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I use zombies as a mythical event, but it could be anything from terrorist attack, pandemic, war, or natural disaster. The techniques that I will present will all be tested by me, and explained in an easy to understand format. I will use the term zombies or zombie attack as a generic term to refer to any disaster that has the potential to take out local infrastructure and force the populace that remains to rely on themselves and not grocery stores, water and power companies,and specifically not on the government to hand out the things they need.

Much of what will be in the zombie section of this blog will be suitable for science experiments. Science is more fun when you add zombies! This will include physics, chemistry, alternative energy, biology and possibly other disciplines!

The zombies have attacked, infrastruture is down, there will be no more cigarette deliveries made.  How will you get your nicotine fix?  I recently started smoking electronic cigarettes, they are composed of a tip which you add a couple drops of nicotine infused oil to, an vaporizer which heats the oil into a vapor, and a battery.  The whole thing looks like a cigarette, smokes like a cigarette and provides nicotine like a cigarette (which helps my legs, I have RLS and PLMD which about 10% of the population has to some degree).

Smoking can also give away your position due to the odor given off, electronic cigarettes give off water vapor so they do not pose the fire hazard, but also they do not have the odor, as a result no one will be attracted to the smell of them, ensuring at least a little bit of safety.  There was an FDA report that came out, it said that some manufacturers (but not all!) contain some potentially bad chemicals, some contain nothing deemed harmful.  Some have twice the normal amount of nicotine, but most are accurately labeled.  The biggest complaint appears to be the flavors, they come in chocolate, cherry, vanilla and more.  The claim is that they only make these flavors to get kids to smoke therefore the entire industry must be banned.  Its insane logic at best.  Electronic cigarettes do not have a tobacco tax since there is no tobacco, they also do not have tar or about 4000 other chemicals that are present in regular cigarettes, while this is still fewer than normal air, things like carbon monoxide are not present which makes it somewhat healthier. (continue reading…)

If you have a thin antenna like the Comet SMA-24 or SMA-503 you may be worried that it will snap off.  Mine look like they will, and a friends did.  Fortunately for my friend it was as he was signing in at a ham fest, so he was able to get a replacement, but he was not happy.

If you are in the field and your antenna breaks you may find that your radio is little more than a paper weight.  By adding a little heat shrink  around the base of the antenna you can dramatically improve its lifespan.

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Tying an antenna is an important part of using the antenna. If you have a wire antenna, whether a roll up dipole or a random wire antenna or some other type of wire antenna you will want to get the antenna off the ground. How you mount it will influence how it operates, as well as how safe it is to use the antenna.
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Many hand held radio antennas are only half of an antenna. They have the whip part, but nothing for a ground plane. Since hand held radios are small devices they usually do not have a good counterpoise to act as a ground plane.  This causes the radios to under perform.  A tiger tail can correct this problem.

This concept can be applied to mobile/base antennas increasing their performance, although most mobile antennas use the vehicle as the counterpoise, the missing half of the antenna, and while on a vehicle you may not see any benefit to using it on those antennas.  This will almost always be required if you mount a mobile antenna on a tripod for portable use or on a balcony or other home structure.  If you attach it to a mobile/base antenna you would do this at the base of the antenna and not at the feedpoint from the radio.

You will need about 10 minutes to make this tiger tail, and it only takes the most basic skills. It is an easy project suitable for people of all ages.
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I have been asked by a few people to explain how you can tell the distance of a transmitter with only a scanner.  I have explained this a few times, and feel that it would be better to write it once more, and then just refer people to this page and be lazy about it

The only thing that you need to determine the distance is a scanner or other radio receiver with a signal strength indicator.  The finer the resolution of the signal strength indicator (or RSSI meter) the more accurate you can be.  While this method is not 100% it will get you fairly close.  If you take samples in a few different locations you can even estimate where the transmitter is to know better where to look.

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If you generate hydrogen with electrolysis, methane from compost, or just need to compress regular air so you can use a divers bell this system will be suitable as both a storage system and a compression system.  When the zombies attack it may not be as simple as hooking up a compressor and filling a cylinder.

This project will utilize some simple physics which will enable you to  store a gas and compress it so you can use it on demand.  It may require some machining skills, unless you find a suitable storage tank that has a drain on it that you can make an air tight seal with.

This is ideal  for flammable gases since it will keep them away from oxygen.  Hydrogen, methane, propane, and many other flammable gases are only flammable when combined with oxygen.  Since the air is about 1/5 oxygen this poses a problem.  This system will separate the gas you want from the oxygen, although it can also be used to store oxygen for your post-zombie medical clinic allowing the hospital to administer pressurized oxygen to people in cardiac or respiratory distress.

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Before I go into any specifics, I would like to cover what it takes to survive.  In the new Discovery TV series “The colony” they did not utilize a list like this, although I think that show is highly scripted and it was by design.  By knowing this list, and following it in your decisions you greatly increase your odds of survival.

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I have seen various survival guides, tv shows, and other things on survival techniques.  Many of them contain incomplete or inaccurate information and some are just dangerous.  In this section I plan on writing simple but effective survival techniques.

I use zombies as a mythical event, but it could be anything from terrorist attack, pandemic, war, or natural disaster.  The techniques that I will present will all be tested by me, and explained in an easy to  understand format.  I will use the term zombies or zombie attack as a generic term to refer to any disaster that has the potential to take out local infrastructure and force the populace that remains to rely on themselves and not grocery stores, water and power companies,and specifically not on the government to hand out the things they need.

Much of what will be in the zombie section of this blog will be suitable for science experiments.  Science is more fun when you add zombies!  This will include physics, chemistry, alternative energy, biology and possibly other disciplines!

(continue reading…)