>>1842
Yeah. These things (Trangia stoves) are the bomb. Lightweight, reliable, and nice to cook with. Love it.

>>1950
Can be pretty hard to get hold of meths, mind. Mine seems to go through quite a lot, and it's also getting quite expensive. It was over a quid fifty for 500ml last time I got some, the fucking cheek of it.

I've just made my own meth burner out of a shoe polish tin and some tin can lids with different size holes in (to alter the size of the flame). It seems to burn merrily enough without wadding but all the similar contraptions on youtube seem to use wadding of some description. What value does wadding add? I've tried it with cat litter (apparently it's good because it holds the meth but is also heat resistant) but can't see any difference.

>>2041 The burner works fine without the wadding and I've been cooking with it so I won't bother.

However methylated spirits is absolutely disgusting. I know the whole point of it is to make ethanol disgusting and that they sell it like that to stop people drinking it, but isn't there anywhere where you can get pure ethanol?

>>2028

You could ask where the tramps are getting their supply.

It's still good fuel, mind.

>>2051

Yes. If it wasn't for the licences thanks to the drink industry you could make your own, but you can buy it in small to large gallon containers quite easily if you search about, you'd be surprised.

You can make a lamp out of tuna fish canned in oil too. You can even eat the fish. Nothing goes to waste. Bit mental for a first choice though.

I once went poppy-harvesting in a field. One day a lady out walking her dog saw me.

The next week all the poppies were gone, and at either entrance to the field there were scraps of police tape flapping in the wind.

protip.

>>1975
Bugger.

>>1975
Did you get much? Was it nice?

>>1974

Growing poppies on an allotment strikes me as a daft idea, your fellow allotment tenders would more than likely know what they are and if you start harvesting there is a high probability of a shit fit being thrown.
If your lucky they will just pull them all up and tell you to sling your hook, if your unlucky they will call dibble with an additional strong likely hood of you featuring in a hysterical media story.
Just grow them in tubs, or do you really not have any yard/garden/flat balcony?

Can't you just buy a trough and grow them in that?

>>2019
Straps. Belly strap or whatever it's called is quite chunky, could be annoying on long walks. And the straps need tidying, I've just been out for a spin on the motorbike and it was like having an insane spider on my back.

>>2020
Back's padding is ok. Just found another big pocket there as well.
Look's like it's pretty waterproof overall, but I'll still be taking a bag cover for it when I go out on adventures.

>>2021
So what's it like to actually use then?

>>2022
Still forming a full opinion, haven't had much use for it so far, but it's ok. Side pockets would have been useful for water bottles. even though it's 50l, it isn't actually that big when it's all strapped down, which is quite good. The big waist clip digs into the back a little when I'm cycling using it, and the back padding isn't great in today's weather, there isn't much airflow. Other than that and stuff previously mentioned, it's fine for the money. It's perfect for the general dossing and couch surfing which is my life at the moment. 6-7/10, considering price.
I might be going off on a weekend hike soon, so I'll report back after that.

>>2021

You should test it by simulating heavy rain in the shower and seeing what happens.

>>1998
You can solve this by wearing a belt. I've got a big fabric belt and it makes me look even more like a Jedi, but fuck it, it works.

I know your problem is solved, but the missus and I use the one man tent I already have no bother at all. It helps that the wife is about five foot nothing, mind.

http://www.cotswoldoutdoor.com/index.cfm/product/jack-wolfskin-gossamer/fuseaction/products.detail/code/76110007/id_colour/98

This hammock thing sounds nice and that, but what happens when you don't have two trees or whatever to hang it off?

>>2014
Mine is waterproof so it doubles as a ground sheet with a built-in mozzie net. Put the tarp over it and, once again, it makes for good (ant proof!) shelter. The only downside is that this requires a bit of planning since some sticks are required to support the net and tarp. Trees or bushes not big enough to support hanging the hammock can still be used to string up the net/tarp, of course.

A non-waterproof hammock wouldn't fare so well and would require a separate groundsheet (unless your tarp is huge enough to do double duty as roof and sheet). However, if you can foresee not finding any trees or suitable posts anywhere on a trip:
A hammock doesn't care how rough the ground is as long as you can hang it, a tent doesn't care how many trees are around as long as you find a reasonably flat bit.

>>2014
If you're touring with a bike or something, you can stake the line into the ground and have it come up and rest on the bike, like a clothes-line-holder-upper-pole (technical term), so you only need one post/tree.

>>1980
Nice looking spud bags. About to sort my garden out today, but I don't think I'll get many veggies in, just flowers this year for me.

>>1981

stock photo pinched from the net I'm afraid, I do have spud bags just like that but the potatoes are no where near that far along

>>1947
A climbing rose might work, but a normal type of rose grows a bit slowly I would think.

I would cover it in some type of peas or beans - they climb brilliantly and you will have a nice crop to boot. If you don't like the way it ends up, it will all die off at the end of the season.

>>1947
As the poster above mentioned, roses tend to grow relatively slowly so they aren't the quickest but the end result is spectacular. It will require training around twice a year or so, though, since they have a habit of bushing out. If you left it for a few years for whatever reason, you'd likely return to a vaguely pergola shaped rose thicket.

Also be sure that your construction is very sturdy if you go for roses as the finished plant will be quite heavy, much heavier than grapes. Peas and beans are best if you want quick results and apart from giving you a crop to harvest, their flowers are quite charming to boot. The only downside is that you have to clear their straw out of your structure at the end of the year. They, too, require some training though as they send out seeking tendrils looking for other things to grab on to, but they adjust and grab on to whatever you wind them around very quickly.

Old man's beard? It's not the very most beautiful, but it'll grow like very little else.

Plant some actual bamboo as well, it will look nice with the pergola, grows fast and is the final boss of survival plants, almost worthy of an IT'Z thread.

Grave vines. They add a beautiful shade alongside the advantage of having tonnes of grapes at your disposal after 5-10 years

>>1940 I've been to this.

>>1941
Would you mind telling us more?

>>1942 It was basically a load of English teachers getting pissed and rolling around in the mud. Koreans often don't know about it. It was a local festival that got taken over by the 18-30 crowd. I just spent most of my time swimming.

>>1940

>If so, plan it for July. That’s when the otherwise sleepy seaside town of Boryeong explodes to life in a squelching, face-caked orgy of oozing grey mud and partial nudity.

>a load of English teachers getting pissed and rolling around in the mud

Sounds like I should plan for anything but July. That sounds embarrassing. I'm happy the Koreans don't know about it.

Christ, I hate that picture.

>>1937

There's a very large swamp preserve about 100 miles from me, where my grandfather used to have a house. It's isolated and nearly unpopulated, and looks about the same as it did a thousand years ago. There are animals and things that you can't see anywhere else. With the proper skills you can 'live off the land' and basically do anything you want.

Sage for foreign haram-ness

>>1930

I'll put you in a bucket, m8.

>>1931
whoosh

>>1914
Oh, but this is not just a hyacinth.

This is a specially grown, ecologically watered, hand-plucked British white hyacinth.

Simon and M&S in my /eco? Best day of my life!

Actually it's been a while since we had a post pics of our garden/compost heap thread.

>>1930
Lady of the house speaking?

>>1920

This is lovely. It gets my vote.

Nepal ballot posted.

>>1920

Vote posted. Make sure to get the kids involved like it says there. It's important (secure our future!).

Only one man can save us - sage for not really adding much other than a borrowed touch of humour

Wind turbines are fashionable. They spring up to subsidise the swimming pools and the mansions of the rich, while the rest of the little villagers have to look on in disgust.

Community wind would be acceptable. As it is, the incentives are piled on to one individual who pollutes the land with these ridiculous ego projects. They wreck lives, ruin businesses (especially in the tourism industry) and serve nobody but the manufacturer, agent, and owner.

If the revivied abiotic oil theory works out then we could end up with a renewable resource with vast quantitites. The soviets seem to have been on to something.

>>1918

Yeah sorry, I meant Fusion not Fission.

>>1924
One day, lad. One day.

The Art of Staying Alive in the Atomic Age (Part 3)

The tactical preparations for survival after the debacle fall mainly into three groups. First is the overhaul of your own bodily assets, which includes everything from joining the YMCA, to get rid of that paunch and increase your wind and endurance, to such things as getting typhoid and cholera shots, having that appendix out, and keeping your teeth in the best shape possible. If you wear glasses, you will need several pairs against the day when there will be no opticians in practice. Second is the acquisition of various materials and tools which you will be unable to make or grow in a sudden, synthetic stone age- items such as a pickax or a burning glass, for example, will be wdrth considerably more than two college degrees or a diamond bracelet. Third is training in various fundamental pioneer skills, not only how to snare and cook rabbits, but such things as where and when to plant potatoes, how to tell edible fungi from deadly toadstools without trying them on Junior, and how to walk silently. All these things are necessary, but more important, much more important, is the acquiring of a survival point of view, the spiritual orientation which will enable you to face hardship, danger, cold, and hunger without losing your zest and courage and sense of humor. If you think it is going to be too hard to be worthwhile, if you can't face the prospect of coming back to the ruins of your cabin, burned down by drunken looters, other than with the quiet determination to build another, then don't bother to start. Move to a target area and wait for the end. It does not take any special courage or skill to accept the death that moves like lightning. You won't even have ttie long walk the steers have to make to get from the stockyard pens to the slaughter-house.

But if your ancestors still move in your bones, you will know that it is worthwhile, just as they did. "The cowards never started and the weaklings died on the way." That was the spirit that crossed the plains, and such was the spirit of every emigrant who left Europe. There is good blood in your veins, compadre!

It is not possible to tell exactly what to do to prepare yourself best to survive, even if this were a book instead of a short article, for the details must depend on the nature of the countryside you must rely on, your opportunities for planning and preparing, the numbers, ages and sex of your dependents if any, your present skills, talents, and physical condition, and whether or not you are at present dispersed from target areas or must plan for such dispersal. But the principles under which you can make your plans and the easiest means by which to determine them can be indicated.

Start out by borrowing your son's copy of the Boy Scout Manual. It is a practical book of the sort of lore you will need. If you can't borrow it because he is not a member of the Scouts, send him down at once and make him join up. Then make him study. Get him busy on those merit badges-woodcraft, cooking, archery, carpentry. Somebody is going to have to make that fire without matches, if that rabbit is ever to be cooked and eaten. See to it that he learns how, from experts. Then make him teach you.

Can you fell a tree? Can you trim a stone? Do you know where to dig a cesspool? Where and how to dig a well? Can you pull a tooth? Can you shoot a rifle accurately and economically? Can you spot tularemia (we are back to that ubiquitous rabbit again!) in cleaning a rabbit? Do you know the rudiments of farming? Given simple tools, could you build a log, or adobe, or rammed-earth, or native-stone cabin from materials at hand and have it be weather-tight, varmint-proof, and reasonably comfortable?

You can't learn all the basic manual trades in your spare time in a limited number of years but you can acquire a jackleg but adequate knowledge of the more important ones, in the time we have left.

But how much time have we?

The Art of Staying Alive in the Atomic Age (Part 4)

All we can do is estimate. How long will it be before other nations have the atomic bomb? Nobody knows- one estimate from the men who made it was "two to five years." Dr. Vannevar Bush spoke of "five to fifteen years" while another expert, equally distinguished, mentioned "five or ten years." Major General Leslie Groves, the atom general, thinks it will be a long time.

Let us settle on five years as a reasonable minimum working time. Of course, even if another nation, unfriendly to us, solved the production problems of atomic weapons in that length of time, there still might not be a war for a number of years, nor would there necessarily ever be one. However, since we don't know what world conditions will be like in five years, let's play it safe; let's try to be ready for it by 1950.

Four or five years is none too long to turn a specialized, soft, city dweller into a generalized, hardened pioneer. However, it is likely that you will find that you are enjoying it. It will be an interesting business and there is a deep satisfaction in learning how to do things with your own hands.

First get that Scout Manual. Look over that list of merit badges. Try to figure out what skills you are likely to need, what ones you now have, and what ones you need to study up on. The Manual will lead you in time to other books. Ernest Thompson Seton's Two Little Savages is full of ideas and suggestions.

Presently you will find that there are handbooks of various trades you have not time to master; books which contain information you could look up in an emergency if you have had the forethought to buy the book and hide it away in your out-of-tpwn base. There are books which show how to build fireplaces, giving the exact dimensions of reflector, throat, ledge, and flue. You may not remember such details; being able to look them up may save you from a winter in a smoke-filled cabin. If there is any greater domestic curse than a smoking fireplace, I can't recall it, unless it be the common cold.

There are little handbooks which show, in colored pictures, the edible mushrooms and their inedible cousins. It is possible to live quite well on practically nothing but fungi, with comparatively little work; they exist in such abundance and variety.

You will need a medical reference book, selected with the advice of a wise and imaginative medical man. Tell him why you want it. Besides that, the best first-aid and nursing instrvction you can get will not be too much. Before you are through with this subject you will find yourself selecting drugs, equipment, and supplies to be stored against the darkness, in your base as well as a lesser supply to go into the survival kit you keep in your automobile.

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The Art of Staying Alive in the Atomic Age (Part 5)

That brings us to another subject and the most interesting of all. We have not talked much about the enemy, have we? And yet he was there, from the start. It was his atom bombs which reduced you to living off the country and performing your own amputations and accouchements. If you have laid your plans carefully, you won't see much of him for quite a while; this is a very, very big country. Where you are hidden out there never were very many people~at any time; the chances of occupation forces combing all of the valleys, canyons, and hills of our back country in less than several years is negligible. It is entirely conceivable that an enemy could conquer or destroy our country, as a state, in twenty minutes, with atom bomb and rocket. Yet, when his occupation forces move in, they will be almost lost in this great continent. He may not find you for years.

There is your chance. It has been proved time and again, by the Fighting French, the recalcitrant Irish, the deathless Poles, yes and by our own Apache and Yaqui Indians, that you cannot conquer a free man; you can only kill him. After the immediate problems of the belly, comes the Underground!

You'll need your rifle. You will need knives. You will need dynamite and fuses. You will need to know how to turn them into grenades. You must learn how to harry the enemy in the dark, how to turn his conquest into a mockery, too expensive to exploit. Oh, it can be done, it can be done! Once he occupies, his temporary advantage of the surprise attack with the atom bomb is over, for once his troops are scattered among you, he cannot use the atom bomb. [But read Spirit of Dorsai for another viewpoint.]

Then is your day. Then is the time for the neighborhood cell, the mountain hideout, the blow in the night. Yes, and then is the time for the martyr to freedom, the men and women who die painfully, with sealed lips.

Can we then win our freedom back? There is no way of telling. History has some strange quirks. It was a conflict between England and France that gave us our freedom in the first place. A quarrel in enemy high places, a young hopeful feeling his oats and anxious to displace the original dictator, might give us unexpected opportunity, opportunity we could exploit if we were ready.

There are ways to study for that day, too. There are books, many of them, which you may read to learn how other people have done it. One such book is Tom Wintringham's New Ways of War. It is almost a blueprint of what to do to make an invader wish he had stayed at home. It is available in a 25 cent PenguinInfantry Journal edition. You can study up and become quite deadly, even though 4-F, or fifty.

If you plan for it, you can survive. If you study and plan and are ready to organize when the time comes, you can hope not only to survive but to play a part in winning back lost freedoms. General George Washington once quoted Scripture to describe what we were fighting for then-a time when "everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and none shall make him afraid!"

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>>1873

>However, since we don't know what world conditions will be like in five years, let's play it safe; let's try to be ready for it by 1950.

Well, I bet he felt foolish.

>>1894

>there still might not be a war for a number of years, nor would there necessarily ever be one

Selective quoting can be fun, but is rather naughty. Now it sounds very different with that as part of the context.

>Well, I bet he felt foolish.

I very much doubt it. I had a cast iron certainty that someone would zoom in on that one part and likely be unfair and take it out of context. The Korean war or any of the other hot spots thankfully didn't escalate, but there were many close calls during the long Cold War period and its hotter proxy wars.

I doubt he felt anything but relief and happy that he had more time to enjoy and use. Nothing went against his philosophy and he stated himself that it wasn't a certainty how far things would go. Nothing at all to feel foolish about. This is a million miles away from the preachers who give an absolute date of a few years down the road for god to do something that their own bible says won't happen and then lie about it afterwards when nothing happens.

A lot of what he is saying applies very well to survival in general or building and rebuilding societies and defending it. It's a good overview of the subjects.

One part I thought was interesting was this:

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