Do you have a craving for the great outdoors? It’s about time you get some fresh air after all the noise, bustle and hustle of the city life. Even if it’s your first time, the rules are very simple and only require common sense. If tracking big game is your passion, you surely could use a few tips and tricks to stay safe and have a great time. Here’s your guide to the wilderness.
Basic Guidelines

Initially, you can explore the wilderness and try to observe the different types of terrain. Different kinds of animal species dwell, hunt or pass by a variety of landscapes. Notice the differences in terms of markings and smell between rocks, sand, mud, clay and grassy areas. Try to find a set of tracks and once you do, stop, look, listen and smell for other hints.

 

With almost superhuman abilities they can read erased print from a page, navigate in a pitch black room, without one gizmo squads of them in group operations can communicate silently with mysterious hand signals. These agents of amazing abilities need no GPS because they can find their way home literally blindfolded. With a keen sense of smell they can pick you out of a room full of people or read your lips from across the room.

Who are these skilled superhuman people you may ask?

With almost superhuman abilities they can read erased print from a page, navigate in a pitch black room, without one gizmo squads of them in group operations can communicate silently with mysterious hand signals.  These agents of amazing abilities need no GPS because they can find their way home literally blindfolded.  With a keen sense of smell they can pick you out of a room full of people or read your lips from across the room.

Who are these skilled superhuman people you may ask?

Every May, the nation's attention is focused on hearing loss during Better Hearing and Speech Month. This is the month that there is a major push to get more people screened for hearing loss. We encourage everyone to get their hearing tested this month, it's a matter of survival.

In addition we would like to salute not just the hearing and speech heroes, but also the visually impaired. They teach us what is possible and ultimately provide new skills for mankind.  Out  of necessity and hard training the impaired have developed things like "human echolocation," "smell vision," complex sign languages, lip reading, reading with your fingers and even "holographic vision" and limbs.

I remember meeting an amazing woman back when I was a child of around 12. My father took me to meet this woman with plans to get me to see things a different way. He knocked on the door and she told us to come in. I noticed nothing odd about the old woman; she looked like anyone's grandmother, kind and soft-spoken. She offered us something to drink and something to snack on and then something surprising happened.  My father asked her for her phone number so she asked him for a piece of paper. He handed her the small notepad from his pocket but before she started to write she stopped and replied, "There is something on this paper from your notebook you gave me, is it important?"  The paper had writing on it that had been erased.  One might say that is not difficult to see but our lady of the hour was stone cold blind. She began to read back the erased print from the page to make sure it was not important. Pardon the pun but it opened my eyes. She knew all this by running her fingers over the paper. She could read print with her fingertips as fast as people with clear sight.

Another suprising talent was her sense of smell that was better than a blood hound. She could tell what you ate earlier and where you stood and a likelyhood of where you had been based on smells in the room.

I often remember stories about that when a person loses one of their senses that the rest or one in particular becomes super heightened. My father asking her to tell me how she gained theses skills, told me, practice, pay attention, focus, and practice some more. She earned my respect, this was all practice until it became a skill. The woman could not see three inches in front of her face yet she could read print faster than most people and was more aware of her surroundings than I had ever imagined one could be.

Many get turned around while taking a quick stroll in the woods resulting in search parties, and often in injuries or worse, all for lack of paying attention to where you are in this world. How little do we take stock of where we are and appreciate the God given gifts of our many senses.  The color of plants that tell us of harvest or the shape they take from coming bad weather. Smell of a carcass in the woods may mean wolves are near while sounds of birds can tell you about other predators, water, and food if you know how to listen.

Take time to appreciate your senses and process the information around you. Get to know your surroundings both city/suburb and wilderness. A man who does not know the land around him is an alien in his surroundings.

Sensory training social experiment:

Try wearing an eye blind/mask for 24-48 hours and you will soon learn to make your abode friendlier to situations where there may be a blackout or loss of sight from a catastrophe or accident. Going silent for a while is another interesting challenge. You never now how much you rely on your voice until you cannot use it.

Play a "What If" game with your family. Tornadoes, floods, and smoke from fires can cause loss of power putting you and your loved ones in the dark and without heat. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours without electricity as a drill can turn into fun with family games around a candle if one can remember where they are. Make a list of things you will need like candles, an alcohol cooking stove (make one or buy one), drinking and bathing water, and of course some food that is easy to cook in an emergency. This is good practice to help rotate those canned goods and other items that need restocking from old expiration dates. Check your first aid kit also and make sure the items have not expired.

During a real emergency use all your senses instead of freezing up. Smell, do you smell fire or moisture? If the smell is like rubber it may be burning wires which means electrocution is a danger. Use your eyes to look for smoke and loose beams, boards, and branches. Use your ears to listen for falling debris. If you cannot smell anything, taste the air. Feel the door low not near metal during a fire, is it too hot to exit?

You may not learn to see in the dark with human echolocation, read erased print with our fingers or other seemingly superhuman things, but by taking time to appreciate the senses we have through preparing to survive during emergencies and appreciating and learning about nature all around us we all then are a superhuman to ourselves and most importantly to our families.
References:

Blind Man 'Sees'
Holographic vision experiences.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18487511



Human echolocation

The ability of humans to sense objects in their environment by hearing echoes from those objects. This ability is used by some blind people to navigate within their environment. They actively create sounds, such as by tapping their canes or by making clicking noises with their mouths. Human echolocation is similar in principle to active sonar and to the animal echolocation employed by some animals, including bats and dolphins. - Wikipedia.

Space Storm Alert: 90 Seconds from Catastrophe

23 March 2009 by Michael Brooks

IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment.

Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power. A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun. It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that...

 

SANTA BARBARA, California - Friday May 8, 2009

An estimated 30,500 residents were orderd to leave thier homes from a fire that blazed out of control in Santa Barbara California today. 12,200 homes or businesses are in the mandatory evacuation area. The fire destroyed or damaged over 80 homes officials said, forcing thousands of people out of their homes to safety.

"We have a lot of resources on the line -- our folks are working their hearts out," Joe Waterman of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection told reporters.



Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Tom Franklin said the fire has displayed a "roller coaster effect" because of the changing weather patterns.

A topic not often discussed when considering possible future disasters is the possibilities of a fire. Make sure your important documents are in a fireproof safe small enough to move in an emergency but sturdy enough to survive should you have to leave it behind.

Fire Safety Tips:

Check for old or  faulty wiring in your home on a regular basis, consult a qualified electrician for a schedule. Chemicles should be stored safely and away from flamable material like cleaning rags etc. Smokers should be careful of ashtrays when emptying them, always make sure your rubbish is not hot. Campers always mind your fires, never walk away from your campfire and try to keep your fires small enough to extinquish with a pile of earth you should have nearby.

Get a smoke alarm, make an escape plan, practice good fire safety, maintain and test your fire sprinkler system if you have one, keep proper fire extinguishers nearby, so your research.

http://www.firesafety.gov/

Forget about martial law, the end of the Mayan Calendar, Trillions in Bailout expenditures, stock market crashes, and other big stuff. Your family is only one small catastrophe away from going hungry! Lose your job, have your car break down, take a kid to the hospital, or some other unexpected emergency and resources for food quickly vanish.

Consider that and then think, what if it were illegal to grow my own food without chemicals? Is this a real concern? The new federal government laws may change your mind.
You could soon find yourself with a $500,000.00 fine and 10 years in jail for growing food. The new bill HR875 would have "ALL" food production under federal regulation. It would require you to have all your food registered, tested and sprayed or injected with chemicals or face consequences.

While Michelle Obama parades the White House Garden, yours will be taken away. Congress is working on a bill: HR 875 (aka the Food Modernization Act of 2009) that  would allow only ‘federally sanctioned’ seeds and produce to be grown and consumed in the name of ‘food safety’. The passing of this bill would also mean no more backyard gardens, community growing spaces, or small farms, as these are obviously an enormous threat to public health according to the bill. Yes they said your garden good is a public health hazard, imagine that.

Soon, growing tomatoes, and other foods for personal consumption or sale will be under regulation. This could eventually cause revolts, activists protesting Monsanto and the big farm chem companies and force home gardeners underground, literally.

Just as the pot farmers in the past learned how to grow their stuff in caves and underground rooms beneath their homes and property we may soon find others doing the same just to grow some non chemical foods to provide for their families.

Imagine having to dig under your home just to grow a few tomatoes, potatoes and small vegetables. 1984 here we come.

Is there a way out? Storable food to the rescue. Insurance you can eat! Consider food storage as a temporary fix, the rest is up to your conscious.

A storm & reported tornado weather in New York interrupted power to more than 100,000 customers, only 20,000 have power restored leaving over 80,000 people still without power.

Radio reports of winds exceeding 100 mph.  The winds snapped power poles and toppled trees, like tooth picks into power lines and cutting service to homes and businesses.
A company, which normally posts outage information on its Web site, blamed the sustained high winds during the day for an inability to disclose county-by-county outage numbers in a timely manner.

The officials can not predict how long restoration work will take.

Lousiana faces the same situation from a similar storm with another 100,000 without power.

Thats a total of 200,000 people in one day.

What would you do if you were in the shoes of the residents of New York?

We have some ideas...

power-outage

1.
If you do have a power outage and want to try to save your food, put perishables like milk, cheese, pork, poultry and meat in the freezer to help keep them fresh. They spoil quickly at temperatures above 40 degrees F.
2.
Cover the freezer with a blanket to help keep the cold air in.
3.
If you smell gas - do not use matches or flip switches - including flashlight switches.
4.
Gather emergency supplies, such as candles, matches, flashlights and batteries, a battery-operated radio, a manual can opener and canned food.
5.
Know the location of the fuse box or circuit breaker in your home.
6.
Learn how to reset the circuit if necessary or change a blown fuse.
7.
Find out ahead of time how to manually override an electric door opener
8.
Turn your refrigerator and freezer to the coldest settings if you think an outage could occur. This will help keep the food cold longer.
9.
Use a surge protector to protect electrical items like your computer, TV and VCR. This can prevent a sudden surge of electricity from damaging them.
10.
Have blankets or cardboard handy to cover windows in the event that the heat goes out. This will help prevent drafts.
11.
Identify the most insulated room in advance; that's where you and your family can gather if you need to stay warrm.
12.
Turn your thermostat to low and turn off the circuit breaker for your water heater to reduce a high demand for electricity once the power does come back on. This will help prevent an overload that can cause it to go off again.
13.
Leave one light switch on so you'll know when electricity has been restored.


We hope to post some articles on home made power generation on a shoe string budget sometime soon. If you have some suggestions, please submit them in the comments.

2009 April 25 17:18:48 UT BUCHAREST, Romania (ST) - Officials at USGS Earthquake Hazards Program report an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3 has struck eastern Romania.

According to Associated Press, there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. An estimated about 400 buildings in Bucharest are considered at risk of collapse during an earthquake escaped any major damage.

Romania's Institute for Earth Physics reports the quake struck at 8:25 p.m. Saturday in the Vrancea region, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) northeast of Bucharest at a depth of 75 miles (120 kilometers). The Institute’s director Gheorghe Marmureanu said it was felt in Brasov, Bucharest,  and  Galati Iasi in northeast Romania.

The quake caused little panic and we are not aware of any serious reported injuries or deaths.

2012 has come to mean alot of things for alot of people but in general most are concerned or at least aware of the need for emergency preparedness.

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