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Monday, March 27, 2023

POTD: Gary, Indiana (plus prepping/survival articles)

Today's selection is a video from the Lord Spoda channel taking a look around Gary, Indiana, including checking out the interior of a cathedral-like church building that has fallen into ruin. Gary was at one time a bustling suburb of Chicago, home to U.S. Steel. Now it is but a crumbling shell of its former self. Besides holding the number 1 or 2 position for highest homicide rate in the nation, Gary has also seen its population fall to less than half of what it was 50 years ago. The result are whole sections of abandoned houses and commercial buildings. While Gary's demographic decline was due to the destruction of the local economy due to the offshoring of steel production, the declining property values, rows of abandoned buildings, and crumbling infrastructure will be the future of most every country over the coming century as populations decline.

VIDEO: "GARY: The USA's Most Dangerous City? What I Actually Saw"
Lord Spoda (35 min.)

And now some prepping/survival articles that have been collecting in my in-box:

  • "Fishing Kayak Setup: How to Build the Ultimate Grab-and-Go Rig"--Field & Stream. There are many cities or locations where bugging out by water may be a better option than trying to leave by car. So, although this article is not a prepping/survival article per se, it has some advice that might be applicable to a water-borne bug out plan.
  • "How to Fix a Flat Bike Tire"--Survival Life. If were to face an economic collapse, or gasoline otherwise became prohibitively expensive, we would see many people turn to bicycles for commuting and running errands, much as you would have seen in many Asian countries 50 or 60 years ago. And if you are forced to bug out by some method other than using a vehicle, I think it would be preferable to bug out using a bicycle rather than walking.
  • "Homemade Soap"--Blue Collar Prepping. The author explains how to make soap using oil, lye and water.
  • "Homeschooling Nuts and Bolts" (Part 1) (Part 2) by R.B., EdD at Survival Blog. The first part discusses why you should consider home schooling your children while the second part covers the topics to include in a home school curriculum. This is a basic overview, so it obviously is not going to have a specific curriculum plan, lists of books, etc.
  • "Five things to know about hunting and eating snakes"--Survival Common Sense Blog. The article discusses venomous snakes and dealing with injured and angry snakes before getting to the cleaning and eating:

    Snakes are very easy to clean and prepare for cooking, and snake meat can be roasted, dried, boiled, fried, or even cooked in a pressure cooker.

    Snakes really only have three internal organs, a heart, a brain, and a tube that handles just about everything else. That means gutting a snake is fairly straightforward; just remove the tube, being careful not to tear or puncture it. Snakes do have a lot of bones, though; deboning a snake is similar to deboning a fish. Once you’ve removed the skin, organs, and bones, you’re ready to cook!

The article links to a few videos on snakes, including one on cleaning and cooking copperheads and another on cleaning and cooking rattlesnakes.

Releasing what it calls a comprehensive synthesis of Burmese python science, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced early last month that the giant invasive snakes have now spread beyond their core range in the south Florida Everglades and into places like West Palm Beach and Fort Myers, Florida. The study calls Florida’s python invasion “one of the most intractable invasive-species management problems across the globe.” And it says that, as the snakes continue to spread north, leaving a trail of ecological devastation in their wake, eradication of the species is impossible with existing tools.

  • "How To Open A Can Without A Can Opener"--Survival Cache. By "can opener" the headline is referring to modern can openers as one of the options is to use the can opener "blade" in a knife or multitool. Most of the other options involve grinding away the rim so the top of the can be removed, although this risk introducing metal shavings or dust into the food. You can also try smashing the can to deform it enough that the top can be removed, but this risks losing some of the contents. My recommendation would be to have a couple extra modern can openers with the handles and cutting disks, and then pepper your preps with military P38 or P51 can openers.
  • "How to Turn 'Less' into Everything You Need"--Organic Prepper. The author has been living in Greece for a bit and has some advice based on how the people there have adapted to the austere conditions following the 2009 economic collapse. A big part of its is attitudinal: taking a positive outlook toward what you have as well as taking greater enjoyment from simple things (an example given is going out for coffee instead of an expensive meal). Others are more practical. For instance:

    Ever since the collapse (and perhaps before, I never visited previously) thrift is a way of life. Here, you don’t always have hot water. You have to turn your water heater on about 20 minutes before you need it. This saves on electricity because you’re only heating up the water for 20 minutes a day. If you’re careful, enough water will remain in the tank for you to wash your dishes and have at least warmish water for handwashing during the rest of the day.

    Nobody has dryers and every street you walk down has laundry on lines flying like flags from apartment balconies. There’s no HOA nonsense here. Every balcony is loaded with laundry, tomato plants, and herbs. Rooftops have solar panels and water tanks. Electricity is used in the smallest amounts possible at all times.

    Part of this is that the price here has skyrocketed. Now, it’s all relative. I was pleasantly surprised when my first electric bill was just 43 Euros ($46.50 USD), but if I only made 800-1000 a month, the typical wage for a Greek, that would be pretty devastating.

    If you were to leave your water heater on all day or your heat or air conditioner on while you stepped out, locals would look at you as though you’d completely lost your mind.

However, there are some things that people should do anytime they venture into avalanche terrain. Those include not going out alone, carrying an avalanche transceiver, a probe, a shovel and also knowing how to use these important safety items.

  • "Gear Stowage"--Blue Collar Prepping.  The author discusses using the Cole-Tac Popcorn Bag for a trauma kit to keep everything in place and easily accessible. She also discusses using USMC Issue Speed Reload Pouches for her ballistic vest as it will hold in place either 9mm stick magazines or AR15 magazines. She uses a 9mm PCC for home defense, but plans on a 5.56 for SHTF, but wanted a magazine pouch that would work with both so she didn't have to remove one pouch in order to make room for the other.
  • "How to Make Your Own Seed Starting Mix and Start Seedlings"--Organic Prepper. An excerpt:

    Last year I ended up paying $85 for seedlings because my starts were too runted and diseased to use. It was an excellent investment, however, paying off in food more than 10x my investment. So buying is a viable way to go.

    Starting your own seedlings, however, is much cheaper, plus you get to choose your exact desired varieties. Garden centers will have varieties that grow well in your area, but if you want to try anything a bit more exotic, they can’t help you. Also, if you’re making an emergency run, as I did, you get to pick from what they have left. Starting your own means, you get to pick what you want. 

    Spring is the best time to plant trees because spring planting allows trees to get established earlier, grow more, and do better when hot weather arrives. Spring planting is especially important for bare root stock. Most containerized and container-grown stock, as well as balled and burlapped trees, can be planted throughout the growing season, but benefit from spring plantings.

    When transporting trees, protect them from excessive wind, drying, and rough handling. Planting holes should be dug at least two feet wider than the size of the root system. Trees should be planted an inch or so higher than the depth they grew in the container or nursery to allow for settling. Air pockets should be eliminated through watering and tamping after planting. Fill in the hole with a mixture of existing soil and soil amendments such as organic material or loamy top soil.

A lot more advice on tree planting at the link, so be sure to read the whole thing. 

Yes, you can survive by eating ants. Though tiny, ants contain lots of protein and a good assortment of vitamins and minerals. However, you’ll have to catch a bunch of them in order to make a sizable portion of food.

A lot more on collecting and eating ants at the link, including the important questions like should you cook them or eat them raw, what they taste like (it varies), and more. 

  • "How Much Protein You Need"--Modern Survival Blog. The author notes that recommendations vary according to the source and potential bias toward a more vegetarian diet. The CDC, according to the article, recommends that 10-35% of your daily calories come from proteins. The article also includes the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) for protein for the different sexes and age groups:

Grams of protein needed each day:

WOMEN age 19+ (46 grams)
MEN age 19+ (56 grams)

Children
1 – 3 (13 grams)
4 – 8 (19 grams)
9 – 13 (34 grams)


Girls ages 14 – 18 (46 grams)
Boys ages 14 – 18 (52 grams)

The article contains more information about protein and why it is important, as well as information on the protein available from different types of foods. 

    A boulder weighing more than 40 tonnes sits on the sand high above the ocean. Dwarfing every other rock in view, it is conspicuously out of place. The answer to how this massive outlier got here lies not in the vast expanse of the Atacama Desert behind it but in the Pacific Ocean below. Hundreds of years ago, a tsunami slammed into the northern Chilean coast—a wall of water 20 meters high, taller than a six-story building, that swept boulders landward like pebbles.

    The tsunami that lobbed this behemoth happened before written records existed in Chile. But we know about it today thanks to the detective work of a small group of researchers who are uncovering the signs of ancient tsunamis around the globe. Using a diverse array of scientific techniques, these paleotsunami researchers have found evidence of previously undocumented colossal waves. In the process, their work is revealing that coastal communities could be in far more danger from tsunamis than they realize.

    As scientists expand their search, they have continued to find ancient tsunamis bigger than those found in historical records, says James Goff, a paleotsunami researcher at the University of Southampton in England. The implications are clear: if a huge tsunami happened once in a given location, it could happen again. The question is whether we’re prepared for it.

I'd read somewhere that a lot of cities founded in ancient times--e.g., Athens, Rome, Paris, London, Tokyo, etc.--are located well inland from their harbors, and the author speculated it might have been because of experience with ancient tsunamis. 

    The BBC and the mainstream media regularly frighten everyone with the latest climate disaster news with pictures of floods, fires and hurricanes, always followed by scary predictions that things will only get worse unless mankind mends its irresponsible ways.

    My alma mater Reuters, the global news agency, used to be above all this hysteria and would relentlessly apply its traditional standards of fairness and balance, but even this mainstream outfit seems to have sold out to the hysterics and axe grinders.

    The trouble is, many if not all of these disaster stories, far from being another step in a worsening scenario, are often nothing of the kind. In a recent book Unsettled. What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters, Steven Koonin uses the UN’s Intergovernmental  Panel on Climate Change data to show that if reporters took the trouble to do a minimum amount of checking, most of these incidents would appear to be natural disasters, yes, but not part of some ever worsening syndrome.

    Economist Bjorn Lomborg has been pointing out for years that humans are having an impact on the climate, but technology will be a match for any problems. Current Government plans to combat climate change will squander massive amounts of taxpayers’ money and achieve very little in terms of stopping rising global temperature, Lomborg says.

    Warmist politicians and lobby groups regularly trash the work of a significant group of climate experts, insulting them with unfounded accusations that they can’t be taken seriously because they have barely perceptible links with ‘Big Oil’ and are ‘climate change deniers’. Criticisms are mainly personal and not aimed at their work. Koonin and Lomborg also suffer the unethical ‘denier’ slur, so let’s destroy that canard first.

    Every scientist knows the world’s climate has been gradually and occasionally irregularly warming since the last Ice Age over about 10,000 years. Nobody denies the climate is changing. The ‘denier’ charge is nonsensical. But it performs the useful function of making clear the user knows nothing about climate science. The argument is about the ‘why’ not the ‘if’. Warmists say all the warming is because of man’s activity. The rest say some, a little or none.

    Education is another area where balance has been replaced by hysteria-inducing propaganda. Children shown demonstrating on the news are often borderline hysterical. No doubt their teachers didn’t bother to tell them that man-made global warming is a theory not a proven fact, and that it’s okay to talk about different opinions.   

    If you wonder why much of the mainstream media seem united in accepting that the world will soon die unless humans don hair shirts, freeze in winter and walk instead of driving, you need to know about websites like Covering Climate Now (CCN).

    Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.

    CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense. This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.

    I asked CCN about the nature of its dealings with Reuters and the likes of Bloomberg. Was it to thrash out a general approach to climate change reporting or to be more partisan?

    CCN hasn’t replied.

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