The Conspirator

Well after the Christmas and New Year’s festivities were over, I made the fatal mistake of weighing myself.  How did I become this huge?  292lbs!!!  I had to sit down and think about the fact that no matter what precautions I make, being this fat is going to be a huge liability in case of some disaster.  A few years ago I tried out the Zone Diet by Barry Sears and found it very good and lost some 15lbs in 2 months before falling off the wagon.  It does limit you from eating much potatoes and bread, but you’re not just stuffing yourself with steak all day either.  Maintaining a balance of proteins, carbs, and fat for each meal helps to lose weight, adjust hormones, and all sorts of other wonderful things according to Dr. Sears.

If anyone is interested in checking it out, here’s a link to one of several books about the diet.

An EMP attack would devastate the electrical grid in the U.S.

A few news outlets published articles about the recent EMP Commission’s report to Congress on the effects of an EMP attack by a foreign country or terrorists. 

An EMP or electromagnetic pulse attack occurs when a nuclear weapon is detonated miles into the atmosphere, creating a pulse that destroys every electronic in line of sight of the explosion.  Few if any people actually die from the blast itself, but the implications for the economy and U.S. citizens are devasting.  Cell phones, computers, cars, electricity,banks… everything would suddenly just stop working.  Worse is the effects that such an explosion would have on our food and water supplies for months, possibly years. 

Read the entire Commission’s report here.

Read another article about EMPs and the Commission’s report here.

I finally, FINALLY got around this weekend to getting my water storage project completed. A couple of months ago I found 55 gallon plastic drums at Baytec Containers and ordered two brand-new ones. At that time they were only $69 a piece. They’ve already gone up to $99 a piece, in part I’m sure to the rapidly worried public over possible water and food shortages in the future.

In addition to the drums Baytec offers a entire range of caps, plugs, and pumps. I bought a simple plastic economy model but it did fine during my testing this weekend. Filling was a breeze, just extended the hose into the basement and it took maybe 10-15 minutes to get both filled. As most do I simply used Clorox to prepare for storage, adding 1 fluid once to each barrel. I let them sit for 24 hours, opened them up and found the water to not really have any noticable smell or taste of chlorine (that’s not good). So I added another 1/2 ounce to each and that seemed to do the trick.

I’ve only got 110 gallons in storage, in addition to whatever I can salvage (hopefully) from the water heater in case of an emergency. I’ll have 5 people to care for (me, my wife, my kid, and both my parents) so I hope to have enough water to last a month. That’s really the bare minimum anyone should keep around. If the future brings even more bleak news about our water and food supplies I will probably get at least two more.

The barrels are not that big and I have them stored under my stairs in the basement which was completely wasted space to begin with. The cost is nothing compared to the security of being able to live comfortably for a month without assistance.

Cool Tools had an interesting post a few days ago about the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, a kid’s chemistry book back in 1960 when chemistry sets actually had chemicals in them.  Watch Billy blow up his house with 3 common household items. 

The book goes for quite a bit on Ebay but a scanned copy is available on Bittorrent.  I downloaded a copy and yes indeed, it really did teach kids how to make Chlorine Gas amongst other wonderful experiments.

Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, 1960