Here are some thoughts: It pays to be prepared. You might laugh at people who prep but what if they are right and you are wrong? Would it hurt for you to have some basic skills and supplies? Skills to include knowing how to sharpen a knife, how to fire a gun, how to forage for food, how to identify which local plants are edible, how to preserve and can food, how to live without electricity. This is by far an incomplete list. There are a lot of good books and resources online to help. Never be afraid to learn. Another useful skill is map reading to include land navigation. Some good things to have: a high-quality knife or 2, canning supplies, battery and solar powered radios, “survival” food, gardening supplies, a rifle and a hand gun, bow and arrows, fishing supplies, water filters, a good quality backpack, good quality walking/hiking shoes. Again, not a comprehensive list, just some things to get your brain engaged. It would also be useful to have some ham radio gear and a license so that you would know how to operate this gear. You could even go as far as to learn basic radio repair. I am sure you could come up with some method of producing electricity to supply modest needs such as solar panels, wind turbines and or water turbines. An additional skill that could be valuable is producing alcohol. Learn to make beer and wine as these would make great trading commodities.
Emergency Operations
Reflections (not the song)
Here it is, the day before a predicted storm and I am sitting here thinking about stuff. I like to watch science shows and learn from them, for instance, how the human genome includes around 2.5% neanderthal DNA if you are not of African extraction. Addictive personalities are caused by some of the genes. Neat stuff. Somewhere out there in the cosmos is a quasar pointed towards the Earth that might have fired off a gamma ray burst and will wipe us out. This event could have happened millions of years ago and might not hit us for millions more … or could hit tomorrow. Cats were once worshiped as Gods and still behave as if they ARE Gods. And here is something to ponder: on January 15th 1919 a tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses in Boston burst open and a wave of black sticky sweet molasses flowed through the streets at about 35 MPH, killing 21 and injuring 150 others. Life can be funny that way.
Adventures in Snowblowing
Anyone who lives/has lived in a northern climate knows the joys of having to clean up after a snow storm. Today I after I woke up, I had to do that. First we had to make a trip down to my mum-in-laws place ( a senior community) and clean out her car. The folks who run the place contract for someone to plow the main part of the lots and the sidewalks but they end up burying the residents’ cars, for the most part. Most of the residents don’t have the physical ability to clean their cars off and un bury them. We and other relatives of the residents go down there and clean up.
Once that was done we came back home. I had to purchase some shear pins the other day as 2 of them had snapped in my blower. I went to replace them and found a large rock wedged under the auger on one side. I was able to hammer the rock out of there and then I had to drive the broken pins out of the shaft. Once this was done, I got the blower started and did the clean up in my driveway and the walk up to the house. Gotta love winter!!
Prepping?
More and more, people are stocking up on food and emergency supplies. There is a huge market for emergency rations and other items. I wonder a few things. Are people keeping track of expiration dates? Are they buying rations that are already out of date? When their 2 weeks or 2 months of food does run out when the shtf, what are they going to do? Do they know how to forage? Do they know how to grow their own food? Can they skin and butcher the animal they just shot? Do they know how to operate that radio they have tucked away for the great breakdown? Can they protect their family and food supply from gangs of people who will be wandering around looking for victims?
These are legitimate questions and the time to think about them is now.
COVID and Chemtrails
It is widely believed that the Governments of this world are spraying their populations with chemicals and germs from high flying planes. If you do a search on the web you will find a plethora of pages about this subject. Some of them offer proof of this and some debunk it. It is a mixed bag. Here is an example of a webpage: https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2020/02/the-united-nations-exposes-chemtrails-100-proof-we-are-being-poisoned/
I have a simple proposal. Since the infrastructure is in place to perform this, why don’t we all contact our congress critters and insist that they use this to spray us all with the COVID vaccine. This would eliminate the need for egregious mandates and “vaccine passports”. If they are already spraying us with malicious chemicals, why not, by popular demand” spray something beneficial? You can find contact information for your politicians online. Let’s get this rolling!!
Weather and Radio
There is a long association between weather and radio in general and Amateur Radio in particular. When broadcast radio started to become in general use, people began to rely on it for local weather reports. Amateur Radio was also found to be useful for spreading weather reports, not only locally but over long distances. One topic of conversation over the radio has always been the weather. Many QSOs include the local weather. It does go deeper than just chatting, however. Hams are concerned about the weather. If thunderstorms come along, it is bad to have your equipment hooked up in case of a lightening strike. Hail and high winds can take down antennas. Trees can come down during storms and flooding can cause all kinds of havoc.
Amateur Radio operators (hams) have been and still are relied upon to provide back-up communications in emergencies and a lot of emergencies are weather related. Even if a ham cannot get to an area and assist with communications they can still be of value by reporting local conditions. A lot of hams have weather stations in their yard and can report things such as temperatures, pressure changes and precipitation totals to the NWS. There are phone apps that allow you to report (mPing is one example and is free) local conditions. What do you do if your cell service is out? Well there are a lot of clubs out there that hold nets when there is severe weather. You can log into a net on a repeater and report. They usually have a back-up plan in the event that repeaters are down. There are also weather nets on the HF bands where you can report conditions. A lot of options exist.
At the extreme end, there are hams who go out spotting bad storms such as tornados. anyway, here is a list of some resources to use if you want to get into weather reporting or learn more about the weather:
http://www.weather.gov is the National Weather Service website
https://www.weather.gov/SKYWARN This is the official NWS Skywarn page
https://www.weather.gov/skywarn/wfo_links This is a link to find local spotter classes in your area
https://www.meted.ucar.edu/education_training/course/23 This is a link to online spotter training
https://www.skywarn.org/local-groups/ And finally a link to locate groups in your area.
I hope this has been useful information to someone out there. 🙂
Ruminants and Moggies and Hawks! Oh my!!
Odocoileus virginianus: Not a very catchy name, I know. I usually refer to them as ruminants on my Instagram page. We don’t mention their common name out loud as it tends to attract them and entice them to run out in front of my car. My wyfe and I enjoy going for recons in the evening and counting the critters we see. For example, tonight we counted 23 ruminants, 27 moggies and 1 hawk. 16 of the ruminants were standing together in a field. Moggies are the only domestic animals that we count. There is no agenda to what we are doing, it is just for fun. We often bring cameras and phones to take pictures. It is amazing what can amuse a person. Back to the common name. Every time we have been driving along and casually used the common name, one jumps out in front of the car. At one time I considered buying some stickers and putting them on the driver side door. At this point, I would qualify as an ace. The proof is in the car repair bills. Other animals we count are owls. turtles, turkeys, groundhogs, squirrels, ducks, gooses and chipmunks. We don’t reveal where we see the ruminants as I believe hunters should do their own recons. I do keep my radio on in case someone calls (ham radio, not broadcast). There are a few repeaters I can reach in the areas we drive. It never hurts to be ready for anything.
Nature, Radio, and Me 