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It is the last day of July. If you have not donated a few bucks, do it now AND IF you are not an alcoholic,join me in a drink or two. Got JD? A little beverage may loosen you up and help you to realize, " Hey, what the heck, sure. It's only a few bucks". And now a little humor: Subject: A story with a moral > > A fellow walks into a bar, notices a very large jar on the counter, and > sees that it's filled to the brim with $10 bills. He guesses there must be...

Iraq's Christians have taken up arms and formed new militias in a desperate effort to defend their beleaguered communities from an onslaught by Islamic extremists. link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/2463208/Iraqs-Christians-form-new-militias-to-combat-Islamic-extremists.html

Obama to Israel: Put Terrorism in Context The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) issued the following statement today: Senator Obama in Jordan today said that terrorism makes 'Israelis want to dig in and simply think about their own security regardless of what's going on beyond their borders.' What Senator Obama fails to recognize is that the safety and security of its citizenry is the primary obligation of a country's leadership. In essence, Senator Obama is asking Israelis and the American Jewish community to put terrorism in context. Senator Obama continues his rhetoric of moral equivalence by implying that measures taken by...

The roughest way to learn to swim is to be thrown in the deep end of the pool, and have to dog-paddle your way to the side if you want to keep breathing. My parents never did that to me, I know only one person who actually experienced that. But, metaphorically? Now that’s another matter. This column is about Clarence Thomas, Paul Carre, the University of Detroit, and the Boy Scout Motto. Begin with Clarence Thomas. I have just finished reading his autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir. It is a gripping tale that would be utterly unbelievable, except that...

In what Sacramento police describe as a "miracle,'' a 2-year-old boy survived on cat food for up to six days on his own and was found Thursday after his mother died in their North Sacramento home. The child - whom Sacramento County Child Protective Services identified as Noah - and his mother were discovered at 10:39 a.m. after police forced their way into the home in the city's Hagginwood neighborhood, police Officer Konrad Von Schoech said. A CPS worker had gone to check on the family that morning because the mother suffered from chronic illness, Von Schoech said. No one...

Did hyperactivity evolve as a survival aid for nomads? 11:39 10 June 2008 NewScientist.com news service Ewen Callaway Impulsivity and a short attention span may be the bane of every parent with a hyperactive toddler, but those same traits seem to help Kenyan nomads keep weight on. A gene mutation tied to attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) is also associated with increased weight among a chronically undernourished group of nomads called the Ariaal. Notably, the mutation offers no such benefit to a cousin population that gave up the nomadic lifestyle in the 1960s. The nomads' active and unpredictable life centred...

A mother who decided to abort her son because he may have inherited a life-threatening kidney condition is overjoyed that he survived the procedure. Jodie Percival of Nottinghamshire, England, said she and her fiancee made the decision to abort baby Finley when she was eight weeks pregnant. Percival's first son Thane died of multicystic dysplastic kidneys, which causes cysts to grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby, and her second child Lewis was born with serious kidney damage and currently has just one kidney, the Daily Mail reported. "I was on the (birth control pill) when I became pregnant,"...

TORTURE OR REASONABLE FORCE? Okay, torture sucks. So, too, does the idea of people being detained without right to counsel, without the freedom to protest their status, etc. Now let’s move on to a hypothetical. Picture yourself in a situation in which you have excellent reason to believe that your family has been targeted by some fanatical, religious nutcase and the nutcase’s buddies. You have irrefutable information that their plan is to execute you, your wife, kids, grandkids, friends, neighbors, everyone you know, and they’ve already shown their expertise at such executions by killing thousands of others. Their Nutcase Army...

Mr Rawles, I have been a survival blog reader for over a year now, and my hat is off to you, sir. "Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse", and the information presented on these pages have been extremely positive influences in my planning and preparations. While I have been, to this point, content to absorb the wealth of knowledge presented here, I was compelled by a recent post to submit this correspondence. In [the letter posted on Sunday] titled "Clash of World Views”, David D. makes the claim that “We’ve had our grand experiment in deregulation and the magic of the...

BUSKIRK — A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings. That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world's oil supply. Now, she's preparing for the world as we know it to disappear. Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore...

Ok. I don't mean Cannabis. These days, with the rising prices everywhere, it should be noted that there are a whole lot of edible plants that grow naturally. Of course everyone is familiar with the good old dandelion, which was originally brought to America as a food crop. But there are many other plants which are at least edible, even if not delicious, so I thought I would start a thread. And while many wild plants aren't too easy on the tongue, the first one I will mention is quite good. And just about overflowing with vitamins and minerals. So......

A couple of ... readers got together for dinner this week -- both well-educated types -- and chatted about the world for a few hours and what's ahead when present trends are projected and barring some miraculous change for the better. Afterwards, an email:Bottom line we got to, after all was said: OK, so we fortunate oddball ones have advance warning of a coming, indeed impending, broad scale societal collapse/restructuring - on multiple fronts - economic cycles, energy, K-wave, solar energy downturn (sunspot cycles). We can, and have, to the extent of our limited abilities, positioned ourselves individually to survive...

OMAHA, Neb. -- An Omaha, Neb., man saved his own life by performing a tracheotomy on himself with a steak knife.One night last week, Steve Wilder woke up and couldn't breathe -- his air passage had swollen shut. "It just blocked all the way and I just got up and I panicked," Wilder said. He didn't think he had time to call and wait for help, so he made an unimaginable choice. "I got a knife and located it and pushed in and blood went gush," Wilder said. Blood was gushing out, but air was rushing in. Wilder was successful...

There has been a great push in this country by child rearing experts and the medical profession that children must be "socialized". It has been a pivotal buzzword for educators and parents alike. It is a main reason for the negative swell toward homeschooling. Yet, it is my contention that what we need to foster, from birth, is natural instinct. Natural instinct is what we understand as the survival instinct. It is an innate instinct of distrust. It is the instinct that alerts us as we start down a dark alleyway on our way home from work. It is the...

For the truly paranoid among us, there's a new extreme standard for which to strive in securing a good night's sleep. The "Quantum Sleeper" promises restful protection from "bio-terrorist attack, natural disaster, kidnappers/stalkers" and, of course, it's bulletproof. If you regularly bed down in a hostile environment, maybe this is the right bed for you. The great thing is that securing yourself inside doesn't mean you're separated from many of the common comforts you would expect. The Quantum Sleeper can be fitted with a CD player, a DVD player with PC hookup, a microwave oven and even a refrigerator. Plus,...

Americans finding soaring food prices hard to stomach can battle back by growing their own food. [Click image for a larger version] Dean Fosdick Dean Fosdick Home vegetable gardens appear to be booming as a result of the twin movements to eat local and pinch pennies. At the Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta this winter, D. Landreth Seed Co. of New Freedom, Pa., sold three to four times more seed packets than last year, says Barb Melera, president. "This is the first time I've ever heard people say, 'I can grow this more cheaply than I can buy it in...

Report: Women Are World-Class Fibbers Sunday , March 02, 2008 Most females lie "more cleverly and successfully than men" about everything from cheating on their spouses and shopping binges to barhopping and facelifts, according to a new book published this week. "Women lie as a survival technique, but also to get what they want," Susan Shapiro Barash, author of "Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets: The Truth About Why Women Lie," told the New York Post. Barash interviewed 500 women nationwide and found 75 percent lie about how much money they spend, while more than 60 percent admitted to cheating...

The Moon Survival Challenge HOW TO PLAY Imagine you are returning to the base ship on the sunlit side of the moon after carrying out a 72-hour exploration trip. Your small spacecraft has crash-landed about 200 miles from the base ship. You need to reach the base ship, in addition to your spacesuit, you were able to salvage the items listed below. Using what you know about the moon, rate each item in the above list according to how important it would be in getting you back to the base ship. Drag the items below up and down to prioritize...

FOREST PARK, Ga. — The gruff, cigar-chomping general who led federal troops into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is convinced America hasn't learned its lesson from the storm. As Lt. Gen. Russel Honore gets ready to retire from the Army and hand over his command on Friday, he says he wants to spend the rest of his life creating a "culture of preparedness" to prevent another post-disaster disaster. "There's an attitude everywhere else that people are smarter than they are in New Orleans and in Mississippi. They're not," the 60-year-old general said at his office at Fort Gillem, just outside...

FOREST PARK, Ga. - The gruff, cigar-chomping general who led federal troops into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is convinced America hasn't learned its lesson from the storm. As Lt. Gen. Russel Honore gets ready to retire from the Army and hand over his command on Friday, he says he wants to spend the rest of his life creating a "culture of preparedness" to prevent another post-disaster disaster. "There's an attitude everywhere else that people are smarter than they are in New Orleans and in Mississippi. They're not," the 60-year-old general said at his office at Fort Gillem, just outside...

The Upright Spike in Technology Dependence--Changing "Grid-Down" from an Inconvenience to TEOTWAWKI If someone were to construct a chart showing human dependence on technology, it would portray an essentially a flat line from Biblical Times to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. From there, there the line would curve upward slightly until the 1890s, when the line would tilt up to perhaps a 10 degree slope. The curve would further steepen in the 1950s (with the advent of computers). The line would then turn into an almost upright spike, starting in the 1990s. In this new era, with each passing...

That's the real flaw in Christopher Dickey's "Deliverance" metaphor: If Cheney is Burt Reynolds, and the rest of America is Jon Voight, and the river is Iraq, who are the hillbillies? Well, presumably (for he doesn't spell it out) they're the dark forces you make yourself vulnerable to when you blunder into somewhere you shouldn't be. When the quartet returns to Atlanta a man short, they may understand how thin the veneer of civilization is, but they don't have to worry that their suburban cul-de-sacs will be overrun and reduced to the same state of nature as the backwoods. That's...

Fishing writer survives bite from deadly snake By JOHN RUDOLF LAKE HAVASU NEWS-HERALD LAKE HAVASU - It took only a split-second to turn an idyllic day fishing on Lake Havasu into an excruciating encounter with one of the deadliest creatures in nature. Early on the morning of Sept. 11, Doug Busey, 49, the Tahoe Daily Tribune's longtime fishing writer, stepped off of a friend's fishing boat to snap a few photos from a beach on the lake's California side. He knelt down to get a better angle on a cactus, and a dark blur jumped out at it him. Only...

Reverse the Public School Brainwashing and Keep Your Kids Safe, by Captain Dave The recent school shooting at Virginia Tech demonstrates a huge underlying societal problem that many of us are either ignoring or are ignorant of. Because society has spent much of the last several decades trying to stamp violence out of schools and out of our children, we end up with kids who are made-to-order victims that will line up to be shot execution style rather than fight back. The answer to school violence is not to arm the campus police, have campus SWAT teams, or class...

My six nights up a tree, by Crocodile George By Barbie Dutter in Sydney Last Updated: 11:49am BST 15/08/2007 An Australian cattle rancher has told how he spent seven days up a tree looking down into the jaws of two hungry crocodiles after stumbling into a swamp crawling with the reptiles. 'I knew they were looking' David George, 53, was knocked unconscious after falling from his horse during a bush-burning operation in north Queensland. Dazed and bleeding after coming round, he remounted his horse hoping it would take him home. Instead it took him to a swamp criss-crossed by crocodile...

Plunging 60 feet off a bridge in a car sounds like a sure death sentence, but survival experts say people can and do walk away from such a calamity, for a simple reason: They were wearing their seat belts. "The people who got out without a scratch absolutely had their seat belts on," says Brian Brawdy, survival expert and a former New York City police officer. "If you're knocked unconscious because you weren't wearing your seat belt, you won't be swimming to the surface." Kimberly Brown, who survived the bridge collapse, told "Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts that had she...

Man vs Wild... "Hello, my name is Bear Grylls, and I'm going to teach you how to survive in some of the harshest, most barren surroundings possible. "I've parachuted into the most forbidding frozen wastes, dangerous jungles, and blazing deserts. For our next adventure, we are going to set aside our parachute, and instead catch a ride on a helicopter.... "... as we survive a trip through a Democratic fundraiser." As cameraman for today, I panned around the surplus military "Huey" helicopter gunship. The pilot ignored my filming and kept his mirror sunglasses fixed on the horizon. At some unknown...

Sydney residents 'must carry survival bags' By Mark Chipperfield in Sydney Last Updated: 2:12am BST 18/07/2007 The easy-going residents of Australia's biggest city are being urged to carry personal "survival bags" to help them cope with a future terrorist attack or natural disaster. The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, says citizens should pack a "Go Bag" containing such essentials as toilet paper, running shoes, spare keys, a torch, disposable gloves, adhesive tape, a transistor radio and sun cream before they leave home each day. Miss Moore, who has yet to pack her own Go Bag, says it is her...

Bracing for a fundraising report at the end of the month that is unlikely to alleviate the headaches that have plagued his campaign, Arizona Sen. John McCain and his top advisers have fashioned a survival plan they hope will steady his GOP nomination run.

BAN CHAN KREM TRAINING AREA, Thailand (May 25, 2007) -- Cockroaches, grasshoppers and grubs taste like burnt chicken skin. Bamboo and a lot of elbow grease will start a fire. Chicken necks are not very resilient. Cobras take it personally when people don't look them in the eye. In a small, backwoods training area in the heart of Thailand's vast subtropical landscape, dozens of Okinawa-based Marines learned those lessons and more May 14 during a crash course in jungle survival during Cobra Gold 2007. Over Cobra Gold's 26-year history, the day of survival training has become the must-see event for...

Traumatic events, like the shooting at Virginia Tech, or the one at Trolley Square forever changes the lives of survivors, families of victims, even institutions. But out of such tragedy also emerge stories of survivors who defy the odds to escape, or heroes who save lives. There are some who think those people share common personality traits that may give them an edge. In 1994 a gunman carrying a bomb, took hostages at the main library in Salt Lake City. Off-duty sheriff's Lt. Lloyd Prescott secretly, and on his own, joined the hostages. Dressed in plain clothes, he kept a...

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=wanted_a_culture_of_self-defense&ns=MichelleMalkin&dt=04/18/2007&page=2 There's no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated "safe spaces" to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions -- while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions (textbook case: Columbia University's anti-Minuteman Project protesters).

Emaciated and riddled with insect bites, two Frenchmen emerged alive yesterday after surviving seven weeks lost in the Amazonian jungle on a diet of bird-eating spiders, frogs, centipedes and turtles. Rescue officials described as "extraordinary" the escape of Loïc Pillois and Guilhem Nayral, both 34, who got lost in the heart of French Guyana, a French overseas department bordering Brazil and Venezuela. "I was so hungry that I even had a go at the turtle's shell and tucked into his claws," said Mr Nayral after the ordeal in which he lost almost four stone. He was infested with worm parasites...

Prof Digs for Clues to our SurvivalUBC Reports | Vol. 53 | No. 4 | Apr. 5, 2007 By Lorraine ChanZhichun Jing holds a replica of a 1,200 BC ivory cup from the Shang Dynasty of China’s Bronze Age - photo by Martin Dee In the Yellow River valley of northern China, Zhichun Jing digs through the remains of long-ago cities to find insights for modern survival. Over the past 10 years, Jing has been excavating the cities of the late Shang Dynasty. Flourishing between 1,200 and 1,050 BC, the Shang was one of the first literate civilizations in China...

The ERC should give a sharper focus to European research Europe has a new flagship agency to fund the brightest ideas in science. The European Research Council (ERC) has been given a budget of 7.5bn euros (£5bn) to 2013, and will focus solely on fundamental, or "blue skies", study. It is hoped the initiative can find the breakthrough thinking - and eventually new products and services - to keep the EU's economy globally competitive. The ERC was formally inaugurated at a meeting in Berlin attended by the German Chancellor, Dr Angela Merkel. She said the Council would become "a...

MySpace-style websites perfect for disaster survival 19:00 15 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service Celeste Biever Dialling emergency services when a major disaster strikes is a typical first response. Now US computer scientists are recommending useful follow-up: logging on to a social networking site, such as MySpace, to share information and survival tips. A bird flu outbreak among humans or a major earthquake will leave emergency call centres quickly overwhelmed, say Ben Shneiderman and Jennifer Preece at the University of Maryland, US. They came up with the idea of creating a web-based emergency alternative, along similar lines to social networking sites...

Consulting Google Earth can help people work out routes to avoid Google is playing an unlikely role in the Iraq war. Its online satellite map of the world, Google Earth, is being used to help people survive sectarian violence in Baghdad. As the communal bloodshed has worsened, some Iraqis have set up advice websites to help others avoid the death squads. One tip - on the Iraq League site, one of the best known - is for people to draw up maps of their local area using Google Earth's detailed imagery of Baghdad so they can work out escape...

Ok folks here's the new thread for the new season. Jack, please don't teacup the guns.

Don't even THINK of opening this thread if you don't want to see what happened tonight!

For Senior Jonathan Goldstein, Monday nights from 9-10 p.m. are off limits for everything except FOX’s hit drama, “24.” “My friends know not to call me during that hour,” he said. “It’s not that I’m anti-social about it, I’ll watch it with other people. I just want to be fully focused on what’s happening.” As most people familiar with the show already know, Goldstein is hardly alone. Since its debut in 2001, “24” has become one of the most popular and compelling shows on television. Its debut this season garnered 33 million viewers and the DVD sales of its past...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzFbxsKA6uA&mode=related&search=

14 survivors from Indonesian ferry found By ZAKKI HAKIM, Associated Press Writer Fourteen people who spent nine days on a life raft after their ferry sank in the Java Sea were rescued when a cargo ship saw them frantically waving for help and heard their whistles, officials said Monday. A 15th person died soon after the cargo ship plucked them from the water on Sunday, nearly 370 miles from where the Indonesian ferry carrying more than 600 people sank in stormy weather. One survivor recounted the moments before the Senopati Nusantara disappeared beneath the violent waves. "I was in a...

TOKYO (AP) - A man who went missing in western Japan survived in near-freezing weather without food and water for over three weeks by falling into a state similar to hibernation, doctors said. Mitsutaka Uchikoshi had almost no pulse, his organs had all but shut down and his body temperature was 71 degrees Fahrenheit or about 21.6 Celsius when he was discovered on Rokko mountain in late October, said doctors who treated him at the nearby Kobe City General Hospital. He had been missing for 24 days. "On the second day, the sun was out, I was in a field,...

Relatives of three men missing in bitter weather on Mount Hood comforted each other and held out hope Friday that the trio survived, eight days after the lightly equipped men left for a two-day ascent. Winds were expected to gust to 100 mph Friday morning in the latest of a string of storms to hit the 11,239-foot mountain, and forecasters said rescuers' next shot to find the men probably would be Saturday. Kelly James, who like Hall is from Dallas, was believed to be holed up in a snow cave near the top, and the other two were thought to...

Survivor of '76: If we made it, they can too Three teens walked out after 13 days in a snow cave on Mount Hood Friday, December 15, 2006 MARK LARABEE The Oregonian It's been almost 31 years since Randy Knapp and two high school friends emerged from their 13th night in a wet, cold snow cave on Mount Hood, where they held onto hope through prayers and struggled to survive while a snowstorm raged outside. As the years passed, Knapp, 48, a finish carpenter and part-time pastor who lives in Medford, refused requests for interviews. But Thursday, as headlines detailed...

FORT HUACHUCA — Chief Warrant Officer Sidney Dahlin-Walker didn’t know if she would be alive to celebrate Christmas. And neither did her husband, British Army Maj. Don Walker. “I didn’t think I was going to make it to the end of last year,” she said. In 2005, the 18-year Army veteran was told she had breast cancer and it was nearly in the third phase of the destructive disease, a time when survival would become less likely. She and her husband had been married for about three years when the news came. Although the couple were in Germany, they were...

BAGHDAD — The cries of a newborn never sounded so sweet, though a tough journey still lies ahead of the five-week-old infant. The fact the child still breathes is living proof of progress. The Baghdad Teaching Hospital, also known as the Medical City Teaching Hospital is responsible for the birth of this tiny miracle. Born prematurely at 26 weeks, the tiny infant is still clinging to life approximately five weeks later, said Lt. Col. Neil Ahle, the senior veterinary medical officer for 1st Cavalry Division, who works on civil affairs projects for the division. “I think to allow that infant...

There have been times recently when I have scarcely dared to open the newspaper for fear of discovering the latest enormity committed by our fellow human beings. You all know the feeling. At this rate, will the human race survive? Does it deserve to survive? Significantly, the first to express this feeling of disgust at humanity was God himself. The Book of Genesis (6:5–8) records: “When the Lord saw that man had done much evil on earth and that his thoughts and inclinations were always evil, he was sorry that he had made man on earth, and he was grieved...

Three million body bags may be stockpiled in disaster plans Last Updated: 1:17am GMT 06/11/2006 Secret plans to stockpile millions of body bags to be used in the event of a flu pandemic, terrorist attack or other disaster are being considered by the Government and health experts, according to a senior minister. The proposals reflect mounting concern at the lack of space to store bodies in morgues and bury them in the event of mass deaths. A senior member of the Government involved in policy planning for a flu pandemic told The Daily Telegraph that "various scenarios" involving hundreds of...

Dear [sl’s Mom], now that the situation here is slowly returning to normal, though never again like it was, I thought I would drop you a line and tell you a little of what has been going on here. You are, of course, aware of our horrible "October Surprise". You remember that hereabouts September and October are usually the most beautiful months of the year, and that the fine fall weather often extends way into November. Not this year. After a lovely spring and unbelievably gorgeous summer, everything seemed to fall off the planet the third week of August, and...