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You are here: Home / Archives for Skills I Wish I Had

Non-Toxic Dining for a World Without Donuts

March 5, 2017 By Walker McKnight Leave a Comment

A second Revolution Donuts location has opened here in Atlanta. I now live right between the two of them, no more than a three-minute drive to each. I like donuts. Revolution Donuts makes new and magical contributions to the donut genre. It’s a problem. I do have some self-control, but it’s in situations like this—faced with an embarrassment of plenty—that my imagination runs toward the hypothetical opposite. I’ve written about which insects you can eat when civilization stops producing donuts. This time, I decided to go full-toddler diet and learn what non-food items I could eat … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Brain Whimsy, Skills I Wish I Had Tagged With: apocalypse, apocalypse diet, edible batteries, futurism, non-toxic, science fiction, Walker McKnight

How to Escape a Nuclear Detonation

February 1, 2017 By Walker McKnight 2 Comments

nuclear detonation, bicycle

My focus on this blog has primarily been fantasy and sci-fi silliness, so it’s hard to give real advice and have it be taken seriously. But I promise the following is real. That's not to say it's an entirely serious post. I don’t think nukes are about to rain from the sky or that you should start underground bunker drills. However… during a different min-career I pursued (long ago), I sat through many briefings and hearings on the subject. A bit of advice from a RAND group stuck with me, and I thought I’d share—mostly because the physical and social science aspects were so … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Coffee and Chaos Theory, Skills I Wish I Had Tagged With: apocalypse, bicycles, fantasy, nuclear weapons, sci-fi, Walker McKnight, Walking Dead

Meditation: My Quest to Do Nothing

August 30, 2016 By Walker McKnight 4 Comments

A man is crazy without meditation

I have a busy mind. I concede that “busy” isn’t necessarily bad when it comes to brains—they’re designed for it—but there is such a thing as too busy. In any given 10-second period, my brain pings through the following thoughts/images/concepts (or something similar): What will I eat for the rest of the day? The Plaza Theater should play Big Trouble in Little China. Robots that look like turtles. Bread. The global coffee shortage is coming. It can’t really be 2016. Can it? Problems with leadership succession helped bring down the Roman Empire. Robots that look like … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Life Among the Living, Skills I Wish I Had Tagged With: fantasy, meditation, mindfulness, science fiction, Walker McKnight

Treasure Hunting and the Known Unknown

August 25, 2016 By Walker McKnight 3 Comments

The real dangers of treasure hunting.

Treasure hunting: we’ve all thought about dropping everything and pursuing it full time. For me, it was mostly during my Indiana Jones fantasies as a kid. (He was an archaeologist, I know, but I think he managed both.) It’s wonderful to know that bits of the ancient past are still out there, buried underground or tucked behind unbroken walls. They are still finding rooms in Tutankhamun’s tomb—and presumably going inside even though it means death by shaving. I don’t run through the forest playing Indiana Jones anymore (well, rarely). But once a year or so, the story of a new … [Read more...]

Filed Under: History Remix, Skills I Wish I Had Tagged With: archeology, fantasy, science fiction, Staffordshire hoard, treasure hunting, Walker McKnight

What’s in Your Survival Kit?

August 4, 2016 By Walker McKnight 2 Comments

A man is caught without his survival kit

It goes by many names. Survival kit. Go bag. Ok, maybe just the two. But this is what I want: a kit that contains everything a person needs to survive (for a time) without access to modern infrastructure, technology, or emergency services. Something that keeps you alive long enough to get help, if there is such a thing as help to be gotten. I don’t have one, so I’ve decided to make one. A survival kit can save a lost hiker, but I prefer to think of it as a “world-fall-down-go-boom” kit. Aside from societal collapse, I’m not sure what scenario I would use it in. There is no … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Life Among the Living, Skills I Wish I Had Tagged With: apocalypse, fantasy, go bag, John Wiseman, science fiction, survival kit, Walker McKnight

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Walker McKnight writes about worlds of the now, tomorrow, and Other while plotting future crime with his asthmatic house panther, Bullet.
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