Emergency one-person survival stove- the best choice is alcohol, 91% of the time.

So, we have trail equipment stores, hardware stores of various types, liquor stores, drug stores, convenience stores, grocery stores, boating equipment stores and marinas as possible sources if you’re afoot on your own. That’s pretty versatile. I don’t think any other liquid fuel comes close, unless you’re willing to use automotive gasoline, which requires special stoves and a lot of ventilation and there’s still danger.

Firebirds turn out to be real. Maybe.

Honestly, I would have guessed that this is about as likely as starfish making musical fiddles out of shells to serenade each other under the water.
The gist of the article is that they claim to have confirmed something fairly common in Aboriginal lore, that some “birds of prey” in Australia take burning twigs from an active fire to another site, attempting and sometimes succeeding in spreading the fire to a new location in order to flush out rodents and other prey.

Jerry Pournelle, RIP

I remember reading once the contention that there are, at any given time in history, only about four hundred really influential people in the world, and that as such it’s really not too surprising that there are a lot of direct and indirect connections between them. Jerry Pournelle was indisputably one of those four hundred for our times.

Survival: Mini Life-Lessons: A bald spot is a helluva thing to have to deal with.

Some years back I rented a convertible for a week in Maui, the selection of vehicles at the rental place being almost entirely convertibles or Jeeps. That’s when I was forced to come to grips with one of the hard realities about growing older.

A bald spot is a helluva thing to have to deal with.

Survival – The Heels-Down Squat. You May Want This.

Put another way, how enabled, how independent and self-sufficient can you possibly be if you cannot get into a comfortable, non-reclining resting position without the aid of a wooden or steel framework that is designed and built specifically for that purpose? We are handicapping ourselves with what has become an actual medical dependence on chairs, just as though we were dependent on any other medical appliance.

Survival – The Importance of Fire

While I was being told about this, standing around in our kitchen, wearing only shorts and a t-shirt since I hadn’t gone out yet on a Saturday, I reached in a pocket, pulled out a lighter and flicked it into life. No, I don’t smoke, I just understand that fire is really that important. I could have just as easily produced a knife or a flashlight, and I have an electronic compass in my casual watch and another in my phone. That’s lounging around the house, not going anywhere. When I’m leaving the house I carry more. If I’m driving or walking more than a block or two, much more.

Survival – I Carry Too Much Stuff

When I go out the door on a typical out-and-about day, I have my wallet (with some unusual items inside but no cash), a folding knife, a lighter, spare car key, money clip with bills, a Chawley Changer pocket coin dispenser (okay, that’s a little weird, but it’s fast, convenient, and I hate having loose change sloshing around in a pocket), a full-sized multi-tool, one of may folding knives (occasionally two), a lipstick-sized flashlight around my neck on a stainless dog-tag chain .. and of course my phone. That’s not counting the stuff on my key chain, miscellaneous keys, a tiny titanium peanut lighter, the tiniest ferrocerium rod I’ve ever seen (Boy Scouts of America, smaller than a house key), a photon lighter, a P38 can opener, and the car-door opener/alarm remote control.

Survival – Is anyone really enthusiastic about the new Leatherman Signal?

All in all, this just reinforces the impression I have from pretty much all of their carabiner-tailed tools and impression that Leatherman has completely lost direction in recent years. I’ve been disappointed with every Leatherman tool I’ve seen since the Charge series, and even more disappointed with the ones I’ve actually tried (Wingman). This looks like it was designed to appeal not so much to even the casual but serious camper as to young kids and armchair survivalists, like Gerber’s BG stuff, like almost all multi-function “survival” tools, it just seems gimmicky and toylike.

Survival – Making fire without technology (or tools!) turns out to be easier than anyone thought

There’s a new, relatively easy way to make fire entirely with “primitive” (or found) materials, and it’s much, much easier than any other method I’ve seen over the decades.

Anyone who knows something about the subject of primitive fire-making will probably consider that incredibly unlikely, and possibly an outrageous statement. After hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of years of making fire with primitive materials new techniques simply don’t appear out of nowhere. Indeed, it’s very possible that this is a very, very old technique… even, just possibly, the first and oldest technique used by our ancestors to make fire at will, that it was very nearly lost in recent times, and is just now becoming known again.

Surprise, surprise… survival on Mars will require generalists and appropriate tech, not specialists and high tech.

None of these general thoughts should come as a surprise. Survival on Earth has almost always implied stepping down from whatever level of technology has failed to a level that still works. It’s one of the most fundamental principles, and a reason that the line between “survivalism” and interest in various forms of primitive technology is so blurred.