There's no Wal-Mart in the wilderness: A thread on making needful things.

reply to post by NetStorm


Sorry, but it's a case of snake oil. This magic elixer does it all. With a simple dowsing stick you can locate lost objects, water, oil, precious minerals, Vietnamese tunnels, Geopathic Stress, Electromagnetic Disturbance, Psychic Disturbance, Water, Archaeological sites, Food allergies, Flower essences, Vitamins & Minerals and ghosts.
It can be used for checking: Your aura and chakras, medical ailments, curses/psychic attack. Besides the problem of, "Ok they crossed. I wonder what I found. I hope it isn't a food alergy or ghost.", there is the issue that it doesn't seem to work under scientific conditions.

A 1948 study tested 58 dowsers' ability to detect water. None of them was more reliable than chance.[17] A 1979 review examined many controlled studies of dowsing for water, and found that none of them showed better than chance results.18

In a study in Munich 1987-1988 by Hans-Dieter Betz and other scientists, 500 dowsers were initially tested for their "skill" and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them for further tests. Water was pumped through a pipe on the ground floor of a two-story barn. Before each test the pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years the dowsers performed 843 such tests. Of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates at least 37 showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that some dowsers "in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ... a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."[19]

Five years after the Munich study was published, Jim T. Enright, a professor of physiology and a leading skeptic who emphasised correct data analysis procedure, contended that the study's results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and not significant. He believed the experiments provided "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim,"[20] stating that the data analysis was "special, unconventional and customized." Replacing it with "more ordinary analyses,"[21] he noted that the best dowser was on average 4 millimeters out of 10 meters closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.0004%. The study's authors responded, saying "on what grounds could Enright come to entirely different conclusions? Apparently his data analysis was too crude, even illegitimate."[22] The findings of the Munich study were also confirmed in a paper by Dr. S. Ertel,[23] a German psychologist who had previously intervened in the statistical controversy surrounding the "Mars effect", but Enright remained unconvinced.[24]

More recently a study[25] was undertaken in Kassel, Germany under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur Wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) [Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences]. The three-day test of some 30 dowsers involved plastic pipes through which water flow could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried 50 centimeters under a level field, the position of each marked on the surface with a colored strip. The dowsers had to tell whether water was running through each pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100 percent success rate, however the results were no better than chance.

You are , of course, free to believe what you want.

Maybe these websites will come in handy for a few of you.....

These guys offer a medical herb crop
www.everlastingseeds.com...

These guys offer the best deal on 100% Certified to be Open Pollinated, Non Hybrid and Non GMO seeds.
www.survivalistseeds.com...

Bulk Wheat and Mills
www.wheatsales.com...

Reading...
www.backwoodsmanmag.com...
www.rawles.to...

Easiest survival foods: Called the "Big Four" by Tom Brown, Jr,:
Cattails, Acorns (learn how to process to remove tannins - do not eat raw), Pine - Nuts, needle tea, young male pollen anthers, inner bark - YUK!), Grasses - any grass seeds that are not black or purple can be eaten - yes, there are a few poisonous grasses but they are rare).
Greens: Plantain, dandelions, greenbriars, chicory, amaranth, lambs quarters
Protein - earthworms, grubs, beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, ant eggs, minnows, frogs (remove skin), mice and rats.
The inner bark and buds of beech, birch, maple can also be eaten,
As you can see there is always something you can eat though you may not want to.

Pocket chainsaws are very painful on the fingers to operate, Gerber makes a great lightweight retractable saw that is far better.

That's all I have time for now, Good thread Ahabstar.

Well one trick I have learned is to make a fire starter. If you take paper anykind and dip it in candle wax, cut it into small 1x1 squares and take a small piece of wire and wire about 15 together you have a fire brick. It will start easy, doesnt matter if it gets wet, and will burn for about 10 minutes. plenty of time to get the fire going. I have about 30 made up in a plastic container from the dollar store. makes starting a cooking/heating fire easier