Monday, January 31, 2011

Winter Advisory: Preparing for College Winters

As it is the Beginning of 2011, many areas are experience good ole' Mr. Freeze himself; winter. If you live on campus like i do and your school is in a northern area you may be seeing some bad weather soon or already have. so here are some good tips for you to survive your snow day.


  1. Have a shovel, especially if you have a car. If you don't have one anyway because it may be important to clear away snow for a number of reasons.
  2. Stock food before it gets bad: And now I don't mean just buy ramen, but you should look at some foods that are easy to prepare and possibly don't require cooking, in case of power outage. 
  3. Have some flashlights; I myself have a Dynamo Flashlight for the issue stated above, recently on campus I've had the power go out 4 times in one day.
  4. Charge now not later. Have all the stuff you care about using (Laptop, Tablet, Phone, Ipod, etc) all charged prior to a storm, you may not get another chance.
  5. Fight the boredom. You may be trapped inside, you may have no power or your campus cable may just be out, have ways to keep from getting bored like board games or something. I'm sure as college students you'll find a way to keep things interesting. 
  6. Stay warm. This ones important because if your freezing in your dorm room your putting your self at risk of Hypothermia. Have blankets, wear wool (socks especially, I hate cold feet) and try to block any drafty areas where heat may escape (windows, bathroom vents and doors).
  7. If its a serious blizzard, stay inside. I know two guys who were dumb enough to go out in a serious blizzard, needless to say one broke his arm and had to be driven to the hospital in severe snow at like 1am. Not Fun.
  8. Don't drive if you don't have to, self explanatory. 
  9. Try not to go crazy. During that same blizzard I was trapped with about 8 other people in the same apartment for about a week, over time tensions began to rise between everyone, so if you see it start to happen try to calm people down and defuse the situation before things get ugly.

So that's 9 simple tips to keep things comfortable if your expecting to be snowed in on campus, through personal experience I know that this can make a bad storm into a relaxing snow day.

Photos By:
fancypotato

Real World Scenarios: Riots in Egypt

Most of you out there are probably aware of the current chaos happening in Egypt due to protests against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. From real world event we get a quick glimpse of what social unrest might look like where ever you may be, and what you might encounter. Below is a link to footage from Cairo capturing the violence unfolding.


Cairo Riot Video



From the video you can see exactly what kind of reaction people will have in this scenario. This could easily happen in any country, even now talks of a similar "Internet Kill Switch"  in america are being discussed, this could be your city or neighborhood, will you be ready?

Photos By:
CNN

Monday, January 24, 2011

Goals

So as this is my first time really doing my own blog I plan to try and have a weekly post along with updates on other interesting post. I plan to give advice on school and share my progress and opinions on survival one of my favorite things to learn about.

Intro: Preparing for the End

Survival, our most basic human instinct, though all of us have this will to live few of us actually channel this desire.  To plan to survive is much more difficult then following our instincts but there are people out there who are determined to be prepared. Not just for TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know it) but for everything from minor mayhem to Semester Finals. See I'm a student; the chaos that I hope to survive includes school and societal collapse and in these trying times I think it is paramount to be ready. I know being young I lack some of the experience of seasoned survivalist but I have that drive to learn, and I've spent enough time in College to learn some tricks for making it out alive. So that's my goal, to learn and share the skills needed to survive disaster while sharing my skills to survive school.