Tag Archives: earth
Z.E.R.O. (Zombie Extermination, Research and Operations) Kit by OpticsPlanet
Imagine: You half-hear a low, guttural sound from outside as you lay sleeping. You figure it’s just your stomach after too much delicious Mexican food…
but a sudden thud on the outside wall of the house shakes you from a peaceful slumber. Deep within the primal centers of your brain, you realize the dead have risen to claim our once-peaceful realm. What do you do? What do you need?
The dead have risen, and they’ve returned as something different. Those you were once closest to now hunger for your flesh, and possibly the Mexican food you had for dinner.
There is no room for error when dealing with the undead.Our Z.E.R.O. (Zombie Extermination, Research and Operations) Kit takes into account all the different aspects of surviving the looming zombie apocalypse. When the undead hordes rise from their shallow graves to wreak havoc on all decent civilization, you’ll need to both fight back (Extermination), and find a cure (Research).
Always be prepared. In the new zombie world you can be king of the hill, or the tastiest treat in town.
Life Post Zombie Apocalypse is Harsh…Survive it!
First, as in any disaster, whether it is a hurricane, blizzard, alien invasion or giant lizard attack, you need basic survival gear. Fighting back will be necessary as well, but you have to survive the elements and everyday hazards before you can mount an offensive.
Stanley First Aid treats bite wounds, scratches & more.You’re sure to get a few cuts and bruises along the way so you need good first aid. The Stanley Personal Protection Large First Aid Kit will help you stop bleeding and take care of other wounds in no time. Zombies don’t have the best eyesight, but their sense of smell is on par with a bloodhound’s. There’s no scent as irresistibly alluring as blood, so make sure you clean and dress wounds when they happen. In addition to keeping zombie hordes from tracking you, treating wounds will prevent infection.
Punching zombies is the most fun you can have, but only with BlackHawk SOLAG Gloves.Preventing scrapes is the best way to keep blood from attracting zombies, so covering exposed skin with protective gear is essential. Blackhawk S.O.L.A.G. Kevlar Gloves keep hands safe from normal cuts, and the reinforced stitching stops zombie teeth from ripping through flesh and turning a healthy human into the enemy. Best of all, the molded knuckle protectors let you put a hard jab straight down the gullet of a walking dead monster in the event you’re unarmed.
Don’t Lose Your Head, Don’t Miss Your Shot, and Don’t Get Lost.
Watch It! The 5.11 Tactical Watch helps you take the perfect shot and get moving fast.Knowing your surroundings and where you’re going is essential to survival in any setting. Make sure you’re wearing the 5.11 Tactical Field Ops Watch, which not only tells time, but also has a digital compass so you know your bearings. The integrated SureShot calculator gives you shooting solutions out to 1000ft so that you don’t need to carry one when you’re taking headshots out from 300 meters to save a loved one’s life. Zombies send panic through the hearts of even the most hardened men, so let the 5.11 Tactical Watch take the guesswork out of your long distance shots.
Thermal Vision and Night Vision will prove essential for identifying the zombie menace in darkness.In addition to knowing where you are, seeing what’s around you will definitely help you survive when a chomping, cadaverous fiend comes for a reckoning. For late night viewing, the OPMOD PVS-14 Night Vision Scope will let you peer into the darkness. When patrolling your camp in pitch blackness you have to be absolutely certain you can see everything, but at a distance it can be difficult to differentiate between an injured human and a zombie. For this we added the Thermal-Eye X-50 Thermal Imaging Camera. As we all know, rising from the grave expels most of the heat from a zombie, leaving behind only faint warmth in the lower extremities. So if you view a stumbling figure with warm feet and a cold head, you know to take the shot. Just as the 5.11 Tactical Watch lets you calculate elevation compensation for long shots, the thermal imager helps you shoot with the confidence, knowing you’re only going to re-kill the undead.
No one survives long without batteries. People are going to loot stores for all the batteries they can find when the dead rise, so stock up now with the SureFire 123A Lithium Battery Box. Ten or twenty batteries might be nice to have, but you’re not planning on living for just a few months, you’re going to live a full lifetime. The included SureFire battery box has FOUR HUNDRED batteries. They’re going to prove to be one of the most valuable forms of currency in the post-zombie world. While we only included one box in our Z.E.R.O. Kit, you might want to pick up a couple extra, plenty for yourself and plenty for trading. Just a few boxes could make you one of the richest men in the world!
Combine the outstanding charging power of the Solaris with its unique ability to distract zombies.If you do run out of batteries and need to power your kit, asolar charger can become your best friend. Zombies have many horrifying abilities, but the one thing they can’t do is blot out the sun, so when you set up the powerful Brunton SOLARIS Portable Solar Panel Battery Charger you’ll enjoy 62 watts of power, which will keep your precious electronics working long after the power grids have shut down. As a side benefit, if a zombie attacks you near the solar charger you can yell out, “Left hand on Green!” and the zombie will forget your brains and focus on completing the task given them.
The SureFire Benelli Forend Light for shotguns turns a regular shotgun into a Zombie Destroyer!While the hunger for human flesh overrides nearly all zombie impulses, certain childhood memories will temporarily replace their hunger. This is a short-lived solution though, as zombiescan’t tell right from left, and the resulting frustration will send them into a rage.
Give the Undead Nightmares by Taking the Fight to Them!
Once you’ve gathered your basic survival gear together, you need to think about how you’re going to dispatch those creeping, gnawing, nearly unkillable monsters. Your rifle, shotgun and handgun (one gun will not keep you alive long) need to be enhanced for maximum zombie-slaying effectiveness.
The Zombie Stopper strikes fear into the hearts of undead creatures.Let’s start with the bread and butter of any zombie-fighter: the shotgun. Zombies are only dangerous at close range, and they often stand idly until a delicious human comes along. If you’re clearing a house at night and a zombie steps around a corner you need to see exactly what you’re shooting at, and the SureFire Benelli M1 Super 90 Forend Weaponlight provides a bright 120 lumens of light without changing your grip or weighing down your shotgun. It uses the Lithium 123A batteries from the SureFire Battery Box, so you won’t need to worry about power. It’s both super durable and powerfully bright. This will give you plenty of light to see those lifeless eyes roll back once you’ve given your zombie attacker peace.
While you need to see if a zombie is hunting you in the blackness of night, to turn the tables and go from hunted to hunter you need the absolute best in rifle scopes and red dot sights. Enter EOTech and theirZombie Stopper Holographic Weapon Sight. This red dot sight gives you an appropriately zombie-themed reticle, and placing that biohazard design on a ghoulish skull will help steel you to always take the shot without hesitation. Even if you’re using the Zombie Stopper for hunting food it will always serve as a reminder that you must be aware of your surroundings.
Little known fact: zombies love the woods. If you’re hunting deer to feed your family keep in mind that a walking creature of the night could pop out from behind any tree or bush and make a feast of your brain.
Don’t rely on a non-zombie specific laser grip.When a large herd of zombies is converging on your position you may not have time to reload your rifle or shotgun and may need to quickly transition to your sidearm. Since speed is of the essence it’s best to have a laser grip on your Glock (the best zombie-slaying handgun). The Crimson Trace Zombie Edition Laser Gripactivates with a normal grip, so you don’t need to worry about pressing a button to turn it on. Seeing the red laser on your target ensures you’ll never miss a shot.
As a side benefit, zombies are drawn to the red light in much the same way a cat is (no surprise, as zombie infection comes from a feline-human hybrid virus). If you run out of ammo you can use this red laser grip to distract the zombies and make your escape!
Zombies fear blades like cats fear dogs, and vacuum cleaners.That brings up an important point: much like batteries, ammunition will be scarce once the zombies cause the fall of civilized society. There are a few ways to deal with this. First,knives are both an outstanding survival tool and stalwart zombie killer. Browning understands this very well, which is why they developed a Zombie Apocalypse Knife.
The seven inch blade is for precision zombie hunters who sever brain stems like ninja assassins. The drop point blade is extra strong and will hold up to all the rigors of a zombie-plagued world.
While you’ll have to learn to rely on your knife when taking on the zombie masses, shooting a rifle is still easier and willdispatch zombies at a faster rate when faced with a large group of these horrors. As ammunition is sure to run low, you’ll need a way to reload your empty cartridges.
The OPMOD Battle Mug: The only cup that can take down a zombie.RCBS has reloading gear so tough you could bash out an undead brain and continue reloading immediately. From the RCBS Pro-Melt Furnace, for re-forging your bullets, to their Progressive Press, for getting your bullets into cartridges, you’ll be all set for the next nightmarish wave.
Don’t forget that at any moment a zombie can appear, so if you’re sitting by a campfire enjoying a glass of water you may not have your knife or gun in hand. It’s best to make sure ANYTHING in your hands is tactically sound, so never drink from a regular cup. Drink from the cup of survivors and champions the world over. The OPMOD Battle Mug is a super strong cup, made from aluminum and features a crenellated base for extra zombie smashing power. You can go from thirst-quenching to death-dealing in less than .45 seconds. We tested that.
Search for a Cure or You’ll Search for a Grave.
Unfortunately, all the gear so far is simply a stop-gap as long as the zombie disease rages on. You can take down thousands or even millions of risen dead and hardly make a dent in the overall undead army. Don’t think short term when prepping for the apocalypse. If you want a safe world for your children and grandchildren you must find a cure. For this you need the best laboratory equipment.
Test, test and test Again. Three tests should do it, by then you’ll have cured the zombie disease.We’ve included Qorpak Beakers, Labnet Pipettes and aCelestron Microscope so you can take samples and study the innermost workings of zombies. The destructive nature of their cells might lead you to a better understanding of their life expectancy or how to possibly treat their symptoms so they no longer hunger for human flesh.
Properly tamed, a zombie can do the physical labor of 30 men without tiring. You will only be able to determine if a zombie can be tamed through laboratory research.
Many hours of grueling arguments, exhaustive research and bite-dodging testing went into developing the selection ofzombie survival gear below.
The Z.E.R.O. Kit also includes night vision devices, solar chargers, multi tools, tactical vests, sunglasses, and much more. We’ve completed all this work to give you the best chance of surviving when Death returns to Earth with hell by his side. You only need to do two things: buy the Z.E.R.O. Kit and fight for your life.
All the zombie gear in this kit is listed below so you can purchase the items separately, but remember that the kit was very carefully put together to cover all your bases. Each item you choose NOT to buy is one less day you’ll live.
ZOMBIE HISTORY – Zombie Scenes in the Bible
Zombies loom large in popular culture these days. Max Brooks’ “World War Z: An Oral 
History of the Zombie War” (2006), the Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith mashup “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (2009), and Melissa Marr’s “Graveminder” (2011), to name but a few recent novels, enjoy a wide readership. There are also graphic novels, the AMC television show “The Walking Dead,” video games, and of course movies. Some of my recent favorites in the latter category include the Norwegian Nazis-as-zombies film “Dead Snow” (2009) with its delightful tagline “Ein! Zwei! Die!” and Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s “The Cabin in the Woods” (2012). With all of this going on, there is little surprise to come across the open-source, collaborative Stinque Zombie Bible. It was just a matter of time, I suppose, and the King James Bible will never be quite the same.
I am an unabashed zombie fan but also teach “classic” English literature and the New Testament so I can’t quite bring myself to desecrate the literary and religious masterpiece that is the Authorized (King James) Version by contributing to the Zombie Bible. Still, wanting to get into the spirit of things, I can’t resist noting a few biblical scenes and themes — a top 10 list — that come to mind each time I watch or read the latest version of the zombie apocalypse to come along. At least in some passages, a zombie-Bible mashup requires very little editorial interference.
1. The Gospel of Luke: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Luke 24:5). Such a suggestive phrase. Note also that the angels asking the question and those they address are standing inside a tomb at the time (Luke 24:2-4).
2. The Book of Revelation: “the sea gave up the dead that were in it” (Revelation 20:13). John the Seer’s creepy statement reminds me of a scene in George A. Romero’s “Land of the Dead” (2005) that features slow-moving corpses walking out of the surf, and Max Brooks’ “World War Z” with its account of the boy returning from a swim with a bite mark on his foot. He also describes the zombie hoards roaming the world’s oceans: “They say there are still somewhere between twenty and thirty million of them, still washing up on beaches, or getting snagged in fisherman’s nets.”
3. Deuteronomy: “Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away” (Deuteronomy 28:25-26; cf. 2 Samuel 21:10; Psalm 79:1-2; Isaiah 34:2-3; Jeremiah 7:33). The ancients worried about the exposure of their body after death. Improper care of one’s corpse was a terrifying prospect, so it is no wonder it features in prophetic warnings of divine wrath. Qoheleth insists that even though a man lives a long life and has many children, if he “has no burial … a stillborn child is better off than he” (Ecclesiastes 6:3). The indignity of non-burial presumably accounts for the honor bestowed on the poor man Lazarus in Jesus’ parable; the rich man receives proper burial but Lazarus “was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham” (Luke 16:22) because there was no one to care for his remains.
4. The Book of Job: “Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures…?” (Job 3:20-21). Job is angry he did not die at birth (3:11), adding that he loathes his life and does not want to live forever (7:16). Others prefer death to life out of principled anger against God, like the prophet Jonah (4:3; cf. 4:8). Physical death eludes a surprising number of people in the Christian Bible, and this is not always a welcome thing. The prophet John refers to some who “seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them” (Revelation 9:6). The prospect of an elusive death, as every zombie fan knows, terrorizes the living. The “stricken” Charlotte Lucas in “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” agrees to marry the tedious and obsequious minister Mr. Collins because she wants “a husband who will see to [her] proper Christian beheading and burial.” This is no small task for most survivors left with such a grim assignment, as Shaun well knows: “I don’t think I got it in me to shoot my flat mate, my mom, and my girlfriend all in the same evening” (“Shaun of the Dead,” 2004).
5. The Gospel of Matthew: “The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After [Jesus’] resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many” (Matthew 27:52-53). Unwanted persistent life is a recurring image in biblical literature and so too is language referring to the impermanence of bodily death. The dead do not stay dead. The psalmist is confident he will not “see decay” (Psalm 16:10 New International Version; cf. Acts 2:27; 13:35). We read of the physical resurrections of specific individuals (e.g., 1 Kings 17:17-24; Luke 8:49-56; maybe Acts 20:7-12) and expected mass revivals (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). Some of these accounts of un-dying involve reference to un-burying. Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus walks out of his tomb when “they took away the stone” (John 11:41). On Easter morning, mourners find “the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back” (Mark 16:4). A second century writer describes further the events preceding Jesus’ emergence from the tomb: “That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and gave way to the side, and the sepulchre was opened” (Gospel of Peter9.35).
6. Ezekiel: Ezekiel receives a vision promising the restoration of Israel (37:11). Seeing a valley full of bones, the Lord instructs him to speak to them, saying, “O dry bones … I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live” (37:4-6). When Ezekiel does so, “there was a noise, a rattling” as bones come together and sinew and skin appears and the breath of life returns. The dry bones “lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude” (37:7-10).
7. Zechariah: “their flesh shall rot while they are still on their feet; their eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot in their mouths” (Zechariah 14:12). They seem to resemble extras in a George A. Romero film.
8. The Gospel of Mark: “hell, where their worm never dies” (Mark 9:48; alluding here to Isaiah 66:24). Gehenna (here symbolically representing “hell,” and usually translated so, as in Mark 9:44, 45, 47) refers to the Valley of Hinnom located to the south and southwest of Jerusalem. Following the reign of Israel’s righteous King Josiah (see 2 Kings 23:10-14), it became Jerusalem’s garbage heap, a place with maggots and rotting corpses. Jesus refers to this burning garbage in Mark 9:48, a place where residents of the city would leave the rotting corpses of humans and animals to the worms that do not die, to maggots. The image suggests the corpses of the damned rot ingehenna/hell — maggot ridden — in perpetuity.
9. 2 Maccabees: “[Antiochus IV Epiphanes] was seized with a pain in his bowels, for which there was no relief, and with sharp internal tortures — and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions … he fell out of his chariot as it was rushing along, and the fall was so hard as to torture every limb of his body. … the ungodly man’s body swarmed with worms, and while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh rotted away, and because of the stench the whole army felt revulsion at his decay. Because of his intolerable stench no one was able to carry the man who a little while before had thought that he could touch the stars of heaven” (2 Maccabees 9:5-6, 7, 9-10). The Syrian ruler’s physical body rots away zombie-like while he still lives. The cause is divine, as the God of Israel strikes this enemy of the Jews with “an incurable and invisible blow” (2 Maccabees 9:5).
10. Genesis with the Book of Revelation: “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep”; “the first heaven and the first earth has passed away, and the sea was no more” (Genesis 1:2; Revelation 21:1). With the disappearance of chaos, Eden returns: “On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit” (Revelation 22:2; cf. Genesis 2:9). Horrors stories often wander back and forth between forms of paradise (ordered society) and chaos (some variant of an apocalyptic hellscape) thus recalling biblical stories with similar alternations. Zombie stories typically depict the disintegration of the modern world, and often hint at a return from the wilderness to the paradisiacal garden for survivors (cf. Genesis 3:23-24). Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” (2002), for one, ends with a developing romance between Jim and Salina, happy in the cultivated lands around a cottage that echoes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The sequel “28 Weeks Later” (2007), however, depicts a failed attempt to restore Eden. After the spread of the disastrous infection in the first film, the sequel documents efforts to repopulate the United Kingdom. Survivors return to their homeland, to what the director’s commentary refers to as “a new world” and a “Garden of Eden.” Naturally, mayhem ensues and the infection spreads as the movie unfolds. It wouldn’t be much of a horror movie otherwise.
ZOMBIE OUTBREAK – PLAN FOR SURVIVAL
“They’re coming to get you, Barbara.” Ever since George Romero’s 1968 classic “Night of the Living Dead,” America has been obsessed with zombies. But some days the zombie apocalypse doesn’t feel so far-fetched. Before you go boarding up your windows, loading your shotgun and stampeding to the nearest cellar, finalize your survival plan. After all, the directo of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ali Khan, noted in his “Zombie Preparedness” article, “If you are generally well-equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse, you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake or terrorist attack.” Oh, joy!
• Somebody has poisoned the water hole: Any viewer of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” knows all too well what happens when a “swimmer” gets into the water supply. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the average human can last about a week without water, so make sure to stockpile it before it gets contaminated.
You’ll need about a gallon of water per person per day. The six-gallon Reliance Desert Patrol container ($19.99) is durable and easy to carry. Fill up enough of them so that your water supply lasts several days.
Once you’re forced to abandon your shelter — and you most definitely will be — you’re going to need the Katadyn Pocket Water Microfilter ($295.90). Sold on Amazon, this filter is one of the best in the market for decontaminating outdoor water found in streams, rivers or puddles. The price is hefty, but the cost of drinking zombie guts is higher. .
• Don’t wind up on the menu: As long as you have water, you can survive 30 to 40 days without food. However, after a few days, your body and brain will go weak. In a stressful situation like a zombie assault, a sharp mind and healthy body are vital.
If MREs are good enough for battlefield combat, they’re (hopefully) good enough for zombie warfare. Load up on MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat) ($94.99 for a 12-pack) from Nitro-Pak. If your mouth’s not watering yet, feast your eyes on the canned chicken, beef, pork and turkey ($55.99 for four 28-ounce cans) from Canned Chicken By Survival Cave Food. Mmm, almost as good as fresh brains!
• Dress to kill: You’re going to need some heavy-duty clothing — preferably something that can withstand a life-threatening bite. Zombie expert and author of “Zombie CSU” Jonathan Maberry suggests body armor made from carpet because it’s hard to chew through and can be found practically anywhere.
The Tru-Spec BDU Trouser 
For footwear, get something lightweight, durable and waterproof. The Converse 8877 Waterproof SideZip Tactical Boot ($99.99) is perfect. It even has arch support and heel cushions to supply comfort during those long treks through the city and wilderness.
• My personal weapon of choice is a machete for one simple reason: It doesn’t require reloading. The Condor Tool and Knife 14-Inch Golok Machete ($26.95) from KnifeCenter.com has a solid handle and razor-sharp edge perfect for sending heads a-flying.
• Always remember: Safety first! You’ll need to be able to patch up just about any injury on the go. The 299-piece All-Purpose First Aid Kit ($18.49) from Utility Safeguard includes everything from alcohol cleansing pads and aspirin to an emergency blanket and gauze dressing. The only thing this one-stop kit doesn’t offer is a cure for a zombie bite.
If you aren’t familiar with Max Brooks’ “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead” ($10.98), buy it at Barnes & Noble ASAP. The book covers everything from zombie physiology and defense tactics to how to prepare your home for a siege.
Another must-read is Roger Ma’s “The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead” ($13.98). It’ll coach you on how to emerge victorious from a close hand-to-hand battle with a living corpse.
Play video games while you still can. Get an Xbox 360 and buy “Left 4 Dead 2″ ($34.99) at GameStop. It lets you take on the infected with objects like a frying pan, ax, chainsaw and baseball bat. Grab some friends and play in multiplayer mode. Now you’ll know who is skilled with melee weapons. Start saying your goodbyes to the friends who aren’t.
IF YOU THOUGHT ZOMBIES WHERE TOUGH – Try Surviving Yellowstone’s super volcano
For preppers, it’s the ultimate end game: surviving the eruption of Yellowstone’s super 
volcano.
While some folk worry about an asteroid strike bringing about the end of the world as we know it, as scientists say it did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, North America is actually sitting on its own extinction-level event waiting to happen.
“Everything would be wiped out; it would take years for the climate to recover and decades for the rivers to clear up because everything would be choked with volcanic ash for a wide area around the eruption site,” said Kelly Russell, professor of volcanology at the University of British Columbia. “The southern latitudes of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba would all see ash cover, how thick it would be depends on the winds and the amount of magma.”
Russell stresses that such super eruptions are extremely rare — the last one happened before human civilization — but that they can and do happen, and Yellowstone, in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, is an active field that has seen three massive eruptions.
He compares Yellowstone to Mount St. Helens in Washington state in 1980.
“It produced one cubic kilometre of magma, and we saw ash fall from it in southern B.C., a small amount, but it was there, and when we look at the very largest eruptions that have taken place at Yellowstone, they can spew out a thousand cubic kilometres, so that’s a thousand times larger than the Mount St. Helens eruption that’s in everybody’s minds.”
Russell points out that two feet of ash from the Crater Lake eruption in Oregon 7,700 years ago can be found in Oliver, B.C., and in the banks of the Bow River in Calgary. He says if Yellowstone cuts loose, the southern Canadian prairies could get covered in many feet of ash, and the American states closest to Yellowstone would be smothered with an even thicker layer of the sterile rock powder, killing off livestock and leaving them unable to grow food.
“The ash is terrible, take a window and grind it into a coarse flour, then breath that in, it does terrible things to the human body. It would be important to have masks and filters, if you were trying to survive it,” Russell said. “The United States would stop being a food-exporting nation and starting being a food-importing nation.”
Yellowstone’s volcano doesn’t have the classic menacing cone shape, so many people don’t know that a magma chamber bigger than New York City lies beneath the steaming surface.
640,000 years ago, animals similar to elephants, rhinoceroses and zebras roamed the plains of the United States when Yellowstone blew — and it took out the animals and every other living thing that couldn’t fly away from the blast.
Scientists estimate Yellowstone’s volcano explodes every 600,000 to 700,000, and some say the time could be coming for another eruption. If it blows, the chances of survival sound bleak, but that’s not stopping some survivalists from preparing.
“Some people who visit there say there are more hot springs popping up there, and there is more of a sulphur smell that’s stronger than ever. You take from it what you want and I just pay attention to it a little more than the average person, just in case,” said Jason Charles, a firefighter in New York City. “I don’t want it to be a curve ball we don’t see coming. I keep it in the back of my head.”
Charles was a paramedic on 9/11 and saw thousands of people struggling to breath through the toxic dust. He has special dust and ash filters for his gas mask in case of another NYC disaster, or if Yellowstone blows.
“I know some people who have bought UV lights, in case they need to grow their own food – but that’s also assuming that the power grid stays up, but then there’s a space issue, how much could you grow?” he said. “It’s better to store food that will last.”
Charles has a one-year supply of food for his family, including his wife and four children. Meal-ready-to-eats (MREs), canned pasta and lots of canned fruit are stuffed into his apartment and his storage locker. He prepares for all sorts of disasters because he says no one should depend on the government to save them.
“The government couldn’t handle (Hurricane) Katrina. Compared to Yellowstone, Katrina was a drop in the bucket,” he said. “I have always heard as a rumour, they would wait for the masses to die and whatever survivors are left, that’s who they’d take care of, because they can’t take care of hundreds of millions of people we have living here in the United States.”
Jake Lowenstern, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, is the guy in charge of the Yellowstone volcano observatory.
“Worst-case scenario, a super eruption is a thousand cubic kilometres of material gets sent out of the magma chamber. When that happens it’s going to send out a lot of ash, and it circles the globe and changes the climate for years, drops the temperature for a few years,” Lowenstern said.
He said while a super eruption is highly unlikely, and even if it does happen not many would survive, it doesn’t hurt to prep.
“Things you can do to prepare for one kind of disaster are useful for any kind of disaster: lots of food, water, medical supplies and batteries on hand, and for an eruption, add good masks, air filters and weather stripping to keep the ash out of homes.”
Massive eruptions of the past:
— Archeologists say human beings barely survived the last super eruption on Earth. 74,000 years ago, Toba blew up on the Island of Sumatra. It cloaked the planet in sulphur, reducing the temperature by 20 degrees, wiping out growing seasons with snow cover nearly all year and causing mass starvation. Geneticists say the disaster reduced the human population to as few as 1000 people, thus causing the genetic similarity between individuals which is traced to the same time period.
— A volcanic eruption has been blamed for plunging civilization into the Dark Ages and triggering the bubonic plague. In his book Catastrophe, archeological journalist David Keys pinpoints a Krakatoa explosion in 535 AD. He says with the power of two billion Hiroshima bombs it darkened the sky and caused drought and flooding all around the world, including in Northeast Africa, which led to a bumper crop of rodents that passed their infected fleas onto rats and mice on European ships docked for trade off of southern Egypt, beginning the spread of the plague of Justinian.
— In 1815, the Tambora volcano erupted in the East Indies. Global temperatures dropped. Europeans and North Americans called it a “year without summer.” Snow fell in New York in June. Frost was recorded in each of the summer months and crops failed. 200,000 people died in Eastern and southern Europe from starvation and typhus.
— In 1783, Iceland’s Laki Volcano erupted. 9,000 people died in Iceland and thousands more died around the world from crop failure, disease and starvation. Temperatures dropped 13 degrees Celsius.
— Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991 in the Philippines, a comparably small explosion, ejecting 20 million tonnes of sulphur. Scientists say it reduced global temperatures by about 2 degrees.
ASTEROID COLLISION PENDING – HOW CAN WE AVOID IT?
Steve Carell’s new movie, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, opened yesterday. Despite its being billed as a comedy (one with a rather dreary basis), the movie has gotten a lot of people thinking about one thing: if a killer asteroid was headed toward Earth, is there anything we could do as a species to avoid doomsday?
The unfortunate truth is that the world would probably be helpless to do anything.
When doomsday scenarios are considered, planners usually give months or even years advance notice time to come up with a plan to divert the colliding body and save the world. Now, as the events of last week show, huge asteroids can, literally, just pop out of the cosmos and into our neighborhood just a few days after discovery.
Right now, there are millions of known asteroids (and untold numbers more undiscovered) floating around the solar system, mostly between Mars and Jupiter, safely out of Earth’s way. Of the millions of asteroids, over 8,800 are classified as near-Earth. Of the near-Earth objects, just over 4,700 are considered as potentially hazardous, which is defined as an object over 500 feet in diameter that can come within 4.6 million miles of Earth.
Obviously, a metallic space rock 500 feet across traveling at up to 15 miles per second could do an immense amount of damage. For comparison, the object (most likely a comet) that caused the Tunguska Incident was probably less than 100 yards (300 feet across) but still leveled forests for over 1,000 square miles.
Needless to say, if a Tunguska-sized object were to hit a populated area, the death toll would be apocalyptic. Large impactor? Worldwide devastation and possibly an end to civilization as we know it. So, if scientists were to discover a doomsday asteroid on a collision course with Earth, could we do anything about it or would we simply have to resign ourselves to a terrible fate and possibly go down in history like the dinosaurs?
The problem with many doomsday scenarios: when contemplating ways to defend our planet, many planners always give several months and often years of notice. Problem: asteroids have a way of sneaking up on us, which is not hard to do considering that there are more people working at the average McDonald’s than there are full-time asteroid hunters manning the world’s observatories. Earlier this year, it was reported that Los Alamos had completed a study wherein nuclear weapons showed promise in deflecting asteroids but, for many, such a scenario should be considered last resort, not first option.
The widely agreed upon solution: early detection, which can only be achieved through a vigilant watch of the skies by skilled astronomers, professionals and amateurs alike.