ON FOOD STORAGE..
Food storage when living subsistence can be problematic.... There is a natural law, that if there is a supply of food, very soon, something will arrive to eat it......
What this means, is that the plastic bags, and paper cartons food comes in when you buy it, may not protect it from whatever comes to eat it.... home grown food hasn't the absurd packaging, but still has the eaters showing up....
Food storage is a critical issue, and if you are lax, you will suffer disappointment, and maybe have to go hungry some. People who are born and raised into the technocult, have acquired food storage habits, and give little thought to the issue, other than opening cans and jars and cartons, and putting unused portions back in the cupboard or fridge.....
In a subsistence situation, or a nomadic one, there may not be cupboards or refrigerators...
So now what do you do?? also there is a worse chance of problems with moisture, insects, rodents, etc., that people without experience will have a hard time believing until it happens to them..... One realization I made years ago, was that culture is more than we tend to think it is, and that its culture that allows humans to live in harsh environments.
Most people in modern times think culture is the language one speaks, the education one receives, the Architecture thats in style, and how much snobbery and ego one can acquire via economic means......
Culture originally had little to do with anything similar to what we have going now...
Yes there was language, but it was for communicating while co-operating, be it hunting, fishing, or gathering in the harvest.....
The Education one got came from one's parents, grandparents, and friends and neighbors...
and this culture was the school of how to survive in the local ambient.
Architecture was whatever it took to do the job in the local climate, and if the group was nomadic, so was the house....
Social status was dependent on one's value to the group.... grandparents were generally esteemed.... they'd seen a lot, learned much, and been who had nursed the newer generations through good times and bad......
People had value...... and their connections socially were very important..... survival and comfort depended on these social networks and systems.....
Modern life is a false parody of these customs..... similar, except money has allowed much ego to creep into the mix..... And people who rate value by money will soon learn different.
Food storage used to be something that was done well, and each generation passed the whatever really works systems on to the next. But now we have a generation of humans with little experience at anything practical, and who haven't a clue about the difficulties storing food when the refrigerator no longer functions, or when they cant go to the store for more of whatever it is they want at the moment....
One sees food storage systems in the countryside that have been traditional for generations, Silos for corn, drying towers for hops, barns full of hay, barrels and bins for grain on small farms, and grain elevators for the co-ops.....
Its an inter-networking food storage culture.....
And if the fossil fuel supply goes down for any reason, much of it will become instantly useless, other than to attract raiders...... No one will be able to fill a silo with corn by using muscle power, unless there are a crowd of workers ready to co-operate and bust butt to make it happen......
And I dont think people who have never co-operated in anything more serious than a meeting at the office, will get much corn in the silo.....
I also dont think people will co-operate naturally, until a while after the crash, humans will need time to realize that work is “the” survival skill, and that group co-operation gets the most results.... at first it will be a continuation of the billions of separate ego trips, i.e. The effect causing the collapse, and then after much suffering, people will slowly begin to realize the value of each other..... basically everyone is acting like an infinite number of two year old kids, add some technology, and economy to the mix, and its a fair description of what passes for reality....
So its probably a good idea to be prepared for the time when few are helping each other, and the real piggy types are helping themselves to what wasn't theirs......
Food storage for one person, or a small family is easier than building a silo or a cellar,
but it still requires “things”, mostly containers, but also sacks, and bags....
the old Boyscout field book calls a backpack a “bag of bags”, because one tends to bag food, clothing, etc., in small bags, and carry them in the big bag.....
Bags are great for carrying things, but bugs and rodents have no problem chewing holes in them to get at the food.... also some bags don't protect against moisture, and some bags dont last very long under the conditions back in the weeds......
The best universal container for survival use made to date, is the U.S. Military ammo-can,
especially the larger sizes.... rats and bugs? Sorry guys, no free lunch today....
moisture? Not if you take care to keep the moisture outside of the gasketed lid...
for salt water marine climate use they dont last long, and in the tropics, their life is limited by rust making holes in them, usually on the bottom where the paint gets worn off... they need undercoated, or some way to protect the bottoms....
At sea and in the tropics, one tends to use plastic for storage containers, the keep bugs, rodents and moisture out, and are cheap, readily available, etc., I dislike plastic as food containers, but its what I can get for now.... On land, one can use stainless, without the pitting common at sea.... Few realize that during extended times at sea, you must use sea water for cleaning, and it will eat holes in the best stainless, unless you at least rinse with fresh water... Better to go with cheap porcelain coated steel cookware for the boat on crossings, and use the stainless in port, or when you have plenty of fresh water.....
Lately I've been coming across some nice stainless round cans, at kitchen stores, like canisters for wheat flour, sugar, etc. these are my number one choice for food storage containers, but are still fairly spendy for me on my third world budget.... they can generally be taped or gasketed, and the lids should go down over the sides a ways, for rain etc.
They stop roaches, rats, and moisture.... I even use them for matches, which are problematic in the tropics due to the high humidity.......
I'm in process on building some simple wooden boxes for storage also... this was the traditional woodsman's answer to rats a century ago..... and also traditional for sailors.....
In the western states, its still fairly common for habitual campers to have a “kitchen box” stored up in the attic with the tent.... I've made many boxes, and moved many times, and the biggest problem is that one tends to make the boxes too big to move comfortably......
so my latest box project is for several smaller boxes....
Another Nomadic realization I've had is concerning food drying, Here in Panarica, done on a tarp in the yard.... corn, beans, cacao, all seen in people's front yards, drying in the sun like the California raisins in mobile home parks.... I use the tarps too, but also am buying some fairly cheap Chinese and Indian stainless trays, as I've discovered that a big pizza pan holds a lot of corn etc., and they can be moved in out of the afternoon rains easier than stuff on a tarp..... and they are fairly nomadic, and stack nice for storage, but always seem to be all in use doing something......
For the lone backpack refugee, storage is a problem, and if you make it out in time, and begin growing food, my best advice is take the storage problem very very seriously, or you may have to look under rocks for food until you can harvest again.... Rodents, Insects etc., will arrive, and what food you have, they will soon ruin.... its a personal survival issue, and a constant war for thousands of years..... And I have learned this all the hard way.....
Drying seems to be the best way to store food for a nomadic situation, grocery store cans and jars are too heavy, and you dont want to carry all that water around, nicer to get it on site, and add it later..... food drying is a fun hobby, from Jerky, to dried fruit, its all good, and all worth doing. There are many food drying systems on the market..... most seem to require a power outlet..... I decided it was wiser to relocate a few thousand miles farther south to where the sun comes out...... 'best place to dry anything is on the roof if you have one....
I've built drying racks, solar dryers, you name it, but a good roof still works best....
For our noble refugee type, he can use his truck tarp to dry foods...... and if he or she was wise enough to evolve an Organic/Nomadic lifestyle ahead of time, they may have things a bit better.... Perhaps a Gypsy trailer with a roof and a wood stove......
GYPSYS.......
And by Gypsy trailer, I dont mean a Camper.... Campers fall apart very fast, the roofs leak, the frame rots out, and the mice and rats come to live in the walls....
Much better to build something smaller, simpler, and better built. And if possible pulled by horses.... When I was a kid I lived in Europe, and saw the Roma People in various countries, and was always enchanted by the idea of a mobile life... at the time they had already mostly switched to pulling their wagons with Pick-up trucks, and the wagons had evolved into something on a trailer axle instead of wagon wheels, but they still were built with the rounded roofs, door in the back with steps, and windows on the sides etc., And I saw them as something that added to the ambient.... For someone wishing a re-birth of this type of life, I advise getting away from the motor vehicle first, unless you wish to end up living next to a closed gas station after the collapse.... And horses have their limits, and what the Gypsys in Europe had for wagons would have taken a minimum of two horses to pull on the flats, and at least four in any hills, and thats a lot of horses to have to feed. I've thought for years on it, and often think of designs for a micro-wagon, built more as a cart for a single horse, and still have a bed, a stove, countertop, windows, doors, and a driving seat under the roof.
I noticed in the seventies, observing the Hippy movement, that house trucks were very popular, also buses, converted into living devices, These had problems, foremost being requiring licenses, insurance, fuel, and a job to pay for all that. The inability of the counter culture to let go of motors is part of what led to its demise.... If they had gone to horse power, or camel power like Mad Max, they may have been able to permanently separate themselves from the system...... The other problem is the Women had kids, and then women insisted that little Johny go in for proper Mental Programming in town at the public brainwash station for kids, i.e. School... They might have as well fed their kids into a sausage machine.....
Now little Johny has kids, wouldn't know an organic turnip from a chemical beet, and thinks the 60's and 70's was about tie-dyed t-shirts.....
If you like to read fiction, and the horse cart/ wagon idea strikes you, Read Andre Norton's “Moon of three rings”, an enchanting account of a nomadic culture.....Another is her “Starman's son” Probably “the” future survival classic.............
The difference between now and the 70's, is that its too late baby..... too late for Bio-diesel, or Alcohol fuels, or Fuel cell cars etc., and we are getting hit with proof on the nightly news..... One who is the least bit intelligent is starting to look for the exit sign, and sniffing smoke in The Great Theater Of the Mind, that we consider reality.... Do you really believe it will take 50 years for things to get really bad??? I think 5 years will see a doubling of the problems, and the serious stuff 10 to 15 years out at most.... Its 'gonna get YOU!
Most have the Hippy-head problem; 'cant let go of their motor............. No doubt plenty of survivalist types planning to haul the camper out of town, and homestead some turn-out on a back road..... That should really please the people already living near there, eh? Especially when millions of them do it.... not to mention the even less prepared showing up, and filling in where-ever possible.... Post collapse should see the highway system become a virtual strip city.....Or a strip war zone.....
I think I'd rather be able to pull out my pliers, cut the fence, fill the ditch, and pull my horse cart out into the open space, where one can take off in most any direction at any time and so get away from the insanity along the roads..... Roads are funny things, your friends can come to visit on them... so can other people..... say the type who dont bother to prepare because they are used to getting what ever they want with a gun.......... Campers, trucks, cars, dont make it far off the improved roads, even four wheel drives.... But a small horse cart could...... And hopefully the raider types will run out of fuel for their quads, or else they have plenty of fat victims along the roads systems..... And Just never go off in search of the few that made it across the ditch and through the wire to freedom, the ones who prepared, evolved a new culture, and became free.......
If we make it past the next few years, and We get enough stuff up in space, perhaps the collapse can be turned into a recession, kind of like the government talking heads do with economic depressions that don't affect the people making over six digits on their pay checks....
GOVERNMENTS are OBSOLETE....
I think that Government itself is obsolete now due to Internet, If you think about the American form of government, it was designed for the reality in horse powered transport days, and pre-telephone era....
Everybody didn't have time to go legislate, so they elected representatives, who rode to the capital, and did what farmers do there.... Nobody seems to have noticed, that we have instant communications now, and that more people believe what NGO's say, than that believe what say the talking heads on boob-tube that have the government jobs.... I'd much rather Amnesty International was working for my release, than the local embassy.....
My point is, we dont need government anymore, the public is watch-dogging the corporations via the web, and we vote with our purchases...... we could also have better luck with our democracy, if voting was not with the black boxes, but with websites open to all...... When there was fraud, the people would be able to find it......... the Era of the Internet Referendum is already here, why should we all pay half of our earnings, for some sick liars, with jowls that would grace blue ribbon swine, to go represent us? (read; stab us in the back and take the money and run.)
The corporations also cant like paying the government for controlling them, as taxes, and also be expected to shell out millions for re-election campaigns, to keep the drones off their backs.... So I envision Public/Private partnerships that exclude the existence of government, i.e. The public part be really public, and not filtered though the hog trough of politics.....”Liberation Fascism?” The people and the companies? Instead of the government and the companies? Think about it, the companies need consumers, the companies need workers, the consumers need food and other goods, and they need jobs to pay for it..... its all the same people..... Where does either side really need government? A lot more paycheck, a lot more profit...... and with modern trends of worker buy-in's into companies, its already starting, and if it lasts long enough, will naturally evolve into people who make up different areas of production, doing real free trade..... I hear a lot on radio about free trade this and free trade that.... Bullshit! I'll believe in free trade's existence when I can grow a load of spuds, put them in my boat, and sail them to the next country and sell them without having any one so much as notice me.... do you 'spose free trade means no bureaucracy? Or no patrol boats, or no fees, or no import or export licenses? No! what Free trade really means is; “we'll let you take our worthless fiat currency for your dwindling resources, and convince you were doing you a favor.”
These days the average worker is being forced to pay taxes that make the Romans look very kind......
So I see the potential for a deal, whereby group B, and group C, eliminate group A, and split the proceeds......
Besides, world government isn't going to save us, its just the same thieves united.... the solution is not more concentration of power, its to decentralize everyone and everything, so that use of fosil fuels aren't required to convert resources into dinners.... And also so any disaster doesn't have a concentration of victims... The only reason anyone lives in the city is the money game....
Neither group has much use for group A................Government is the original protection racket, as stated by Bucky Fuller, and other than sticking guns in peoples faces and extorting money, What real good do they do? They Obviously aren't helping the people in this country, nor controlling the borders, Instead they have our collective nose in the mid-east, where its getting burnt off..... I suggest that we respectfully let the Muslims fix their own problems, and that we adopt a trade policy that mirrors responsibility, I.E. Countries with human rights, workers rights, and pollution issues dont get to import, no matter what they have, or who they know.... Ditto for corporations.......
How to make it happen? Vote with you wallet, the companies will do anything for money, even build Gypsy carts, if they are hot sellers, its government that is the problem, its only product is waste...... Why do 60% of all American workers spend their days in cubicals in front of computers doing forms? It ain't because thats necessary for production of anything... The way to eliminate government, is to quit feeding it, you know; dont feed the bears, and they have to work too..... And I'm not saying become a tax resistor, which is mostly a ticket to the federal prison system, I'm saying work your way clear, to a life that doesn't require money... Jesus said it in the parable of Caesar's coin, his concept had two sides just like the coin, that if you use Caesar's coin you will end up paying taxes, but the other side of the balance was that if you dont use the system, you dont pay taxes either...
And he went on with the parable of the birds and animals not holding down jobs..... amazing that he suggested the same things I'm suggesting, and even after 2000 years, everyone is still supporting the Roman army thats brutalizing and enslaving them..... Money is such addictive stuff..... and most people are so lazy, that few slaves of any color ever try to escape into self-sufficiency............
Like King Solomon stated, “The lazy will surely pay tribute” Tribute is a pre-politically correct word for taxes, the conquered pay tribute, whether conquered by an army, or conquered by a TV they themselves bought on credit...... Well, soon the lazy wont eat, and a little while after that, they wont have houses, or water to drink, Nor fuel for their campers, Nor jobs to hate for 40 hours a week.... its just a matter of time now, and the only question, is how many will survive, and who will survive?
Increase your odds, now................. by working towards a more natural life, and by putting your investment money into opening the door to the universe.... the Space Elevators......
i.e. Use your income to change things on both ends..... in your own life, and for your children's children....... Humanity, is going to seed into space, or maybe go extinct, and its the mobile self-sufficient type who will go...... people who know how to grow food, how to fix and make things, and how to live in balance with an environment.....
THE ONLY THING WORTH BUYING, IS YOUR FREEDOM.
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Preparing for the future, part 02
WATER IN THE WILD.
Out side of the cities and towns, few people pay for water. With out clean water you will die.... the most used source of water in the countryside in developed countries comes from drilled wells........ And governments in their quest for the absolute limits of human ability, to take their shit and pay for it, are now beginning to put meters on privately drilled and owned wells in the united states...
If you were to have to become a refugee and walk out of the city, where would you get water? For dogs, any mud puddle will do, but for humans, its a bit wiser to search out a cleaner supply......
Most lakes are cleaner than a mud puddle, but I avoid drinking from them, lakes can have human and animal sewage running in to them....
Rivers? Better than lakes, but I'd walk a little farther......
Streams? Yea! But keep looking, keep walking up-stream......
OK! here we are, where the stream begins, below the hills, or back in them.....
Hmmmm....... its not in a pasture full of mad cow shit..... Not the drainage of a swamp, its in the woods, and the water seems to be coming out of the ground, meaning that its been filtered through the soil.... The earth is the original water filter, its not too portable, but most places with rain water, have springs, and you can generally drink safely from them, safer than most city water supplies.... no chlorine, no fluoride, no human sewage from leaking pipe systems laid in the same ditches, just pure drinking water... (be careful of springs in deserts, they can have toxic levels of minerals, arsenic, selenium, etc.) Also its a good idea to realize that you can not make pure water cleaner by adding something to it, like chlorine for instance... If you are in doubt, its a good idea to boil the water, (when the U.S. Dug the panama canal it was noticed that Chinese workers got sick less..... they were drinking tea....... and so boiling the water.....)
Usually natural springs are filled with leaves, mud, sticks, etc., and one likes to clean them out with a small shovel, and maybe wall them a bit with rocks, and dig out the hole deep enough to dip out of and not get minerals in the macaroni.....
If I were going to go live back in the hills, I'd want a few feet of plastic hose......
so that I could divert my little spring, and slightly down hill, have a place to fill my bucket without the mud problem.....
The average person needs a minimum of one gallon of water per day..... this will be only for drinking and cooking, no washing, And in a survival situation you can get by on 3 quarts, even in the tropics, and I'm talking from personal experience. I and my dog once lived a week on 5 gallons of water, and it was all we had, unless you count the 200 miles of sea water between us and the nearest fresh water....
The military used to publish the idea that you could get by on a quart per day.... Bullshit!, not long term, not anyplace hot, and not if you have to work or walk.......I suspect that was what the officers figured the enlisted deserved, so that they could have more for themselves....
Water is becoming a stylish topic, but the real problem is that everyone is bunched up in cities.... plenty of water out in the mountains, just takes the courage to hoof it out there.... Which few are willing to do, because they are sitting on their pile of excess materialism, and enjoying comforts they dont really need.... And eating amounts of food that are killing them.... And working hours as long as any slave, to pay for it all....
For water containers, I like stainless steel, plastics have chemicals in them that are similar to some human hormones, and that cause cancer, especially in women.
I have a one quart stainless G.I. Issue canteen, I consider it a nice water bottle, i.e. Good for a two hour hike..... I also have some nice water cans from India, stainless, gallon sized, that I got in a kitchen supply store.... they have wide 4 and ½ inch mouths, and so I can clean them, inside, unlike plastic water jugs..... I've lived long term using one can per day for drinking and cooking..... and that is a fairly valuable thing to know....
Happiness is a creek to camp by, because if we can, we use a lot of water..... running water is the prerequisite to sanitation and cleanliness...... and bad sanitation of any kind is a health risk. Whether its living in filthy cities, or wearing for too long, those dirty socks, the end result of bad hygiene is some kind of microbe eating on you....
In the camping reality, pots and pans tend to get very blackened, on the outside.... this can be cleaned off by covering them with a paste of ashes and water, and then scrubbing them in an hour or so........... I've found that its best to just let the outside stay black, no food touches the tars etc., and I concentrate on making sure the inside is cleaned well....
I also made up a black canvas bag for one camp cook kit, as black doesn't show the tars that rub off the pots........
And if you think you'll have access to more detergent in the brush, or after a disaster, you will be disappointed....
On bathing, soap is really great stuff, and shampoo is even better, but both are just wetting agents, and de-greasers. Survival bathing, i.e. When soap etc., is gone, is a real problem, especially washing your hair, and the only way to really get clean without soap, is to spend a lot of time in the water.... in the tropics, lemon juice makes a decent soap.
And yes I know soap can be made, but it takes oil or grease of some sort, both of which require some serious work to come by in a survival or subsistence life style..... And I wonder if in the future what there will be for enough stability anywhere? To do the homesteader/back to the lander routine, as in the FOXFIRE books, would require some serious amount of preparation and work, not to mention the stability issue...
I also wonder about the potential of excess food as a form of mobility limiter, nobody is going to get off of a fat stash of food unless they are forced to...........which might cause your demise for other reasons....
But there are a lot of things you can stockpile, or that have been traditionally kept by,
From candles, to condiments.... The usual stuff in the kitchen drawers that I grew up around were candles and flashlight batteries.... These were country people, and knew that the electricity goes out sometimes....
I like to stock fishing gear, and some basic sewing stuff.... few people have thought on the difficulties trying to cobble up a replacement for the common sewing needle..... Few think about matches either... or fish hooks, or mono filament line...... None of which weigh much or take up much space.....or cost much now.....
MORE ON FOOD
The thing you use the most of, is food.... If you analyze your total expenditures, food is often on the list fairly high cost wise... In situations where you can grow food, one should do so....
But it takes a very large garden to produce enough food for a family, and even one person
needs a lot of space.
I did discover years ago that growing bulk foods, like wheat, corn etc. was very efficient time wise.. Wheat can make up as much as 80% of a persons diet, and a man can grow a year's supply by hand with a month of physical labor... Which caused me to wonder why so many people worked 12 months a year..... in a subsistence lifestyle a person tends to work at food growing almost all the time, but few 40 hour weeks....
Here in the tropics, food is almost a joke, I have stuff planted that takes the place of trips to the store, or even to a refrigerator... Here you just go harvest whatever is available, and bulk stuff that you have in the ground all the time... many crops produce all year, and others have a long season, and some things, two crops per year.... its hard to get worried unless I think about being forced out.... Which is why I moved here, the ability for food security.... I feel thankful I've had 10 years to plant food trees, as its trees that produce the most food for the least work or worry........
I've long thought about future humans after the collapse, and I think the survivors will have to re-plant everything, using surviving genetics, Like some kind of Johny Appleseed tribes....
Too bad we didn't head that direction to begin with..... Personally I dont think much of the technocult as a life...... Perhaps its OK for people who aren't attracted to something more natural......... I find camping full time to be more pleasant than cleaning the bathroom, kitchen etc., on my days off from working paying for them.... Money is great bait, but one gets tired of chasing for it.... There is another way to be successful you know, its by learning how not to need very much of the stuff.... Needs are accessible from both ends of the pipe..... you can buy them, and pay taxes on them and a profit for producers, transporters, middlemen, etc., And also lose to inflation, which is in effect a stupidity tax, because every one thinks inflation just happens, and that the money evaporates or something....
In truth it a secret tax, and transfers wealth the usual direction, but at a faster clip....
Or you can produce for your own needs, and avoid taxes, and others siphoning you....
But gee, nobody ever seems to think that being a generalist pays as well as a specialist,
but it does.......'Pays better....in real terms...
Also in nature specialization invariably leads to extinction.... I think its the same for cultures, and I know man got where he has, by being a very good generalist.....
What that means, is a survivor type is a generalist by nature......
The main thing to realize, is that you need very little to be comfortable..... and what you are used to, is obscene levels of materialism, and you have been programmed to think you need it all... Capitalism is the art of creating a need and then filling it....
I advocate getting low, and reaping the dividends in free time, better health, more actual security, no stress etc., I think many people will discover themselves happier camping than living in an apartment.... Makes one wonder what people did before cities?
I used to worry about food in my survival/subsistence reality, and I had good reasons to do so, but the worrying didn't do any actual good, and eventually I learned that I always
seemed to get some food and survive..... and I let go of the worrying, and just kept working towards having more and more planted.... Now food is hardly an issue.....
Entertainment gets to be a problem, as you have a lot of free time.... I'm working on learning musical instrument number three, and I make things like pack saddles, food processing tools from wood, and soon to start working in metal again.... I also listen to short wave radio a lot.... for the survival kit I think a musical instrument is important, Something small and portable if possible, like a flute, harmonica or tambor or small drum...
Most people, when they get away from their sound system go into culture shock from lack of enough head beating rhythm.... When the collapse comes this will affect many.....
THE BEST TIME TO LEAVE.
Is as soon as possible..... waiting until the catastrophe runs over you, isn't a good idea....
Undoubtedly during the New Orleans disaster, there were many people living out in the brush who didn't have any problems.... A cabin up on posts back in the swamp, a garden on a high spot, and a lot of history fishing etc., And enough sense to tie the boat up good for the storm... 'Candles and batteries in the kitchen drawer?
My point is that disaster affects most, people who are least connected to a more natural life..... Thousands died, of the results of just rain.... and perhaps within the same parish some hardly changed their normal routines, and had boats, to go take turkeys off of roof tops....
Our choices affect our future... And if you chase money long enough, it will kill you.....
People used to joke; “get a job.” Now they joke; “get a life.” In the future they will joke; “ Get a REAL life.”
I have learned that my direction towards preparing for the future has resulted in some really nice changes in my life, and the projects I do and the things I buy all go together better, as minimalism becomes a filter for not buying or doing some things, and so I get sidetracked less by things I dont need... my materialism is starting to actually make some sense, instead of just being random purchases from whatever I encounter... its brought order to the chaos...... and the nomadic/mobility culture that is growing in my life is resulting in a style, or a motif' that is harmonious and beautiful...And I use the nomadic/retro progression thing to filter all my decisions..... It often surprises me.... things begin to work well together and match each other, and I am designing items and getting a definite unique style, neo-nomadic, neo-indigenous, whatever it is, its nice, and very original for something that is made from all the materials and techniques that I have learned over the years, focused by the criteria.... its “arty”......
I suggest you get a real life before the rush of the herd..... people are problems, more people are more problems, and less people are less problems....and when the rush is on, things will become very difficult in comparison to in the now....
And starting now, even if its just buying a vacation cabin, or just going camping and exploring areas as potential survival camps, is doing something.... another issue is post collapse transportation.... that car isn't likely to get you far, unless you leave early....
ON Boats....
After long thought, my transportation of choice is a boat..... and if I lived inland, I'd take up sea-kayaking.... as a sea kayak is the only means of transport that is going to function well if the bridges are collapsed, or the highways plugged with dead cars.... A short portage into the nearest drainage, and then up or down the river or up or down the coast, etc......
And a sea kayak can carry a fair amount of survival gear... definitely enough....
The main thing to keep in mind with sea-kayaks, is that few are strong enough, salesmen push light-weight onto mindless yuppies..... Boats dont need to be that light, and rough water in a crisis is no place to learn the limits of some super piece of shit plastic boat... As always think durability factor, and get the heavier stronger boat... One realization I've had, is that a sea kayak, some fishing gear, and a reverse osmosis filter for desalinizing sea water, and a person is free and likely to survive , and be mobile, almost anywhere..... Minimalism is so incredibly powerful......
Another boat option is the sailing yacht..... but whats generally on the market are very problematic... fiber-glass boats have about a 30 year life until the resin plasticizer starts to degrade and the hull needs to nestle into a land fill.... yacht styles also tend to be very impractical, The best hull is aluminum, or steel that has been well maintained, the plastic ones are trash, and most often have spade keels, which is so you have to rent moorage or a slip... If you try beaching one, tide goes out, it flops over, and when tide comes in, it floods the boat, and sinks it in place.
If you want to escape the technocult onto a boat, get some kind of workboat hull with a full length keel, so you can beach it for what ever reason..... Build living space below, but avoid all the junk put into yachts, sinks, toilets, too many berths, showers, etc., they all cause problems, and its nicer just to do the dishes in a bucket out in the cockpit, and its nicer to not have a smelly toilet down inside a tiny living space that has poor ventilation generally.... And toilets, sinks, are what statistically sink most yachts.... Yacht interiors are designed to please women's tastes, for the 15 minutes preceding the sale... And after the sale, the wife may go out a time or two, but soon the boat evolves into the guy's dog house, where he can go to get away from her.... So if you're male and in the market for a boat, forget the love-nest interior, better to think boy things, like fishing, workshop, cargo, etc., which all just happen to be what you'll really need in a survival situation.....
On sails, its strength that counts, If you buy used sails, have them restitched.....Or you will be sorry.... Personally I'd just buy storm sails off of a bigger boat... lightweight racing sails dont last long in blue water cruising conditions...
Boats would be my choice if I didn't already own a farm in paradise....And I have over a thousand hours as a blue water solo sailor....and I am in process on designing and building another boat......
A lot of people live on their boats, and hold down jobs, or do crafts etc., and get by, they also haul small cargoes.... It keeps a roof over your head, and the ability to leave any time you choose, and by a route not likely to be plugged.... And they are cheaper to maintain yourself, than a house, and dont pay the taxes that a house has to.... I highly recommend them for divorced males..... Absolutely nothing makes a guy feel better, than seeing his ex-wife's entire culture disappear over the horizon astern ......
MORE On HORSES......
Horses are man's second best friend..... and its a good idea to remember to treat them well, especially considering they are incredibly strong and powerful, and not all that smart when it comes to figuring out why you seem to be so upset sometimes.... its like being buddies with Mohamed Ali, if there is a problem, 'gotta stay calm......... 'doesn't matter who's fault it is.......
Horses come in various sizes, from Ponies to Clydesdale's.... they eat in proportion to their size.... and a smaller one needs about 40 pounds of “salad bar” per day to stay healthy....
Larger horses are generally used in flat lands, and smaller ones in the hills and mountains.
Two smaller horses can usually haul more than one bigger one.... But it would take a string of 50 pack horses to haul what most people think is necessary to live comfortably in the outback... So if you are thinking to use horses to provide a life style in the sticks, I suggest you alter your expectations about what you need to survive, until you can get it on one or maybe two horses....otherwise you will spend the rest of your life like ghost riders in the sky, except you'll be looking endlessly for more pasture...... Horses evidently come originally from fairly dry climates, they can go several days between watering if necessary and still survive. And they also seem to require a diet high in minerals, as one would expect in areas not rain leached.... if you plan on having horses in a wetter climate, best keep a mineral block available, or your horse will get sick and be effectively starving, on what looks to be plenty of food.... But wetter climates along coastlines allow you the option of letting the horses occasionally drink sea water, which they will gladly do.... I think it wise to have fresh water readily available afterwards, but horses love sea water on an occasional basis...
One problem with owning a horse, is then you think you have to ride it.... which eliminates
its ability to haul much besides your fat arse.... so if you wish to ride, and have a bunch of survival or subsistence stuff, you'll need a second horse for packing...
Or you can just walk, like the proverbial miner and his burro, and get there without the haughty noble attitude, and only have to deal with one horse.....
Survival ism is learning to live without things you really dont need.... And the only way to learn what you do and dont need, is to practice it.....
On horses, pay careful attention to caring for their feet, clean hooves that are trimmed regularly, are happy hooves, and a lame horse isn't going to carry anything very far.....
I dont recommend shoeing horses, unless they are to be used continually on rock or pavement... most horse owners pay for shoeing, and leave the horse in the pasture.... its like this expensive bad habit they never analyze...... trim often, go with the plastic boots on hard terrains........
Another potential with horses, is to have a cart..... good idea, and in the flats, its easier on the horse than carrying everything on his back..... but in the mountains, carts are marginal, and wagons are worse. But a travois or packsaddle still functions OK...... as long as theres a trail.... Here in Central America we use the mountain ponies even up in the jungle and rugged mountains.... its called: “Trepando en las raises” (“climbing in the roots” ) due to the large buttress roots in the tropical forests... A good horse, can pack gear through areas you cant get a wheelbarrow through.... by being able to step over the roots....
Personally I feel that the Technocult is totally bankrupt, both morally, and actually.... A man works and works, and most of the money goes into what it takes to show up at work.... This isn't a life, its a slave's existence sugar coated by having the gate in the barbed wire left open, for any one with the guts to walk out it.... and so few have the guts.....
It is still possible to leave.... and a couple of horses and all the gear, would cost less than 90 days rent.... a lot of gear you can make yourself, even packsaddles..... One would still need a food supply, and I think a few goats would be my choice..... goats eat and thrive on brush, and it can be desert or tropics, as long as there is green to chew.... Goat milk is horrid stuff, but goat cheese is really good..... Milk goats will also feed your dog, and Angoras will give you something to make blankets out of..... As far as I know goats are the animal of choice for survival purposes.... They can even be used for pack animals.....
For meat, the males need to be banded when young, or you can eat excess nannies too...
goat skin is much like deer hide, and will make nice buckskins..... and with the hair left on create clothing thats warm and colorful.... Many survivalist wannabees think they can survive by hunting deer..... but there are more people living in Portland Oregon than there are deer in the entire state.... i.e. They wont last long if the cities go down.... I think I'd rather have a couple ponies for packing, and wander around B.L.M. Land with a couple dozen goats, than try to depend on hunting..... (Or trying to hold down a town job..... ) I'd have a few sheep too maybe, I'm partial to sheepskin coats in cold climates..... another possibility is Dexter cattle... a downsized unit now available in the U.S........... efficiency generally comes in smaller packages.... What amazes me is how many cowboy types there are, and how few men take up herding as a way to subsist.... Its like after the invention of pick-up trucks and canned beer, subsistence herding somehow became impossible..... My advice is to sell the 4x4, roll the money over into horses and livestock, bid on BLM pasture, get a good wall tent, and spend your time doing something men actually like to do, and if some woman wants to come along, she's likely a keeper, and if not, consider yourself lucky to have a life out where there aren't any women to side track a guy, into slavery.... Besides, living outdoors will soon get rid of the beer belly, and you wont need the big belt buckle for a retaining wall....... you can use it to fry flap-jacks on instead....
My point is that there are still plenty of options open, if one begins to think subsistence, instead of paycheck...... A horse or a bow and arrows still work as good as they ever did..... but we are so programmed to think our options are only what passes as normalcy.... Better to break moulds, climb out of ruts, and impress your friends with how creative you are, and as the system crashes, they'll figure out that you're not so wild and crazy, just ahead of the curve, and when theres no food in the supermarket, a hunk of mutton or beef over the coals will seem a feast worth having........
Out side of the cities and towns, few people pay for water. With out clean water you will die.... the most used source of water in the countryside in developed countries comes from drilled wells........ And governments in their quest for the absolute limits of human ability, to take their shit and pay for it, are now beginning to put meters on privately drilled and owned wells in the united states...
If you were to have to become a refugee and walk out of the city, where would you get water? For dogs, any mud puddle will do, but for humans, its a bit wiser to search out a cleaner supply......
Most lakes are cleaner than a mud puddle, but I avoid drinking from them, lakes can have human and animal sewage running in to them....
Rivers? Better than lakes, but I'd walk a little farther......
Streams? Yea! But keep looking, keep walking up-stream......
OK! here we are, where the stream begins, below the hills, or back in them.....
Hmmmm....... its not in a pasture full of mad cow shit..... Not the drainage of a swamp, its in the woods, and the water seems to be coming out of the ground, meaning that its been filtered through the soil.... The earth is the original water filter, its not too portable, but most places with rain water, have springs, and you can generally drink safely from them, safer than most city water supplies.... no chlorine, no fluoride, no human sewage from leaking pipe systems laid in the same ditches, just pure drinking water... (be careful of springs in deserts, they can have toxic levels of minerals, arsenic, selenium, etc.) Also its a good idea to realize that you can not make pure water cleaner by adding something to it, like chlorine for instance... If you are in doubt, its a good idea to boil the water, (when the U.S. Dug the panama canal it was noticed that Chinese workers got sick less..... they were drinking tea....... and so boiling the water.....)
Usually natural springs are filled with leaves, mud, sticks, etc., and one likes to clean them out with a small shovel, and maybe wall them a bit with rocks, and dig out the hole deep enough to dip out of and not get minerals in the macaroni.....
If I were going to go live back in the hills, I'd want a few feet of plastic hose......
so that I could divert my little spring, and slightly down hill, have a place to fill my bucket without the mud problem.....
The average person needs a minimum of one gallon of water per day..... this will be only for drinking and cooking, no washing, And in a survival situation you can get by on 3 quarts, even in the tropics, and I'm talking from personal experience. I and my dog once lived a week on 5 gallons of water, and it was all we had, unless you count the 200 miles of sea water between us and the nearest fresh water....
The military used to publish the idea that you could get by on a quart per day.... Bullshit!, not long term, not anyplace hot, and not if you have to work or walk.......I suspect that was what the officers figured the enlisted deserved, so that they could have more for themselves....
Water is becoming a stylish topic, but the real problem is that everyone is bunched up in cities.... plenty of water out in the mountains, just takes the courage to hoof it out there.... Which few are willing to do, because they are sitting on their pile of excess materialism, and enjoying comforts they dont really need.... And eating amounts of food that are killing them.... And working hours as long as any slave, to pay for it all....
For water containers, I like stainless steel, plastics have chemicals in them that are similar to some human hormones, and that cause cancer, especially in women.
I have a one quart stainless G.I. Issue canteen, I consider it a nice water bottle, i.e. Good for a two hour hike..... I also have some nice water cans from India, stainless, gallon sized, that I got in a kitchen supply store.... they have wide 4 and ½ inch mouths, and so I can clean them, inside, unlike plastic water jugs..... I've lived long term using one can per day for drinking and cooking..... and that is a fairly valuable thing to know....
Happiness is a creek to camp by, because if we can, we use a lot of water..... running water is the prerequisite to sanitation and cleanliness...... and bad sanitation of any kind is a health risk. Whether its living in filthy cities, or wearing for too long, those dirty socks, the end result of bad hygiene is some kind of microbe eating on you....
In the camping reality, pots and pans tend to get very blackened, on the outside.... this can be cleaned off by covering them with a paste of ashes and water, and then scrubbing them in an hour or so........... I've found that its best to just let the outside stay black, no food touches the tars etc., and I concentrate on making sure the inside is cleaned well....
I also made up a black canvas bag for one camp cook kit, as black doesn't show the tars that rub off the pots........
And if you think you'll have access to more detergent in the brush, or after a disaster, you will be disappointed....
On bathing, soap is really great stuff, and shampoo is even better, but both are just wetting agents, and de-greasers. Survival bathing, i.e. When soap etc., is gone, is a real problem, especially washing your hair, and the only way to really get clean without soap, is to spend a lot of time in the water.... in the tropics, lemon juice makes a decent soap.
And yes I know soap can be made, but it takes oil or grease of some sort, both of which require some serious work to come by in a survival or subsistence life style..... And I wonder if in the future what there will be for enough stability anywhere? To do the homesteader/back to the lander routine, as in the FOXFIRE books, would require some serious amount of preparation and work, not to mention the stability issue...
I also wonder about the potential of excess food as a form of mobility limiter, nobody is going to get off of a fat stash of food unless they are forced to...........which might cause your demise for other reasons....
But there are a lot of things you can stockpile, or that have been traditionally kept by,
From candles, to condiments.... The usual stuff in the kitchen drawers that I grew up around were candles and flashlight batteries.... These were country people, and knew that the electricity goes out sometimes....
I like to stock fishing gear, and some basic sewing stuff.... few people have thought on the difficulties trying to cobble up a replacement for the common sewing needle..... Few think about matches either... or fish hooks, or mono filament line...... None of which weigh much or take up much space.....or cost much now.....
MORE ON FOOD
The thing you use the most of, is food.... If you analyze your total expenditures, food is often on the list fairly high cost wise... In situations where you can grow food, one should do so....
But it takes a very large garden to produce enough food for a family, and even one person
needs a lot of space.
I did discover years ago that growing bulk foods, like wheat, corn etc. was very efficient time wise.. Wheat can make up as much as 80% of a persons diet, and a man can grow a year's supply by hand with a month of physical labor... Which caused me to wonder why so many people worked 12 months a year..... in a subsistence lifestyle a person tends to work at food growing almost all the time, but few 40 hour weeks....
Here in the tropics, food is almost a joke, I have stuff planted that takes the place of trips to the store, or even to a refrigerator... Here you just go harvest whatever is available, and bulk stuff that you have in the ground all the time... many crops produce all year, and others have a long season, and some things, two crops per year.... its hard to get worried unless I think about being forced out.... Which is why I moved here, the ability for food security.... I feel thankful I've had 10 years to plant food trees, as its trees that produce the most food for the least work or worry........
I've long thought about future humans after the collapse, and I think the survivors will have to re-plant everything, using surviving genetics, Like some kind of Johny Appleseed tribes....
Too bad we didn't head that direction to begin with..... Personally I dont think much of the technocult as a life...... Perhaps its OK for people who aren't attracted to something more natural......... I find camping full time to be more pleasant than cleaning the bathroom, kitchen etc., on my days off from working paying for them.... Money is great bait, but one gets tired of chasing for it.... There is another way to be successful you know, its by learning how not to need very much of the stuff.... Needs are accessible from both ends of the pipe..... you can buy them, and pay taxes on them and a profit for producers, transporters, middlemen, etc., And also lose to inflation, which is in effect a stupidity tax, because every one thinks inflation just happens, and that the money evaporates or something....
In truth it a secret tax, and transfers wealth the usual direction, but at a faster clip....
Or you can produce for your own needs, and avoid taxes, and others siphoning you....
But gee, nobody ever seems to think that being a generalist pays as well as a specialist,
but it does.......'Pays better....in real terms...
Also in nature specialization invariably leads to extinction.... I think its the same for cultures, and I know man got where he has, by being a very good generalist.....
What that means, is a survivor type is a generalist by nature......
The main thing to realize, is that you need very little to be comfortable..... and what you are used to, is obscene levels of materialism, and you have been programmed to think you need it all... Capitalism is the art of creating a need and then filling it....
I advocate getting low, and reaping the dividends in free time, better health, more actual security, no stress etc., I think many people will discover themselves happier camping than living in an apartment.... Makes one wonder what people did before cities?
I used to worry about food in my survival/subsistence reality, and I had good reasons to do so, but the worrying didn't do any actual good, and eventually I learned that I always
seemed to get some food and survive..... and I let go of the worrying, and just kept working towards having more and more planted.... Now food is hardly an issue.....
Entertainment gets to be a problem, as you have a lot of free time.... I'm working on learning musical instrument number three, and I make things like pack saddles, food processing tools from wood, and soon to start working in metal again.... I also listen to short wave radio a lot.... for the survival kit I think a musical instrument is important, Something small and portable if possible, like a flute, harmonica or tambor or small drum...
Most people, when they get away from their sound system go into culture shock from lack of enough head beating rhythm.... When the collapse comes this will affect many.....
THE BEST TIME TO LEAVE.
Is as soon as possible..... waiting until the catastrophe runs over you, isn't a good idea....
Undoubtedly during the New Orleans disaster, there were many people living out in the brush who didn't have any problems.... A cabin up on posts back in the swamp, a garden on a high spot, and a lot of history fishing etc., And enough sense to tie the boat up good for the storm... 'Candles and batteries in the kitchen drawer?
My point is that disaster affects most, people who are least connected to a more natural life..... Thousands died, of the results of just rain.... and perhaps within the same parish some hardly changed their normal routines, and had boats, to go take turkeys off of roof tops....
Our choices affect our future... And if you chase money long enough, it will kill you.....
People used to joke; “get a job.” Now they joke; “get a life.” In the future they will joke; “ Get a REAL life.”
I have learned that my direction towards preparing for the future has resulted in some really nice changes in my life, and the projects I do and the things I buy all go together better, as minimalism becomes a filter for not buying or doing some things, and so I get sidetracked less by things I dont need... my materialism is starting to actually make some sense, instead of just being random purchases from whatever I encounter... its brought order to the chaos...... and the nomadic/mobility culture that is growing in my life is resulting in a style, or a motif' that is harmonious and beautiful...And I use the nomadic/retro progression thing to filter all my decisions..... It often surprises me.... things begin to work well together and match each other, and I am designing items and getting a definite unique style, neo-nomadic, neo-indigenous, whatever it is, its nice, and very original for something that is made from all the materials and techniques that I have learned over the years, focused by the criteria.... its “arty”......
I suggest you get a real life before the rush of the herd..... people are problems, more people are more problems, and less people are less problems....and when the rush is on, things will become very difficult in comparison to in the now....
And starting now, even if its just buying a vacation cabin, or just going camping and exploring areas as potential survival camps, is doing something.... another issue is post collapse transportation.... that car isn't likely to get you far, unless you leave early....
ON Boats....
After long thought, my transportation of choice is a boat..... and if I lived inland, I'd take up sea-kayaking.... as a sea kayak is the only means of transport that is going to function well if the bridges are collapsed, or the highways plugged with dead cars.... A short portage into the nearest drainage, and then up or down the river or up or down the coast, etc......
And a sea kayak can carry a fair amount of survival gear... definitely enough....
The main thing to keep in mind with sea-kayaks, is that few are strong enough, salesmen push light-weight onto mindless yuppies..... Boats dont need to be that light, and rough water in a crisis is no place to learn the limits of some super piece of shit plastic boat... As always think durability factor, and get the heavier stronger boat... One realization I've had, is that a sea kayak, some fishing gear, and a reverse osmosis filter for desalinizing sea water, and a person is free and likely to survive , and be mobile, almost anywhere..... Minimalism is so incredibly powerful......
Another boat option is the sailing yacht..... but whats generally on the market are very problematic... fiber-glass boats have about a 30 year life until the resin plasticizer starts to degrade and the hull needs to nestle into a land fill.... yacht styles also tend to be very impractical, The best hull is aluminum, or steel that has been well maintained, the plastic ones are trash, and most often have spade keels, which is so you have to rent moorage or a slip... If you try beaching one, tide goes out, it flops over, and when tide comes in, it floods the boat, and sinks it in place.
If you want to escape the technocult onto a boat, get some kind of workboat hull with a full length keel, so you can beach it for what ever reason..... Build living space below, but avoid all the junk put into yachts, sinks, toilets, too many berths, showers, etc., they all cause problems, and its nicer just to do the dishes in a bucket out in the cockpit, and its nicer to not have a smelly toilet down inside a tiny living space that has poor ventilation generally.... And toilets, sinks, are what statistically sink most yachts.... Yacht interiors are designed to please women's tastes, for the 15 minutes preceding the sale... And after the sale, the wife may go out a time or two, but soon the boat evolves into the guy's dog house, where he can go to get away from her.... So if you're male and in the market for a boat, forget the love-nest interior, better to think boy things, like fishing, workshop, cargo, etc., which all just happen to be what you'll really need in a survival situation.....
On sails, its strength that counts, If you buy used sails, have them restitched.....Or you will be sorry.... Personally I'd just buy storm sails off of a bigger boat... lightweight racing sails dont last long in blue water cruising conditions...
Boats would be my choice if I didn't already own a farm in paradise....And I have over a thousand hours as a blue water solo sailor....and I am in process on designing and building another boat......
A lot of people live on their boats, and hold down jobs, or do crafts etc., and get by, they also haul small cargoes.... It keeps a roof over your head, and the ability to leave any time you choose, and by a route not likely to be plugged.... And they are cheaper to maintain yourself, than a house, and dont pay the taxes that a house has to.... I highly recommend them for divorced males..... Absolutely nothing makes a guy feel better, than seeing his ex-wife's entire culture disappear over the horizon astern ......
MORE On HORSES......
Horses are man's second best friend..... and its a good idea to remember to treat them well, especially considering they are incredibly strong and powerful, and not all that smart when it comes to figuring out why you seem to be so upset sometimes.... its like being buddies with Mohamed Ali, if there is a problem, 'gotta stay calm......... 'doesn't matter who's fault it is.......
Horses come in various sizes, from Ponies to Clydesdale's.... they eat in proportion to their size.... and a smaller one needs about 40 pounds of “salad bar” per day to stay healthy....
Larger horses are generally used in flat lands, and smaller ones in the hills and mountains.
Two smaller horses can usually haul more than one bigger one.... But it would take a string of 50 pack horses to haul what most people think is necessary to live comfortably in the outback... So if you are thinking to use horses to provide a life style in the sticks, I suggest you alter your expectations about what you need to survive, until you can get it on one or maybe two horses....otherwise you will spend the rest of your life like ghost riders in the sky, except you'll be looking endlessly for more pasture...... Horses evidently come originally from fairly dry climates, they can go several days between watering if necessary and still survive. And they also seem to require a diet high in minerals, as one would expect in areas not rain leached.... if you plan on having horses in a wetter climate, best keep a mineral block available, or your horse will get sick and be effectively starving, on what looks to be plenty of food.... But wetter climates along coastlines allow you the option of letting the horses occasionally drink sea water, which they will gladly do.... I think it wise to have fresh water readily available afterwards, but horses love sea water on an occasional basis...
One problem with owning a horse, is then you think you have to ride it.... which eliminates
its ability to haul much besides your fat arse.... so if you wish to ride, and have a bunch of survival or subsistence stuff, you'll need a second horse for packing...
Or you can just walk, like the proverbial miner and his burro, and get there without the haughty noble attitude, and only have to deal with one horse.....
Survival ism is learning to live without things you really dont need.... And the only way to learn what you do and dont need, is to practice it.....
On horses, pay careful attention to caring for their feet, clean hooves that are trimmed regularly, are happy hooves, and a lame horse isn't going to carry anything very far.....
I dont recommend shoeing horses, unless they are to be used continually on rock or pavement... most horse owners pay for shoeing, and leave the horse in the pasture.... its like this expensive bad habit they never analyze...... trim often, go with the plastic boots on hard terrains........
Another potential with horses, is to have a cart..... good idea, and in the flats, its easier on the horse than carrying everything on his back..... but in the mountains, carts are marginal, and wagons are worse. But a travois or packsaddle still functions OK...... as long as theres a trail.... Here in Central America we use the mountain ponies even up in the jungle and rugged mountains.... its called: “Trepando en las raises” (“climbing in the roots” ) due to the large buttress roots in the tropical forests... A good horse, can pack gear through areas you cant get a wheelbarrow through.... by being able to step over the roots....
Personally I feel that the Technocult is totally bankrupt, both morally, and actually.... A man works and works, and most of the money goes into what it takes to show up at work.... This isn't a life, its a slave's existence sugar coated by having the gate in the barbed wire left open, for any one with the guts to walk out it.... and so few have the guts.....
It is still possible to leave.... and a couple of horses and all the gear, would cost less than 90 days rent.... a lot of gear you can make yourself, even packsaddles..... One would still need a food supply, and I think a few goats would be my choice..... goats eat and thrive on brush, and it can be desert or tropics, as long as there is green to chew.... Goat milk is horrid stuff, but goat cheese is really good..... Milk goats will also feed your dog, and Angoras will give you something to make blankets out of..... As far as I know goats are the animal of choice for survival purposes.... They can even be used for pack animals.....
For meat, the males need to be banded when young, or you can eat excess nannies too...
goat skin is much like deer hide, and will make nice buckskins..... and with the hair left on create clothing thats warm and colorful.... Many survivalist wannabees think they can survive by hunting deer..... but there are more people living in Portland Oregon than there are deer in the entire state.... i.e. They wont last long if the cities go down.... I think I'd rather have a couple ponies for packing, and wander around B.L.M. Land with a couple dozen goats, than try to depend on hunting..... (Or trying to hold down a town job..... ) I'd have a few sheep too maybe, I'm partial to sheepskin coats in cold climates..... another possibility is Dexter cattle... a downsized unit now available in the U.S........... efficiency generally comes in smaller packages.... What amazes me is how many cowboy types there are, and how few men take up herding as a way to subsist.... Its like after the invention of pick-up trucks and canned beer, subsistence herding somehow became impossible..... My advice is to sell the 4x4, roll the money over into horses and livestock, bid on BLM pasture, get a good wall tent, and spend your time doing something men actually like to do, and if some woman wants to come along, she's likely a keeper, and if not, consider yourself lucky to have a life out where there aren't any women to side track a guy, into slavery.... Besides, living outdoors will soon get rid of the beer belly, and you wont need the big belt buckle for a retaining wall....... you can use it to fry flap-jacks on instead....
My point is that there are still plenty of options open, if one begins to think subsistence, instead of paycheck...... A horse or a bow and arrows still work as good as they ever did..... but we are so programmed to think our options are only what passes as normalcy.... Better to break moulds, climb out of ruts, and impress your friends with how creative you are, and as the system crashes, they'll figure out that you're not so wild and crazy, just ahead of the curve, and when theres no food in the supermarket, a hunk of mutton or beef over the coals will seem a feast worth having........
Elevator to Space
Space Elevators, A Treatise:
THE INITIAL BEANSTALK
The very first Space Elevator will have to be mostly a very simple industrial grade device, consisting of a spool of carbon nano-tube fiber cable, and a winch system, (The first cable should be a hexagonal weave, allowing it to lay slightly more compactly on the drum than round braided or round twisted cables...a flat cable would have incessant feeding problems and perhaps require kinking or wasted space at the edges of the spool, to get continuous rolls on the same drum etc...)
There should also be an external thrusting ring, which will house an array of rocket style thrusters... this will be used to provide a counterbalancing/lifting effect replacing some of the mass needed to counterbalance the first cargo lifted, which should be an “umbilical”, or second larger cable in the shape of an un-equal hexagon, i.e. Three longer faces, and three shorter corners, providing space internally for a central tube, and three “hoses”... the shortened “corner faces” will be cogged, with a composite material allowing its use as a “reverse worm gear” for lifting a powered platform (I suggest the platform have twelve sides, the center hole in the platform will appear three sided, and if the overall structure is trussed, one flat will need to be left open.) this platform should use high voltage electric power from three conductor strips, perhaps with the corner cogs if their material is conductive... this would allow a very positive and safe lifting system of the outside platform, with micro-control of movement possible... I would use a long threaded worm and angle the cogs, allowing the use composites with the system, and resulting in long mating faces on the gearing and cogs, allowing lifting of heavier items with the available materials... and to allow high speed application of power with pure rotary movement...
FIRST UMBILICAL
After the first cable, one would lift a second heavier cable in the form of an umbilical, This first umbilical should have the three smaller internal “hoses” used to transport air, and natural gas etc... with the air and natural gas used in part, to power another thrust ring, as in the initial lifting “sky-hook”... but this thrusting ring would be powered by fuel etc., supplied from the ground, and therefor not have the limits of the initial skyhook which must thrust off of tanked fuel and oxygen... I would suspect that the umbilicals will have thrusters built into each stage, allowing each section to add to the lift as it is pulled up and out... perhaps a thrusting ring at intervals also, like beads on a string, the center tube should be as large of a diameter as possible, and it will be used as a pneumatic delivery device, i.e. Air pressure from the ground used to send up cargoes of structural materials for construction, people, or anything else that will fit in the Gondola... and the same tube can be used for lowering cargoes using air pressure as a braking device to eliminate the usual problems from high re-entry... And at least provisionally during the initial lift the center tube could be used for air and the three hoses for natural gas, And later changed when the thrusters are used mostly for maintaining positioning of the station during unusual load situations... I would also consider a study on the use of Helium balloons to help lift the bottom part of the cables during installation... It's some “free lunch” allowing numbers to be used elsewhere to better purposes...
FINAL UMBILICALS
This second stage Elevator or “Asensor”, will be used to lift the third stage, which should be a set of three much larger umbilical pairs, or six tubes in all... these should also be the same unequal hexagonal shape outside with the worm gear/acme thread like cog systems, conductors, and outside platform, ( which will be used mostly for outside maintenance of the umbilicals... Or for slower, over sized freight, such as modular sections...) With the pneumatic tubes being as large as possible to use with bigger payloads, any cargo that will fit inside the pneumatic Gondolas will travel the distance in a fraction of the time of any system using a “climber” on the cable in strip form... And carbon nano-tube fiber should make a fairly strong pressure tube, as well as being the support tie to earth... the design gets around many of problems of a vacuum ambient... How much pressure to stack air twice as high as the atmosphere? How much to push cargoes in a sealed tube, or a sealed against the tube gondola?
These three Umbilical pairs, will consist of an up and a down tube in each pair, Will be stationed in a hexagonal array on the ground, with shunt valving to allow down-coming cargo breaking pressure to be cycled into the lift tube, and so recycle the energy from the falling cargoes into the lifting side... Or pushed into storage for later use in lifting... this array on a hex, should allow the pairs to come together as one goes upward on the design from near horizontal in a gentle curve, into a parallel verticals configuration, with an aesthetic effect similar to Mr. Eiffle's tower... This would also allow passengers to seat themselves in the normal manner on the ground as the tubes would be near horizontal at a distance from the central datum point, and as the Gondola vehicle goes upward, the seating should gymbal slightly with compensators ( like automotive gas shocks) to allow the passengers to take the thrusts in a balanced reclining position,(balanced between thrust and gravity) rather than their knees in their chins...
TELESCOPING SECTIONS
These three tube pairs should have a telescoping section in their horizontal areas, to be used to move the station off its datum point one diameter plus, to dodge space junk, and also used in conjunction to allow “ducking” the station-head downwards slightly for the same purposes, and to allow any minor altitude adjustments or for using station mass as counterbalancing for various load levels in the tube cargoes... These same pneumatic tubes can be used to supply air to the station, and to ships, by them milking off some of the pressure between up and down sides of the pair systems... And really, I think we need to create some jobs cleaning up near-space of all the human and natural space litter...
TRIPLE REDUNDANCY
The reasons for the three tube pairs are to have triple redundancy, is to allow continued use during inside maintenance of one of the tube pairs, and to still have a spare pair if maintenance and accident combine to take out two pairs at the same time...and also for structural reasons of the whole design... allowing it to remain stationary in spite of winds etc.
A major downfall of the strip cable concept... It also allows the elevator to handle a lot of cargo, and its a big Universe, we might need the capacity...
GO VALVES
At the top, on each up-tube, should be a “go-valve” (GV's) that acts like a switch in a railroad yard, and allows cargoes and vehicles (Gondolas) to be either “siphoned” at the top, i.e. Be routed into the station and then back into the down tube, or to be ejected directly into space... this would allow split second routing decisions, and routing of individual payloads either into the station, or lets say; To scramble earth based “fightercraft” (space vehicles), launching much like paint balls full or semi-auto from a paintball gun... (very rapidly) which would make the guys in the Pentagon, very very happy... This system would allow ground based vehicles to be launched at a fraction of current costs...
AT THE BASE
At the base we will need a power supply, I recommend three or more Geo-thermal wells, running steam turbines, with direct drive to air turbines for the initial compression of the large volumes of air for the pneumatics, with said air pressure being stored in a array of sub-terrain air tanks tunneled as vertical shafts into the bedrock, and manifolded into a cross connected system, or an isolated system at will...
These geo-thermal wells and turbines can also be used to heat the “tanked” air slightly with the steam, through a heat exchanger, or the cooling loop on the steam cycle, etc., for de-icing both inside and outside of the umbilicals/ pneumatics... I also recommend that the tanks have dehumidifiers built into their bottoms that collect moisture and allow it to be blown out using the ambient tank pressure with simple pipe and valving... I also suggest that in normal mode the three redundancy zones be kept entirely isolated, with the air shunted outside its pair group only in emergencies... everything triple redundant and isolated as much as possible, especially electrically... ( One could also use a matching standard guage land based pneumatic tube system to get freight to the Pneumatic Asensor, allowing automatic routing etc., and an integrated system, planet and solar system wide with Pneumatic Asensors on other moons and planets... )
THE FLIGHT DECK AND CONTROL TOWER
The station should be built as a vertical cylinder overall, with a flight deck and control tower at its top, to handle mid sized in-coming and outgoing craft, I recommend the area be divided into at least three sectors, preferably 6 or more, or fields with the control tower being at the center, and a central cargo/ aircraft hangar decks elevator array built into the base of the tower, the reason for the flight deck arrangement, is simple human ergonomics, and the fact that it provides a familiar way for existing aircraft pilots to “come in for a landing” and for craft to be handled by familiar methods just as at commercial or military airstrips, or as on an Aircraft Carrier, this will also allow “stacking” incoming or approaching craft just as used at current airports... and allow current pilots and air traffic controllers, to retrain easily for the new ambient conditions... it also provides much parking area on the sides of the strips... it also keeps incoming ships at least trying to stay above the deck level... helping to prevent the Twin Towers effect... keep the higher velocity space craft up on the roof...
FIELDS OF FLIGHT
I suggest that the three (or more) flight deck sectors be elongated to cantilever outwards structurally from the station body proper, to allow longer landing strips for deck parking and for the occasional rookie a bit more leeway coming in... (even though it should feel more like coming in in a helicopter...) The sectors could have a dividing wire backstop for use as emergency arresting gear to catch disabled incoming craft, and the decks themselves should be either light guage steel plate, or a magnetic surface, allowing craft to anchor themselves with electro-magnetism etc., on contact... This section of the Pneumatic Asensor should rotate separately from the station proper, to allow the landing fields to be rotated in the proper direction for the apparent motion of the station, Facilitation, for landing craft, much like taking off and landing into the wind with aircraft... actually the whole station above the cargo lift decks could be rotated to produce pseudo-grav., and the winged landing strips would rotate with or without the upper section, and it is possible to use air cylinders like jacks to raise the landing strips at angles to launch on planned trajectories, and the system could be used to “process” more vehicle traffic like a Gatling gun... the bullets ( robotic cargo ships) could come in or go out, timed to the rotation and sweep angle of the wing-strips, and feed themselves into and out of the hopper much like a touch and go, with a cargo drop in the near center... Such a Rotary station with the pneumatic system would trans-ship a lot of cargo... and it could sling or AIR CATAPULT the empty lighters out on the far side of the rotation, or at any other vector, if speed was imperative, like say in an ammo handling situation...I would have a large diameter air stand pipe, as the center support of the control tower, and use it to trans-ship air to lunar colonies via large tanker ships... so imagine the flight deck being much like a flower, with its rotary petals, and then the Air Ships come in nose down at the center of the flower to fill up with “Honey” for the moon... I suspect the first Pneumatic Asensor will be the first “For all mankind” Military base in space...
THE STATION PROPER
The station itself should be built in a stacked manner, levels, with new construction being sandwiched between the upper and lower functioning end levels, i.e. Flight deck, and lift deck levels... Like adding a card to a deck of cards... I suggest that all couplings, air, water, electricity, wastes, etc, be built as modules with quick or easy disconnects, to allow adding in said sections, and to allow modules to be traded in and out for any reason...
Basically to add a new floor to the station, you install temporary jumpers on all the connections, jack the top and bottom apart, put in external structure and external bulkheads, and then pressure up, and be able to work inside early in the construction process...
New levels should be named as derivatives of the original levels, i.e. Level 21B, is level 21 original, and B means its the second addition...
COLOR SCHEME
The internal color scheme of the station needs be a color code for sectors, I recommend twelve sectors over all, with three primary colors separated by their various intermediary color shades, with the walls and ceilings being basic flat white with some of the appropriate color added to create a mild and pleasing pastel tone of the sector color, slightly tinting the background flat white paint, and all the trim darker, being the sector color also... this is to avoid confusion in emergency situations, perhaps a holing, fire, or other situation, anyone working anywhere can know their sector at a glance any direction, and go the direction correct for the emergency... so a holing could be announced by level and sector, and as long as the lights were on, personal navigation would be instant... Even for people who work all over the station... I also recommend a braille signing system at passage way intersections, using lighted raised dots or studs. Large and bold enough to be sensed through a space suit glove unlit, in the dark... this braille sign should be at face height on all four or more corners of the intersection, and provide sector and level location...
GEOPHYSICAL LOCATIONS
I think the first stations should be built less than ten degrees of latitude from the equator, for the obvious reasons, and also to be away from the hurricane storm tracks which begin at ten degrees or so... No twisters here... I recommend the first American station be built in southern Costa Rica, or northern Panama on the Cordilla Central, due to Geothermal potential ,and physical locations for shipping and land transportation access to the Americas... Also as climate change raises sea levels this area will become an island, (Panarica) with the lowlands of Panama, the canal etc., becoming a sea passage in the future, and I suspect the Lake Nicaragua/ Rio San Juan area will also be navigable to ships... Making it the cross roads of this side of the planet, and highly valuable strategically...
WIND AND OTHER EFFECTS
Do not ignore the wind factors, this will be the down fall of any strip built system, I recommend the engineers view the films of the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure, and think about the strip design, and wind speeds aloft, and the Harmonics of such a strip cable... it wont work guys... and you dont need it anyway... Ribbons flutter invariably in the wind, and I worry also about harmonics and de-Guassing... look at the cable this way, its a very long Violin string that will be stretched very tight and and have its sounding box in a vacuum, meaning the whole station would begin to vibrate and sing as wind and cargo conditions changed, with the cable feeding the sound energy into a vacuum insulated sonic battery... and if it was perhaps a harmonic of high-C etc., it would be hard on portlights, glasses and mugs in the galley and maybe even people's teeth... and has anyone experimented with pressurized sounding boxes in a vacuum and zero-G situations? I think I would want some sound dampening into the design, and maybe break up that 300km or more violin string into some sections that weren't flutter prone... say use tubes and triangulated CNTF cable trusses... it might “Hum” but it wouldn't be coherent sound... the effect of which, could also cause metal fatigue if not properly dealt with...
On de-Guassing etc., thats quite an antennae, 300km plus of carbon... and not a bad lightning rod... what kind of effects will one get from Solar wind, lightning, atmospheric charges, and static electricity, etc.? I.e. No shortage of experiments need to be done before guys with hardhats hook lines onto cargo...
HOME SWEET HOME...
I think the living quarters areas should be to the outside of the various levels, allowing people to have an external view, and external access to their private yachts... these sections could possibly be rotated to produce artificial gravity, meaning that the view port would be much like a glass bottomed boat, (in the floor of the living room?) and access (the front door) would be through the ceiling... (Or to a hall on the side. ) I very strongly suggest two things, one: that all dwellings have their own air tight integrity, and two: that they also have life boats... two airlocks minimum to a house, front and back doors, allowing private homes to be used as refuges in a holing situation...
AMPHORAS
The life boats should be simple devices, lets call them “Amphoras” after the Greek wine vessels, as they will be for our most valuable commodities, our families... I suggest they be much like thermos flasks, with a single opening at the top, double wall, and a vacuum between the walls, for insulation, and that area be filled with dust, as dust in a vacuum is a near perfect insulator... On the outside, I suggest the space shuttle tile material, but as a single casting, to eliminate the potentials we are so aware of...
(Any bureaucrat who even suggests the omission of these life boats, for any reason, should be given the “Titanic Award” and jettisoned into space, very naked, at first opportunity...)
The drag (drogue) Parachute system should be progressive, i.e. Consecutive chutes, all with a hole in their centers, to allow them to be packed around the access hatch like a dough nut... these chutes should be hooked together, “chained”, so that even if one fails to open, it's drag will still help deploy the next larger chute... these Amphoras should be slightly ballasted to float hatch up...
The Packed chutes should be protected thermally by a lip projecting upwards, like the rim on a beer can...With a heat shield ring-hatch over them to protect until at deploy altitudes...
I also think some retro or slowing energy could be provided by having a water jacket that heats up producing steam which is jetted out forward or downward, to turn re-entry heat build up, into braking and cooling... So basically all residences will have a hatch or two in the floor, leading to either an amphora, or the house outside airlock...or the family yacht?
PNEUMATIC LOGIC
The reasons for the Pneumatic systems are fairly obvious, low friction, very safe, and very rapid ascents and descents... also the factor of supplying air etc. to the station and ships in space... And the ability to use heavy land based power systems to provide the lift... Not to mention the recycling of energy between the cargoes going up and down... If the pumping/pressure systems are over-designed, the umbilicals or station, can take a minor holing, and perhaps still function in an emergency, providing more security than any other system... also if the power goes out, the down tubes can still be used in a passive mode to brake cargoes by nothing more complicated than a pressure relief valve at the bottom... Or could be used by people with very small diameter parachutes... And look at it this way, the entire atmosphere only weighs about fifteen pounds per square inch, and we commonly pump at pressures of thousands of p.s.i., leaving plenty of numbers for engineering acceleration etc. on such a design...Its also non-polluting if it leaks, and no shock hazard etc., to passengers... and if there is a failure in mid-lift, the capsule/container/Gondola in question can be caught by its air cushion and all passengers survive... internal maintenance can be done on the umbilicals using platforms that are open topped and lifted by said air pressure, and then locked into position with simple mechanical brakes to the inner wall of the umbilicals...Allowing re coating of the inner surface of the umbilicals, or patching any holes, etc... Also air as a medium of power weighs very little, and the boosting pressures should be fairly low... The effect of the air pressure over the square area of the gondola's base should allow impressive physics, much like hydraulics...and one could have the horizontal sections at the ground base be long enough for some pre-acceleration if necessary... and with crossovers, the suction behind downloads, could be used to lower pressure slightly, ahead of uploads if needed...
Not to mention the structural stiffening of the whole structure provided by the pressurized umbilicals... Its a system that allows excellent control, safety, and connections, to Mother Earth...
I would suggest a very light triangulated CNTF cable array between the umbilicals to tie it all together... and to dampen vibrations...
This design has potentials no strip cable system can ever match... make it repairable, make it efficient as a cargo handling device, make it an integrated system, With the ability to shift all ground based transport systems to compatible standard sized pneumatics, and eliminate our little oil problem, And all of us still have our personal cars and trucks, with a non-polluting replacement that can be powered by any ambient excess mechanical energy, like ocean waves, not to mention the geothermal power... And forget projected beam power systems, they are inherently dangerous, simple pressurized air is a safer replacement, and can be used in so many ways...its known and proven technology, with actual known numbers to the engineering... And unfortunately with the current beam energy idea, if your beam power is in the Laser or Microwave bands, a structure, or vehicle moved by the wind or an earth quake, would be difficult to target even from directly below, and if you get off the bull's eye with Laser or Microwave, it could hole your station, or fry some people... And the pneumatic system could also be used for energy transfer, using the Turbine pumps and then turbine/back to mechanical or electrical energy, even if it meant going continuous on air flow...And the tubes could be used to temporarily counter act an air loss situation in the station... Basically its a system by where the common family car would have a highway to the cities on the moon or Mars etc., either with a Ferry Ship, or as independent space vehicles. And its a simple solution to the fossil fuels problem... you can pump air pressure with windmills or wave action very easily, and its very “Home Boy Friendly Technology”, and can give all the guys working in their garages and basements something to sink their inventive teeth into... Using Air as an energy storage device is in some ways better than electricity, as it doesn't require anything too high tech and it wouldn't need batteries that are hard and slow to charge, and expensive to replace, And that create E-garbage, the system basically works by attempting the impossible instead: to wear out air molecules instead of wearing out batteries... It doesn't have to be too efficient, Free energy even at only 3% efficiency, is still free... And air will be the most important and “available” commodity in a space located culture...Very likely to end up as the base for a currency system; “Air credits”...
For here on Earth, it would function well as a secondary power grid, with lower pressure air being wind farmed etc., This solves a current problem of energy storage that is the hold up on new technologies...and say @ 100 psi, and it going to central stations to be used to run turbines that produce/pump air at much higher pressure for storage... this higher pressure air could then be used to regulate the system, or to go into independently “powered” (stored actually) vehicles... as a power grid , pneumatics has many positives... and houses could have air power turbines producing electricity etc...The system would also easily cross connect with the existing electrical grids via turbines running generators and electrical motors running pumping turbines, and higher pressure pumps, or perhaps a two way generator/motor/turbine? Combine this with underground high pressure storage...
SOME KITCHEN SCIENCE NUMBERS...
For example, imagine a tube say 6 feet in diameter, (I would want the tubes much larger than this.) area equals radius squared times pi, so 6 ft is 72 inches, divided by two gives a radius of 36 inches, squared, is 1296, X pi,gives 4069, plus a little behind the decimal point, Let's round to 4,000 square inches... now add just a measly 100 psig/or 115psi,to the equation, and and you are looking at 400,000 lbs of thrust at sea level...
Meaning you could get some serious velocity on something weighing a fraction of that and O-ringed inside a very very strong tube, if it was carbon nano fiber reinforced... 100psig? Not even a problem to produce, and if you can make a strap with the material, you can make a garden hose... Somebody needs to ring up Uniroyal, and maybe 3-M, and see if they are interested in building some 300km or so air hoses... So, what I am talking about, is the literal equivalent of a flexible tube paint ball gun, using air pressure to launch things, up a tube perhaps coated with Teflon, on the inside, that uses ambient Geo thermal energy to do it, and results in the solution on how to ventilate the station, feed air transfusions to ships, and if you used very large Dirigible type pressure tankers, could be used to ferry air to a lunar or a Mars colony, and return used air to the earth if you wanted or needed to, perhaps to remove the carbon to build more neat toys with... Or to use the planet Earth in part, as the moon's lungs... for that, I would want to maintain Earth with a very healthy set of lungs... and if you really really needed to get rid of a lot of Earth's Atmospheric co2 in a hurry, the system would work to blow atmospheric co2 into space if you could separate it from the other atmospheric gases...So basically booting up enough elevators, and connecting them to co2 extractors, preferably blowing almost pure carbon? would work to fix our big “boo-boo”... and who knows what one could use co2 for in space factories, or perhaps, growing algae on the moon... Overall, its a way to boot ourselves and our baggage into space very very cheaply, creating infinite wealth making potentials, and a lot of contracts and jobs... Its also a National and Planetary security issue...
Its the high ground... And the new dominate human culture, is who ever gets there first with the most... so if you guys on Wall street don't want to have to bother to learn Chinese, I suggest you invest strongly, and keep the Chinese studying English... The best investments will be in the Carbon Fiber, and Aluminum companies, and especially companies now involved in pneumatics... Later when asteroid mining begins, the types of metals used will shift... Any stock broker worth his salt will be into the long term investment potentials of such companies, they will gain more than Government bonds, or any “Earth limited” investments... This IS the future, invest heavily, and bring solutions and profits sooner...
The Whole idea is much like an air powered Super-Gun... less initial velocity and pressure, but a lot longer barrel, and you can use gravity balanced with air pressure to bring the loads to the top and stop them at the right floor... Or launch loads directly into space, having usable velocities for slow cargo to the moon...
Everybody wins...
And nobody has to die in wars to do it...
We could all co-operate and make it a reality very quickly, and do you suppose they would look pretty at night? all lit up with lights to warn aircraft, and and the lights at work stations etc., and an artist would want the tube to be transparent if possible, so as gondolas shot up it, the cabin lights would streak... very pretty... and give little brothers and sisters something to think about, when they watch their big brothers and sisters head off into space...
And then there would be the occasional use of the gas thrusters on the station... might be pretty to see those at night also, light up at hundreds of km. up...Future historians will say our explosion into space was limited by our excessive Earth based military expenditures, and our limited “small” populations, I think that we should start storing fetuses, instead of aborting them... in fact people should be paid for them... In the future they will be a cultural commodity: i.e. Those cultural groups wanting more inhabitants for colonies could “buy” the fetuses, and raise them as their own, be the culture and the fetus differing, it would only serve to eliminate racial bias etc., and eliminate inbreeding... This is THE major paradigm shift for humanity, from competition and war over territory, and resources, to competition in expansion...
THE INITIAL BEANSTALK
The very first Space Elevator will have to be mostly a very simple industrial grade device, consisting of a spool of carbon nano-tube fiber cable, and a winch system, (The first cable should be a hexagonal weave, allowing it to lay slightly more compactly on the drum than round braided or round twisted cables...a flat cable would have incessant feeding problems and perhaps require kinking or wasted space at the edges of the spool, to get continuous rolls on the same drum etc...)
There should also be an external thrusting ring, which will house an array of rocket style thrusters... this will be used to provide a counterbalancing/lifting effect replacing some of the mass needed to counterbalance the first cargo lifted, which should be an “umbilical”, or second larger cable in the shape of an un-equal hexagon, i.e. Three longer faces, and three shorter corners, providing space internally for a central tube, and three “hoses”... the shortened “corner faces” will be cogged, with a composite material allowing its use as a “reverse worm gear” for lifting a powered platform (I suggest the platform have twelve sides, the center hole in the platform will appear three sided, and if the overall structure is trussed, one flat will need to be left open.) this platform should use high voltage electric power from three conductor strips, perhaps with the corner cogs if their material is conductive... this would allow a very positive and safe lifting system of the outside platform, with micro-control of movement possible... I would use a long threaded worm and angle the cogs, allowing the use composites with the system, and resulting in long mating faces on the gearing and cogs, allowing lifting of heavier items with the available materials... and to allow high speed application of power with pure rotary movement...
FIRST UMBILICAL
After the first cable, one would lift a second heavier cable in the form of an umbilical, This first umbilical should have the three smaller internal “hoses” used to transport air, and natural gas etc... with the air and natural gas used in part, to power another thrust ring, as in the initial lifting “sky-hook”... but this thrusting ring would be powered by fuel etc., supplied from the ground, and therefor not have the limits of the initial skyhook which must thrust off of tanked fuel and oxygen... I would suspect that the umbilicals will have thrusters built into each stage, allowing each section to add to the lift as it is pulled up and out... perhaps a thrusting ring at intervals also, like beads on a string, the center tube should be as large of a diameter as possible, and it will be used as a pneumatic delivery device, i.e. Air pressure from the ground used to send up cargoes of structural materials for construction, people, or anything else that will fit in the Gondola... and the same tube can be used for lowering cargoes using air pressure as a braking device to eliminate the usual problems from high re-entry... And at least provisionally during the initial lift the center tube could be used for air and the three hoses for natural gas, And later changed when the thrusters are used mostly for maintaining positioning of the station during unusual load situations... I would also consider a study on the use of Helium balloons to help lift the bottom part of the cables during installation... It's some “free lunch” allowing numbers to be used elsewhere to better purposes...
FINAL UMBILICALS
This second stage Elevator or “Asensor”, will be used to lift the third stage, which should be a set of three much larger umbilical pairs, or six tubes in all... these should also be the same unequal hexagonal shape outside with the worm gear/acme thread like cog systems, conductors, and outside platform, ( which will be used mostly for outside maintenance of the umbilicals... Or for slower, over sized freight, such as modular sections...) With the pneumatic tubes being as large as possible to use with bigger payloads, any cargo that will fit inside the pneumatic Gondolas will travel the distance in a fraction of the time of any system using a “climber” on the cable in strip form... And carbon nano-tube fiber should make a fairly strong pressure tube, as well as being the support tie to earth... the design gets around many of problems of a vacuum ambient... How much pressure to stack air twice as high as the atmosphere? How much to push cargoes in a sealed tube, or a sealed against the tube gondola?
These three Umbilical pairs, will consist of an up and a down tube in each pair, Will be stationed in a hexagonal array on the ground, with shunt valving to allow down-coming cargo breaking pressure to be cycled into the lift tube, and so recycle the energy from the falling cargoes into the lifting side... Or pushed into storage for later use in lifting... this array on a hex, should allow the pairs to come together as one goes upward on the design from near horizontal in a gentle curve, into a parallel verticals configuration, with an aesthetic effect similar to Mr. Eiffle's tower... This would also allow passengers to seat themselves in the normal manner on the ground as the tubes would be near horizontal at a distance from the central datum point, and as the Gondola vehicle goes upward, the seating should gymbal slightly with compensators ( like automotive gas shocks) to allow the passengers to take the thrusts in a balanced reclining position,(balanced between thrust and gravity) rather than their knees in their chins...
TELESCOPING SECTIONS
These three tube pairs should have a telescoping section in their horizontal areas, to be used to move the station off its datum point one diameter plus, to dodge space junk, and also used in conjunction to allow “ducking” the station-head downwards slightly for the same purposes, and to allow any minor altitude adjustments or for using station mass as counterbalancing for various load levels in the tube cargoes... These same pneumatic tubes can be used to supply air to the station, and to ships, by them milking off some of the pressure between up and down sides of the pair systems... And really, I think we need to create some jobs cleaning up near-space of all the human and natural space litter...
TRIPLE REDUNDANCY
The reasons for the three tube pairs are to have triple redundancy, is to allow continued use during inside maintenance of one of the tube pairs, and to still have a spare pair if maintenance and accident combine to take out two pairs at the same time...and also for structural reasons of the whole design... allowing it to remain stationary in spite of winds etc.
A major downfall of the strip cable concept... It also allows the elevator to handle a lot of cargo, and its a big Universe, we might need the capacity...
GO VALVES
At the top, on each up-tube, should be a “go-valve” (GV's) that acts like a switch in a railroad yard, and allows cargoes and vehicles (Gondolas) to be either “siphoned” at the top, i.e. Be routed into the station and then back into the down tube, or to be ejected directly into space... this would allow split second routing decisions, and routing of individual payloads either into the station, or lets say; To scramble earth based “fightercraft” (space vehicles), launching much like paint balls full or semi-auto from a paintball gun... (very rapidly) which would make the guys in the Pentagon, very very happy... This system would allow ground based vehicles to be launched at a fraction of current costs...
AT THE BASE
At the base we will need a power supply, I recommend three or more Geo-thermal wells, running steam turbines, with direct drive to air turbines for the initial compression of the large volumes of air for the pneumatics, with said air pressure being stored in a array of sub-terrain air tanks tunneled as vertical shafts into the bedrock, and manifolded into a cross connected system, or an isolated system at will...
These geo-thermal wells and turbines can also be used to heat the “tanked” air slightly with the steam, through a heat exchanger, or the cooling loop on the steam cycle, etc., for de-icing both inside and outside of the umbilicals/ pneumatics... I also recommend that the tanks have dehumidifiers built into their bottoms that collect moisture and allow it to be blown out using the ambient tank pressure with simple pipe and valving... I also suggest that in normal mode the three redundancy zones be kept entirely isolated, with the air shunted outside its pair group only in emergencies... everything triple redundant and isolated as much as possible, especially electrically... ( One could also use a matching standard guage land based pneumatic tube system to get freight to the Pneumatic Asensor, allowing automatic routing etc., and an integrated system, planet and solar system wide with Pneumatic Asensors on other moons and planets... )
THE FLIGHT DECK AND CONTROL TOWER
The station should be built as a vertical cylinder overall, with a flight deck and control tower at its top, to handle mid sized in-coming and outgoing craft, I recommend the area be divided into at least three sectors, preferably 6 or more, or fields with the control tower being at the center, and a central cargo/ aircraft hangar decks elevator array built into the base of the tower, the reason for the flight deck arrangement, is simple human ergonomics, and the fact that it provides a familiar way for existing aircraft pilots to “come in for a landing” and for craft to be handled by familiar methods just as at commercial or military airstrips, or as on an Aircraft Carrier, this will also allow “stacking” incoming or approaching craft just as used at current airports... and allow current pilots and air traffic controllers, to retrain easily for the new ambient conditions... it also provides much parking area on the sides of the strips... it also keeps incoming ships at least trying to stay above the deck level... helping to prevent the Twin Towers effect... keep the higher velocity space craft up on the roof...
FIELDS OF FLIGHT
I suggest that the three (or more) flight deck sectors be elongated to cantilever outwards structurally from the station body proper, to allow longer landing strips for deck parking and for the occasional rookie a bit more leeway coming in... (even though it should feel more like coming in in a helicopter...) The sectors could have a dividing wire backstop for use as emergency arresting gear to catch disabled incoming craft, and the decks themselves should be either light guage steel plate, or a magnetic surface, allowing craft to anchor themselves with electro-magnetism etc., on contact... This section of the Pneumatic Asensor should rotate separately from the station proper, to allow the landing fields to be rotated in the proper direction for the apparent motion of the station, Facilitation, for landing craft, much like taking off and landing into the wind with aircraft... actually the whole station above the cargo lift decks could be rotated to produce pseudo-grav., and the winged landing strips would rotate with or without the upper section, and it is possible to use air cylinders like jacks to raise the landing strips at angles to launch on planned trajectories, and the system could be used to “process” more vehicle traffic like a Gatling gun... the bullets ( robotic cargo ships) could come in or go out, timed to the rotation and sweep angle of the wing-strips, and feed themselves into and out of the hopper much like a touch and go, with a cargo drop in the near center... Such a Rotary station with the pneumatic system would trans-ship a lot of cargo... and it could sling or AIR CATAPULT the empty lighters out on the far side of the rotation, or at any other vector, if speed was imperative, like say in an ammo handling situation...I would have a large diameter air stand pipe, as the center support of the control tower, and use it to trans-ship air to lunar colonies via large tanker ships... so imagine the flight deck being much like a flower, with its rotary petals, and then the Air Ships come in nose down at the center of the flower to fill up with “Honey” for the moon... I suspect the first Pneumatic Asensor will be the first “For all mankind” Military base in space...
THE STATION PROPER
The station itself should be built in a stacked manner, levels, with new construction being sandwiched between the upper and lower functioning end levels, i.e. Flight deck, and lift deck levels... Like adding a card to a deck of cards... I suggest that all couplings, air, water, electricity, wastes, etc, be built as modules with quick or easy disconnects, to allow adding in said sections, and to allow modules to be traded in and out for any reason...
Basically to add a new floor to the station, you install temporary jumpers on all the connections, jack the top and bottom apart, put in external structure and external bulkheads, and then pressure up, and be able to work inside early in the construction process...
New levels should be named as derivatives of the original levels, i.e. Level 21B, is level 21 original, and B means its the second addition...
COLOR SCHEME
The internal color scheme of the station needs be a color code for sectors, I recommend twelve sectors over all, with three primary colors separated by their various intermediary color shades, with the walls and ceilings being basic flat white with some of the appropriate color added to create a mild and pleasing pastel tone of the sector color, slightly tinting the background flat white paint, and all the trim darker, being the sector color also... this is to avoid confusion in emergency situations, perhaps a holing, fire, or other situation, anyone working anywhere can know their sector at a glance any direction, and go the direction correct for the emergency... so a holing could be announced by level and sector, and as long as the lights were on, personal navigation would be instant... Even for people who work all over the station... I also recommend a braille signing system at passage way intersections, using lighted raised dots or studs. Large and bold enough to be sensed through a space suit glove unlit, in the dark... this braille sign should be at face height on all four or more corners of the intersection, and provide sector and level location...
GEOPHYSICAL LOCATIONS
I think the first stations should be built less than ten degrees of latitude from the equator, for the obvious reasons, and also to be away from the hurricane storm tracks which begin at ten degrees or so... No twisters here... I recommend the first American station be built in southern Costa Rica, or northern Panama on the Cordilla Central, due to Geothermal potential ,and physical locations for shipping and land transportation access to the Americas... Also as climate change raises sea levels this area will become an island, (Panarica) with the lowlands of Panama, the canal etc., becoming a sea passage in the future, and I suspect the Lake Nicaragua/ Rio San Juan area will also be navigable to ships... Making it the cross roads of this side of the planet, and highly valuable strategically...
WIND AND OTHER EFFECTS
Do not ignore the wind factors, this will be the down fall of any strip built system, I recommend the engineers view the films of the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure, and think about the strip design, and wind speeds aloft, and the Harmonics of such a strip cable... it wont work guys... and you dont need it anyway... Ribbons flutter invariably in the wind, and I worry also about harmonics and de-Guassing... look at the cable this way, its a very long Violin string that will be stretched very tight and and have its sounding box in a vacuum, meaning the whole station would begin to vibrate and sing as wind and cargo conditions changed, with the cable feeding the sound energy into a vacuum insulated sonic battery... and if it was perhaps a harmonic of high-C etc., it would be hard on portlights, glasses and mugs in the galley and maybe even people's teeth... and has anyone experimented with pressurized sounding boxes in a vacuum and zero-G situations? I think I would want some sound dampening into the design, and maybe break up that 300km or more violin string into some sections that weren't flutter prone... say use tubes and triangulated CNTF cable trusses... it might “Hum” but it wouldn't be coherent sound... the effect of which, could also cause metal fatigue if not properly dealt with...
On de-Guassing etc., thats quite an antennae, 300km plus of carbon... and not a bad lightning rod... what kind of effects will one get from Solar wind, lightning, atmospheric charges, and static electricity, etc.? I.e. No shortage of experiments need to be done before guys with hardhats hook lines onto cargo...
HOME SWEET HOME...
I think the living quarters areas should be to the outside of the various levels, allowing people to have an external view, and external access to their private yachts... these sections could possibly be rotated to produce artificial gravity, meaning that the view port would be much like a glass bottomed boat, (in the floor of the living room?) and access (the front door) would be through the ceiling... (Or to a hall on the side. ) I very strongly suggest two things, one: that all dwellings have their own air tight integrity, and two: that they also have life boats... two airlocks minimum to a house, front and back doors, allowing private homes to be used as refuges in a holing situation...
AMPHORAS
The life boats should be simple devices, lets call them “Amphoras” after the Greek wine vessels, as they will be for our most valuable commodities, our families... I suggest they be much like thermos flasks, with a single opening at the top, double wall, and a vacuum between the walls, for insulation, and that area be filled with dust, as dust in a vacuum is a near perfect insulator... On the outside, I suggest the space shuttle tile material, but as a single casting, to eliminate the potentials we are so aware of...
(Any bureaucrat who even suggests the omission of these life boats, for any reason, should be given the “Titanic Award” and jettisoned into space, very naked, at first opportunity...)
The drag (drogue) Parachute system should be progressive, i.e. Consecutive chutes, all with a hole in their centers, to allow them to be packed around the access hatch like a dough nut... these chutes should be hooked together, “chained”, so that even if one fails to open, it's drag will still help deploy the next larger chute... these Amphoras should be slightly ballasted to float hatch up...
The Packed chutes should be protected thermally by a lip projecting upwards, like the rim on a beer can...With a heat shield ring-hatch over them to protect until at deploy altitudes...
I also think some retro or slowing energy could be provided by having a water jacket that heats up producing steam which is jetted out forward or downward, to turn re-entry heat build up, into braking and cooling... So basically all residences will have a hatch or two in the floor, leading to either an amphora, or the house outside airlock...or the family yacht?
PNEUMATIC LOGIC
The reasons for the Pneumatic systems are fairly obvious, low friction, very safe, and very rapid ascents and descents... also the factor of supplying air etc. to the station and ships in space... And the ability to use heavy land based power systems to provide the lift... Not to mention the recycling of energy between the cargoes going up and down... If the pumping/pressure systems are over-designed, the umbilicals or station, can take a minor holing, and perhaps still function in an emergency, providing more security than any other system... also if the power goes out, the down tubes can still be used in a passive mode to brake cargoes by nothing more complicated than a pressure relief valve at the bottom... Or could be used by people with very small diameter parachutes... And look at it this way, the entire atmosphere only weighs about fifteen pounds per square inch, and we commonly pump at pressures of thousands of p.s.i., leaving plenty of numbers for engineering acceleration etc. on such a design...Its also non-polluting if it leaks, and no shock hazard etc., to passengers... and if there is a failure in mid-lift, the capsule/container/Gondola in question can be caught by its air cushion and all passengers survive... internal maintenance can be done on the umbilicals using platforms that are open topped and lifted by said air pressure, and then locked into position with simple mechanical brakes to the inner wall of the umbilicals...Allowing re coating of the inner surface of the umbilicals, or patching any holes, etc... Also air as a medium of power weighs very little, and the boosting pressures should be fairly low... The effect of the air pressure over the square area of the gondola's base should allow impressive physics, much like hydraulics...and one could have the horizontal sections at the ground base be long enough for some pre-acceleration if necessary... and with crossovers, the suction behind downloads, could be used to lower pressure slightly, ahead of uploads if needed...
Not to mention the structural stiffening of the whole structure provided by the pressurized umbilicals... Its a system that allows excellent control, safety, and connections, to Mother Earth...
I would suggest a very light triangulated CNTF cable array between the umbilicals to tie it all together... and to dampen vibrations...
This design has potentials no strip cable system can ever match... make it repairable, make it efficient as a cargo handling device, make it an integrated system, With the ability to shift all ground based transport systems to compatible standard sized pneumatics, and eliminate our little oil problem, And all of us still have our personal cars and trucks, with a non-polluting replacement that can be powered by any ambient excess mechanical energy, like ocean waves, not to mention the geothermal power... And forget projected beam power systems, they are inherently dangerous, simple pressurized air is a safer replacement, and can be used in so many ways...its known and proven technology, with actual known numbers to the engineering... And unfortunately with the current beam energy idea, if your beam power is in the Laser or Microwave bands, a structure, or vehicle moved by the wind or an earth quake, would be difficult to target even from directly below, and if you get off the bull's eye with Laser or Microwave, it could hole your station, or fry some people... And the pneumatic system could also be used for energy transfer, using the Turbine pumps and then turbine/back to mechanical or electrical energy, even if it meant going continuous on air flow...And the tubes could be used to temporarily counter act an air loss situation in the station... Basically its a system by where the common family car would have a highway to the cities on the moon or Mars etc., either with a Ferry Ship, or as independent space vehicles. And its a simple solution to the fossil fuels problem... you can pump air pressure with windmills or wave action very easily, and its very “Home Boy Friendly Technology”, and can give all the guys working in their garages and basements something to sink their inventive teeth into... Using Air as an energy storage device is in some ways better than electricity, as it doesn't require anything too high tech and it wouldn't need batteries that are hard and slow to charge, and expensive to replace, And that create E-garbage, the system basically works by attempting the impossible instead: to wear out air molecules instead of wearing out batteries... It doesn't have to be too efficient, Free energy even at only 3% efficiency, is still free... And air will be the most important and “available” commodity in a space located culture...Very likely to end up as the base for a currency system; “Air credits”...
For here on Earth, it would function well as a secondary power grid, with lower pressure air being wind farmed etc., This solves a current problem of energy storage that is the hold up on new technologies...and say @ 100 psi, and it going to central stations to be used to run turbines that produce/pump air at much higher pressure for storage... this higher pressure air could then be used to regulate the system, or to go into independently “powered” (stored actually) vehicles... as a power grid , pneumatics has many positives... and houses could have air power turbines producing electricity etc...The system would also easily cross connect with the existing electrical grids via turbines running generators and electrical motors running pumping turbines, and higher pressure pumps, or perhaps a two way generator/motor/turbine? Combine this with underground high pressure storage...
SOME KITCHEN SCIENCE NUMBERS...
For example, imagine a tube say 6 feet in diameter, (I would want the tubes much larger than this.) area equals radius squared times pi, so 6 ft is 72 inches, divided by two gives a radius of 36 inches, squared, is 1296, X pi,gives 4069, plus a little behind the decimal point, Let's round to 4,000 square inches... now add just a measly 100 psig/or 115psi,to the equation, and and you are looking at 400,000 lbs of thrust at sea level...
Meaning you could get some serious velocity on something weighing a fraction of that and O-ringed inside a very very strong tube, if it was carbon nano fiber reinforced... 100psig? Not even a problem to produce, and if you can make a strap with the material, you can make a garden hose... Somebody needs to ring up Uniroyal, and maybe 3-M, and see if they are interested in building some 300km or so air hoses... So, what I am talking about, is the literal equivalent of a flexible tube paint ball gun, using air pressure to launch things, up a tube perhaps coated with Teflon, on the inside, that uses ambient Geo thermal energy to do it, and results in the solution on how to ventilate the station, feed air transfusions to ships, and if you used very large Dirigible type pressure tankers, could be used to ferry air to a lunar or a Mars colony, and return used air to the earth if you wanted or needed to, perhaps to remove the carbon to build more neat toys with... Or to use the planet Earth in part, as the moon's lungs... for that, I would want to maintain Earth with a very healthy set of lungs... and if you really really needed to get rid of a lot of Earth's Atmospheric co2 in a hurry, the system would work to blow atmospheric co2 into space if you could separate it from the other atmospheric gases...So basically booting up enough elevators, and connecting them to co2 extractors, preferably blowing almost pure carbon? would work to fix our big “boo-boo”... and who knows what one could use co2 for in space factories, or perhaps, growing algae on the moon... Overall, its a way to boot ourselves and our baggage into space very very cheaply, creating infinite wealth making potentials, and a lot of contracts and jobs... Its also a National and Planetary security issue...
Its the high ground... And the new dominate human culture, is who ever gets there first with the most... so if you guys on Wall street don't want to have to bother to learn Chinese, I suggest you invest strongly, and keep the Chinese studying English... The best investments will be in the Carbon Fiber, and Aluminum companies, and especially companies now involved in pneumatics... Later when asteroid mining begins, the types of metals used will shift... Any stock broker worth his salt will be into the long term investment potentials of such companies, they will gain more than Government bonds, or any “Earth limited” investments... This IS the future, invest heavily, and bring solutions and profits sooner...
The Whole idea is much like an air powered Super-Gun... less initial velocity and pressure, but a lot longer barrel, and you can use gravity balanced with air pressure to bring the loads to the top and stop them at the right floor... Or launch loads directly into space, having usable velocities for slow cargo to the moon...
Everybody wins...
And nobody has to die in wars to do it...
We could all co-operate and make it a reality very quickly, and do you suppose they would look pretty at night? all lit up with lights to warn aircraft, and and the lights at work stations etc., and an artist would want the tube to be transparent if possible, so as gondolas shot up it, the cabin lights would streak... very pretty... and give little brothers and sisters something to think about, when they watch their big brothers and sisters head off into space...
And then there would be the occasional use of the gas thrusters on the station... might be pretty to see those at night also, light up at hundreds of km. up...Future historians will say our explosion into space was limited by our excessive Earth based military expenditures, and our limited “small” populations, I think that we should start storing fetuses, instead of aborting them... in fact people should be paid for them... In the future they will be a cultural commodity: i.e. Those cultural groups wanting more inhabitants for colonies could “buy” the fetuses, and raise them as their own, be the culture and the fetus differing, it would only serve to eliminate racial bias etc., and eliminate inbreeding... This is THE major paradigm shift for humanity, from competition and war over territory, and resources, to competition in expansion...
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