Where will you sleep during the end of the world? Your bed? In your unprotected, above-ground house? Nonsense. Let me tell you of a much better—and vastly more stylish—way to keep on keepin' on when the bottom drops out of human civilization. Here's a fun fact about me: I’m obsessed with the doomsday luxury shelter. Everything about the concept fascinates me. The engineering, the operating logistics, the market, the advertising, the class and culture issues, the psychology of those who buy them, and—most of all—what happens inside if you ever actually have to use one. The luxury … [Read more...]
Non-Toxic Dining for a World Without Donuts
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...]
Robotic Bats and Why Scientists Study Zombies
I’ve got another chaos theory roundup for you because the future keeps futuring faster than I can blog about it. Hope you enjoy. The Robotic Bat I’m in the bat fan club. They hoover up insects, fly like fighter pilots with only sonar to see by, and couldn’t be cuter. But as will eventually happen with every form of living species, scientists have created the robot equivalent. Caltech has a new robotic bat that can mimic bat flight, and it’s pretty impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfwX6X4Nx20 This Wired article offers some fun details. The robot bat is only 3 ounces … [Read more...]
How to Escape a Nuclear Detonation
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...]
What’s in Your 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...]