Organize your First Aid supplies!: I sliced my finger open pretty badly working on putting a keychain-sized Leatherman back together. The new ones have little Torx screws, but that certainly does not mean they are easy to pull apart and reassemble! About an inch long, pretty deep, bled all over the place (not as bad as Dave Canterbury's cut). Ran to our medicine/first aid closet and found it in total disarray; blood gushing finger + applying pressure with the other hand = not the time you want to search through piles of cold medicine for some gauze. Gave up and ran to my EDC bag, grabbed that first aid kit and patched myself up (yay EDC bag!). In between cleaning up the blood I'd spilled all over the place, I organized the medical supplies and put the first aid stuff into a clearly marked, dedicated bin. If you haven't done this, DO IT. Next time I gash myself open at home, I shouldn't need to plunder my EDC kit for FAK stuff!
Thoughts on the Colony: I've pretty much given up on this show, but still watch via TiVo and judicious fast forwarding. The producers set the colonists up in situations they can't really win while the colonists obviously don't take security seriously, despite failing miserably every week. All that they've done was put a chain on one of the gates to their area and make a sword/machete. There's no one standing guard, there's no real concern when something bad happens (oh, the model just got kidnapped...that's too bad). These people would be dead and done a dozen times over if the scenario were real. The windmill and biodiesel were pretty cool and inventive, but it's clear that the post-apocalypse tech is what the colonists care about, not their safety and wellbeing.
Misc of Interest:
Essential Gear: Read this a while ago and came across it again, good read: Mercop's 10 Essential Pieces of Gear. "Preparedness is about having in arms reach what you need or the resourcefulness to get it or improvise it with what you have."
Murph passed along this blog about turning your backyard pool into a self-sufficient aquaponics garden, GardenPool.org. Pretty inventive!
Global Guerrillas: "You can't outlast D2[2nd Depression] by stockpiling canned goods/bottled water, buying gold, or arming yourself to the teeth." More >