Comments

Episode-2063- Expert Council Q&A for 8-11-17 — 43 Comments

  1. Jack’s opening comments were precisely what I thought when I read Steven’s fearmongering email “NYC and DC will be nuked.” Is he in financial trouble or something? He is going full bore Alex Jones on us.

    The thing I love about the survival podcast community is it pulls me out of that retarded bullshit. It’s survivalism mixed with rational thought… Unlike Stevens email.

    • I have talked to him about it, his assertion is “sooner or later” could be a 100 years, could be 100 days, but sooner or later it is going to happen. He really believes this. I think he is wrong about it but yea he believes it, it isn’t a marketing ploy.

      Keep in mind what he is saying and it is lot more reasonable. His contention is with all these third world shit hole nations working on nukes, sooner or later one of them will sell it to an ISIS type and they will successfully in some way deploy it on US soil.

      Personally I am more worried about if the fall workshop will get rained out, but I do understand what he is trying to say.

    • I gotta take Steven’s defense here. He has been a HUGE influence on me, so much I can’t even begin to describe. In fact, it was Steven’s website where I was introduced to TSP to begin with.

      I can see how he could rub some wrong, I suppose, but I personally love it. He’s just like Jack, he states what’s on his mind in an “I don’t give a shit” opinion and let’s the chips fall where they may.

      In fact, I chuckle now at the first time Jack lit me up in comments. I was offended to the point where I told myself I’d never listen again. Then I realized, given all I’ve learned from Jack, why the hell would I penalize MYSELF for my being so thin skinned. Jack pissed me off so I’m going to stop learning from him??? That doesn’t make any sense!

      Steve Harris is the same way. He’s pissed me off a couple times too. But it’s his style. And if nothing else, I know he is sincere and means well AND has lots and lots of knowledge in that noggin of his that I can learn from.

    • Ron, everything Jack said was true. He hit the nail on the head. Jack knows me so well. I’m am very much a student of history and being a student of history I’m also a student of the future. I have dealt a lot with homeland security issues on a professional level and I understand technology and the transfer of information, knowledge and ability. You HARDLY EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER did I say EVER hear me do a ‘fear monger’ email.

      So when I do, I suggest you think about what I’m saying. I’m not saying it lightly. Like Jack said, I really believe that NYC and DC will get nuked. It might take 100 days to 100 years, but it will happen IMHO. You’ve never heard me do a fear monger on TSP, and I don’t make an email like that lightly. No.. I’m not desperate for money.

      I’m just trying to help my customers and it look like it back fired on me. However the truth is there is a lot going on with North Korea that the idiot media is NOT telling you. That is why I TOLD you…but since you did not hear it in the media, you doubted me. I’m not blaming you.

      Its good that you are saying what you are saying. What you are saying is making me be more articulate and thus making you think twice about what I’m saying. Thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate it. Thank you – Steve p.s. A biological biowar agent is by far much much worse than even the largest nuclear device. Keep in mind, there have been over 2500+ nuclear detonations above and below the ground in the world. This can be verified on wikipedia.

    • The impression I get here in central Asia from the news and the few conversations I’ve had about the events and escalation in the Korean peninsula is one of serious concern, but it’s not even close to the barely restrained panic & outrage that I’m seeing in U.S. media and government statements. Despite the fact we’re far closer to the area of concern (and potential fallout) than any US state or territory.

      IMO there is a small risk in the near-term of some miscalculation or accident that kicks off a shooting war, but I think it’s very small since NK has little incentive to start anything now and the U.S. doesn’t have enough of the right assets in place (at least currently) for an optimal preemptive strike or invasion. It’s mostly two blustering fools talking tough shit for public consumption at this point. Well, that and finding another thing for us all to be scared about as well as lining up more juicy defense contracts. Now I DO think this is one of several telling signs showing the willingness if not eagerness of various nations and powers to go to war, and that’s what worries me more. So mid to long term, I do share some of Steven’s concerns about an escalating series of conflicts throughout the world, though I’m less willing to speculate on specific targets or events. But for right now, the situation in NK is something I’m keeping aware of but that’s about the extent of it.

  2. Hello Jack,

    I thank you for all that you do, and you have an error in your link,

    Battery bank considerations for a van – Charles Sanville – Detailed Instructions
    goes to Crypto Skim not Charles information.

    Keep up the Great content, you R O C K!

  3. Re homeschooling in science. This from a PhD in organic chem (I have decades of college teaching experience plus some at HS and grad school): the key is observation.

    Get out in nature and observe. The little Golden Guides to plants, animals, birds, trees, etc., are still cheap and still terrific. Observe how things work: use tools. Make simple machines. Cook. Few students entering college have been taught to observe or given a chance to develop manual dexterity.

    So if your child becomes interested in science more deeply, she or he will be leagues ahead of standard curricula. If not, he or she will have a lifetime enjoyment of nature and skills. Win – win. (PS: I think the mania for “STEM” is killing science, but I’ll stop before I rant.)

    • Linda, I have four kids and would love to hear your rant about STEM killing science. Feel free to rant away. I bet I’m not the only person who’d like to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

    • The person asked about STEM and I didn’t want to slam it 🙁 I graduated second in my class with more scholarships then I could spend on college but was afraid of science. Saying yes to all the questions/experiments my kids had about how things work has given me such a passion for science and it frustrates me that they want to take something so amazing and make a tiny little check list.

      We learn best by doing, then observing with reading pretty far down the list!

      We love the field guide books and have tons. Now with google at our fingertips we can learn more about every tiny little interesting flower, animal or plant. Even if we can’t find the exact flower we can get close and just the process of narrowing that down is interesting and gives greater understanding.

      Linda forget to add – blow things up! Kids really love that 🙂 AND I’d love to hear your rant about STEM too! Bring it – if you’re on the survival podcast facebook page can you share there to get some important discussion going?

      • I am a HUGE HUGE HUGE proponent of starting to teach kids (at least middle school and higher) chemistry by teaching them the chemistry of pyrotechnics (fire works). You have to learn the elements and the compounds you are dealing with. You have to learn their weights, you have to be able to balance an equation, you have to be able to figure out how many grams of X get mixed with Y and then what does Z do when its added. The starting place is the chemistry of black powder, over 2000 years old. Teach them about it, have them make it in the lab (no… its no more dangerous than any other thing in chem lab) and then they get to go outside and light it off.

        What does it to in the open. What does it do when you mix it better, what happens when you mill it. What happens to it when it gets wet, what happens when its confined. What are the byproducts of its reaction and what did those byproducts do to weapons in the civil war and the revolutionary war. We fought and won our country with black powder, lead, steel and wood, and flint, and then the chemistry of the percussion cap. That’s a whole chapter right there.

        When you get into pyrotechnics then you get into using black powder (BP) as a lifting charge to shoot the shell into the air, then the chemistry and speed of the fuse to ignite the shell and then BP as the bursting charge, and then all of the ‘stars’ that are in the shell. What chemistry are they. How do you make blue, red, green, yellow.

        How do you make an orange trail behind it as it flies up etc…. you get into the physics of how high it goes etc… its just endless endless fun science for the learning and teaching. One of the best best best places to get the books and the chemicals for this is going out of business. Skylighter.com They were the giant in the field. Of course, in a modern public school system there is no way in hell they’ll teach the chemistry of pyrotechnics. Its too ‘dangerous’. Hell, most of things we did in chem lab in the 80’s would never be taught today ‘too dangerous’.

        Know what is dangerous? Dumb kids. They’d rather feed then the BS of global warming and make them feel doom and guilty then make them feel happy and fun and enjoy what they are learning. In case you did not know, BP is 75% Potassium Nitrate (salt peter), 15% Charcoal (very fine) and 10% sulfur….. but..that is only the beginning. How you mix it, how you treat it and grate it into different powders (F, FF, FFF, FFFF) is a whole encyclopedia of chemistry.

    • I’d like to hear more too about how people like you two feel about STEM as well.

      All we hear is STEM STEM STEM I mean it is to the level of Marsha Marsha Marsha isn’t it.

      Are you saying that they are making some sort of sandwich out of this? Shoving say too much engineering an math into say tech or science where people who would pursue science or tech are turned off by it?

      I mean I have been out of the state’s mental control since about 93, so I don’t really know what the hell STEM really is, I always just thought it stood for science, technology, engineering and math.

      So that any pursuit of one of them was simply a STEM thing?

    • You’ve mentioned organic chemistry before Steve. So I actually bought the Organic Chemistry for Dummies book to read. COmes with a work book and everything. It’s not for light reading though. My oldest daughter studied organic chmeistry last yr in high school and has been my tutor in some degree. Nothing like family bonding discussing organic chemistry!

    • I can just see it. She’ll be called Libby her entire life. Then sometime when she’s 16 or dating and a boy or a teacher will ask her if she’s called libby because her parents were Liberal and she’ll go, “NO!!! Libby is short for Liberty !! I’m named after the fundamental God given human right.!”

      • Knowing her father and mother – you’ve got that right Steve. We’ve raised our kids to be lovers of liberty and they are passing it on to the next generation!

  4. I am getting error 500 when trying to play on my android and this when on my laptop.

    Internal Server Error

    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

    Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@survivalpodcast.net and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

    More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

    Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    Apache/2.2.32 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.32 OpenSSL/1.0.1e-fips mod_bwlimited/1.4 Server at http://www.survivalpodcast.net Port 80

  5. Oh, it’s a meeting of the minds for sure! I entered college (confession: fall of ’69) intending to major in biology. In the first chem lab (required for bio) the professor taught us the use of the chemical balance by having us make black powder. I was hooked: knowledge is power! I went into the lab in off hours to carry out more experiments. When it was discovered, I was just encouraged to major in chem.

    I don’t think contemporary college chem labs even have gas for Bunsen burners. Agree with Steven: what’s dangerous is people who have no idea of safety because they have never worked with anything dangerous.

    Sue, I knew you were responding to someone asking about STEM. You were right to say name the fields of study and relate them to everyday experiences: demystify.

    Here’s my “STEM” rant (note sneer quotes), or part of it. It’s killing science because it’s killing wonder. Go in any modern “science museum” (so called) and you will find a bunch of what I call “punch and run” exhibits: kid punches button, something happens, but kid has already run on to the next thing. Very little of it is about science or engineering or math; it’s all about the narrow band of technology that is required in…wait for it…THE WORKFORCE. How I hate that word! It makes human beings into machine parts, or (even more offensively) cannon fodder in the wars of economic growth. And of course that means that STEM is made into something elevated and specialized that requires school systems to transmit…by a checklist, of course, as Sue noted.

    The scientists I’ve known, in my now antiquated generation, talked (and sometimes still do) about the fun of knowing and discovering things. That same professor who had us make black powder used to say that science is asking nature a question, and that it’s wise to design your research project so that however it turns out the answer is interesting and perhaps even useful. This describes an open-ended encounter with some aspect of nature. “STEM education,” in contrast, seems geared to meeting “learning goals” that have to do with manipulating nature, in the service of (of course) generating a “workforce.” I’ll stop there. 🙂

    • So basically things are even worse they I say then are? Yay, the joy of being right strikes again!

      Things really have changed and I say this as a guy in his 40s.

      In 10th grade I had a basic chemistry class, first day we had a lab, clearly designed to get us excited.

      It involved a beaker, a lump of zinc, hydrochloric acid, balloons, matches, a yard stick and tape. Yes we made and ignited our own little “hydrogen bombs”.

      I am sure you know this drill but for onlookers, you put the zinc in a beaker, you pour HCI over it and it off gasses H, you put the balloon over the beaker, then it inflates, you tie it with a string and it floats like a helium balloon but well hydrogen is a bit more ignitable than helium.

      Tape a match to the end of a yard stick and light it, hold at arms length and you get a nice little fire ball!

      We were hooked!

      Not going to say a friend and I didn’t use some of this new found knowledge for mischief involving model rocket engine igniters but no one ever lost and eye or a finger so it was all good.

      I bet they don’t even dissect frogs in high school bio any more!

      So schools no longer do shit for real science, no wood or metal shop, no home economics (at least you learn to cook), etc. why the hell do we even have them is my question?

      • The one year we had a kid go to government school, rural ag highschool 9th grade, his ag class of 18 weeks consisted of 12 weeks of safety and 6 weeks to put together a pre threaded pvc sprinkler stand. 6 weeks 45 minutes a day. Even in the country with two trips to HomeDepot because you missed a piece that’s 2 hours not 3 3/4 hours per week x 6 weeks = 22 and 1/2 hours because of classroom management 🙁

      • From what I know mostly yes!

        My son is 28 he had wood shop in 7th grade in rural PA but when he went to high school in Arlington Texas there were no shop classes, there were VoTech classes that included things like this, but you had to be in the VoTech curriculum to take them, you could nto just take shop as an elective.

        The two young men who have worked as farm hands for me (one 19 the other 18) have told me that they had NO SHOP OPTIONS at all other than perhaps some sort of votech thing.

        If you don’t know VoTech is like where you take electronics repair, auto body, computer programming, etc in high school. The issue is most of these programs ignore sufficient math and foreign language to be a viable path for college. It is a full decision to pursue sort of a mini technical degree in high school you have to make by the end of 9th grade. When I was in high school you simply had to pass your core course in 9th to get in, and your math core had to be Algebra 1.

        After that you only took really easy math, science, English, etc courses for half the year and spent the full other half in tech. It isn’t bad but it is very limiting and the academic side, wow, talk about show up and you will pass, very much so! In my school (pre computer programs) it was considered for the “dumb kids”. And most could do a few things when they got out but were hardly prepared to get a job, besides how many auto body specialists does a town of 20,000 people need?

        Taking basic electives out of school for industrial arts is so damn sad to me. I took Wood Shop in both 9th and 10th grade, that was all you could do But I had a lot of open time in my schedule, by 11th grade, so I became a shop apprentice.

        This put me in shop 2 periods a day most of my junior and senior year. I helped the other kids with their projects and I was able to build anything I wanted as long as I paid for the materials. I built an amazing hanging gun cabinet, I had about 150 in materials in it, when I took it home my uncle’s friend offered me 600 for it on the spot, of course I SOLD IT FAST.

        I built and sold 4 more over the next year and a half.

        Mr. Fox was a great teacher not just about wood but about life, my famous response to “but if” being “if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle” came from Mr. Fox. He was in a way a father figure to me, one I really needed at the time.

        I even had a kid really trying to pick a fight with me one time, really trying. Fox comes over and says hey, make sure there are not machines running but next time, put him into the fucking wall, go to town on his gut and ribs, long as you don’t hit him in the face I have you back with the dean. NO SHIT!

        Anyway the kid ended up on his back in a pile of scrap wood, I kept my part (not in the face) but he ended up with a judo hip throw of quite a few feet and into the scrap bin. No trip at all to the dean, no more issues from that kid.

        Some of my most valuable skills with wood and with people came from that class and I worry our kids don’t have this.

        Same thing in gym, two boys were gonna fight, coach let it go, one got the upper hand, he’d beak it up, and say, “so you want to shake hands, say it is out of your system and move on, or do you guys want to tell me it isn’t over and go to see the dean”. No one ever went to the dean, and it was always over.

        Our new generation of kids that can’t do shit and can’t deal with shit is our own making.

      • My kids school has a wood shop in middle school but the teacher is currently putting off his retirement because his is the last middle school / Junior high wood shop left in the state of Texas and the school has already decided not to replace him when he retires.

    • Thank you Linda! The more you convince people that everything is specialized the more dependent they become 🙁

      STEM goes along with Critical Thinking in the education world.

      There are only 4 answers – really?

      Wait there’s only 1 right answer out of 4 that we’ve given you. Really?

      The beauty of science is that hypothesis, theory and law are only those things until we get more information. No one would call Einstein a moron for being “wrong” about the theory of relativity.

      When you sit kids at a desk inside a box and tell them there is only one right answer = don’t worry the government will take care of you even if you can’t get the right answer.

      Science = get shit done, try things out – discover Although I have to say I did burn my eyebrows off and a pony tail which led to . . .
      Critical thinking = after you got shit done and screwed up you get to do it differently the next time and if you want to get better at critical thinking keep improving on what you’re doing.

      We love this TSP community for its critical thinking skills 🙂

  6. Unboxing!

    A HUGE help for the internet-Amazon age. Sometimes when shopping online I don’t even have an option to read the sides and back of the box of the product I want, unboxing videos help with that.

    The actual weight and size ofthe item I want is described and sometimes size comparisons are done during unboxing.

    I can see the surprises, let downs, and expectations of a customer first describing his experience “oh! I thought this texture was going to be smooth but it’s actually quite rough”.

    But Jack, I agree. If all the video does is a BASIC unbox, then yeah, a waste of my time.

    Like you always say, “Does it create any value?” Some unboxings bring great value, some don’t.

    My next unboxing video hopefully won’t be a waste of anybody’s time! Hahahah

  7. I tried to download Episode 1190 Holy Crap… part 1. It is hanging up at 0.2/15.3 MB. All the other links on that page and part 2 of Holy Crap… downloaded quickly and without a hitch.
    I have a friend I think is ready to hear this and am trying to give him the package of podcasts. I’ve already given him the podcast link but realized he wouldn’t get the message he needs with your resent episodes. Not that there is anything wrong, it’s just too far forward in the process.
    Thank you for all you do, God bless you.

  8. Leg Cramps! I have been experiencing leg cramps because of dehydration, and mineral deficiencies. The usual suspects are Magnesium, Potassium, and Calcium. In my case it turned out to be Sodium. Who knew? Then I had other symptoms nausea, weakness, low energy, very painful stomach with vomiting, sometimes a burning headache, and even confusion that I thought was something else, turns out they completed the picture of sodium deficiency making dehydration easier to occur. It was like a feedback loop. I also work in a dining facility, the steam and humidity during feeding and after meal cleanup was always 85 to 100 percent with no moving air.

  9. I get pretty bad leg cramps once in awhile, usually from dehydration. What works, 100% of the time for instant relief is to limp on over to the liquor cabinet and take a swig of tonic water. The quinine (sp) in it is what does the trick. Of course, preventing them is key, but those that know the pain involved might want to keep a bottle of tonic water around just in case.

    • Ha when I read the first part I was like, I am going to have to say no that isn’t the solution, but hey good tip.

  10. Never heard this Rush song. Caress of Steel was one of the first LPs I ever had but I never was into Rush too much other than that.

    However, I do know that Neal Peart is a beast.

  11. To Jack’s question, “So things are even worse than I’ve said they are?” (Might not be exactly the quote, but close) the answer is “yes.” This is how local school systems justify bloated budgets with diminishing educational returns: “muh STEM.”

  12. Re: unboxing videos –
    They can be extremely helpful. Typically if you watch an unboxing video it is for something that you have almost no experience with. Let’s say you are wanting to buy (or just bought and now don’t know how to setup) a Dillon 550B reloading press. If you are new to reloading or even just new to progressive presses then you can watch multiple videos of other people putting one together.

    Sure, maybe they don’t know what they are doing but if you are watching the video then you probably don’t either.

    On Albo Pepper’s channel he has an unboxing of fruit trees. Let’s say you’ve never planted a fruit tree before, or you did and the tree didn’t survive. This type of video will let you know what to expect when your package arrives and hopefully give you tips on how not to screw things up.

    Companies are getting away from quality manuals because the info can be found online, or they feel a manual isn’t needed. With YouTube unboxing vids you can learn even faster than tracking down and reading the manual.

    Just my $.03 (I always try to give a little extra).

  13. Leg cramps?
    Get tested for heliobacter pylorii. This bug is the cause of a lot of stomach ulcers. A third of the population has it but not everyone has ulcers, BUT, it stops your body absorbing magnesium. Not many Drs know this.
    I was taking lots of magnesium for my cramps but as time wore on it had less and less effect. I went to the right doctor, one who was BOTH a natrupath AND a MD and he presribed me a test. After treatment I’m better.

  14. When I hear Jack’s comment about Neil Pert, I couldn’t help but think of Krieger from Archer.

    “How dare you fail to recognize my greatest accomplishment to date!”
    “You finally nailed YYZ?”
    “It’s Zed and . . . no. Neil Peart stands alone.”

    https://youtu.be/sBJO3Zj-Sv0

  15. Don’t put the battery bank on the top of a van! Too much weight up there will change the center of gravity on the van. Sloppier handling a greater tendency for rollover.