The Armageddon Blog

Category: Found on the Internet

  • Found on the Internet: How to Throw a Tomahawk

    Like the article says, it may not necesarily be a very useful skill, but there will be that one time that it could be the difference between life and death and looking back on it you’ll be glad you learned it.

    You’ve probably seen it in countless movies. A mountain man or Indian takes a man down by hurling a tomahawk through the air and sticking it into his enemy’s back. If you’re going to strike a man down, I can’t think of a more badass way to do it than with a tomahawk.

    But contrary to popular belief, Native Americans and mountain men rarely threw their tomahawks, or ‘hawks, during battle. A tomahawk was one of their best hand-to-hand weapons, good for both offensive and defensive moves.  Throwing a tomahawk to kill an enemy, while certainly very cool looking, put considerable distance between the thrower and his very best weapon. Even if a mountain man or Indian warrior killed his target, he was pretty much defenseless while he scurried to retrieve his hawk from his victim’s body.

     

    [How to Throw a Tomahawk Like a Mountain Man] via [The Art of Manliness]

  • Found on the Internet: How to Build the Ultimate Survival Shotgun

    I love love LOVE zombie apocalypse stuff.  Especially when it’s a well thought out experiment in design.  This guest post on The Art of Manliness falls squarely in that category.  Creek Stewart, a survival and preparedness instructor, walks us through the steps of how to modify a shotgun from a single purpose tool into an essential, multi-purpose survival tool:

    I’m fortunate in that I’ve been able to turn my passion into my profession–this being the study of Survival and Preparedness.  I’ve always enjoyed building survival kits of all shapes and sizes.  I enjoy the challenge of fitting lifesaving survival necessities into small compact containers.  I’ve built survival kits using film canisters, candy tins, key-rings, boxes, bottles, tubes, bags and everything in-between.  For this project, I decided to build a survival kit using a shotgun platform–creating the Ultimate Survival Shotgun.  My challenge was that everything had to be included in or on the gun itself–no extra pack items or containers.  Below is what I did as well as the survival logic behind each decision.

    [Arming Yourself for the Zombie Apocalypse: How to Build the Ultimate Survival Shotgun] via [The Art of Manliness]

  • Found on the Internet: How Do I Tell If a Mushroom Is Safe to Eat?

    Clearly, if websites were people, The Armageddon Blog would be good pals with Lifehacker.  Or at least, follow Lifehacker around all the time talking about how great of friends they are while Lifehacker tries to ignore the creepy guy following him around.  Yet again, there’s another article on Lifehacker that is relevant to the interests of this website.  If I’ve drilled one fact over any other on the site, it’s that food is probably the most important thing to your survival.  You’ll be able to scavenge food from houses and stores sometimes, but more frequently as time goes on, you’ll need to rely on nature for sustenance.  Mushrooms are one of the more prevalent foods you’ll find in a forest, but they can be potentially dangerous (more so than any other plant you’ll come across).  So how do you know which ones are safe?  Alan Henry let’s us know a few guidelines for determining this:

    If you spend any time outdoors, you’ve probably seen mushrooms growing under trees or in your yard, but if you’re out camping or just enjoy foraging, here are some ways to tell if the mushroom you’re looking at is edible.

    [How Do I Tell If a Mushroom Is Safe to Eat?] via Lifehacker

     

  • Found on the Internet: Brewing a Cup of Coffee Without a Percolator

    Yet again, Lifehacker shows us an interesting way to do an everyday task in an emergency situation.  This time it’s how to brew an “emergency” cup of coffee.  A first world problem to be sure, but something that could soothe your soul post apocalypse:

    So you’re desperate for a cup of coffee, but you don’t have a coffee maker nearby. If you need to get your caffeine fix as soon as possible, you can hack together a small coffee maker out of just two paper cups and a filter.

    [Brew an Emergency Cup of Coffee with Two Paper Cups and a Filter] via Lifehacker

  • Found on the Internet: Turn a Can Tab into a Fish Hook

    It’s a sad fact, but there are very few places in the world that you can’t find human garbage of some form or another.  The silver lining to this dark cloud is that you can make use of this garbage in a post apocalyptic world.  Over at Instructables, there’s an post on how to turn a can tab into a fish hook.  It’s a simple procedure that only requires tools commonly found on a multi-tool.

    [Turn a Can Tab into a Survival Fish Hook] via Instructables

  • Found on the Internet: CDC Addresses the Zombie Apocalypse

    It’s a been a popular subject for the past few years and the US Center for Disease Control has finally jumped on board.  Writer Ali S. Khan wrote a post on the CDC’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Blog about how to survive during a zombie outbreak:

    The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?”

    Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too!

    [Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse] via CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response Blog

  • Found on the Internet: How to Drive Away From a Tsunami

    While this doesn’t necessarily fall into the niche of avoiding the apocalypse, knowing how to avoid a catastrophic tsunami is certainly a helpful skill to have in The End of Times.  Jalopnik has an excellent article on doing exactly that.

    Using a car to evacuate in the event of a tsunami is NOT RECOMMENDED. If the tsunami is caused by a local earthquake, roads could be cracked and unpassable, or as Newsweek notes, clogged with those trying to escape, as what happened during the Samoan tsunami in September 2009:

    People who could easily have climbed to high ground in the hills behind them chose, instead, to evacuate by car. Many drowned in their cars, which were struck in exodus traffic along narrow coastal roads.

    The third floor or above in a steel-structured concrete building next to the beach is a far safer place to wait out a tsunami than on the way to higher ground in your car.

    But if you’re already in your car, and have no other options, you’ll need to think fast. You only have a few seconds to make moves that’ll increase your odds. Most important, because of the sheer velocity and size of a tsunami, and other cars, debris or people that may be in your way, you likely won’t be able to outrun the water, no matter how fast your car is.

    [How to drive away from a tsunami] via Jalopnik

  • Found on the Internet: Bug Out Bag

    Our first post here at The Armageddon Blog was on Go Bags.  Recently over at the Art of Manliness blog, they’ve done a similar write-up on these emergency kits. 

    

  • Found on the Internet: How to Forecast the Weather

    One thing that flies under everyone’s radar in consideration of the apocalypse is forecasting weather.  You just don’t think about it, or how to do it until you stuck in a downpour with no shelter.  Chris for The Art of Manliness blog gives us exactly what we need to, as he puts it, Forecast the Weather Like Daniel Boone.  From reading clouds to common sayings about weather to reading barometric pressure, its everything you need to know in order to make some basic forecasts about weather.

    Forecast the Weather Like Daniel Boone [via The Art of Manliness]

  • Found on the Internet: Automatically Creating a Vertical Sundial

    Part of the problem with making a sundial is accuracy.  You have to take into account your location, elevation, and in the case of a vertical sundial, the direction its facing.  There are ways to make the calculations (which I’m sure I’ll get into at some point), but now there’s no reason to.  Damia.net  has a web app that interfaces with Google Maps to get most of the information you need to make a sundial, but then does all the calculations for you and generates the sundial.  All you have to do is print it out!  Granted, this tool isn’t helpful at all after the society-destroying event finally occurs and there is no more Internet, but it could be helpful to make one in preparation!

    Create your vertical sundial [Damia.net]