Best of 2015: The Cascadia megaquake – 3 experts weigh in on what to expect

http://crosscut.com/2015/12/best-of-2015-the-cascadia-megaquake-3-experts-weigh-in-on-what-to-expect/

by Crosscut Editors

This week Crosscut is running some of our best stories of the year, as 
selected both by our writers and by popularity with readers. We will 
resume new content next week. 

Is the Pacific Northwest about to be wiped out in a massive earthquake? 
A New Yorker article on the region’s seismic vulnerabilities has provoked widespread interest in the subject, if not outright panic. At issue is the 
Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is primed to unleash an earthquake that 
may go down as America’s worst natural disaster in recorded history. From 
the piece, one quote has stood out from a FEMA regional official: “Our
 operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”

To tamp down on any misconceptions out there, Reddit hosted an expert 
panel on the subject Tuesday, fielding questions on the Pacific Northwest’s impending demise in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session. The participants 
were John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network; 
Debbie Goetz of Seattle’s Emergency Management Office; and Sandi 
Doughton,  science writer at The Seattle Times and author of Full Rip 9.0: 
The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.

indigenous dried corn recipe from rewild.com

     Kind of not supposed to be sharing these things with non-tribal members; but I've come to respect the people in this community and know this is not the place where people will misuse cultural traditions or use the secrets of the land for ill purpose. Here is one of the oldest recipes for drying corn we Lenape (Delaware) have used for time immemorial. (When it's done they sort of look like corn flakes, but reconstitute well to be used for various purposes.) You don't want to dry it on a screen or cheesecloth because you want the juicy mealy stuff to dry as part of it not drain away. Lots of nutrients in that stuff.

     "Kahapon. Dried corn. Traditional way to keep and dry corn for later use. Corn in the milk stage. Pinch the growing corn and the juice is milky and runny. Grate and grind the Xaskwim off the cobs collecting the corn, the germ, the juices all together. Take it outside to dry in the sun. And when it's finished you have it. Drying and keeping our corn for later use has been done this way since forever. There are a few other ways as well. Later on you can eat it, pound it in a kahakan (hollowed log corn pounder) , mix it with fat, ground meat and berries, make journeycakes, or throw water on it to make a type of porridge. The possibilities are endless."

Ground Zero Media

Ron Patton, editor of Paranoia Magazine, is taking a position with these folks in Portland and moving his Conspiracy Store up to the Northwest!

http://www.groundzeromedia.org/

Beautiful, Dangerous, Radioactive Art

http://disinfo.com/2015/04/beautiful-dangerous-radioactive-art/

by Majestic on April 14, 2015 in Art, Environment, News

A collection of radioactive ceramic vases is about to go on display in London’s venerable Victoria & Albert Museum. They’re beautiful but deadly as a result of the toxic sludge used to sculpt them, as revealed by Fast Company:

Ceramic vases made from toxic mud created in the production of must-have products such as laptops and smartphones will present a markedly different perspective on consumer technology when they go on show at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum later this month.

3 finished vases, conceived by Unknown Fields Division and produced with Kevin Callaghan, a ceramics artist, will be on display in the V and A Gallery.Photo: Toby Smith, courtesy of Unknown Fields

The mud was collected from a toxic lake in Inner Mongolia into which thick, black chemical waste is pumped from neighboring refineries in and around Baotou, the region’s largest industrial city (read more about the place described as “hell on Earth” in this BBC story).

China produces an estimated 95% of the world’s supply of “rare earth” elements.

Baotou is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of the materials–elements found in anything from magnets and wind turbines and electric car motors to the electronic guts of smart phones and flat screen TVs.

The ceramics were produced by The Unknown Fields Division, a self-declared “nomadic design studio” headed by Liam Young and Kate Davies and developed within the Architectural Association in London, whose aim is to reflect the shadows luxury products cast across the planet.

“The vases are a way to talk about ideas around luxury and desire. How both are culturally constructed collective sets of values that are fleeting and particular to our time,” says Davies.

“These three ‘rare earthenware’ vessels are the physical embodiment of a contemporary global supply network that displaces earth and weaves matter across the planet.”

Adds Young: “The dominant media narrative about our technologies is based on lightness and thinness. Terms like ‘cloud’ of ‘Macbook Air’ imply that our gadgets are just ephemeral objects–and this is the story we all want to believe.

“In reality, our technologies should really be thought of as geological artefacts that are carved out of the earth and produced by a planetary-scaled factory.”

Unknown Fields travels the world to explore landscapes and infrastructures critical to the production of contemporary cities and the technologies they contain–often forgotten landscapes scarred by consumer demand…

[continues at Fast Company]

Guerrilla Radio: How some prison inmates hack, rewire, and retool their radios to create walkie-talkies - See more at: http://disinfo.com/2015/03/guerrilla-radio-how-some-prison-inmates-hack-rewire-and-retool-their-radios-to-create-walkie-talkies/#sthash.E551OQAZ.dpuf

http://disinfo.com/2015/03/guerrilla-radio-how-some-prison-inmates-hack-rewire-and-retool-their-radios-to-create-walkie-talkies/

by Majestic on March 27, 2015 in News

Take notes from this Marshall Project post: you’ll want to retool your radio too come the Apocalypse:

Prisoners face numerous restrictions when communicating with one another or the outside world. But where there is a rule, there is often a workaround. At Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California, inmates have yelled to one another through drainpipes under their cells; inmates in Texas talk through cans connected with twine; and in facilities throughout the country, little paper notes — known as “kites” — are literally handed off. As technology has developed, so have the communication methods; cell phones and iPods are regularly smuggled to inmates by visitors and guards. And occasionally, the technology is already inside the prison. Some inmates have learned how to transform their radios into devices that allow them to talk to each other and even eavesdrop on guards.

Once an inmate has purchased an analog radio from the prison commissary (they usually cost less than $30), he can open it up and pull apart a coil, which changes the range of frequency that the radio can access. All the inmate needs to do next is find the frequency that the staff uses on their walkie-talkies. Modifying a radio for two-way communication requires reversing an electrical current to turn a speaker into a microphone. As Ruth Massingill and Ardyth Broadrick wrote in their 2007 book, Prison City, about prison conditions in Huntsville, Texas, “Transforming a radio into a vocal transmitter-receiver requires only a basic knowledge of electronics, a skill readily found within prisons.”

An Insider’s Perspective

In 1976, John Draper, known among hackers as Captain Crunch, was incarcerated at a low security federal prison in Lompoc, California (for phone fraud, incidentally). Upon arrival, he bought a radio from the commissary and re-wired it in the electrical shop so that he could hear walkie-talkie chatter among guards. Because the guards were required to report their movements, Draper was able to know when the coast was clear for other activities — like teaching other prisoners how to modify their own radios. Nobody, as far as Draper knows, was ever caught. “The guards are so clueless,” he says.

That’s less the case today. A correctional officer at the Goree Unit, near Huntsville, Texas, who asked not to be named said staff recently sent a prisoner to solitary confinement after they found that his radio had been doctored. “He could hear our radios and he could transmit out,” she says…

[continues at the Marshall Project]

- See more at: http://disinfo.com/2015/03/guerrilla-radio-how-some-prison-inmates-hack-rewire-and-retool-their-radios-to-create-walkie-talkies/#sthash.E551OQAZ.dpuf

This Is The Greenhouse You’ll Want For Your Homestead Food

http://www.homesteadnotes.com/this-is-the-greenhouse-youll-want-for-your-homestead/2/

Yes, you can build almost any type of greenhouse. The whole idea is to grow foods during a longer season. But this greenhouse is something you’ll have to take a look at yourself. Here’s an article I found from our friends atPrepForSHTF where you can read the article in its entirety.

---

This Is The Greenhouse You’ll Want For Your Homestead

This is a greenhouse based on the Earthship design. Earthship is a trademark design and it was started by Michael Reynolds of Earthship Biotecture. The company is based in Taos New Mexico.

The walls of an Earthship home are typically made of discarded tires and usually packed with dirt and then covered with adobe, concrete or some other material to seal the tires off from the environment in essence and to provide more stability to the walls.

Video: watch the trailer to the Greenhouse of the Future…

“Based on 40 years of experience by the Earthship Biotecture enterprise in house construction using tire foundations and, according to scientific researches on the subject, burying tires represent a minimal risk to human health and the environment”.

Things to Consider

Tires can be found virtually anywhere, and often times they can be found and gathered free. It is costly for companies to dispose of tires properly so they generally end up in a pile somewhere waiting for removal. Garages/service shops in some cases, will charge you a disposal fee when selling you new tires if they are the ones that are mounting the new tires, and removing the old ones. With this in mind you can likely gather all of the tires needed for virtually nothing more than the labor and time needed to haul them back home.

Tires are easy to work with and do not require any specific skills to construct a wall with them. Everyone in the family can be involved in the project. Of course gathering tires and utilizing them in an environmentally friendly ways means less tires in landfills and less tires laying around filled with water. Tires are beacons for rodents, and snakes and when filled with water they are breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Once in place people have found that tires are more resilient over time than concrete.

Glass bottles can be incorporated into the walls, and again you can probably find all that you need by asking local vendors, restaurants, and even bars for their empty containers. They have to pay someone to haul off their empty bottles so make sure it is you hauling some away for your greenhouse project. Bottles incorporated in the walls, especially colored ones can add light and color.

The greenhouse is based on passive solar heat which means less glass than a traditional greenhouse, but with the roof being orientated properly and insulation of the north side the greenhouse would better contain the heat that was gathered during the daylight hours. Keep in mind with this design it could be used for more than just a greenhouse. The south side of the greenhouse is constructed totally of glass or some other material typically used for greenhouse construction.

The slanting sun during the winter months shines through the south side glass heating the tire walls, which in turn will radiate the heat back into the structure as the temperature drops at night. You would not need an alternative heat source at night in most cases.

This family lives on a floating fortress of greenhouses in the middle of the ocean

http://www.theplaidzebra.com/floating-fortress/

BY: TED BARNABY

In Clayoquot Sound, BC, tucked away in the coastal inlets of Cypress Bay, and about a half-hour by boat off the coast of Tofino, live Catherine King and Wayne Adams—the owners and operators of Freedom Cove.

Freedom Cove is a magnificently constructed and colourful off-grid float-home and garden, only accessible by boat. If your ambition is to go off grid, Wayne and Catherine—along with their two kids, Eleanor and Alistair—have more or less developed the perfect system.

Their floating home and garden system includes about twelve platforms, supporting a number of wooden structures, living spaces, and greenhouses—all interconnected through a wooden pathway system. The rainy winter season takes care of the water supply during colder months, while in the summer the majority of their supply comes from a waterfall across the bay.

The couple also used to have a hen house on the property; however their ambitions were spoiled by the increasing attention they received from predatory sea-animals in the area. The electricity is also largely supplied through solar panels and photovoltaic energy generators. The numerous greenhouses produce veggies and fruit all year round, allowing Wayne and Catherine to be completely self-sustainable. In fact, this system has been sustaining itself for the last 20 years.

Wayne and Catherine’s home also is situated in the thick of a lively ecosystem, sharing their slice of land (or water, rather) with deer, wolves, otters and a plethora of large coastal birds. However, according to Wayne, the otters are little more than “30-pound rats” that frequently gnaw away at his foundations.

The two are also respected artists within their surrounding community; their carvings and candles can be found in various gift shops across Tofino, particularly around the Long Beach area. Wayne is typically behind the carvings and crafts, while Catherine—formerly a professional dancer—is now predominantly the mastermind behind their gardening initiatives. Catherine is also a painter, writer and wood carver.