Save the World–Poop in a Bucket

...human waste, a number of other stories on the subject came out at the same time: Wasteland: A Journey through the American cloaca in Harper’s Magazine. Journalist Frederick Kaufman traces sewage from New York’s North River Solid Waste Treatment Plant to . . . [spoiler here!] bags of soil at Home Depot. A Mother Earth News reader submitted a photo and description of a handsome sawdust privy made out of an old garden hose box. Very clever! Science D...

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Shamelessly Tooting Our Own Horn

...iveLA clan took second place in the slightly-over-the-hill division with a time of 12:09 (missing the gold by two seconds). Our reward is the ugly medal you see here, the fact that the race proceeds benefited the community programs of the YMCA, and the knowledge that should the shit hit the fan in downtown LA, we can beat the crowds to the heliport. SurviveLA was too obsessed with winning to document the journey, but the enterprising folks at Metr...

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Out of Water!

...Power on Friday and it was Monday morning before anyone showed up. By that time, mysteriously, the water began flowing again. The DWP worker checked the pressure, said it was fine, and shrugged when we asked what the problem might have been. We welcome comments from readers who want to speculate on the cause of this outage as we like to know how things work or fail around here. While we have a few gallons of water around in case of an earthquake t...

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A Close Shave Part II: The Rolls Razor

...e blade after each use. A detailed description of the operation of this unique razor can be found on this web site. In effect the Rolls Razor is a compromise between a straight razor and a safety razor. We say it’s time to bring back the Rolls Razor so we all can stop handing Gillette and Schick, who have the same business models as crack gangs any more money, and stop filling all those landfills with more plastic....

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Getting Out

...etting Out, Your Guide to Leaving America. We completely understand the sentiment of wanting to get the hell out of this proto-fascist banana republic we live in and we endorse this book for those who don’t want to hunker down and do the homestead thing. SurviveLA even has a former colleague in Chanai India who got out of the US several years ago and now has an interesting job and his own ultra low-cost homestead. Despite the allure of more exotic...

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