This article was written by Chris on Nov. 13, 2012.

What is risk assessment?

Risk assessment is the process of determining the relative probability and consequence of taking an action in response to an event. In risk assessment we are looking at the probability of an event taking place, the actions we take in anticipation of the event, and the consequences of each action if the event does or does not take place.

It is important to include the action “do nothing” as one of the potential actions.

At the end of the risk assessment we will have the ability to look at all of the potential outcomes, the likelihood of each outcome, as well as how acceptable each outcome is.

For any event there is a probability of that event taking place. What is the probability of the power failing tonight for more than an hour? What is the probability of the power failing in the next 6 weeks for more than an hour? What is the probability of power failing sometime in the next 6 months for more than a day?

Each of the above named events has a probability. Where we live, the probability of losing power for more than 5 minutes sometime in the next 12 months is near 100%. The probability of losing power for more than 6 hours sometime in the next 12 months is closer to 40%. These are very rough numbers and are the result of looking at history of power failures in our area. It is also the result of looking at preventive maintenance by the power company in our area.

Identifying an event and assigning the probability of the event happening is the first step in risk assessment.

For each of the above events we can make a list of actions we can take in anticipation of these events. The following are some of the actions we can take in anticipation of a power failure event.

• Do nothing
• Buy and install a full building power backup system (UPS)
• Buy and install a full building power system.
• Buy a portable generator and install a generator feed with switching capability for the building.
• Buy a portable generator and some extra extension cords
• Set aside $500 to buy a portable generator and some extra extension cords if the event takes place.
• Buy extra candles, some oil or Coleman lanterns and a camp stove along with some sleeping bags.

The next step is the hard step. Each of these actions needs to be evaluated in terms of what the consequences are of the event happening or the event not happening for each action.

To put it differently, the event will or will not take place. For each action you have identified, you have to identify the consequences of taking that action if the event does take place as well as if event does not take place.

Here’s a simple example: A standing dead tree will fall on the house. The probability is low. One possible action: I will cut the tree down now so it will fall safely away from the house. The consequence of taking no action and the tree falling is that our house is damaged and maybe somebody is hurt. Also, the contents of our house are likely to be damaged. The consequence of taking no action and the tree NOT falling is that there is no change. The house is still at risk but nothing has happened. The consequence of cutting down the tree is that I have to buck it up and turn the tree into firewood. The consequence of cutting down the tree which would NOT have knocked it over is that I have to buck up the tree and turn it into firewood.

Of the four possible outcomes, 2 are good, 1 is very bad and 1 is no change in condition.

An approaching hurricane changes the probability of the event taking place which changes the risk assessment which led me to go out and cut down the tree.

In the following table we go back to our power outage event and list our actions and the consequences of taking that action if the event takes place and if the event does not take place.

Power Goes Out For 24 Hours
Action	Happens	Does Not Happen
Do nothing	Frozen goods start to melt, no internet, no water pump, no electric heat, no electric fans, no hot water (and maybe more)	Nothing
Install Full Building UPS	Nothing happens. Use up some fuel.	$15,000-$25,000 gone
Install Full Building Backup Power	Power goes out to everything for 3 to 5 minutes	$5,000-$6000 gone
Buy Portable Generator	Power failure to house. Extension cords have to be run. Some items will not have power. All 220V (well pumps, furnace blowers, electric dryer will need special handling or might not work at all. Fuel use will have to be monitored	$200-$1000 gone
Put aside $500	Power goes out. You have to get to a store that still has a generator. Buy generator. Buy gas container. Buy gas. Get generator home and hooked up like above.	Nothing
Get electric free equipment	Computers and internet go down. People gather around the wood fired stove for heat. People go to bed earlier because candles or oil light not bright enough. People talk to each other. Food is cooked over wood or propane stove.	A few hundred dollars are spent on food, candles, an extra tank of propane for the grill.

Setting up a table like this helps us understand the different possible outcomes. We get to see the good side and the bad side of each and how we can evaluate which choices are best for us.

The Complexities

Unfortunately, risk assessment is not a simple process. In fact it is very complex due to interactions between different actions and events.

Let’s consider an example of such an action. It is 9/11/2001 and then-President Bush is informed that four aircraft have been hijacked. He is told that there is actionable intelligence stating that the hijackers are going to fly the aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Capitol Building in DC and the White House.

He has two choices. He can let the events play out and the hijackers MIGHT actually do what is predicted, or he can push the destruct button on the aircraft, causing them to be destroyed instantly with loss of the lives of everybody onboard.

The risk assessment says that there is a 95% chance that 5,000 to 30,000 people will lose their lives if he lets the events unfold.

If he pushes the button there is a 100% chance that 200-400 people will die on those aircraft. Does he push the button? Would you push the button? Could you kill 400 people when nobody might die if you don’t?

The consequences then cascade from there. We know the consequences of those aircraft destroying the World Trade Center buildings. We know the horrible cost in lives lost, in families ripped apart, and of health issues for those that were there. We know how even today we pay the price in freedoms lost when we go to board an aircraft.

What of the consequences if he had pushed the button? He would have gone down in history as a mass murder. “He killed 400 defenseless people!”, “He didn’t KNOW they would have crashed the aircraft into those buildings; everybody knows that hijackers always fly someplace and then demand something.”, “It was all a government plot, there were never any hijackers, he lied and people died!” Those are some of the things that would have been said.

What would never have been said was, “He saved the lives of tens of thousands of people.” Because we would never have known the results of him NOT pushing the button.

One of the real problems with risk assessment is that successful risk assessment means nothing happened. The only visible consequence of the assessment and choosing an action is that there was some cost that a bean counter can see.

Avoiding the “Dead Baby Story”

People react much more strongly to a good emotionally driven story than they do to numbers, logic or reason. A dead baby story is exactly that, a strong, emotionally driven story used get people to make a decision. The decision could be a good one or a poor one but it is impossible to judge due to the nature of it. A poor decision is one made with out regards to fact or logic.

Dead baby stories are used all the time to explain why something should be outlawed or forbidden. “I once heard that somebody put razor blades in apples so don’t ever accept fresh fruit when trick or treating”, “A friend of a friend drowned because she was wearing her seatbelt and couldn’t get free when her car went in the river.” These are examples of “dead baby” stories. In almost all of these stories, something terrible happened to somebody or something, which pulls on the heart strings. However, the probability of the event in question was very, very low.

The reason they are called “Dead Baby Stories” is often the story involves some child being hurt or killed. “You should never have a gun in your house. I read a story where a 2 year old got a hold of his father’s pistol and accidentally killed himself with it.”

One of the real problems with not getting caught up with a dead baby story is that sometimes they are real events with real consequences. There are babies that died because the bathwater was too hot. There are people that died because they couldn’t get out of their seat belts when their car went into the water. These are real events and consequences.

Regardless of whether or not the stories are real, the risk assessment must take into account both the probability of the event taking place and the consequences of that event.

The stories of people dying because of seat belts trapping them in a situation where they had to escape are many. But the analysis has to take into account two different events. The first is, “My car goes into the water and my seat belt does not release.” The probability of this happening is very low but the consequence is high. Total risk, LOW.

On the other hand, the probability of getting into an accident is relatively high. The probability of being injured in an accident if you are NOT wearing your seat belt is even higher. Therefore the risk from wearing your seat belt is much lower than the risk from NOT wearing your seat belt.

Part of the problem with dead baby stories is that sometimes we don’t recognize them as dead baby stories. Sometimes the stories are presented in the news as a “did you know?” with lots of facts about how bad the consequences are. Or how awful the company is for letting this consequence happen.

Sometimes the information is presented in such a way that we want to believe, and our risk assessment goes out the window. BPA might be an example of this. There is some research that shows this chemical might leach into the contents and this leaching might cause issues. But the people that are pushing this research just happen to have been hired by a company which was selling BPA free bottles . . . before BPA was an issue.

So is this a dead baby story being used to sell a product or is it good research that was brought to view by a company who just happens to represent a client that sells BPA free items? Makes you wonder.

Here’s an example from a few years ago. IUDs are one of the safest, most effective forms of birth control available. They have one of the lowest failure rates and one of the lowest side effect rates of any birth control method. For a long time, they were considered dangerous to use and were often ignored in the U.S. However, that is now changing (*Note from Allyson circa 2026: the links Chris had here are long gone, and the info is a decade out of date. Where articles are gone, I’ve just removed the links. Where they still exist, I’ve left them in. Remember these are from 2012.*)

Because the IUD has to be inserted and removed by a medical professional, a woman will not “forget” it. It is not going to have “pinprick” failures. A woman won’t accidental stop taking her birth control pills. An IUD just works.

I’ve had multiple doctors tell me these facts and my research supports their opinions. (Personal contact with multiple obgyns – while the sample size is not large, having all report the same thing leads me to believe that these facts are true).

But then the dead baby stories started. They are based on fact. They really did happen. The Dalkon Shield had a design flaw. The flaw led to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID). PID could cause scaring and adhesions which in turn lead to significant reproductive health issues.

Under the risk assessment, we have a consequence, “PID,” and a probability. Given that there were millions of women using IUDs (160,000,000+ in 2002) but there were only 4,000,000 Dalkon Shields used. Math gives us a 2.5% chance of a woman having a Dalkon Shield if she choose to get an IUD. Of those, only 8% had issues, meaning that the probability of a negative outcome was 0.2%

Looking at the statistics for other birth control methods it is easy to see higher failure rates. But the stories were so horrible of some women being unable to have children after using “an IUD,” or of birth defects “caused” by “a IUD,” that many women stopped choosing IUDs as a form of birth control.

This example of a dead baby story shows a consequence with a horrible outcome (sterilization, birth defects) but a very low probability of occurrence, led women to chose a path with bad outcomes (getting pregnant, headaches, dizziness, spotting, decreased libido, mood swings, interactions with other medications and health conditions) with a much higher probability of one or more of these negative consequences.

I apologize for not having all the citations for this digression. Please feel free to use Google to double-check my information.

Other examples are the outlawing of DDT. There was a very small probability of health issues from DDT. But DDT controlled the mosquitoes which carried a wide range of diseases that killed many more people than DDT ever harmed. In fact there is some research which says outlawing DDT is one of the reasons for such serious health issues in third world countries. Just look at the advertisements asking for netting to protect people from mosquitoes.

Still another example is our airport security procedure. The facts say that the TSA is not preventing terrorists or others from getting weapons on aircraft. Note the “shoe bomber”, “underwear bomber”, and “toner cartridges” were all discovered or stopped by people other than the TSA. The hope that they might just stop one bad guy is worth it to the majority of people, and so they give up vast amounts of personal liberty in exchange for appearance personal protection.

To put a little perspective on dead baby stories affecting our choices, there are 43,600 injuries per year of just children in the bathroom or bath tub and around 140,000 per year over all vs. 165,000 ladder related falls. Yet ladders have all sorts of warnings on them and everybody talks about how dangerous they are. There are even rules that say that people have to use “fall arresting” gear when on ladders, yet almost as many people are hurt in bathroom related accidents every year.

Risk assessment requires separating the probability of an event, from the actions taken in response to that event, from the consequences of those actions in the face of the event happening or not happening. When these parts are not separated it becomes almost impossible to create a good risk assessment.

Just because there is a consequence that is horrific does not mean that avoiding that action is the correct path to choose.

How Event Probability and Consequences Affect the Risk

Risk is the combination of the probability of an event and the consequences of that event taking place in the face of preventative actions. The higher the probability of an event taking place, the higher the risk of from the event, and the higher the consequence from the event, the higher the risk.

When we are doing a risk assessment we are looking at actions we can take prior to the event in order to modify the total risk involved.

To better understand the interrelationship between probability and consequences in determining total risk, we are going to use a simple example of placing a bet. There are only two actions to be considered.

For the purposes of this example we are going to use an event of a coin toss. The coin and toss are “fair” which is to say the coin will land heads up 50% of the time.

Event: The coin will land heads up.

The action will be “placing a bet” on the outcome of the event. In other words we are betting on the coin landing heads up. The second action is “do nothing.”

The consequence is the loss of the amount bet.

Flipping A Fair Coin
Action	Event Happens	Event Does Not Happen
Do Nothing	Nothing	Nothing
Place a Bet	Win Amount of Bet	Lose Amount of Bet

From the table we can see that there are four potential consequences: two neutral, one good, one bad. If we choose not to bet, nothing bad will happen but nothing good will happen either.

If we set the amount of the bet low, say $1, then we can set a “value” to the consequence, “acceptable” and “unacceptable”. If the bet value is low enough then all four outcomes are “acceptable”.

If we raise the amount of the bet to $20, then things start to change. Now we have three results which are acceptable and one that is “unacceptable”. With only two choices we can’t tell how “unacceptable” the bad result is. What we do know is as the size of the bet increases the level of “unacceptable” becomes higher.

Using a scale from 0 to 10 with 0 being totally unacceptable and 10 being acceptable, anything less than 10 is unacceptable to some extent. So to use this in our example, if we are betting $1 then the consequence of losing the bet has a value of 9. On the other hand if we are betting our mortgage payment, the consequence of losing might be a 4. If we were betting our life it is likely that it will have a value of 0 or 1. (For most people the thought of losing the life of a loved one is a 0 while the loss of their own life is about a 1).

We can actually see how people are affected by risk assessments when we watch the same group of people play poker for cash and when they play for tokens with no physical value. People that have nothing to lose (the tokens don’t have value) will bet heavier and on poorer hands than when they are using real cash.

One thing that has to be taken into consideration when these types of risk are calculated is the value assigned to each consequence is very personal. A person with a “fun” budget of a few thousand dollars will assign a consequence value to a $100 bet much differently than a person with a fun budget of only $500.

At this point you should be able to look at our simple example and see how the risk changes based on the consequences. But we can also modify the risk by modifying the probability of an event.

We modify the probability of an event by learning more about an event or by changing the circumstances in which the event might take place.

Taking an example of rock climbing, the probability of a “fall” happening is reduced by increasing the experience of the climber. We can also reduce the probability by changing equipment or conditions in which the climb is taking place.

Here is an example of a set of risk analyses that was performed in the mid 1980s. They bet wrong.

The event will be: A catastrophic failure with loss of lives because of a gasket failure. The probability of gasket failure is set at 0.1% when the temperature is above 32°F. We know the failure rate is higher if the temperature is lower but we don’t know what the actual failure rate will be.

The actions we can take are: Refuse to perform the mission if the temperature is below 32°F. Test to determine the failure rate below 32°F. Perform the mission if the temperature is above 0°F. (The entity in charge had already decided that launch at sub-zero temperatures was unacceptable.)

Catastrophic Failure Of Seal
Action	Event Happens	Event Does Not Happen
Do Nothing	People die, equipment lost, huge PR issue	Procedure continues as is
Refuse Mission	Event can not happen	PR issues, loss of revenue, loss of face, loss of management bonuses
Perform Extra Tests	Same As Do Nothing	Same as Do Nothing

In this case we can see that one of these actions does not actually affect the risk analysis. So why include it? The answer becomes that performing the test gives us a better understanding of the probabilities of the event. Given a better probability, we can make better decisions.

This analysis was actually done for NASA. The actual event was hidden. The event that should have been analyzed was, “Is the probability of seal failure significantly higher at 32°F such that our risk analysis for a mission go decision should be modified?”

Do Tests show different probabilities?
Action	Event Happens	Event Does Not Happen
Do Nothing	Same Probability feed to Primary analysis.	Same probability feed to Primary analysis.
Test Performed	High cost of test, loss of face, potential delay in missions, new better probabilities leading to more mission delays	High cost of test, loss of face, potential delay in mission

In the analysis done it was decided that the cost of doing the testing to determine the probability of failure at low temperatures was prohibitive. Therefore the testing was not done. Therefore the risk assessment stated the same which was it was safe to launch the space shuttle when the temperature was at freezing the night before. Therefore the launch did take place. During the launch a gasket (O-Ring) failed leading to the catastrophic failure of the mission including loss of all lives aboard and the loss of the vehicle as well.

Please note an important aspect of risk analysis is having good information on consequences and probabilities. If you are working from bad data then your assessment is likely to be bad as well.

So far we’ve been modifying the consequences to show how that changes the risk assessment. We can also change the probability of an event taking place in order to increase or decrease the risk involved.

If the probability is modified, the risk is modified. Consider the standard movie leap (see The Day After Tomorrow) where our hero starts to run and then leaps over a chasm, narrowly avoiding falling to his certain death. Yeah, most of the time the leaps are long enough to make an Olympic gold medalist envious, but let’s ignore that for the moment.

The consequence of the leap succeeding changes the risk. If we KNOW the probability of making the leap is 100% then there is nearly no risk. If on the other hand we know there is almost no chance of the hero making the leap then the risk is astronomical.

The movie Executive Decision is an example of the movie maker playing with the audience by presenting the standard, “It would take a super human effort to survive this,” with the audience knowing the hero will survive because he does have top billing and it is very early in the film. Then the hero doesn’t make it. The hero dies. Oh my, what is this movie about now?

The movie maker has taken our innate sense of risk assessment and told us, “yeah, this is impossible. You and I both know it is impossible but the hero can always do the impossible.” In other words the real world probability is near 0% but in the movie world the probability of succeeding has always been 100% so the perceived risk is low. Then the movie maker breaks the rules: “Fooled you! I used real world probabilities. Now you can’t assume that movie probabilities are in effect for this movie.”

So rather than the three probabilities we’ve looked at so far, nearly 100%, 50% and nearly 0%, we can have probabilities anywhere in between. As the probabilities change the risk also changes.

Where you might be willing to “bet on the event” if the probability is “fair” and the consequences are “acceptable” you might decide the odds are against you too much and refuse to bet.

If you know that you are going to lose 100% of the time then it is highly unlikely you will place the bet. On the other hand people will bet on losing odds every single day of the week, knowing the odds are against them.

Would you bet $2 when the odds are 1.8% of winning even $4? Those are pretty bad odds. They say for every $110 you bet you will win $4. But you could do better, you could win $7 but the probability is 0.14% or you’d have to spend $1412 to make $7. Note, math-wise there is a point before you get to the $1412 where you are likely to win something but it is still fairly high and much higher than $7.

But we can really entice you! If you are willing to bet $2 with a probability of 0.013%, I’ll pay you $200. Does that sound like good odds? Most people can look at that and see there is a very low chance of winning the $200 before you’ve spent well over $200.

And here is the kicker, I’ll give you a 0.00002% chance of winning a million dollars or more! And all you have to do is give me your $2. Just remember, you can’t win if you don’t play.

The preceding odds are for “Power Ball Lotto”.

In general, in a “game of luck” the “house” attempts to hide the fact that the game is rigged so over time the house will take in more money than they pay out. The game is not “fair”. The fact that it is not fair is hidden in the payouts. As an example US roulette double zero wheels have a house advantage of 5.26%. Put another way for every $100 bet at roulette the house takes $5.26.

The player doesn’t see that 5.26% house edge, instead they see a pay out of $35 for a dollar bet. If they only bet a single number a 100 times they’ll win big! Unfortunately the house will still take $5.26 of that hundred. The probability of winning is 2.63% the pay out is 35 to 1. 100*35*0.0263=$92.05. The reason this is not exactly $94.74 is because when you win you get your original bet back.

I once read: Lotteries are taxes on people that don’t understand math. What they are actually saying is that people do the risk assessment and are willing to lose $2 or $5 or what ever it is they bet per week.

As the probability changes so does the risk. Often times the actual risk is hidden by the feeling of potential profit. Risk assessment requires looking at both the probability and the consequences. Evaluating either in isolation can lead to serious errors in assessment.

Cascading Consequences

The problem with the simple risk assessment examples given is they do not take into account how a consequence could cascade.

Consider a person placing a $100 bet in order to win $1000. The odds are not good but if he wins then he can pay off his credit card. He has the $100 in his pocket. The consequence is he will lose the $100.

The cascading consequence could be he no longer has enough money to make his mortgage payment. Now instead of being behind on his credit card he is also going to be behind on his mortgage. This happens all the time in casinos. As a matter of fact casinos often are designed to make it easy for a gambler to bet more than they can really acceptably lose.

Cascading consequences occur when the first consequence causes some other consequence, which in turn causes more consequences.

Consider the power outage scenario. Losing power in our household is no big deal. Wood heat and propane grill gives us heat, food and water. But there are bad things that go along with extended loss of power. The largest is that our freezer will start to warm and we might lose some food.

On the other hand if you are on an O₂ generator and the power fails there is no more Oxygen being generated. You need to get the power on or have a secondary source of oxygen.

We do have long power outages where I live. I had a telecommute job. The job required me to be at my desk at 0800 and be available through 1700 to take customer calls and to provide additional technical support to my team. For most people a power outage is not a huge thing. For me it could mean my job.

My risk assessment said that being with out internet access which included my phone service was an unacceptable risk. So we ended up rewiring parts of the house and installing a T1 (type of high speed internet connection). This meant that if there was a power failure in the area we could bring up the computers and the internet with a whole house generator.

But there was another thing that happened. Installing a T1 connection means that the phone company treats a “down connection” exactly the same as if an entire town lost phone service. This means that while my Comcast neighbors were still waiting for service to come back up we’d been up and running for two days. Mean time before repair was about 2 hours.

Of course there was a cost for all of this. We had to invest in the time to rewire the house and we had to pay a premium price for our T1 connection.

In this case the cascading consequence was that I might lose my job if we lost power. And that would be because we lost computers and internet.

Why Are People Concerned About Major Catastrophes?

Or: Why are people worried about what to do after the end of the world as we know it? Simple, because their risk assessment says that it is OK and reasonable to plan for it.

When doing a risk assessment we often find actions which are not bad, which reduce the likelihood of the event or which would mitigate the event if it takes place. By choosing to do the action we have an investment in resources (time and money) but it causes no harm and might prevent a bad consequence.

My daughter shows signs of dyslexia. My wife is a reading specialist. She thinks there is a 90% probability that my daughter has dyslexia. But we do not have a diagnosis of dyslexia.

Because of her training my wife does not want to flatly say my daughter is dyslexic. So we did the risk assessment.

Daughter might have dyslexia (90%)
Action	Event is True	Event is false
Do nothing	Daughter is slow to read, has frustration reading, will have spelling issues.	Nothing
Teach her as if she has dyslexia	Daughter is given the tools to read is not significantly slowed, does not become frustrated, will have coping methods in place for spelling.	Daughter will learn new reading tools, will likely read better and faster, will spell better

When we look at the risk assessment we have one negative consequence which is doing nothing and she is dyslexic. We have one neutral consequence and two positive consequences. Both positive consequences are the result of taking action. Therefore since there is no downside to taking the action we proceed by taking the action.

It does not matter if she does or does not have dyslexia because in either case taking action will cause no harm and will help regardless.

At the end of October 2012 there was a large hurricane which hit the north east states of the U.S. For some people it was a big deal. For others it was “no big deal.” Why the difference?

My adult daughter in Maryland was asking me as the storm was coming ashore if she should stay where she was or evacuate? She was not prepared for either option.

For us, we stopped by the local store to fill up the spare propane tank and get an extra couple of gallons of fuel for the generator. My lady stopped at the store on her way home to pick up eggs.

It was no big deal. We have been preparing for a bad situation. As such this situation was just a minor test of the plans.

A friend of mine has lost her job a couple of times. One time it was for over six months. She was getting some unemployment but not enough to pay all her bills. She paid her bills with that money but they lived on the food she had put away for an emergency.

My parents gave me a hard time a couple of months ago about thinking and planing for major events. My father’s statement was something along the lines of “When we go shopping we always do a check of our pantry first. If we are down to a couple of cans of something then we’ll pick it up but it doesn’t pay to buy more than you are going to need.”

My parents have been preparing all their lives! They are so good at it that they don’t even think about it. They have a few months of food at hand. They might not be happy about the choices but they won’t go hungry if they get snowed in. Their toilet paper supply won’t be exhausted if the snow keeps them home for a week. This is just the way they grew up.

Summary

Risk assessment allows us to make good decisions based on facts and logic, not emotion. These sorts of decisions might hurt people’s feelings but are unlikely to get people harmed or killed.

Risk assessment is a process. It begins with identifying an event. Once an event is identified a set of actions are analyzed by determining the consequences of the event happening or not happening based on the action.

Each consequence or set of consequences for an event action intersection is given an acceptability level. The event is given a probability of happening. The risk of each intersection is the combination of the probability of the event happening or not happening and the acceptability of the consequence.

Consequences have to be evaluated at both the first level and as a sequence of cascading events. (For lack of a nail the shoe was lost, for lack of a shoe the horse was lost, for lack of…)

At times the correct response to a risk assessment is, “We have to have a better determination of the actual probabilities and conditions in which those probabilities hold true.”

It is possible and actually probable that a single action can be used for multiple events. While the worst of those events might never take place, the action you choose to perform in case of that event might very well be the correct action for a multitude of other events whose combined probability is very high.

For a very long time, I have believed that the full and complete answer to the rape problem is to arm every woman, or at least every woman we can convince to be armed and properly trained. Will a few men get shot? Yes. They will get shot, and they will die. Not all of them will be guilty of sexual assault, but regardless, the message would get out.

See, rapists are not smart, usually. They are opportunistic. They’re not motivated by sex, either. They’re motivated by power. Rape is not a sexual assault, it’s a mental one. A ridiculously large number of them are actually cowed by women, hence the need to overpower them and do bad things to them.

The concern about being shot and killed by women would stop those types of rapists.

It wouldn’t stop the crafty ones, nor the kiddy diddlers, but there isn’t much we can do in advance about those.

But yes, for the “normal” rapists, the “everyday” rapists, the rape whistle shown above would be just fine, along with smaller versions.

What it would not help with are the ones who are in it for other reasons than power. It wouldn’t help at all with the few but real number of women who cry rape when it isn’t. And boy, do I have a problem with those women.

I am afraid that this current “Jane Doe” is one of those women. I’m afraid she’s like Mattress Girl.

When I went to evaluate the coverage of the Cornell case, I asked Grok to get me JUST the facts. No news outlets, no media reports. I just wanted the various documents available to the public, that state the facts as presented. And frankly, there really aren’t all that many.

What we do know:

She went to a frat party, was already drunk and likely high when she arrived. This is by her own admission, as well as the observation of many witnesses on record. She then proceeded to agree to a threesome with two men, take ketamine in a large dose, and have sexual relations with those two men for an undetermined amount of time. After that, the original two men left, and other men came in.

At least some of the men in the frat put up an “advert” of sorts, telling their frat brothers that there was a willing woman upstairs. These other men were ones who read the “advert” and joined in what they thought was the fun. Per their statements, they found a woman who was lucid enough to ask them to stop a couple of times while she went and did things, and a couple of times when other men in the room were so drunk they were sick and she was checking on them. They stopped when she asked them to stop. Her own statement to the police, the original one, included this information.

Now, the District Attorney went over all the information in the case, and came to the conclusion that there was no way to win a case where the woman states that for the majority (and maybe all) of the time, she consented to what was going on. That’s just not rape, in anyone’s books.

I am strongly of the opinion that every woman deserves to have at least one person who stands by her, steadfastly believing everything she says. No, I take that back. Every person who says they are a rape victim deserves it, not just women. Even when the facts seem wrong. Even when it sounds like she might be lying or blowing things up. It’s hard enough to report this kind of thing. Having one person who’s your designated *believer* really does help. Even if it ends up that the person wasn’t telling the truth, the other people around them known that should they end up in a bad place, THEY would have someone to believe them.

I am often that person, for a variety of reasons. I’m okay with that. I will hold hands, encourage proper reporting, stand with a woman while she has a rape kit done (and let me tell you, that’s a whole other level of degradation, even if it’s entirely necessary). Someone has to be with her (or him), and I am happy to be that person.

But none of that means that I give up my ability to have independent thoughts. I have stood beside someone who I personally thought was lying. Turns out I was wrong; I was very glad I kept that thought inside my head. Regardless, she needed someone standing by her, and I gave her that. Had she gone to court and lost, had he not confessed when pressed by the police and shown all the evidence as it piled up, I would have asked her eventually if she was sure. It’s a shit question to ask someone, but sometimes it has to be asked. I don’t mind being that person, either.

I think someone needs to take Jane Doe aside, hold her hand, and ask her quietly if this really happened. Because her early statements don’t match her later ones. If there’s a reason for that (and there is ONE thing… she reported rape, and it was not written into her report that way, so that was a wrong-doing on the part of the police), then let me know. Let us know. I’m all for supporting rape victims… but I do so with the understanding that they will work toward being survivors, not victims perpetually. I am entirely wary of women who seem to want to stay the victim.

If Jane Doe had been carrying, I suspect we’d know if she’d been raped. If she had been, one or more of the perpetrators would be dead. Maybe not the first two guys, who she absolutely consented to be with (and later thanked for the fun, though requested not to invite the whole frat next time, which implies a lot). It takes a lot to just out and shoot someone who isn’t sexually assaulting you. Most women who want attention from this kind of thing would never shoot their target, because they wouldn’t get the sympathy and love that they’re aiming for. It’s not a perfect answer, but at least it’s an answer… right?

Sigh…

Someone posted this on the internet. Because someone posted this on the internet, someone else got upset. Why, you may ask, did someone get upset over having the above pointed out?

Well, one person pointed out that they were upset they were alive, that they were homeless, didn’t have a bed, and were hungry. Being told to be grateful for things they didn’t have was wrong.

Another person said that the act of stating, “Be grateful,” is an order, and that in so ordering someone to be grateful, you may as well add “or else” to the end. It’s not a statement of joy, but a threat.

Another said it’s a performance piece designed to anger people so they lash out.

I can’t make this shit up. I can’t EVEN.

If you are reading this, you are alive. Even if you feel like total shit (and if you do, PLEASE reach out, because I’d rather spend hours listening to you talk about your bad day than minutes reading a eulogy at your funeral), you’re alive. You may not have a home, but I’m guessing if you’re reading this then you do. There aren’t a lot of people hanging out in political discussion groups on Facebook or the internet in general who are homeless. But even then… a tent, a car, a van, even a box can be a home if you want or need it to be. I’ve lived in a lot of odd places, and almost all of them were “home” even if only for a short while.

If you’re sleeping, you have a bed. It might not be a good bed, but you have one. Your bed might be made of a park bench, the backseat of a car, or a sleeping bag on the ground, but it’s still a bed. I’d hazard to guess pretty much no one reading this is living hard on the streets, though. That means you have a mattress, with sheets and probably a box spring, pillows, maybe a heating blanket, definitely warm blankets. You have a bed.

You have food. And I’m going to be blunt on this – if you don’t have food, that’s on you. There are so many food banks, church dinners, community soup kitchens, and people just outright offering to feed folks that if you’re going without, it’s your own fault. There, I said it. I’m sure that makes me a horrible person, but I’m only speaking the truth. I think what most people mean when they say they have no food, is that they have no food THEY LIKE, and that is not the same thing. At all. You have food.

Me, I am alive. I’m in a better place (physically, emotionally, mentally) than I have ever been before. I relish being alive, even in stressful moments. I’m alive, and I’m bloody grateful that I am.

I have a home. I actually have several homes, because I’m that blessed. I have my home with my family. I have my home with my boyfriend. I have homes with friends, who’ve made it clear I can show up at any moment, any time of day or night, and there will be all of the other things I need. I am so damn grateful to have a home, and not just a house. My heart lives in my home.

I have a bed. I love my bed. I even got to pick the mattress for this bed, which was awesome. I have a cot, too, my “bed while camping,” and I love it as well. I love all my warm blankies, my heating blanket, my pillows that squish just right. I’m so grateful to have a bed that allows me to get amazing rest and wonderful cuddles. And other stuff. Heh…

I have food. I may not have filet mignon, but I have chicken and ground beef. Heck, in a time of need, I know how to get squirrel and deer and turkey. I have a pantry full of rice, beans, canned meats, pasta. I know how to make bread and have both flour and grains to make flour. I have FOOD, so much food. I’ve spent a lot of time saving up that food. I prepare for times when we don’t have a lot, because that always happens. When it does, it doesn’t slow me down. It just changes some of my recipes. And that’s okay. I’m grateful for the ability to think ahead and plan in advance, and I’m grateful for the food I feed my family.

I am grateful. I have all of the above, plus friends, extended family, neighbors… Things might not go exactly as I want them to, but that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I am a blessed person, grateful for all that I have.

This was written by Chris on Oct. 28, 2012.

Starting A Fire

A Story

Quick story. The other day I wanted to test my shelter skills. It was dark and raining. It had been raining all day long so everything outside was soaked. My goal was to make a fire from my EDC (everyday carry). The tools I actually decided to use were:

• Fire steel
• pocket knife
• Poncho
• Flashlight

I put on my poncho, grabbed my flashlight and headed out. My original intention was to find a standing tree to take tinder from but the fact that my night vision had not recovered made me change my plans. I walked in to the woods near our house and made my way in about 30 yards. There I spotted a fallen birch limb about 8 inches in diameter. Most of the bark was missing but some was still attached.

I tested to see if the attached part was still firmly attached and once I found it was, this is where I started. I knelt down with the front of the poncho under my knee and stripped some of the bark off the log. As soon as a piece was stripped it went under the poncho out of the rain and sat on the poncho in front of my knee keeping it dry.

Once I had a fair bit of the bark, I collected it all by feel and stood up. I walked to the nearest pine tree and broke off some dead wood from the tree, again collecting it under the poncho. By this time I had my hands full so I found a place where I wanted to make the actual fire. If I had intended for the fire to last I would have created a bit more shelter but this was a test of starting a
fire more than keeping it going.

Once I had cleared a small area I knelt down over it and pulled my head into the poncho. I was now inside a shelter. One piece of bark went down onto the ground with the dry inside up and the wetter outside against the ground. This gave me a dry location to build my tinder bed. Another piece of bark was placed dry side up to take the rest of my bark.

Splitting the bark gave me access to the very dry interior of the bark. This paper thin layer was broken up into slivers that were placed into a small pile on the base plate. Once I had a small pile I sorted out my twigs and other pieces from smallest to largest,
including the extra bark.

Once everything was in place I got out my fire steel and got my knife back out. A half dozen attempts and finally a spark caught. The bark pile got a good clean flame. I slowly fed it some more until it was established. At this point I added my twigs. It was
getting a bit warm under the poncho but I wasn’t ready to let the rain fall.

A few moments later I had a good flame with the starter twigs catching. At this point I just stood up using my arms to hold the
poncho out to provide shelter for my fire. If need be I could have built the fire larger. If the fire had been sheltered it would have
kept right on going as it was fed. As it was, I considered it a successful test and carefully put out the fire. Putting my head back in the hood I watched for another five minutes to make sure there were no embers still live and headed on home.

This is one of those things that too many people aren’t “getting” lately.

I do a lot of reenactment. I run into people who will happily tell me that the only “approved fabric” for dresses and waistcoats of colonial New England are (insert fabric choices here). They’ll explain there are 3 acceptable patterns, and no variations may ever be made because it’s not historically correct.

This is absolute poppycock. It’s bullshit with extra fiber. At no point in history have women EVER been content with five fabric choices and 3 acceptable dress patterns. Never. Leaving aside the absurdity of even saying that, it points to a much greater problem… that the people saying it actually believe it.

There is this pervasive outlook among the new “historians” (I use the term quite loosely) today that if you don’t have an extant piece showing the exact (whatever), then it didn’t exist. You can’t prove it, so you can’t say it existed.

That is not how history works. I file that under the scientists and archaeologists who tell me that the little stone carved fat ladies were all goddesses. I’m sure some might have been, but I’m equally sure that some of it was porn, because men are about porn the way women are about dress fabrics.

As a member of a few historical societies, I’ve run into people doing experiential archaeology. This means they are taking the items that were available at the time, and using them in the way we either know they were used or posit they were used, to see if the end result matches what we think we know. The end result of many of these experiments is that we change our views. At one time, we thought dinosaurs were lizards, and now we know they were often bird-like. At one time, we thought medieval clothing was all muddy colored and dark, mostly blacks and browns. Now we know that’s so wrong as to be comical, and that medieval clothing was riotously colorful, loud, and often clashing. It took people DOING in order to figure out how we got to the end point… or to figure out that the end point we thought was there, was not.

I am an amateur historian. I do experiential historical cooking. This means that I play with recipes from various time periods (medieval, Viking, colonial American, etc), and I try to figure out what they were doing. It isn’t always obvious. Redacting a recipe (taking it from “Hew ye thee bef into gobbettes” to “dice your beef into even sized pieces about a half inch in size) includes some science, some art, and a lot of translation. You not only have to know about recipes and cooking in general, you have to know about THAT recipe IN CONTEXT. If a medieval recipe asks for an exotic ingredient, it may mean a number of things, and you have to figure out which one is correct (is it a new ingredient brought by an adventurer? did it arrive on the spice trail? is it a modern recipe wrongly identified as medieval? etc). Nothing about it is easy, and not one part of it can be done without engaging in the actual DOING.

There are a couple of recipes I’ve done that really surprised me. The first is “cucumber mandrang,” which is basically a sort of dilly relish that was eaten as a salad or side during the early part of the 18th century. It contains some fun ingredients, including cayenne pepper, which surprised me. It must have just arrived, because we have no earlier mentions of it as far north as New England. How exciting! The second is “chicken pudding,” which is a left-over chicken quiche, for all intents and purposes. It’s tasty and odd, and a great way to use up leftovers and extra eggs in the spring.

The mandrang surprised me because of the spicing. It’s made with port or sherry, “chayne” (their word for cayenne), and a few other spices, mixed in with finely diced cucumber. It’s refreshing and tasty, and one of the few raw recipes I’ve run across from that early. It’s unusual and delicious, and it has a strong resemblance to crock pickles or refrigerator pickles.

The chicken pudding got me because it looks so odd, has a different name, and yet comes out looking so familiar. It tastes great, though slightly different than you think it will when you see it.

I could never have learned any of the stuff I did without actually trying to make these things. Going by books alone, neither of the recipes I’ve mentioned were all that odd. It was the doing that brought out how amazing they are. I learned so much more by actively doing!

We need to encourage kids in school to begin doing. There are too many who just regurgitate information, because that’s what they’re taught. Spit out test answers on demand, and never learn a thing, and never DO. We need them doing… experiencing… experimenting… and growing.

We need that, too. We need to stop repeating our mistakes.

I have long believed as Heinlein says above, through Lazarus Long. If I had managed to get my life together, I would currently be living off grid where no one could find me. I do not like a society that inspects me when it isn’t required.

And there’s the rub. Voting requires ID to ensure it’s the folks who should be voting who are doing so. And while I *personally* do not have an issue with people coming to the States for a better life, if they assimilate, there are issues with open borders admitting people who have no interest at all in assimilating. We’ve reached a point where the number of people coming in is going to overwhelm our systems, and that means we need to close the doors.

Me personally? I think we should just close the doors. Period. If you’re in, you’re in. If you’re a violent criminal, we’ll find you, prosecute you, and lock you up according to our laws (or give you the choice to self-deport, while informing authorities at the other end of your choice). If your only crime is being here, well, we’ll deal. If you’ve stayed under the radar because you’re living AS an American, I honestly, truly don’t care. You’re not the problem.

America is currently experiencing a downtrend in birth rates. We are losing more people to death than we are replacing them with. There are a number of folks who are upset about that, but I am not one of them. While I’ve no interest in depopulating the country entirely, having a few less million would mean we could feed, house, clothe, and educate the ones who ARE here.

Are there issues with that? Yep. Lots of them, especially with the government in the state it currently is.

This is elder abuse. I called the misuse of Biden as elder abuse. How in the world am I supposed to not say that about Mitch? He’s a frickin’ zombie, guys. And he isn’t the only one.

We have Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): 92, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.): 84, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): 82, Jim Risch (R-Idaho): 81, Angus King (I-Maine): 82 in Congress. We have (R-Ky.): 88 (also the dean of the House), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.): 86, Steny Hoyer (D-Md.): 85, James Clyburn (D-S.C.): 84, and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): 84 in the House. And those are just “the oldest.” There are dozens more who are almost as old.

Why are we pushing the nanny state with all the flock cameras and other devices for watching the citizenry? We’re saying it’s because of illegal aliens, but that’s not what’s being used to catch them. Instead, we’re getting the majority of our illegal aliens out via local law enforcement (fingerprinting at jails goes back to AFIS and other systems, which in turn feed to the Feds, who come pick them up safely at lockup), traffic stops, and other passive means. It’s not through mass surveillance. That’s for you and me, guys.

As people get older, they become aware of their mortality. The more fragile they feel, the more they want to be protected. Hence the cameras. Just in case ol’ Mitch wanders off. Or Maxine takes a cab somewhere and forgets her phone number.

We need to scale back and/or get rid of surveillance, because it affects lawful citizens as much OR MORE than criminals, and lawful citizens don’t need watching, thank you very much. That whole 4th amendment thing. We need to enact term limits and let some younger people in our government. Right now, the Boomers and older are in control and frankly they aren’t functional enough to do the job well. Gen X might be the right age, but we’re just fucking done with everyone’s shit and want you off our lawn. So fine, stick some younger ones in. While not impossible, I doubt they’d cock it up any worse than it currently is.

This past weekend was the timeline event at the Fort at No. 4. We invite reenactors from whatever other time periods who’d like to be there, and we assemble. People who are around the Fort’s era (1700s) are inside the fort, and everyone else is outside. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to be.

See, it rained this weekend. I will conceded that if you lived on the coast, this was a major thing. But over on the Vermont border, up north? No, thank you. This was a non-event storm. It rained, folks. It was just normal autumn rain. But a few of our groups decided they couldn’t make it, which made me sad. I am trying to be understanding, but I’m grumpy. Ah well.

I chose to make one dish for each of the time periods that were (supposed to be) at the event. So I had tons of food planned out, and I did not make all of it. I ran out of steam about 4pm on Saturday, after a LONG day of cooking over the fire. Still, we had much MUCH more food than people to eat it, and everyone waddled off happily afterward.

It was a fairly epic feast, I must say. I did a bunch of medieval, WWII British home guard, and 18th century recipes, and my friends L & J did a bunch of Asian foods for the Vietnam and Korean wars. The only complaint (and I heard it from more than one person) was that there were so many options that even if you only took a spoonful of each thing, you got too full and couldn’t eat everything. LOL…

It was a thoroughly exhausting weekend, but my bread turned out gorgeous, the chicken puddings were spot on, and my apple crisp was pretty tasty! All in all, it was truly worth it. I just wish we’d had more people there. I think we ended up with about 30 or 35 people, all told. But next year we’ll do better!

My summer season is just about over. I have three more events: Jaffrey Fall Fest, Mayflower Days (a modern market that I’m doing a little 18th century corner in), and the Hammond Castle Ren Faire. All of these will be fun! After that, I’ll be transitioning into craft fair season, which does not involve tents, camping gear, or any of the cooking stuff. It’s mostly just sitting at tables, dressed up, talking to folks. Whew. So much easier.

In the background, Chris has been dressing up and interpreting, as well. He’s pretty amazing. 🙂

Keep That Coffee Hot by Scatman Crothers.

This is another song from the Fallout series on Prime. I adore most of the songs they play, but this one really struck the right tone for today. I needed my extra coffee, but I got it all done!

This article was written by Chris on Oct. 29, 2012.

History

The Story of Prometheus¹

Prometheus, who had saved [Deukalin and Pyrrha], looked upon the men and women of the Earth with compassion. Their labor was hard, and they wrought, much to gain little. They were chilled at night in their houses, and the winds that blew in the daytime made the old men and women bend double like a wheel. Prometheus thought to himself that if men and women had the element that only the Gods knew of — the element of fire — they could make for themselves implements for labor, and they could build houses that would keep out the chilling winds, and they could warm themselves at the blaze.

But the Gods had not willed that men should have fire, and to go against the will of the Gods would be impious. Prometheus went against the will of the Gods. He stole fire from the altar of Zeus, and he hid it in a hollow fennel stalk, and he brought it to men.

Men, possessing fire, were then able to hammer iron into tools; they were able to cut down forests with axes, and sow grain where the forests had been. They were able to make houses that the storms could not overthrow, and they were able to warm themselves at the hearth-fires. They had rest from their labor at times. They built cities; they became beings who no longer had their heads and backs bent, but were able to raise their faces even to the Gods.

Zeus spared the men who had now the sacred element of fire. But Prometheus he did not spare. He knew that Prometheus had stolen the fire even from his own altar. And he thought on how he might punish the great Titan for his impiety.

Background

The history of fire goes back before recorded time. We see it in the oldest cave drawings found. We see it in the camps discovered in archaeological digs. Fire has always existed and man put it to use as one of his first tools.

Nobody really knows when humans started to use fire, but we do know some of the things they used fire for. They cooked with it. They used it to heat treat wood. The used it to help clear land. They used it for light and comfort.

Fire really is the oldest tool and it is something we should have with us at all times in some form or another.

What is Fire

Fire is a tool. It has been used by humans for thousands of years. It is used to heat our shelters, cook our food, make our water safe, create tools, make shelter, keep us safe at night, boost our spirits, signal from afar and tell us that all will be well with the world.

If you look at the Rule of Threes, fire has its place in each of the levels. Fire is used in a first aid capacity. It’s used to help create shelter. It is one of the best tools for purifying water. It allows us to cook our food. It gives us hope and turns a camp site or tent into “home.”

Most people think of fire in terms of the cozy campfire. A circle of rocks to keep the fire in bounds, cheery flames leaping and dancing, hot dogs and marshmallow on sticks, good friends talking about ghosts and goblins, all to the sound of crickets… A safe happy place.

Fire is also hidden in the depths of your car engine, or in the breech of a gun, expanding gases to cause the bullet to fire. Fire is in your furnace adding heat to your home. Fire is in the forge of the blacksmith, turning raw metal into tools and weapons. Fire turns rocks of ore into the metal of industry. Fire makes metal soft enough to bend or hard enough to hold an edge.

Fire is our friend, our compatriot, our partner in life. We need to tame it and hold it true to our needs. We must learn to create it, feed it, respect it, and in the end kill it.

Fire is an exothermic reaction which results from the combination of a fuel source, heat and oxygen. It can be as fast as black powder burning or as slow as a lazy campfire. Regardless of where it is and how it was created, fire is a simple process of heat being combined with oxygen and fuel which creates more heat than it consumes.

The process

Warning!! Minor science ahead — but you should still read this.

While we think of wood burning, that isn’t exactly what is happening. Instead, heat is causing the wood to “out-gas.” Wood is made up of C (carbon), H (hydrogen) and O (oxygen) with a chemical formula of C₁₀H₁₅O₇. When it is heated it gives off a gas which is flammable, CH₂O. When this gas is combined with O₂ it reacts to form H₂O (water), CO₂ (Carbon dioxide) and CO (carbon monoxide). 2CO will then combine with O₂ to create still more CO₂. There is a bit more going on but these are the primary reactions.

The reactions above are exothermic, which is to say they give off heat. They give off a LOT of heat. The amount of heat that they give off is enough to cause wood to break down and release still more gases which burn, giving off still more heat.

What this means is that we have to heat up our fuel (wood) to the point where it will out-gas, which in turn burns, which creates still more heat, which causes the reaction to continue. If the heat of the fuel/wood drops below 500°F the wood will stop creating gases which burn. If the temperature never reaches 500°F the wood will not burn at all.

Water is the enemy of fire. Why? Because turning water into steam takes vast amounts of heat. The heat that goes into turning water into steam can’t be used to heat the wood to the point where it will out-gas. Water turns to steam at 212°F which means that most, if not all, of the water must be driven from your wood before it will burn.

If the wood is not dry then even if it is burning, much of the heat that should go to useful work is instead going into driving out the water in the wood near the flames, preparing that wood to burn.

Science here: You will often read the term “work”. “The wood does work”, “the gun powder burns doing work”. “Work” is a technical term in this case and it means “Force applied over distance”. In the case of the gunpowder, the powder burning causes a gas to form and expand (greatly). This causes an increase of pressure behind the bullet. This pressure applies a force to the bullet and causes the bullet to move down the barrel. This is work. This is “mechanical work” (there is also “electrical work” and “thermodynamic work”).

Dry wood works much, much better, giving off a lot more heat than wet/green wood does.

Making Fire “Hotter”

A fire is made hotter by increasing the rate at which the fire burns. The more the wood/fuel out-gases and the faster those gases burn, the hotter the fire.

The means that we need to make sure the fire has all it needs in order to continue the combustion process. As we noted in the science section above, the process requires heat to cause the out-gassing, fuel to provide the gases which will burn, and oxygen to react with the gases.

If any part of those three requirements is missing or is in low supply, the fire will go out or at the very least react (burn) more slowly.

We increase the fuel by adding more. It is that simple. If the fuel is dry then so much the better, but if it is not dry we are lowering the heat of the fire. The more fuel in a given volume, the higher the temperature will be.

But even if we have a large fuel supply with plenty of heat, if there is not enough oxygen getting to the fire, the reaction will slow down and some of the gases will escape without burning. So the question becomes, “how do we add more oxygen to the fire?”

Simple: blow on it.

Normal air at sea level contains about 20% oxygen. The air we exhale contains about 16% oxygen. Therefore we take about 20% of the oxygen out of the air when we breath it in. When we blow on a flame we actually increase the total amount of oxygen that the fire gets as long as we provide more than 20% more “air”.

A bellows does the same thing as blowing but with 20% oxygen instead of 16% oxygen. This makes a bellows better than blowing. A fan or other blower can do the same. As long as the amount of heat taken from the reaction does not cause the fire to die, the addition of air to the fire will cause it to burn hotter.

When I would start a fire in the wood stove in my work shop I would catch a spark in a bed of wood chips. Once the flame was partially established, I used my air compressor to provide air which gently blew into the fire via a blow gun attachment. This extra air was enough to quickly heat the fire to the point where the logs would start to burn. Once that happened there was no more need for the compressed gas. It made starting the wood stove so much faster and easier. You did have to make sure it was clean, though, so you didn’t get a lot of ashes back in your face.

Another way to increase the air flow is to take advantage of the fact that heat rises. As heat rises it pulls air upwards. This creates a low pressure area near the fire. Putting a chimney above a fire increases this up draft and air flow. The better the chimney draws, the more air it pulls into the burn chamber.

If you create a system where the primary place where air enters the system is at the bottom or base of the fire, or even under the actual flames, this will increase the area in which combustion takes place as well as increasing the amount of air being pulled into the system.

If you look at most wood stoves there is a grate that the wood sits on. The fire burns just above the wood. The grate and design of the wood stove allows air to enter from under the wood and then flow upwards through the combustion zone, supplying more oxygen and increasing the speed of reaction.

A hobo stove or rocket stove is designed around this principle. A hobo stove has a series of holes around the bottom of the can. This is where air enters the stove. The fuel fills the bottom third of the stove (mostly twigs and such) and burns very hot. The can acts as a chimney to increase draft. As long as the chimney is not blocked, a hobo stove will burn very efficiently.

A rocket stove is similar to a hobo stove in that air enters through the bottom but it has one other advantage. Fuel is also added at the bottom. The thing that makes a rocket stove a rocket stove is that there are two openings at the base of the stove. A low opening which provides the air supply and a second opening just above which is where fuel is fed in. With the addition of a chimney to increase draw, you again have a very efficient fire.

Steps To Creating Fire

For we simple folk, creating a fire consists of a couple of steps: creating the original spark or ember, getting the spark to ignite the tinder, feeding the tinder into kindling to established a fire, building the fire until it is well established, and using the fire.

Most people will never have to just create the spark. Instead they’ll flick a Bic or light a match or push a button for “electric ignition”. All of these are the “sparks of life” for fire, even if they don’t actually create a spark.

A Bic lighter works by having a liquid fuel under pressure. When a valve is opened the gas on top of the liquid (butane) flows out. Butane is a highly flammable gas. When a spark reaches this fuel, the fuel will ignite. As the gas is flowing out of the lighter, sparks from the flint and wheel flow into the gas stream causing that ignition.

A safety match consists of a temperature sensitive compound on the head of a stick of wood or paper. As the compound is moved across the strike surface the friction causes the strike surface to heat up, releasing red phosphorus which turns to white phosphorus which ignites. This ignition causes the compound of sulfur on the tip of the match to ignite. This in turn causes the match stick to ignite.²

A light-anywhere match just needs a bit of friction in order to create the heat required to ignite the compound on the head. In order to strike a safety match with out a strike surface try sliding it across a piece of glass.

When you don’t have matches or a lighter it is time for something else. The two things most commonly used to create that original spark are either a “flint and steel” or a friction created ember.

Flint and steel have come a long way since they were originally designed, and are now created with a “fire steel,” which is compound that creates very large, very hot sparks. Lots of them.

Embers are created by generating heat and focusing that heat into something that will start to smolder, holding the heat for an extended period of time. Fire bows and fire sticks work this way, as does a magnifying glass.

Once you’ve create the “spark” you will need to carefully transfer that spark to the tinder. The tinder’s job is to catch a spark and create a small flame that can then be used to ignite more fuel.

For a sparking system, the idea is to throw the sparks directly into the tinder (if the tinder is flammable enough) or to throw the sparks into something that will then smolder into an ember.

Once you have an ember, it is transfered into a tinder bundle. The O₂ to the ember is increased until the heat is high enough to cause the tinder to burst into flame. Tinder is chosen for its low flash point and not for long burn times. Therefore you have a very limited amount of time once the tinder bursts into life before the tinder dies out.

Once you have the tinder going, the open flame is either inserted into (normally under) kindling or small kindling is added directly over the tinder. The latter method is used if it would be difficult to get the burning tinder under the kindling.

Kindling is small fuel pieces that will burn easily and therefore rapidly but not as fast as tinder. For example a cotton ball makes good tinder. Take one cotton ball outside and apply a burning match to it. It will light very quickly and burn out in just a few seconds.

During the time that the tinder is burning it must catch the kindling. More fires die at this stage than any other.

Once the small kindling has caught, larger kindling is added until the fire is large enough to ignite your primary fuel source. Your primary fuel source could be small branches, buffalo chips, small or large logs, split logs or a dozen other options. It could even be wood pellets or coal/charcoal.

At this point you have your fire. Unless you do something to put it out, it should continue to burn until the fuel is exhausted. If you have transferred your fire to a stove then you should be able to cook or heat via your stove.

Some Uses of Fire

The two primary uses for fire in a survival situation would be warmth and cooking. Under cooking please include boiling water to make it safe to consume.

A stove is designed to concentrate heat where it will do the most good. An open fire (like a campfire) radiates heat in all directions with most of it going upwards. All the heat that goes up is “wasted”.

A good stove will extract as much heat from the fire as possible. The heat thus extract can be used to cook with or heat with. Even if you don’t have a stove, a campfire can be made more efficient by building a wall of rocks behind it to reflect heat.picture of tracy’s camp fire here.

Always make sure your fire has a way of venting. While smoke is very unpleasant, it is normally obvious enough that people will avoid it. CO (carbon monoxide) is a colorless, odorless gas. If the CO builds up where you are breathing it can kill you.

A fire can also be used to make bowls, cups, pitchers, arrow and spear tips. While it is possible to carve or whittle a pitcher or cup it is very difficult. The time honored method is to place a glowing coal on a piece of wood. The hot coal then chars or might even start burning the wood where it touches.

You take the coal off and place it back in the fire. You then extinguish any flame on your wood and scrape out the charred wood. Repeat as required until you have a bowl or cup or whatever you want.

The term “fire hardened” means that something has been heated in the fire and then cooled rapidly. This is normally applied to metals but it also applies to working wood. If you take a stick and char the tip you can then scrape the char off on a rock or with a knife. Repeat until you have a very nice point. The point you end up with will be harder than what you would get by just whittling.

Place fire in a container that will concentrate the heat, blow air through it and you can heat metal hot enough to work. If you make charcoal or have access to coal you can make a fire that will actually melt metal.

If you can melt metal you can cast it. If you can cast it you can then form it into other tools. While it might not be pleasant you can make a hammer of stone and then heat metal in a forge to make a hammer so that you can then make tongs so you can then make…

Summary

We have three more articles on fire coming. The first covers creating the spark of life for a fire. It will show how to use fire steel, magnifying glass and a fire bow in order to create that first ember. It will also cover creating tinder or gathering it.

The second article will cover how to build the spark into a full fire, either in a stove or in an open fire pit.

Our final article on fire is on non-electric, non-gas stoves. This will cover everything from the simple but effective hobo stove up through a Coleman style camp stoves with stops in between for wood cooks stoves.

Citations

1 PROMETHEUS, Internet Sacred Text Archive 2 How Do Safety Matches Work?

I’ve watched my share of entitled, whiny brats complaining about having to work a job. It’s rough to see, and it implies some less than great parenting, and some HORRID schooling. I don’t think that it’s the majority of kids/young adults, though. But there is definitely a question as to whether people WANT to work anymore.

So the bottom line is that no, no one wants to work 60 hours for 40 hours of pay, or be at work more than home, or spend home time doing work stuff. No one wants to be laid off or fired via an email, or even worse, a text. That’s correct. But the reality is that sometimes, we do HAVE to work 60 hours, regardless of the pay. Sometimes we see the office more than home, because it’s the right thing to do either for your company or your family.

I recently saw an ad on FaceBook asking for people to go to work at a local company. They were desperate for people, they said. The offered $12/hour for skilled employees. Skilled. They had a laundry list of tasks (not standard stuff, either) that each employee would have to be able to do.

If I can get work at McDonald’s for $19/hour, why in heaven’s name would I want to do a SKILLED job for $12/hour?

That’s a bit part of a real problem. The idea that companies want to hire people with university degrees (real ones, not glamorized participation trophy ones) who owe thousands of dollars in school loans, for less than they could make working retail, is just awful. That’s not how companies get employees.

They’ve taken away the perks. I have watched the teacher in my life go from having what we all referred to as “Cadillac insurance” to taking the best insurance offered and still having a $8000 out of pocket pay and not even half of prescriptions. That’s what’s now being called Cadillac insurance. It’s ridiculous.

I’m seeing companies take away paid lunches, paid holidays, paid anything. There are no more Christmas parties or even something as pitiful as a card on your birthday. In fact, a lot of companies are choosing not to have any full time employees at all. After all, why should they? Full time employees have to be given insurance if the company has more than 50 employees. There’s no incentive at all for them to hire full time folks. That leaves people, honest and hardworking people, scrambling to find second or third jobs to be able to afford basic stuff.

I don’t know how we fix this. We could mandate that any company that has full time hours (Walmart, McDonald’s, etc) must hire full time employees to a certain percentage, but I hate mandates. I don’t want to force them to do it because otherwise they fold. I want them to know that doing the right thing means their business gets better. How do we do that? I have no idea.

On the left, of course, mandates are all the rage. They want to make companies do certain things, without taking into account that what works for one company may not work for another. They also lose sight of the fact that companies forced to do things they don’t want to will eventually figure out legal ways around it. They have people for that.

America has also outsourced so much of its work! I have friends who run one of the largest historic tent making companies in the world. They had to email all their customers last week to explain that they can’t get canvas, and therefore can’t take anymore orders for 2026, and maybe not for 2027 either. They have the WORK. People want tents, they’re willing to pay for them, and they’re eager. But if you have no canvas, you can’t make tents.

They used to get their canvas from the Ukraine, because it was cheaper and frankly better made. Slowly, stuff in America became crappy. Why buy crap when you can get better abroad? Well, now we have tariffs, which I still agree with in general, so that canvas out of country is no longer cheaper. That SHOULD mean we get someone here to make canvas, but that’s not happening. And if it was, it would just be spinning up right now, and quality product would not be shipping in time for customers who want tents NOW.

This is, of course, the downside to tariffs. Yes, it can encourage Americans to make and use American goods, and I believe that should be happening. But during this transition period? We’re killing small American companies, the companies Trump wanted to save. At this rate, by the time we’re able to make our own stuff again, we won’t HAVE any small companies left. We’ll be relegated to Wallyworld and its ilk, which bothers me.

There are so many problems with work right now, even in places where folks WANT to work, and badly.