What TV Has Done to Our Minds

On June 29, 1980 philosopher Manly Hall gave a powerful 8-minute talk on NBC’s Odyssey about what TV has done to humanity:

We come home and sit down in front of the TV watching… what?

We’re not watching anything that is really going to make us think a good deal… We watch sports. We watch news – which is usually highly influenced politically.

We go through a few horror dramas, westerns, a few very poor humor programs… and then settle down to the great run of “family epics” in which we learn nothing.

This constitutes a big intellectual experience.

Getting Prepared for Tomorrow
Makes Life Better Today

Why spend time, money and resources preparing for future disasters that might never come? The masses say: “Carpe diem! Live for today! Let tomorrow take care of itself.”

I say… Being prepared for tomorrow and living life today are usually the same thing (as long as you don’t get extreme with your survival preparedness):

No Running Water, No Electricity…
Living in the City

“This house has stopped paying their electricity bill,” says an anonymous YouTube reporter pointing his camera through the dark night at a window dimly lit by a candle. “They’re literally having bonfires every night. This is what’s happening in Southern California. 25% of people in my area are squatting on their own property.”

Over in New Jeresy, the Board of Public Utilities reports that 51,768 homes had their electricity shut off in the last six months. 6,783 families went without gas. 2,943 households have had their water valves closed tight.

Don’t Make Yourself a Target

Gulp! Joe Junior here and I’m in big trouble. I just read this:

If your neighbors’ kids are hungry 10 days into a disaster that has no end in sight and their parents have seen your year’s supply of food, you can guarantee that they’re going to do whatever they need to get food for their kids.

That’s from Lesson One of David Morris’ Survive in Place: 12-Week Urban Preparedness Course. (I’m only 7 but Dad thought I should take this course – it sure is more exciting than math homework).

After reading the first lesson, I just realized I’ve been making a big mistake.

The Frozen Garden of Eden

Buried into one of the arctic islands of Svalbard, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, are over half a million varieties of crop seeds. “[The region] is remote, severe and inhabited by polar bears,” reports the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

The seeds, stored in an underground vault, are protected not just by the harsh environment but by four blast-proof doors and two airlocks. Known as the “Doomsday Vault,” “Noah’s Ark” and “The Frozen Garden of Eden,” it is designed to survive earthquakes, tsunamis and even a nuclear attack.

The World Has Ended and There Is No Time to Cook

You wake up one morning and find out “it” has finally happened. Maybe the currency has collapsed. Maybe oil imports have stopped. Maybe a solar storm has hit the continent.

It’s not long before the nation’s electric grid blinks out.

Collapsing infrastructure can be stressful enough. Getting clean water and staying warm will be priority number one. You don’t need the added stress of making a fire pit and soaking beans.

Survival Saturdays

Joe Junior here. I’m almost 7 years old. I want to tell you about what goes on at our house on Saturdays.

Saturday mornings are weird. I wake up and the house has a creepy silence. My clock doesn’t work. The light won’t turn on.  The toilet doesn’t even flush.

No, there hasn’t been an earthquake or war or anything like that.

Nope. It’s yet another of Dad’s Survival Saturdays.

How to Grow Food Without Land

What are people to do who do not own or rent land and want to start a survival garden today? One reader was facing this exact dilemma.

We’ll call him Preparedness Pete. For reasons that will become obvious in a minute he prefers I do not reveal his location. Let’s just say he lives somewhere in Canada.

His family rents a second floor apartment. They have a small balcony where they are growing mung beans, squash and cucumber in pots. Obviously not enough to live off.

Little Homestead in the Big City

The Dervaes family produces up to 6,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables a year in their 4,300 sq. ft. backyard.

And here’s the best part… They live in Los Angeles between two big highways. Not out in the country. Not in a small town. But in the 2nd largest city in North America.

“Growing food is one of the most dangerous occupations on the face of this earth,” says Jules Dervaes, “Because you are in danger of becoming free…

Football and Fertilizer

Today people talk about American Idol, Hollywood films and spectator sports. Our great grandparents talked about soil, seeds and water.

Children used to spend half the year working in fields growing and harvesting vegetables. Today a third of school children – according to polling organization Mori – think bread is made from potatoes. Half of the surveyed children couldn’t even tell you ham comes from a pig (most thought ham came from a chicken).

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