Scientists say they hope to find remnants of a meteor that brilliantly lit up the sky before falling to earth in western Canada.

University of Calgary planetary scientist Alan Hildebrand called it one of the largest meteors visible in the country in the last decade.

Widely broadcast video images showed what appeared to be a speeding fireball Thursday night over Saskatoon that became larger and brighter before disappearing as it neared the ground.

Hildebrand said Friday that he received about 300 email reports from witnesses.

“It would be something like a billion-watt light bulb,” said Hildebrand, who also co-ordinates meteor sightings with the Canadian Space Agency.

Tammy Evans was wakened by her 10-year-old daughter who ran into the bedroom.

“She said there was a flash of light, the house shook twice and it sounded like dinosaurs were walking,” Evans said.

Hildebrand suspects it broke up into pieces and he plans to investigate around Macklin, Saskatchewan near the Alberta border.

Rick Huziak, an amateur astronomer in Saskatoon, helped operate a camera on top of the University of Saskatchewan physics building that captured video of the meteor.

“It was quite spectacular. The ground lights up all over the place,” he said.

Martin Beech, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Regina, said meteorites are valuable to learning about the history of the solar system.

“Picking up a meteorite is almost equivalent to doing a space exploration mission between Mars and Jupiter,” he said.

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Southern Californians simultaneously dropped to the floor and huddled under tables and desks for two minutes of imagined seismic turmoil on Thursday in the biggest U.S. earthquake drill.

The Great Southern California ShakeOut was organized by scientists and emergency officials as part of a campaign to prepare the state’s 22 million inhabitants for a catastrophic quake that experts say is inevitable and long overdue.

The drill is based on the premise of a magnitude 7.8 quake striking the southern portion of the famed San Andreas Fault, a subterranean chasm between two massive plates of the Earth’s crust that extends hundreds of miles (km) across the state.

The hypothetical quake, similar in strength to the devastating tremor that hit China in May, also is the basis for this year’s annual Golden Guardian exercise — a days-long disaster simulation for emergency-response agencies statewide.

“This helps us hone our skills,” said Patricia Aidem, a spokeswoman for Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in suburban Los Angeles, whose trauma center is taking part in the larger mass-casualty drill.

“We live in earthquake country, so being prepared to help the public is just an amazing advantage for the community.”

Teaching people quake survival skills also “means fewer patients for us,” she added.

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What should you do if you’re stranded outside in -15C weather? According to survivalist lore, burrow into the snow.

Weather researchers agree, and they provided the supporting scientific evidence in a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS).

During most winters, York University buries electronic thermometers at ground level beneath snow at a campus weather station. This past Feb. 29, when the air registered -15C, the temperature at the ground surface was a comparatively balmy 0. Three days later, when the air temperature rose to 12C, the ground surface remained at 0.

This is nature’s thermostat at work. The 10-centimetre-deep snow insulated the ground from the cold air. Also, any heat conducted up from the earth goes mostly into melting snow rather than raising temperatures.

Finally, when melted water freezes, it releases what’s known as “latent heat,” again maintaining the temperature near 0 at the spot where ground and snow meet.

But the survivalist thermostat fails when air temperatures are really frigid, says atmospheric science professor Peter Taylor in the CMOS Bulletin.

York also operated a weather station last winter at Iqaluit, Nunavut. The late February temperatures there were -25 to -30, both in the air and just beneath the snow surface.

“If you are stranded, burrowing under snow is still a good plan to conserve body heat,” writes Taylor, “but do not expect to find a -5C layer after several months of -30C temperatures.”

survivalism

Donna and Joel Brinkle used to own 5 acres in Geneva. That’s where they raised their family. Joel worked as a manager at Florida Power & Light Co. Donna is a former deputy court clerk.

Then, in the 1990s, they stopped paying taxes and declared themselves independent of all government authority. They have been battling government ever since.

Joel, 76, went to jail. The IRS went after their money, and Seminole County sold their home because of unpaid taxes.

Now, they face a new battle: Florida’s attorney general is suing them, accusing them of fraud and harassment for filing a lien naming four Seminole County officials: Sheriff Don Eslinger; State Attorney Norm Wolfinger; Clerk of Courts Maryanne Morse; and Clayton Simmons, chief judge of the 18th judicial circuit.

The couple recorded the lien in April, claiming ownership of every piece of property held by those officials.

The suit asks a judge to throw out the claim and to ban the Brinkles from filing any more liens against public officials, unless it is done by an attorney or with a court order. It also asks a judge to bar the state and the county from accepting any more liens from the couple unless they are done by an attorney or with a court order.

Dozens of liens in 6 years

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sovereign citizen

In 2008 the USGS led a collaborative effort with URS Corporation, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley to create computer simulations of large, anticipated earthquakes on the Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults. The most recent large earthquake on the Hayward fault was in 1868, 140 years ago. Because the past five large earthquakes on the Hayward fault have been about 140 years apart, the Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults are the most likely faults to produce a large earthquake in the Bay Area. These computer simulations of scenario (or anticipated) earthquakes provide detailed pictures of what shaking we should expect in such earthquakes. These computer models capture the shaking at length scales larger than about 300 ft (100 m), so they do not include the effects of very thin, soft sediments, such as Bay Mud around the perimeter of San Francisco Bay. For areas with these thin, soft sediments the shaking would be stronger than what is shown in the animations.

The computer simulations include a total of seven earthquake scenarios: three magnitude 6.8 scenarios with different starting locations (epicenters), three magnitude 7.0 scenarios with different starting locations, and one magnitude 7.2 scenario. The next large earthquake on the Hayward fault will likely fall in the range of magnitude 6.8-7.0. The magnitude 6.8 and magnitude 7.0 scenario earthquakes provide detailed examples of the type of shaking we should expect in such an event. The magnitude 7.2 scenario earthquake, while possible, is a much less likely event involving simultaneous rupture of both the Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults.

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earthquakes

The bomb squad and police conducted an investigation Tuesday in Conshohocken at the Millennium Riverwalk Complex, which was the scene of a major fire last summer.

Police responded to an 11:30 a.m. report of a possible explosive device found in apartment building 4000 and remained at the complex for several hours.

Montgomery County authorities later said they recovered several weapons — all of which are believed to be legally owned — as well as other items from an apartment that was left uninhabitable by the August blaze and the presence of mold.

The items removed from the apartment belonged to a man described as a survivalist who was never allowed to return to the residence. He was said to be cooperating with the police investigation, Fox 29’s Joyce Evans reported from the scene.

Investigators were taking the items — including about 50 containers of rice — to a crime lab to ensure that there was nothing illegal there, and that process was expected to take several days.

After arriving at the scene Tuesday morning, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department Bomb Disposal Unit first X-rayed a black bag found near the complex entrance. It was found to have nothing inside.

Police then searched inside of the building and said, based on what they found inside, they felt further investigation was warranted.

The apartment complex told residents that a security company noticed a box of ammunition in the building, prompting the call to police.

The “System” has developed numerous means by which to separate the individual from their capital.  An excellent treatment of this is an article called “The Gospel of Consumption.”  Understand this!  And do not allow yourself to be milked like some stupid cow.

We will learn these lessons of depression-era living again it seems, but maybe this time, after the dust settles and we count the heads of those remaining, we can retain them and pass them on to future generations so that they will not be so dependent on an increasingly fragile and complex system that is just itching to shear them like sheeple.  Do this for yourself, but more importantly, do it for your children.  Teach it to them, and do so primarily by example….that’s what they will be paying most attention to anyway.

• Avoid debt like the plague it is.
• Make due or do without.  If you cannot afford it then you cannot have it.
• Be happy with what you already have.  It’s called “Thankfulness”
• Be good stewards of the resources you currently possess
• Run your household like a business, because it is a business.

Source: CNN.com

Memories of salvaging and stealing to avoid going hungry are part of the legacy of the Great Depression. Some iReporters say they can’t help but look at the current economy and feel the past holds lessons for the present.

…

Donna LeBlanc of Waxia, Louisiana, says she carries no credit to this day as a result of the frugality and self-reliance instilled in her by her family. Her husband keeps the couple’s credit card and maintains a zero balance.

The Great Depression meant scary times for many households as a period of economic downturn spread throughout the world. Historians trace its start to the “Black Tuesday” stock crash on October 29, 1929, and argue that the resulting global desperation set the stage for World War II.

LeBlanc said her grandparents were fortunate that they didn’t have investments and could grow — or catch — their own food during the Depression years.

Her grandfather Lester was a “Cajun cowboy” often seen wearing a cowboy hat, and her grandmother Ida was a resourceful woman who spent much of the 1930s working as a store clerk. LeBlanc, always told never to keep credit card debt, heard frightful stories from Ida

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“Hard-core survivalists say I’m a complete poseur,” says Mike, who estimates he’s spent about $10,000 on his stockpile. “They give me flak for living in the city. True, I’m eight miles from one of the biggest targets in the country—but I’m not going to live in some podunk town. I like to go out to dinner and bars. I like my nice, soft, cushy life.”

According to Jim Rawles of SurvivalBlog.com, survivalism is growing at a rate not seen since the seventies, fueled by such obvious crises as the housing crash, the tanking economy, looming environmental disasters, and the spike in oil prices. All of these things have conspired to validate the preppers’ paranoid worldview, but, more than the supposed Y2K computer bugs or the post-September 11 terrorism panic, the catalyst was Hurricane Katrina. It was an unholy confluence of natural calamity, government failure, and ensuing human suffering, disorder, and anarchy.

“For me, the horrid government response to Katrina really struck home,” says Jason, a 34-year-old who runs SHTFblog.com, a survivalist website. “I don’t think the government is out to get me, but I do think it’ll be inept at delivering help should I and much of the nation need it during a time of disaster. Then there’s SARS, global warming, increased food and fuel costs … Watch the evening news—why wouldn’t you prepare?”

Preppers don’t preach about the Rapture or hold up the end is near signs. They keep their identities under wraps, partly because they don’t want their neighbors and coworkers to think of them as better-dressed versions of Ted Kaczynski. “I don’t talk about it to a lot of people,” Mike says. “They make fun of you.” But preppers are also secretive because they don’t want a crowd at the door—waiting for handouts—when things do fall apart.

Jack Spirko, a 35-year-old media-company owner, lives in a subdivision outside Dallas, in a sprawling house with a home movie theater and two living rooms. He’s taken pains to make sure that none of his neighbors know he’s been vacuum-packing quail meat and stocking up on zucchini from his backyard garden for the past three years. “If you walked up to one of them and said, ‘Do you know Jack? Do you think he has six months of food in the house?’” he says, “they’d say no. We don’t wear camo. We don’t look like survivalists. We look normal.”

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Via: The StarPhoenix

People are always asking me, “Chef Tony, if you are attacked in your kitchen by an intruder, what is the best utensil for self-defence?

I always tell them the same thing. I’m not a chef and my name isn’t Tony.

It so happens, however, that I do know something about the use of kitchen utensils for self-defence. When I empty the dishwasher, say, I always ask myself, “Would it be possible to kill someone with this?”

It’s not a question you want to be asking for the first time when a kitchen intruder comes at you. You might choose to defend yourself with something other than the optimal weapon. Bacon tongs, say. These are almost useless as a weapon, unless, of course, someone attacks you with a strip of hot, crispy bacon, in which case you might use the tongs to disarm him. Otherwise, bacon tongs are the second-worst weapon in the kitchen, right after the basting brush.

Of course, the weapon of choice for most experienced chefs is the large, all-purpose chef’s knife. That’s why they call it all-purpose. You can use it for slicing, chopping, hacking or stabbing.

Certainly, a knife is ideal for mincing fresh shallots or for trimming the fat off a rack of spring lamb, but is it the best weapon against one or more determined attackers who might themselves be armed with knives? I’m not so sure. For this kind of heavy-duty work, you’re better off with a meat cleaver, if you have one. What makes the meat cleaver so effective in the event of a home kitchen invasion is that the perpetrators almost always are made out of meat.

A better weapon still is the cast-iron skillet. It’s the kitchen equivalent of a medieval mace. A heavy, iron skillet can also deflect an opponent’s knife or even a small-calibre bullet, so it’s a shield as well as well as a blunt instrument. When you hear the gong-like peal of an iron skillet connecting with an intruder’s cranium, you know the fight is over.

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US military: Survival, Evasion and Recovery, FM 3-50.3

us-fm-3-50.3-2007.pdf
Download from: Sweden, US, Sweden2, Latvia, Slovakia, UK, Finland, Netherlands, Tonga, SSL, TOR

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