The Drinkable Book

One of the members of our Facebook Page found an article covering a new method of cleaning water and wanted our thoughts on it. Since I am the resident water “expert” (I'm trying not to laugh), I looked into this new invention and have some information and opinions on it.

The Drinkable What?
The concept was a student's PhD project to develop a cheap, simple method of treating water to make it less dangerous to drink. The inventor (Dr.Theresa Dankovich ) uses specially manufactured paper to create a water filter that will kill bacteria and screen out the larger particles. Since it's made of paper, she bound it in the form of a book to make it easier to transport and store. Each page is perforated and a half sheet is used at a time. Depending on the raw (untreated) water quality, she claims up to 30 days usable life for each filter, so a 25 page book (50 filters) could last a person about 4 years.



The Paper
The paper is treated with silver and copper nanoparticles which have antibacterial properties. The exact quantity, size, and distribution of the silver and copper particles isn't mentioned, but to be proper nanoparticles, they would have to be between 1-100 nanometers in size. For a quick math refresher there are 1000 millimeters (mm) in a meter, 1000 micrometers (um or microns) in a millimeter, and 1000 nanometers (nm) in a micron. For those of us that don't speak metric, there are 25,400,000 nm in an inch.

Currently the paper is being hand-made by the inventor in a church kitchen. The chemical treatment and drying of the paper is time consuming, and she's working on getting the whole process scaled up for industrial production at a small paper mill. She has the backing of a mid-sized charity and a PR firm, so I think she has a good shot at making it into production.

The project has a Facebook Page with links to their most recent activities.

The Filtering

The book comes packaged in a plastic box. Half of the box is used to hold the piece of filter paper (half of a page) and the untreated water, and is placed on top of the other half of the box which catches the treated water. As a reader pointed out in the Facebook comments, this is a flaw which presents many opportunities for cross contamination when the system is not in use. Placing the book back into the box after the book has gotten dirty or while the box is still damp/wet is a design flaw that should be fixed. The only thing that could allow this to be acceptable is the fact that the filter is killing bacteria instead of just physically removing them from the water.

It is important to that that this is a water disinfection device, and it works only on microbes in the water. It will do nothing for chemical pollutants or metals like lead and arsenic, nor will it desalinate sea water to make it potable.

The Results
The inventor is a chemist, so she knows how to run lab tests properly. I trust her when she claims better than 99.9% reduction in bacteria by using her filter. She claims it meets EPA standards for drinking water, but that would be for bacteria only.

Reducing bacterial contamination by 99.9% is not all that good compared to some of the water purification systems we have available today, but for a cheap and easy system to be given away in undeveloped area of the world it would help. Knocking the bacterial load in your water down makes it easier for your body to handle the remaining bugs.

I'm still digging through reports, trying to find out what exactly they tested it with. Raw water from some third-world mud puddle was the harshest test I've seen it pass so far. I'm trying to find the numbers for efficacy (power to produce results) of her filter on Giardia and some of the other common microbes. E.coli is the standard bacteria for water testing because it is found everywhere, but it is not always a good indicator of how well a system will work against other organisms.

My Take on the Whole Thing
I like the idea of a simple water filter that is capable of destroying 99% of the bacteria present. For use in undeveloped areas, areas affected by major disasters, or when traveling through areas with microbes that your body is not used to (Montezuma's Revenge) it makes sense.

Right now the emphasis seems to be helping out people who don't have access to clean water on a regular basis. I think that they could fund a lot of charity work by developing and selling a system for the emergency equipment market. We'll have to wait and see if it ever gets sold commercially.

The use of gravity instead of pumps means that it is simple and the lack of moving parts means it is unlikely to break. The plastic box is a weakness, but pictures in the video do show the paper being used in a funnel like standard lab filter paper.

Using nanoparticles to do the disinfecting is an untested field, so I'm going to have to wait for more information before passing judgement on its effectiveness and longevity.

Silver and copper do have antibacterial properties, and as elemental metals they have no defined shelf-life. They are also neither consumed nor depleted in their use, so the amount of water that one filter could treat would be determined by when the paper carrier gets clogged or falls apart.

This type of filter would be unaffected by freezing or heat (as long as it didn't ignite) and could be stored indefinately. A perfect application for a filter of this type would be in emergency kits stored in airplanes or fresh-water boats. Having something the size of a sheet of paper that can disinfect your water for a month would be handy when traveling in wilderness areas by canoe, kayak, or foot.

I'm not going to throw away any of the water treatment gear that I already own and replace it with a Drinkable Book if/when it hits the market, but it might be handy to have as a plan C or D. If they get rid of the plastic box and shape it into something that will fit a normal container, it would be a welcome “extra step” in being prepared to clean my own water. Pricing is always going to matter, but they'd be insane to try to put a big price on something they want to be able to give away to people in need.

Prudent Prepping: Buffet Post

The dust has settled and the First 72 Hours have passed. Now we concentrate on what to do in, and how to plan for, the long term via Prudent Prepping.

This is my almost monthly roundup of things that have happened which are too small  to be made into a full-on blog topic.


Personal Preps
I have been looking for a full-time job for some time, and when I do get the chance to interview, I want to make a good impression: nice shirt, sharply creased pants and polished shoes.

Yes, about my shoes: last week, as I was going out the door, I noticed one shoe was not tied well so I pulled on the end to take up the slack. BINK! the lace broke. Both shoes had old laces, but since I don't wear them very often I kept putting off replacing them. Fortunately I have two pairs of identical black shoes that I can alternate wearing if one set gets wet, so I just grabbed the other pair. The worst part is I have shoe laces in my truck bag, just for occasions like this.

I don't think I'm getting the job, but it's not because I didn't look presentable.

Every Day Carry
Over the weekend, before it hit 100° here, a friend and I took a hike with her dogs on a scenic trail overlooking the river and hills. I pack a minimum of two liters of water in my EDC bag and while it was only in the high 80s where we were, everyone needed to drink some water. This was not a problem for the top end of the leash, but a bit more so for the bottom end. I didn't have a cup to use for the two small dogs to drink from, so our hands were used instead -- not an efficient use of the water at hand!

When I got home, the Sea to Summit X-Bowl in my Camping/BOB gear was moved into the EDC bag. I have mentioned Sea To Summit in the past and this is another really neat item. The bowl collapses with accordion-like folds from over 2" in height down to only 3/4".



Yard Sale Finds
I hit several neighborhood yard sales and found a small, compact pair of inexpensive binoculars to go into my GHB/EDC gear. I have been wanting some binoculars for a while, and these are perfect for my needs: light, very compact, and if I break them, I don't really care.

The Takeaway

• Think about maintaining all your gear, even the things you may not use or see every day. 
• The items that I carry need to be adaptable to more than one use. 
• Plan for pets every day, not just in an emergency.

Recap

• 3 pairs of 30" shoe laces;  $2.39 each at Target.
• 4 x 15 power Vivitar binoculars; $2 at a yard sale.

As always, if you have comments, suggestions or corrections, please post them so we all can learn. And remember, Some Is Always Better Than None!

NOTE: All items tested were purchased by me. No products have been loaned in exchange for a favorable review. Any items sent to me for T&E will be listed as such. Suck it Feds.

Hi-tech Tinder Showdown! (With bonus Instafire revisit)

Erin and I got to discussing some of the pros and cons of modern, high-tech tinders and fuels vs traditional materials. After a fair bit of conversation, we decided that a showdown was in order, and as I seem to be the resident pyro, who better than me to judge such a grudge match?

Our two new challengers are UST Wetfire Tinder Cubes and FastFire Tinder. Instafire was also revisited for part of this test.

Wetfire/Fastfire
Upon inspection, the Wetfire and FastFire cubes appear to be an identical material. Both are white, formed blocks, light in weight, with a dry texture similar to a bar of soap. They can be cut or shaved very easily with a pocketknife, and can even be crumbled under moderate hand pressure, which allows them to be broken down for easy fire starting. Both come in individually sealed foil packets, allowing them to be dispersed throughout various gear packs.

Clockwise from top: Wetfire, Esbit tabs (for scale), FastFire

The big difference between the two is size. The FastFire blocks are roughly twice the size of the Wetfire blocks. An individual Wetfire block can handily light two fires, while a FastFire block can do four or more. Considering that the Wetfire cost $10 shipped to my door, and the FastFire cost $14, the FastFire is the better value, based on price. The Wetfire can be packed into smaller containers however, so if space is a concern, that may sway a decision.

The basic fire lay.  Larger kindling would be added to this after starting.

Both manufacturers recommend making a small pile of shavings, and building your fire lay over and around that pile. This method works very well; the shavings take flame instantly, even with sparks from a ferro rod. They burn at a height of 6-8 inches, readily igniting any wood and giving a hot fire in short minutes. In fact, both tinders take flame so readily, a match or sparks will ignite it in block form as well. A half-cube of Wetfire (or a quarter cube of FastFire) burns for several minutes; more than enough time to dry damp kindling and start it burning.

Burning hot and tall.

Instafire as Fuel
Instafire packaging also touts it as a useful fuel source (Wetfire and Fastfire both state on their packaging not to use them as cooking fuels, only as fire starters; this likely has to do with them being petroleum-based), so it seemed the perfect time to test this claim while I had my fire testing area already set up,

A full pouch of Instafire will fill an Esbit and then some, as I learned pretty quickly.

Instafire on the Esbit.

I used my Esbit stove as a test bed, mostly because it was available and convenient to do so. It holds a pan of water at an ideal height over flame to cook, no matter the flame source.

Speaking of flame sources: Instafire, sadly, did not start with a fire steel. However, it remains very easy to light with an open flame, and the least expensive of the group. It took flame immediately with a single match, but was a bit smoky under the pan. Make sure that any place you use this setup is well ventilated, like mine:

The fire and fuel test setup.

On the Esbit rig, the fuel needed regular stirring to maintain a good flame, but a good flame did result. 

On a pan filled with 16 ounces of water:

• Small bubbles started rising at 13 minutes.
• At 17 minutes there were large bubbles. It wasn't what I'd call truly boiling, and definitely not rolling, but it was close to it. 
• Unfortunately, the fuel self-extinguished at 20 minutes.

 I'd say that, all told, it's less than ideal for cooking on. However, if used simply to provide heat, you get a good 20 minutes of rather hot flame.

Cooking aftermath.

One other note on the Instafire: the above picture is the bottom of my saucepan after the test. If you look at the pre-cooking picture, you'll see it was shiny copper when I started. The residue was a tough soot, which required a scouring pad and elbow grease to remove. Don't use your wife's good pans to cook with this, and if you do, make sure you have time to clean them before she gets home.

As a TV host from my youth used to say, you don't have to take my word for it. In fact, you shouldn't. Pick up a pack of Wetfire or FastFire, and pull out a couple cubes and practice with them. Know your gear before you need it!


Lokidude

BCP Skill Challenge

Picture by KJ Photography

& is used with permission.

We seem to have run out of guest articles (and Mondays are currently open for someone to become a regular contributor), so today I have decided to issue a challenge to our regular readership in the hopes that it would solve a problem of mine and simultaneously get us more submissions.

As a prepper and an enthusiast of gun accessories, I am constantly acquiring hex wrenches that come with new pieces of hardware. While it's convenient to have the proper size of wrench during installation, afterwards I don't need them -- I have my own set of very nice metric & imperial wrenches that I keep in my tool box.


But I am reluctant to throw away these spare wrenches, because that seems wasteful. They're still perfectly good tools; they just happen to be unnecessary. Since I couldn't think of what to do with them, I decided to pose the question to you, dear readers, as the


BCP Hex Wrench Skill Challenge!
The rules are quite simple:

1. Think of something non-wasteful to do with these pieces of steel. I want a solution that is constructive, useful, and preferably ingenious. Do not suggest I put them in the recycling bin or give them to someone else.  
2. Practical applications will be deemed more worthy than purely artistic solutions. The ideal submission will be both practical and attractive. 
3. The solution must be something that someone without technical skills can perform. For example. Firehand is a blacksmith, so I imagine he has all sorts of notions for melting them down into ingots or hammering them into nails using his knowledge and equipment. However, I don't have that knowledge, nor do I have access to a forge, bellows, etc. 
4. If you provide detailed, step-by step instructions, preferably with photographs or illustraions on how to do these technical things (such as making a forge using simple household items). then that will make you eligible for this contest. This is called "Leveling the playing field."
5. Write an article using the guidelines on Guest Articles page. If you have pictures, you can get by with fewer words; fewer pictures means more words. If it's a concern, I'd rather you write too much than too little; I can edit out unnecessary elements but I don't want to put words in your mouths. 
6. The contest starts now and runs through the end of the year. I realize I'm asking for something very technical, so you have 4.5 months to put it together. 
7. Because I am running this contest myself, other members of this blog can compete if they desire. Lokidude and Firehand, I'm looking at you in particular. 

Prizes

Because this is out of my pocket and born of a desire to de-clutter my life, prizes are in a similar vein: Anyone who writes an article gets to pick an item out of my swag box. Some items in the swag box are tools which didn't quite work the way I'd hoped they would; some are goodies that I've reviewed, or which came in Apocaboxes, and I don't have room for them. (For example, I have multiple knives, both fixed and folding, in the swag box; it's not that I don't like knives, it's just that I have no current use for them and no place to put them, so they're in my way and gathering dust.)

Nothing in the swag box is junk.  I wouldn't do that to people. 

The person with the best article gets first pick from the box. Other winners get subsequent picks, until everyone has had a turn. 

Anything left over will be given as thank-yous to future BCP guest authors.

This is the Swag Box as it currently stands. It's likely to fill up more as I clean and de-clutter my life. Please  keep in an mind that between now and the end of the contest, there will be 3 more Apocaboxes (August, October, December) arriving, along with whatever I acquire for product testing and for the holidays, so this picture is not everything that is available. 

Got it? Good! Now get to work!

Gun Blog Variety Podcast #52

Adam and Sean  make it to Episode 52! That's one full year of The GunBlog VarietyCast!

• Erin Palette gives us some very good advice about depression.
• Nicki Kenyon thinks The Donald would be The Disaster for US foreign policy.
• This week's Special Guest is Sean's father, Eugene Sorrentino. He tells us why you should never shoot all your ammo at the range.
• Barron B tells us all about why Adobe Flash sucks.
• And Weer'd goes back to that never ending well of liberal foolishness, MSNBC, and audio fisks someone we've never even heard of before.

Thanks for downloading, listening and subscribing. Please share with a friend, and Like and Share us on Facebook.

Listen to the podcast here.
Show notes may be found here.

A special thanks to our sponsor, Law of Self Defense. Use discount code "Variety" at checkout to get 10% off anything you buy.

Attitude

Picture by KJ Photography

& is used with permission.

It's rightly said that attitude is the defining factor between survival and failure. You can have all the gear, all the training, all the knowledge, all the preparedness in the world, and it won't matter one whit if you have no resolve and your response is to give in to grief, curl up and die.

I struggle with depression, fatigue, and crippling headaches on a regular basis. Thankfully I am not suicidal, but I know all too well what it's like to feel that the simple act of getting out of bed is a monumental task. And this is in the comfort of my electric-powered, climate-controlled home! I shudder to think what it would be like to do so after a disaster when I don't know what the day will bring, or where my next meal will be from, or if I'll have enough clean water.

My life is cushy, no doubt about it. I have clean clothes and a soft bed. I have fresh water and nutritious food. I have entertainment, I have convenience, and I have comfort.

And yet there are some days in this cushy life when getting to the end of the day seems insurmountable. How, then, can I expect that I will make it through a disaster?

The truth is that I don't expect it. I hope that I will, of course, and it's not like I'm counting on failure. But eventually, my chronic and cyclical depression WILL catch up to me. And while that isn't a death sentence, it will make survival that much harder -- because depression makes everything harder.

(Everyone who has had to psyche themselves up to put on shoes just to get the mail knows what I'm talking about.)

And so ultimately, I have to prep around my weakness. That means a lot of convenience and a lot of comforts in my preps. I understand some of the hard-core types believe only in the necessities, and that anything non-essential will slow them down. And for them, maybe it's true.

But as someone who gets emotionally exhausted just getting out of bed, convenience and comfort go a long way toward making existence bearable, which to my mind makes them survival items. They're emotional force multipliers.

Your mileage likely differs. That's fine. You aren't me, and I'm not you.

This post born of the fact that I'm currently in the grips of my depressive cycle and I'm tired of people telling me I'm too enamored with things. I'm not a goddamn Army Ranger or Navy SEAL. Likely, neither are you. So stop telling me I need to give up my "snivel gear." How about you give up your "more prepper than thou" attitude instead?

Farming

This will be the first of a short series on growing food, from the perspective of someone who has lived most of his life in the “breadbasket” of the US. If you're growing food for yourself and family you have a garden, but if you're growing a crop for sale or trade then you have a farm. Truck gardens fit somewhere in between the family garden and the commercial farm with some of the advantages and problems of both. I'll start with what I know best: farming.

The People
Farmers are aging. For the last few generations, farmers have sent their children off to college and not many of them are coming back to work on the farm. I know men in their 60's and 70's that are still farming, or working with farmers, some out of necessity but others because they don't know any other way of life. Finding young workers isn't easy when McDonald's has similar pay and better hours. 

Farming is dangerous. Farm work usually ranks about #4 on any list of the most dangerous jobs in America (police work is usually #8 or #10). Not many people are willing to work around dangerous, chemicals, moving machinery, and livestock that can crush you at all hours of the day, in all kinds of weather, and often alone. Scars and missing digits aren't unusual in a gathering of farmers.

These all lead to a smaller number of people feeding the rest of the population. If a catastrophe were to hit the US, the impact of losing just a “few” farmers would have major repercussions. The percentage of the population that actually grows food has been shrinking for decades, and the size of farms has been growing as family farms are incorporated into larger operations. As farms have gotten bigger so has the equipment, which is now equipped with state-of-the-art electronics to help manage their operation.

The Land
Fields are being reworked to take out fences (GPS has eliminated the need to mark property lines) and terrain features in order to use larger equipment.What used to be done with four-row equipment is now done sixteen (or more) rows at a time. The "big" tractors I used as a teenager are now relegated to hauling wagons and powering augers - they can't handle the new field equipment.

Farms vary greatly in size, from a few acres for a truck farm to several hundred acres for growing grain and several thousand acres for cattle/sheep ranches in marginal land. Regulation of the farming industry is growing, and it is just as easy to file paperwork for a large farm as it is for a small one.

Prime farmland is currently selling for around $10k/acre around here; pasture land (too steep or poor soil to plant on) is selling for $2000-3000/acre. There are a lot of millionaire farmers, but it's all tied up in the land. For tax purposes, a lot of land is held in a family trust - a legal way of passing the land on to a new generation without having to sell half of it in order to pay the inheritance taxes.

Developers building houses for the urban-flight crowd have been buying a lot of marginal land and turning a quick buck planting McMansions in the hills. They don't fare well with the intermittent power and blocked roads that occur when winter rolls around, and most of them aren't built well enough to stand alone in a field without a windbreak and the heating bills are astronomical.

The Definitions 

Acre: 43,560 square feet. There are 640 acres in a square mile (also called a “section”). For city folks, an acre is about 90% of the size of a football field. Fields were laid out or surveyed in square-mile blocks when the middle of the country was settled. A section (square mile) was divided into fourths (160 acres) called quarters, which were further divided into fourths (40 acres).

Fertilizer: Anything that can be used to provide the nutrients needed for plants to grow. Manure was used for centuries, but has been replaced with mined minerals and manufactured blends.

Nutrients: The three main nutrients used to grow plants are Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P), and Potassium (K). Fertilizer is often marked with three numbers designating the percentage by weight of these three major nutrients, in that order (N-P-K), so if you see 28-8-4 on a bag you can know that it contains 28%N, 8%P, and 4%K.

Permaculture: Any crop that reproduces itself without human assistance. Meadows, forests, and orchards are good examples. They have lower maintenance, but produce less quantity or lower quality food/feed.

Monoculture: A farming technique that favors specializing in one crop, and often only one variety of that crop. The major downside to monoculture farming is its susceptibility to disease: one potato blight (a fungus-like disease) can wipe out an entire economy based on monoculture farming.

The bird flu hit hard this year and has caused the extermination of many large poultry flocks (tens of millions of birds), which has already raised the price of eggs at the grocery store.

This (2015) spring and summer have been wetter than normal for a large portion of the middle of the country (sorry, California). Since wheat is grown in two seasons (winter wheat gets planted in the fall and matures in the spring; summer wheat is planted in the spring and harvested in the fall), most of the wheat in the fields has been water-logged this year. If it stays wet there is a good chance of mold and fungi starting in the fields, which will reduce the amount of wheat for food/feed use and therefore increasing prices.

Monoculture farming is becoming more common around here; the days of a farmer growing his own livestock feed and raising meat animals are mostly gone. Poultry is raised in factories, beef in feedlots, and pork in confinement buildings. Where most farmers used to grow wheat (for bread), corn (for feed), oats (for the horses), hay (for winter feed), and often some of other small grains (sorghum, barley, flax, rye, etc.), now they specialize in either corn or soybeans, and buy whatever else they need with the money from the sale of their single crops. In other areas of the USA, this specialization leans towards wheat or cotton with the same lack of diversification.

Agronomy: The study of how to best grow plants for human use. It's a messed-up combination of economics, chemistry, biology, geology, and a few others for good measure. It's part science, part art, and usually a whole bunch of experience. Most colleges in the middle of the country offer degrees in Agronomy, but without the experience a new graduate is going to be lost.

A good agronomist can survey a field and tell you what you'll need to put on it to grow a good crop. A bad one will sell you whatever his boss is pushing the most.

Truck garden: I know several truck farmers locally. The typical setup is an older family farm (40 acres or less) that is not economical for raising corn or soy beans, and the family doesn't want to sell the land to a big operation that would be able to blend a small field or two into their existing fields and still make money (I've been on single fields of 500+ acres of corn).

Unlike traditional farming, truck farming doesn't rely as heavily on one big harvest every year to pay the bills; most truck farmers have structured their planting and harvesting schedule to provide income throughout the year. Diversification of your crops minimizes the bad effects of a disease or pest infecting one crop and leaving you broke and hungry. Typical spring harvests are “new potatoes” and berries of all sorts. Summer crops are sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, and string beans. Fall crops are melons and squash with apples and other tree fruits being a minor specialization. Winter crops are rare, but some people have found niche markets with nuts and preserves that they can sell through the cold weather.

There is a growing market for locally-grown produce with a premium price for “organic” anything in nearby cities, so there are customers available. Since most of the sales are made off the back of a pickup (there are some grocery stores that will carry locally-grown produce) and paid in cash, the tax burden implications are clear.

The Wrap-Up
If growing your own food is part of your strategy to deal with disasters, let me know if there's anything I can expand on. This is a subject that is so deep and broad that I'll never be able to cover everything on a blog. I'll be recommending some reading material in the near future, and will take a stab at gardening soon.