Survival Recipes for a Declining Empire
Primitive manufacturing techniques for the homesteader and prepper written in an easy to understand manner using easy to obtain ingredients
RSS 2.0Simple Salad Dressing
This is an easy and quick salad dressing recipe from things you might probably already have in your fridge.
Recipe instructions:
Mix the following ingredients and chill before use.
8 ounces yogurt
1 tbsp ketchup
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp mustard
1 tbsp honey
April 9, 2013 Tuesday at 9:52 pm
Easy Homemade Tortillas
This is a simple recipe to make tasty tortillas suitable for sandwich wraps or breakfast burritos.
Ingredients: 3 cups flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 5 tablespoons lard or beef tallow, 1.25 cups of water, cooking oil if you want to fry
Recipe Instructions:
Mix all of the ingredients together in a mixing bowl and turn out onto a kneading board. Knead the dough until it is smooth (about 2 minutes).
Pinch off about a golf ball sized piece of dough and flatten with a rolling pin until it is about 12 inches in diameter. Larger sizes tend to get difficult to handle and tear.
Cook the tortilla on medium heat for about 1 minute per side. It will bubble up in spots, that is to be expected. You can optionally add oil and fry the tortilla to make it tastier.
That is pretty much all there is to it. Here is the finished product. The tortillas tend to be a bit thicker than store bought ones but they sure do taste better.
April 9, 2013 Tuesday at 4:59 am
US ships of the Spanish American War that fought in the battle of Manilla Bay
American Fleet in Hong Kong before attacking Manilla.
An account of the battle from Dewey himself. Photos of the individual ships follow his story.
Admiral George Dewey
A quote from Dewey on why we won:
“In my judgement i should say that the first lesson of the battle teaches the importance of American gunnery and good guns. It confirms my early experience under Admiral Farragut, that combats are decided more by skill in gunnery and the quality of guns than all else…”
“The second lesson of this battle is the complete demonstration of the value of high grade men. Cheap men are not wanted, not needed, and are a loss to the United States Navy…”
“The third lesson, not less important than the others, is the necessity for inspection. Everything to be used in battle should have been thoroughly inspected by naval officials…”
USS Olympia the flagship of Dewey
This color photo of the last surviving ship from the Spanish American War is taken from George100 at en.wikipedia
USS Boston
USS Raleigh
USS Baltimore
USS Concord
USS Petrel
Black/white image sources: Numerous out of copyright works
Quotes: Admiral George Dewey, a sketch of the man by John Barrett. Harper Brothers New York and london 1899.
March 14, 2013 Thursday at 5:38 am
American Battleships of the Spanish American War
If you were ever curious about the main battleships that fought in or near the time of the Spanish American War this post is for you. Most of these ships were commissioned in the early to mid 1890s. They are all considered first or second class battleships.
USS Maine
The Maine entering Havana harbor before being blown up.
USS Maine blown up
USS Massachusetts
Commissioned 1891
32 officers, 463 crew
cost 3,063,000 dollars
Armor(in.) Side 18, Turret 15, Barbette 17
Speed 16 knots, Displacement 10,288 tons
Main guns – 13 inch guns (4), 8 inch (8), 6 inch (4)
Secondary guns – 6 pounder (20), 1 pounder (8), colts (2)
2 torpedo tubes
USS Iowa
Commissioned 1893
Displacement 11,340 tons
Speed 17 knots
Horsepower 12,105
Cost 3,010,000
Primary guns – 12 inch (4) 8 inch (8) 6 inch (4)
Secondary guns – 6 pounder (20) 1 pounder (4) Colts (4) 3 inch (2)
4 torpedo tubes
Armor – side 14 inch, turret 15 inch, barbette 15 inch
Crew 36 officers, 474 crew
USS Indiana
Commissioned 1891
Displacement 10,288 tons
Speed 16 knots
Horsepower 9,138
Cost 3,063,000
Primary guns – 13 inch (4) 8 inch (8) 6 inch (4)
Secondary guns – 6 pounder (20) 1 pounder (7) 3 inch (2)
Torpedo Tubes (2)
Armor- side 18 inch, turret 15 inch, barbette 17 inch
Crew 32 officers, 465 crew
USS Oregon
Commissioned 1891
Displacement 10,288 tons
Speed 17 knots
Horsepower 11,111
Cost 3,222,810
Primary guns – 13 inch (4) 8 inch (8) 6 inch (4)
Secondary guns – 6 pounder (20), 1 pounder (6), colts (2), 3 inch (2)
Torpedo tubes (2)
Armor – side 18 inch, turret 15 inch, barbette 17 inch
Crew 32 officers, 462 crew
USS Texas
Life aboard a ship
March 12, 2013 Tuesday at 5:32 am
What it is like to die by a rattlesnake bite
The following account describes a case of death by rattlesnake bite over several days. It should provide you an idea of the agony you might experience if bitten and untreated.
October 17, 1809
2:30 p.m. Thomas Soper was bitten twice on the fingers when he reached into a rattlesnake cage to pick up a dropped ruler. He went to a pharmacist and appeared to be drunk. His hands were not swollen yet.
3:00 p.m. His hands began to swell and the lower part of his forearm followed suit shortly. The skin on his hand was tense and painful.
4:00 p.m. The swelling was now at his elbow
4:30 p.m. The swelling was halfway up the arm with pain up to the armpit. His skin was cold and he could not answer questions due to incoherence. He felt sick and had a faint heartbeat of 100.
6:00 p.m. His heartbeat became stronger.
7:30 p.m. He had a faint heartbeat again.
9:00 p.m. He felt depressed, had cold skin, a weak pulse of 80.
10:30 p.m. Extreme pain in the arm, strong heartbeat would change to weak heartbeat every 15 minutes. He felt less depressed when the pulse was stronger.
11:30 p.m. Arm was swollen all the way to the armpit, felt cold, and no pulse could be felt up to the armpit. He was coherent.
October 18
1:00 a.m. He was incoherent and had a weak pulse of 132. His skin was mottled all the way down to his abdomen. His arm was cold but painful still. He had fainting and vomiting spells.
Noon His arm looked like it was putrefying. Fainting spells and weak pulse continued.
October 19
9:00 a.m. The swelling in his arms started to lessen and feeling slowly returned.
October 20
His arm felt warmer but he still had trouble keeping food down.
October 21
He was sometimes delirious with a pulse of 120
October 22
Pulse of 98 which become stronger and fuller that night. His right side all the way to his abdomen was inflamed, painful, and mottled.
October 23, 24, 25
No change
October 26, 27
The arm became more swollen again, his tongue was furred. Faster pulse.
October 28
He had some rigor at night
October 29
Heartbeat 100, an abcess formed on his elbow that was lanced. The lower arm reduced in size after this but the upper was still swollen.
October 30
The upper arm wasn’t swollen anymore
October 31
Pulse 120, rigor at night, abcess discharge from his arm decreased.
November 1
He became delirious, lost his appetite, and had a 120 pulse.
November 2
Very weak pulse, depression, brown tongue, delirium, skin started to die near the armpit.
November 3
A mortified finger was amputated and mortification also spread elsewhere.
November 4
4:30 p.m. Death
Source: The Case of a Man, Who Died in Consequence of the Bite of a Rattle-Snake; With an Account of the Effects Produced by the Poison. Home, E Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1776-1886). 1810-01-01. 100:75–88
March 10, 2013 Sunday at 1:15 pm
Creating a transparent region in your photos using GIMP
If you ever wanted to cut out the center of an ornate image and replace it with a transparent region you can do it with the GIMP photo manipulation program. We will walk you step by step so that you can for instance, cut out the face of someone you don’t like anymore and replace it with a new face that you cut out of a different picture. You can enlarge these explanatory images to see a closer view of what is going on in each step.
Step 1: Open the image you want to edit with GIMP.
Step 2: Select layer, transparency, add alpha channel as shown to create the transparent background.
Step 3: Choose the lasso or rectangle select tool and make a box around the region you want to cut. Press delete after selecting to remove the unwanted area.
Step 4: You have the option here to invert your selection. This means that you can cut the outside away (removing the border), or cut the inside away (removing the picture).
Step 5a: In this step we have cut away the outside.
Step 5b: In this step we cut away the inside of the picture. You can put something inside the frame like this.
Step 6: Export the image as shown and save the file as a png. PNG files let you have transparent regions.
Step 7: This is the final product that can now be used to create a new image with a different inside.
March 10, 2013 Sunday at 8:02 am
Extremely disturbing Soviet Experiment on the reanimation of dead dogs
The following video is not for the faint of constitutution. Soviet experimenters graphically show the removal of organs and their reanimation with machines. Severed heads are artificially kept alive as well. Dogs are drained of blood till death occurs, then reanimated and re-injected with blood. The dogs then go on to live normal lives after removal from the machines. Do not watch if you don’t like the sight of blood, death, or cruel mistreatment.
We present this video not to shock so much as to show how strong and vibrant the will to live can be. The fact that soviet scientists can conduct these Frankenstein type experiments is quite disturbing. Source: Archive.org
March 9, 2013 Saturday at 1:14 am
Links
