Archive for the 'Survival' Category

Following up on my post How Helene Affected The People Of Appalachia, there are a number of shameful things that we’re learning about the official response.

Let’s begin with this terrible report of a man who used his own helicopter to rescue stranded people above Asheville, N.C., and who was told if he continued, he would be placed under arrest.

The responsible officials are Dustin Waycaster – Fire Chief, and Chris Melton – Asst. Fire Chief. Congratulations men, you’ve made the hall of shame. It would take an entire article to examine the moral implications of preventing the rescue of men and women in danger, but we’ll leave it at that and cover it later. Suffice it to say that it sounds like you were discomfited by someone showing you up and “interfering with your operation.” Although it’s likely a manifest lie to say that anyone was really interfering with anything.

Next up, let’s go down to Florida where, even though there is state preemption, Chief of Police Donald Hagan believes he knows better.

OKEECHOBEE, Fla. (CBS12) — Before Hurricane Helene made landfall, several cities and municipalities declared local states of emergency to ensure funds would be available for storm-related repairs.

One city’s local state of temporary emergency order has stirred controversy from gun advocates. On Monday, the Okeechobee Police Department admitted to enacting the wrong declaration last week, which mistakenly included a gun ban.

Firearms Policy Coalition, a non-profit gun rights organization headquartered in California, recently posted the notice on X, criticizing the police department for adopting the order, which banned the sale of guns and ammunition and prohibited public firearm possession by anyone other than law enforcement or military members.

UPDATE: We just spoke with someone in the @RonDeSantis administration. Not only was this local declaration illegal and unconstitutional, we were told that as soon as the Governor’s office was aware they directed the Police Chief to rescind the order. pic.twitter.com/w3yVcqQvw1

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) September 30, 2024

[ … ]

“This is something that was mistakenly enacted. Once we learned that the emergency order was not the order that we intended to declare, we immediately terminated it,” Det. Jarret Romanello, Public Information Officer for the Okeechobee City Police Department, told CBS12 News on Monday.

No one believes this was a “mistake,” Jarret. We all believe that you’re a professional liar.

Then there is more on authorities threatening arrest for folks trying to help.

We have medical teams trying to access Burnsville (elevation 2,700ft) and Black Mountain. Authorities are threatening arrest. I’m gonna keep this short & simple; something is very wrong here.

— Kelly DNP Functional/Integrative Medicine (@kacdnp91) October 2, 2024

She’s right, of course. Something is very wrong here.

Next up, the hall of shame isn’t limited to the authorities. I wonder who the “activist” groups are who are perpetrating these crimes?

Tennessee Hurricane Helene Truck Tire Slashing Update From Trucker

This many incidents has to be coordinated

– TA Travel Center Denmark, Tennessee: 50 Trucks tires slashed
– Loves in Dixon, Tennessee: 16 Trucks with tires slashed
– Loves in Holiday, Tennessee: 5 Tires slashed… pic.twitter.com/IIa2mwUY8n

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) October 1, 2024

This list of hall of shame members is quite likely to grow in the coming weeks and months.

UPDATE #1:

This is certainly sad. Notice that the cop who enforces what he knows to be an unjust law says “I get it.” But he enforces it anyway, as they will do. The police chief is ultimately to blame for first allowing crack heads into Asheville where the lady had to be worried about it, and second to issue standing orders to prevent this lady from retrieving her property. He (Mike Lamb) deserves to be in the hall of shame.

I’ve been wondering when we’d see some footage of what police interactions are looking like in #asheville North Carolina #helene #ncwx

Well, here we go. City of Asheville Police Department hounds resident about getting their things from their home, “you guys have already gotten… pic.twitter.com/6PV9EqiMqy

— Frank Fighting For Freedom 🇺🇸 (@thinktankfranks) October 3, 2024

UPDATE #2:

And perhaps the most egregious actions from the worst of all villains, Pete Buttigieg.

🚨NEW – Federal Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has shut down aid flights into Western North Carolina.

A NOTAM has been issued by the FAA that won’t allow anyone not approved by the state to fly aid missions. They said they would give permission but they’re not being…

— Dr. Ben Braddock (@GraduatedBen) October 3, 2024

UPDATE #3:

This is disturbing, but expected behavior from the federal bureaucracy. They don’t understand the implications of their decisions, but then they wouldn’t care even if they did. What governors and local authorities (read LE) won’t do is enforce against FEMA. Notice that the local Sheriff is enforcing rules that harm people. Notice that no LE is entering the FEMA dumps to enforce the right to dump. Notice that only the people whose lives will suffer care about this.

MUST WATCH & MUST SHARE ! If you don’t fear the government yet , you will after watching this 👇 Apply logic to your question WHY ! So they can make life of disaster victims as miserable as possible ; where people give up , leave their homes never to return…. #AbandonedAmerica pic.twitter.com/GtdzuTTBqz

— VeBee🇺🇸✝️ (@VeBo1991) October 3, 2024

UPDATE #4:

Here is an interview with the city manager of Lake Lure, Olivia Stewman. I won’t embed it but will link it. She disgusts me so much, and was deflecting blame to everyone else and defending her actions to the point that I will break that all out into a separate analysis.

UPDATE #5:

The advertised FEMA stipend – $750. The real FEMA stipend – $0.

Everyone in her area including herself applied for 750 dollars and were denied. pic.twitter.com/gPDUaTbNZa

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) October 4, 2024

What? You didn’t really expect FEMA to live up to their word, did you? We’ve sent all of your dollars overseas or housed illegal immigrants with it here. You don’t rate.

Please visit my new featured post, How Helene Affected The People Of Appalachia.

This is a good set of tests and an interesting channel. I guess one takeaway might be to stick with SureFire and Streamlight (although I have never seen either company field lights that claimed 5000 lumens). I wonder who needs a 5000 lumen flashlight anyway.

Then this is also a good video, but frankly I can’t locate a Maglite 623 with these specifications. I’m guessing it’s a modified version.

Source.

Equipped with only 19 pounds of gear, 89-year-old Bing Olbum set off on what he intended to be a five–day hiking trip.

Instead, Olbum found himself stranded for nearly 10 days in over 4 million acres of Salmon-Challis National Forest. It’s home to some of the most rugged places in the country beyond Alaska, according to a local search and rescue coordinator.

Some of the peaks and saddles Olbum passed through reached over 8,000 feet as he cleared more than 20 miles while traversing the alpine forest.

“The odds of anybody surviving that period of time out in the wilderness area is very unlikely,” said Custer County Search and Rescue Coordinator Lincoln Zollinger.

On August 1, Olbum ventured from the Hunter Creek Trailhead in east-central Idaho on a backpacking trip. He was expected to arrive at his exit point in the McDonald Creek Area five days later, according to the Custer County Sheriff’s Office.

Olbum was reported as a missing person days later on August 6, the sheriff’s office said.

The Custer County Search and Rescue team began searching for him by land and air. Ground teams scanned the forest for traces of Olbum, lasering in on possible trails on which he could be found.

The next morning, the Idaho National Guard and a private pilot lent their helicopters to help with the search, and the Idaho National Laboratory manned drones to sweep through the forested mountains for signs of Olbum.

Despite the extensive effort, the Custer County Search and Rescue team “had zero traces of him for the five days” they had been looking, Zollinger said.

Local residents of Custer County and the surrounding area made up the ground search teams.

Locals left their jobs and commitments to help with the search for Olbum, as the Custer County Search and Rescue team is entirely made up of volunteers, according to Zollinger.

“We’re still a really small community,” Zollinger said, adding that he and others have spent their whole lives here. “They say, ‘stay off the mountain,’ well we’re going anyways.”

And it was these community members who finally brought Olbum home.

“We were getting ready to discontinue our search and turn it back over to the family to let them look for (him),” Zollinger said, adding that the chances of survivability were low after being out there for so long.

Olbum’s daughter, Jennifer Olbum, posted his photo and trail map on Facebook Thursday asking for information and help from hikers familiar with the area.

“For two days search and rescue have been unable to locate him which tells me he is hurt or worse and unable to lay out a tarp for the choppers to see,” she wrote.

Two days later, on the final evening of the search, a group of local rescuers discovered Olbum’s camp, according to the sheriff’s office.

After searching for Olbum in the surrounding areas, local residents on horseback found him safe in the early morning hours of August 11.

According to Zollinger, Olbum was found virtually unscathed and was only mildly dehydrated and sore from the sheer distance he covered on foot.

That morning, the Custer County Sheriff’s Office praised Olbum, saying his “will to survive has resulted in an unbelievably good ending to this incident” in a post on Facebook.

Olbum had lightly packed for his backpacking trip. His only food for the excursion was beef jerky, salted nuts and iodine tablets to purify water, according to Zollinger. He also packed a one-man tent, a blanket and a pad to sleep on.

He did not have any tracking devices on him and only had a compass and a paper map for navigation.

I don’t recommend hiking the bush in Idaho without a large bore handgun, which based on his light loadout, I’m willing to bet he didn’t have.

I also don’t recommend going into the deep bush with an ultralight loadout. Freeze dried food would have been very light.

Finally, hiking in the bush without a tracking device is bold. Probably too bold for me. I don’t recommend it.

Outdoor Life.

Outdoor gear is in the midst of a sea change. A common family of chemicals used for waterproofing, stain resistance, and durability — PFAS — is being banned in textiles in California and in apparel in New York starting in 2025. As a result, outdoor gear companies are working hard to remove these chemicals from their products. With PFAS being utilized in DWR treatments on wind jackets, waterproof treatment on down, tent fabrics, rain jackets, and much more, this will require a major shift for the industry. But what is PFAS, and why is it being banned?

[ … ]

PFAS, short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, was originally developed by Dupont in 1938, and a version of it quickly found its way into any number of household goods under a familiar name: Teflon. Its waterproof and stain-resistant properties made it extremely popular. Today there are nearly 15,000 chemicals in the PFAS family, including PFOS (Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid) and PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic Acid), which are found in everything from rain jackets to food packaging to shampoo.

What makes these chemicals unique is the carbon and fluorine bonds in their atomic structure. Because carbon and fluorine bonds are very strong, they do not break down easily. For that reason, they are known as “forever chemicals.” They build up in the environment, and they build in the human body. Based on an analysis of survey data from the National Center for Health Statistics for the years 2011 to 2012, it is estimated that 97 percent of Americans have PFAS in their bloodstream.

It doesn’t matter that only two states intend to ban these chemicals. The rest will soon follow, and even if they don’t, the outdoor gear manufacturers will change their products in fear of lawsuits.

If you purchase – or intend to purchase – rain gear, hunting apparel, or outdoor gear of any sort that is rated for water or rain resistance, this will affect you.

There are currently parkas on the shelves that you may want to purchase if you are so inclined to stay ahead of this ban.

TTAG.

Shortly after 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, officers responded to the location for a report of an attempted home invasion robbery. Police spoke to the homeowner, who said three men tried to break down his door but were unsuccessful and fled the scene.

The SPD says the suspects tried a second time at around 12:25 a.m. the next morning.

Authorities say four men returned to the house to try breaking the door down with a sledgehammer.

The homeowner told police he was sleeping and woke up to loud banging at the door. He armed himself with a rifle, and when the suspects tried getting inside, he shot at them.

Most of the time home invasions are conducted by more than one person. The only thing missing here is the common protocol of the criminals to shout “Police, Police …”  Including those who are actually police.

Let me explain what’s happening here before you watch this.

When hiking in the Teton’s in May of this year (on a professional trip to Idaho Falls, ID) with still a very heavy snow pack, I fell into a tree well.  When I began the hiking the Jenny Lake trail, the snow was inches deep.  During the trip it turned into feet deep, and I had no snow shoes and no trekking poles.  Anyway, it was extremely difficult to get out of the tree well and it took quite some time.

I was “post holing” in snow, and it had never occurred to me what happens when you go waist deep into snow.  You don’t remove your leg.  You have to dig your leg out.  The snow is like cement.  Here the snowboarder is head-down into a tree well and well within the snow.  He probably cannot expand his lungs very much in order to breath.  He certainly cannot extricate himself from the problem.

The skier is in a mad rush literally to save the man’s life.  Despite what he says, he cannot breath – not while encased in the snow pack.

As to applicability, whether you snow board or ski or not, the lesson [re]learned is just this: don’t ever leave your colleagues.  Ever.  If you’re with someone, they are acting very stupidly and irresponsibly to leave you, regardless of the fact that they may want to forge ahead and make time or whatever the reason.  He needs to find new friends.

This incident is followed up here and here.

And it just seems like we’re being inundated with this, especially the invasive kind.

Asian longhorned ticks (ALTs) have been spreading across the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. since at least 2017, according to the Center for Disease Prevention (CDC), and the pests’ numbers are now on the rise in Ohio—a recent study from the Ohio State University reveals. According to the study’s authors, 9,287 invasive ticks were removed from a farm in eastern Ohio in the summer of 2021 after three cattle were reported dead from tick bites by the landowner.

During the study—lead-authored by Ohio State Assistant Professor of Veterinary Preventive Medicine Risa Pesapane—scientists continued to monitor the invasive tick population after most of the pests were killed off with pesticides. They found that the Asian longhorn ticks returned to the pasture and continued to spread in June 2022, despite the tick control efforts undertaken in 2021.

“You cannot spray your way out of an Asian longhorned tick infestation,” Pesapane said in a Nov. 3 news release. “They are going to spread to pretty much every part of Ohio and they are going to be a long-term management problem. There is no getting rid of them.”

Pesapane said that the cattle killed during the 2021 ALT infestation in eastern Ohio sustained thousands of tick bites. “One of those was a healthy male bull, about 5 years old,” she said in the press release. “Enormous. To have been taken down by exsanguination by ticks, you can imagine that was tens of thousands of ticks on one animal.” The term “exsanguination” refers to the action of draining a person, animal, or organ of the blood needed to sustain life.

[ … ]

According to Pesapane, the invasive tick’s rapid spread lies in its ability to reproduce asexually, without mating. “There are no other ticks in North America that do that. So they can just march on, with exponential growth, without any limitation of having to find a mate …

Great.  Does anything good come out of Asia?

If it isn’t ticks, it’s chiggers.  This one is especially dangerous to humans.

Wildlife researchers at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro found a novel pathogen for the first time in North Carolina that is carried by chiggers.

Bacteria called Orientia tsutsugamushi causes the disease scrub typhus, which is spread to people through bites of infected chiggers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“That is a disease that has never been described in North America or in the Americas altogether,” Dr. Gideon Wasserberg, an infectious disease expert who works in the UNCG Department of Biology, said.

Symptoms include:

• a dark scab at the site of the bite
• confusion
• fever
• chills
• headache
• body aches
• rash
• larger lymph nodes

In some extreme cases, it can lead to organ failure.

Just great.

I’m happy that the suffering from summer is over and we’re facing some cold weather now, but summer will be back with a vengeance, so stay diligent.

This guy had some gear I’ve never seen before, and I need to take a look at the water purification system he had going on.

Related, I see that he recommends powder mix (e.g., Gatorade) for electrolyte replacement.  This is important because water isn’t enough.

Without Comment from source:

My small family spent two years of our lives essentially stateless, stranded at sea, 18,000km from home, floating on 40ft of fiberglass. ‘Freedom to transact’ literally became a matter of life or death. This is our story.

Australia locked its citizens out from returning during the pandemic. My family (wife and three kids 3, 5 and 6 months old) were sailing on a catamaran in the eastern Caribbean at the time. We ended up there for two years waiting out the pandemic.

When the pandemic hit, we essentially became stateless. For a time, all countries within sailing distance closed their borders to Australian-flagged vessels. No flights or cruise ships. My son couldn’t renew his passport, and we had to get him temporary (refugee) papers.

Initially, we got locked down for 91 days on our boat in an overseas territory of France. The gendarme nautique (water police) prohibited us from leaving the boat. We technically weren’t even allowed to swim off the boat at anchor.

Early on, desperate to get the kids some exercise, we took the dinghy to an isolated beach. The gendarme came with guns and megaphones to enforce our isolation. The next day, a mini aircraft carrier arrived, and military control was implemented on the island.

Hurricane season arrived while we were still in lockdown, ramping up the stress. We provisioned to head to sea if a hurricane approached; stateless, the last resort plan was to drift at sea, waiting out the season. I studied the weather manically.

Months passed, hurricanes became imminent, the outlook dire; then Grenada saved us. They let 1,200 stranded boats in, despite their borders being completely shut. A tiny poor country was saving us when my own affluent country was blocking its citizens. This hit home hard.

We sailed 3 days non-stop to Grenada. Too late in the season, we faced terrible weather, experiencing multiple frontal systems, winds of 30-40+ knots, and at one point, three tornadic waterspouts closed in around us while the gooseneck bolt on the boom vibrated loose.

Two more weeks of quarantine, then freedom after 4 months restricted to the boat. NOAA then issued a hurricane warning with a track map directly over us. We scrambled to prepare and tie to the mangroves. Thankfully, it fizzled out and passed just south of us.

As time went by, we became forgotten citizens. ‘Freedom to Transact’ issues began to arise. We had been living in Canada for the 3 years prior on global expert visas. Canada had also locked us out (it remained open to citizens & PR but not to work visa holders).

Our Canadian bank cards expired, and we needed to physically be in Canada to activate new ones. Subsequently, our online banking account was suspended for suspicious activity. Again, we were required to go into a branch to remedy, which was impossible.

Our Australian bank access also became restricted. After roaming overseas for too long, our Australian phone SIMs expired and we lost access to our 2FA numbers needed for access to our bank accounts there.

To obtain a new SIM, we needed to provide government-approved ID and activate from within Australia. Again, the familiar response was ‘come into the bank and we can sort this out’. Loss of freedom of movement essentially led to a loss of freedom to transact.

Fortunately, we had access to family who could help us out, and the bank agreed, after much pleading over the phone, to accept a phone number of a family member for 2FA. But the lesson was clear: without Freedom to Transact, you have very limited options to sustain life.

The Australian government had also placed a Level 4 travel ban on the entire world for its citizens, previously reserved only for war zones. This immediately rendered both our travel and health insurance policies void due to exemption clauses for travel to Level 4 areas.

The Panama Canal then shut to vessels under 80ft. And so began two, often stressful, years at sea, 18,000km from home, reliant on the benevolence of small foreign countries to provide the very shelter that our own country refused to render.

In this crazy chapter of our lives, we faced numerous challenges, yet savoured incredible family experiences. Chiseled by the stress, we entered a heightened state of existence, ultimately transforming it into the most extraordinary time of our lives.

Navigating through immense technical and geopolitical intricacies, we journeyed using little more than wind across 15 countries & territories during the pandemic. With the absence of cruise ships/flights, the Caribbean’s remote tranquility echoed the serenity of the 1950s.

Sailing into endless sunsets, dolphins playfully surfed our bow’s wake, as the stars emerged in the evening sky. We saw numerous volcanic islands materialise on the horizon, and explored untouched jungles and secluded waterfalls.

We spent time with the kids wildlife spotting for monkeys, iguanas, bird colonies. Exploring volcanic landscapes, relaxing in hot springs. Swimming and diving over the reef with turtles and schools of fish. Just enjoying the sea and each other as we watch the kids grow up.

Endless hours at the beach meeting other stranded families from all over the world with vastly different backgrounds but ultimately a shared story. A common experience to bond us together.

We ran our own renewable power systems; solar and wind into a lithium bank. We made our own water via a small desalination unit, caught our own fish. Drank rum punch and watched the green flash from more remote beaches than one could expect to see in tens of lifetimes.

Not all roses obviously. The flip side was the challenges of raising a baby girl and two boys including doing home school in a confined space. Coming up to speed under duress as landlubbers with the realities of sailing, navigation, weather routing, and all boat systems.

Constantly working on the seemingly infinite list of boat maintenance jobs. Endless time spent provisioning and looking for parts. Fitting in the time to work remotely to keep us alive financially. Dragging anchor in midnight squalls, having other boats drag around you.

Enduring sleep deprivation from anchor alarms and a breastfeeding infant, we somehow persevered on multi-day sails without access to additional crew, testing our limits. We then faced extended lockdowns and quarantines everywhere upon arrival.

The mental angst of that initial 91 days of lockdown in the hurricane belt hoping that boarders would open somewhere for Australian flagged vessels before the hurricane season started will be with me for life. Certainly the hardest thing we have done as a family.

The 18 months that followed was a sublimely beautiful yet at times crushingly difficult; in hindsight the most meaningful time in our lives. When we finally made it home to Australia after two years floating on 40ft of fiberglass, it felt like an alternate reality.

People at home stressing about the smallest of issues and arguing over trivial things. The Australia I left, a nation of prolific travellers, was now scared of foreigners in a way I had never thought possible in my life. Something had been lost in the population here.

They had their own lockdown trauma. In a bizarre way being stranded at sea liberated us from it. Forged by circumstance, intermeshed into the physical world around us, our preconceived boundaries of what was possible in life physically and emotionally had been removed.

Yet in other ways it led to a kind of PTSD reintegrating into society. Everyone took for granted simple freedoms like freedom of movement, freedom to always be able to return to your home country, and freedom to transact. We knew first hand how fragile it all was.

I held back releasing ocean work or even this story as I needed time to process the experience. After two years of being back on land I created the Intrepid Ocean series to attempt to work though these thoughts and emotions.

The experience highlighted the fragility of the global norms and governance systems we take for granted. Now after three years back in Australia we are heading back to our boat in the Caribbean to finish what we started. The kids are now 4,8,10. So here we are again on the precipice about to jump off. To find out who we truly are, as individuals, as a family.

Copied in its entirety to make a record; who knows how long the source platform will allow this? He definitely should write it all out in book form.