IAF Podcast Episode 15

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Air date: Friday, Sept 29, 2017

Christian’s Thoughts

Do something! Take that daily step! There is no time for excuses any more. There are older people who have skills; if you are young, ask them how to do stuff. There are younger people who are hungry for skills; if you are old, don't assume they are slackers. It’s time to reach across these generations, and join together, and share.

Technology is helping to bridge that: do a video of that backyard garden, that aquaponics, and be seen by others. And as soon as you see someone else do it, you say, “I can do that too!” You didn’t think you could, but when you see someone else do it, when you hear about it, when you read a blog, we inspire each other. So biggest message: SHARE WHAT YOU’RE DOING. With other ppl. Get involved in your communities. Be involved with each other. Tell your story. Tell me your story, and I’ll share your story to others.

Just my thoughts. Let's build this community.

News

Related to solar cycles and geoclimatic changes. Just too much to speak to. Luckily, Adapt 2030 has done a terrific job covering the early freezes across the Northern Hemisphere -- the "early freezes" we here have been expecting for weeks now.

  • Ocean receding from Brazil again. I'm still hunting for anyone who can explain to me what this is about.

Irma

  • Irma, 50% citrus wiped out

The State

One thing learned through Irma that's not immediately obvious, is just yet another reminder that the state DOES NOT care about your survival, it only exists to ensure its own survival.

Significant Storms

Growing season shrinking

Earthquakes

Four MAJOR along ring of fire, in last 24 hours -- strike that, now one off coast of California:

Charged Atmosphere / Solar Wind

At least we know the power grid is taken care of

We know the power grid has been well taken care of (queue Jim Woolsey's warning that the grid is not protected at all, and bureaucratic reasons preclude it)

These are highly suggestive that we are teetering on the edge. I'm not trying to be alarmist, but the systems of society are nearly failing on a daily basis. Let that inform our own intentions and what we manifest with our time.

Volcanoes

Good lord:

Volcano Alert level for Agung volcano raised to 3 (of 4), Bali, Indonesia

Extreme Rain/Flooding

200,000 homeless after 11,000 homes destroyed in Niger:

Cholera Epidemic

Folks laugh at idea epidemics or plagues coming back in #GrandSolarMinimum now -- as they have throughout history in these cycles.

The fact is, when food is low, and tired, immunosuppressed people don't have access to clean water, it doesn't take much.

Yemen's 5-month Cholera crisis is an unfortunate demonstration.

Change of Tone -- Criminalizing Dissent

This is a hugely important item -- in fact, I did a separate video about it exclusively here (DTube / Youtube), and will source parts of it into this episode.

Suffice to say in the show notes:

The media is a weaponized social construct, used to program unthinking folks. In fact, James Corbett, terrific researcher, just did a video on this.

There has been a definite change in language and attitude. Before, Anthropogenic Global Warming "deniers" were associated with "flat earthers" by Obama and the pope, etc.. Now this "mocking" stage has advanced directly to full de-humanization:

Icebreaker: Fred Singer, Washington Times Opinion Piece

Awesome job to Fred Singer, who succeeded at getting this opinion piece included in the

A September 12th Washington Times opinion piece by Fred Singer includes serious discussion and the terms "Geoengineering" and "global cooling!" I was so shocked, I mirrored the article here to archive.is/tZ7VR.

I have been equally surprised to see Dr. Sam Khoury's pieces. David DuByne recently spoke with Sam, but I think both these opinion pieces are being slowly leaked to push the narrative in a desired direction: just as NASA could not regain control over the narrative in April when they released toothless stories about a normal 11-year "solar minimum," so too are we now seeing the establishment really attempt to re-shift the overton window. From Singer's piece:

Climate cooling, as opposed to warming, presents serious problems for humanity. As cooling causes agriculture to fail, most of the world’s population will starve and we will be reduced from its present level to about a million, hunting animals and collecting nuts and seeds for sustenance. This has happened before during the ice ages, when nomadic bands of prehistoric humans had to shelter in caves for protection from the cold, and had to rely on uncertain supplies of food.
We need to distinguish between two kinds of climate cooling events. The first kind is “astronomical” — as studied by the Serbian astronomer Milutin Milankovitch — and determined by the orbit of the Earth in the solar system and the obliquity and precession of the spin axis. There’s very little we can do about that. In the past 2-3 million years, we have experienced about 20 of these glaciations, typically lasting 100,000 years, interrupted by interglacial warm periods of about 10,000 years. We’ve been in our present interglacial, which is called the Holocene epoch, for about 10,000 years, and many think we’re due for another glaciation within a few decades or centuries. Some disagree and think that the Holocene may last much longer, about 45,000 years.
The accepted way in which a glaciation begins is when a snow-ice field at high latitude survives the summer and then grows during the winter months, getting larger and larger all the time. The remedy is quite simple, at least in concept. We need to identify the surviving snow-ice fields, which can be done easily by means of weather satellites. Once we identify them, we can remove them by dumping black soot and allow the summer sun to melt the snow and ice. However, these concepts need to be tested, so experiments are in order.
The second kind of climate cooling is controlled by solar activity and has a short period of 1,000-1,500 years. Our civilization experienced what we call the Little Ice Age (LIA) from about 1400 to 1800 A.D. The cooling was severe enough to destroy agriculture and the budding civilization in southern Greenland. We observed serious effects of the cooling in Europe when harvests failed and people starved; epidemics caused additional deaths. Since about 1850, the climate has been recovering from the LIA, showing some warming.
Even though the cooling of a Little Ice Age is not as severe as an astronomical glaciation, we need to move urgently to counteract a future LIA. This is not simple, but greenhouse effects can help to warm the climate and overcome the cooling. For various reasons, release of carbon dioxide is not the best remedy; carbon dioxide is saturated and doesn’t have much additional climate impact. Furthermore, as far as we can tell, the recent LIA was patchy and individual cooling episodes lasted only years or decades.
In a nutshell, as opposed to global warming, global cooling is a very real problem for a number of reasons. Based on the historic past, we can be sure that cooling will occur again, and maybe very soon. When it does occur, it will have serious effects on agriculture and lead to mass starvation. Unlike for warming, geoengineering against cooling seems physically possible, relatively inexpensive and environmentally benign.

Daily Steps

It's that time of year! Everyone is storing / canning / preserving.

I could tell you many similar stories from folks in the community, or share instead this slice of American history, straight from the oven of 1945. Or actually, a couple highlights first:

  • MountainMoma made manchego cheese; working on health/fitness (lost 5 lbs!)
  • Stwood worked up and canned 7 quarts of my tomato juice recipe; tomorrow, we will work up some more pickled peppers. Still have 4-5 #'s of hot wax peppers that some are going bad. We gotta get em used up!
  • Carl Stored food rotation and gun cleaning in the armory...diesel added for generator...new helper getting some OJT. Bought a half cord of soft wood, close, and restacked hard euc wood out back.
  • MJWitt going to town on his new site, "Lots to do with setting up the new holdfast, so I've been quite busy. Setting up the new storage cistern (stairs, shelves, moving the supplies in, etc), Ordered a new propane powered gennie and poured the pad for it, making an appointment for my concealed permit. Also bought a canning rig and trying my had at some blackberry jam, apples/applesauce, and pickles. Next on the list a major overhaul and improvements to the storage shed (to turn into a workshop).

Cricket Farm

Wiki

Since I was on bed rest for a bit, I also went to town on the Wiki, and researching:

    • I started adding problem-specific sections. For example, Anxiety or Diabetes are now pages that link to alternative/natural therapies/modalities.


How about you? What steps are you taking TODAY to ensure your food security TOMORROW? let me know.

Viewer Feedback

Crop Losses

From Joe Primal: 

I'm an almond farmer in California, and I lost 1/2 my crop to a plague of moths (they lay worms in the nuts) like we've seen.  We also had trouble getting our tomatoes to set fruit because of cold nighttime temps.

Oyster Mushrooms

Oysters are pretty easy going mushrooms. Personally, I bought a pre inoculated log from a reliable vendor to start. I believe the substrate that they grew in was hardwood sawdust based. I have had amazing success with it. I have had 4 or 5 flushes now. The latest flush was after I let my block dry out heavily. I just soaked it a week. Refrigerated it a week. And put it back into the fruiting chamber. They just flat out grow. Check out Paul Staments mushroom growing books. That info has been priceless.
  • And another:
Just a couple of quick things, and check me on this first one but, oyster mushrooms should be cooked prior to eating. Otherwise, they can cause an upset stomach, just FYI. Second those plugs that you use to grow your Oyster mushrooms are intended to be put into wooden logs. Obviously it works the way you did it, but that's probably one of the reasons it took so long. If you get loose spore and shake it in the bag, you'll probably have faster results. I'm glad you're growing mushrooms, that's awesome. 3) also consider growing shiitakes. They are a great source of vitamin D. As the amount of sunlight decreases, we will need more vitamin D supplementiin. If you turn shiitake mushrooms over and let them sit Gills up in the sun, they produce way more vitamin D. Finally, Both oyster and shiitake mushrooms can be dried for later use if you manage to produce enough. thanks again!

Herbs

A Nettle tip: 

I keep stinging nettle tincture on hand for my severe fire ant allergy.  I have found that if I use it fairly quick it works better than over the counter antihistamines.  Then I put a compress of moistened yarrow on the bite.  With this combination I have no need for an epipen!

Health

On managing your own health, a caring viewer wrote in response to my hospitalization, and I very much agree with the philosophy: 

If one has one of various body conditions that are managed by different medications the availability of which would be gone along with centralized electric grid, one should, at least, experiment with getting rid of the condition by diet alone now. Eat the correct foods for your body. I have a pinched vagus nerve that shows up in breathing, digestion, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. Dr.s want to prescribe a chemical for each different facet. I have a chiropractor working on the pinched part of the nerve. I handled the tachycardia, the blood pressure, and the small intestine, with herbs and diet. THAT sort of information is presently available on probably at least a thousand different websites. Just find the right stuff for you. Save the chemical doctors for emergency first aid situations, broken bones, wounds, that they are the best in the world at.

Tires

On finding sources of free tires, ie, for building Earthship style alternative buildings: 

My wife had to get one of the tires on our car replaced today.  In the process, she ends up seeing a room full of bad tires in the shop.  She asks the owner who was the one doing the job btw.  "Have you ever heard of the earthship?" The gentleman says yes and told her we could have all the tires for free!  He fills it every month.  Super cool I thought I'd share that with you!

Icebreaker: FLASHBACK! Canning Victory Gardens

But, like I said, most people are preserving right now. We should be packing away harvest for the winter, and saving seeds for next season.

Home canning soared during World War II, reaching its peak in 1943, with over 4.1 billion jars canned in homes and community canning centers (Bentley, 1998). Wartime canning and victory gardens were symbols of patriotism and heavily promoted by the government.
Home canning during World War II offered families on the home-front a way to supplement their food supplies when rationing was in effect. As an import, sugar, a home canning staple, was among the rationed items.
Sugar suppliers today are feeling the real pinch of a long year. Last year civilians used 6,100,000tons (including industrial use)….about 700,000 tons more than we could afford. This year if we are to live within our quota of 5,400,000 tons….and if each American family is to be assured of a fair share of that quota, tighter rationing is necessary.
A standard sugar ration was 5 pounds, but individuals who home canned could submit requests to their local rationing boards for up to 20 extra pounds of sugar expressly for canning, provided the applicant outline in detail their proposed canning plan (Question box, 1944).
Pressure canners were also rationed during the first years of the war due to their aluminum construction. As a result, sharing pressure canners with friends and family or utilizing community canning centers grew. The risk of malfunction also grew, however and women were advised to “use extreme care” when using pressure canners. Also, everyone should thoroughly clean and inspect canners before use and not leave pressure canners unattended while in use to prevent overheating and avoid explosions (Urges caution, 1943).
[W]atch out, community canners, don’t push these small steam pressure outfits too hard. We’re going to need them longer than just the summer. They’re built to handle about 300 or 400 jars a year at the most.
Pressure canners were necessary for canning low-acid foods, however and the USDA put pressure on the War Production Board to ease restrictions on pressure canner production.
Pressure canners are essential to can vegetables other than tomatoes. Manufacture of 630,000 has been authorized for 1945, compared to 40,000 in 1944. This year’s canners will not be rationed and will be available through regular commercial channels.
Rationing restrictions were lifted mid-1944 and significantly less emphasis was put on victory gardening and home canning by the government (Bentley, 1998). Food shortages towards the end of 1944, however necessitated a renewed effort by the government to support victory gardens and home canning, but participation never reached that of 1943 (Bentley, 1998).

Source: Canning Victory Gardens.

Viewer Question & Item of the Day: Aquaponics Feed (Organic/Non-GMO)

Paul asked, "what kind of food do you feed your fish." This is an interesting answer, in fact, I have a [Aquaponic_Fish_Food wiki page dedicated to it] and am doing experiments to see with what biological components I can reach a self-sufficient level of protein production: earthworms, black soldier fly (25%), duckweed, ...

As well, I currently use this "Aquaponics" specific feed that specifically has protein and nutrition for the fish, plus extra nutrition and trace elements available for the plants, and is made from ingredients I like. See nutrition info up on Aquaponic Fish Food:

  • $12 for 2 pounds, will last a while if you're running smaller system (3-5 fish)

I'll keep that wiki page posted as the experiment evolves. It takes time to locate studies showing that fish stop responding well to diets with BFSL over 50%, for example.

Final Thought

Remember we looked at our power grid teetering on the edge. Have you asked yourself these questions lately:

  • How will you get food if the grocery stores are closed?
  • How will you cook food if you are able to acquire it?
  • What will happen to the perishable food in your refrigerator and freezer?
  • How will you heat and cool your home if you are in an area subject to extreme temperatures?
  • What will you use for light once a few candles run out?
  • How will you transport yourself if your vehicle doesn’t run (whether EMP or no gas)
  • What will you drink and wash with if the municipal water facilities are no longer providing water or if the pump on your well runs on electricity?

Let's try and improve our answers to those questions every day.

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