Favorite Fire Starters

I've given up on butane lighters, from disposables to the very expensive Brunton Helios. They've let me down too many times. These are what I've settled on, clockwise from the top:

"Stormproof" matches - REI markets these, and they're the best matches I can find. 

Pros: can be used to light candles and lamp wicks; once the match is struck, no amount of wind or water - not even a dunking - will make it go out until it's run its course.

Cons: require two hands; matches and strikers affected by moisture; impractical to carry more than a dozen or two in your pockets.

The aluminum K&M match case is very high quality, holds about a dozen matches plus a couple strikers, and has a compass inletted into the top. A good thing to have in a pocket on any hike. The yellow UCA match case holds about two dozen matches plus strikers, and also has a convenient striker on the outside. It's too big for pockets, but good to keep in packs.

Ferrocerium rods, or "Firesteels" - alloys of iron, magnesium and rare earth metals extruded in various diameters. The top one shows the magnesium rod and scraper kept with it. Most firesteels are manufactured by JX Metals in Shanghai, then branded and marked up (sometimes dramatically). To use them, you literally scrape particles of metal off the rod, and if done quickly enough, heat generated by friction will ignite them. An impressive shower of very hot sparks is the result. With a little practice, you can usually ignite tinder consistently with one scrape. Don't use the sharp edge of your knife, use the squared-off back of the blade, or better yet, a dedicated scraper. Anything that's very hard will work well. Tool steel is excellent. Tungsten carbide is even better - buy a carbide sharpening tool when they're on sale at your hardware store.  

You can also buy soft magnesium rods to go on a lanyard with your firesteel and scraper so that you'll always have a source of waterproof tinder. See the paragraph on magnesium tinder below for how to make use of them.

Pros: thousands of lights; unlimited shelf life if protected from corrosion.

Cons: require two hands (well, you can do it with one hand and a foot, but it takes some coordination you might not be capable of it if injured); can break if dropped; impractical for lighting candles and lamps; corrosion can be a problem in salt environments - paint them with your wife's nail polish if you aren't going to use them for a while.

Sparklite:

Pros: very tiny and compact, almost weightless - you can stash several of them in pockets and packs; can be used with one hand; work even after being immersed in water; unlimited shelf life if protected from corrosion.

Cons: won't ignite most natural tinders, so you'll need to bring along vaseline-impregnated cotton balls or buy more of the "Tinder-Quik" tabs that come with them; impractical for lighting candles and lamps; corrosion can be a problem in salt environments

Blastmatch:

Pros: can be used with one hand; unlimited shelf life if protected from corrosion.

Cons: bulky in your pocket; impractical for lighting candles and lamps; corrosion can be a problem in salt environments; fragile (the metal striker fell out of the plastic it was molded into).

Doan magnesium: these combine a small ferrocerium rod with a block of magnesium. They get a bad rap because people don't understand how to use them. Their advantage is that you always have a waterproof source of both sparks and tinder. Scrape a little pile of magnesium shavings into a depression (see the paragraph below about magnesium tinder), then strike sparks from the epoxied-on ferrocerium rod into the pile. The shavings will burn hot enough to ignite rubber from a tire if that's all you have. Don't waste your money on the knockoffs from Coughlans or China. The strikers of the former break off easily, and some of the latter aren't even magnesium - I think they're aluminum.

Pros: waterproof ferrocerium rod and waterproof tinder always available.

Cons: impractical for lighting candles and lamps; corrosion can be a problem in salt environments

Magnifying glass - Pros: never wears out; can be used with one hand; has multiple uses like reading fine print, identifying mushrooms, finding tiny slivers, etc.

Cons: only works in bright sun, impractical for lighting candles and lamps.

Of all the above, my favorite firestarters are Stormproof matches, Sparklites and Firesteels.

Sparklite says their lighters should last for "more than a thousand strikes". Let's assume a 50% marketing exaggeration just to be on the safe side, and call it 500. I'm sure that I've lit more than 500 fires with mine, and it's still working.

Firesteels of 1/4" diameter are advertised as lasting "up to 3,000 strikes". (Those of 3/8" diameter are advertised as lasting "up to 12,000".) Again, lets assume a conservative 50% BS factor, and call it 1,500. Let's further assume that it takes you an average of three strikes for a spark to catch, because sometimes they're difficult to aim. (Although after some practice, you should be able to ignite good tinder consistently with only one or two.) So conservatively figure 500 with those, too.

For comparison, here's what a 1/4" firesteel and a Sparklite look like next to 500 Storm Matches:

As of today, 500 REI Stormproof matches cost $65 and weigh 6.5 ounces. That's 13 cents per fire.

A Sparklite from Fourseasonssurvival.com costs $8, and for our purposes is weightless. That's less than two cents per fire from something that costs no effort to carry.

A heavier-duty aluminum Sparklite with an extra flint costs $15. Three cents per fire not even taking into account that it'll last longer.

A 1/4 inch diameter firesteel with a scraper from Firesteel.com costs $7.60 and weighs one ounce. Less than two cents per fire.

A 3/8 inch diameter fire steel with a scraper from Firesteel.com costs $14.50 and weighs two ounces. Using the same 50%-and-3-strikes math, that's less than one penny per fire.

I almost always have a 3/8" firesteel with a scraper in my pocket, on an orange paracord lanyard looped through a belt loop. There are extras in my vehicles. There's one hanging by my woodstove. There are Sparklites and Doan magnesium fire starters in my hunting coat and floatation vest. I used to keep all of the above plus a Blastmatch in my pockets when I was flying fighters and bush planes. There are Stormproof matches in waterproof containers in canoe duffles and cot organizers, and magnifying glasses in medical kits.

If a burning bush told me I could only have one fire starter, it'd be a 3/8" fire-steel on a paracord lanyard with a scraper and a rod of magnesium, all on an orange lanyard to make the kit more visible in the leaves. In addition to the advantages described above, they're just plain fun to use.

A discussion of fire starters isn't complete without a discussion of tinder. Translating sparks or embers into flames can be difficult. I really like the commercial tinders marketed under the name "Tinder-Quik" that come with Sparklites. They're made of cotton impregnated with beeswax, petroleum and silicone. Small, light, convenient, and they'll work even after a dunking. You can cut them in half to make them go further. Just fluff up an end and they'll catch the tiniest spark.

Cotton balls with a bit of petroleum jelly (not too much, just a tad) are my second choice. Stuff them into a section of a fat plastic straw by pulling them into an elongated shape and then poking them in with a stick. Seal the ends of the straw by holding them shut with pliers and melting with a flame. To use, just cut off one of the ends, pull a bit of cotton out and fluff it up. (That'll get petroleum jelly on your fingers, which is almost always a good thing outdoors - my fingers and lips get dry and cracked.)

Magnesium burns very, very hot, and is completely waterproof - you could swim ashore from a capsized canoe and then ignite a rubber boot with it if you had to. It can be frustrating to collect a small pile of shavings if you aren't patient or don't have the technique, though. Rest one end of the rod or block on something solid, in a shallow depression in a boulder or scooped out of the dirt, or in the punched-in crown of your hat on the ground. Scrape with the squared-off spine of your knife or your dedicated scraper for a few minutes until you have a pile more-or-less the diameter and thickness of a quarter, depending on what you intend to ignite with it. Making shavings doesn't take much pressure, just patience. Protect them from wind, they're so light that the slightest breeze will scatter them.

Natural tinders that work well for me are birch bark, Phragmite seed heads, thistledown, milkweed fluff, cedar bark, pine needles, grass, beech leaves that have hung on young trees through the winter, tinder fungus, cattail fluff, milkweed fluff, Old Man's Beard smeared with Balsam Fir pitch, and the insides of Oak leaf galls. As a general rule, anything you find on the ground will be too damp, even when the weather's dry, and any tinder that can be shredded should be. Sometimes wet tinders can be dried by carrying them between your inner and outer layers of clothing for a while. A single Phragmite seedhead with a single pinecone on top is all you need to quickly touch off a fire.

Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler (née Krzyżanowska, AKA Irena Sendlerowa, Nom de guerre Jolanta), 1910 – 2008, was a member of the Polish underground during WWII.

She worked for Warsaw's municipal department, and had a permit to enter the 16-block Ghetto cordoned off by the Germans to inspect sanitary conditions during a Typhus outbreak. She began smuggling babies and toddlers out, sometimes sedated and disguised as packages. Their names were recorded in coded form and buried in jars under an apple tree. The Resistance recruited her, and the smuggling accelerated.

In 1943, Irena was arrested by the Gestapo. In prison she was interrogated repeatedly, but gave up nothing of value and continued to resist with small acts of sabotage, such as cutting holes in German uniforms when doing laundry. During a final torture session, her feet, legs and arms were broken and she was sentenced to death. A bribed guard added her name to the list of executed prisoners and left her in the woods. She lived in hiding for the remainder of the war. When it was over, she dug up the jars and tried to reunite the children with their relatives. There were 2,500 names in the jars, but almost no surviving families.

The post-war Communist government of Poland persecuted Irena because they were only aware of her involvement with the German army and not her efforts to save the children. Her family lived in poverty and public disgrace. Her children were expelled from the University.

A year before her death at age 98, she was considered for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, but it was awarded to Al Gore instead. She didn't seem to mind: "What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal."

"Key Response Planning Factors for the Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism"

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory prepared this report for the Department of Homeland Security. Here are the key points:

"Despite hundreds of above-ground nuclear tests and data gathered from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the effects of a ground-level, low-yield nuclear detonation in a modern urban environment are still the subject of considerable scientific debate.The largest potential for reducing casualtiesA during the post-detonation response phase comes from reducing exposure to fallout radiation. This can be accomplished through early, adequate sheltering followed by informed, delayed evacuation.

1. Find early, adequate shelter

It is important to be in the shelter when the fallout arrives. Fallout arrival times vary with yield and weather. If you are outside of the building-collapse area immediately surrounding the detonation, you should have several minutes before fallout arrives.

If you are outside or in a car, seek the nearest adequate shelter. Even an inadequate shelter is better than no shelter.

• Adequate shelters are locations that have as much earth, building materials, or distance between the occupants and exposed horizontal surfaces as possible. Exposed horizontal surfaces accumulate fallout. Buildings do not have to be air-tight. Broken windows do not greatly reduce the protection offered by a shelter.
• Examples of adequate shelter:
• — Basements, usually against a basement wall (in the corner). — Multistory brick or concrete structures.
• — Office buildings (central core or underground sections).
• — Multistory shopping malls (away from roof or exterior
• walls).
• — Tunnels, subways, and other underground areas.
• 
  
• Inadequate shelters include:
• — Cars, buses, and aboveground rail systems.
• — Light residential structures, such as mobile homes.
• — Single-story wood-frame houses without basements. — Single-story commercial structures without basements
• (e.g., strip malls, retail stores, and light industry).
• 
  
• 2. Perform an informed evacuation of that shelter based on three key factors:
• 
  
• -The quality of the shelter.
• - Radiation levels at the shelter site.
• - Radiation levels and travel time along the evacuation route.
• 
  
• Shelter for at least the first hour unless threatened by fire, building collapse, medical necessity, or other immediate threats.
• Once you have decided to evacuate:
• - Seek instructions and information on the location of dangerous fallout areas.
• - Identify the shortest possible evacuation route that avoids high levels of contamination. Consider tunnels, building lobbies, or other evacuation routes protected by earth, heavy building materials, and/or distance from fallout.
• - Seek local collection points (with adequate shelter) for evacuation by mass transit.
• - Consider evacuating by car if the roads have been cleared.
• 
  
• 3. Control contamination
• - Avoid outdoor exposure during the first few minutes and hours after the fallout arrives—this is the highest priority. Exposure due to contamination depositing on clothing and skin, inhalation, and ingestion are secondary concerns. Simple respiratory protection, such as a layer of cloth over nose and mouth, can mitigate contamination.
• - Remove outer clothing and shoes upon entry to shelter. Alternatively (and less preferably), brush off contamination. If possible, wipe or wash hair and exposed skin to remove fallout particles.
• 
  
• Identifying features of a nuclear detonation (not all features may be present)

An abrupt blinding flash that is visible over a large area (particularly at night).
The widespread disruption of unprotected electronic devices (EMP).
Thermal damage and burn victims well away from the blast location.

Widespread high-level radiation readings.

• A “mushroom shaped cloud” may not be generated or visible
• 
  
• Take shelter before fallout arrives

1. The most significant exposures from fallout occur in the first
2. hour after fallout arrives.
3. Seek shelter immediately if sand, ash, or rain starts to fall.

Except in areas of major building damage closest to the detonation, fallout should take at least several minutes to arrive.

• 
  
• Avoid the primary radiation hazard—external exposure to fallout
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Fallout particles on the ground and other horizontal surfaces give off penetrating radiation; inhalation is only a minor concern.
• Shelter provided by heavy materials (concrete walls, earth, etc.) and distance from the particles on the ground are the primary sources of protection.
• The best place to find protection is in the middle or basement of a building.
• Even with broken windows, buildings can provide adequate shelter.
• 
  
• Areas of blast damage might NOT be contaminated with fallout
• 
  
• - Blast damage extends outward from the detonation in all directions, perhaps for several miles
• - Fallout proceeds downwind, contaminating only a fraction of the blast-damaged area.
• 
  
• Hazardous levels of fallout will extend into undamaged downwind areas
• 
  
• - Levels of fallout that can induce sickness from an outdoor exposure may extend 20 miles or more downwind.
• The shockwave that breaks windows travels much more slowly than the bright flash of light. This delay, up to 30 seconds or more, can increase injuries if people approach windows to investigate the bright flash."

• If you only remember one thing, this is what it should be: seek adequate shelter (think UNDERGROUND) for at least the first hour.

Mexico's Drug Cartels

"Plata o plomo" ("silver or lead"), is an expression meaning bribery or violence. Mexico's cartels have coalesced around the two most powerful, the Sinaloa and the Los Zetas, who tend to operate at opposite ends of that spectrum. They use the same set of tools, but they use them to different degrees.

The Sinaloa leaders have been in "business" for decades, tend to take a more patient approach to things, and generally aim to own officials and politicians. Not that they aren't capable of ruthless brutality, it's just not usually their preferred Plan A. Like intelligence organizations, they often bribe low-level officials and then facilitate their promotions. Sinaloa has formed very long-term relationships with many police and military officers, politicians, journalists and judges on both sides of the border, paying some of them millions of dollars per year.

Sinaloa head Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is an almost mythical figure who has been a fugitive for over thirty years. Having bought a great deal of goodwill, he is revered, even, among Mexico's poor. He was arrested in 1993, continued to run his empire from a very comfortable prison situation, and "escaped" when it looked like he might be extradited to the US. Since then, both Mexico and the US have been "unable" to locate him.

The Los Zetas cartel was more recently formed by Mexican special operations soldiers, who have stolen and bought military weapons and know how to use them. It tends to apply a violent solution to any problem first. They bribe people, but find that it is faster, cheaper and easier to intimidate or eliminate them. Even those whom they choose to bribe tend not to stay on their payroll for years.

As a general rule, when you think 'corruption', think Sinaloa. When you think 'piles of heads dumped in a public square', think Los Zetas.

Mexican officials are under a great deal of pressure to "do something" as their presidential election approaches, and US officials as the "Fast and Furious" scandal gets ever dirtier. Stay tuned for exciting developments.

Biography of the Day: Tim Sullivan

‎"Big Tim" Sullivan, 1862-1913, was a New York state senator who controlled virtually all jobs and vice in lower Manhattan.

He was born to Irish immigrant parents. His father, a Union Civil War veteran, died young of Typhus. His mother remarried an alcoholic laborer.

At eight, Sullivan was shining shoes and selling newspapers. By his mid-twenties, he owned six saloons, with additional business interests in theaters, boxing and horse racing.

He married a childhood friend, Helen Fitzgerald, about whom little is known. Associates said that he never spoke of her, and that they were "wise enough not to ask".

He rose to political power during the heyday of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine infamous for patronage and graft. His electoral base was New York City's poor, among whom he was extremely popular. He sponsored picnics and steamboat excursions for tenement dwellers in the summer, and had food, coal and shoes distributed in the winter. He aligned himself with the women's rights movement and legislated humane treatment for cart horses. Despite his emphatic denials, his involvement in prostitution, gambling, extortion, organized crime and street gangs was widely known. New York's strict gun control laws began with the Sullivan Act, which he enacted in order to disarm rival gangs as he politically protected his own. He became known as "The Tammany Tiger" as spectacular ethnic gang violence flourished, and he further expanded his power by incorporating Italian and Jewish gangs into his predominantly Irish organization. Rivals took to sewing their pockets shut so that the corrupt NYPD couldn’t plant firearms on them. Many gangsters stashed their weapons inside their girlfriends’ “bird cages”, wire-mesh fashion contraptions around which women wound their hair. Ordinary citizens were disarmed, which solved the problem of victims defending themselves. The FBI finally got involved and was able to put a lid on things in the 1950's.

Suffering from tertiary syphilis, Sullivan slowly went mad and was committed to a sanitarium. He escaped, and his dismembered body was found on a train track. His family did not report him missing, and his body was unidentified for two weeks despite his fine clothes and monogrammed diamond cufflinks, prompting speculation of foul play.

His estate was valued at more than two million, a huge fortune in 1913.
Sullivan had one child with his wife Helen, a daughter who died in infancy. He did, however, father at least six illegitimate children, mostly with actresses.

Biography of the Day: Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla, 1856 – 1943, was a complicated genius whose work, among other things, made possible our commercial AC electrical supply system, wireless communication, radar, remote controls, wireless power transmission, and spark plugs. Born in Serbia, he finished school early and went on to study electrical engineering in Austria. After three years, he dropped out and cut relations with his family. His friends believed that he had drowned. He moved to Slovenia, suffered a nervous breakdown, briefly attended a university in Prague, then went to work as an engineer in Paris and finally the US.

Offered a great deal of money to solve a problem for Thomas Edison, he did so. Edison broke his word and refused to pay him, so he resigned and worked for a time as a ditch digger as he continued his experiments. One of them was seized and torn down because of suspicion that it was being used by German spies. He once ripped up a Westinghouse contract that would have made him the world's first billionaire, because he thought that power should be free, and because he didn't want to deal with creditors if Westinghouse went out of business. He and Edison feuded until the end of their days, and it probably cost both of them Nobel Prizes.

Tesla was a sickly man with many quirks and phobias. He was fastidious about cleanliness and had a pathological fear of germs. He wore white gloves and declined to shake hands. He was physically revolted by pearl earrings, and obsessed with the number three (he circled buildings three times before entering, and wouldn't stay in a room without a three in its number) and with pigeons (he fed them daily with special seeds). He spoke eight languages, was a connoisseur of art, poetry, philosophy and food, was passionate about billiards, chess and cards. He was "sweet, sincere, modest and generous". He openly expressed disgust to overweight people, and sent employees home to change if he didn't like their clothes. He was painfully introverted, and yet a great showman. He memorized entire books. He never slept longer than two hours. He often spent more than two days straight at gaming tables, and once worked 84 hours without sleep. He was ambivalent about women, and none played a part in his life aside from a mysterious relationship with the daughter of J.P. Morgan. He claimed that chastity was an important component of his scientific abilities. He believed that man's sense of pity interfered with the workings of nature and advocated sterilization of the unfit to offset it.

In middle age, Tesla became a close friend of Mark Twain, who spent a great deal of time in his lab. In his later years, he became extremely sensitive to light and noise, converted to vegetarianism, decided that women were the dominant sex, and predicted that humanity would eventually be ruled by "Queen Bees". He believed that he was visited daily by a specific white pigeon that gave his life meaning. When it died, his work stopped.

Tesla died broke in a NY hotel room. His pallbearers were Nobel Prize winners. The US government seized his private papers and classified them Top Secret. He had been involved in a lawsuit claiming that he had invented the radio, not Marconi. Shortly after his death, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

Who imports food and who exports it?

This information was condensed from a report by 'Stratfor Global Intelligence'.

Corn, rice, wheat and soybeans are the world's most important food staples.

Corn and soybean exports are dominated by the Western Hemisphere, and wheat by the Northern Hemisphere. Asia accounts for most rice, which is the most easily destabilized of the key staples due to its sensitivity to rainfall.

Ninety countries import corn, but only four export it in significant quantities: The United States, Brazil, Argentina and Ukraine.

The largest rice producer by far is China, but they consume most of their production domestically. The top exporters of rice in order of rank are Thailand, Vietnam, India, Pakistan and the United States.

Most of the wheat export market is dominated by ten entities: the United States, Australia, Russia, Canada, the European Union, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Turkey and Uruguay. China is by far the largest producer of wheat, but as with rice, consumes almost all it produces.

The US, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina are the largest exporters of soybeans. China imports more than 60 percent of globally traded soy, and has been stockpiling in anticipation of future supply fluctuations.

Reading between the lines here, it's easy to see that America still "feeds the world". It's also easy to envision domestic unrest in import-reliant China when future food shortages and price increases occur.