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DrumBeat: September 23, 2007
Posted by Leanan on September 23, 2007 - 9:06am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Natural Gas: A Bridge to Totally Clean Energy? - Robert Hefner says natural gas offers a bridge to a squeaky-clean 'hydrogen economy.'
At the time the Fuel Use Act was being debated, my estimates were that the U.S. had 1,500 to 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas remaining. My estimates were called irresponsible, but the big oil companies were wrong. We have produced 585 trillion subsequent to that time, and today most estimators believe that we have at least 1,500 to 2,000 trillion remaining. At today's rate of consumption, that leaves [America] a 70- to 100-year supply.
Syria's oil output forecast to fall by more than half
Oil production in Syria is forecast to drop 360,000 barrels per day next year, Oil Minister Sufian Al-Allaw said on Sunday, Allaw said in a statement that the output of the crude peaked in 1995 and 1996, indicating that the output has recently dropped by 385,000 bpd recently.
UAE to cut oil output by 600,000 bpd in November
'A scheduled essential maintenance programme will take place in November 2007 at three offshore fields -- Upper Zakum, Lower Zakum and Umm Shaif. During the maintenance period, production will be reduced by approximately 600,000 bpd,' ADNOC said in a statement.It did not specify how long the work will last but said it had taken measures to meet its commitments.
Motorists in Iran are to be allowed to buy an extra one-off allocation of 100 litres of petrol, in addition to their regular monthly ration of 100 litres, reported Reuters.
China potential oil reserve 65 bln tons; 39% proven - report
China's oil reserve potential stands at more than 65 bln tons, of which only 39 pct has been proven, Xinhua news agency reported, citing Wang Tao, director of the China Commission of the World Petroleum Congress.Wang said that China's natural gas reserve potential stands at 25 trln cubic meters, with just 24.6 of them affirmed.
Foreign companies keen to tap China's coal deposits
Foreign companies that own clean coal technologies and work with their Chinese counterparts to tap China's coal reserves, one of the world's largest, may get good returns as China is seeking to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and ease its increasing thirst for oil.
Greenspan Re-writes the History of the Invasion of Iraq
"That's silly," former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld answered a member of the American media at a news conference at the Pentagon before the war, at the beginning of 2003. The reporter had asked Rumsfeld if the reason for the war against Iraq was US control over oil.However, it now appears that the issue wasn't that silly, as Rumsfeld claimed at the time.
First off, with lucid logic and prosaic prose, Foster shows why and how the very nature of capitalism, the "genetic code" of capitalism, is the source and the cause of our current predicament and, most importantly, that no amount of "tinkering" with the system will solve things and, in fact, "tinkering" will, in all likelihood, increase the speed of the slide toward catastrophe through the simple expedient of delaying dealing with the inevitable consequences of an economy that can only survive by expanding its markets or, as it's euphemistically known, "growth."
A new slide into oily stagflation
THIS weekend marks the 34th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur war. In case you have forgotten, it triggered the world's first OPEC oil price shock and the awful era of stagflation.And oil prices are at it again.
One of the biggest question marks facing the global economy today is how we can increase energy supplies by the additional 50 per cent forecast to be needed in the next 25 years and at the same time drastically lower our dependency on hydrocarbons, which currently provide 80 per cent of the world's energy needs.
Opec intervention seen as fading force
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) has stepped in with 500,000 extra barrels of oil a day to calm global markets but the cartel may not have the power it used to have to provide respite for investors.
Mexico becoming one of world's more dangerous countries
"These people that are placing these devices know something about the flow of the oil and gas," said one American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. "They didn't just place it randomly in the middle of the valve system."
20,000 March Against Myanmar Government
About 20,000 people led by Buddhist monks demonstrated against Myanmar's military junta Sunday, in what has quickly become the largest anti-government demonstrations since the failed democratic uprising in 1988.
IQPC to host Security for Energy Infrastructure in the Middle East event
The security risks faced by the oil and gas industry are diverse and come in many forms. Different parts of the world are beset by geopolitical circumstances that can leave local oil and gas operations in the line of fire for those wishing to compromise operational integrity for reasons of financial gain or simply social and political instability.
The fees for the bus go up and up
Parents throughout the northwest suburbs are reeling from annual bus fees as local districts try to make their services self-sustaining. Mounting fees have fueled calls for the state to support school transportation and kindled concerns about tailpipe pollution from a crush of parents dropping off children at school.
Global Swarming: Is it time for Americans to start cutting our baby emissions?
We're obsessed with our green lifestyles—eating local, driving hybrids, paying off our excess carbon-dioxide emissions. From that perspective, voluntary familial extinction (or at least reduction) might not be such a bad idea. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, cutting back on kids is the best choice you can possibly make.
Falling German Birthrate Dispels Baby Miracle Myth
A United Nations report this year called this global aging “a process without parallel in the history of humanity” and predicted that people older than 60 would outnumber those under 15 for the first time in 2047.
They’re Electric, but Can They Be Fantastic?
Experts say the cars’ arrival hinges on two make-or-break issues:Developing safe, affordable lithium-ion batteries lasting 100,000 miles.
Overcoming a psychological barrier among people who can imagine the benefits — but who can also see themselves stranded with a dead battery and no place or time to recharge.
A Busy City Street Makes Room for Bikes
The city is planning to remake seven blocks of Ninth Avenue in Chelsea into what officials are billing enthusiastically, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, as the street of the future.The most unusual aspect of the design, which will run from 16th Street to 23rd Street, is that it uses a lane of parked cars to protect cyclists from other traffic.
A Chicken on Every Plot, a Coop in Every Backyard
City dwellers who raise chickens are springing up around the country. Groups organized on the Internet in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, Tex., are host to chicken-centric social events, and there are dozens of books — a whole new form of chick lit — on raising chickens, including Barbara Kilarski’s “Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs and Other Small Spaces,” and related titles like “Anyone Can Build a Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker,” by Herrick Kimball.
Winds of change are blowing in northwest Missouri
The Bluegrass Ridge farm is the first commercial wind project to open in Missouri. The wind farm could produce about 57 megawatt hours of energy — enough electricity to power 34,000 homes.
The Dutch government takes a stand -- against cars, for bikes
The Dutch government has taken a trend to promote eco-friendly cities a step further than its European neighbors by announcing firm measures to discourage cars and driving.
A fundamental global trend nowadays is growing natural resource scarcity. Oil and natural gas prices have soared in recent years. This past year, food prices have also skyrocketed, causing hardships among the poor and large shifts in income between countries and between rural and urban areas.The most basic reason for the rise in natural resource prices is strong growth, especially in China and India, which is hitting against the physical limits of land, timber, oil and gas reserves, and water supplies. Thus, wherever nature’s goods and services are traded in markets (as with energy and food), prices are rising. When they are not traded in markets (as with clean air), the result is pollution and depletion rather than higher prices.
Agriculture In A Post-Oil Economy
To what extent could food be produced in a world without fossil fuels? In the year 2000, humanity consumed about 30 billion barrels of oil, but the supply is starting to run out; without oil and natural gas, there will be no fuel, no asphalt, no plastics, no chemical fertilizer. Most people in modern industrial civilization live on food that was bought from a local supermarket, but such food will not always be available. Agriculture in the future will be largely a "family affair": without motorized vehicles, food will have to be produced not far from where it was consumed. But what crops should be grown? How much land would be needed? Where could people be supported by such methods of agriculture?
Australia: Group has plan if oil crisis starts to bite here
“The peak oil planning came out of oil shocks in the 1970s (when the cost of oil quadrupled),” said Ms Wallace, who has had a strong interest in peak oil since completing a permaculture course last year.“It is all about what to do when we run out of energy.”
Access to Oil Is Bedrock of Our Middle East Policy
Should the United States invade a foreign country for its oil?If that question were posed in a poll, the vast majority of Americans would no doubt answer with a resounding "no." We're the good guys in the world, spreading democracy, freeing the oppressed, opposing tyrants. We wouldn't invade a sovereign country strictly out of a selfish lust for its resources, would we?
Iran oil bourse 'won't undermine US instruments'
Plans for a commodity exchange for oil trading in Iran won't undermine the dollar’s supremacy in the oil markets, its architect says.
US praises deal on cutting threats to ozone
The United States on Saturday hailed an international agreement to ban chemicals threatening the ozone, saying it would bolster efforts to combat global warming.
One Effect I Expect Post-Peak Oil -
Growing and Persistent Mental Illness
Worth a Read
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/22/AR200709...
A Very Good Friend is a Psychiatrist doing her Residency here, the toughest job in town
Alan
So far the toughest job I know about is to decide if a child should stay in a family that seem to be dysfunctional or moved to a foster home. Both alternatives are probably bad for the child and the question is wich is least bad.
We have a mutual friend who does that type work. It is still not as tough.
In a recent shift of 27 hours, she admitted 16 people for 24 hour observation (they stay in a cot in the hallway) because they were a danger to themselves or society, three were so violent they sedated and constrained. Dozens more were examined and not committed.
Then she had to process those at the end of their 24 hour hold and decide whether to give them a bed. If so, she must kick someone else out of a bed, since we have so VERY few beds (we had over 100 psychiatric beds pre-Katrina, we re-started with 5 and then 12 beds in a Lord & Taylor department store and are now about 30 beds I think, with massive mental health problems, see linked article).
She has guessed wrong (perhaps there is not a right answer) and had patients commit murder-suicide and psychotic suicide recently because they were not in beds getting in-hospital treatment.
Best Hopes those on the front lines,
Alan
This is a just flappin' huge issue coming right at us. Yes, New Orleans has it now, but the whole darned country is going to get it in spades over the next nine months as the mortgage scam unwinds. All we need is a little tap - a hurricane or fun new war in the ME, gas goes below MOL, stuff gets ugly fast, and things may only come back slowly if it ever comes back at all.
Are there any region wide reports? Are there any success stories?
I've made a few statements about spiritual support in coming days and this is exactly the sort of stuff I worry over - we have this whole First Church of Christ, Investment Banker mindset here now and those who've bought into this are going to get knocked down, never to recover, at least not in a context in which they're familiar. Do we pray and conserve or incite and fight? I think this may be an unspoken campaign issue for 2008 ...
Community support and our long tradition of talking to each other has kept a very bad situation from getting worse in New Orleans.
Suburban isolation is not a good thing when under stress.
Rising mental health issues and related reduced ability to cope and change will be part of the post-Peak Oil world. Self medication via substance abuse as well.
Alan
Alan,
It going to be a huge problem. As the oil exploration business crashed in the late 80's and 90's, I had a lot of chronic depression and substance abuse problems. As I came back out of the problems, I inventoried my values and attitudes so I could change away from my most distruuctive problems and learned some interesting things about myself. A lot of the root problem was low self-esteem, and I acted out seeking chemical relief. But my self-esteem problem meant I had to change my behaviour to do things I liked myself for doing.
I learned that I got a huge amount of my previous self image from my profession and monetary success. The money and things gave me a place in society that I couldn't easily replace, and as I sold the big house and had my first marriage break up, i couldn't replace the interests in wells that I'd given up so easily to my first wife, whom I affectionately call ol' what's her name, and kept having reoccuring bouts of depression punctuated with bouts of substance abuse. It was a self distructive down spiral.
In order to break out of it comepletely I had to do several things. The first was to realise that no matter the cause, it was my behaviour that was the problem, and I just plain had to stop, and I did it by going to A.A. and following their directions. As I said, my reoccuring bouts of depression were a large part of my problem, and I had to get treatment for my depression which included medication for me, but it required my going to a doctor to get help. Next, i had to have the humility to be willing to listen to others and receive instruction from them. Then I had to examine my own behaviour, and change my life so that I incorporated the life lessons that I learned.
As bI noted, one of my problems was low self-esteem after my life had fallen apart. Sowhat i did was look at people that I respected and try to find out why I had these feelings about them. I discovered that they were kind and tried to help other people. They were honest, and willing to look at themselves. And the ones i respected most were creative and tried to add to life rather than take away, and they were generous rather than trying to maximize their self-interest.
At any rate these are useful life lessons for me. I try to practice them even though things have turned around and I could just go back to being a self-saisfied landman with a good hustle. Now, I never take a lease unless its going to be a good deal for the landowner as well as my employer (s) as I figure its in my employer's best interest to have a happy lessor. I'm trying to assemble a shallow oil field redevelopment deal, and i'm taking care of my investors at least as well as I take care of myself. I have a number of excellent shallow ideas, and I'm interested in building up some investors that invest in multiple prospects. And even though the idea is mine, I'm cutting in the Geologist and the Engineer when we find one, and the other guy raising money because everyone does a better job when they get an interest in the prospect Bob Ebersole
shame i am moving out of the Houston area... sounds like if I'd have run into you at the October event you could have lent some good advice right now!
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain
ResponsibleAccountable,
Email and I'll send you my telehone number. My email is : Bob Ebersole two thousand and four (name lower case, numbers not words) at Yahoo.com. I don't know how good my advice is, though.
I figure if there really is any cosmic meaning to life its to learn and share with others what we've learned. Alan's right about all the shock that we are all going to have as the chickens come home to roost, yet its going to also be an opportunity for positive things, too. Just helping each other learn to garden or make a grey water cistern for watering vegetables will help us meet the neighbors and make new friends-we'll get opportunities to establish local villages when all our spare time isn't spent sitting in 3 MPH traffic on the freeway.
You bring up an issue that was a big deal in our culture prior to peak oil - the whole definition of self based on the nature of our gainful employment.
I took an interest in this a few years ago and I have a sort of off an on running experiment I conduct on people depending quite strongly on the situation.
What do you do?
[deadpan]I'm a bank robber.
What do you do?
[deadpan]Perhaps a bit too much heroin.
What do you do?
I spend a few moments describing my interests and hobbies, only lightly touching on what I do for my income.
What do you do?
[the direct approach] What do I do when ... ?
I never pull this stuff when there is money on the table but casual conversations when I'm traveling almost always go along these lines. The results are amusing and revealing - I purposefully steer the conversation to this whole concept of defining self based on what is certainly a transient arrangement with an employer in this day and age.
So ... what do I do?
I'm a hiker, biker, kayaker, amateur photographer, a some times freelance journalist and compulsive scribbler, I try to work a little here and there, and right now I'm about that whole change agent business, which I can't quit even if my life depends on it.
So ... how will people define themselves when the forms of employment of yesteryear recede and one in five of us has no "daily definition"? Perhaps "peak oil activist" will be one of the phrases that one will hear?
SCT - you might consider taking a short break from posting - mostly your comments are tolerable but honestly - we don't need to know your every thought or action.
Not that most don't appreciate your comments - but I'm just saying, a break of a day or so. Like Cid.
I'm a hiker, biker, kayaker, amateur photographer, a some times freelance journalist and compulsive scribbler, ...
Some people call me Maurice. Really love your peaches,
| The problem will solve itself.
| But not in a nice way.
I met somebody who would ask "What are you into?" as an antidote to that. I completely flubbed the response and he switched to the usual "What do you do?"
Andy
Alan, thanks for posting this. It's something I've been wondering about as I work in retail and I see people taking superficial needs too seriously all the time.
I wonder how Katrina has affected the birth rate in New Orleans?
Let them eat cake.
As it looks increasingly obvious that given the major issues facing the world population overshoot, global warming, financial games, and peak oil and others. We will be facing a crisis that effects the core tenet of our current civilization which is infinite expansion and infinite resources.
A big unknown in this probably troubled future is how the population will respond especially in the technically advanced countries since any chance of a technical miracle would most likely come from the more advanced countries. This miracle may simply be prudent use of our current knowledge base.
Given this one wonders how todays population will respond to a threat thats difficult to pin down say either peak oil or global warming since the victims are in this case the perpetrator thus its a case of suicide.
Next considering that most people put sustainable populations at much lower level then we have today easily 1 billion or more we have to consider a situation in many countries that is more akin to the Black Death than anything seen in more modern times.
Next the art of political propaganda has reached its zenith with a combination of unethical politicians and self interested populace the old Roman trick of providing bread and circus's has been refined to the point that governments have removed most constraints on their actions. This has resulted in the last big issue we have today. Which is the greatest concentration and disparity in wealth that has existed since at least the 1700's. Globalization has accomplished the task of removing wage arbitrage and enriching the wealthy while providing the poor with plastic trinkets in exchange.
So considering all the above I cannot help but feel that major rioting and the formation of various police states that attempt to blame each other for the current circumstance is all but certain. Any chance of a sort of enlightened high tech sustainable economy is in the more distant future after the worlds population is decimated and the rulers finally overthrown. I'm not saying we will loose our technology but it will probably be developed in a method similar to Nazi Germany or the USSR. Both these governments where far from free but managed to develop robust technical programs. This is not cheap solar cell and fossil fuel free crops for the poor.
If you look at the US today a major focus on our technology is the creation of armor to keep combat soldier safe and the use of robotics to keep soldiers out of harms way. We seem to be heading towards a Terminator type army.
The reason this is important is if you consider what I've outlined above the creation of a military that has the technical ability to destroy insurgencies combined with no constraints on killing and you have the makings of a very long and terrible dark age.
"...a very long and terrible dark age" or, more likely I'm afraid, a very short and terrible nuclear war.
I just finished the book 'The Road'....brutal post nuke fiction...
Makes me think you should run toward a target in the case of nuclear war.
i don't need to run. where i live right now is smack dab in between three targets forming a triangle. :P
Rule of thumb: If you are more than a few miles from ground zero, you are not going to die the way you think you are going to die. If you believe otherwise, you are living a fantasy which could turn out to be a very terrible fantasy indeed. In fact, if we want to get technical, even inside a few miles from ground zero, you are not likely to die the way you think you are going to die. If the targets that surround you are "soft" targets (extremely high probability), then the fireball will never even touch the earth's surface, which means dying will be like in a 200 mph car wreck.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Fortunately, or not, the target nearest to me is the Naval Weapons Center in Earle, NJ. That's the very definition of a "hard" target, so I'm guessing that in an all-out war, a whole lot of big nukes are going there. "I've gotta get out of this place..."
- Scott
"Try sour grapes; you might like them."
DelusionaL,
Who wrote that?
Cormac McCarthy.
no need to argue...we could have a short and terrible nuclear war followed by a long and terrible dark age ;^)
We are no more going to have a Threads or The Day After style nuclear war than we're going to have a big thunderclap that sweeps away the remaining few genuine Christians in this country. That is more of that underlying apocalypticism that permeates our culture. The U.S. and Russia are the only possible players in such an exchange and the protocols are already in place to avoid this in the face of much higher tensions than we have today.
Pakistani nukes number in the low dozens. Indian nukes number in the low dozens. North Koreans have likely less than a dozen in inventory but they're almost certainly propagating them to their fellow members of the so called axis of evil. Syria may or may not have nuclear tips that survived the recent Israeli raid. Iran may or may not have North Korean built nuclear tips for their Sunburn missiles.
We'll see tit for tat exchanges, at least at first. Tel Aviv goes up ... promptly followed by Damascus or Tehran, or maybe both for good measure. There will be a terrible long silence as the west absorbs Jewish refugees ... even if Israel wins, Israel loses. Pakistan and India are bound to try each other sooner or later - hotter and drier will only add to the tension over Kashmir. North and South Korea make a nice proxy for China and the United States' tensions and the North Korean government is Bat Guano Crazy(tm). If someone does sneak one into a U.S. port, no matter which of the possible players was involved, even if its a false flag operation, I'd look for a measured response - low yield cobalt wrapped thermonuclear party favors will be the "return on capitol" for all investors in this particular scheme.
Or do I have a grim, doomer outlook? That copy of Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples sitting next to Dodge's Alexander both tell me to expect the worst when such problems arise.
Actually, with a cheap, very silent submarines available, a second tier country could launch a nuclear cruise missile fairly close to our shores and hit Washington DC virtually undetected. If detonated during a vulnerable time, lets say during the State of the Union address or another event where the elites are all in town, it would be devastating. A city in the middle of the country would have been a far better geographic location purely out of the development of sub-based missiles.
Devastating? We just elect new elites and life goes on. Who's gonna miss those turkeys?
RobertInTucson
I haven't escaped from reality. I have a daypass.
Elect? Try that under the dictatorship that will follow.
we right now have a pre-ww1 type situation when it comes to nuclear weapons. if a bomb is used locally it won't stay local for long.
That reminds me - I'd like to thank whoever recommended the movie Testament. It's a great film on the aftermath of a nuclear attack and the gradual unwinding of society that follows. It'll make you want to beat the sh*t out of anyone who supports first use of nukes in warfare.
I did. Thanks. I suggested it to Chimp.
However, my resason for suggesting it wasn't about society going to pot but rather that the people were brain dead when it came to nuclear survival skills. No one had a blast or fallout map. No one knew how to build a home-made radiation monitor (out of a coffee can no less). No one had the smarts to wear any kind of mask. Finally, sort of, no one had the smarts to hike over to the ocean. The blast takes place in SF and Marin County (where the story takes place) is north of it and the west edge of the county is the Pacific ocean. The winds are usually west to east so it would seem logical to move west not stay where you are.
What no one has ever mentioned is that while they lost power, they seemed to have water. Duh.
The book, Nuclear War Survival Skills, was available at: http://www.osim.org/nwss
Todd
The book is still available:
http://www.oism.org/nwss/
It's on DVD, too.
"Ch. 16: Minimum Pre-Crisis Preparations
Your chances of surviving a nuclear attack will be improved if you make the following low-cost preparations before a serious crisis arises. Once many Americans become convinced that a nuclear attack is a near certainty, they will rush to stores and buy all available survival supplies. If you wait to prepare until a crisis does arise, you are likely to be among the majority who will have to make-do with inadequate supplies of water containers, food, and materials. Furthermore, even if you have the necessary materials and instructions to make the most needed survival items, you and your family are not likely to have time to make all of them during a few days of tense crisis.
The following recommendations are intended primarily for the majority who live in areas likely to be subjected to blast, fire, or extremely heavy fallout. These people should plan to evacuate to a safer area. (Many citizens living outside high-risk areas, especially homeowners with yards, can and should make better pre-crisis preparations. These would include building high-protection-factor permanent shelters covered with earth.)
SHELTER
Keep on hand the tools and materials your family or group will need to build or improve a high- protection-factor expedient shelter: One or more shovels, a pick (if in a hard-soil area), a bow-saw with an extra blade, a hammer, and 4-mil polyethylene film for rainproofing your planned shelter. Also store the necessary nails, wire, etc. needed for the kind of shelter you plan to build.
Keep instructions for shelter-building and other survival essentials in a safe and convenient place.
VENTILATION-COOLING
Make a homemade shelter-ventilating pump, a KAP, of the size required for the shelter you plan to build or use.
WATER
Keep on hand water containers (including at least four 30-gallon untreated polyethylene trash bags and two sacks or pillowcases for each person), a pliable garden hose or other tube for siphoning, and a plastic bottle of sodium hypochlorite bleach (such as Clorox) for disinfecting water and utensils.
FALLOUT METER
Make one or two KFMs and learn how to use this simple instrument.
FOOD
Store at least a 2-week supply of compact, nonperishable food. The balanced ration of basic dry foods described in Chapter 9, Food, satisfies requirements for adults and larger children at minimum cost. If your family includes babies or small children, be sure to store more milk powder, vegetable oil, and sugar.
Continuing to breast-feed babies born during an impending crisis would greatly simplify their care should the crisis develop and worsen
For preparing and cooking basic foods:
° Make a 3-Pipe Grain Mill like the one described in Chapter 9, Food, or buy a small hand-cranked grain mill, which grinds more efficiently than other expedient devices.
Book Page: 133
° Make a Bucket-Stove as described in Chapter 9. During evacuation, the stove can be used as a container. Store some kitchen-type wooden matches in a waterproof container.
° Keep essential containers and utensils on hand for storing and transporting food and for cooking and serving in a shelter.
SANITATION
A hose-vented 5-gallon can, with heavy plastic bags for liners, for use as a toilet. Includesome smaller plastic bags and toilet paper with these supplies. Tampons.
Insect screen or mosquito netting, and fly bait. See Chapter 12.
MEDICINES
° Any special medications needed by family members.
° Potassium iodide, a 2-oz bottle, and a medicine- dropper, for prophylactic protection of the thyroid gland against radioactive iodines. (Described in the last section of Chapter 13, Survival Without Doctors.)
° A first-aid kit and a tube of antibiotic ointment.
LIGHT
° Long-burning candles (with small wicks) sufficient for at least 14 nights.
° An expedient lamp, with extra cotton-string, wicks, and cooking oil as described in Chapter 11.
° A flashlight and extra batteries.
RADIO
A transistor radio with extra batteries and a metal box in which to protect it.
OTHER ESSENTIALS
Review the EVACUATION CHECKLIST (developed primarily for persons who make no preparations before a crisis) and add items that are special requirements of your family."
KFM = Kearny Fallout Meter
http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p938.htm
"How to Make and Use It
FOLLOWING THESE INSTRUCTIONS MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE
Fig. (Nuclear Ground Burst Explosion - Drawing)
The complete KFM instructions include patterns to be cut out and used to construct the fallout meter. At the end of the instructions are extra patterns on 4 unnumbered pages. The reader is urged to use these extra patterns to make KFM's in normal peacetime and to keep the complete instructions intact for use during a recognized crisis period.
If Xerox copies of the patterns are used, they should be checked against the originals in order to make sure that they are the same size as the originals. Some older copiers make copies with slightly enlarged dimensions. Even slightly enlarged copies of all the KFM patterns can be made satisfactory provided: (1) on the PAPER PATTERN TO WRAP AROUND KFM CAN, the distances between the 4 marks for the HOLES FOR STOP- THREAD are corrected; and (2) the dimensions of the FINISHED-LEAF PATTERN are corrected.
These instructions, including the heading on this page and the illustrative photos, can be photographed without additional screening and rapidly reproduced by a newspaper or printer. If you keep the KFM instructions intact, during a worsening crisis you will be able to use them to help your friends and thousands of your fellow citizens by making them available for reproduction."
Thanks for the link, although I think you meant http://www.oism.org/nwss/ instead of 'osim'.
Regarding the movie, you're right, the people had no idea how to survive a fallout situation. But given the fact that no one had done any sort of pre-planning, I don't think they had many choices. And picking up and moving west would have been smart from a fallout point-of-view, but then they'd be on the beach with no water, food, or shelter, and no support network of neighbors and friends. They were screwed either way.
I'll have to say, when one of the kids says, "mom, the water tastes funny", it sent a chill down my spine.
And regarding the running water, I just assumed it was gravity fed from a nearby water tower... probably just my ignorance on how municipal water systems work.
Stream and Citrus,
Thanks for correcting the URL...I was looking down at my printed out copy on the floor and - obviously- screwed up.
For those who care about the future and survival, I'd like to suggest that you actually print stuff out. I have 5-3" ring binders of what I consider important survival information. For exzmple, Binder I contains: our personal security plan (what to salvage if we have to get out NOW), In The Wake - Tools for Grid Crash (52 pages), Survival links (20 pages), Survival and Austere Medicine (213 pages), Doctors for Disaster Perparedness - Basic Medical Kit (9 pages), Bacterial Warfare..What Your Family Can Do (89 pages), SF Blast and Fallout Map, US Blast and Fallout Map (6 pages), Nuclear War Survival Skills (89 pages).
The other binders contain lots of basic stuff like how to make wood bearings or raise micro-livestock and pond management.
The cost is really zip and Internet stuff comes and goes. How about building a crystal radio? Or, Possum Living (which I have posted before) http://www.f4.ca/text/possumliving.htm
Or, how about a sunflower seed huller and oil press?
http://www.journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/oilpress.html
You never know.
Todd
Thanks for the links... good stuff there. I'd never thought about printing all of this out, but you're right - ITSHTF internet access will be one of the first things to go. Hell, all it takes is a heavy rain to knock it out here (which in Atlanta, regrettably, was a very long time ago).
Here's one more book I can recommend - Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. I think food preservation skills will soon come back in a big way, and fermented food is about as easy as it gets. Just be sure to stash away a big keg of salt.
"ITSHTF internet access will be one of the first things to go."
IMO, that's the understatement of the decade.