November 2023 - Page 5 of 5

Carleigh Fairchild: Discusses Her Time on the TV Show Alone

There’s something primal that stirs within us at the thought of being isolated in a remote place. As social creatures, many of us instinctively shy away from situations that separate us from our fellow humans. Others are drawn to solitude, so that they may more clearly hear their inner voice — a voice that’s often drowned out by the modern-day electronic hum that permeates our lives. The latter individuals typically remain secluded only for a short period of time, before having to return to the social tasks their lives demand. However, there are an elite few who have grappled with not only the physical dangers of the remote wilderness, but also with their own inner demons for months at a time without another human soul to lean on for support. Carleigh Fairchild is one such person.

Since the age of 13, her life has been immersed in wilderness survival and survival skills training. After turning 18, she moved to Washington state to learn primitive skills, and tested herself by successfully solo backpacking 500 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. Having traveled the country honing her skills, she took on one of popular culture’s most difficult survival challenges by becoming a contestant on History Channel’s Alone — not once, but twice.

First, she went to the foothills of the Andes mountains in Patagonia, Argentina, on Season 3. She returned to the show on Season 5, which took place in Mongolia. Today, Carleigh uses her vast experience by teaching others how to reconnect with their surroundings and themselves, much like our not-so-distant ancestors did on a daily basis. We were able to attend a wild edibles class she was teaching at the Georgia Bushcraft Campground near Watkinsville, Georgia, and had the opportunity to sit down with her to learn more about her survival experience and what it was like to survive for 86 days in Patagonia, alone.

Carleigh Fairchild Interview

RECOIL OFFGRID: You started learning wilderness survival skills as a child, what do you feel drew you to that endeavor?

Carleigh Fairchild: My mom started me on the path of learning survival skills when she went to the Tracker School run by Tom Brown Jr. in New Jersey. They have a wide variety of classes. They start with their Standard Course which covers pretty much all of the basics of survival skills, and then there’s more advanced survival skills and tracking classes.

She came home from that and showed me the bow drill kit she had made. It was my first look at making a fire without matches or a lighter. I was fascinated that you could truly rub two sticks together and make a coal. I wanted to learn more. Luckily, I was able to attend a teen summer camp the next year when I was 13 to learn earth skills. I loved the connection the skills brought to me — connection with the earth, connection with my own abilities, and connection with others also passionate about those…

Know Who’s Running the Show

If the key to survival planning is about awareness, then start with becoming aware of the government of your own community.

I don’t know about your town. But in my town, being a team player in local government means ignoring and promoting incompetence and tolerating abusive toxic behavior. If you’re a moron, then this is an easy task. If you are a moron who hates working and just wants to fill a seat and get paid for it and be told how wonderful you are for doing nothing, then this is the place for you. If you cry and complain when told you’re not doing your job and you find sympathy with colleagues and your boss, well then you’ve found the dream job in my county. If your health insurance is furnished through a council member’s company and your health savings account is with another council member’s bank, then it matters not that it’s not a beneficial health plan for you but more about whether these elected officials can benefit from their positions. But you don’t mind, then you get paid for not working and get to enjoy being told how great you are at it. This is the nature of modern local government in many towns, large and small. Replicate this at the national level and it all makes sense. Is this a brutal assessment? You bet it is. But nonetheless, it is pretty accurate.

The Local Club (or Show) is not about competence but rather more about whether or not someone gave a friend or family member a job. If you don’t think the government is rife with nepotism, then you are naïve. Are they capable of doing a good job? That’s not as important as you might think or hope. Are there good people? Of course, just like in every other occupation. Are there too many government positions now? Of course, families grow you know. And they will protect themselves at your expense if you have the audacity to point out any of these things. Maybe they made their money because at some point their parents were intelligent, but as time went on their offspring did not have to work so hard for it and learned to retain the wealth by any means necessary and to the point of obvious stupidity. Maybe some of the local leaders really wanted to make a difference but they were outnumbered. This is where we are now, in America: Suppression of common sense and the promotion of incompetence to protect their own. Like comedian George Carlin said: “It’s a big club and you’re not in it.” And the club is growing.

Why do we allow this? Why isn’t it called out? It’s an old club, even in small towns. You literally must have nothing to lose to be able to call it out, if you’re going to do so, alone. Understand that you could be harassed by law enforcement — a group that is often married to The Club. You may…

EPIC, Consumer Reports Urge National Cyber Director to Consider Consumer Privacy and Promote Prevalent Cybersecurity Practices

On October 31, EPIC and Consumer Reports urged the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) to consider privacy alongside cybersecurity as part of ONCD’s Request for Information on harmonization of cybersecurity regulations, promoting principles such as data minimization. Earlier this year, the White House’s National Cybersecurity Strategy Implementation Plan tasked ONCD with reducing contradictions in cybersecurity regulations. In addition to recommending that ONCD incorporate privacy concepts into its process, the consumer advocacy organizations urged ONCD to immediately begin advancing bare minimum cybersecurity practices that appear in nearly all cybersecurity requirements and best practice standards (rather than wait until the long task of harmonization for multiple regulations and frameworks is fully completed before promoting such fundamental and commonly-accepted information).

EPIC’s and Consumer Reports’ additional recommendations included emphasizing to agencies that companies subject to multiple sets of cybersecurity requirements should comply with the most rigorous requirements and not be permitted to claim compliance with the most rigorous by satisfying the requirements of the least rigorous, that regulated entities are responsible for unregulated third parties whom they give access to their data and systems (e.g. Target is responsible for its HVAC vendor), that permitting companies to self-certify compliance requires enforcement to ensure the certifications are accurate, and that audits should be independent and thorough.

EPIC continues to call on lawmakers across the country to take up the cause of establishing comprehensive privacy protections and to limit harmful data practices and impose data minimization standards. This includes urging regulators to incentivize stronger industry data security practices and to mandate transparency for consumers when breaches do occur.

Introduction to Bodgery. Tools: axe, chisel, bushcraft knife, and handsaw.

Greenwood crafts are essential to the preparedness community. It allows us to create what we need on the move or on homesteads, the things we need to keep going. This is why I have written this article on the practice of bodgery, a sect of greenwood crafts.

Bodger. Though the word is synonymous in the United Kingdom with doing only half a job, it is also known in greenwood crafts circles as someone with great skills in the handling of unseasoned timbers (greenwood), with minimal tools and within the woodland masters of their craft bring forth fabrications of assumed unattainability. Quite simply, a bodger, named after their favourite tool, is someone who crafts using the greenest of timbers while working in a symbiotic relationship with the woodland in which they dabble. That might include the production of chairs and other furniture, gardening tools like dippers or digging sticks, shingles for roof tiles, draw horses as work vises, tables, turned goods using a pole lathe — like cups, bowls, chair legs, and candlestick holders or perhaps even wicker baskets weaved of the thinner twiglings. But that is not the discussion here. We’re talking about the fundamentals of bodgery, and how to start off before embarking on more intricate projects.

The primary distinction between bodgery and bushcraft is rather subtle. Personally, I consider them one in the same. See bodgery involves the study and practice of greenwood crafts, just like bushcraft is. Bushcraft however, is centred around meeting the basic needs of the woodsman, such as crafting tools and shelters to enhance your comfort during your short stay in the woodlands. However, it’s important to note that bushcraft should not be confused with the military’s application of fieldcraft, which focuses on the manipulation and manoeuvrability of the landscape for the easing of military exercises. Whereas bodgery focuses on the longterm production and use of greenwoods crafts, for trade or personal use. Both bushcraft and bodgery producing the ability to create your needs and desires using the materials available in abundance in the outdoors. It should be said that all of the skills discussed in this paper pertain to both the bushcraft and bodgery crowd, as they focus on long-term woodland management for maintaining the woodlands for the following years to come.

Now we have a brief understanding of what bodgery is, we should discuss the primary function. The bodger produces no more product than what the bodger can reproduce. Through a process of woodland management. This means to maintain a woodland to keep a constant supply of workable greenwoods, fire woods and construction timbers. Bring only what you can carry on your back in the woodland and take only what you need. Abundancy is the catalyst for complacency. It is not enough to allow a woodland to re-gain its own supply of usable greenwoods for your crafts projects. Mother nature is an all powerful master, but does not take your needs into consideration. This is why you must actively manage it through…

My dad rescued this shotgun from a pile of captured Nazi weapons destined for destruction – Survival Common Sense Blog

My dad’s shotgun was a handmade drilling he brought home from World War II in Germany.

It’s my personal connection with the last days of WWII.

by Leon Pantenburg

My shotgun generally gets a few looks. The gun was originally my dad’s, and it is a pre-World War II 16-gauge side-by-side drilling, with an 8×57 rifle barrel underneath. It is ornately engraved with hunting scenes, and signed by gunmaker Franz Kettner. (Here is more information about Franz Kettner.) The stock is Circassian walnut burl (I think). The gun shows some honest use and wear.

This pre-World War II drilling was my Iowa pheasant gun.

When I was a kid, the drilling was nothing special. It was my upland gun, and I shot the hell out of it. Iowa farmers, like my dad, use tools, and most considered a gun to be a tool. They were used for putting down injured farm animals, eliminating gophers in the garden, crows that were harassing chickens or the occasional varmint that needed eliminating. Every farmer had a shotgun, and a .22 rifle.

But Iowans are also avid hunters, and shotguns are used for hunting everything from quail to deer. When Dad quit hunting, I used the 16 for hunting pheasants in standing corn. It has tight chokes, and patterns Number 6 shot really well.

Dad never talked about his service, except a story about a Louisiana chicken dinner. But even as a kid, I knew the veterans’ stories were important, and I gathered bits and pieces as I could. Later, as a trained journalist (Iowa State University, class of 1976) and a newspaper editor in Washington D.C., I discovered the national archives, and researched individual unit records.

I also got the letters Dad sent to his sister, Edna. Dad’s letters were, of necessity, devoid of any military specifics. I read them all, and they were mostly about life at Camp Shelby. Once he got to Europe, there weren’t many letters.

He did wryly comment in one letter, that “I captured eight Germans all by myself.” During the last days of the war, many German soldiers, desperate to escape being captured by the Russians, surrendered to the first Americans they came across. But other than that, most letters were folksy tales of training and questions about how folks were doing back home

Dad, at home on leave,before shipping overseas in 1944.

Tracking dad’s service was challenging. He enlisted in the Army in 1941, and trained troops at Camp Shelby, MS. He was sent to Europe shortly after D Day as a Military Policeman. He was in Patton’s Third Army that went to the relief of the besieged city Bastogne, Belguim.

Then he got transferred to a motor transportation group, where he escorted supply convoys, and was finally promoted to Captain and company commander of a…

Read the rest here