Everything Nice Stove Instructions!  This is a pyrolizing stove that produces a hot flame with little smoke, and the end product is biochar,
which can be used as fertilizer.

Building a small slow sand water filter for individual use. Complete plans, with pictures, for building this low tech water purification/filtration device.
Water purification in a disaster is a big deal, and once constructed, this works by the simple flow of water through its system.

Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps.  Identifies the fundamental threat in a disaster situation as  the "six ways to die" -- heat, cold, illness, injury, hunger, thirst.
Illustrates the infrastructure that prevents deaths from these fundamental threats from killing us at these levels of complexity --
 personal, family/household, village, town, region, country, world.

Hexayurt -- this is a simple emergency shelter that can be built with common materials by amateurs.

The Gupta State Failure Management Archive -- this is a very large archive of material compiled by Vinay Gupta regarding options and management in the event of  "state failure" -- the collapse of existing systems.

Compendium of Useful Information -- access to more than two gigabytes of useful how-to information, compiled by Bob Waldrop, and added to at irregular intervals.

What are Printable Flyers and why are they necessary and useful?

The world is afflicted with unjust and irrational economic and political structures. We face multiple threats including resource exhaustion/peak oil,
climate instability, and economic irrationality and collapse. An unsustainable system will not go on forever. Unless the stress is relieved
and the system made sustainable, it will eventually collapse. We hope that a "soft landing" can be engineered for our currently unsustainable systems
of economics and politics and lifestyle, but just in case we are wrong. . . or you get stuck in a disaster when help is delayed. . . or there's some sudden
need to jump start a sustainable society real quickly. . .here is a selection of "printable flyers" we hope would be useful in such a situation.

Emergency service organizations have great contingency plans for most "ordinary" disasters (weather events, other localized disasters, etc.),
but we should all be concerned about the response of governments to what would be a continent-wide disaster/collapse. For example, I asked
around here in Oklahoma City and local government has no contingency plans for protecting the families of emergency responders in such a situation,
 so that the police and fire departments can go about their duties confident that their families are OK. How long will they stay on the job if their families are at risk?

Government emergency plans are based on bringing resources from other areas to help the area in trouble. They don't ask and thus they don't answer
he question - what happens if no help is available from outside the disaster area, because the disaster is continent-wide?

As far as I know, these printable flyers are the only community response materials for such a situation available on the internet.
The time to make contingency plans is before the situation collapses, and the most basic thing you can do is to download these flyers and
 copy them in advance of problems so that they are available when they are needed.

And absent a collapse or destablized situation, they have ideas about sustainable living and the importance of knowing and working with your
neighbors which are useful for families and neighborhoods.

My theory on crisis leadership is that "they who get there the firstest with the mostest" have the best chance of carrying the day.

Imagine the situation, a few days after everything pretty much slides into perdition. Maybe its been coming over a period of months, maybe its quick,
like an EMP attack. Your neighbors get together to decide on what to do. You show up with copies of the printable flyers. Immediately, the flyers are
the focus of discussion. Instructions! You brought instructions! Written instructions! We are all conditioned to follow the instructions, and here you are,
with some instructions for a situation most of them have never ever thought about or considered possible. You gain cred because you contribute something useful.
Your neighborhood is not out of the woods yet, but now you have a plan, concrete actions to work on, something to do. Useful work that addresses the
immediate needs of a complex disaster situation is the best way to process the feelings of panic and powerlessness that most people would be experiencing
in such an unprecedented situation.

Besides your neighbors, think about your local government. After you meet with your neighbors, send a delegation downtown to city hall, and generally
make enough of a polite nuisance of yourself to get yourself and your copies of the printable flyers in front of someone with some authority. Here again,
you've brought instructions! Better than anything that FEMA has, ideas that even your local emergency services director hasn't thought of. Practical
instructions that fit the circumstances, that weren't dictated by bureaucrats from far away.

To give yourself authority, give yourself authority. As you print and copy the printable flyers, start an informal organization. Call it "(Whatever the name
of your town or area is) Mutual Aid". My group is Oklahoma City Mutual Aid. We've had a workshop to discuss our options in the event of a collapse
situation here in central Oklahoma. See the details at http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/okcmutual.htm . If someone asks, "What is that?, answer -
"We are an informal group of people concerned about community resilience in the face of major and grave challenges." While the copy shops are up and
running, make yourself a professional-looking laminated ID card with your picture, signature, a logo (find a graphic of two hands clasped, or two people
shaking hands), and the name of your organization. Punch a hole in the top for a lanyard, and voila, you look just like everyone else who has some authority.
All the other emergency workers will be wearing something like that, and if your community is of any size at all, somewhere there will be a committee
of these emergency workers meeting, and your goal should be to get invited to those meetings. Bring your printable flyers, and
you will be there the firstest with the mostest.

The alternative could be a take-over by what Kunstler calls the "corn pone fascists" or even worse. Disasters always bring out the best and the worst,
 and if you wait around and do nothing, you are at risk of being at the mercy of the worst. Don't wait for the best to come out in others, YOU are the BEST already.
Step forward, teach, suggest, coordinate, be a good example.

But if you don't download, print, and make copies now, you won't have the instructions to use in your are when times get tough.
So don't delay, print today! Procrastination is the thief of time.

Printable flyers for promoting frugal living

The flyers are copyright 1999 - 2011. Permission is hereby granted to download and print any amount of copies for free distribution (tell your friends!).

For much greater detail about my plans for adapting my "urban homestead" to meet the looming challenges of peak oil,
climate instability, and economic irrationality, see Gatewood Urban Homestead, the permaculture design for my home.

For more information, visit . . .

Better Times Almanac of Useful Information  | www.facebook.com/bobwaldrop | www.facebook.com/oscarromerocatholicworker

Prairie Rose Permaculture - Lifestyle design for the 21^st century that meets the challenges of peak oil, peak food, climate instability,
and economic irrationality - my permaculture practice, offering online permaculture education worldwide and design consulting in the Oklahoma area.

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Bob Waldrop rants with hair on fire on politics and economics