Archive for the 'Survival' Category

The title of this article is rather broad and audacious, so let’s do what all good engineers would do and set the boundary conditions for the analysis.

All calculations will be approximate given the time invested in this analysis and the purpose thereto.  Some assumptions and engineering judgments will be made due to the lack of independently verified information and data.  This analysis is meant to be brief and the intended audience is both engineers and non-engineers (for educational purposes).  Why am I writing this – out of some sort of ghoulish focus on death?  Well, engineers study the ghoulish consequences of the failures of other engineers as part of our profession.  Consider the fact that most engineers can explain the cause of the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse (if you can’t, you shouldn’t be an engineer), the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure, the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster, and the space shuttle Challenger disaster (where Morton Thiokol was told to take off their engineer hats and put on their manager hats when considering O-ring temperature certification).  This is part of what we do to become better.

Moreover, the public needs to be more aware of things like this.  Every time an individual walks into a building or drives on a bridge, they are entrusting their very lives to engineers.  Let’s say all you do downtown on a given day is walk into a building to use the restroom.  How do you know that the HVAC system won’t kill you?  At the Bellevue-Stratford hotel, the engineers designed the intake air to be in the proximity of the condensation pooling, thus concentrating what is otherwise a fairly innocuous bacteria called Legionella to a finally fatal concentration to the occupants.

We’ll go in a sort of flow of consciousness fashion under headings for purposes of clarity, and rather than clutter the analysis with links, a series of source URLs will be posted at the end.  I will use information from those sources.  Understand that this puts us at the disadvantage of trusting what may be later learned to be erroneous information.

Final Pressure

Computation of the final pressure upon destruction of the vessel is fairly easy, but then fairly complicated, depending upon how precise you want to make it.  Under normal conditions, many mechanical engineers use a simple rule for conversion, i.e., 0.433 psi/ft.  This comes from the STP (standard temperature and pressure) value of 62.4 lbm/ft³ / 144 in²/ft² = 0.433 psi/ft.  So assuming that the vessel imploded at 4000 meters, this converts to 3.28084 ft/m ⋅ 4000 m = 13,123 ft, but we’ll use 13,000 feet.  The pressure at that depth is 13,000 ft ⋅ 0.433 psi/ft = 5629 psi.  This will be seen to be important later.

True enough, this is a simplification.  The assumption of 62.4 lbm/ft³ is at STP, and water becomes more dense down to 39.2 ºF (also, there is a compressibility factor for water to be incorporated).  So as the temperature of the water decreases and the pressure increases, the water will become more dense.  If asked to solve this more precisely, I would use the ASME steam table data and enter it into TableCurve-2D, then use the fit and coefficients it gave me to enter into MathCAD or JupyterLab for integration.  Another option might be just to solve the equations of state.  But the resultant value wouldn’t be much different than the one above.

Hull Fabrication

OceanGate apparently used a mixed composite of carbon and Titanium fibers wound with adhesive to construct the hull.  Whether this is a good design notwithstanding, the vessel had been to approximately this depth before.  Apparently, the assumption was that if it was safely done once, it can be safely done again.  But that doesn’t account for deformation where the crystalline structures slip, discontinuities form along grain boundaries, and you go beyond mere elastic deformation to loss of material strength.  The operations manager wanted NDE (non-destructive examination) to be performed on the hull and viewport (we’ll get to the viewport shortly).  The CEO responded that there was no NDE that could possibly be successful on this design, an assertion I flatly deny.  The chief of operations was fired because of his concerns.

Viewport

From all available sources, it is apparent that the viewport was designed and certified down to a depth of 1300 meters, not 4000 meters.  I have found no information to contradict this.  This was perhaps the largest concern that the operations manager had.  The viewport material is essentially Plexiglas.  He wanted the viewport to be redesigned by the same company to be worthy and certified down to the same depth as the hull, of course, assuming the hull hadn’t sustained plastic deformation.  As the analyst says in the video I embed at the end, this is the most egregious failure of all.  I agree.  I would assess that it’s mostly likely that the catastrophic failure the Titan sustained was caused by the viewport.  It was previously stated by the CEO that each time he descended to that depth, the viewport deformed several inches inward.  Whether that was plastic deformation or not is unknown, but that’s what NDE might have determined.

Construction & Vessel Closure

Videos I have seen showed no concern for FME (foreign material exclusion) during either fabrication of the vessel or closure of the aft end (done externally, I’m assuming, with torquing passes on the bolts).  Foreign material in any of these design materials or in the closure head would of course completely negate any engineering analysis done on the vessel.

NDE

I am not an NDE engineer, but I know a bit about it.  There are many kinds of NDE: visual examination, eddy current testing, acoustic testing, dye penetrant testing, radiograph, ultrasonic testing.  Of these, I would surmise that UST would be effective, and I know for certain that radiograph would be a successful test of the hull, and I assume the viewport (I am less certain on the viewport, but the viewport may be an easier test by other means anyway).  Cobalt-60 is a commonly used radionuclide for radiography.  Grabbing David Kocher, ORNL/NUREG/TM-102, Co-60 emits two photons at 100% yield, 1.173 Mev and 1.332 MeV.  For simplification (so I don’t have to interpolate), we’ll use 1 MeV for our calculations.

Using ANSI/ANS-6.4.3, the mass attenuation coefficient for carbon at 1 MeV is 6.352E-2 cm²/g.  After doing research in which I found that most carbon fibers are being sold at around 1.5 g/cm³ density, I decided to conservatively use 2 g/cm³ to prove my point.  (6.352E-2 cm²/g) ⋅ (2 g/cm³) = μ = Linear Attenuation Coefficient = 0.127 cm(-1).  The hull is approximately 5″ thick ≈ 12.7 cm.  EXP(-0.127 ⋅ 12.7) = 0.1993.  Thus, 20% of the emitted photons would have completely penetrated the hull, and this doesn’t include buildup (in other words, these simple attenuation calculations assume death of the particle at first collision, but there are always follow-on particles).  Yes, there is a better way to do this calculation, i.e., with Monte Carlo transport analysis.  But doing so wouldn’t change the basic point.

Radiography would most certainly have been a successful means of NDE for the vessel.  After all, we perform radiography of pressure vessel nozzle welds in nuclear power plants.  I assess the claim made by OceanGate to be completely false, perhaps due to ignorance, perhaps because they didn’t have any safety culture to speak of.

Thoughts on What Engineering Is and Is Not

It is the solemn duty and responsibility of engineers to protect the safety and health of the public.  There are dishonest and corrupt actors in every profession, of course, but they are to be called out, shunned, and their license revoked.

Designing a vessel that can go to a shipwreck and view the remains may be fun, challenging, and motivating.  Doing it, whether successfully or not, is not engineering.  It’s clear from the words of the CEO himself that he held a low view of both safety and highly experienced analysts.  But it’s precisely those people he needed to hold him and the project accountable to proper engineering principles.

It’s also not engineering if you solve an ODE (ordinary differential equation).  Second year calculus students do this all day, every day, all across the globe.  That’s called mathematics.  Engineers use math a lot, but doing math doesn’t make you an engineer, and certainly not a good one.

If you want to understand the life of an engineer, consider that ODE in a different context.  A client asks you to solve an ODE for him to model a chemical or nuclear system.  To begin with, all equations need input.  Solving symbolically does him no good.  That input might be correct, or it might not be, and might be based on instrumentation that doesn’t have the range it needs, or left in the field in harsh conditions or not inspected and calibrated on regular intervals.  A simple field walkdown of the instrumentation the client is trusting indicates that workers are using impulse lines as ladders to get to valves above the instrument.  The impulse lines are bent or broken.  Thus, the engineer cannot trust that instrument.

The engineer must correct this with the client.  He must ensure that there is a calibration done on regular intervals, and he must also understand whether the inputs he has been given are normal operating conditions or transient conditions, and what happens when the system is not operating as intended.  The system is out of specification.  How does that effect his calculations?  What are the consequences of those out-of-normal operating conditions?

You see, he is responsible for every possible use of the system he’s modeling.  He must make that clear to the client, must document each and every assumption and engineering judgment in his file, and then write a document that, in today’s expectations, looks more like a book with footnotes, references, reference page numbers, and possible use of alternative methods to arrive at his results (if he used forward differencing in EXCEL, what does JupyterLab tell him and how well does it benchmark?).  Did he find errors in his work?  Did he find any computational instability due to numerical stiffness of the equations?  How did he document and display his results?  Can the client use it without confusion, or worse, mistakes and errors that may lead to personnel or equipment safety problems?

Next, on to the PowerPoint presentation of results to the client, along with recommendations for corrective actions, field notes and observations, and statements of liability.  After all, the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse occurred due to deviations the construction company made from the drawings and specifications.  But our engineer knows that the engineering firm was held responsible for not knowing that, and their errors and omissions insurance had to come to the rescue.

Unless there is complete and total traceability of inputs, references, communications, instrument calibrations, SSC (structure, system and component) qualifications and environmental conditions throughout the entire SSC train, no engineering has been done.  I repeat.  Unless these things obtain, engineering has not been done.  Someone is pretending to be an engineer, but he’s not doing engineering.

These are lessons every engineering student learns in their classes all the way through school.  But incorporation of these principles takes time and experience, and rarely if ever have I seen a student fresh out of any school, regardless of pedigree or extent of education, display these attributes.  This approach has to be trained into people.  That’s the value of age and experience.

The CEO had a low view of that, apparently leading to confirmation bias.  Because I’ve done it before, I can do it again.  Chain of SSC qualifications (is the viewport qualified to the same depth as the hull), testing to detect plastic deformation, understanding material fatigue, spending a bit more money to ensure that proper engineering principles have been followed, obtaining fully independent review of his design – these are all things that were apparently not motivating or exciting or inspiring to him.  The fact that this craft had a fairly new design schema doesn’t negate the need for review by experienced engineers – it increases it.  The principles of physics, mathematics and engineering are timeless.

I am not saying that doing any or all of this would have prevented the implosion.  I am saying that this vessel was not “engineered.”  It was fabricated and set to voyage, but it was not engineered.  The company also apparently marketed this vessel as having industry and academic involvement that it didn’t have.

I assess this failure to likely have been preventable, and the company negligent.  Unfortunately, this will probably take its place as a case study alongside other engineering disasters like the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, Union Carbide Bhopal disaster, the Texas A&M bonfire disaster, and the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure.

UPDATE: Source.

New evidence continues to strongly suggest that OceanGate’s submersible, which catastrophically imploded and killed all five passengers on its way to the wreck of the Titanic last week, unfit for the journey.

Arnie Weissman, editor-in-chief of Travel Weekly, initially agreed to join the June expedition, the Washington Post reports, but backed out at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict. A May dive he was supposed to go on also was canceled due to bad weather.

A conversation he had with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush the night before the expedition, however, still haunts him to this day.

According to Weissman, Rush had bought the carbon fiber used to make the Titan “at a big discount from Boeing,” because “it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes.”

In other words, Rush knew that the carbon fiber — which is a very poor choice of material for a deepsea vessel, as many experts have pointed out — already potentially had flaws that could’ve played a role in the Titan’s tragic demise.

It’s yet another indication that Rush and OceanGate cut alarming corners in the development of the sub. In fact, experts had been warning them for years that building such a vessel while dismissing any efforts to have it qualified and tested by experts and regulators is a very bad idea.

Even after his death — Rush himself was on board during last week’s implosion — the CEO’s poor decision-making and rejections of prioritizing safety are starting to come to light.

“I responded right away, saying, ‘Don’t you have any concerns about that?'” Weissman told the WaPo, recalling his conversation about Rush’s decision to use expired carbon fiber for the hull of the Titan. “He was very dismissive and said: ‘No, it’s perfectly fine. Having all these certifications for airplanes is one thing, but the carbon fiber was perfectly sound.'”

Meaning what, exactly?  Certifications for aircraft are fine, but not necessary for sea craft?  Anyway, I don’t know how Boeing (or the manufacturer of the carbon fibers) ascertains a shelf life.  But this exchange goes to show a cavalier and dismissive attitude towards SSC certification and traceability.  I continue to believe the most likely failure point was the viewport, certified as we discussed above down to 1300 meters, or < 2000 psi.  If I was the manufacturer of the viewport, at this point in the warranty I would get very, very precise with my calculations of depth, temperature/density assumptions, and pressure, as well as fold in margin of safety.

UPDATE #2: U.S. Coast Guard Launches Investigation into Titan Submersible Implosion.

The U.S. Coast Guard has announced the launch of an investigation into the implosion of the Titan submersible that killed the five people on board.

The Deseret News reported that the Titan lost communications with the Canadian research ship Polar Prince about an hour and 45 minutes after the dive initially began and that the U.S. Navy heard a potential implosion of the submersible on June 18.

The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation is looking into the case and is set to include officials “from Canada, France and the United Kingdom as they look into what caused the deadly implosion,” according to CBS News.

[ … ]

The Guardian reported that some questions being asked following the incident included questions about “the craft’s experimental design, safety standards and lack of certification” for the submersible.

“My primary goal is to prevent a similar occurrence by making the necessary recommendations to advance the safety of the maritime domain worldwide,” chief investigator Capt. Jason Neubauer said, according to ABC News.

[ … ]

Axios reported that Neubauer said that officials investigating the incident “are taking all proper precautions on site if we are to encounter any human remains.”

No human remains will be found.  Without trying to be ghoulish, the bodies have been incinerated and torn apart.  This is what happens when engineers don’t do their job.  However, this development does expand the potential scope of legal liability for the company, as well as cause pause to consider potential charges depending upon the outcome.

UPDATE #3:

A comment points to this photo.

NEW: photo reveals the monitor in the doomed Titanic sub was *screwed into* the carbon fiber hull… 😳 pic.twitter.com/0mrxf8gTCb

— LeGate🇺🇦 (@williamlegate) June 23, 2023

I would have to know more about how the interior inner lining was attached to the hull before I commented on it.  If there is a compressible barrier (such as cork) and the hull doesn’t sustain a lot of deformation, it’s possible this modification to the lining makes no difference.  However, if the lining becomes essentially an integral part of the hull and is compressed with it, then the screw holes become a “stress concentration point.”  Every mechanical engineer knows about stress concentrations at keys on shafts, teeth on gears, etc., that cause localized stress to degrade the whole structure.  It probably would have been better if the device was never mounted on anything attached to the hull.

I highly recommend these videos.

Source 1

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Source 11

Many more, too numerous to link.

Prior, on ticks and Lyme disease.

Summer is here, and with it, four-legged critters, but they aren’t the only things in the woods that can harm you. The thing about snakes is they can be just about anywhere when it’s warm.

Important factoid: Most snake bites are strikes to the hand; check the area before working or grabbing things.

Source:

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a medical toxicologist and emergency physician at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. I have treated 600+ snakebites and direct one of the busiest snakebite services in the U.S.

I also love snakes and consider myself a member of the herpetology community. And I want to help prevent any bad outcomes (for both humans and snakes) if a snake-human interaction goes awry.

I hate snakes, especially Cotton Mouth Moccasins which can range widely in color and markings.

These are the recommendations for pre-hospital treatment. I will have a different post dealing with hospital management.

Found at the link: Snakebite Management (in hospital) – Pit Vipers.

If you get bitten by a snake you suspect is (or may be) venomous:

1. Get away from the snake. No need to hurt the snake just because you’re angry, and you don’t want to incur additional injury.

 

2. If you (or someone else) can safely and quickly get a picture of the snake, great, but don’t waste time or risk a second envenomation. Ultimately, pit viper (rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths/water moccasins) envenomations are diagnosed clinically. As are coral snake bites, but most people can identify those. Just pray you have a doctor who knows what he or she is doing (see below)

If you can take a picture, you can shoot it first. Just sayin’. Pro tip: birdshot in .410 for a handgun. Outdoor Life lists several options with pros and cons for each. It may be illegal to kill snakes in your area; 3S treatments may apply.

3. Remove constrictive clothing and jewelry

4. Position the affected extremity appropriately. This is a little controversial, but some things are clear. For pit viper bites (which account for > 95% of the venomous snakebites in the U.S.), DO NOT PLACE BELOW HEART LEVEL. Almost all pit viper bites cause local tissue injury, and placing the affected extremity below heart level will cause the venom to collect in the extremity and will increase the hydrostatic pressures in the extremity. This will increase the potential damage to lymphatic vessels and increase the likelihood of some degree of permanent injury, such as post-exertional swelling. For copperhead and cottonmouth bites, in which local tissue is highly likely but the likelihood of systemic toxicity is low, I recommend placing the affected extremity ABOVE HEART LEVEL. In rattlesnake bites, it is reasonable to keep the affected extremity AT HEART LEVEL.These variations are for pre-hospital management. Once in the hospital, the affected extremity should always be elevated. This is emphasized in the unified treatment algorithm.

5. Get to an appropriate hospital. If you are having life-threatening signs and symptoms (e.g. airway issues, low blood pressure) get to the closest hospital for stabilization. They can then transfer you if needed to an expert. Otherwise, proceed directly to a hospital with a snakebite expert. If you interact with snakes a lot or are outside in snake-endemic areas, you should investigate your regional hospitals to locate one or more specialists. I can help you with this. It’s a pretty small community.

6. Avoid dangerous and/or stupid interventions:

• DO NOT cut and suck. All this does is make a wound worse and potentially introduces bacteria into the wound

1. • DO NOT apply a tourniquet. There is no benefit in cutting off an extremity’s arterial blood supply unless the patient is bleeding to death.
   • DO NOT apply any sort of constriction band or pressure immobilization for pit vipers. For the same reason that we do not place the affected extremity below heart level. The American College of Medical Toxicology has a position statement on this.
   • Pressure immobilization IS reasonable for coral snake bites.
   • DO NOT use electrical shock treatment. It does not “neutralize the venom” or whatever nonsense advocates claim. But it is a good way to cause permanent injury.
   • DO NOT apply heat.
   • DO NOT apply PROLONGED icepacks. A few minutes at a time is okay (say, 5 minutes on, 10 minutes off) but prolonged cryotherapy is bad for the tissue.

7. DO NOT use one of those commercially-available suctions devices. They don’t remove venom. They just suck. See the best-titled editorial ever here.Do not bring the snake to the hospital. A dead snake can still envenomate you, and I hate when people kill snakes. And as much as I like snakes, I do acknowledge it becomes a logistical difficulty when someone brings a live snake to the ED. And, as I said before, we don’t need to see the snake to provide appropriate treatment.

I love when people kill snakes.

Wisdom from his son: “Let’s not sleep on a ridge any more.”

Yea, I could have told him that too.  However, I see the alure of the camp site. If he thought there would be no foul weather, it’s easier for him to see what he wants to see and get where he wants to go for hunting from the top of the ridge.

If I’m going to sleep high, I prefer to find a strong patch of evergreens to help block the wind.  Large boulders will do that too.  There were both just down from the ridgeline. But you have to be careful around trees because they can come down on you if there are any dead ones.

The storm starts around 15 minutes.  I’m surprised the tent survived.

Summer is fast approaching and with it four-legged critters become more of a threat to humans but they aren’t the only thing in the woods that can harm you.

In our last article, we discussed general aspects of those tiny but problematic arachnids: ticks. Perhaps the most well-known disease transmitted by ticks is Lyme Disease.

Spring and Fall are seasons that ticks are commonly known to bite humans. The most well-known disease passed by ticks to humans is known as “Lyme disease.” Lyme disease was unknown until about 1975, where it was first diagnosed in the town of Old Lyme, Connecticut. Since then, Lyme has become the most common tick-borne illness in the Northern Hemisphere, so common that May is officially Lyme Disease Awareness Month.

Lyme Disease is caused by the corkscrew-shaped bacterium known as Borrelia burgdorferi. Another species, Borrelia mayonii, has also been shown to also cause the disease. Both are carried by Ixodes scapularis, also known as the blacklegged or deer tick, in the East, upper Midwest, and all the way down south to Texas. The western blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus) can be found all along the Pacific coast. Ticks are responsible for more than Lyme disease; they’re also responsible for transmitting babesiosis, anaplasmosis, and other infections.

In settings where winters are milder and acorns abundant, the population of animals that ticks like to feed upon increases. These include mice, a favorite of baby ticks, and deer, popular targets for adults. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are estimating many tens of thousands of Lyme cases in humans per year (three times the number reported 20 years ago).

One time while hiking, I picked up nine ticks. As I approached a shoulder-high grassy field, I thought better of entering it for several reasons, but the whole hike, something about the place was deeply bothering me. There are places in Tennessee where you should only go if you live there. Even the people who grow up here know that if it seems like a place you shouldn’t be, well, you shouldn’t. I only hiked a bit and stayed on a known trail, but somehow, I was covered in the American Dog Tick (Wood Tick). Nasty creatures, and a very disappointing hike as I wanted to establish knowledge of the area. I entered the area previously from the other end of the trail, went so far, and wanted to see the rest of the route on a single-day venture by entering from the other end. The lesson was, that area would not fit within the purposes I needed; maybe it was a success after all.

The article covers prevention, symptoms, treatments, and other tick-borne diseases.

Friendly reminder post. Some folks have a specific date or event that signal seasonal gear swap and home changes. Depending upon your area, it’s time to inspect and swap items in your car kit/go-bag/get-home bag. Dump the bag(s), and inspect all items. For those items you had a mind to upgrade, do just that, relegating lesser items to backup roles. Swap out cold for warm gear as needed for your specific area/elevation. This may include items other than clothing. Sometimes it can be tricky as some zones still have a snowpack, but it reaches almost 60F during the day.

Do what you want with your firearms gear but doing a semiannual inspection and review is always a good idea. Might as well do it in conjunction with the other stuff.

Know your heart, your family or team, your area, and your gear. If you got fat or lazy this winter, fix that right now!

Here are a couple of videos with quick-hit tips for survival. I like this guy. No muss, no politics, no cussing, straight delivery, seemingly without the desire for a cult of personality around his channel. If he ever did a presentation or event in my area, I’d probably go.

I’m recently back from a business trip and professional conference in Idaho Falls.  At the end of the conference I decided to do a bit of hiking.  I headed up to the Tetons.  Here is one picture of a less snow covered area.

At least the path is worn well enough that it can be seen.  Everyone else turned around a short time after this photo was taken.  I kept going, and seemed to be the only one up there.  On up the trail I passed a really nice Asian dude who talked to me and recommended that I not move forward unless I had AllTrails on my phone.  We happened to have connectivity where we were at the time, and he assisted me in loading it up, downloading maps and getting the right trail (there were some trails with similar names).  Soon I lost connectivity.  It’s a good thing (and providential) that I ran into him.  This was the next scene a few miles further.  The trail had utterly disappeared.  Were it not for AllTrails, I would still be wandering in the Tetons.

The snow was five or six feet deep in places, and while I could make decent progress at times staying on top of the pack, I was “post holing” a lot.  A few times I fell into tree wells and had to claw my way out.  That’s an awful lot of work.  The Asian dude had not only trekking poles, but snow shoes as well.

Also, I’ll comment that with more unenlightened among us sometimes I often have wondered why a man doesn’t just “swim” out of snow (e.g., during an avalanche).  Yea, that’s impossible.  Put your leg into snow hip deep and it’s like cement.

The trail was the Taggart and Bradley Lake trail in the Tetons.  I wasn’t properly prepared for the hike.  I did make it, but not without a slog.  I didn’t pack my trekking poles because I didn’t want the additional space and weight in my luggage.  That was a profoundly stupid decision but I didn’t know at the time that the trails would be in this condition.  Going up there without snow shoes made it very difficult.

The second day I decided to do something a bit tamer and stay closer to Idaho Falls (within about an hour of the city).

The Idaho and Wyoming area is beautiful country for sure.  But the Northwest had a very deep snow pack this year.  Be prepared when you go into the bush.  I wasn’t.  I could have gotten into trouble in the Tetons.

Outdoor Life.

This is an extremely easy to use rock climbing harness that easily carries and supports hunters in a seated position after an arrested fall. The Black Diamond Zone is designed with the idea that users (climbers) are expected to fall in this harness. It is also designed for self-rescue, since rock climbers are often not easily accessible to rescuers. One of the reasons that full-body safety harnesses are recommended often for hunters is that it would be impossible for a hunter to fall out of a full-body harness if all the straps are fastened properly. Properly worn, the rock climbing harness provides almost as much security. Remember that rock climbers, unlike deer hunters, plan to fall and may be in unusual postures when they do so and count on these harnesses for survival.

Although the front attachment of the tether for rock harnesses could get in the way, the big advantage of this attachment point is that self-rescue becomes far easier after an arrested fall. Since this is a “sit” harness, hanging in these harnesses is much more comfortable than the full-body harness. Because you sit in this harness while suspended, unlike hanging in a full-body harness, the risk of suspension trauma is low.

He goes on to discuss traditional fall-arrest harnesses with a lanyard on the back of the system.  Don’t do that.

You’re incapable of self-rescue, and the system will cut the flow of blood to your legs, potentially causing loss of limbs.  Don’t be tethered to your back side.

Do it the right way.  Use rock climbing gear.  Dump the old, traditional ways of doing things.  All you need to purchase is the harness from Black Diamond, a legitimate carabiner, and a tree tether.  Replace the tree tether if it gets worn.

When real potential security threats are present, unless you’ve practice handgun skills extensively and shot in individual or group training scenarios, all of that prior training, though useful to a degree, was done in the abstract. When facing a known potential threat, for the average CCW holder with basic training, additional training must begin immediately. Here are some basic steps to begin.

Pray individually and as a family. Start reading the works of David and about David together. Discuss his reliance on the Lord and his war/defense tactics and strategies. The Lord of Hosts is not a pacifist, so read the Holy Bible in a new light.

And everyone 16 and up read The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker.

Due to that abstraction, I recommend starting back at the beginning with a basic handgun course for husband and wife and any grown children or other adults in the home. Do the training together. This builds a sense of group purpose and team cohesion, helping to know who is capable and to what extent in order to support each other.

Next, at least take intermediate-level handgun training together. The family can take a training progression to the level they feel necessary, all the way to tactical kill-house, vehicle handgun use, scenario training, etc., if desired.

Fourth, while you’re training, you must develop a home security plan. Do regular walkthroughs of your home at night with the lights off to get used to the layout with limited or no light because you must practice your plan with lights on and with lights off. Without practice, you are back in the world of abstraction again. Plus, what’s in one adult’s mind may not be what the other is thinking and planning, which can get you or your children killed. If you have young children, you must involve them; sorry, no exceptions; this must be done. If children are too young to remember and follow instructions to participate, then the plan must include covering them. To lessen the shock to children, you can start with a fire plan, which every household, eh-hem, should already have. Refine these plans as you learn and practice.

There are home-security consultation firms. I have no experience with any, but we’re supposing that quality ranges widely and some prices may be outrageous.

Additional reading for serious-minded adults can include On Killing by Grossman and Left of Bang by Van Horne. These books are not for everybody and are by no means Christian literature.

Source.

Cage spoke to Nicholas Hoult, his co-star in the upcoming film titled “Renfield,” as he told the tale of his bug-eating experience.

“Oh yeah, I ate it twice, because the director did it just to prank me,” Cage said, according to Yahoo. He then gave Hoult some advice about eating bugs on the set of their new film, since his character eats insects to gain superhuman powers. “If you could get rid of your fear, your phobia of eating insects you could solve world starvation,” he said, according to Yahoo.

Cage continued to detail the potential perks that come with eating bugs.

“High protein, no fat, excellent nutrients, abundance — they’re everywhere,” he said. “I mean, why not? But nope. Not gonna happen,” Cage said.

Hunger is caused by theft, laziness, and lack of obedience to God’s laws.  Eating bugs won’t solve any problems.  It will create more.

But at least you know that all of Hollywood is controlled by the WEF and Klaus Schwab.  There is nothing in it for Nicholas Cage to promote bug-eating except for acceptance and money.  To him, that’s reason enough.

Here we discussed Dan Becker’s experience trying to do a rim-to-rim hike of the Grand Canyon in bad conditions (use of snow shoes) while climbing the North Rim.  I was fairly hard on his team mates – they let him down by not stopping him and doing the things they needed to do (hydrate him, get food energy into him, get him rest, and most of all, stopping the physical exertion).

I feel that I was justified to be so hard on his team mates.  Here is another video of the same trip told by Dan himself.  Pay close attention to the 10:57 and 11:46 marks.  He says, “I was having severe chest pains,” and when asked if he was okay, he said an unequivocal “no.”  The rest of the team should have been with him the whole way.  The first sign of a little bit of chest pain should have stopped the entire group.

That’s it for me.  You don’t split up on the trail.  You just don’t.  Medical conditions of team members remain unknown to the rest of the team, you have less protection against predators, and so many other reasons.  Don’t … split … up.  If you’re going slower than you wanted to, tough.  That’s all part of the being on a team.  Deal with it.

Rather than picking up Dan’s backpack, the team should have stopped right then and there to assist Dan and get him healthy again.  I’m willing to bet there would have been no need for rescue if they had done that.