Coming Together by Being Apart

...a crisis our moral instinct tells us to come together. Staying apart feels selfish. It’s counter-intuitive that the best expression of community right now is a lack of community. To keep everyone safe we must self-isolate. We must also convince our friends and relatives who are still in denial that they also must stay at home for the good of all. One bit of solace came from listening to a podcast about the 1918 Spanish Flu. All the struggles we’re...

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Essential System #5 – First Aid Kit

...duct-taped to their forehead) Nonadherent dressings – two 4-inch by 4-inch Self-adhering roller bandages – two rolls 2-inch width by 5 yards SAM splint – one Athletic tape – one roll, 2-inch wide Triangular bandages – two 36 inch by 36 inch by 52 inch for slings (large bandanas will do) Moleskin or Molefoam – 4-inch to 6-inch square for blisters Tincture of benzoin – One 0.5 ounce bottle – to keep tape sticking and to protect skin Providine iodine...

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Essential System #7 – Repair Kit and Tools

...tool that we wear on our belts at all times but, hold the blog press here, self-sufficiency geniuses Stephen Box and Enci gifted us with a category-busting set of tools that, get this, fit within a tiny 30g (1.5 oz) Altoid tin! Believe it or not this pocket size Altoid tin contains the following items: 1 inner tube piece – a section of a bicycle tire that can be used as a tourniquet, bandage, or slingshot 1 boot lace – always handy to have a secti...

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The Sound of One Hand Snapping

...ve had to do a fair amount of carpentry around the compound – part of that self-sufficiency thing – and countersinking nails with a nail set, those pen like things you use to get the nail head below the surface of the wood, is a pain in the ass. Which is why we think that this tool, the “Noxon Two Bit Snapper” by the mysterious Spring Tools Corporation may be the handiest tool in the SurviveLA compound tool box. The Snapper model we have is double...

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Escape from LA

...l Islands National Park, tomorrow for a weekend of backpacking and general self-sufficiency. We’re going in part to experience what the landscape of Southern California would have been like had it not been fucked up by freeways, strip malls and Spearmint Rhino billboards to name just a few of the many indignities we face each day. We’re also going to Santa Rosa to experience a place which was home to the Chumash Indians who lived for 13,000 years...

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