Archive for the 'Preparedness' Category

How can engineering skills help in emergency preparedness?

David April 14th, 2008

I was inspired by a presentation of a small alcohol stove built using two paint cans and fueled with denatured alcohol at a recent preparedness fair at church.   A few days later I decided to try to build it from memory with my own "custom air vents" to make sure that the fire would get enough oxygen.  I placed this on top of my kitchen stove and lit it to see how long it would take to boil a small pot of water.  It was working even better than I had supposed, but then it really started going!  I ended up with two foot high flames licking the bottom of our stove vent hood!  My wife rushed to get the fire extinguisher to save her kitchen cabinets, but I held her back for a moment because I thought that I could still get the flames under control.  I used kitchen tongs to put the lid of the paint can back on the smaller can to limit how much air the fire could get.  Luckily the flames died down quickly enough for me to carry the whole ensemble out the back door to the patio. I should probably not mention that last year I was a boy scout leader, teaching 11 year old boys about scouting basics including fire safety.  Probably not the best example, right?  Rather it was more like the bad example of young scouts playing with fire when the scout leaders aren’t looking! 

Since I want to stay on my wife’s good side and to not burn up our kitchen, I have done some more research on the subject:

I found the Base Camp Trail Stove, showing exactly how I should have built the paint can stove (above), including a warning to not try to light this stove in the house.  Too bad that I didn’t read that earlier!

I found several other small stoves that I’m anxious to try out, built from two aluminum cans.  The first, Penny Alcohol Backpacking Stove, has gone through a series of engineering refinements for the optimal stove design, fuel type, and boil time, each of which is well documented with graphs for comparisons.  The flames for this small stove only go a few inches high, a much more reasonable height than the two foot flames I had with my own version, and light enough to carry in a backpack.  There are a lot of variations on the penny stove, one of which by LaMar Kirby includes a better stand than the original.  (Young children will be less likely to get impaled by the stand supports if they get too close.)  Here is yet another variation on the penny stove, with step by step instructions (including a short video).

This alcohol stove project is just one small way in which a good engineer can use their professional skills in emergency preparedness.  If you are looking for something more,  I would strongly recommend that you look at getting certified as a HAM radio operator (yes, they still use those, and no, you don’t have to know Morse code any more). Having a HAM radio is an excellent tool for preparedness, especially if you get involved in CERT (Community Emergency Response Team).  Receiving CERT certification can be done by anyone with a willingness to sit through the training classes and to perform the exercises as part of the class.  I have personally passed both certifications and I wouldn’t consider myself a hard-core preparedness person.

Let me know in the comments if you have come across any other interesting technology helps for emergency preparation or food storage (like this food storage calculator, even if the recommendations are a bit dated). 

Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket

David April 14th, 2008

Back in March, I had commented briefly about the rising costs of wheat and other commodities.  From CNN this afternoon (April 14, 2008), it looks like that trend isn’t getting better any time soon.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said the surging costs could mean "seven lost years" in the fight against worldwide poverty…

"In just two months," Zoellick said in his speech, "rice prices have skyrocketed to near historical levels, rising by around 75 percent globally and more in some markets, with more likely to come. In Bangladesh, a 2-kilogram bag of rice … now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family."

The price of wheat has jumped 120 percent in the past year, he said — meaning that the price of a loaf of bread has more than doubled in places where the poor spend as much as 75 percent of their income on food. 

As an LDS Church member, I have been encouraged to prepare for these types of crises.  I have been doing what I believe is most important for my family, but there is so much more that seems to be left undone.  It is sad to see how this can affect the poor of the world so directly.  There are a whole host of things that we can do to alleviate the pain and suffering of those less fortunate as ourselves.

I have noted a number of attempts that people have made to help alleviate problems such as these.  Some of the most effective I have seen have revolved around the LDS Church Welfare programs to distribute food to those needing it immediately after disasters and educating others on how to be more self reliant (such as digging wells and burying water lines to villages in Africa). 

A few years ago, my wife and I started using the Square Foot Gardening program for ourselves and have been impressed with how well it works for our own needs.  SFG has formed a non-profit foundation to educate the poor around the world to help them provide food for their own families.  They continue to look for volunteers willing to help educate the poor in how to raise their own produce.

Do you remember the old saying “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” ? We believe that the same can be accomplished by teaching a person to garden in a simple easy way that they can do, like the Square Foot Gardening method.

Even SFG techniques are the tip of the iceberg in permaculture (sustainable agriculture) options.  Since the 1970s, researchers have been investigating how we can design systems which replenish each other.  I did my own research a few years ago by building a small "chicken tractor" (movable chicken coop), multiple compost bins (for mulch and manure), and incorporating Native American gardening techniques such as "Three Sisters." It was a neat experience and one that I would be happy to share with others.

There is a whole host of common sense technologies and techniques that have been lost in the last few generations where we as a people haven’t needed to learn how to produce our own food in sustainable ways.  But by harnessing the knowledge of experts and sharing that information over the internet, we can recapture some of this knowledge and share it with those that need it the most.  (Too bad the 90% of the world that can’t afford a computer with internet access can’t directly learn from this information.)