The Middle East "Peace Process" Is Not About Peace

I have occasionally visited Sultan Knish, a blog by Daniel Greenfield.  Tonight I ended up there and find a post that made me reflect deeply on the whole "Peace Process".  "We Won't Let Terrorism Stop Us From Appeasing the Terrorists". 

The media however doesn't think much of it, with multiple stories arguing that Netanyahu really doesn't want peace. Time Magazine took it further with a cover story arguing that Israel Doesn't Want Peace. Which is an inevitable assumption given that over the last two decades, Israel has turned over territory, weapons, houses, factories and cold hard cash to the terrorists. In exchange the terrorists have occasionally agreed to show up at the negotiating table, denounce Israel and demand more-- in between calling for a Jihad. Clearly Israel doesn't want peace.

Worth your time.

Photo from Sultan Knish

Yes, the photo is from Sultan Knish, but not from the posting I link to above.  You'll just have to go read this, too!

Labor Day 2010

Like most workers who get paid holidays, I'm enjoying a day off.  I realize this doesn't apply to those who are working in hospitals, police cruisers, or other jobs that simply must be manned 24/7/365, and I thank you.  Long ago and far away, I worked as an ER nurse's aide; I understand.  It rained all afternoon, but the pork butts were smoked yesterday, so it was a lazy day here at the castle. 

Back on topic, Denninger (whom I probably link to more than anyone) has posted a must read essay, called "Why Do You Labor?". 

Denninger does a good job of addressing the corruption in the highest levels of the government/banking cabal, and it got me thinking.  Is the US a police state?  What's your definition of a police state?  Wikipedia might be only occasionally useful, but they are probably worthwhile for simple definitions. 

The term police state describes a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive.

The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.^[1]

Is there totalitarianism?  How about when large percentages of voters oppose government healthcare or car company bailouts, and they do it anyway - then insist you be "reeducated" about how wonderful it is?  How about when the government breaks all the rules of transactions for corporate bonds and  gets away with it? 

Is there social control?  How about when the Department of Justice, ordered by the Attorney General of the United States, decides to not prosecute blatantly criminal actions based solely on whether the offenders are a preferred minority?  (are we not all a minority, depending on how far down in our classifications we want to go?)

Is your mobility restricted?  Ever been stopped at random by police, or because you met some profile?  Around here, a local sheriff used to fund his department by stopping cars and checking for cash.  If you have cash, you must be a drug dealer, therefore it's their money to seize.  The only arguments appeared to be whether they were profiling minorities.  The argument that we should have a right to carry cash if we so want seems to have never been considered.    

Is your freedom to express political or other views restricted?  How about if the Speaker of the House, the third person in the line of succession should the President and Vice President be killed or incapacitated, thinks you should be investigated if you suggest a mosque should not be built at ground zero - in other words, use your first amendment rights?   

"I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded. How is this being ginned up..."

How about when the FCC's "Diversity Czar" says

"...my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.
"[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."

Are you subject to police monitoring?  Police UAVs are hot-selling surveillance item. When questioned about FAA laws that forbid overflying residential areas at less than 500 feet, a local officer responded they were exempt because they were LEOs.  Have you been a victim of a botched SWAT raid?  Perhaps a wrong address, or the result of an informant saying anything to get some credits, and had your dog shot?  Perhaps the BATF raided you and, unable to find anything wrong, stomped on your kitten and killed it? (or here )   

In a case which is widely known among the gun community, but which has been ignored by the national press, except for the Washington Times, the home of gun show promoters Harry and Theresa Lamplugh was raided by BATF in 1994. At least fifteen BATF agents, armed with machine guns, burst into the Lamplugh's home one morning. Mr. Lamplugh asked the men, most of whom were not wearing uniforms, if they had a warrant. "Shut the f___ up mother f___er; do you want more trouble than you already have?" they responded, sticking a machine gun in his face.

Over the next six and half hours, BATF agents demolished the home, refused to let the Lamplughs get dressed, held a pizza party, killed three house cats (including a Manx kitten which was stomped to death), scattered Mr. Lamplugh's cancer pills all over the floor, and carted off over eighteen thousand dollars worth of the Lamplughs' property, plus their medical records. Nearly a year later, the government has neither filed any criminal charges, nor returned any property, even the medical records. (119)

Denninger's point is that the only way to shut down the corrupt, emerging police state is to starve the beast.  He is, in effect, calling for a national strike.  He says,

Why do you willingly get up and make effort to feed your family and better yourself when literally trillions of your money are lavished on these enterprises by a band of 545 crooks in Washington DC who have all, each and every one of them, personally enabled, permitted and endorsed these scams?

I speak specifically of:
435 Representatives in Congress
100 Senators
1 President
9 Supreme Court Justices

My definition of a police state has always been a bit nebulous.  Essentially everything is illegal, and whether you live or die is up to the police officer you are in contact with. After thinking about these examples, I have to conclude, if we aren't a police state, "I can see it from my porch". 

A Roundup of Economic News

US Mint Silver Eagles

It may be a holiday weekend, but there was a lot of activity in the days leading up to the weekend, and even over the weekend.  Part of this is old news that got by, part is new.  In no particular order, stories that struck me because they resonate with economic issues I've been beating the drum about.

The US Department of Labor has issued the agenda for their September 14/15 meeting to discuss "lifetime income options for retirement plans"   Sounds pretty boring, doesn't it?  In reality, it may well be the meeting where they settle on the story that will be used to confiscate your savings - IRA or 401k.  I've been on this particular drum several times, for a couple of reasons.  First, Barney Frank and others have publicly said they want to eliminate 401k plans because only "rich people" use them.  Second, there's about $10 trillion in those accounts, and they need that money like a crack whore needs her fix.  The agenda shows they will have representatives from groups that want your money and groups that want to keep administering those plans. It seems to me the most likely cover story is that they'll take your money and promise to provide you a modest return - like the Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS).  To protect you from those awful market risks, you know, like the ones that hurt your 401k in 2008.  This might make both sets of parties happy.  You weren't invited were you?  I sure wasn't, and there will be nobody representing me - at least, not that I know of. 

Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com has an interesting article by Morgen Richmond, showing an industry by industry summary of jobs lost through the depression so far.  It shows what a dismal failure the stimulus programs have been. 

It’s simply irrefutable that the Recovery Act has not had the beneficial impact projected by the White House. In fact, based on the data alone it’s arguable that the net impact has been detrimental to the economy, especially in combination with other legislation and policy changes enacted by the Administration and the Democrat-led Congress.

This shouldn't be a surprise.  Stimulus programs don't work.  If they did, Japan would not be in the twenty-something-th year of a "lost decade".  The much vaunted efforts of FDR in the "Great Depression" were pronounced a failure by members of his own administration.  Contrary to popular buzz, World War II did not get us out of the Depression by spending; what happened was that the President (rightly) started paying more attention to winning the war than to screwing around with the economy and it righted itself.  Most people don't realize that there were recessions and depressions before 1930 and the government never got involved.  The economy fixed itself.

A program like "Cash for Clunkers" can't possibly restore a market; all it can do is pull demand forward.  In any time period, some percentage of people are planning to buy a car in a few months.  When they put a big incentive out, those people buy cars earlier, and to be charitable, maybe a few others.  After that, the demand collapses to a lower level than it would have been because the other people just can't afford to buy a car or don't feel comfortable taking out a loan.  That's exactly what happened to People's Automotive Collective Number 1, when their sales dropped by over 20% from the previous year. 

Considering how many times this sort of Keynesian stimulus has failed, it's a wonder people still believe in it.  It's got to be a religion. 

Speaking of that, I've been reading a recurring idea that this depression may end up killing the Fed (example from a guest author at Zero Hedge here).  Interesting thought, but this is the richest organization in the world - in many ways, the US Federal Government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Federal Reserve Bank, not the other way around.  I can't imagine them giving up and going away without troubles in the country of biblical proportions. Would you take a couple of good roundhouse punches to your face to protect your kids?  It might be more like literally giving up an arm.  I would.  It may be what it takes to rescue the country. 

One of the great thinkers of our time (or any time), Dr. Thomas Sowell, had an interview with Uncommon Knowledge, posted in its entirety on BigGovernment.com.  It's 36 minutes long and definitely worth watching and listening to.  It's largely based on his new book, Dismantling America.  (I'm sure you're tired of reading: I don't make anything from book links to Amazon - they're just for convenience). 

I spent three days on my EMP articles, and more time writing them.  Frankly, I find that issue easier to understand than political economics because it's all technical problems and not stupid politician tricks.  But the chance of us needing to know all about an EMP is much lower than the chance of us needing to know about economic collapse.  An EMP might happen, but our economy is in collapse right now. 

More Thoughts on EMP

Warning: Seriously geeky stuff ahead

First, though, the nature of  blogging is that if you read from the top down, you get the  ideas in the opposite order of which they are intended.  If you don't read this blog everyday (and I think Mrs Graybeard and I are the only ones who can say that we do), or if you come across these posts in 3 weeks or 3 years, you don't see that the natural order for these pieces is

Why I'm Not Afraid of EMP - things that I think are overblown
Why I Am Afraid of EMP - things that I think are genuine concerns
More Thoughts on EMP - approaches to mitigating the effects, preventing damage to your home and installation. 

While the problem can be a big one, I firmly believe it can be handled.  I'm definitely not the type of person who throws up their hands and surrenders to this sort of problem, and I don't think the self-reliant culture would even think of that.  Military systems that must tune very wide frequency ranges almost instantly, while being available 24/7/365, have different problems than homeowners looking for communications around their ranches or amateur emergency communications (EMCOMM).  For the hams, and others who rely on radio links, doing some circuit simulations and some more pondering on EMP has led me to some simple conclusions. 

One simple word: filters. 

Back to the root of the problem.  The FFT of a brief pulse is broadband energy.  That means the energy from the EMP pulse is spread out from DC to VHF.  The source I started with says that you're down to 1% of the field by the time you reach 240 MHz.  That means if you're planning the communications for your retreat or other post-SHTF situation, you can simply use UHF; either FRS radios or 440 MHz ham radios for more power, range and privacy.  I pointed out in the first piece that narrowband circuits and small antennas help prevent damage, and that the received voltage goes up with the bandwidth of the antenna.  I've simulated a lot of the results with LTSpice.  If you're a hobbyist, you should have this program.  It's free, it's easy to use, and it's as accurate as any of the commercial SPICE simulators because it uses the same "engine".  We use it at work all the time and I know we are one of thousands of companies using it.   

Here's a typical problem.  I have a radio I intend to use as my main post-SHTF communications.  It covers lots of bandwidth, and I want to see how much effect the EMP will have on it.  I built a simulation that puts out 50,000V at 10,000A with a 3ns rise time.  I put a simple blocking capacitor in line with the antenna and find it offers almost no protection.  So I add a couple of zener diodes as clamps (very commonly used in lightning protection, where they are sold as Transient Voltage Suppressors).  A pair of 1N751 zener diodes, which almost every hobbyist has seen as a 5V regulator, limits the peak dramatically: it's over 550 V, instead of 50,000.  The pulse is still short - no part of the circuitry acts to spread it out - but the energy has been reduced tremendously  (the energy is ½ * V^2*t^2).  An unmodified commercial radio will probably survive this, depending on design. 

Let's say I want to reduce it further.  A simple single inductor, single capacitor 50 MHz highpass filter reduces the voltage by a factor of 10, with a peak of 74 V.

A commercial radio will probably survive this.  This will allow the radio to be used from 50 MHz to the top of its range.  Now, I know I said the bandwidth of the radio helps reduce the results of the EMP, and a small antenna helps.  The point of this exercise is that the filter protects the radio no matter what antenna is attached!  I don't think you need this with the typical short rubber duck antenna that is standard on a handie-talkie, but this makes it safe no matter what.  Here's the circuit: you could build this in a small metal box and connect it between the outside antenna and the radio.  Follow good VHF or UHF practices. You don't need extremely high voltage capacitors, but physically larger parts have better surge absorbing ability than the tiny surface mount parts in cell phones. 

For lower frequency work, like the HF bands, I believe bandpass filters are the answer.  Let's take the same basic approach and build a simple 14 MHz bandpass filter.  I'll make it center frequency of 14.150 MHz, with a bandwidth of 400 kHz, to make sure I pass the desired band.  This is what the front end of the radio sees.

You will probably notice something interesting going on here: the single sharp pulse has been transformed by the circuit to an amplitude modulated signal decaying in voltage.  The "carrier" (high frequency) is the center frequency of the filter and the lower frequency is the filter's bandwidth. 

A simple filter like this one could be put in the antenna line of any radio tuned to 20m, attached to any high gain, high bandwidth antenna.  The filter will have to be changed for any band you're operating, so you'll need several filters and switches, cables, all that stuff.  Is that a hardship?  To borrow an overused phrase, "I report, you decide".  Leave it in place while transmitting, and build it from suitably high voltage capacitors (500V is plenty for a 100W rig).  By the way, another advantage of this is that the filter will reject lightning.

I have done some simulation of a 14 to 30 MHz BP filter, like you might use with a 5 band beam or log periodic antenna. Many hams have small beam antennas like this, and a filter like this would eliminate band switching filters.  The results are very promising.  I am trying to look at "typical" amateur stations as I know them: simple wire antennas, loaded verticals and modest directional beams.  I am very hopeful that this will work.

It seems that everything I look at shows me filtering is a sound approach, and that makes sense.  After all, if the problem is broadband energy, get rid of as much of it as you can.  This could extend down to powerlines.  Powerlines don't only carry their AC line frequency (i.e.,60 Hz here in the US); they carry various data services used by the power companies and others.  A lowpass filter that cuts off reasonably close to the powerline frequency would remove virtually all of the EMP energy, but take the data services out as well.  It seems the networks would get complicated, but I believe it could be done.  The physical size of the components required intimidates me, but those guys work with it all the time.  It would be cool to get a power engineer to comment on how feasible it is.   

Do you have a backup generator?  We need to develop ways to protect them, so that if the grid fails, it doesn't conduct EMP into the generators and destroy them.  I haven't worked this out, yet. 

Commercial aircraft are tested with lightning simulations based on measurements of actual lightning strikes measured.  The parts of the circuit that are exposed to the outside world get tested to much higher levels than internal control lines, but tests to thousands of volts and thousands of amps are routine.  Radios play through a lightning strike on the antenna port (there is, of course, a nasty static crash).  The main approaches to lightning design are to shunt the stroke to ground when possible, and filter as much as you can.  We use spark gaps, or gas discharge tubes as one layer of protection, but EMP is too fast for this.  Gas discharge tubes take much too long to ionize and fire, so the EMP will blast through before they can do anything.  Filters, though, are still a good fix.  Again, the problem is to filter out the EMP without destroying signals you're trying to hear. 

How do I handle this?  My ham antennas are grounded unless I'm using them.  The "big radios" have dual antenna switches, both switches are grounded.  The VHF ground is the large metal chunk that everything sits on (aka - a desk).  The lower frequency grounds extend outdoors to a large system of ground rods and even radial wires buried an inch or so into the yard.  My small radios (HTs) are just sitting around.  I don't expect to have an issue with them. 

You may have noticed that at no point did I ever say I promise/swear/guarantee that what I'm saying will work and protect your gear.  It's not that I'm mealy mouthed; I just don't have the ability to run simulated EMP tests, so this is all based on a mixture of theory, calculations, simulations (which are theory and calculation) and what we call "engineering judgment".  I am not afraid to put my money where my mouth is, and treat my radios this way, but I hope we never need to find out if our radios survive an EMP.

Edit: right after posting a word magically disappeared in my flawless text.  

Wait - They Had WHAT In Their Beer?

Every so often you come across one of those science headline stories that really does make you go "huh?" and maybe even wraps your head around a really new concept.

Ancient Nubians drank beer laced with antibiotics

Tetracycline found in bones of 2,000-year-old mummies

Read the rest here:  

The yellow film is the extracted tetracycline from the 2000 year old bones.

"Given the amount of tetracycline there, they had to know what they were doing," said lead author George Armelagos, a biological anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta. "They may not have known what tetracycline was, but they certainly knew something was making them feel better." 

There's a lot of interesting aspects of this story.  The original discovery of antibiotics in the Nubian mummies was thought to be contamination, so the researchers developed a way of making sure it wasn't contamination by extracting it from bones.  Another interesting point is that the researchers estimate the amount of tetracycline they were getting was therapeutic by today's standards, not just trace amounts. 

Although I remembered from my biology classes that tetracycline was derived from another bacteria, I had always assumed that it was a product of the 20th century.  To the occasional person who says, "gee, you learn something new every day", I always answer, "if I'm lucky".

 

Offered For Your Consideration

As Rod Serling used to say on the Twilight Zone.  Gateway Pundit hardly needs a link from me, but I found this story interesting.  It's a comparison between the way the mall was left after Saturday's Restoring Honor Rally, and after the Obama Inauguration.

After the evil conservatives left

After the inauguration

This is not isolated.  After the massive 9-12 rally last year, police were quoted as saying they had never seen the area left that clean.  And anyone who has eyes has seen how the "rent-a-mobs" pulled together by the left for protesting (e.g., G20 summits in Pittsburgh, Seattle or anywhere) trash the place.  If you want violent mobs, I'm 99% sure every single one I've ever seen was a left-wing mob. 

Now I'm not going to get all self-righteous and "our side is better than their side" on you.  It is better to be humble, not prideful.  I just know which side I'd rather be associated with. 

Why I Am Afraid of EMP

The last post talked about why I think the popular conception of EMP is overblown and why I think EMP is largely over-rated as a threat.  As I said, I am fairly confident that in the aftermath of an EMP, your radio is going to work, the broadcast AM/FM/TV stations are going to work, air traffic control is going to work, the radios on the planes are going to work, your car is going to work, and most electronics will work. The most important radio systems on aircraft from a safety standpoint are in the UHF spectrum, in particular right around 1.0 GHz - the Transponder system and the Traffic Collision Avoidance System.  There is virtually no energy from an EMP there to bother them.

I mentioned that if your antenna was narrowband, like so many are, or the radio was narrowband (which pretty much all are), it would likely be safe.  It also points out the big problem with an EMP.

The EMP electric field is broadband, so it will couple more power into electrically big structures.  The largest electrical structure on the planet is the power grid.  Somewhere near the grid in size is the phone system.  These are going to be damaged by an EMP, perhaps completely destroyed.  I know that the industry is aware of this, and some companies are actively working to prevent EMP or solar flare damage.  I don't know how widespread these things are, and the system is as weak as its weakest links.   

In both cases, the wires extend as solid connections over hundreds of miles.  The fields induced into these wires will be enormous, leading to power surges that will undoubtedly damage the equipment at the ends if it's not prepared for it.  In the case of phone systems, the switching centers at the ends of those long lines will be damaged.  In the case of power lines, some of the damage may be generation, but most of those systems are not at the ends of hundreds of miles of wire.  Power plants tend to be close to transformers that step up the power for distribution.  The transformers will bear the brunt of the damage and that's not very comforting. It's not like there's a ready supply of thousands of these very specialized transformers. 

Don't think that your cellphone will get you through.  After it leaves that little radio in your hand, which won't be damaged, and gets to the first tower, it's all plain old wired telephone lines.   If the phone network goes down, our cellphones or smart phones do, too.  Amateur radio repeaters are likely to remain operating, and ham radio emergency communications is likely to come to the forefront of rescue efforts. 

Power lines and phones are areas that most people who write about EMP will emphasize because it's a very serious problem.  It's highly uncomfortable and stressful to be without power for a couple of weeks (and not uncommon here in hurricane country); it's deadly to be without power for long periods, which is what will happen.  In colder climates, it's life threatening during the winter.  Northerners are forgiven for perhaps not thinking that it's just as life threatening in the south over the summer.  Remember a few years ago, when Europe had a hot spell over the summer and almost 15,000 people died in France, alone? 

Damage to the power grid would lead to widespread problems.  Many companies (including the one I work for) and many people (especially here in hurricane country) have backup generators for those 2-4 week periods.  All of the local AM/FM/TV stations have backup generators.  What happens if that becomes months to years?  If we had reliable fuel supplies, we could live on the generators.  We would have more maintenance than is convenient, but could keep refrigeration going for food and purification for water.  I can't predict if fuel will be available.  Certainly the energy companies could use part of their energy to provide backup (for example, the natural gas company could use some of their LNG product to run generators to keep their systems up and running).  The question is whether or not they do. 


Our society is fed and clothed by a constant flow of trucks across the country, bringing goods from all over the world to local stores.  The trucks will undoubtedly keep running - if they can get diesel fuel.  Truck routing may suffer and inefficiencies add to cost, but that's not very important compared to the fuel. 

Likewise, trains bring the larger cargoes around the country, between trucking distribution centers.  Will trains run?   I'm not so sure.  The trains' locomotives probably won't be affected, but the tracks are hundreds of miles of metal; big antennas to collect the EMP energy.  I don't know enough about train switching systems to know if they'd survive the EMP.


The loss of the grid would be catastrophic to western civilization. As a result of the availability of energy, people who would have died a hundred years ago are living independently at home today; people who use oxygen at home, people on a variety of medications or medical devices (pacemakers, insulin pumps...) and others.  Sadly, many of those people will die. 

Where does this leave us?  In a weird place.  Our computers may work, but the power to run them or the internet routers might be missing.  Even if available (the Internet was designed to work around nuclear catastrophe), many of the things we use it for might not be available. Our radios and TVs will probably work, but the stations to inform us may only last a few weeks - to report on the beginnings of social chaos.  Our cars would continue to get us to work, but the companies may not be capable of staying open and in business.  We could drive to get out of town, but gas stations might not be able to run the pumps to keep us moving.    So it all comes down to the power grid.  How well it handles the problems and how robust it is to multiple failures.  "Smart Grid" won't do anything for you; all it can do is force rationing onto you.  It would probably increase the susceptibility of the grid to EMP. 

Why I'm Not (Very) Afraid of EMP

When I started this blog six months ago, one of the things I pondered was what I could contribute to the world that other bloggers don't.  As I've spread out, reading more and interacting more, I think I can add some useful information about topics I study on my own, work with, or do as a hobby. 

Over the course of the next few posts, I'm going to look at EMP from a specialist's perspective.  EMP is a term that brings a lot of fear with it.  While I don't specifically work on protection of electronics systems from EMP, I do work with lightning protection and EMI (electromagnetic interference) protection, both of which are very similar.  I have the tools and background to do the math, and think I can improve the signal to noise ratio of the conversation.  I'm going to start with the optimistic side: why I'm not afraid of EMP, and then talk about the concerns I do have about it. So let's start at the beginning. 

Electromagnetic Pulse.  It's widely talked about whenever people talk about potential catastrophes.  There is at least one "open source" book ("Lights Out", currently offline as the author shops it for sale to movie studios, but you can probably find a copy around) and a commercial book ("One Second After") about the aftermath of an EMP, typically depicting the destruction of society - The End Of The World As We Know It. (note: again - I don't make anything off links to Amazon.  It's here simply as a convenience)

To begin with, what is an Electromagnetic Pulse?  Most people who are familiar with the term know it as a side effect of a nuclear detonation in the ionosphere, and that's a good way to generate one.  The ionosphere is a layer of the atmosphere, from about 50 miles to 600 miles or so up, where gas atoms are turned into ions by the UV rays from the sun.  The Federation of American Scientists offers this explanation (from Wikipedia).

A high-altitude nuclear detonation produces an immediate flux of gamma rays from the nuclear reactions within the device. These photons in turn produce high energy free electrons by Compton scattering at altitudes between (roughly) 20 and 40 km. These electrons are then trapped in the Earth's magnetic field, giving rise to an oscillating electric current. This current is asymmetric in general and gives rise to a rapidly rising radiated electromagnetic field called an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Because the electrons are trapped essentially simultaneously, a very large electromagnetic source radiates coherently.

The pulse can easily span continent-sized areas, and this radiation can affect systems on land, sea, and air. The first recorded EMP incident accompanied a high-altitude nuclear test over the South Pacific and resulted in power system failures as far away as Hawaii. A large device detonated at 400-500 km (250 to 312 miles) over Kansas would affect all of the continental U.S. The signal from such an event extends to the visual horizon as seen from the burst point.

The effect seen at ground level is a very brief, very high voltage pulse.  The very short duration spreads the energy out in frequency, (the universe is just put together that way).  The electric field (E-field) produced is felt across the entire portion of the continent "seen" by the explosion, although the intensity does fall off with distance, as with any source of E-fields.  That is, the areas farthest from the epicenter will get a lower voltage peak than the people directly under the blast. 

How much voltage are we talking about?  Standard models talk about a voltage pulse that reaches 50,000 volts in five nanoseconds (five billionths of a second).  For comparison, lightning may reach similar voltages, but takes much longer.  A lightning strike's rise time is often more than 1,000 times longer, over a microsecond.  While lightning strikes are not all the same, a lightning strike that is less than 100 nanoseconds is quite unusual.  Here's a mathematical simulation of what the pulse looks like.  The time axis is in nanosecond s, so "1" is 1 nsec.  Note that the time display is in log scale, so the pulse is really short; it's down to 1% of its peak value in just over 100 nanoseconds.  If any damage is going to happen, it's going to happen in the first 50 nanoseconds.

One of the main things the EMP stories focus on is how everything electronic is blown out.  Airplanes fall out of the sky.  No communications at all.  They say to store your radios wrapped in foil in a metal ammo can. 

I don't believe that. 

SurvivalBlog has recently run reports of several tests where many vehicles were exposed to a simulated EMP (generated in other ways, so they affect much less area).  Almost all of the cars kept working or simply needed to be restarted.  These were modern cars, not old cars without electronic ignition systems.  Amateur radio magazines have carried articles where tests were done, and results calculated for typical amateur radios.  Most typical installations were not damaged.  Radios did not need to be in a sealed metal box.  I am familiar with the ways commercial aviation electronics is tested, and I don't believe that failures would be widespread.  Airplanes will not come crashing down.   

Here's why radios won't be burned out:

This is a plot of the electrical field created by the 50,000 Volt EM Pulse pictured above, derived by taking the FFT of that pulse. E-fields are usually referred to in units of Volts per meter.  This plot adds the bandwidth of the measurement, so Volts per meter per Hertz.  The fields are small: less than .002 Volts/meter.  For comparison, commercial aircraft electronics is typically tested to withstand fields of 20 V/m, often 200 V/m.  Military systems are tested to higher levels. 

And it gets better.  If you have a narrow band antenna - and most are - the power received is just not that great.  For example, pretend you have an amateur transceiver for the 20 meter band, where your group has a meeting nightly.  You have a dipole antenna for that band.  The power you gather is less than 1/1000 watt (-2 dBm for those curious).  There is no way this power level would be dangerous to your radio.  To your "2 meter" radio (146 MHz), the signal is quite a bit weaker (-16 dBm - less than 1/10 the power of the lower frequency).  In both cases, your radio might well be exposed to signals of this strength without EMP.   

The local broadcasters: TV, AM, and FM, all use narrowband antennas.  The air traffic control systems and navigation systems at the airport use narrowband antennas.  In the case of the broadcasters, their transmitters are putting out thousands of watts or tens of thousands of watts - or more.  It would be an amazing feat to even find the incoming signal from an EMP in the presence of that sort of transmitter power.  Transmitters won't be damaged.

Now if you have a broadband antenna and broadband receiver, the levels will get worse because of the broadband energy the pulse causes.  That's where the bandwidth really becomes apparent; the broadband E-field voltages increase by 10 times the log of the bandwidth.  A 14-30 MHz log periodic dipole array antenna will make the fields stronger by 72 dB, or voltages around 4000 times higher.  But the average E-field values in this frequency band are around .0006 V so multiplying by 4000 still only gives you 2.4 V/m/Hz. 

Calculating how strong the levels would be in the radio is a bit more complicated, because the architecture of the radio matters.  The very first circuits the EMP hits will see higher powers, but they are designed to limit the bandwidth (reflecting most of that pulse back out of the radio) and you should still not have a problem.  The signal on channel is still the same; the power seen at the input filter is higher.  If you integrate up all the power the antenna will bring into the radio, it gets up to a full Watt.  Again, the protection in the front of the radio will keep it from being damaged.   

I don't want to play climate scientist here, and just believe my computer model, but it's agreeing with other things I've seen published.  Always compare computer models to experiment!  If that model pulse is too weak, it still lets us estimate performance.  If the voltage pulse is 100 kV instead of 50, we double the voltages we derived. 

I don't believe that EMP is terribly hard to handle in a radio.  If your radio is VHF, for example, a simple low frequency blocking capacitor might be all you need.  A UHF or microwave radio will be completely unaffected - there's no EMP energy out there.  It's a mistake to think that you use the steady state ratings (that is, your capacitor is rated at 100 VDC) when handling a surge like this.  It's better to look at total energy in the pulse, and since it's so short, there's less energy than in a lightning pulse.  

In short, I think in the aftermath of an EMP, your radio is going to work, the broadcast AM/FM/TV stations are going to work, air traffic control is going to work, the radios on the planes are going to work, your car is going to work, and most electronics will work.  That doesn't mean nothing bad will happen.  

In my next post I want to talk about the things about EMP that do bother me. 

(This work was derived from some industry applications notes, largely from Ansoft, a leading manufacturer of EM analysis software). 

How Hyperinflation Will Happen

The fine folks over at Zero Hedge posted this great analysis of how hyperinflation could happen.  It opens up with a "where we are" moment.

Right now, we are in the middle of deflation. The Global Depression we are experiencing has squeezed both aggregate demand levels and aggregate asset prices as never before. Since the credit crunch of September 2008, the U.S. and world economies have been slowly circling the deflationary drain.

To counter this, the U.S. government has been running massive deficits, as it seeks to prop up aggregate demand levels by way of fiscal “stimulus” spending—the classic Keynesian move, the same old prescription since donkey’s ears.

But the stimulus, apart from being slow and inefficient, has simply not been enough to offset the fall in consumer spending.

And this great explanation of an important insight:

If we think that hyperinflation is simply inflation on steroids—inflation-plus—inflation with balls—then it would seem to be the case that, in our current deflationary economic environment, hyperinflation is not simply a long way off, but flat-out ridiculous.

But hyperinflation is not an extension or amplification of inflation. Inflation and hyperinflation are two very distinct animals. They look the same—because in both cases, the currency loses its purchasing power—but they are not the same.

A tad long, but really worth reading.  I think it's the best presentation of what the voices in my head have been telling me that I've come across.

When?  The author thinks the precipitation incident could happen any time from this fall through (but not later than) the end of 2011.  As I've said, I think the market is going to further deflate this fall, but that's based on technical analysis and this sort of event is more like a "black swan" that doesn't fit the usual predictions. Still, my guess is the deflation/depression gets worse, and then the hyperinflation happens.

Yo, NASA! Can We Knock Off the Solar Storm Scare Tactics?

I'm talking about this:

Melbourne, Aug 26 (ANI): Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, is to strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs.

Honestly: this article is 99% garbage.  100 million hydrogen bombs?  Would those be 10 kiloton bombs or 10 Megaton bombs?  They're taking advantage of the fact that people are (in general) woefully ignorant of the forces in nature.  A typical hurricane will release 200 times the electrical energy generated in the entire world every day.  A hurricane has hundreds of times the energy of a hydrogen bomb. A typical CME puts hundreds of times of that energy (Gigaton bombs) into our magnetosphere, and the most it does is cause pretty lights at night. 

It's bad form to copy the whole article here and thoroughly fisk it, but let me address just a few highlights.  What are my qualifications?  I'm an amateur astronomer, solar observer, someone who tracks solar cycles and tracks solar activity.  When they say,

Several US media outlets have reported that NASA was warning the massive flare this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet's power grid.
Despite its rebuttal, NASA's been watching out for this storm since 2006 and reports from the US this week claim the storms could hit on that most Hollywood of disaster dates - 2012.

there's an implication that a particularly bad storm has been building.  They don't work that way.  Solar storms are short lived events, caused by solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Nothing happening today will cause a storm in more than a few days or weeks at most.  Even worse, it implies flares and CMEs can be predicted years in advance.  There is no known way to predict them beyond knowing that they're associated with more activity, and visible sunspots.  All they're saying is that solar maximum is coming. Like it does every 11 years (on average) for as long as we've been aware of solar cycles.

Solar flares and CMEs happen all the time, even during solar minima. Earlier in the month, on another solar flare scare story, I said,

See, solar flares vary over orders of magnitude in size.  The smallest go from C1 to C10.  Next up, M class flares also go from a 1 to a 10.  Finally, the biggest flares are X class or X-ray flares.  There's no top to that scale, but in the peak of the last solar cycle, back around 2003, X class flares were hitting every month.  An X10 flare hitting directly can make auroras visible in the southern US.  A monumental flare in 2003 made them visible in north central Florida.  I have heard a big flare in the previous cycle (1990s) caused an aurora visible in the Caribbean.

 The original Australian article says,

"The general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 2013) will be the most violent in 100 years," News.com.au quoted astronomy lecturer and columnist Dave Reneke as saying.

I'd like to find out who has that opinion.  The cycle we are currently starting (Cycle 24 - they got that right) is coming out of the lowest solar minimum in over 100 years.  Nobody that I've seen thinks this cycle is going to be even average in strength, let alone "the most violent in 100 years".  The current activity is still well below predictions:

What you can't see in that plot is that the predicted start and peak of the next cycle was shifted to right every few months through all of 2008 and 2009.  We went through more days with zero solar activity in '08 and '09 than any stretch since 1913, and the cycle "refused to start" when they said it would.  You can see from that chart that the predicted peak (in Spring of '13, not 2012) is well below the peak of the last cycle, which wasn't as strong as the one before it.  Actually, there's a respectable number of physicists who think this peak will be much lower than average.

It will be the weakest solar cycle since Solar Cycle 6, the second half of the Dalton Minimum (1810 to 1823). Solar Cycle 5 had a maximum amplitude of 49.2 and Solar Cycle 6 of 48.7.

Is it possible for a solar CME to do the things they talk about? Absolutely. How likely? There has been one CME since 1900 that damaged parts of the grid (it shut down power in Quebec) and that was in the last peak of the 1990s (1996?).  It's not precise to say expect it to happen once in a hundred years, but probably close enough for discussion.  If you own a satellite, you can shut it down when a big CME is coming because you see the flare and ejection when they happen (ignoring that the light takes 8 minutes to get here from the sun) while the particles from the CME take a couple of days to get here.   

These government goons are trying to show us how important they are so that they can raise funds. They're trying to get us to say, "Oh, no! Don't cut our budget, cut something else!"

 

Is This How 401k Plans Get Stolen?

I've written before about the likelihood that our 401k plans are going to be nationalized (Southerners use the more correct word, "stolen").  There's a variety of arguments, but they largely come down to the Fed.gov leviathan desperately needs any money it can get to fund its insane spending levels, and there's a large chunk of change in the 401k system.  The unions and other mutant zombie hordes demand it. 

John Galt over at Shenandoah has found a few things that add up to a mechanism that I've missed. It starts out with a news story that the Illinois Teacher's Retirement System is selling off $3 Billion to meet required payments. 

If Illinois is doing it…
CALPERS is probably doing it….
If California is doing it….
Florida is probably doing it….
If we’re doing it, everyone will be selling as price levels trip liquidation panic.

Understand that 46 other states and thousands of communities and counties are having the same problem. Then think about what happens when they all see price levels tripped and they all attempt to hit the “sell” button a the same time.

Go read.  It's short.

About That Whole Global Economic Collapse Thingy - Part V

I note with a little interest that the Hindenburg Omen has appeared again, last Friday.  However, the authors of this Yahoo Finance article say forget that - the market fundamentals are scary enough as it is.  That's essentially my position in a nutshell.  The Omen itself predicts:

• A 77% probability of 5% move to the downside;
  
• A 41% probability of a panic sellout, down 10-15%;
  
• A 24% probability of a stock market crash, down greater than 15%.
  

I ran across an interesting tidbit on the Economic Collapse Blog, a web site I visit now and then.  Famous "Motivational Speaker" Tony Robbins, who spent most of the 80s and 90s running late night infomercials to help us "unleash the power within" and take charge of our lives, is predicting an economic collapse. Worthwhile videos and column.

He has an interesting way of putting it.  Think of this collapse as the onset of winter.  Winter is inevitable, and just as winter can have some beautiful days (especially around here) it's typically thought of as a tough season which passes.  There's no reason you can't profit from it, if you're in decent shape now.  What does that mean?  The usual: get out of debt; have a store of value, be it food and supplies or some commodity that will be valued.  One of the reasons for the depth of this recession/depression is that people are paying off their debts at the highest rate ever.  That's actually a good thing.

They say the people who did well in the Great Depression had cash when other people were desperate to sell.  I expect the same thing this time around.  At some point, say December of 2012 (hat tip to the 2012 EOTW loonies), it will seem like things just can't go on.  Tax Riots, civil unrest in bankrupt cities that can't afford police, roving bands of looters, blood in the streets - you get the picture.  At that point, when everyone thinks it's the end of the world, that's the time to have cash and go buying. 

Let me give a testable prediction.  Here's a plot of the DJIA since New Years of 2009.  (thanks to Wealth Daily).  That pattern forming on the right is a "head and shoulders" pattern, and we are just now going over the peak of the right shoulder.  That means a fall to the downside typically equal to the difference between the top of the head at 11051 and the lows shown by the bottom green line.  This predicts that the DJIA will drop to 8000 or 8200, probably (this is the guess-y part) in 2-3 months.  Since most of the really bad market crashes have come in September or October, this could accelerate things a little and pull it to 1-2 months out.  I expect the DJIA to be in the 8000 range at Thanksgiving, for example. 

If you're listening around, you probably hear people saying the DJIA will go down to 5000.  Maybe lower.   5000 is lower than the lowest dip in this 20 month chart, which tells me it isn't very likely.  I'm not going to bet my life it won't happen, though. 

By the way, the other day I joked, "Time to get out of the market and into cash?  Why would you take financial advice from some nobody on the 'net? "  I owe it to the 3 of you to be a little serious here.  Yes, I am almost completely out of equities and have almost totally cut off my exposure to the DJIA.  I am putting my money where my mouth is. 

Be careful out there, y'all.

Florida Primary Day

Ahhh, the smell of pork in the air...

Today is primary day here, and as always, the lovely and wise Mrs. Graybeard and I have voted.  In this case, I say wise because of this observation from years ago:

Preparing for an election is like cleaning out the litter box.  It's a disgusting, revolting task that exposes you to all sorts of dirty, filthy things you'd rather never see, but if you don't do it, the job gets even more disgusting and revolting. 

There have been two statewide races here in Florida that have gathered national attention: our governor's race and our senate race.  Currently, one of our two US senators is a temporary appointment.  George Lemieux was appointed to the seat when elected senator Mel Martinez unexpectedly resigned (and appears more conservative).  Sitting governor Charlie Crist decided to run for that senate seat.  When current state senator Marco Rubio decided to run for it, he started blowing Crist out of the water.  Crist is widely disregarded by conservatives and libertarian-leaning folks as a RINO.  When he resigned from the state GOP to run as No Party Affiliation, it only confirmed what most of us thought.  Crist is more competition for the apparent Democratic nominee, Kendall Meek.

The other big race was for the Crist's old governor's job.  Current attorney general Bill McCollum is running against outsider/businessman Rick Scott.  Bill McCollum is long time insider in the GOP, and has been in government in some spot since the early 1980s.  In general, I like McCollum.  He's currently attorney general and was the first to sue the Fed.Gov over the imposition of Obamacare.  He also is pretty 2A-friendly, and that's really good.  Unfortunately, his campaign has been absolutely awful, in most people's opinions.  I don't believe I've seen a single ad that tells me why I should vote for Bill, just attacks on Rick Scott. 

Frankly, it's all pretty disgusting.  I wish we had elections where you didn't feel quite so much like you needed a bath afterward. 

Sometimes TEOTWAWKI Isn't TEOTWAWKI

A Single Home Survives After Hurricane Ike in Gilchrist, TX - 2008

Source, and many more pictures here.

When "preppers" talk about "The End Of The World As We Know It", they're usually talking about something major, possibly global, like a total economic collapse, the hemispheric impact of a solar flare, or an EMP event that takes out the USA.  But to these home owners, Ike was the end of the world as they knew it.  Two days before, this was a beautiful beachfront community.  Anyone who didn't bug out of the rest of that island didn't survive it. 

We are living in a time of such massive unemployment that it's not always on the front of our minds that these can be TEOTWAWKI events for the people going through them.  One of my regular reads, MikeH at Behind the Parapet talks about moving a grown child, spouse and a grandchild into his home, after just this sort of event. It's what families do - and should do. 

I just want to remind us all that we should be preparing for these sorts of things.  These events are far more likely than the world-ending flare or the Zombie apocalypse. Maybe you don't get hurricanes where you live, but I'm sure you get some sort of natural disaster: tornado, blizzard, earthquake, mudslide...  Virtually every place gets something. 

Don't just be prepared.  Be useful.

Inflation and Hidden Inflation

If you read "regular" economics information and blogs, you may find some debate on whether we will be undergoing deflation or inflation; that is - whether we're likely to be going into a deflationary death spiral (read "collapse" or "Greatest Depression") or an inflationary death spiral (read "Weimar Republic" or "Zimbabwe").  Some groups speculate hyperinflation is coming.  The argument against hyperinflation is probabilistic; they argue that true hyperinflation is historically rare, and that collapses are much more common.  In my experience in daily life, we are seeing signs of the expected inflation.  The official statistics - the US Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI - disagrees.  

Inflation is a topic I've written on extensively.  My second post on this blog concerned this, and I've addressed it other times such as this one: 

Inflation is always a result of monetary policy.  Always.  How does inflation occur?

Imagine you had a printer that could make perfect copies of any dollar denomination you wanted.  Because it's technically, you know, highly illegal to do this, you want to be disciplined about how you use it and reserve it for emergencies.  You need to buy a car and get into a bidding war at an auction.  You win because you can always pay a higher bid, just by printing a little more money, and you always get away with it.  Can you imagine that after a while, you would use this power more often?  Now imagine everyone had such a printer.  Can you imagine that the prices of everything would be bid up by the larger supply of dollars?  This is the essence of price inflation: an increase in the number of dollars available to bid pushes up price. 

Our Secretary of Homeland Security here at Castle Graybeard, Mrs. Graybeard, and I have been talking about how much price inflation is working into food prices.  AOL Money & Finance page Daily Finance reports Walmart has been quietly raising prices - some 60% or more.  Read the full article. 

Some of the price hikes were considerably larger. For instance, the price of a 32-ounce bottle of Windex household cleaner jumped 50%, a 12-ounce box of Quaker Oats instant grits climbed 65% and a 50-ounce container of Tide detergent rose by more than 50%. A spokesperson for the Bentonville, Ark., company could not immediately be reached for comment.

One of the tactics companies use to hide inflation in their prices is to sell smaller packages at slightly higher prices, rather than raising the price on the familiar size by a higher percentage.  Ice cream makers shrank their half gallon containers a while back, many other manufacturers, such as Doritos and other chip makers, and candy bar makers followed suit.  A so-called gallon of paint we just bought says it's 120 oz - not 128.  Even Moe's catfood can is 5.5 oz, down from 6.

The most widely reported Consumer Price Index, the "Core CPI"; colloquially called the "Cost of Living Index", which does not include food and energy costs - as if life were possible without them - says we are undergoing relatively benign growth.  Shadowstats - who keeps the CPI calculated the way it used be - shows total inflation of around 10% per year.  My guess is that food prices are running higher than 10% inflation.  We keep reading reports of poor production in all sorts of crops this year; that would argue for higher food inflation to come.   

Courtesy of ShadowStats.com

Blogger FerFal from "Surviving in Argentina" has seen all this firsthand.  Argentina underwent a collapse, and in their re-building has seen high inflation.  He offers advice on dealing with the inflationary spiral, There Will Be Poor - Don't Be One. I note that FerFal is apparently planning to leave Argentina and move to the US - as the majority of people that can afford to escape the horrible conditions in Argentina have left the country. 

US Mint Silver Eagles in the Standard Tubes of 20

Meet Obamacare

The true name of this law is (obviously) not Obamacare, just as the abomination thought up before was not really called HillaryCare.  But no one will ever call it by it's real name, the "Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, P.L. 111-148; and Health Care & Education Reconciliation Act, P.L. 111-152"

Behold the flow chart (source) (and while you're there, download the full sized pdf of this chart):

Is that Byzantine enough for ya?  According to the guys who made this up, it's the simplified version.

Brady admits committee analysts could not fit the entire health care bill on one chart. “This portrays only about one-third of the complexity of the final bill. It’s actually worse than this.”

I'm particularly intrigued by this little corner:

Why is Homeland Security so closely involved to the president.  I understand you'd like them to be around in case of something that's a security threat, say a bio-terrorism attack.  But everyday?  The other two lines feeding them are from the two main powers, the IRS and the secretary of HHS. 

In addition to capturing the massive expansion of government and the overwhelming complexity of new regulations and taxes, the chart portrays:

• $569 billion in higher taxes;
• $529 billion in cuts to Medicare;
• swelling of the ranks of Medicaid by 16 million;
• 17 major insurance mandates; and
• the creation of two new bureaucracies with powers to impose future rationing: the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and the Independent Payments Advisory Board.

As the TV pitchmen say, "But wait, there's more!".  In "Obamacare and Taxes: The Final Tab"  Americans for Tax Reform lists the 20 new or higher taxes they've found so far. Some of these are:

Individual Mandate Excise Tax, Employer Mandate Tax, Surtax on Investment Income ($123 billion/Jan. 2013):  Creation of a new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income, Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans, Medicine Cabinet Tax, Flexible Spending Account Cap (FSA accounts to be capped at $2500),  Tax on Indoor Tanning Services (the famous "honky tax"), Brand Name Drug Tax (let's hurt everyone!) Tax on Innovator Drug Companies (can't allow any innovation!) 

Even that is just the start.  In the pdf for the post "Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History" they list the taxes coming our way.  That they know of.  So far.

It has been speculated that the goal of this system is to collapse, so people will demand the wonderful government replace it with a National Health Service.  I don't see any reason to rule that out, in light of comments of many associated with developing the plan. 

As the wonderful Mark Steyn said so long ago,

Why squander your presidency on trying to turn an economically moribund feudal backwater into a functioning nation state when you can turn a functioning nation state into an economically moribund feudal backwater?

I believe it was Mark who pointed out the essential problems with a national health service like the British or Canadian models.

The expenses go so high and the systems get so complex that they suck all of the government money and political effort up into the health system.  It becomes central to every election. 

Health care becomes highly politicized.  Diseases with the loudest, most active lobbying groups get the most money.  So money goes into treating AIDS or breast cancer, or sex change operations, but not hip replacements, pneumonia, or prostate cancer. 

Since it's politically sexier to put money into these politically backed diseases than buildings, the infrastructure is ignored.  Buildings crumble.  Cleaning staff is reduced, so hospitals become filthy places and hospital borne infections kill thousands.  

Another consequence is that pharmaceutical research grinds to a halt.  When companies are forbidden to profit, forbidden to pay for the top talent, it goes elsewhere.  When antibiotics fail, people will complain there are no alternatives - which will be a decade of work away.

With limited resources, rationing must happen, and treatment is denied to people who "haven't suffered enough", or are "too fat to get that hip replaced".  Care delayed is care denied, and people die. 

Another thing to ponder is this: the National Health Service for the UK - that tiny little piece of land - is the third largest employer on Earth, behind the People's Liberation Army (of China) and the Indian National Railroad system.  How much larger will our system have to be? 

I've heard a buzz of "Repeal and Replace".  I say "Repeal Now".  Worry about replacement later.  Look at every bubble on that flow chart and shut them down now.  Send those people home now. 

 

Our Government - Now Hiring Medicine Man

I ran across this link today.  The Federal Bureau of Prisons in Minnesota is looking to hire a Native American Medicine Man. Srsly.

It gets better.  Ever see the Simpsons Movie?  The old native (Inuit?) woman in the tent with Homer?  They must think that was a documentary. 

"The contractor will conduct Native American ceremonies and provide instruction to inmates in the Native American Faith.

General Topics for Contractors - Native American
1. Red Road
2. All My Relation
3. Medicine Wheel
4. The Sacred Pipe
5. Sweat Lodge
6. Elders
7. Circle of Life
8. Traditions/Rituals
9. Prayers
10. Ceremonies" 

...a list that goes to 38 lines...

First off,  the Native American Faith?  Isn't there a bunch of them?  I've certainly read that beliefs varied, with major tribes having quite different belief systems. 

Sorry, but this just goes into my too bizarre for words file. 

This just in:  When the job link started going around, they changed it.  Now, instead of looking for a Medicine Man, they're looking for a Spiritual Guide. Guess "Medicine Man" didn't pass the legal team. You can see on the left that this was changed 3 times from 4:25 to 4:54.

And Now For Something Completely Different

By nature, I'm a DIY kind of guy.  I couldn't even begin to list every kind of thing I've made, but the range includes fishing rods and bucktail jigs, goes through full size wall-units, and small wooden boxes, with stops at radios, grinding telescope mirrors, hand fabricating precious metal jewelry, making one-of-a-kind metal parts for projects and special fixtures or tools. 

So when my interests turned to knives, it would only be a matter of time until I had to try making some.  Unlike firearms, you can buy knife kits widely.  The first couple of knives I built were folder kits.  Knife making supplies and kits are pretty easy to find.  Three places I know of are:  KnifeKits.com   Texas Knifemaker's Supply   and Jantz Supply

I have a couple of good self defense folders, a Cold Steel Recon 1, a Spyderco Tenacious, and a nice folding knife I made myself from this kit, with carbon fiber sides (called "scales" in knife-talk).

Once you've built a few kits, the next step up in knife making is to buy a finished blade and do the rest of the work yourself.  The "Ph.D. level" of knife making is to make everything, even Damascus steel for the blade.  Just below this level, many knives are made from the leaf springs of a junkyard car, or shaped from purchased chunks of carbon, stainless, or even Damascus steel.   

I decided to buy a blade and instead of attaching bone, antler, or wooden scales, I would make a set of scales from a semi-precious stone.   I decided on a fixed blade this time, not a folder, simply because I have many folders and no fixed-blade knives.  I started with this blade, which is clearly from Texas Knifemaker's.  With no instructions, I had to invent my work flow, which worked out pretty well. 

The first step was to install the bolsters, those two big pieces between the blade and the pins in this picture.  This was done by using two of the longer pins, and required enough effort to accomplish that I'm sure they're secure.  The pins are hammered in, and the bolsters clamped to the blade tang with a C-clamp to eliminate gaps while hammering in and setting the pins.  The pins extend a good quarter inch past the surface of the bolsters, leaving the question of how to get rid of the extra metal.  I have heard of grinding them off, but I own a good jeweler's saw, so I simply sawed them off flush to the bolsters.  If this was going to be a step by step, I would have taken a picture of them at this point, but I forgot.

Before you can go any farther, it's time to select and prepare the rough rock to become the scales.  This is where you decide what the knife will look like when it's done.  Will it be blue, red, green, or what?  With natural stones, there is an almost unlimited choice of colors and textures.  I chose a stone called silver sheen obsidian.  Obsidian (volcanic glass) comes in many varieties and is a favorite of rockhounds and lapidaries (people who cut and polish stones).  Silver sheen obsidian is black, but shows a silvery sheen (chatoyance) under light, almost a cat's eye effect, so it is a black handle that carries in it the silvery sheen of the blade. 

You can cut a stone like obsidian on a diamond tile saw, like you'll find in every Home Depot or Lowe's these days.  Skil makes this fairly cheap saw.  You wouldn't want to use this on very valuable stones, but for something like this, it's fine.  Once a couple of pieces with a good straight side are cut, epoxy the scales onto the blank and let it dry overnight.  If you're unaware, covering the blade with conventional masking tape is a good way to keep from slicing yourself up while working on your knife. 

A couple of 1inch C-clamps hold the stones while the epoxy sets.

Now it's time to shape the stones.  You have to do this with wet grinding, but other than that requirement, anyone who has done body work on a car knows instinctively what to do.  It's simply coarse grinding followed by progressively finer grits until you polish.  Do NOT use a Dremel for this: they're not waterproof.  Because of my other hobbies, I have access to a Diamond Pacific Genie, a wet grinding machine widely used by lapidaries who cut opaque stones like jade, agate, jasper and even gem material like star sapphires or opals.  I shaped the handles roughly, including some shaping of the sides and bottom ends of  the bolsters, which did not match the shape and outline of the knife blank. You can barely see it in this picture, but the bolsters are about 1/16" beyond the blade tang outline, all around. 

Rough-shaped down to about #400 grit.

With the stones shaped to this "fine grind" finish, I then smoothed the bolsters with files and sandpaper into a smooth profile with the blade.  After a few dozen projects as a silversmith, and a couple of classes in it, I tend to believe I can do anything with a handful of needle files, and while stainless is way harder than sterling, it was uneventful. 

Finally, with the metal smoothed and finished to 600 grit on sandpaper, I did the last few steps of grinding and then polishing the stone scales, and the metal, followed by polishing the metal bolsters with Tripoli on a bench polishing system.  I bumped the back half inch of the blade on one of the diamond wheels while shaping the stones, and had to re-shape and sharpen the blade.  I have the Lansky system for sharpening blades, and got a nice edge.  As a test, I cut some cooked chicken and found it cut every bit as well as the original edge.  

Finished Knife

So there you have it.  Is it practical, or is it a presentation/art knife?  At this point, I think it's practical.  I'll have to do some experimentation to see how well it handles.  My biggest concern with this project was that the knife might get too slippery when wet.  I find that's not the case, at least with water.  I have not tried blood (thankfully…) or other fluids.  What's it cost?  The blade was $30 with shipping.  I had the obsidian, but a good sized piece would be, maybe, $5.  The rest was a couple hours of my time, and you can't count that for a hobby, right? 

Mrs. Graybeard said she'd rather do this kind of work than make jewelry, because when you're done, a knife is an important, and very useful thing, while a piece of jewelry is nice, but it's just decorative.  There could be more knives like this in our future.

Edit: 8/23/10  On the request/advice of commenter, I've replaced the photo of the finished knife with one photographed on a more neutral background.  I think it looks better.