Unsplash: Pixabay

The nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency showed exactly what President Donald Trumps commitment, or lack thereof, to the environment would be for the duration of his presidency.

Trumps comments on climate change have varied from calling it a hoax to agreeing that it is a problem that needs to be dealt with in some manner. Pruitt as a nominee reflects the former of these views on climate change and a commitment to fossil fuel corporate interests.

The EPA is here to stick around, but that does not mean that Pruitt cannot facilitate a conservative agenda that drastically cuts EPA funding, relaxes EPA-mandated regulations, and turns a blind eye to industrial interests. The Senate confirmation of Pruitt, someone who has sued the EPA 14 times, will mark a tremendous blow to environmentalists in an era where climate change will be the most pressing global issue. With this, it is important to look to green movements that can facilitate pushback against a pro-industry, anti-environmental administration for the next four years.

John Dryzek, a professor at the University of Canberras Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, outlines specific approaches to solving environmental issues, including survivalism, environmental problem solving, sustainability, and green radicalism.

Sustainability and green radical movements are both worldviews that recognize the environmental issues facing us today and the fact that humans are at the center of this negative impact on nature. What is abundantly clear in Dryzeks study of the different worldviews is that their blueprint for protecting the environment represents the central value structure of each discourse.

For example, the sustainability world view positions the environment at the feet of humans, while the Green Radical worldview does not. Sustainability as a solution is committed to the Western, capitalist principles of development at all costs, but wants to sustain the environment by promoting a cause that can achieve it all.

Green radicals see capitalism and its ideals of incessant production and consumption as a problem that can only be fixed by overthrowing the system itself. It becomes a question of whether we work with the system or destroy it to build our own.

The sustainability worldview is broken into sustainable development and ecological modernization. While both intentionally fit the neoliberal framework, focusing on progression and economic development, they are also attempting to change the systems of production so that we can have it all.

Moreover, sustainable development revolves around the idea that we can still grow if we solve environmental issues in a multifaceted approach, much like democracy, that promotes many values in a competitive and cooperative manner.

The problem with this is twofold.

We must first make sustainable resources desirable to corporate interests, initially by making them economically more efficient and then finding a way to incorporate the oil and automobile industry in this transition seeing as they have an immense amount of political power.

This effort was made clear by President Barack Obama when he presented the efficient models of clean energy and used them to reduce emissions throughout his presidency. Then, even if we can produce less, emit less, and become more sustainable, because of our consumer habits inherent in a capitalistic economy, we will continue to harm the earth when consuming what developing countries are producing.

This multifaceted attempt to promote sustainable economic growth through international and grassroots organization while de-emphasizing national government, is encouraging in that it decentralizes power, reducing the strength and validity behind realist political thought, while promoting traditional liberal political theory. The fact that this discourse incorporates decentralization makes it better than ecological modernization by giving people more access and focused less on experts and elites setting up the so-called sustainable economy. I believe this would be beneficial to many international issues of power facing us today by moving from a zero-sum to a positive-sum foreign policy. From an environmental perspective, however, sustainable development still submits to market capitalism and its relentless need for growth, and therefore will not be successful.

Though this model of sustainable development promotes the notion of having it all, scientific research tells us this may not be possible. Scientific reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that the threat of an environmental catastrophe is imminent. Continued growth means more emissions, meaning higher global temperatures, rising sea levels, increases in the number of natural disasters, huge displacements of refugees and economic ruin. Even if we were to turn to a sustainable economy, this would take time that we may not have. The transition to sustainable resources such as solar or wind would require continued reliance on emissions simply just for infrastructure development and implementation.

To tackle the environmental problems facing the globe, an approach along the lines of green radicalism seems more appropriate.

Green radicalism is able to detach from capitalist imprisonment through a polycentric approach. While green radicalism as a worldview encompasses the discourse of green consciousness and green politics, together, they may be best fit to tackle the dilemma of protecting the environment while overthrowing and rebuilding the political and cultural structures that I believe are most fit for society.

Through the implementation of what Dryzek calls eco-theology (though I will call it eco-spirituality) and bioregionalism, a greater appreciation and connection can be made between humans and nature, molding our cultural identity to one that coincides with the environment rather than battling it. On a political front, green politics can transform institutions from the inside out, promoting a decentralized style of governance rather than government, while grassroots organizing can mobilize from the ground up through what may look like what Dryzek calls radicalized democratic pragmatism.

This democratic mobilization can borrow from activist, grassroots agendas laid out by democratic pragmatists such as: alternative dispute resolution, policy dialogue, citizens juries and town meetings. Furthermore, the implementation of worker cooperatives, where employees own and democratically make decisions about the companys future, would help to derail capitalism at its core through infusing corporate markets with more efficient, better-run businesses for the people. These worker co-ops have been shown to increase the happiness of workers, increase the efficiency by which they work and increase the overall productivity of the business.

This is simply because the people are given the power to take control of their destiny, because it is their own and not a wealthy elitists business. If you change the value structure in societal culture then mobilize on the ground to support political action within these capitalist market economies that are headed by corporate interest, the liberal capitalist political economy can be uprooted and overthrown. From there, local initiative and community action could build a greener socialist alternative that incorporates the principles of self-governance.

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Green politics can save us - Drexel University The Triangle Online

If you have young children and arent a professional movie viewer, chances are youre only well-acquainted with this years Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature. And even then, youve probably still only seen three of the contenders, the two Disney productions, Zootopia and Moana, and maybe the stop motion adventure Kubo and the Two Strings. That last one may even have been a little too scary for your kids. As for the other two, My Life as a Zucchini and The Red Turtle, theyre foreign-made movies that arent easy family fare, and they havent been widely available.

Until now. Possibly. Depending on where you live. This weekend, The Red Turtle is making its way to theaters beyond the nations major cities, though its still a relatively limited number of locations. Also this Friday, which just so happens to be the start of Oscar weekend, My Life as a Zucchini opens in New York City and Los Angeles, kicking off its own rollout across the rest of the country through March. Neither will win the Academy Award, but whether youre able to see them before Sundays show or only afterward, they must not be dismissed or forgotten about as also-rans.

Its hard to argue that either of them deserve the Oscar over the three mainstream American movies, because theyre just so different from the usual anthropomorphic animal stories and singing princess fairy tales and more calculated yet less soulful stop motion efforts. It doesnt matter which takes the prize, as together the five films offer a wonderful range of animation delights. And My Life as a Zucchini and The Red Turtle represent the most distinctly different achievements of the bunch. With the former, though, you just need to be sure you see the right version.

My Life as a Zucchini is a coming-of-age movie, directed by Claude Barras based on the 2002 French novel Autobiographie dune Courgette, about a kid nicknamed Zucchini who accidentally kills his alcoholic mother. He winds up in a small foster home, finding a kind of family there among the other abandoned and orphaned children and their caretakers. Although the new movie version has been sanitized somewhat from the book, which isnt exactly for young readers, the story as well as some of the themes and visuals are most appropriate for viewers aged in the double digits.

Plus, to best appreciate My Life as a Zucchini, youll want to see the original French-language version, and yes that means youll want the subtitled rather than the dubbed release. Fortunately, most theaters will be showing both versions. Heres what you get with the original that you dont get with the dubbed incarnation: the child actors who voice the children characters (including Gaspard Schlatter as Zucchini) have a natural, almost improvisational quality to their speech, the result of Barras not making them memorize their dialogue so much as speak the lines in their own words.

That approach really makes the film, fitting well with the crude yet cute character design. The voice acting in the dubbed version (which includes famous adults like Nick Offerman and Ellen Page, as well as child actors who sound like veteran professionals in spite of their age, including Erick Abbate as Zucchini), has a more conventional, polished sound that feels overproduced and not at all right for the story. Knowingly emphasizing its voice work, My Life as a Zucchini also has a bonus scene during the end credits depicting, in animation, Schlatters casting session (the dubbed version includes the scene intact with Schlatters voice, subtitled, which doesnt make much sense after watching with Abbate voicing the role).

As for the rest of the movie, its fine, often very sweet, and it handles the heavy themes of death, drug abuse, child abuse, and more very well from the perspectives of the children. I do wish My Life as a Zucchini was better focalized with regards to it being Zucchinis story, as the title claims and as the bits of voiceover narration adhere to; for a while its much more concentrated on another one of the orphans. But otherwise theres nothing to criticize thats not wholly subjective and a matter of my personal dislike of the look of some of the characters, specifically their scratchy red noses.

The Red Turtle is a little easier on the whole family, as theres almost no dialogue, and what little there isa few utterances of hey!requires no English-language version. No subtitling, no dubbing. Its a marvelously visual film, though its possibly too slow for younger children anyway. Its not a kid movie nor an adult movie. Its not for any audience in particular other than one that likes to be enchanted by visual storytelling and basic fairy tale and mythology plots. The story concerns a castaway who one day encounters a large sea turtle that magically changes the course of his desert-island-dwelling life.

Directed and co-written by Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit (a previous Oscar winner for his 2000 short, Father and Daughter), The Red Turtle has its own issues, but theyre minor and Im nitpicking to address them. As much as I love that the film is dialogue-free, that actually becomes somewhat implausible for the story in the latter half. The first part is also much more exciting in its depiction of the adventurous survivalism of the stranded man. And there are a lot of questions that arise about where the story goes that cant be answered because theres nobody to explain the details or the characters motives.

Yet every single shot in The Red Turtle is perfect, especially because of the intricate and beautifully imagined backdrops, and in terms of just what is on screen, the story action is directed faultlessly. While theres not always the greatest emotional connection to the characters, between them or for the audience, the film is occasionally pretty affecting for something of its simple 2D hand-drawn style. We dont get many films of any format so lacking in their dependence on dialogue these days, and its essential that we see more like this and the past-nominated works by Sylvain Chomet.

The essential charms of My Life as a Zucchini and The Red Turtle are contrasting components. The former is worth seeing for its voice work and what it does freely with its dialogue, while the latter is a must-see feature because of its lack of voice work (and coming from Studio Ghibli, whose films tend to get distracting celebrity-filled dubs, thats really notable) and what it does freely with its imagery, including fantastic dream sequences. They face strong mainstream competition at the Oscars this year, but hopefully they at least benefit in the notice of being nominated.

See them both once theyre playing near you.

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The Essential Animation Charms of 'My Life as a Zucchini' and 'The Red Turtle' - Film School Rejects

Phobophobes rise into 2017 nestled atop a wave of attention focused towards the revitalized South London scene with new single 'The Never Never', due for release March 24th via Ra-Ra Rok Records. Following previous single 'Human Baby', an elegy to their late guitarist George Russell that was played every day for a week on BBC 6Music, 'The Never Never' arrives an ode to the precarious survivalism of society's most disenfranchised. Swirling through repetitive slogans, rubbishing the adverts that promise a life we can't really afford as pastiche, and asking earnestly, "what separates those treading water to survive from the religious idols who struggled so similarly?"

"The Never Never is a critique of today's excessive consumerism. The repetitive and slogan-esque nature of the track evokes the reductive nature of advertising." explains frontman Jamie Taylor.

In the wake of a tumultuous 2016, Phobophobes continue to forge their own path, taking whatever's thrown at them and squeezing every ounce of inspiration from it. It's the only way they know. Frontman Jamie Taylor has built studio space wherever he's roamed, from Paris to Peckham to Primrose Hill. Even Pittsburgh, Iowa, Palm Beach and New York whilst working on a touring art exhibition across America, setting up a studio in each hotel room to work on new tracks. Even when invited to Abbey Road Studios to record with Ken Scott (Bowie, Lennon, the list goes on), bass player at the time, Elliot, took swabs of their oldest microphone and grew bacteria in petri dishes, the results of which are immortalised in Phobophobes' artwork and in the centre of their 7"s.

This boundless DIY mentality echoes through Phobophobes' every move. Having now found home in the basement of The Brixton Windmill, the nucleus of South London's gig circuit where Phobophobes record, rehearse and also put on their own shows, playing alongside Shame, Goat Girl, Meatraffle, The Fat White Family, Childhood and countless others, they remain progenitors of the scene.

Following a single launch show at London's MOTH Club, Phobophobes will tour the UK with LIFE through April on the dates below. The band are currently readying their debut full-length album and will release 'The Never Never' on 7" vinyl this March 24th via Ra-Ra Rok Records.

PHOBOPHOBES New 7" single 'The Never Never' due March 24th via Ra-Ra Rok Records

Stream 'The Never Never' https://soundcloud.com/phobophobes/the-never-never-single

UK Tour with LIFE begins April 1st

facebook.com/Phobophobes/

March 13 London, Moth Club (single launch)

April w/ LIFE 1 Hull, The Welly Club 2 Glasgow, King Tuts 3 Manchester, Gullivers 5 Birmingham, The Sunflower Lounge 6 London, Camden Assembly 7 Bristol, Crofters Rights

Phobophobes are: Jamie Taylor (Guitar/Vocals), Chris OC (Keys), Dan Lyons (Drums), Jack Fussey (Guitar), Bede Trillo (Bass) & Christo McCracken (Guitar).

Continued here:

Phobophobes Announces New Single and UK Tour with LIFE - Broadway World

As a result, the computers controlling our banking systems, our hospitals, and our air control system would fail at midnight on December 31, 1999, and our bank accounts would be wiped out, our life support systems would come to a halt and patients would die on the operating table and airliners flying at midnight would crash because air controllers would be unable to communicate with pilots.

Those inclined to panic built shelters where they brought generators, huge quantities of water, a supply of food that would last for years, gold and silver and enough guns and ammo to protect themselves from neighbors who wanted to break in and share in the sanctuary.

Well, computer programmers worked out the conversion from 1999 to 2000 and January 1, 2000, began a happy new year without complications. I wonder if those who had prepared for the worst still have those generators, AK47s, ammo and pork and beans.

There is always something to panic about for people who are inclined to panic. The result is called "survivalism," which is making of preparations for an expected long-term or complete breakdown of society, also known as THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (TEOTWAWKI) or WHEN THE S_ _ _ HITS THE FAN (WTSHTS).

Those who do it seem to have two things in common: extreme paranoia and extreme wealth. It's been going on for generations and it's still going on today. Some call themselves "preps" (as in preparation).

One solution is former ICBM silos. There is a broker who sells old missile silos. The preps who buy them worry about events developing and if something like the Russian Revolution a total takeover of the government and takeover of private wealth. Some of them have outfitted themselves with private planes and helicopters.

One of the silos is found north of Wichita, Kansas. It is protected by a large steel gate with a guard dressed in camouflage and carrying an automatic rifle. Inside is a condo survival project, a 15-story luxury apartment complex. The silo cost the developer $300,000 and the construction was completed in December, 2012, at a cost of $20 million. The units are selling for $3 million each.

Other preppers believe that survival depends on getting as far away from America as possible. The destination of preference for these doomsayers seems to be New Zealand. There is a real estate broker in Auckland, New Zealand, who specializes in high net-worth clients looking for sanctuary in times of world crises. One client, a U.S. hedge-fund manager defends his interest "this is no longer about a handful of freaks worried about the world ending unless I'm one of those freaks."

There is no limit to the possible disasters people worry about: The Bubonic Plague in Europe during the middle ages, the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, the Great Depression, the Global AIDS crisis, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa, a nuclear war started by North Korea, a race war in America, another great flood (one group is building an arc), the U.S. government coming to confiscate our guns, a deliberate move by our Congress to dumb America down, or U.N. black helicopters occupying America to enforce a New World Order. You can think of other examples and so can I.

You can be a survivalist or a prepper if you are sufficiently panicky about real or imagined threats or disasters, but can you afford it? I can't, so I'm hunkering down right here in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota with fresh flashlight batteries, pork and beans, chicken noodle soup, a can opener and lots of good books.

(NOTE: Order Lynn Hummel's new book, The Last Word (171 articles, 310 pages) by sending $15.00 plus $3.00 postage ($10.00 plus postage for additional books) to Pony Express Books, 721 N. Shore Dr., Detroit Lakes, MN 56501, or order at: bevlyn@arvig.net.)

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Lynn Hummel column: Always something to panic about - Detroit Lakes Online

As a result, the computers controlling our banking systems, our hospitals, and our air control system would fail at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, and our bank accounts would be wiped out, our life support systems would come to a halt and patients would die on the operating table and airliners flying at midnight would crash because air controllers would be unable to communicate with pilots.

Those inclined to panic built shelters where they brought generators, huge quantities of water, a supply of food that would last for years, gold and silver and enough guns and ammo to protect themselves from neighbors who wanted to break in and share in the sanctuary.

Well, computer programmers worked out the conversion from 1999 to 2000 and Jan. 1, 2000, began a happy new year without complications.

I wonder if those who had prepared for the worst still have those generators, AK47s, ammo and pork and beans.

There is always something to panic about for people who are inclined to panic. The result is called "survivalism," which is making of preparations for an expected long-term or complete breakdown of society, also known as THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (TEOTWAWKI) or WHEN THE S_ _ _ HITS THE FAN (WTSHTS).

Those who do it seem to have two things in common: extreme paranoia and extreme wealth. It's been going on for generations and it's still going on today. Some call themselves "preps" (as in preparation).

One solution is former ICBM silos. There is a broker who sells old missile silos. The preps who buy them worry about events developing and something like the Russian Revolution a total takeover of the government and takeover of private wealth. Some of them have outfitted themselves with private planes and helicopters.

One of the silos is found north of Wichita, Kansas. It is protected by a large, steel gate with a guard dressed in camouflage and carrying an automatic rifle. Inside is a condo survival project, a 15-story luxury apartment complex. The silo cost the developer $300,000 and the construction was completed in December 2012, at a cost of $20 million. The units are selling for $3 million each.

Other preppers believe that survival depends on getting as far away from America as possible. The destination of preference for these doomsayers seems to be New Zealand. There is a real estate broker in Auckland, New Zealand, who specializes in high net-worth clients looking for sanctuary in times of world crises. One client, a U.S. hedge-fund manager, defends his interest: "This is no longer about a handful of freaks worried about the world ending unless I'm one of those freaks."

There is no limit to the possible disasters people worry about: the Bubonic Plague in Europe during the Middle Ages, the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, the Great Depression, the Global AIDS crisis, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa, a nuclear war started by North Korea, a race war in America, another great flood (one group is building an arc), the U.S. government coming to confiscate our guns, a deliberate move by our Congress to dumb America down, or U.N. black helicopters occupying America to enforce a New World Order. You can think of other examples and so can I.

You can be a survivalist or a prepper if you are sufficiently panicky about real or imagined threats or disasters, but can you afford it? I can't, so I'm hunkering down right here in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota with fresh flashlight batteries, pork and beans, chicken noodle soup, a can opener and lots of good books.

Continue reading here:

Commentary: Always something to panic about - Park Rapids Enterprise

A song of ice and fire.

By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell Published 08/02/2017

Eight Point's debut effort isn't a particularly unusual survival game, at least on the strength of a few hours play, but it does handle some well-worn ideas with thrilling starkness. In particular, I really like what it does with fire. If wood-chopping, mining, hunting and crafting are the verbs that carry you through this Alaskan wilderness, campfires are the punctuation points - fleeting reprieves from the chill of nightfall, where you can cook otherwise poisonous food, patch your wounds, hone your character's fledgling ranger skills and maybe craft yourself a pair of wooden clogs without worrying (quite so much) about dying of hypothermia.

Viewed in top-down, it all makes for an arresting tableau. Firelight etches deep, twitching shadows into the surrounding, procedurally generated woodland, warming the flat planes of the game's stylised geometry. The listless piano score fades as darkness sets in, leaving you all alone with the crackle of twigs, the shifting of snow-covered branches, the scuffles and howls of passing animals.

Eight Point's nine members proudly declare themselves to be residents of Yakutia, a wintry expanse the size of India that houses a population smaller than that of Rhode Island, and while I doubt they developed this game while crouched in a makeshift tent, it certainly feels like the work of people who are intimately familiar with the experience of being very, very cold. There's a sense of actual, tangible peril to it that survival games often fail to convey, preferring to bury you in vaguely anxiety-inducing drudgery.

Not that The Wild Eight is without its share of drudgery. The game casts you as one of eight survivors of a mysterious plane crash, and whether you play as tough oil rigger William or frail medical student Mandy, you'll be spending a lot of your playthrough tending to rapidly depleting hunger and temperature gauges while scouring the world for wood, rock and things to kill and/or eat. Die and, assuming there isn't a co-op partner with a defibrillator around to revive you, you'll respawn back at the crash site as a level 0 character without all your precious equipment. You can then, if you choose, visit the site of your death in order to cannibalise your remains. The game's multiplayer, which I've only scratched the surface of, makes cannibalism more of a theme - when you're caught in the grip of a random blizzard with no wild mushrooms to munch on, the thought of dining out on an ally has a worrying appeal.

Central to all this are your tent and workshop, which can be packed up, carried around and deployed at no additional resource cost once assembled. Workshops are for bodging together needful things such as healing ointments, pickaxes and rabbit traps. Tents are for training your character up in the finer arts of survival, such as how to sprint when you're being chased by a hungry wolf, or how to get 5 wood instead of 3 when you punch a tree. You can also, very usefully, stop your bars depleting by seeking refuge within for two minutes (around six or seven in-game hours) given sufficient firewood.

The game's HUD and menus are simple and elegant, with big, clickable icons, though the act of dragging and dropping items (for example, food onto your character) is a little fiddly. The procedurally generated terrain is somewhat blemished by too-obvious repeated elements, such as wolfpacks that always spawn near abandoned buildings, but it succeeds in holding the attention, even as you the mechanics grow familiar.

Partly, that's because you can make your mark on it - resources don't magically respawn when out of view, so exploration becomes a matter of working out which regions you've yet to trawl, and whether there's an old campsite you can avail yourself of along the way. And the deeper your delve, the more you'll become aware that something is rotten at the world's core. There's that old field laboratory I found, for one thing, its caved-in buildings strewn with cryptic journal entries, and there are those weird metallic noises you may hear at night. All of which is reason-enough to keep plugging as the game begins its journey through Early Access, but for me the key draw is still the sight of those fragile blazes flickering amongst the trunks, keeping winter marginally at bay.

Read the rest here:

The Wild Eight is survivalism served extra-cold - Eurogamer.net

MURCHISON, Texas

Inside his football field-size warehouse an hour's drive southeast of Dallas, Gary Lynch is busy trying to keep up with orders for his solid-steel bomb shelters.

He offers visitors a tour of a 600-square-foot model under construction for a Saudi customer.

Right now, it's just a steel shell, he said, but when the work is done it will be a luxurious underground bunker with a master bedroom, four bunk beds, a composting toilet, a living room with satellite television capability, filtered air and water, and a storage closet with room for months of food.

Lynch explains that orders for his most expensive shelters, which can cost as much as several million dollars, have increased since the November election.

"It definitely has picked up a little as Donald Trump emerged as president," said Lynch, general manager of Rising S Co. on the outskirts of the rural city of Murchison. Lynch said some customers even half-jokingly say they're trying to protect themselves from a "Trumpocalypse" or "Trumpnado."

"There's some people who maybe even voted for Donald Trump and may be worried some of the riots are going to get out of hand and there's going to be social or civil unrest," he said.

"Then you've got people who didn't vote for him and are thinking that now that he's president maybe he's going to start a war. There's definitely been some renewed interest from people since the election."

Doomsday prepping the act of stockpiling food and other essentials in a reinforced, often-underground shelter used to be mostly associated with Libertarian-leaning Americans who feared their own government would turn on them.

But now that Trump has taken office, some centrists and left-leaning folks also are building bomb shelters under their homes and businesses, apparently fearing either civil strife or war with an external enemy.

Sales of Rising S's most luxurious shelters have jumped 700 percent in recent months, he said. Lynch didn't provide specific data on how many units he typically sells, but he said Rising S Co. recorded about $14 million in sales during the past year.

Although Lynch credits Trump's surprising rise to power for the latest sales spike, he said a similar jump in sales occurred eight years ago when President Obama took office.

He has been building shelters for 13 years.

"When a Republican is president, the left wants to buy a bunker," he said. "It's the opposite when a Democrat is president."

The phrase "#Trumpocalypse" has taken on a life of its own on social media such as Twitter.

And a quick search online shows many other examples of people taking advantage of Trump's knack for controversy to sell their fare.

For example, in Pearsall, south of San Antonio, a Craigslist seller named Dan was offering used buses for $3,000 to $5,000, and explaining on his advertisement that "They make good Trump Bunkers and Bomb Shelters."

"You Know Who's Finger will be on the Button," the ad continues. "Make America Great Again. Buy a Bus. All are welcome. Pro Donald. Pro Hilary. (sic) Can we all be friends again?"

America has a long history of building bomb shelters, going back to the days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union shortly after World War II.

In the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of home owners built underground escape rooms something that was encouraged by President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat who presided over the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that nearly brought the U.S. and Russia to nuclear blows.

America's bunker mentality is the stuff of movies and historical lore. The desire for blast-proof walls, filtrated air and water, and composting toilets is deeply embedded in the national psyche.

And, although it's an issue that typically only comes up during a leadership change, domestic strife or a global crisis, the desire to be safe from harm to have a place where loved ones can hunker down indefinitely seems to always burn in the nation's collective belly.

It's a different story with storm shelters, similar structures that can be built either underground or as a "safe room" within a home. Storm shelters tend to grow in popularity after a major disaster such as the tornado in 1997 that killed 27 people in the Central Texas city of Jarrell, or the one two years later that killed 36 people in the Oklahoma City area.

According to the Lubbock, Texas-based National Storm Shelter Association, which applies its official seal to shelters that meet high construction and design standards, "sales are half what they were three years ago," executive director Ernst Kiesling said.

After a major incident such as a tornado or hurricane, Federal Emergency Management Agency money can sometimes be made available to offset some of the cost of shelter construction, depending upon how states and cities use the federal funds.

But the demand for shelters usually only lasts about as long as the cleanup, Kiesling said.

"After an incident, there will be an upsurge among the public, but it will subside rather quickly," he said.

Storm shelters can be underground, or they can be built at ground level in a home. They can be made of steel, fiberglass or other materials.

Although they typically don't have the long-term accommodations for people to live in indefinitely, like a bomb shelter, storm shelters can also provide residents with a "safe room" to escape dangers such as gunfire or a home intruder.

But usually it's concern about enemies of the state whether foreign or domestic that motivates someone to install a bunker in their home or business.

Peter Westwick teaches a class on the atomic age at the University of Southern California and he sometimes shows his students a photo that he took just a few years ago of a commercial building in Los Angeles called Atlas Survival Shelters. The otherwise-nondescript metal building features an outside display of a bright yellow bomb shelter the size of fuel truck.

The photo illustrates how little has changed about Americans' concern for the long-term security of their republic since the 1950s, he said.

"I sometimes use a picture I took of a shelter manufacturer here in LA, just off the 5 freeway, to show these fears haven't gone away," Westwick said in an email. "But they have changed, to a broader doomsday/survivalism instead of just nuclear fear."

Of the current interest in shelters, Westwick said, "I think you could indeed say that the losing side in an election often takes a catastrophic view of the outcome. You might consider the migration to the Idaho, Montana, Wyoming region by conservative or Libertarian adherents following Obama's election.

"There's an issue here with whether the survivalists fear an external enemy (e.g. the Soviet Union, albeit aided by Communists in American society) or an internal one (e.g. the Idaho survivalists apparently fearing their own government and fellow citizens).

"The current fears seem to be more of Trump provoking an external enemy, whether another state or stateless terrorists," he said.

Often, customers who buy bomb shelters are wealthy.

Steve Huffman, founder of the Reddit social news aggregate site, acknowledged in a recent New Yorker story that he is obsessed with surviving a catastrophe.

In that same article, many other wealthy elite from New York, San Francisco and other tony places say they're stocking up on gas masks, motorcycles (more nimble and fuel-efficient than cars during a crisis) and other essentials to escape from the expected confusion and panic that likely would envelope and overtake those who had failed to prepare.

But bomb shelters don't have to break the bank.

Some manufacturers offer closet-size underground bunkers for as little as $5,000.

At Rising S Co., Lynch said he and his roughly 40 employees can't sell anything that cheap. They use the finest, Alabama-made steel and an air purification system with a patent pending on its design and materials like that come at a cost.

Rising S Co.'s shelters also feature a water purification system that can be designed to pull water from an underground well, a municipal water system or a storage tank.

But Lynch said he can set up customers with an entry-level shelter approximately 4 feet by 6 feet for roughly $10,000.

In fact, he has one of those basic models under construction right now in his warehouse off Texas 31 in Murchison, right alongside the underground virtual palace his crew is building for that wealthy Saudi customer.

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Bomb-shelter builder busy as customers prep for 'Trumpocalypse' - Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Survivalism" (also known as "Halo 23") is the first single by industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails from their 2007 album Year Zero. The song is the third track on the album. The single was released digitally on the iTunes Store on March 13, 2007, and the CD and vinyl singles were released internationally on April 2, 2007.[3]

On February 14, 2007, a clip of the chorus to "Survivalism" was first heard by fans calling the telephone number 1-310-295-1040, which was found by joining discolored numerals on the back of a tour T-shirt.[4] FMQB reported that "Survivalism" would arrive at radio stations on February 27 with an add date of March 6,[5] but 102.1 The Edge in Toronto, Canada debuted the song on February 15, and on the next day, it was officially played on radio stations across the United States. It was later made available on Nine Inch Nails' MySpace page.

As with "The Hand That Feeds" and "Only," the "Survivalism" multi-track GarageBand file was released by the band for fan remixing on March 13.[6] It can be downloaded on the album's website.

In July 2012, Canadian house musician deadmau5 did a remix of the song. This remix was later included in his 2014 album while(1<2).

Nine Inch Nails was scheduled to begin shooting a video for "Survivalism" on February 5, 2007, in the Los Angeles area.[7] It was directed by Alex Lieu, Rob Sheridan, and Trent Reznor.

The video was circulated on the Internet on March 7, 2007, when Nine Inch Nails played the Carling Academy Brixton in London, England. USB pen drives containing low and high resolution versions of the video were found at different locations in the venue by concert-goers.

The video consists of a series of images from a console of secret cameras installed in an apartment block. As the camera moves between the footage, viewers are able to see into the lives of a number of residents, including:

There are also cameras directed at hallways and stairs inside the apartment block. After about a minute, these screens show a SWAT team armed with submachine guns assembling outside. They enter in formation, and eventually break down a door (on which the letters "REV 18 3-4" are stenciled, a reference to a passage in the Bible) and enter the apartment where a band is playing. The noise disturbs all the residents, who momentarily stop what they are doing and move off to investigate, then return to their activities. At this point, a number of cameras have been turned off and show static. The band is no longer in their room. It has been torn asunder and a large smear of blood is visible on the floor. The final shot shows a bleeding corpse being dragged around a corner and out of sight.

The Bible passage referenced by the door is from the Book of Revelation, a passage describing the fallen city-nation of Babylon and how she has been corrupted by luxury and adultery, and how people are being called to leave this whorish nation behind and not share in her immorality to keep from sharing in her judgement. (see here)

The time code in the monitor sometimes changes the last digit for a letter. This eventually spells out "THE_TURNEDTO_". In addition, several Bible verses that reference water and blood are shown throughout the video. "Isaiah 15:9" on the graffiti wall, "John 19:34" on the picture of Jesus behind the couple, and "II Kings 3:22" and "Exodus 7:21" in the board behind the man with the laptop. This led to the discovery of the Year Zero website, thewaterturnedtoblood.net, which is a collage of a hand picking a man up out of the wreckage of a crumbling bridge, claimed to be drawn by a prison inmate. There are various biblical quotations surrounding the drawing, and capital letters (un-capitalized letters in the second paragraph) align to form the word "francesca" once in the first paragraph, and twice in the second. Francesca has two documented meanings; 'free', and 'from Franconia' or 'from France'.

The music video is available for download (both the lo-res and hi-res version) at the album's website.

At the end of 2007, Rolling Stone readers voted the video as the best music video of year.[8]

"Survivalism" had 501 plays and debuted at #28 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart in the week ending February 23, 2007. It eventually climbed to #1 for one week, becoming NIN's fourth consecutive number 1 single (as well as their most recent),[9] and debuted at number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100.[10] Since Linkin Park's enormously more successful "What I've Done" single debuted at number one and replaced "Survivalism"'s position, the song however had fallen drastically after 1 week at #1, almost dropping off the top 20 modern rock tracks within just one month. The song dropped from #7 to #19 during the week of May 12, 2007, proceeded to fall to #26 during the week of May 19, 2007, then hit #37 in the week of May 26, 2007 leading the song to stay on the chart for only 13 weeks, a disappointment as a few other notable songs, despite not reaching #1 on the chart, stayed in the top 20 for longer, such as Breaking Benjamin's "Breath" (#3), Papa Roach's "Forever" (#2), Incubus's "Dig" (#4), and Rise Against's "Prayer of the Refugee" (#7) ("Breath" stayed on the chart for 39 weeks). "Survivalism" debuted at number two on the UK Rock Singles Chart [11] and on #29 in UK Singles Chart.[12][13] The song is Nine Inch Nails' forth consecutive top ten single on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart.[14]

The single debuted at number one on the Canadian Singles Chart (the only time a Nine Inch Nails single debuted at the top of a chart), a position which it maintained for six weeks.[15]

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Survivalism (song) - Wikipedia

Survivalism r en rrelse av individer eller grupper som kallas survivalister eller preppers som aktivt frbereder sig fr mjliga framtida avbrott i lokal, regional, nationell eller internationell social eller politisk ordning. Under 2015 har Andreas Karlsson brjat framtrda som en frgrundsfigur fr rrelsen i Sverige genom intervjuer i media[1][2] och frelsningar[3].

Survivalister frbereder sig ofta fr detta avbrott genom att hamstra mat och vatten; lra sig frsta hjlpen och sjlvfrsvar; frbereda sjlvfrsrjning; upprtta byggnader som hjlper dem att verleva eller "frsvinna".

Tnkbara avbrott kan vara:

Termen "survivalist" finns belagt p engelska sedan 1976, i frfattaren Kurt Saxons skrifter.[4] Uttrycket har ftt en negativ klang p grund av frknippandet med terrorister som Theodore Kaczynski och Timothy McVeigh.[5] Delvis fr att distansiera sig frn dessa har termen "prepper" etablerats sedan 1990-talet fr att markera avstnd frn de mest extrema formerna av krisberedskap.[6] Preppers har ven beskrivits som "den tredje vgen" av survivalister.[7] Hr syftar frsta vgen p de som byggde krnvapenkrigsskrade skyddsrum i sina trdgrdar under 1950- och 60-talen. Andra vgen var de som under 70- och 80-talet ville fjrma sig frn allt vad civilisation och samhlle hette. Den tredje vgen, preppers, r mindre extrem. Som en bloggare uttryckte det: "du skulle kunna bo granne med en prepper utan att veta om det".[8]

2009 kallade P3 survivalism "sommarens hetaste subkultur".[9] Ngon plitlig statistik ver antalet preppers har aldrig funnits, men antropologen Chad Huddleston hvdade 2014 att det aldrig tidigare funnits s mnga.[10] Ledarskribenten Patrik Kronqvist sger att 2015 var ret d preppern "kom in i finrummet", och ser den gryende folkrrelsen som en reaktion mot tidens allt mer urbaniserade och specialiserade ideal.[11] Han ser ocks att rrelsen innebr en uppvrdering av traditionellt manliga ideal.[12]

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Survivalism Wikipedia

KURT SAXON ON SURVIVAL:

Kurt Saxon, owner of Atlan Formularies, is the father of Survivalism. He coined the word. For years he's collected knowledge on trades, crafts, cottage industries and survival skills from a past when our immediate ancestors had to do for themselves on a day to day basis. His work is in anticipation of a time when our overcrowded and down-bred system goes the way of Rome.

Kurt started his business in January of 1976 with a quarterly newsletter called "The Survivor". After publishing and selling twelve issues of "The Survivor", Mr. Saxon would collect all those back-issues and combine 3 to 5 long out of print books to this concoction to create a bound volume of one of his most famous works to date; "The Survivor" series of books. We have 2 volumes in print with 8 more on both CD and DVD ROM ready to go to press just as soon we have the financial where-with-all to print them.

Kurt's most famous (or "infamous" if you happen to roost on the left side of the political spectrum) work is called "The Poor Man's James Bond" series. We have the first of this series in print, with the other 4 all on CD/DVD. Though much of the information (chemistry, chemicals, improvised weapons, weaponry, bombs, explosives, etc.) found in these books could be usedfor some home grown domestic mayhem, Mr. Saxon has assembled it all in one handy package for one reason and one reason only. So that you and/or any group of your friends or fellow citizens would have all the info necessary to defend yourselves from all the thugs, punks and assorted two-legged vermin that always seem to come out of the woodwork when any local, state or national disaster strikes.

His program is in no way political, racist or religious. He leaves such considerations to those who seek security in belief rather than practical knowledge.

The only inalienable right is to die for ones beliefs. Those who choose beliefs over knowledge, as well as those who don't know the difference, will not survive the collapse. In most cases, they will have done the only good thing they have ever done, which is to take their defective genes out of our species.

Atlan Formularies supplies the knowledge to survive. Those who reject such knowledge are welcome to share the fate of the rest of the doomed herd.

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Survival Plus - Kurt Saxon, survivalism, survivalist

Many people take safety measures in order to be prepared in the case of an emergency, such as storing bottled water, canned food, flashlights, batteries and whatnot. Survivalists, however, go one, or rather, many steps farther by basing their entire lifestyle on an ongoing preparation for major social and political disruptions. Some of the events that survivalists fear, or even expect, will happen are clusters of natural and/or nuclear disasters; war; collapse of society due to shortage or unavailability of electricity, fuel, food, water; economic collapse, a sudden pandemic; and basically any other panorama of the end times.

Survivalism is believed to have originated in the 1960s, when the threat of a nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia was latent, and even though the movement has gone somewhat dormant, events in every decade have brought new waves of survivalism, for instance the 1973 crisis, the renewed US-USSR arm race in the 80s, the Y2K computer bug in 1999, and the 9/11 events.

Categories of survivalists, which may overlap each other, include safety preparedness oriented (learns principles and techniques for surviving such common calamities as structure fires, dog attacks, physical confrontations, snake bites, lightning strikes, car breakdowns, bear encounters, flash floods, home invasions, train wrecks and others that can occur anywhere at any time), wilderness survival emphasis (is concerned with thirst, hunger, climate, terrain, health, stress and fear in cases of plane crashes, shipwrecks, being lost in the woods), self defense driven (personal protection, martial arts, self defense tactics), brief natural disasters (tornado, hurricane, flood, wildfire, earthquake or heavy snowfall), long natural disasters (unusually long and cold or warm periods), indefinite natural disaster (global warning or cooling), bio chem scenario (spread of diseases through biological agents), malthusian (uncontrolled human population growth), monetary disasters investors (preparing for paper money to become worthless through hyperinflation), and others.

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Kurt Saxon - Survivalism, Survivalists