Radiation Resistant Plants

Here's a bit of good news. New Scientist is reporting on a study on plants found inside the radioactive Chernobyl accident site that are developing radiation resistance. Here's the good part (emphasis added):

Compared to the plants grown in normal soil, the Chernobyl soya produced significantly different amounts of several dozen proteins, the team found. Among those are proteins that contribute to the production of seeds, as well as proteins involved in defending cells from heavy metal and radiation damage. "One protein is known to actually protect human blood from radiation," Hajduch says.

That's fantastic - plants that can not only survive in radioactive areas, but can actually help humans survive as well. These aren't genetically engineered plants either, they developed radiation resistance in response to their environment. That means it's pretty likely that other plants will develop similar traits in similar conditions.

There's also a related article on radiation loving fungi, but no word on if they pass along any rad resistance.

Via New Scientist

Bookshelf: Back to Basics

I'm trying out a new book review format below, so please let me know what you think. Also you might notice that the book links below are Amazon Affiliate links. If you click the link it will take you to the Amazon page for the book and if you order it, I'll get a small kickback. When I get enough money, I'll order another book for reviewing. If you want to order the book without me getting a payment, don't click the link.

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition by Abigail R. Gehring (editor)

I discovered this book through Amazon's recommendation system after looking at survival books, and I'm glad I found it. I think it's a great addition to the bookshelf. The book is a broad survey of many "traditional skills" that early American settlers and pioneers had. This includes things like building a log cabin, making your own timber, raising livestock, preserving foods, traditional crafts and so on. You can find the index of the book on the Amazon page.

(Disclosure: I haven't finished reading the book - it's slow going and I wanted to get this review up quickly. If any of my opinions change once I'm done, I'll be sure to update this review.)

Physical Structure

The book itself is standard sized for a large hardcover textbook, but it's bound landscape style instead of portrait, so it's long and will probably stick out of your actual bookshelf if it's not very deep. Textbook is a good comparison and the construction reminds me very much of textbooks I've used in the past - a stiff, strong cover with thin glossy pages. The binding seems strong and of better quality than I usually see in hardcover books. One pleasant surprise was that the longer landscape form helps to keep the book open to whatever page you're on without needing to hold it open, which is a great feature if you need to reference it while you're working. Overall I feel like this is book is of high quality construction and I wish I had more like it.

Layout

The book is divided into six sections, each focusing on a different aspect of traditional skills. Within each section are a number of subsections concerning specific tasks. For instance, Part One is all about picking out a piece of property and building on it. It includes topics like Preparing the site, Converting Trees into Lumber, Raising a Barn, Sanitation and so on. The book uses a 3 column per page layout for most entries, but makes heavy use of diagrams, illustrations and sidebars so you never get a page with just three columns of text.

The illustrations are designed to be as clear as possible and have explanatory text. Usually the illustrations have information that is not included in the general text. Sometimes the text has a brief high-level overview of a particular task and the illustrations have much more specific steps. I get the impression that they wanted each entry to be as complete as possible, so they were careful to not have redundant information.

The book is printed in full color and has many photographs. Because "traditional skills" are old and becoming more rare, a lot of the source images are quite old and still in black and white. Fortunately there are still a good number of color photos. Rarely is a photo in place simply for decoration - most have some important bit of detail to impart. Illustrations are mostly two color for simplicity, but a few (like plant identification) have full color illustrations.

I feel like the layout of this book was very carefully planned, and it shows. The layout can be complex at times, but it remains very easy to read and see how sections are separated. There is also a fairly complete index at the end, which is always nice to see.

Content

This book is packed with information. I was surprised by the breadth of information in it, and even more surprised that it wasn't dry and boring like a textbook. Most of the content is very clear and easy to understand, and can hold your attention if you have at least a little interest in it. Step by step instructions make complex operations relatively simple.

It should have been obvious to me when I ordered the book, but I was actually hoping for a bit more depth. In hindsight, that's fairly ridiculous - this book is just a survey. For any one of the subsections of this book you can probably write another whole 464 page book. I've got a pretty good idea of how I might go about building a log cabin now, but I'm sure there are things that I would prefer to know that the book didn't cover in any significant detail. Still, I know a heck of a lot more than I did before. Many sections also have a block of references at the bottom, so if you want to explore a topic more fully you've got a list of source material right there.

Another thing I didn't really expect was the extremely practical spin the book takes on "traditional skills." For instance, in the log cabin section they give instructions on how to use an axe to cut notches in logs, but also give an example of how to use a chainsaw to do it. In fact, most of the building section either explicitly recommends using power tools for ease of use but also gives examples of how you might do it with only traditional tools. They also recommend plastic or tar paper as moisture barriers in homes, and that's something folks didn't have 200 years ago but is a very important improvement over traditional methods. The section on juicing apples for cider has three examples of cider presses - one traditional screw press, one improvised lever based press, and one that uses a car jack. Cool!

Current Usage

The book is targeted at back-to-nature folks and people who want to live a more green lifestyle. I think I will find this book at least a little bit useful even if the world doesn't end any time soon. My wife saw the composting section and she wants to try that out in our garden this year. We're also intending on preserving food that we grow in our garden, and this book has some good info on that. I think it's most useful for people who live in the country and have some room to do the outdoor projects. An apartment dweller will be limited in the projects they can take on but could still find quite a bit to do, especially in the crafts section.

Post-Apocalyptic Usage

The first year or two after the apocalypse this book isn't going to be all that useful. At that point you'll either still be able to find preserved food and sturdy shelter or you'll be so fixated on basic survival that you won't be able to do anything else. The likelihood of you needing to move around a bit is also very high, so you won't be able to build a permanent home bring a lot of stuff with you. However, from year 2 through year 50 this book will be invaluable. It covers critical skills like growing and preserving food, building shelter, making clothing and so on. It gives enough info that you should be able to get by and learn by doing. Admittedly some things like building a log cabin aren't going to be very likely with plenty of abandoned housing around, but having a basic understanding of the concepts involved would be a big help when you do need to construct a new building.

The book does make assumptions about supplies that are available that might be hard (or impossible) to find in a PA world. Cement is a good example. Cement is difficult to make and is beyond the scope of the book, but it's really a requirement for the section on building with stone. Cement is such an amazing building material that I'm going to have to try and find a separate resource for that.

Overall

Well written, sturdy and packed with information. I paid about $17 for it, so it's also relatively cheap. Other books might have more info on specific topics, but the breadth of this one is hard to beat. Once you're past running for your life on a daily basis and start to settle in one place, you'll want this book.

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition

Grey Goo Concept Art

Here is some lovely concept art by Giacomo Costa of grey goo overrunning a city, along with a nice little blurb from io9 explaining the possible situation that could have caused it.

In case you're not familiar, "grey goo" is the common name for a scenario where self-replicating nanotech (which looks like a pool of grey goo) runs amok and turns everything on earth into more grey goo. Grey goo isn't a good PA scenario since it tends to end with everything, and I mean everything, dead. Even so, a more selective nanomachine - maybe one that eats plastics or metal - might make for a more interesting scenario. More on that some other time...

Grey Goo Artwork via io9

FreakAngels

FreakAngels is a graphic-novel style webcomic by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield. The story follows 12 psychic teenagers who are trying to survive in flooded Post-Apocalyptic London. It's starting to pick up speed, and Warren Ellis is his usual charming self. The violence in the comic can be a bit graphic and it's definately not for younger readers, but it's pretty interesting stuff. Their first book is also available.

FreakAngels

Book: Bugs in the Arroyo

Reader (and friend) Abra pointed out this excerpt from "Bugs in the Arroyo" by Steven Gould. The story has a very interesting form of apocalypse: metal eating bugs. I get the impression they might be some kind of self-replicating machine gone wild. It reminds me of Ray Bradbury's short story "A Piece of Wood," where a man discovers a compound that quickly turns metal into rust.

A metal-free future would be a particularly difficult one. Certain things like saws would be difficult, if not impossible to make. Plows and axes are possible with other materials, but inferior. There would be no guns or bullets, or even nails. Harnessing electricity would be basically impossible. On the other hand, glass has a very sharp edge even if it doesn't hold very long, and some types of wood are as strong as some metals. I suspect that a culture prepared for an event like that might be able to develop some strong plastics (or as mentioned in the story, fiberglass) to replace certain metal items, but they'd still be locked into a permanent metal-free existence.

I'm sure these aren't the only two examples of metal-free futures, or ones where certain resources are "off-limits." If you can think of more, let me know in the comments.

Swine Flu

Swine Flu has been all over the news the last couple of days. Lots of people are using the word pandemic. Is this the big one? Personally, I doubt it. Governments got very scared about SARS and Bird Flu in the last few years, so I think the appropriate agencies are relatively well prepared for this.

Just a word of advice - when it comes to science and medicine, don't listen to your friends. They don't know anything (unless they're, you know, doctors and scientists in appropriate fields). Find authoritative sources. The Center for Disease Control, scientific websites like New Scientist and Nature and professional health-focused sites like WebMD are a better source of information than that guy you talk to on the bus. Even the usually terrible local evening news is slightly better. Misinformation is very dangerous during an emergency.

So, after all that let's get all worked up. This is all hypothetical. What would an apocalyptic swine flu pandemic look like?

If we look at a real pandemic like the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed about 100 million people, it's easy to see that a disease on that scale isn't really apocalyptic in nature. The Spanish flu killed between 2.5-5% of the human population. To be apocalyptic it would have to go way beyond that and kill maybe 25% or more, like the Black Death did in 14th century Europe.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that it has high lethality, is resistant to treatment, spreads easily and ultimately kills about 25% of the population, spread around evenly. Since it was caught after quite a few deaths in Mexico, and there are known cases in the US, it's a safe bet it has spread to other locations via major travel hubs and large cities - LA, NYC, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Beijing, etc... If things go well any infected people will be quickly identified and isolated and the spread of the disease halted in that area. If they don't go well once these major travel hubs are thoroughly infected they will be next to impossible to lock down. The disease will spread out to smaller cities and towns as panicked people head away from the bigger cities.

Once the disease really starts to infect large numbers of people and the authorities try to restrict travel we can expect to see problems with resources. I think this is especially true of places like the US and Europe, where there are not necessarily a lot of local resources of particular types because it's cheaper to centralize and ship long distances. For example, car manufacturers might have a hard time getting steel because their trains are restricted or there are too many sick engineers. Certain goods will become very hard to find, for instance tropical fruits in the upper midwest US. Obviously the authorities will try to keep medicine and necessities in good supply, and if nothing else happens to make it worse, the effects of the pandemic will probably end somewhere around there. Lots of people dead, but little else truly impacted. Critical infrastructure and government will likely remain in place and functional.

As long as the percentage of deaths doesn't go too high, there will be a shifting in people's focus. People involved with luxury items and non-essentials will shift to fill the gaps in more essential services. We might see a drop in dog groomers, florists and baristi and an increase in local farming and manufacturing jobs. Some other interesting fallout would be a wide-scale housing market upset, as so many vacant homes come on the market. You won't be able to sell your house because it's so easy to get a cheap vacant one. People who are renting currently will be able to cheaply move into their own houses and the rental market will be in big trouble.

For a few years after the pandemic I expect there will be a kind of resistance to large social gatherings, or even the use of public transportation. The car market may boom despite recent environmental concerns as people shy away from the close quarters of the bus and train. Telecommuting will become huge, first because it will let people work while ill without any risk to coworkers, and second because it will be necessary to recruit people from farther away if there are shortages in skilled workers locally.

The developing world is going to be hit much, much harder than the US and Europe. Medical supplies are already limited, and areas that are already experiencing war, famine or the AIDS epidemic may be all but wiped out. Places that loose too much of their population will see their basic infrastructure collapse, and the rest of the world will be ill-equiped to assist.

All in all, it would be a pretty scary and nasty event, but compared to the other big potential apocalypses (nuclear war, environmental collapse and zombies) this one is pretty mild. The human race will certainly survive and the world won't be a wretched hellscape for generations. There may even be some upshots. After facing a brush with apocalypse, people might start to think in longer terms than they did before and plan more effectively for this kind of thing. A drastic reduction in population will also cause a drastic (temporary) reduction in environmental impact which could slow the approach of some of the environmental dangers looming on the horizon.

All this is just my opinion, obviously. What do you think could happen during or after an apocalyptic plague? Let me know in the comments.

ICA on FARK

The site got linked on FARK recently, so hello to all you FARKers. I just wanted to let you know I'm working on a longer post about Swine flu, and I'll be trying to incorporate the suggestions I've received into an update on the Bookshelf. Thanks for reading!