Show #35: Surviving the End of the World (as we Know it)

Leòmhann said:
Excellent ~ highly informative and helpful as usual, folks !!!! :)

:clap: Thank You Thank You :clap:

I second this. :)

Just in case people feel inspired to make their own soap here is a nice and short vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ghvQ4v_Fjrs

I had to swallow something when Joe said that for instance Holland could be buried under a mile of ice, although this is an issue that has been on my mind for some time. So, nothing new there. And indeed, it is better to be in Spain or North-Africa, when that happens.:lol:
 
:) For those of you, who can't listen on the beginning, the show begins at 4:30 min.
Going to listen now.

Add. Last sentence
 
Belibaste said:
I'm afraid I didn't explain this point very well. What I meant is that, in addition to using ashes to produce lye, some soap makers add ashes (in particular volcanic ashes) to their lye + fat mix in order to improve the abrasive properties of the soap (peeling effect).

That reminds me. We have a Sange Pa (natural Iranian volcanic pumice stone) that my parents got from Iran a long time ago, and we still have it and use it:

Sange Pa (natural Iranian volcanic pumice stone) is a tool to make the rough feet smooth and soft. It has been an indispensable part of Iranian baths for centuries. The natural abrasive qualities of Sange Pa makes it an excellent tool for scrubbing rough skin and callous areas of feet. Made of volcanic lava rock it does not lose its effectiveness or shape, and will not soften or dissolve. Is is very lightweight and floats on the water. [...]
Sange Pa is easy-to-clean and bacteria and mold resistant because of its volcanic nature.

See here for those interested: _http://www.kalamala.com/products/natural-volcanic-pumice-stone-sang-e-pa

I thought the show was very informative, helpful and inspiring. Lots of food for thought!

Also, here is the link to the book How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: click

Not sure if the following link is a good source for the "100 items that will dissapear first in a SHTF Situation" as this one is a revised and an updated version, but may be worth a look. See here: click

In the chatroom, Pashalis mentioned:

There is a very good SOTT Focus article on that subject of how to prepare an join a community for the future called "Social Harmony in Times of Global Dischord":
http://www.sott.net/article/250139-Social-Harmony-in-Times-of-Global-Dischord
 
Thanks to Mariana for the video link, & also to Oxajil for those links. I've been searching for the "Social Harmony in Times of Global Dischord" SOTT article for ages. Phew! Thanks to the team for the show. "Vegetarian terrorists." Love it! :D
 
There's also this recent thread on 'Preparedness': http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,21375
 
Kniall said:
There's also this recent thread on 'Preparedness': http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,21375

Thank you, Kniall, and to all who posted additional information on preparedness. And I do think that next show with Lierre Keith will be unforgettable. Looking forward to it.
 
Mariama said:
I had to swallow something when Joe said that for instance Holland could be buried under a mile of ice, although this is an issue that has been on my mind for some time. So, nothing new there. And indeed, it is better to be in Spain or North-Africa, when that happens.:lol:

If I remember correctly Kniall mentioned that during ice age, some regions were covered by one mile of ice then Joe expanded this point saying that it doesn't happen overnight. You won't wake up one morning with one mile of ice covering the surrounding land. This is an incremental process and accumulating a one mile thick ice cover certainly takes many years.

This being said recent research shows that ice age settles much faster t(about 3 months) than previously expected (about 10 years).
 
Belibaste said:
This being said recent research shows that ice age settles much faster t(about 3 months) than previously expected (about 10 years).

Just a quick Google search indicates that the record for most snowfall in one day (at least in N. America) is:

- Greatest snowfall in a day: 75.8 inches (Silver Lake, Colorado; April 14-15, 1921)

Since 1 mile = 63,360 inches, if that snow rate continued permanently, it would take 2.29 years to accumulate 1 mile of snow.

Now, that record was at an elevation of +10,000 ft, but still... An ice age would mean the weather ain't gonna act like normal, and as we've already seen, things are "heating up"... or "cooling down" if you prefer!

And then when you think about it, you don't need 1 mile of ice/snow to cripple a city. Several meters will do quite nicely!

Thus, I would say that it won't take long to be "buried" in ice.

Well, that's my cheerful thought of the day! :halo:
 
Mr. Scott said:
Belibaste said:
This being said recent research shows that ice age settles much faster t(about 3 months) than previously expected (about 10 years).

Just a quick Google search indicates that the record for most snowfall in one day (at least in N. America) is:

- Greatest snowfall in a day: 75.8 inches (Silver Lake, Colorado; April 14-15, 1921)

Since 1 mile = 63,360 inches, if that snow rate continued permanently, it would take 2.29 years to accumulate 1 mile of snow.

Now, that record was at an elevation of +10,000 ft, but still... An ice age would mean the weather ain't gonna act like normal, and as we've already seen, things are "heating up"... or "cooling down" if you prefer!

And then when you think about it, you don't need 1 mile of ice/snow to cripple a city. Several meters will do quite nicely!

Thus, I would say that it won't take long to be "buried" in ice.

Well, that's my cheerful thought of the day! :halo:

Well that record seems to have been broken last year when two to three meters (7-11 feet) of snow fell overnight, in North Iceland in early September and buried 13000 sheep alive!

As far as I remember there was also another instance last year where snow of a similar magnitude fell at another place in a short period of time.
 
Belibaste said:
I have been doing a bit of research and even found out that you can make soap of lye made of wood ash

Yes mixing ashes with water produces lye which is one of the two components along with lipids necessary to start a saponification reaction. Some producers even keep some ashes when skimming the lye because of the slight abrasive properties of ashes.

Mariama said:
The soap the mother made was soft, BTW. :) Just saying, because people might expect it should be hard.

The hardness of the soap you make will depend on the kind of fat you use and on the lye saturation. Basically the longer the fatty chains are and the higher the lye percentage is, the harder the soap will be.

That's the reason why the soap labelled "pure olive oil" actually only contain about 70% of olive oil, the rest is usually palm oil. Soap that is only made of olive oil is very soft and when exposed to water it turns into jelly.

So home-made hard soap is feasible but you need the right fat mix and to dose precisely your fat/lye ratio. You put as much lye as possible but not too much otherwise the saponification reaction is incomplete and you will have untransformed fat in your soap.

I've been making all my own soap for a few years now, and while it is a tricky process, once you get the hang of it, it's a great skill to have. The lye percentage in your soap recipe is calculated to the amount needed for the particular oils to saponify. If you have too little, it won't saponify, if too much it will be what's called a "lye heavy" soap and may not be safe to use. It's a good investment to get the most accurate scale you can, because even being off by a little bit can ruin the soap. It's also very important to have eye protection and good gloves, as any splash of lye can burn you. I know a few soapmakers who have been careless and got burned pretty badly.

In the past, soap makers used to make their own lye, this was done by collecting rainwater in a barrel and combining with ashes. The difficulty with this was that they couldn't be sure how strong the lye was, so it was basically trial and error to see how much to use.
 
It is not clear, but soap may not be high on the priority list.

Having been around winter bush camps it seems that body washing is a low priority. I have heard of some trappers going months without washing their bodies or clothes with soap. This is as recent as 40 years ago.

The information is good to have though, for a warm day!

It might be better to have a few jars of lard on hand for eating. Food is and always has been at the top of the priority list. One bonus is that most of the food scroungers likely would overlook this as an option for food, at least in the near future.
 
WIN 52 said:
It is not clear, but soap may not be high on the priority list.

Maybe a proper survival attitude is to find a fine balance between being an "animal" when it's necessary and preserving our dignity, keeping on doing the little things that differentiate humans from animals. This might also be an important point for motivation, hope, sense of self-worth, etc.

From this perspective, items like soap, lipstick or perfume might be much more valuable than we could think at first. Here is an article emphasizing the importance of keeping our dignity instead of surviving like mere animals:

As many long term reader or members of my survival course know, I like to talk about important but some maybe call “not so spectacular” part of survival that is not so much fun like for example talking about latest guns and gadgets.

Today I want to talk about dignity and what it means in survival scenario. Before I talk from own experience, read the extract below from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin who describes what happened after his unit freed the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during second world war.

At the moment of his writing every day hundreds of people still died and it was place of pure horror.

It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Importance of still being human and not become complete animal is often overlooked part for people who prepare for long term survival. I had over one year to fight against becoming like rats around our house during war. Expect to become more like animal.

You can have all equipment ready for SHTF, ammo, weapon, gear… you can even be perfectly good trained in lot of different skills and fields and still when SHTF you can end up dead in the first days just because you what i call „refuse to believe“ whats happening.

It is that state of mind when man simple do not want (or not able) to comprehend new situation.

It can be one quick life threatening situation like folks attacking your home and you just waited few seconds too long to shoot some attacker, and then you are dead, end of the story. Or it can be whole process of failing to recognize new world around you and new rules (or absence of rules) and then again you just not doing correct things for the situation, and again you end up dead.

Example would be that when SHTF you are trying desperately to have and use power generator and light all rooms in your houses just because it mean normal life for you. And that normal life is gone, and trying to bring it back in that situation usually means more troubles.

Holding onto all comforts and behavior you are used to can be dangerous.

To make long story short, what I am trying to say is that you may be trained and equip like SEAL member and still you can be killed easily from some 70 years old dude, with even older rifle just because you were surprised when SHTF with amount of destruction and violence and you did not seen that old dude coming (or being so evil).

On the other side that old dude maybe lived through couple of SHTF events in his life, and he knows when it is time to act without hesitation and mercy.

There is still fine line you have to walk between losing your human side and becoming pure animal. One of the things that changed a lot when SHTF is fact that everything became really dirty.

It was something like slow process, first people tried to keep it as clean they could, but without all normal services, like garbage trucks, running water and all other community services that make normal living soon it simple became impossible.

Later all garbage was used somehow, but in beginning it started piling up everywhere, when you add to that ruins on the street, human waste and dead bodies it was very ugly picture.

After some time, we started to accept dirt outside and it then was priority to stay clean and keep clean only inside that small circle inside your home, and when I say „clean“ I do not mean „clean“ like today. Maybe as clean as we could be.

For example simply moving through the city in the middle of the night meant that you needed to crawl, jump, hide, walk or run trough all kind of things, and very often some real nasty and dirty things.

Many times I was hiding on places so dirty that stench was almost paralyzing, once in the middle of the night I jumped behind some wall because sudden shelling, and when I jumped there I realized that I landed on dead guy.

His face was smashed with broken wall, and partially buried, place there was so small that I had to actually lay on him for some 20 minutes. He died probably when wall from the house collapsed after some shelling, who knows.

Fire from the shelling was so strong that I actually loved that dead guy and that place in that moment. I almost hug him while I was trying to be as small as possible because pieces of steel and rock were flying around me just like some crazy rain, while my stomach was rising and floating from the detonations and smell.

All I was saying at that moment was „thank you, thank you, thank you“ like some magic words, and I even was not aware who do I thank to, that dead stinky guy, my brain for noticing that small space, or God for saving me.

Today years and years later I still carry that smell inside my nose. But I did not move from there before danger was gone. It is survival and luckily I was already used to dirt enough to just stay with that dead guy.

Some folks just stopped to care about cleanliness and hygiene completely. So for them washing and cleaning become something like not wanted luxury. They went complete animal.

They simply stopped to care about these things, so I also knew some guys with look and smell so awful that even dead guy smelled like parfume store. It was easy to surrender to stuff like that, I mean in trying to keep yourself clean.

But it was stupid not only in terms of the hygiene and illnesses, also by surrendering yourself you admit that you do not care anymore, and when you admit that you are only few steps from becoming animal with what you do too. People give up on themselves.

For me being as clean as I could be had something like preserving one of the last connection with “normal” life, with life before sh!t hit the fan, when things like neighbors, breakfast, car etc, were just things we took for granted, like things that always gonna be there unchanged.

Of course I was aware that being clean is important in order to stay alive because all diseases problem, no doctors hospitals etc. but on some psychological level it kept me sane and it kept me normal man.

Even in survival situation you need to still care about few little things to keep your dignity, to keep spirit up, to not lose yourself. If you stop caring about everything it is like disease that eats you.

When I came back from trading or scavenging in the city, I would clean or wash myself thoroughly in my yard before entering my house, again of course because common sense, hygiene and diseases, but maybe even more important I tried to keep all chaos and violence, suffering outside of my home on some psychological level.

I try to stay out of the everything, or actually I tried to keep everything outside of my home, like some ritual. I would keep the clothes for outside in bag, my boots were in one corner, never entering my room in it etc.

One of my relative wears pink slippers (mittens) when he was home sometimes, he would say that he just felt that everything is fine when he wear it. It was spooky and strange to see him in pink slippers while outside world is going to hell, but we all have some strange ways I guess to keep ourselves sane. Maybe wearing those slippers after he was forced to shoot some folks kept him sane, reminded him on some normal times when grandma wear it in the evenings.

On the other side, like I said in beginning if you stick too much to old habits you are not doing best for survival too.

So if I had to be animal, I was animal. It was about survival. For example there was a period when I eat just to survive, like animal, without paying attention what I eat or how. If I found some food I ate it in quick way, if there was some food with worms in it, I would eat it in dark, without looking what I eat etc.

Point was (and still is) to be man, but to be ready to be animal if you are forced to be animal, and thats it. It comes down to being flexible, adapting to situation and I hope this helps to crush the idea some Hollywood or fantasy survival scenarios show that survival is about being complete animal. No, it is fine line to walk.

You can (and you have to) have as much hand sanitizers, soap, disposable face masks etc. as you can but you can still end up dead if you are not ready to accept fact that one day you might be forced to „hug“ dead guy in order to survive, or eat roast rat or pigeon.

Once next collapse comes many people will wake up to reality and struggle to be human like they were or become animals and as skilled survivalist I hope you will walk fine line in between. The people who were walking that path were and I'm sure will be those who have biggest chances to survive.
 
manitoban said:
I've been making all my own soap for a few years now, and while it is a tricky process, once you get the hang of it, it's a great skill to have. The lye percentage in your soap recipe is calculated to the amount needed for the particular oils to saponify. If you have too little, it won't saponify, if too much it will be what's called a "lye heavy" soap and may not be safe to use. It's a good investment to get the most accurate scale you can, because even being off by a little bit can ruin the soap. It's also very important to have eye protection and good gloves, as any splash of lye can burn you. I know a few soapmakers who have been careless and got burned pretty badly.

In the past, soap makers used to make their own lye, this was done by collecting rainwater in a barrel and combining with ashes. The difficulty with this was that they couldn't be sure how strong the lye was, so it was basically trial and error to see how much to use.

How do you go about making soap? Any specific "recipe"? I'd be very happy to follow your steps. Your soap is always wonderful!!
 
WIN 52 said:
It is not clear, but soap may not be high on the priority list.

Having been around winter bush camps it seems that body washing is a low priority. I have heard of some trappers going months without washing their bodies or clothes with soap. This is as recent as 40 years ago.

The information is good to have though, for a warm day!

It might be better to have a few jars of lard on hand for eating. Food is and always has been at the top of the priority list. One bonus is that most of the food scroungers likely would overlook this as an option for food, at least in the near future.

I respectfully disagree with you, WIN52. Making soaps, and with essential oils, may be on a high priority list, if someone suddenly finds himself/herself in the wilderness.

I'm sure, you know this English language idiom: "Cleanliness is next to godliness."
 
Thanks everyone for the awesome episode! I was wondering, where could one find the list of "most valuable post-collapse items" that was recounted later on in the show?
 

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