How to convert a washing machine into a water powered generator - enough...

Sometimes I wish I knew more about electricity...more to the point, how to hook up the odds and ends needed to make things like solar panels, wind, and water (see below) work to charge a battery or run appliances.

As you'll see in the video below, this gentleman has made a very convincing water-powered generator for most of his home. I'm not sure how he's running the water to the apparatus, but it's definitely an interesting (and entertaining) tool!

THE 10 ESSENTIAL ITEMS TO SURVIVE

I like this one primarily because of the British accent (LOL). He does a great job of breaking down the top 10 items you'll want to have with you in a survival situation.

Keep in mind, this is an emergency kit, not necessarily your "bug out bag". This is something you should probably keep in the bottom of your backpack or in the trunk of your car. These are small items that are easy to carry and mutli-functional. Post comments and send me pics of YOUR Survival Bag!

Survival Kit from Off Grid Survival

Have you ever wondered if that new piece of kit is really worth the money? Have you wondered if the gear for which you are shopping will really perform as advertised? I know I certainly have. Being in the military alone makes one almost certainly a "kit junky" of sorts. I can never have a big enough backpack, or enough knives, or the "perfect" GPS gadget. Even after I purchase one, I am forever wondering if the other option might have been a better deal.

Well, for those of you out there who are like me and want to see a consolidated list of survival gear that's been pre-evaluated and categorically ranked, look no further than "Off Grid Survival" - they have a very comprehensive website with tons of great emergency tips and survival tricks....INCLUDING a wonderful list of kit they say they have reviewed and ordered by preference. Check it out!

http://offgridsurvival.com/store/

Emergency / Survival Water Purification

The intro music alone is worth watching the video! Jotting down a little information on those basic necessities. Water, heat/shelter, and food. Practical Survivor (below), details how to make a emergency water purification system for less than $50! Definitely worth trying out.



Here's a link to the inexpensive water filtration website he's talking about:
http://www.monolithic.com/topics/water-filters

How to Start a Fire With an Aluminum Can and a Chocolate Bar

Starting a fire is the ROOT of all aspects of survival. Worried about having the tools with you necessary to start a fire? If you don't have a match, no lighter, or even a striker, all may not be lost!

Did you know you could get one going with just an aluminum can and a chocolate bar?

Check out the video below to see just how to accomplish this amazing feat!



Publishing from overseas at the moment. When I get back, I'll start posting videos like this of myself, showing various survival tips and techniques.

Fossil Hunting in Chesapeake Bay

Went fossil hunting - took a tip off the Internet for a great (albeit Public) fossil site down on the Chesapeake Bay. The Calvert Cliffs State Park is apparently well known for it's fossilized shark teeth, shells, and snails. It was a great trip; there's about a 1.8 mile hike to get to the beach -

Holy beaver damage!

Once I got there, I knew I was going to have my work cut out for me!!

So, I decided I would just sit and have lunch first - eating lunch on the beach in Chesapeake Bay.

Actually found my first tooth right where I was sitting. I sifted through the debris and sand right at my feet and turned up (what I thought was) a Cretoxyrhina (shark) tooth. As it turns out, though, this area is Miocene, not Cretaceous where I'm used to hunting. So these sharks were MUCH younger than anything I've found before.

Actually found a non-shark tooth as well. Some sort of fang (seen on the far right). I have no clue what it might be though!

Had a great variety of shells as well. Much better looking than the cretaceous junk I normally see in the Western Kansas chalk!

Not an extraordinary fossil hunting day, but to paraphrase my friend Tom Caggianno, 'a bad day hunting fossils, is better than any other day!'

More information on the Calvert County exposure - http://www.mgs.md.gov/esic/brochures/sharks.html

The Bison Expedition

My daughter and I went on an expedition out to the west side of the county a few weeks back. She loves exploring and I knew of a spot where I'd found a bison skeleton washing out of the side of a creek. I'd always idly wondered if it was still coming out or if it had been completely washed away, SO we decided to go take a look.

We parked on the side of the road and immediately found some pretty cool bones to look at:



As we started digging around the site, it was pretty apparent this was a medium sized canine. I initially thought it might be a coyote, but, sadly, it turned out to be a dog and at least one puppy. Even more tragic was what appeared to be an old plastic garbage bag deteriorating around the bones. Along with the fact that none of the bones appeared to have been broken (meaning not hit by a car), this implied, in my opinion, the dogs had been stuffed in a garbage bag and dumped on the side of the road. It was an interesting adventure for the daughter unit tho!

After digging on the dog bones for a while, we continued on down to the creek where I'd found the bison bones fifteen years or so ago.

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Of course, there was plenty of flora to go through first in order to GET to the creek bed.

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It was a lot of fun!

...and we even found some fish swimming around (can you see them?).

We found the Bison bones right away. Unfortunately, I had convinced myself that, while I did want to find it, I didn't expect to find it. Thus, I came ill-prepared and had almost nothing with which to dig. SO, we took some good pictures instead. I'll need to get with the property owner if I ever decide I want to go get it.

But wait! It wasn't a waste of a day, not by a long shot. Aside from spending some great quality time with my daughter, we also started finding plenty of bone fragments along the sandy beach (and in the water!).

Our first bone fragment discovery.

Daughter picking up some bone fragments.

Then we started finding some BIG pieces. This is a fragmented bison femur. I'm still not entirely convinced it wasn't harvested because of the type of fracture - it LOOKS like the marrow might have been accessed. It doesn't, however, appear to have been cooked...so who knows? It was pretty exciting though!

So exciting, in fact, that we needed to take a banana break.

After a quick break, we made our BIG find for the day - I don't know that it's necessarily associated with the femur fragment from earlier, but we found the partial, horned skull of a HUGE bison bull.

Daughter checking it out after I pulled it from the creek.

THEN we discovered this Bison skull was actually someone's home! We let him know we were claiming imminent domain on his house and he had to leave.

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What a GREAT expedition! We found plenty of exciting bones around the area, took some pictures of some of the flora in the area, and had a pretty good time throwing rocks into the water too!

Of course, we had to show momma what we found too -

More adventures to come!