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

[Ollie]

Luck, luck, luck will make up 99% of survivability.

Luck is certainly one factor but it doesn't mean that sheer luck is the only thing that will determine what happens to you. As Pasteur said "Chance favors the prepared mind".

So the best way is probably to focus on things we can change (improvement of our skills, development of a network, psychological preparedness, material preparedness) and then be ready for whatever happens.

Agreed, and this Show gives a good indication of what may be done. Great stuff. Thanks a lot. Lots of food for thought.

 

[Gwenllian]

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.

Posted too quickly.

Thanks Belibaste, for these impressive quotes. I never knew that lipstick could be so important. That is valuable information, OSIT. The writer said: "it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance" and I have to agree. That someone that ordered all those lipsticks must have understood women in desperate times and was someone who could empathize. Indeed, that is "unadulterated brilliance" and I think it is very moving, too.

I watched 'The pianist' a few days ago. It is also a good film to watch in terms of preparedness, OSIT. The pianist kept his humanity, probably because of his friendships.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pianist/

When I start experimenting with my soap I think I will include fragrant herbs, because I can imagine now how important a bar of soap will be, especially when it smells great. Maybe add some herbs that are anti-viral or anti-bacterial? Don't know whether that will help much, though. It is probably best when the herbs are fresh.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Luck, luck, luck will make up 99% of survivability.

Luck is certainly one factor but it doesn't mean that sheer luck is the only thing that will determine what happens to you. As Pasteur said "Chance favors the prepared mind".

So the best way is probably to focus on things we can change (improvement of our skills, development of a network, psychological preparedness, material preparedness) and then be ready for whatever happens.

Agreed, and this Show gives a good indication of what may be done. Great stuff. Thanks a lot. Lots of food for thought.

I very much agree, as well. And another great show! I skipped the last one with Ellen Brown to listen to this one today. I'll try to catch that one tomorrow, or soon anyway and then I'll be almost caught up with the shows. :)

 

[H-KQGE]

I listened to it again this morning, really enjoyable & good info. Why we're candles & hygiene goods so low on the list?

 

[Laura]

As I mentioned before, I think a lot of what is going on even among smarter, more tuned-in people, is a bad case of "normalcy bias". Of course, what we are dealing with here is something that is a bit larger in scale and time scope than an oncoming tornado, but the principle is the same.

From: "You Are Not So Smart" by David McRaney

Normalcy Bias

THE MISCONCEPTION: Your fight-or-flight instincts kick in and you panic when disaster strikes.

THE TRUTH: You often become abnormally calm and pretend everything is normal in a crisis.

If you knew a horrific mile-wide force of nature was headed toward your home, what would you do? Would you call your loved ones? Would you head outside and look for the oncoming storm? Would you leap into a bathtub and cover yourself with a mattress?

No matter what you encounter in life, your first analysis of any situation is to see it in the context of what is normal for you and then compare and contrast the new information against what you know usually happens. Because of this, you have a tendency to interpret strange and alarming situations as if they were just part of business as usual.

For three days in 1999, a series of horrific tornadoes scrubbed clean the Oklahoma countryside. Among them was a monster force of nature later called the Bridge Creek–Moore F5. The F5 part of the name comes from the Enhanced Fujita Scale. It goes from EF1 to EF5 and measures the intensity of a twister. Less than 1 percent of tornadoes ever reach the top level. At 4, cars go airborne and whole houses are leveled. To reach level 5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, a tornado’s winds must exceed 200 miles per hour. The winds in Bridge Creek–Moore reached 320.

Warnings were issued thirteen minutes in advance, yet many people did nothing as the monster approached. They milled around and hoped the killer would spare them. They didn’t attempt to run for safety. In the end, the beast destroyed 8,000 homes and killed 36 people. Many more would surely have perished if there had been no warning at all. For instance, a similar twister in 1925 killed 695.

So, given there was a warning, why did some people not heed the call to action and seek shelter from the colossus?

The tendency to flounder in the face of danger is well understood and expected among tornado chasers and meteorologists. Tales of those who choose to ride out hurricanes and tornado-spewing storm clouds are common. Weather experts and emergency management workers know you can become enveloped in a blanket of calm when terror enters your heart.

Psychologists refer to it as normalcy bias. First responders call it negative panic. This strange counterproductive tendency to forget self-preservation in the event of an emergency is often factored into fatality predictions in everything from ship sinkings to stadium evacuations.

Disaster movies get it all wrong. When you and others are warned of danger, you don’t evacuate immediately while screaming and flailing your arms.

In his book Big Weather, tornado chaser Mark Svenvold wrote about how contagious normalcy bias can be. He recalled how people often tried to convince him to chill out while fleeing from impending doom. He said even when tornado warnings were issued, people assumed it was someone else’s problem. Stake-holding peers, he said, would try to shame him into denial so they could remain calm. They didn’t want him deflating their attempts at feeling normal.

Normalcy bias flows into the brain no matter the scale of the problem. It will appear whether you have days and plenty of warning or are blindsided with only seconds between life and death.

Imagine you are in a Boeing 747 airplane as it touches down after a long flight. You hide a sigh of relief once the ground ceases to rush closer and you hear the landing gear chirp against the runway. You release the hand rests as the engines power down. You sense the bustle of four hundred people preparing to leave. The tedious process of taxiing to the terminal begins. You play back some of the moments on the giant plane, thinking how it was a pleasant flight with few bumps and nice people all around. You are already collecting your things and getting ready to remove your seat belt. You look out the window and try to make out something familiar in the fog. Without warning, shock waves of heat and pressure tear into your flesh. A terrible blast rattles your organs and tears at all corners of the plane. A noise like two trains colliding under your chin bursts eardrums up and down the aisles. An explosion tunnels through the spaces around you, filling every gap and crevice with streamers of flame surging down the aisles and over your head, under your feet. They recede just as quickly, leaving unbearable heat. Clumps of your hair crumple into ashes. Now all you hear is the crackle of fire.

Imagine you are sitting on this plane now.

The top of the craft is gone and you can see the sky above you. Columns of flame are growing. Holes in the sides of the airliner lead to freedom.

How would you react?

You probably think you would leap to your feet and yell, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” If not this, then you might assume you would coil into a fetal position and freak out.

Statistically, neither of these is likely. What you would probably do is far weirder.

In 1977, on an island in the Canaries called Tenerife, a series of mistakes led to two enormous 747 passenger planes colliding with each other as one attempted takeoff. A Pan Am aircraft with 496 people on board was taxiing along the runway in dense fog when a Dutch KLM flight with 248 inside asked to be cleared for takeoff on the same airstrip. The fog was so thick the KLM crew couldn’t see the other airplane, and both were invisible to the control tower. The crew misheard their instructions. Thinking they had just been given permission, they began to speed toward the other plane. Air traffic controllers tried to warn them, but radio interference garbled the messages. Too late, the captain of the KLM flight saw the other craft ahead of him. He pulled up hard, dragging the tail along the ground, but couldn’t take flight. He screamed as half of the KLM aircraft smashed into the Pan Am at 160 miles per hour. The KLM airplane bounced off the Pan Am jet, soared for five hundred feet, and then tumbled in a terrible jet fuel explosion. Everyone on board disintegrated. The fire was so intense it would burn until the next day.

Rescue crews spilled out onto the tarmac, but they didn’t drive out to the Pan Am flight. Instead, they rushed to the flaming wreckage of the KLM plane. For twenty minutes, in the chaos, firefighters and emergency personnel thought they were dealing with only one problem and believed the flames peeking out from the fog in the distance were just more wreckage. The survivors on board the Pan Am flight would not be rescued.

The engines were still running at full power because the pilot had attempted to turn at the last second, and the crew couldn’t switch them off because the wires had been severed. The crash sheared away most of the top half of the 747. People lay in pieces from the impact. Flames spread through the carnage. A massive fire began to take over the plane. Smoke filled the fuselage.

To live, people had to act quickly. They had to unbuckle, move through the chaos onto the intact wing, and then jump twenty feet onto wreckage.

Escape was possible, but not all of the survivors would attempt it.

Some bolted into action, unbuckled loved ones and strangers and pushed them out to safety. Others stayed put and were consumed. Soon after, the center fuel tank exploded, killing all but the seventy people who had made their way outside.

According to Amanda Ripley’s book, The Unthinkable, investigators later said the survivors of the initial impact had one minute before the fire took them. In that one minute, several dozen people who could have escaped failed to take action, failed to break free of paralysis.

Why did so many people flounder when seconds mattered?

Psychologist Daniel Johnson has rigorously studied this strange behavior. In his research he interviewed survivors of the Tenerife crash among many other disasters, including skyscraper fires and sinking ships, to better understand why some people flee when others do not. In Johnson’s interview with Paul and Floy Heck, both passengers on the Pan Am flight, they recalled not only their traveling companions sitting motionless as they hustled to find a way out, but dozens of others who also made no effort to stand as the Hecks raced past them.

In the first moments of the incident, right after the top of the plane was sliced open, Paul Heck looked over to his wife, Floy. She was motionless, frozen in place and unable to process what was happening. He screamed for her to follow him. They unbuckled, clasped hands, and he led her out of the plane as the smoke began to billow. Floy later realized she possibly could have saved those sitting in a stupor just by yelling for them to join her, but she too was in a daze, with no thoughts of escape as she blindly followed her husband.

Years later, Floy Heck was interviewed by the Orange County Register. She told the reporter she remembered looking back just before leaping out of a gash in the wall. She saw her friend still in the seat next to where they had been sitting with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes glassed over. Her friend did not survive the fire.

In any perilous event, like a sinking ship or a towering inferno, a shooting rampage or a tornado, there is a chance you will become so overwhelmed by the perilous overflow of ambiguous information that you will do nothing at all. You will float away and leave a senseless statue in your place. You may even lie down. If no one comes to your aid, you will die.

John Leach, a psychologist at the University of Lancaster, also studies freezing under stress. He says about 75 percent of people find it impossible to reason during a catastrophic event or impending doom. On the edges, the 15 or so percent on either side of the bell curve react either with unimpaired, heightened awareness or blubbering, confused panic.

According to Johnson and Leach, the sort of people who survive are the sort of people who prepare for the worst and practice ahead of time. They’ve done the research, or built the shelter, or run the drills. They look for the exits and imagine what they will do. They were in a fire as a child or survived a typhoon. These people don’t deliberate during calamity because they’ve already done the deliberation the other people around them are just now going through.

Normalcy bias is stalling during a crisis and pretending everything will continue to be as fine and predictable as it was before. Those who defeat it act when others don’t. They move when others are considering whether or not they should.

As Johnson points out, the brain must go through a procedure before the body acts—cognition, perception, comprehension, decision, implementation, and then movement. There’s no way to overclock this, but you can practice until these steps individually are no longer complex, and thus no longer take up valuable brain computation cycles.

Johnson likens it to playing an instrument. If you’ve never played a C chord on a guitar, you have to think your way through it and awkwardly press down on the strings until you make a clumsy twang. With a few minutes of practice, you can strum without as much deliberation and create a more pleasant sound.

To be clear, normalcy bias isn’t freezing at the first signs of danger like a rabbit who confronts a snake, which is a real behavior humans can succumb to. To suddenly stop moving and hope for the best is called fear bradycardia, and it is an automatic and involuntarily instinct. This is sometimes referred to as tonic immobility. Animals like gazelles will become motionless if they sense a predator is nearby in the hopes of tricking its motion-tracking abilities by blending into the background. Some animals go so far as to feign death in what is called thanatosis.

In 2005, researchers at the University of Rio de Janeiro were able to induce fear bradycardia in humans just by showing subjects photos of injured people. The participants’ heart rates plummeted and their muscles stiffened immediately. To be sure, this sort of behavior happens in a disaster, but we are talking about something different with normalcy bias.

Much of your behavior is an attempt to lower anxiety. You know you aren’t in any danger when everything is safe and expected. Normalcy bias is self-soothing through believing everything is just fine. If you can still engage in your normal habits, still see the world as if nothing bad is happening, then your anxiety stays put.

Normalcy bias is a state of mind out of which you are attempting to make everything OK by believing it still is.

Normalcy bias is refusing to believe terrible events will include you even though you have every reason to think otherwise.

The first thing you are likely to feel in the event of a disaster is the supreme need to feel safe and secure. When it becomes clear this is impossible, you drift into a daydream where it is.

Survivors of 9/11 say they remember gathering belongings before leaving offices and cubicles. They put on coats and called loved ones. They shut down their computers and had conversations. Even in their descent, most moved at a leisurely pace—no screaming or running. There was no need for anyone to say “Remain calm everyone,” because they weren’t freaking out. They were begging the world to return to normal by engaging in acts of normalcy.

To reduce the anxiety of impending doom, you first cling to what you know. You then mine others for information. You strike up dialogs with coworkers, friends, and family. You become glued to the television and the radio. You gather with others to trade what you know so far. Some believe this is what happened as the Bridge Creek–Moore F5 tornado approached, which caused some people not to seek shelter.

All the tools of pattern recognition, all the routines you’ve become accustomed to are rendered useless in a horrific event. The emergency situation is too novel and ambiguous. You have a tendency to freeze not because panic has overwhelmed you but because normalcy has disappeared. Ripley calls this moment when you freeze “reflexive incredulity.” As your brain attempts to disseminate the data, your deepest desire is for everyone around you to assure you the bad thing isn’t real. You wait for this to happen past the point when it becomes obvious it will not. The holding pattern of normalcy bias continues until the ship lurches or the building shifts. You may remain placid until the tornado throws a car through your house or the hurricane snaps the power lines.

If everyone else is milling around waiting for information, you will too.

Those who are deeply concerned with evacuation procedures—first responders, architects, stadium personnel, the travel industry—are aware of normalcy bias, and write about it in manuals and trade journals. In a 1985 paper published in the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, sociologists Shunji Mikami and Ken’Ichi Ikeda at the University of Tokyo identified the steps you are likely to go through in a disaster. They said you have a tendency to first interpret the situation within the context of what you are familiar with and to greatly underestimate the severity. This is the moment, when seconds count, that normalcy bias costs lives. A predictable order of behaviors, they said, will then unfold.

You will seek information from those you trust first and then move on to those nearby.

Next, you’ll try to contact your family if possible, and then you’ll begin to prepare to evacuate or seek shelter.

Finally, after all of this, you’ll move.

Mikami and Ikeda say you are more likely to dawdle if you fail to understand the seriousness of the situation and have never been exposed to advice about what to do or been in a similar circumstance. Even worse, you stall longer if you fall back on the old compare-and-contrast tendencies where you try to convince yourself the encroaching peril is not much different than what you are used to—normalcy bias.

They use a 1982 flood in Nagasaki as an example. Light flooding occurred there every year, and the residents assumed the heavy rainfall was part of a familiar routine. Soon, though, they realized the waters were getting higher and doing so faster than in years past. At 4:55 P.M., the government issued a flood warning. Still, some waited to see just how peculiar the flooding would be, how out of the ordinary. Only 13 percent of residents had evacuated by 9 P.M. In the end, 265 were killed.

When Hurricane Katrina bore down on my home in Mississippi, I remember going to the grocery store for food, water, and supplies and being shocked by the number of people who had only a few loaves of bread and couple of bottles of soda in their carts. I remember their frustration as they waited in line behind me with all my bottled water and canned goods. I told them, “Sorry, but you can never be too prepared.”

Their response? “I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal.”

I often wonder what those people did for the two weeks we were without electricity and the roads were impassable.

Normalcy bias is a proclivity you can’t be rid of. Everyday life seems prosaic and mundane because you are wired to see it as such. If you weren’t, you would never be able to handle the information overload. Think of moving into a new apartment or home, or buying a new car or cell phone. At first, you notice everything and spend hours adjusting settings or arranging furniture. After a while, you get used to the normalcy and let things go. You may even forget certain aspects of your new home until a visitor points them out to you and you rediscover them. You acclimate to your surroundings so you can notice when things go awry; otherwise life would be all noise and no signal.

Sometimes though, this habit of creating background static and then ignoring it gets in the way. Sometimes you see static when you shouldn’t and yearn for normalcy when it cannot be found. Hurricanes and floods, for example, can be too big, slow, and abstract to startle you into action. You truly can’t see them coming.

The solution, according to Mikami, Ikeda, and other experts, is repetition on the part of those who can help, those who can see the danger better than you. If enough warnings are given and enough instructions are broadcast, then those things become the new normal, and you will spring into action.

Normalcy bias can be scaled up to larger events as well. Global climate change, peak oil, obesity epidemics, and stock market crashes are good examples of larger, more complex events in which people fail to act because it is difficult to imagine just how abnormal life could become if the predictions are true.

Regular media over-hyping and panic-building over issues like Y2K, swine flu, SARS, and the like help fuel normalcy bias on a global scale. Pundits on both sides of politics warn of crises that can be averted only by voting one way or the other. With so much crying wolf, it can be difficult to determine in the frenzied information landscape when to be alarmed, when it really is not a drill.

The first instinct is to gauge how out of the norm the situation truly is and act only when the problem crosses a threshold past which it becomes impossible to ignore. Of course, this is often after it is too late to act.

 

[manitoban]

How do you go about making soap? Any specific "recipe"? I'd be very happy to follow your steps. Your soap is always wonderful!!

The ideal way to learn soapmaking would be to attend a class and watch a soapmaker in action. Unfortunately, this isn't possible for most of us, as not too many people teach this particular craft anymore.

However there are a number of books on the subject that do an excellent job of covering all the basics. As there are safety concerns, it's a good idea to do a lot of reading before you start experimenting, as things can (and do!) occasionally go wrong.

I'd recommend this book - "The Soapmaker's Companion" by Susan Miller Cavitch, (available on Amazon and in some bookstores) for a beginner as it is very comprehensive and also has numerous recipes, with all the lye percentages already worked out for you. It can get you started with a good basic recipe, the supplies and equipment you need, and there are also numerous examples of more complicated recipes that can address various skin concerns etc. You can even get creative with coloring, essential oils and various other additions. It also addressed problem situations and how to cure and store the soap and basically teaches you step by step how to make soap.

All the soap I've made comes from recipes in this book, (including your soap Chu), and all have turned out well. I can't really recommend any particular recipe as they all have to be adjusted to the size of the mold you have and how big a batch you want to make.

I think the main thing is to have a thorough understanding of the chemical process and the safety concerns, and then you can get started.

 

[Laura]

Psychology of survival:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBKJPiKRLJE

 

[H-KQGE]

Psychology of survival:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBKJPiKRLJE

Thanks for that. Talk about inspirational! That's quite a thing to have so much faith in each other even if you are well practised for certain scenarios. And then the feeling of guilt long after the event (in the case of the other sister) shows how necessary working on our psychology & behaviour is, for those of us with foreknowledge, who can then exercise vigilance all around. The thought of being out at sea has always been more frightening to me than land-based terrors.

 

[Jasmine]

How do you go about making soap? Any specific "recipe"? I'd be very happy to follow your steps. Your soap is always wonderful!!

The ideal way to learn soapmaking would be to attend a class and watch a soapmaker in action. Unfortunately, this isn't possible for most of us, as not too many people teach this particular craft anymore.

There are lots of Youtube videos on soap making. In searching you can find a good one where you can follow their directions step by step while they're making it. And you can also see the different methods people use. Most of these videos are from very experienced soap makers. But there's definitely a learning curve and you must be very very careful in the handling of lye. I was fortunate to be able to take a class, and it was well worth it. There's a lot of measuring and a little math that goes into it, and I highly recommend, as manitoban did, to try to take a class if possible. Maybe seek out some arts and crafts stores in your area or look for handmade soap in your local heath food stores or swap meets to find soap makers in your area that might give classes.

Here's me at my class, and my first soap log freshly cut, it was a proud moment.

 

[WIN 52]

The Eskimo culture survived through several Ice Ages, it seems. There is no washing when exposed skin freezes in seconds.

An ice age lasts about 90K years. That's 90,000. We've only been out of the last one for about 11K years. Modern man only appeared about 40K years ago (70K if you take the Cs figure). Bottom line is, eskimos have not "survived through several ice ages" though they certainly have thrived in an icy environment.

You might enjoy watching the film "Fast Runner" for up close and personal depiction of the eskimo lifestyle.

Were there not Earth humans alive on this planet when the group of modern men/women were re-constructed and brought to Earth?

Have there been times of no humans on this planet in the past 300,000 years?

I could be wrong on both lines of thought!

 

[Dirgni]

Sometimes small things are very important in dark times. They help you not to give up. One of my grandfathers survived Russian prisoner of war camp because he had a picture with his family. So he had something to cling to and that helped him not to give up. He came back physically OK but he never wanted to tell about this time. When I read stories about the mid to end of the fourties in my country it is the small things like special meals or some small treats that people remember. Or the help they got. It helped them to find the courage not to give up. I also heard of people, who died just because they gave themselves up e.g. during refugee tracks or in camps. So the right mindset and out of the box thinking may help. Also mutual help and sharing


The German publisher Zeitgut has a collection of books with reminisce stories from normal persons who lived during differnt good and bad times in the last century. For those who can read German 2 examples of our extremer times:

http://www.amazon.de/zur%C3%BCck-Vertreibung-Integration-1944-1955-Zeitzeugen-Erinnerungen/dp/3866141335/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380643959&sr=1-2&keywords=zeitgut+b%C3%BCcher+Flucht

http://www.amazon.de/weiter-geht-doch-Deutschland-1945/dp/3933336104/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=MC54EDOSPGAY&coliid=INH67SJ5GPO96



OK, I do not exactly know what will happen. Spot light collection from our newer history to get an impression and make some estimation what could happen:
After 2nd World War cigarettes were here a second currency besides the Reichsmark. There were black markets, where there were goods you did not get otherwise. There was "just enough" food for (most) normal people during and not enough the first years after the war. People especially from the cities travelled to the farms and tried to get food in exchange for almost everything they did not immediately need for surviving. This was called hamstering and discourgaged from the government. Some of them even stole food from the fields (hunger!) and coals from trains because of major shortages. Food and clothes were rationed and without stamp cards you did not get them (Organized distribution of goods). People had to take in others without roof over the head (Bombed out, refugees). A lot of people kept some hens and/or rabbits. Gardening was done also at any odd places. Bycicles (tires and inner tubes were much mended somestimes), handcarts (also prams) were very useful to transport goods and people. Looting was forbidden and loothers were punished immediately by the others when got caught. The law never broke completely down. It was normally followed by the normal persons during the whole time with some exceptions connected to food/warmth. Cities were bombed and people lost their home from one minute to another. Violence tended to go out from governance, troops and psychopaths. Very bad things happened to people, who were imprisoned in camps, who tried to flee from eastern Germany (during a very cold winter) and to those who lived after the war outside the borders of the region which is now Germany and Austria.

By the way a lot of people had after the war issues because they did not have their papers any more (birth certificates, passport, ID cards, marriage certificate, school certificates, other certificates, social insurance papers, ...). You may want to take them with you if you have to move on suddenly. Please also remember to take some small personal things and pictures of your family with you. A packed backpack or suitcase may also be useful.

For other examples you may also want to check primary sources / journals e.g. about the wars in Yougoslavia in the nineties, the 2nd WW in Britain, the settlement years in Northern America, stories about the black death, etc

 

[Gawan]

Great show and very good information indeed!

Edit: I guess I should clarify why I asked this question. Many post online (not here) are obsessed with getting botulism from home canned meat. Consequently, that prompted me to do a bit of research on the bacteria and the toxin it produces. However, I'm not sure if i'm missing something as I wouldn't want to have a closet full of botulistic (pretty sure that's not even a word) meat.

My thought is that home canned meat if it is done right, is much safer than anything you buy from a store. But, having said that, I think that if there is an instant of doubt, or you just want to make sure, when you open the jar to use the meat, just plop it in the pressure cooker and bring up the pressure and re-cook that way for at least five minutes. That should do it.

I had more bad experiences with bought canned meat than what I did myself. At least two glasses where already bad and should have lasted for several years. It didn't look bad, but something was off with the smell, so I did throw it away not to risk anything. Eventually the first bad sign is if the glasses can be opened really easy, but eventually also depends on the type of glass.

I listened to it again this morning, really enjoyable & good info. Why we're candles & hygiene goods so low on the list?

Imo the things that got mentioned were suggestions to get the idea and I'm not sure if the lower numbers are less important.

 

[eleusis]

Thanks for another incredible show everyone. Your strength, courage and hard work are an inspiration to all of us out here. Oh, and a big thank you to all the techies too who keep this radio show going and the forum and website up and running. Just so you know, hearing your voices week to week is a great comfort regardless of the topic or topics you're discussing. You're the best.

 

[Beau]

Psychology of survival:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBKJPiKRLJE

I've watched that previously, and have to recommend Ray Mears' TV episodes "Bushcraft" for anyone interested in learning more about surviving "on the land". He typically travels to a specific area of the world in each episode and shows how you can use the land to survive and how the locals have managed to use what some would call primitive technology for survival purposes. He's entertaining and educational in his presentation and shows a lot of respect for the people in the areas that he travels to.

 

[whitecoast]

Psychology of survival:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBKJPiKRLJE

I've watched that previously, and have to recommend Ray Mears' TV episodes "Bushcraft" for anyone interested in learning more about surviving "on the land". He typically travels to a specific area of the world in each episode and shows how you can use the land to survive and how the locals have managed to use what some would call primitive technology for survival purposes. He's entertaining and educational in his presentation and shows a lot of respect for the people in the areas that he travels to.

Thank you! I'll have to look into it :)