Backpacker Fact-Checker, #1: Shoe Weight
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Category Archives: Preparedness
Fire in the Rain without Matches
About 20 minutes and he is better then you or I are likely to ever be. Although part of that is because he did not have any really easy resources in range of his house (like birch).
Lessons learned….
1. This is why you carry tinder if you can. Saves a lot of time.
2. Tie something high vise orange 550 cord or something like that to your ferro rod. You can’t rely on not being an idiot when you are under pressure.
3. If you can have a fixed blade knife on you it will work a lot better when you really need a knife then a folder.
4. All that said, you don’t need much to get a fire going if you have time. When you are short on time that is what makes skill and gear so much more important.
Deep Well Hand Water Pump Installation Bison Pumps Bison Pumps
Basic Overview.
Goes into more detail….
Why you should panic about the US Deficit
*Note: This is an informal note that is not directly related to my last essay. The second part of that is still to come.*
Notwithstanding the headline, I don’t really think that panic accomplishes anything useful. But I am amazed that we are looking at a catastrophe and hardly anyone is talking about it. The current situation is the opposite of the “food crisis” that I addressed last year. At the time I talked about how even though there were a lot of bad headlines when you looked into the actual numbers there was no crisis in the immediate near term (it might be different now at least in terms of rice, but I have not really dug into the numbers yet for this year). But in terms of the US deficit, very few people seem to be panicking and yet when you dig into the numbers they are really bad.
So I thought I would write a short informal piece to break down the headlines that I have been linking to and explain why they represent a catastrophe in the making that will directly impact your life. Let us start with a recent CNN story titled “Federal budget deficit expected to nearly double to around $2 trillion.”
Now, if you are a typical American redneck, you will see a head line like that and sagely tell whoever is next to you “the politicians are going to bankrupt this country” and then go on with your business without giving the headline another thought. And who can really blame the typical redneck for reacting like that? In 2020 the Federal Government ran 3.1 trillion dollar deficit and in 2021 the feds ran a 2.8 trillion dollar deficit. It is true that in 2022 the deficit was just over a trillion dollars but if the world did not come to end back in 2020 or 2021 then, why should a mere 2 trillion dollar deficit be a cause of panic today?
Chaotic Maui Evacuation:
I put them out of order but if your short of time, watch the one below even though it is second in series.
This is another escape story….
Generic context….
Predator vs Honda & GENMAX—Let’s Settle This!
The Honda came out on top pretty convincingly. Worth watching so you know what you are getting for the Honda premium.
RESCUED hiking the Grand Canyon
Interesting part is what took him out (Rabdo) which he explains at the end.
End of the Fire Logs: Fire Logs #12, #13, and #14 plus closing thoughts
When I first started doing these fire logs in the beginning of the year, I said….
“I intend to do one fire a week from the start of January through the end of March. I am not trying to teach myself anything exotic but rather to see how well what I “know” and what I have carries over to fire starting in winter weather. The goal is to try something new either in terms of conditions or in terms of equipment used every week.”
I was reasonably successful in this goal. Once we got into March, I had a harder and harder time finding time to write up the results of what I did, but technically that was not part of the goal. For almost all of the fires, I was able to spin them as some kind of success even if some of them were pretty lame. Only Fire Log #13 was a complete failure.
I had planned for this to end with March in part because I knew I would be getting busier around then. As that is indeed the case (in fact, most of this was written in the first week of April but I am only now finding the time to put it up) I am going to try to do a briefer then normal overview of the fires that I have not already covered to close out this series of experiments.
Surviving In A War Zone
It gets more interesting (for me at least) as it goes along.
Fire Log #11: Three Fires And Three People.
As a follow up to trying to get the “Bad Girl” to start her own fire, I wanted to see if she retained anything useful and if she could start a fire when she had to gather the wood herself. A good opportunity to do this presented itself in the form of a nephew’s birthday party. The property at which this party took place had more suitable woods then I own (a good part of my property is swamp) and wandering out into them was a good way to burn off some of the sugar high after the presents were unwrapped.
Two of my brothers decided to come along as well. I had thought they were just coming along to add to the pressure on “Bad Girl” but as it turns out, they wanted to try their hand at staring a fire in poor conditions themselves. As a result, there were three people of varying skill levels trying to make fire in the snow with scavenged wood for the first time.
Originally I was going to do something myself while “Bad Girl” was doing her thing, but with so many people to watch I did not really do anything other than set up an alcohol stove using the Firebox Nano stove and light it with a ferro rod. So what follows will just be my observations on the three first time fires in the snow.