liveonearth | Entries tagged with survival

The First Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the foragers, was followed by the Second Wave Extinction, which accompanied the spread of the farmers, and gives us an important perspetive on the Third Wave Extinction, which industrial activity is causing today. Don't believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving th emost plant and animmal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.
--Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, 2015, p74.

Water storage barrels, screw top, for sale in Portland:

http://www.waterbarrelspdx.com/Home_Page.html

OPB special on the Cascadia earthquake: Unprepared

http://www.opb.org/news/series/unprepared/

PBEM (Portland Bureau of Emergency Management)
has posted 17 videos about preparedness, accessible here:

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/article/400345
These videos are required viewing for NET volunteers.

The NET training video on UTILITIES is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXA_-P1rHdU&feature=youtu.be
On utilities from Unprepared:

http://www.opb.org/news/series/unprepared/how-to-safely-turn-off-utilities-after-a-disaster/

Gabriel Park is a BEECN (Communication Node) location:

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/59630

http://www.publicalerts.org

Join a Portland Neighhood Emergency Team (NET) and get free training:

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/31667

The CERT program overlaps with the NET program:

https://www.publicalerts.org/community-emergency-response-teams-cert-neighborhood-emergency-teams-net

On Forming a CERT (community emergency response team).

http://www.fema.gov/community-emergency-response-teams

Living on Shaky Ground, a print publication on inform preparedness

On seismic retrofitting houses, creating a preparedness kit

http://www.oregon.gov/omd/oem/plans_train/earthquake/shakygroundmagazine_final.pdf

Cascadia Subduction Zone plan

State level document for perspective

http://www.oregon.gov/OMD/OEM/Pages/plans_train/CSZ.aspx

Oregon OEM earthquake awareness page

http://www.oregon.gov/OMD/OEM/Pages/plans_train/earthquake.aspx

For Teens: Without Warning comic book ; Go-Kit Passport

Portland’s Earthquake Response Appendix

for info on local community response

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/article/382005

Portland Bureau of Emergency Management’s

webpage called “Preparedness Resources”

Click here or visit https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/46475?

Pet Owners: Portland has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the nation.

Prepare your family and pets!

Click here or visit https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/63348

Annual quake drills: Shakeout

http://www.shakeout.org

PBEM (Portland Bureau of Emergency Management)

(5o3) 823-4375

Prep Oregon
A volunteer organization with many good resources for helping people get ready for anything.

http://www.preporegon.org

State level Questions: call Zachary Swick

Emergency Preparedness Planner, NIMS Program Coordinator

Operations and Preparedness Section, Oregon Military Department

Office of Emergency Management

Tel: (5o3) 378-2911 Ext. 22233, Fax: (5o3) 373-7833

zach dot swick at state.or.us

EARTHQUAKE WAKEUP ARTICLE: THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES

About what you might expect immediately after a quake

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/first-five-minutes-big-one-earthquake

About the rest of that same day, with a little bit about the NET system

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/neighborhood-emergency

I do not risk my life.
I take risks in order to live.
I take risks because I love life,
not because I don’t.
--Stephen Koch, climber and extreme snowboarder

When I look back on all these worries,

I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed

that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,

most of which had never happened.

– Winston Churchill

1. Anyone can survive for three hours without maintaining the core body temperature.

2. Anyone can survive for three days without water.

3. Anyone can survive for three weeks without food.

SOURCE
http://peaksurvival.com

Of course these are debatable but the gist of it is true. What this perspective does is help you prioritize your actions. The first thing you must do is maintain core body temperature. Next, find water. Then concern yourself with food. Get obsessed with something else when you have no backup, and you may not survive.

Bring carbs
Eat protein.

Dr Paul brings ribs from a restaurant. He's in his 90's and doesn't mind spending his money on food for others. He's a retired physician, orthopedic surgeon to be specific. His sons are all in medicine too, some clinical and some research. He gave me the Mayo clinic book on Alternative Medicine. They basically have a stoplight rating system for all things alternative, and the majority of treatments get the yellow light based on the science that they found. I appreciate it pretty much. They don't damn naturopathic medicine, it gets yellow also. There are good and bad parts. I wish they'd do the same approach for conventional medicines. People might be shocked how weak the evidence is for some of them. The degree to which pharmaceutical businesses drive the FDA and the delivery of medicine is apalling. I love it every time I read of another review that shows reasonable conventional doctors understand that some of the uses of pharmaceuticals are unsubstantiated and may do more harm than good.

The only real security is ...

the ability to build your own fires

and find your own peace ...

What we most regret

are not the errors we make,

but the things we didn't do.

--Audrey Sutherland

Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon
by Tom Myers and Michael Ghiglieri

This book logs all the mistakes you can make at the Grand Canyon. There's an interview with the authors here. There have been some changes since the first edition. There are more environmental deaths, climbing deaths down in the canyon, and suicides than when the book was written. There are fewer deaths overall and fewer falls from the top of the canyon. Perhaps the park has improved safety and access to cliff tops to cause this change.

Q: What are common risk factors for death at the Canyon?

A: "Men, we have a problem," Ghiglieri said to an audience at NAU's Cline Library this winter, displaying a graphic with a skull and crossbones.

Being male, and young, is a tremendous risk factor, he and Myers found.

Of 55 who have accidentally fallen from the rim of the canyon, 39 were male. Eight of those guys were hopping from one rock to another or posing for pictures, including a 38-year-old father from Texas pretending to fall to scare his daughter, who then really did fall 400 feet to his death.

So is taking unknown shortcuts, which sometimes lead to cliffs.

Going solo is a risk factor in deaths from falls, climbing (anticipated or unplanned) and hiking.

Arrogance, impatience or ignorance also sometimes play a part.

SOURCE
http://azdailysun.com/news/local/canyon-deaths-and-counting/article_ba588a05-e816-55be-87f6-80f15b76f744.html

...is worth overdoing. That was their mantra.

Completely Recommend.
( is worth overdoing. )

Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.
--Carl Sagan

We have the wolf by the ears,
and we can neither hold him,
nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale,
and self preservation is in the other.
---Thomas Jefferson -Apr. 22, 1820

The environment we're used to is designed to sustain us. We live like fish in an aquarium. Food comes mysteriously down, oxygen bubbles up. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo we call civilization. Then we go into nature, where we are least among equals with all other creatures. There we are put to the test. Most of us sleep through the test. We get in and out and never know what might have been demanded. Such an experience can make us even more vulnerable, for we come away with the illusion of growing hardy, salty, knowledgeable: Been there, done that.
--Laurence Gonzales in Deep Survival, page 133.

It sounds cruel, but survivors laugh and play, and even in the most horrible situations--perhaps especially in those situations--they continue to laugh and play. To deal with reality you first much recognize it as such...and play puts a person in touch with his environment, while laughter makes the feeling of being threatened manageable.

...Laughter stimulates the left prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that helps us to feel good and be motivated. That stimulation alleviates anxiety and frustration. There is evidence that laughter can send chemical signals to actively inhibit the firing of nerves in the amygdala, thereby dampening fear. Laughter, then, can help temper negative emotions.

Laurence Gonzales in Deep Survival, page 41.

Down to their innate molecular core,
cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed,
scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.
--Siddhardtha Mukherjee in The Emperor of All Maladies

http://www.resilience.org/
Looks like a great forum for the effort to build resilient communities.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one that is most responsive to change.
-—Charles Darwin

Great Mercola article here on identifying which of the weeds in your back yard are EDIBLE for making salads or green smoothies.

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
~~William Stafford

as accessed here
http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Way_It_Is.html

Only two things are infinite,
the universe and human stupidity.
And I'm not sure about the former.
--Albert Einstein

There is no profit
in curing the body
if in the process
we destroy the soul.
--Samuel Golter, City of Hope

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INTERESTING TIMES

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Entries tagged with survival

QotD: Homo sapiens is a veteran at driving extinctions

PDX Quake Preparedness Resources Online

QotD: Risk Taking

QotD: Winston Churchill on Anxiety

Three Basic Survival Rules

The College Student Rule for Potlucks

QotD: Security and Regrets

How People Die in Grand Canyon

Anything Worth Doing

QotD: Do Something

QotD: We have the Wolf by his Ears

QotD: How tough we aren't

QotD: Survivors Laugh and Play

QotD: Cancer cells are Scrappy

Community Building for the Post Oil Era

QotD: Change

Weeds-->Smoothies: How to ID Edibles

Poem: The Way It Is

QotD: Infinite Stupidity

QotD: Curing the Body