SHTF prepping

What is it? Well, the SHTF stands for "s**t hits the fan". Basically, it's a reference to some sort of societal collapse or apocolypse. So SHTF prepping is preparing yourself for said societal collapse or apocolypse. I've been watching, out of a morbid curiosity, lots of YouTube videos that people have posted about their own preparations. And it's caused me to have a lot of questions. Or perhaps caused me to notice certain.. inconsistencies.

One of the biggest issues I've noticed is that a lot of people are simply buying extra groceries, storing them, and rotating as they buy fresher groceries, so that the stored groceries are always relatively fresh. Eating the older stuff before the newer stuff, which makes sense in that way. But here's the thing. If you're one of those people who believes the government is corrupt and trying to dumb us down and control us, if you're one of those who believe the global elite are trying to bring about a New World Order... why would you stock up on all the same foods that those people are promoting to you now? If you believe in this, then you believe that the GMO foods are bad for you, you believe that all the big name processed foods are bad for you, so why would you want to keep eating them after a SHTF event?

Personally, I'm not a fan of most processed stuff, but not because of the conspiracy theories, rather because I believe that the more natural a food is, the better it is for us and our bodies. So, if I'm going to store food for an SHTF event, I'm going to find a way to store natural foods, not canned ravioli, and sugary cereals, and canned vienna sausages. Call me crazy, but it's something to think about.

~Mahalo~

Doesn't Anybody Read?

In having a Facebook account, a Google+ account, and a few of the other myriad social networking accounts available these days, I've come to notice something really annoying: People don't read. In an age when we have more information available to us than ever before, people read less of it than they ever used to. There are exceptions of course, because there are those who will choose the comments section on a FB or G+ post to argue and debate, and show their net prowess. But for the most part, people don't read, and here's what I mean. I'm reading a Google+ posting that had a mathematical equation in it. Something + something - something x zero + something. Now, anyone who remembers even high school mathematics should know the order of mathematical equations. PEDMAS = Parentheses, Exponents, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction. So, in the example I listed, the multiplication comes first. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. So if, for example, the equation were: 5 + 9 - 3 * 0 + 7, you break it down thus; 3 * 0 = 0, leaving us with 5 + 9 - 0 + 7. Now that's where people get mixed up, because most will just do it one step at a time, left to right.  But if you do, your answer will be much different than if you followed PEDMAS. As expected, there were a lot of wrong answers. But then, at one point, a college mathematics student posted and cited PEDMAS, then broke the equation down correctly. Hours later, there were still people giving wrong answers, and explaining why it was right, and with no regard to the PEDMAS post, making it obvious they hadn't even read it. Had they read it, they could have looked that up to see if he was right, and saved themselves the embarassment.

Another example. Today, +Guy Kawasaki shared an article originally posted by Alan Taylor in The Atlantic. The article was about Neil Armstrong, his life and career. This article contains several pictures of Neil, particularly during his NASA career. One of the pictures, the one that was highlighted on +Guy Kawasaki's Google+ share, was of Neil in a Gemini 8 capsule, during training before the Apollo program. Now, the picture wasn't captioned, so I can't fault many people for not realizing that this was not an Apollo capsule. But very early on in the list of comments, it is explained by somebody who went to The Atlantic and read the article, that this was a picture of a Gemini capsule, not an Apollo capsule, and it was not taken upon Neil's return to Earth from the moon. It was also explained that the green colour in the water was not antifreeze, as many +'ers wondered, but locator dye, used by NASA and the USAF to locate the astronauts upon splashdown. One of many methods of location. Yet again, many, many comments after this, people are still talking about it being an Apollo capsule, and antifreeze.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: READ! You'll probably manage to prevent yourself from looking the fool more often than not. Nobody has ever died from being too educated. Foot in mouth disease is as prevalent in type as it is in live speech. Do some research instead of talking out of your ass. It will stand you in good stead, trust me.

~Mahalo~