The woman who fell from the sky: the aircrash sole-survivor’s story.
Juliane Koepcke was travelling on an internal flight over the Peruvian jungle when it was struck by lightning and disintegrated. She fell from over 10,000 feet into the rainforest and was the only survivor.
Ms Koepcke found herself falling in open air, she came to still in her seat (which was attached to the intact row) after plunging more than two miles through the air, through the jungle canopy and to the jungle floor.
The face of nuclear terror has changed since the Cold War, but disaster-medicine expert Irwin Redlener reminds us the threat is still real. He looks at some of history’s farcical countermeasures and offers practical advice on how to survive an attack.
About Irwin Redlener
Dr. Irwin Redlener spends his days imagining the worst: He studies how humanity might survive natural or human-made disasters of unthinkable severity.
http://www.ted.com/talks/irwin_redlener_warns_of_nuclear_terrorism.html
She took us into the world of cadavers and examined the anatomy, physiology and psychology behind sex. Now, Mary Roach discovers the surreality and weirdness of space.
For example, what happens when you’ve been in space for a year? And is it possible for a human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? From the space shuttle training toilet to NASA’s crash simulation tests, Roach explores the strange universe.
Tagged with book:author=mary roach space gravity survival science nasa space shuttle mars
With vintage Russian black humor, Orlov described the social collapse he witnessed in Russia in the 1990s and spelled out its practical lessons for the American social collapse he sees as inevitable. The American economy in the 1990s described itself as “Goldilocks”—just the right size—when in fact is was “Tinkerbelle,” and one day the clapping stops. As in Russia, the US made itself vulnerable to the decline of crude oil, a trade deficit, military over-reach, and financial over-reach.
Russians were able to muddle through the collapse by finding ways to manage 1) food, 2) shelter, 3) transportation, and 4) security.
By way of readiness, Orlov urges all to prepare for life without a job, with near-zero burn rate. It takes practice to learn how to be poor well. Those who are already poor have an advantage.
http://blog.longnow.org/2009/02/16/dmitry-orlov-social-collapse-best-practices/
Transcript: http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html