a highly-developed society with a well-intentioned government things can go wrong, pointing to the ice storms in Quebec in 1998 that left people without power for weeks. Having food and water in case of disaster is prudent.

"The reality is, all of us are going to experience some personal apocalypticisms at some point," Kent said. "The survivalists just have a very dire fantasies about what theirs is going to be like and hold the belief they can do something about it. A lot of people are much more avoidant or fatalistic about their own demises."

So, on one hand, Kent thinks that it is prudent to have some food and water on hand, but on the other hand, it is delusional and paranoid to have some food and water on hand. C'mon Kent. Make up your mind.

To see who is the crazier, I just went to Google News to see if there are any articles just in the top news stories (not further searching for specific terms or going into sub-catagories) that would support a survivalists/preppers world view. There were a few:

1.  There were several stories concerning the civil war in Syria, including this one from the Associate Press on rebel attacks on Asad strongholds.

2. Evacuations ordered as Colorado fire reaches 8000 acres in size.

3.  Spain requesting 100 billion Euro bailout for its banks.

4.  Thousands fleeing violence after attacks in the Ivory Coast.

5.  "Heavy rain Saturday in southern Escambia County left an unknown number of people homeless, forced over 100 people into shelters, and caused untold millions of dollars in damages." (Full story here).

That was just off the front page of Google News at the time I drafted this post. How many other disasters, big and small, would I find. How about the personal disasters that underlie the unemployment statistics? Or house-fires? Or the death or lengthy illness of a family's breadwinner?

Like anything segment of the population, there are going to be the kooks and crackpots--the outlying extreme on the bell curve. But to take the abnormal as an example of the the "norm" is the basest form of logical error, and intellectual dishonesty.

For more on this topic, here is an article from MyNorthwest.com about a prepper speaking out against the stigma attached to make disaster preparations.

Untreatable Gonorrhea Spreading

From MSNBC:

A potentially dangerous sexually transmitted disease that infects millions of people each year is growing resistant to drugs and could soon become untreatable, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Scientists reported last year finding a "superbug" strain of gonorrhea in Japan in 2008 that was resistant to all recommended antibiotics and warned then that it could transform a once easily treatable infections into a global health threat.

"This organism has basically been developing resistance against every medication we've thrown at it," said Dr. Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, a scientist in the agency's department of sexually transmitted diseases. This includes a group of antibiotics called cephalosporins currently considered the last line of treatment.

"In a couple of years it will have become resistant to every treatment option we have available now," she told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of WHO's public announcement on its 'global action plan' to combat the disease.

The WHO said those fears are now reality with many more countries, including Australia, France, Norway, Sweden and Britain, reporting cases of the sexually transmitted disease resistant to cephalosporin antibiotics.

"Gonorrhea is becoming a major public health challenge," said Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, from the WHO's department of reproductive health and research. She said more than 106 million people are newly infected with the disease every year.

. . . It also increases the chances of infection with other diseases, such as HIV.

. . . Francis Ndowa, formerly the WHO's lead specialist for sexually transmitted infections, said gonorrhea has not only adapted to elude antibiotics but developed less painful symptoms, increasing its survival chances.

"They used to say that if you have urethral gonorrhea you go to the toilet to pass urine, it would be like passing razor blades. It was that painful," he explained. "Now people with gonorrhea sometimes...only notice the discharge if they look when they pass urine, it's not that painful anymore.

"So the organism has readjusted itself to provide fewer symptoms so that it can survive longer. It's an amazing interaction between man and pathogen."

Evolution in action.

Something Energetic Occurred in 774 A.D.

From the Daily Mail:

Fusa Miyake, of the Nagoya University in Japan, studied the growth rings of two trees dating back 1,200 years - and discovered that an explosion of epic proportions occurred between 774 and 775AD.

. . . Trees capture particles from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, and one particle that gets buried within the annual growth rings is carbon-14.

Carbon-14 forms when cosmic rays - generally caused by massive solar flares, or by supernovae - interact with nitrogen and oxygen in our atmosphere.

In the two cedar trees - and doubtless many other tree records from the period - there was a giant increase of 1.2 per cent of carbon-14.

In comparison, the annual variation of the captured isotope is just 0.05 per cent, making this more than a 20-fold increase.

The first thought is that the unusual levels of carbon-14 were due to a supernova explosion, but there is no record of a sighting. The article states:

In recorded history, at least two supernovae have exploded in the skies visible from Earth, their light travelling across light-years to hit the eyes of humans.

In 1006 and 1056, two stars went nuclear - at least, the light from their deaths arrived on Earth in those years.

Both explosions resulted in 'stars' that were visible in the daytime for weeks afterwards, and were recorded around the world.

Yet even such giant events, which impacted on those who saw them enough that the records survive to this day, were not powerful to result in much of a variation in the carbon-14 levels.

So the 774AD explosion must have been on a scale much bigger.

But if a supernova had exploded of a force even just equal to the other two witnessed supernovae, we should be able to witness gas remnants - the corpse of the star - in space. But there is nothing in the skies to suggest this.

The only contemporaneous record is from a 13th-century English chronicler, called Roger of Wendover, who, according to New Scientist, is quoted as saying: 'In the Year of our Lord 776, fiery and fearful signs were seen in the heavens after sunset; and serpents appeared in Sussex, as if they were sprung out of the ground, to the astonishment of all.'

This lends itself to just one other possibility, that of a solar flare. But if that was the case, it would be the biggest solar flare ever recorded by our sun.

And if that had occurred, it would have seriously hurt or even entirely destroyed our ozone - and at the least leaving traces that we could identify more than 1,000 years later, let alone leading to reports from all the chroniclers of the age.

* * *

Researcher Igor Moskalenko, an astrophysicist at Stanford University, California, who has followed the case but is not involved in the original study, says: 'I cannot imagine a single flare which would be so bright.'

Instead, he offers his own hypothesis: 'It may be a series of weaker flares over the period of one to three years.'

Other tree rings have also implied something big happened in in the mid-770s, this time in the UK.

Researchers from Queen's University Belfast, UK, also found the carbon-14 increase - but they have yet to publish their work.

Daniel Baker, a space physicist at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado also told New Scientist: 'The work looks pretty solid - Some very energetic event occurred in about 775.'

What would be useful is to compare the tree ring results above with those of the 1859 solar storm, the so-called "Carrington Event".  Since it was the largest solar storm in recorded history, it would provide a good comparison to judge whether or not a large solar storm produces sufficient cosmic rays to increase the carbon-14, but also a measure of how energetic the event in 775 must have been.

 

 

"The Weekend Homesteader: May"

Amazon currently has The Weekend Homesteader: May for free for the Kindle. Normal price is 99 cents, so its not a terrible price if you miss the deal.

I just barely noticed this, so I haven't had time to read it. However, I have the one for November. Basically, these are small booklets that include a handful of gardening/small farm projects suitable for a given month or season. (These are based on the seasons for the United States). For instance, the May edition covers starting your gardening, while the November edition covers some projects for getting your garden situated for winter and planning your garden rotation for the following year.

Anyway, it is certainly worth downloading for free, and if the other volumes are like the November volume, definitely worth the 99 cents.

Arachnophobia

Remember the movie, Arachnophobia? Well, its happening for real in a town in India. From the news report:

A town in India has suddenly been overrun by swarms of venomous spiders, leaving two people dead after being bitten.

It may sound like a B-grade horror movie, but residents of the town of Sadiya, in Assam state, say that on the evening of May 8 as they were celebrating a Hindu festival swarms of spiders suddenly appeared and attacked them, The Times of India reported.

Over the next few days two people -- a man, Purnakanta Buragohain, and an unnamed school boy -- died after being bitten by the spiders. Scores more turned up at the town's hospital with spider bites.

Local resident Jintu Gogoi spent a day in the hospital complaining of excruciating pain and nausea after being bitten. He said weeks later his finger was still blackened and swollen.

District authorities are also panicking -- and they are considering spraying the town with the insecticide DDT.

Locals say the most terrifying aspect is that spiders appear in swarms and their behavior is highly aggressive.

"It leaps at anything that comes close. Some of the victims claimed the spider latched on to them after biting. If that is so, it needs to be dealt with carefully. The chelicerae and fangs of this critter are quite powerful," head of the department of life sciences at Dibrugarh University Dr. L.R. Saikia said.

Teams of Indian arachnid experts have flocked to the town, hoping to identify the species, but so far they have drawn a blank.

They say it could be a tarantula, a black wishbone or even a funnel-web spider -- or it could be a whole new species.

One thing they agree on is that it is not native to the area as there is no record of venomous spiders in Assam. The black wishbone and funnel-web are native to Australia.

Researchers are also still running tests to find out the toxicity of the spiders' venom.

The story notes that the deaths could have been the result of "treatment" from witch doctors. 

Undoubtedly, it will wind up having some rather mundane explanation, but interesting--and sort of scary--nonetheless. 

For some reason, probably because the typical bite resulted in pain and swelling rather than being deadly, it reminded me of this portion of Chapter 9 of Revelation:

3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

4 And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

5 And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.

Some Free Books From Amazon to Consider (Update)

As many of you know, Amazon has quite a few free books for the Kindle (or computers or smart phones with the Kindle reader). Most of these are out-of-print books, but they also have newer books that are reduced to $0 for a short time as promotions.

I came across a couples in the last couple of days whose topic may be of interest to you. Because of the short time, I haven't read them, so this is no guarantee that they are well written.


1. Personal Health: What You Need to Know from Modern Science, by various authors. This is actually a collection of three books: The Addicted Brain: Why We Abuse Drugs, Alcohol, and Nicotine; Antibiotic Resistance: Understanding and Responding to an Emerging Crisis; and Allies and Enemies: How the World Depends on Bacteria. I downloaded it mostly for the second book, in the hope it will have information about dealing with infections without recourse to standard antibiotics....

2.  Composting Inside & Out by Stephanie Davies. I think the title explains it all.

If you are interested, please hurry. I was going to recommend The First-Timer's Cookbook by Shawn Bucher, which I just downloaded for free last night, and it is already back to being $9.99.

Update:

This may be an important issue: Yeast Infection Treatments by Angela Whitfield, also free at the time of this writing from Amazon.

Indus Valley Civilization Destroyed by Climate Change? (Updated)

From Fox News:

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of the world population. The civilization developed about 5,200 years ago, and slowly disintegrated between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago — populations largely abandoned cities, migrating toward the east.

"Antiquity knew about Egypt and Mesopotamia, but the Indus civilization, which was bigger than these two, was completely forgotten until the 1920s," said researcher Liviu Giosan, a geologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "There are still many things we don't know about them."

* * *

Now Giosan and his colleagues have reconstructed the landscape of the plain and rivers where this long-forgotten civilization developed. Their findings now shed light on the enigmatic fate of this culture.

"Our research provides one of the clearest examples of climate change leading to the collapse of an entire civilization," Giosan said.

The researchers first analyzed satellite data of the landscape influenced by the Indus and neighboring rivers. From 2003 to 2008, the researchers then collected samples of sediment from the coast of the Arabian Sea into the fertile irrigated valleys of Punjab and the northern Thar Desert to determine the origins and ages of those sediments and develop a timeline of landscape changes.

"It was challenging working in the desert — temperatures were over 110 degrees Fahrenheit all day long (43 degrees C)," Giosan recalled.

After collecting data on geological history, "we could reexamine what we know about settlements, what crops people were planting and when, and how both agriculture and settlement patterns changed," said researcher Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with University College London. "This brought new insights into the process of eastward population shift, the change towards many more small farming communities, and the decline of cities during late Harappan times."

Some had suggested that the Harappan heartland received its waters from a large glacier-fed Himalayan river, thought by some to be the Sarasvati, a sacred river of Hindu mythology. However, the researchers found that only rivers fed by monsoon rains flowed through the region.

Previous studies suggest the Ghaggar, an intermittent river that flows only during strong monsoons, may best approximate the location of the Sarasvati. Archaeological evidence suggested the river, which dissipates into the desert along the dried course of Hakra valley, was home to intensive settlement during Harappan times.

"We think we settled a long controversy about the mythic Sarasvati River," Giosan said.

Initially, the monsoon-drenched rivers the researchers identified were prone to devastating floods. Over time, monsoons weakened, enabling agriculture and civilization to flourish along flood-fed riverbanks for nearly 2,000 years.

"The insolation — the solar energy received by the Earth from the sun — varies in cycles, which can impact monsoons," Giosan said. "In the last 10,000 years, the Northern Hemisphere had the highest insolation from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, and since then insolation there decreased. All climate on Earth is driven by the sun, and so the monsoons were affected by the lower insolation, decreasing in force. This meant less rain got into continental regions affected by monsoons over time."

Eventually, these monsoon-based rivers held too little water and dried, making them unfavorable for civilization.

"The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity — a kind of "Goldilocks civilization," Giosan said.

Eventually, over the course of centuries, Harappans apparently fled along an escape route to the east toward the Ganges basin, where monsoon rains remained reliable.

"We can envision that this eastern shift involved a change to more localized forms of economy — smaller communities supported by local rain-fed farming and dwindling streams," Fuller said. "This may have produced smaller surpluses, and would not have supported large cities, but would have been reliable."

This change would have spelled disaster for the cities of the Indus, which were built on the large surpluses seen during the earlier, wetter era. The dispersal of the population to the east would have meant there was no longer a concentrated workforce to support urbanism.

"Cities collapsed, but smaller agricultural communities were sustainable and flourished," Fuller said. "Many of the urban arts, such as writing, faded away, but agriculture continued and actually diversified."

Update:

I think it is a mistake to credit the collapse of civilizations to a single cause. In this case, there is also evidence of other factors including disease. In his book, Germs, Genes, & Civilization, David Clark notes that "[c]holera is thought to have origins in India and emerged onto the world stage only in the nineteenth century." (p. 72). However, it had been described by Hindu physicians as early as 400 B.C. and probably had been extant much earlier. (Id.) He theorizes that cholera may have appeared among the Indus Valley people. Clark writes:

Perhaps the major achievement of the Indus Valley culture was its water supply and drainage system. All major centers had sophisticated communal plumbing, with water supply channels and drains. Almost every house in major centers such as Mohenjo-Daro had its own baths. Drains took the dirty water to a communal underground sewage system. The Great Bath of Mahenjo-Daro was the earliest public bath in the world.

With this background, he considers the theory that changes in the rivers led to the extinction of the civilization, but notes that other civilizations have suffered and survived similar difficulties. He also notes problems with theories that the Indus Valley people were overwhelmed by Aryan invaders. Most interestingly, he notes that "life in the countryside appears to have carried on with relatively little discontinuity during the collapse of the Indus Valley cities." In other words, what would have impacted all of the cities, but not the countryside.

Having discounted these other factors, Clark moves to his thesis: that it is the advanced water and sewage systems that led to the downfall of the Indus Valley culture. He relates that "[t]he latest archeological levels of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro revealed large numbers of unburied skeletons" but which lacked signs of violence, such as warfare. The suggestion, then, is that they died of an epidemic. Specifically, he notes that the rims of the public wells were usually within a few inches of the ground, and the drainage system was only buried a foot to two feet underground. Blockages or flooding of the drainage system would have resulted in contamination of the drinking water supply. Moreover, access covers and other evidence shows that blockages were relatively common.

Today we might wonder how they got away with this for a thousand years. The answer seems to be that highly virulent waterborne diseases had not yet evolved when the Indus Valley cities were first built. As we have already discussed, most virulent epidemic infections have emerged only in the last few thousand years. ... To put it rather unkindly, the evolution of cholera could well be the legacy of the Indus Valley culture. Cholera is perhaps the most likely agent, especially because it was known in India from early times. But because more than a thousand years passed between the fall of the Indus Valley culture and the earliest convincing descriptions of cholera, other diarrheal diseases, caused by related enteric bacteria such as Shigella or Salmonella, might have been the cause.