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Wyoming Considering So-Called “Doomsday Bill”

  • Posted on February 26, 2012 at 4:41 pm

State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.

House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.

The task force would look at the feasibility of Wyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.

Casper Tribune: Wyoming House advances doomsday bill

This may sound like wingnut survivalist paranoia, but this is pretty interesting. Much of the state quite vulnerable to system shocks. Services ranging from food shipping to postal mail processing depend on out of state resources. The state is extremely petroleum dependent, so gas shortages would hit people hard. I’ve been told that although Wyoming produces huge amounts of coal, but is highly dependent on out of state resources for electricity (but I’m not sure that’s true).

Have any other states proposed official bills for state resilience?

See also: Resilient communities with Jeremy O’Leary – the Technoccult Interview

Update: This has already been shot down.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/PIB2eVQrbRA/

Zombie Preparedness Advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  • Posted on May 24, 2011 at 11:00 pm

zombieblog photo4 Zombie Preparedness Advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The federal government agency the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a zombie apocalypse preparedness guide.

For example, here’s what the CDC recommends you have on hand in case of a zombie-related emergency:

  • Water (1 gallon per person per day)
    Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
    Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
    Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
    Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
    Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
    Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
    First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)

CDC: Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

What’s great is that this is the sort of stuff you should keep on hand for any emergency. Great way to make disaster planning fun, CDC!

Update: Here’s a PSA from Oregon Public Health, which as Trevor Blake notes in the comments below “features members of the Portland Occulture secret society.”

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2011/05/25/zombie-preparedness-advice-from-the-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention/

Nassim Taleb Interview on His New Book Anti-Fragility

  • Posted on May 14, 2011 at 3:27 pm

taleb Nassim Taleb Interview on His New Book Anti Fragility

Great new interview with Nassim Taleb by one of his former teachers at Wharton:

Taleb: The events in the Middle East are not black swans. They were predictable to those who know the region well. At most, they were gray swans or perhaps white swans. One of the lessons of “Wild vs. Mild Randomness,” my chapter with Benoit Mandelbrot in your book, is what happens before you go into a period of wild randomness. You will find a long quiet period that is punctuated with absolute total turmoil…. In The Black Swan, I discussed Saudi Arabia as a prime case of the calm before the storm and the Great Moderation [the perceived end of economic volatility due to the creation of 20th century banking laws] in the same breath. I was comparing Italy with Saudi Arabia. Italy is an example of mild randomness in comparison with Saudi Arabia and Syria, which are examples of wild randomness. Italy has had 60 changes in regime in the post-war era, but they are inconsequential…. It is a prime example of noise. It’s very Italian and so it’s elegant noise, but it’s noise nonetheless. In contrast, Saudi Arabia and Syria have had the same regime in place for 40 some years. You may think it is stability, but it’s not. Once you remove the lid, the thing explodes.

The same kind of thing happens in finance. Take the portfolio of banks. The environment seemed very placid — the Great Moderation — and then the thing explodes.

Herring: I would agree that people knew the Middle East was very vulnerable to turmoil because of the demographics, a very young population, and widespread unemployment, the dissatisfaction with the distribution of income and with regimes that were getting geriatric. But knowing how it would unfold and knowing that somebody immolating themselves in a market in Tunisia would lead to this widespread discontent — and we still don’t know how it will end — is a really remarkable occurrence that I think would be very difficult to predict in any way.

Taleb: Definitely, and it actually taught us to try not to predict the catalyst, which is the most foolish thing in the world, but to try to identify areas of vulnerability. [It's] like saying a bridge is fragile. I can’t predict which truck is going to break it, so I have to look at it more in a structural form — what physicists call the percolation approach. You study the terrain. You don’t study the components. You see in finance, we study the random walk. Physicists study percolation. They study the terrain — not a drunk person walking around — but the evolution of the terrain itself. Everything is dynamic. That is percolation.

And then you learn not to try to predict which truck is going to break that bridge. But you just look at bridges and say, “Oh, this bridge doesn’t have a great foundation. This other one does. And this one needs to be reinforced.” We can do a lot with the notion of robustness.

Wharton: Nassim Taleb on Living with Black Swans

(via Chris Arkenberg)

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2011/05/14/nassim-taleb-interview-on-his-new-book-anti-fragility/

Can Vertical Farming Scale?

  • Posted on December 23, 2010 at 10:31 am

Vertical farming

Some researchers, such as Ted Caplow, an environmental engineer and founder of New York Sun Works, a non-profit group, argue that even using renewable energy the numbers do not add up. Between 2006 and 2009 Dr Caplow and his colleagues operated the Science Barge, a floating hydroponic greenhouse moored in Manhattan (it has since moved to Yonkers). “It was to investigate what we could do to grow food in the heart of the city with minimal resource-consumption and maximum resource-efficiency,” says Dr Caplow.

The barge used one-tenth as much water as a comparable field farm. There was no agricultural run-off, and chemical pesticides were replaced with natural predators such as ladybirds. Operating all year round, the barge could grow 20 times more than could have been produced by a field of the same size, says Dr Caplow.

Solar panels and wind turbines on the barge meant that it could produce food with near-zero net carbon emissions. But the greenhouses on the barge were only one storey high, so there was not much need for artificial lighting. As soon as you start trying to stack greenhouses on top of each other you run into problems, says Dr Caplow. Based on his experience with the Science Barge, he has devised a rule of thumb: generating enough electricity using solar panels requires an area about 20 times larger than the area being illuminated. For a skyscraper-sized hydroponic farm, that is clearly impractical. Vertical farming will work only if it makes use of natural light, Dr Caplow concludes.

One idea, developed by Valcent, a vertical-farming firm based in Texas, Vancouver and Cornwall, is to use vertically stacked hydroponic trays that move on rails, to ensure that all plants get an even amount of sunlight. The company already has a 100-square-metre working prototype at Paignton Zoo in Devon, producing rapid-cycle leaf vegetable crops, such as lettuce, for the zoo’s animals. The VerticCrop system (pictured) ensures an even distribution of light and air flow, says Dan Caiger-Smith of Valcent. Using energy equivalent to running a desktop computer for ten hours a day it can produce 500,000 lettuces a year, he says. Growing the same crop in fields would require seven times more energy and up to 20 times more land and water.

But VertiCrop uses multiple layers of stacked trays that operate within a single-storey greenhouse, where natural light enters from above, as well as from the sides. So although this boosts productivity, it doesn’t help with multi-storey vertical farms.

The Economist: Vertical Farming: Does It Really Stack Up

The article suggests that rooftop farming may be a more practical alternative in the near term. Here’s what VertiCrop looks like:

urban farming

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/PYDWWe5m-fc/