Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

www.ted.com

Cleaning polluted soil, creating new insecticides, treating smallpox and even the flu ... in 18 minutes, he doesn't get all the way through his list, but he has plenty of time to blow your mind.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.dailymail.co.uk
www.fungi.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
And Now Mushrooms On Mars!!!

Do you want some good news? Listen to this guy.

Intuitive to most humans, the earth is living, breathing entity. This Ted talk helps to confirm what many a Shaman has understood. Mushrooms are much more then magic!

They may be the secret to making the earth better.

This video is a must see!

www.ted.com
(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 24-5-2008 by whiteraven]

Watch the Ted vid first. Awesome!

en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 24-5-2008 by whiteraven]

this is truly remarkable.

while remarkable, there are some things that could be hazardous.

the part with the mushroom growing out of the ants, well if it can do that to ants, what stops a further evolved strain, etc, from doing the same to humans and the rest of the food chain? it needs to be closely monitored like any other major industry but this offers some incredible opportunities and I hope this thread gets a lot more attention

its too bad he was only shown for a short time speaking about the energy problem

whyfiles.org...

This is a link showing ants who "farm" mushrooms! So there are either certain mushrooms that are good or certain ants who can use fungi. I need to read more on this as it shows a complex symbiotic relationship between insects and fungi.

Also.. certain Fungi are toxic to woodcutting ants, termites yet beneficial to the planet as the Youtube video displayed as well as the TED video.

. Yes, I thought the same thing. You must have seen the ant with the mushroom growing out of it. Cool picture!

I am excited concerning the ability to reclaim dead land with mushrooms. There is some much polluted land in NE Oklahoma which I thought I could maybe introduce the ideas of mushrooms!!

I am in the middle of buying some land upstream from this area near the Illinois River in OK. And I will plant some of the “burlap” mushrooms on my land as well if I end up buying it. It is not polluted but I want to do this just for fun as well as to make the land as healthy as possible.

This is a quote showing how “Mushrooms reclaim the land”

“We conducted experiments in breaking down a diesel spill in Bellingham, Washington. There were four piles of contaminated soil. One pile was treated with bacteria. One was a control pile. One was treated with chemical enzymes. The other pile was treated with our oyster mushroom mycelium.
Our pile produced thousands of pounds of oyster mushrooms, which decontaminated the soil in eight weeks. The mycelium produced extra cellular metabolites that broke down the diesel oil. The mushrooms turn out to be perfectly edible, with no petroleum residues whatsoever. Some of them grew extremely large.
The other piles remained dark, stinky and lifeless, but our pile rebounded with life. The mushrooms sporulated. The spores attracted insects, which laid eggs. Birds came in to eat the larvae. They brought in seeds and plants started to grow. This experiment demonstrates that fungi as primary decomposers can be keystone species that lead to restoration and a proliferation of life in habitats otherwise hostile and lifeless. “
www.bioneers.org...





[edit on 25-5-2008 by whiteraven]

So, as far as insects go I will post some information from the Bioneers website that gives us some idea of how they are using Fungi.
"Mushrooms have led me to a number of inventions, including a nontoxic insecticide. Metarhyzium is a unique group of mold fungi that targets termites and carpenter ants and many other insect species that damage crops and buildings. The pesticide industry has tried to use Metarhyzium spores to kill termites, but these insects aren’t stupid. They can smell the plague and they run away from it.

I thought there must be a better way and I ordered Metarhyzium cultures because we had carpenter ants in our house. I coaxed out the mycelium into a form in which the sporulation is delayed and I found a breakthrough: The very fungus that had repelled the insects after sporulation attracted them before it produced spores. Carpenter ants took pieces of mycelium I grew back into their nests, and two weeks later, they were gone. Our house was protected from reinvasion for four or five years.

The worker ants become little mushroom growers. They spread the mycelium throughout the nest and give it to the queen. After the mushroom produces spores, the ants get sickened with the mycelium and die.

I have received a breakthrough patent to use this form of Metarhyzium against carpenter ants, termites and fire ants. It’s active against any insect with a queen—100,000 to 200,000 species. This could totally revamp the pesticide industry. "

I agree with your concern..yet as we know pesticides are not the answer...maybe mushrooms can help.

One thing that everyone could do is to help to raise awareness of the "Mushroom solution"

Peace WR





[edit on 25-5-2008 by whiteraven]

Great thread, I think this could be used as a wake-up call for all of us, we need to start going back to the very land that kept us safe in the womb of eternal darkness.NATURE.

Funny I was just thinking about frying some nice juicy mushrooms, with prawns and a little bit of lemon.

Starred and Flagged! Thanks for posting this Whiteraven!

Indeed, Mother Earth is a living, aware, biological entity.

Nature holds so many fascinating keys that we have not figured out yet.

Mushrooms are incredible little organisms-They have so many uses, and they almost look "alien" in appearence, which makes their growth fascinating to study as well. A very undervalued little entity IMO...

[edit on 25-5-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

starred and flagged as well.
this is absolutely one of the best threads ever posted here.
thank you for sharing this video find.

i've passed the link to everyone i know that will take the time to watch and digest.
thank you!

reply to post by menguard

Yes..Amen brother!

Mushrooms and knowledge of them is an ancient secret that we are rediscovering.
Another Mushroom Story
I have a friend of mine who was born in Scotland. He had radioactive water pour on him while working as a apprentice in Scotland.

Years later, after he had settled in Canada, he came down with cancer of the mouth, jaw. He went through chemo, radiation and it went into remission.

Soon, though, it returned and they gave him a few months to live. He decided to spend his last months in Costa Rica.

While in Costa Rica he was drinking some beer and fishing by himself. He had wondered a little ways away from his cottage and sat down to rest. He had not caught any fish, and was very fatigued.

As he rested a "indian" came out of the forest. This woke him up and he tried to communicate with the Native Costa Rica guy but of course they spoke different languages. The guy from the forest could see the large scars on my friends neck, face and that my friend was not well.

My friend offered him a beer. The "Native" took the beer and they shared a few moments together as they drank.

The "Native" got up, after the beer and motioned for my buddy to follow him into the jungle which he did.

He came to a "village", more like a campsite, and he was introduced to the Shaman.

The Shaman, after a beer, motioned to show that he saw the scars and that my friend was not healthy.

To make a long story short my friend stayed with the Shaman and his people for about a week. The Shaman had cooked up a brew in a dead, hollowed up tree with mushooms and other "stuff". My friend drank this stuff....
He is now cancer free...this occured about 12 years ago. He has written a book about it but it is not published as of yet.

I have read his book and I speak to him almost every day at our pub "O'Hanlens" here in Canada. He is still in fair health..no cancer..but suffers from the operation that removed part of his throat, mouth, jaw etc.





[edit on 25-5-2008 by whiteraven]

Im glad to see science finally catching back up with the occultist order of things. Druids, shamans, and occultists alike have known for a long time there is much more to mushrooms than meets the naked eye.

Here is an old thread I did when I first came to ATS about Spores, and mushrooms. And the insect types of life that live within them. They are the part of the core being that has built these spores. And they are alive!
Being who I am, this may be a far stetch to some of you so if its not your thing please move along, this can get a bit deep. As I have said for a long time that mushrooms hold many secerts to not only our health, but the universe in general.

Thanks for starting this thread, I hope more people start to open their eyes to the nature of how strange this universe really is. And just how many types of life all function to serve the next higher essence.
In time, humans too will come to serve the greater essence we live within.

I saw this about a week or two ago on TED, I was personally fascinated with the mushrooms' medical properties and it's ability to tackle pollutions.

Speaking of the mushroom medical properties, can anyone link me to that mushroom-medical chart at the 12 min. mark in his TED presentation. I was looking for it, but unfortunately couldn't find it. I'm starting to read up on alternative medicine so it relates to my current interest. lol

reply to post by skyblueff0

I cannot find the chart but here is some medical information.

"Another very promising avenue of our research is the potential of fungal antibiotic compounds to neutralize the dreaded 0157 E. coli bacteria. I discovered that Fomes fomentarius mushroom (the same species found on the famous "iceman" in the Alps) seems to send out anti-bacterial crystalline messenger entities that seek out and disintegrate the E-coli. The creeping mycelium seems to be able to pick up chemical scent trails and to track down and destroy it. There is no cure for E. coli, so this discovery could be very promising. "

Remember the iceman...he knew about the shrooms!

Below is good reading as well......
Some of the fungi I was working with were tested, and, to my surprise, seemed to be effective in the decomposition of some chemical and biological warfare weapons. One of my strains from the old-growth forest actually seemed to be effective in neutralizing highly toxic VX nerve gas. VX is a very potent nerve toxin that Saddam Hussein did use, and once it's put into an environment, that area becomes inhospitable to all vertebrates for hundreds of years. It does not break down. This gives us yet one more argument for saving the old-growth forest: it may be a matter of national defense.

I've also been working with another very promising medicinal species, the turkey tail mushroom, and the Lancet recently published a clinical study using them for treating gastric cancer that got good results. The turkey tail also seems to have potential in breaking down PCBs. That would be remarkable indeed, if the same mushroom turned out to be both medically effective and a powerful cleanser of environmental toxins
also we can reverse damage done by Saddam"

This is truly interesting.

www.bioneers.org...



[edit on 26-5-2008 by whiteraven]

When I first looked at this thread at first I thought it said

"6 ways Mushroom Clouds can save the world"

Odd.

Its true though about the Fungi. Lots of resources could be produced with Fungi.

I'm still wondering about those Mushroom Clouds though.

*Snip*

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[edit on 11/16/2008 by semperfortis]

reply to post by whiteraven


Great thread, starred & flagged. Thanks for posting it,his ideas look to be very promising. Now that's what i like to see something from the earth fixing the earth ! It's always so much better to find remedies that come from the earth compared to anything man made. Seeing something like this makes me feel hopeful again.

The fixes for many of our problems are already surrounding us, just drug companies seem to prefer to sell you ones they make... with sometimes horiffic side effects...

Wicked, the government should just load up some airplanes with some mushrooms and just air drop them all over the world....

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[edit on 11/16/2008 by semperfortis]

I have posted a series of threads on the nature of fungi...

all in all they are one of the most interesting life forms on the planet and among the most chemically complex.

I almost believe the notion that they are actually alien in origin... after all they appear so suddenly in the fossil record.