Category Archives: Survivalism

Many contestants in each season couldn't make it through the harsh conditions of the wilderness. Fears about bears and wolves, starvation, weight loss, gastrointestinal pains, and injuries were just some of the reasons why contestants tapped out. Some of them simply couldn't stand being alone and found they missed their families and partners too much to continue. Despite the immense pressures that contestants face, a select few were able to withstand all of Mother Nature's challenges.

According to TheCinemaholic, Season 3 winner, Zachary Fowler, survived for 87 days in the Patagonian wilderness and used a portion of the money to buy a new car for his wife, pay off debts, and even had plans of building a house. Zachary went on to have a successful YouTube channel where he teaches wilderness survival advice. Season 6 winner, Jordan Jonas, survived for 77 days in the Northwest Territories of Canada, and he also has his own successful YouTube channel where he teaches courses on survivalism. His biggest lesson from "Alone" (via History) was that while he was free from distraction and had time with his thoughts, he realized that there isn't much more that's important in life than spending time with family and being with loved ones.

Excerpt from:

What It Really Means To Win A Season Of Alone - Looper

How does one even begin to express ones love for a homeland that is everything? Alpha and omega. Home, journey and destination. A sandbox where you make all mistakes and in a heartbeat, everything is forgiven and forgotten. Motherland and fatherland. And must one express this love? Or is it communicated and understood without saying anything like a sons is towards a parent. But then again this is the age of expression and children today remind you of their infinite love every five minutes. This is where the poverty of ones abilities holds ones tongue. I, for one, am no Tagore whose alchemy of words would create pure gold, or who had the company and help of titans like Yeats. I can only try to talk of the visceral nature of affection that powers my heart and preoccupies every waking hour of my modest existence.

Perhaps Tagores these words would come close to what I want to say: I am here to sing thee songs. In this hall of thine I have a corner seat. In thy world I have no work to do; my useless life can only break out in tunes without a purpose. When the hour strikes for thy silent worship at the dark temple of midnight, command me, my master, to stand before thee to sing. When in the morning air the golden harp is tuned, honour me, commanding my presence.

74 is an interesting number. Just one year shy of platinum jubilee. An age quite mature in human years but rather young in the comity of nations. One number further than 73, that Dr Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory fame calls the best number. Why? 73 is the 21st prime number. Its mirror, 37, is the 12th and its mirror, 21, is the product of multiplying 7 and 3.... In binary 73 is a palindrome, 1001001, which backwards is 1001001. But it is neither 73, not 75. Almost there but not quite. Stuck between being and becoming. But let us not forget that it is the mirror of 47, the year of the countrys birth.

When you look at the nature of the 74 years of our collective cognitive experience, the first word that comes to mind is survivalism. Seriously. I have not seen another country that burns so much midnight oil mulling over existential threats, both real and imagined. This could be because of the spontaneous nature of Pakistans birth, the trauma left behind by the violence that accompanied freedom, Indias constant predictions about its failure, the fall of East Pakistan or a million more trials that it has gone through. While others sing of their countrys greatness, we pray for its long life. Humility is good, and prayers useful. But when you have lived long enough you do not need to revisit and re-litigate the causational factors of your countrys birth. It is there, we inherited it and it is the only place we have ever called home. Instead of justifying it every 10 minutes, we need to concern ourselves with the task of making it better. Dreams and visions matter here. Todays aspirations for tomorrow. And actions affirming those visions.

Reflecting on the independence day and journey so far proves to be a bittersweet experience for my generation. Sweet because it is the independence day. Bitter not because of the day or the country, but for who we (my generation) are. I call us the lost generation. Not the one that was led astray, but the kind that falls through the cracks when you are not looking. Heavy traffic on streets forces cars to switch to the slower lanes, where once boxed in, it may take hours to cover a journey of minutes. This is the story of my generations life. As Faiz put it, Kahaan se aaii nigaar-e-sabaa, kidhar ko gaii, abhii charaagh-e-sar-e-rah ko kuchh khabar hii nahin, (Whence came that darling of a morning breeze, whither has it gone? The lamp beside the road has still come no lessening.)

For a lifetime how many crises have we seen? The worst earthquake of the countrys history (2005), the worst floods (2010), the worst existential challenge since 1971 (the war on terror which left around eighty thousand dead including women and innocent children), perhaps the worst climate change challenge, economic hard times, belligerent neighbours and constant erosion of opportunities. The first Afghan war, refugee crisis, Afghan civil war, Taliban, the second Afghan war, now Taliban again. Modi, Doval and their defensive offence. Only God knows how many more upheavals we have to see before we meet our maker. And what leadership did we provide? All our national leaders are in their advanced sixties. My generation has never led the country. Perhaps the next generation will. We, my dear sirs, are truly a lost generation.

Then there is the matter of memory and introduction. The countrys memory is not what it once was. In the American romantic comedy 50 first dates, when Adam Sandler learns after falling for Drew Barrymore that she suffers from anterograde amnesia and he will have to re-introduce himself to her every single day, he does not baulk. But thats why stories are just stories. It is one tough job. And it must be a South Asian thing because recently an Indian poetess Rehna Sultana wrote: Ma, ami tumar kachchey aamar porisoi diti diti biakul oya dzai (Mother, Im so tired, tired of introducing myself to you.) I know it was said in a different context. But it fits this context too. Like a glove. Doesnt it?

So, you get it. Bittersweet. But here is the thing. This countrys most emancipating gift and one can die because of the intensity of love due to this, is that it is almost a blank slate. Too much can be written. And perhaps the best that has ever been written, anywhere. A paradise on earth, a city of love, a dreamers best dream come true. We owe it to our next generation to leave a better Pakistan than the one we inherited. No political pipe dreams or delusions of grandeur. Just a beautiful, peaceful, pluralistic place one feels proud to call home. From our eastern neighbour, we are getting too much hate these days. We have seen enough hate to last a lifetime. We will only deal in love and humanity now. As the prime minister so aptly put it, we will be partners in peace, not in war.

Great nations are built on the backs of many generations that die unrecognised. It seems my country needs only one. Perhaps, that is the only way for my lost generation to be found.

Happy 74th Independence Day everyone.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 14th, 2021.

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Seventy-four - The Express Tribune

This weeks Altercation is (mainly) authored by the extremely prolific Shaul Magid, professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, Kogod senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue in Seaview, New York. It draws on the research and arguments of his new book, Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical, though its contents are original to Altercation.

When people today hear the name Meir Kahane, most think about the militant and racist rabbi turned Israeli politician who founded a political party in Israel, was elected to the Knesset in 1984, and was removed in 1987 under the Racism Law legislated just for him, which made his party illegal. Many may be familiar with his policy to transfer Arabs out of Israel, his belief that Israel cant be both Jewish and democratic, and his critique of left-wing secular Israelis, calling them Hebrew speaking goyim.

Those more familiar with Israel may be aware of the ubiquitous Kahane was Right graffiti that dotted the landscape, especially after the second intifada in 2000, the emergence of a series of Israeli politicians who still view Kahane as a mentor, and the rise of small but vocal neo-Kahanist vigilante groups that terrorize Arab civilians in the name of Kahanes vision of what a Jewish state means. There are very few in Israel who are not familiar with the term Kahane or Kahanism and what that implies. His funeral in Israel in 1990 was one of the largest in the history of the country.

In contemporary America, however, things are very different. Kahane is almost a persona non grata in the American Jewish conversation, and when his name is mentioned, it is usually in regard to something in Israel. Ironically, Kahanes career began in America with the founding the Jewish Defense League in May 1968, and by early 1970 he had all but hijacked the Soviet Jewry movement through his call for civil disobedience and even violence to persuade Russia to free its Jewish dissidents. He testified before Congress about Soviet Jewry in June 1968. In March 1971, he organized a rally in D.C. for Soviet Jewry that was the largest rally ever held at the White House. He was the subject of long articles in Esquire and The New York Times Magazine, and was a feature interview in Playboy in 1972. JDL chapters sprang forth in many cities across the country, and his Soviet Jewry activism was the subject of a White House discussion between President Nixon and the Soviet ambassador. In 1971, a Look magazine poll showed that about 25 percent of American Jews had a positive view of the JDL. Kahane was not a marginal figure but a national one. It is likely that between 1968 and 1973 he was mentioned in The New York Times more often than any other rabbi in America.

So why do we know so little about Kahane in America? Jonathan Sarnas comprehensive book American Judaism does not mention him or the JDL at all. This is no oversight. There has been a marked attempt among scholars and institutional Judaism more generally to erase Kahane from American Jewish history.

Perhaps thats because Kahanes American record includes leading an organization that committed several murders. In 1985, regional offices of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee were bombed; the bombing in Santa Ana, California, killed ADC official Alex Odeh. Irv Rubin, the head of the Los Angeles branch of the JDL, publicly celebrated the killing, and eventually several JDL members were convicted of murders of other Arab Americans, while JDL members whom the FBI posted rewards for in Odehs killing remain free in Israel. Rubin died in prison awaiting trial for other violent acts. The JDL credo that set it apart from other far-right American Jewish organizations was its embrace of deadly violence.

Despite that, the ultranationalism of Kahanes worldview has seeped deep into the collective subconscious of American Jewry. We simply cannot tell the story of postwar American Jewry without Meir Kahane.

To get at what I am arguing, we must distinguish between two things: Kahanes tactics and Kahanes worldview. Kahanes tactics were very much a product of his time; the culture and race wars of the late 1960s, the radicalism of the New Left that led many young first-generation Jews to radicalize and adopt radical politics for Jewish causes after the New Left became anti-Israel after 1967. Kahanes militarism was a reflection of those years, even if his American followers proved to be a good deal more deadly than any wing of the New Left.

His worldview, however, was something different. It was an amalgam of Cold War anti-communism, an attack on American liberalism, and a systemic critique of the moderate nature of a mainstream Jewish establishment that was wary of making trouble. He challenged the regnant belief that liberalism and moderation would save the American Jewish dream. Interestingly, Kahanes early program was a diasporist one and not focused on Israel at all. An early JDL manifesto claimed the organization sought to save the American dream for Jews by instilling in its youth an assertive and activist program to fight assimilation, anti-Semitism, and intermarriage.

If we remove Kahanes militant tactics, his general worldview is alive and well.

His belief in the ubiquity of anti-Semitism in America was strongly resisted by the American Jewish establishment, and most American Jews. His belief that liberalism had no answer to intermarriage was similarly contested. He wrote a book on intermarriage in 1974, Why Be Jewish?, when few Jews were writing about intermarriage. Based on the 1972 sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie, he called American Judaism Bernism. He lamented the American bar mitzvah (all bar, no mitzvah) and offered a Judaism of the street before there was a social justice movement. When American Jews were still worried mostly about anti-Semitism on the right, he claimed anti-Semitism on the left was more threatening, and in the 1970s he argued that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were identical at a time when few made that connection. Kahane argued against Black nationalism the way some Jews today argue against critical race theory. In the late 1960s, he argued Jews were not responsible for whatever had happened to American Blacks, at a time when many liberal Jews favored reparations. Today, Kahanes view on reparations can be heard in many quarters of the moderate Jewish world.

On these and other issues, what Kahane was saying about American Jewry in the late 1960s and 1970s is what many mainstream Jews are saying in 2020. If we remove Kahanes militant tactics, his general worldview is alive and well. He founded Camp Jedel where Jews could learn to shoot guns as Jews. Today, some American Jews proudly send their children to the IDF military Gadna program, where American Jews learn to shoot guns as Jews. In some way, what Kahane wanted was to transfer Israeli survivalism to American shores. In the 1980s, Kahane argued that a Jewish and democratic state was schizophrenic. Today, faced with a half-century occupation, some Jews are questioning whether democracy should be sacrosanct if it challenges a Jewish state.

In short, if we separate tactics from worldview, Kahane has seeped into the collective subconscious of American Jewry more than we are willing to admit. In Israel, facing up to Kahanism is easier as it is more open and thus more a part of the conversation. The attempt to erase Kahanes legacy in America makes it much more difficult to recognize and confront. Many want to see him as a persona non grata. And therein lies the danger. The neoconservatism that emerged after Kahane was gone has been partly responsible for the rightward shift in some of American Jewry. But Kahanism lurks just beneath the surface. Someone once said that even though Kahane left America, America never left Kahane. I would add that in the collective mind of much of American Jewry, Kahane lives on in many of the moderate and genteel discussions about Jewish survival today.

I see that that Rabbi/Professor Magid is also a clawhammer banjo player and a student of Ken Perlman, one of the great living banjo virtuosos and musicologists of old-time banjo as well as the musical partner of Al Jabour who was, until his death a few years ago, the curator of American folk music at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. There are a few people in this world who have too much talent to be accorded to a single person. Its just not fair. I had this thought twice in the past week, once when I was reading about Jhumpa Lahiri and again when I was reading about Viet Thanh Nguyen. Both are significant scholars as well as brilliant authors of fiction. (Of course, they are also terrific, albeit unnecessary, arguments for the value of an open immigration policy.) Ive not read Lahiris new novel, Whereabouts, originally written, infuriatingly to mere mortals, in Italian, a language she recently decided to learn, but I did read Nguyens magnificent two novels and can recommend them unreservedly. Start with The Sympathizer before moving on to The Committed.

We cant solve many of the worlds problems all by ourselves here at Altercation, but one I think we can dispose of is the sad fact that many people think Tom Jones is lame. Well, think again after you have watched Tom sing Long Time Gone with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Raise Your Hand with Janis Joplin; Burning Down the House with the Cardigans; and, more recently, Leonard Cohens Tower of Song all by himself.

Finally, what the world needs now, no less than love sweet love, are conservatives who have a sense of honor and devote themselves to tell the truth, regardless of where it may lead. There are just a few of these left and we lost one with the passing of Yale historian (and Brooklyn College alumnus) Donald Kagan, whose four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War is one of the great scholarly achievements of the past half-century.

Excerpt from:

Altercation: The Ghost That Stalks the American Jewish Establishment - The American Prospect

Eight people are walking through the trees in the National Heritage Park in Wexford to take a survival skills workshop run by Shayne Phelan of Eagle Ridge Survival. He is a likablebearded man with a bandana on his head, an army surplus jacket with Instructor lettered on the breast, and a lot of tattoos including the words dead and lift across his knuckles.

As we walk, Shayne stops sporadically to point out plants of note garlic, ginger, a mushroom that will kill, a mushroom that may cause stomach ache and hallucinations, plantain which is a panacea for many health problems, some plants which are edible, and Water-dropwort Hemlock, which is not edible at all. Its the most poisonous plant in Ireland, he says.

If we need to murder someone we can come back, chuckles Brenda Forrest, an acupuncturist and homeopath who already knows how to spin yarn, grows vegetables and owns a flint (for fire-making purposes).

Careful, says Shayne. Theres a journalist here.

Brenda is not the only person who has some prior experience. Sarah Smith, here with her daughter Lindsey Murphy, recently did a course on seaweed foraging.

Regardless of what your reason to be here today is, says Shayne, I will teach you with the same integrity that your life could depend on. Hopefully everyone will leave here today with a good understanding of what it actually requires to stay alive. And theyll also have a good understanding of how delicate as a biological structure we actually are and how we can actually end up in a lot of trouble very, very quickly.

We reach a clearing in the trees where we sit in a circle on chopped logs as Shayne tells us about his own credentials. Hes been hunting, fishing and falconing since childhood. I was a feral kid at school, he says. My teacher [once] heard something from my bag and when he put his hand in to investigate he was bitten by a ferret. I had jackdaws who used to follow me to school. I was just that sort of weird kid. Youd never guess, right?

In 1986, he read two books that changed his life: The SAS Survival Handbook by Lofty Wiseman, and Bushcraft by Mors Kochanski. Kochanski, who died recently, is his idol.

Survivalism, as Shayne describes it, is slow, methodical and about being prepared for the worst. While Phelan doesnt rule out the possibility of a solar flare knocking out all our electronics or World War III destroying our supply chains, he thinks its far more likely that his students will need these skills if they sprain an ankle when alone on a mountain walk.

Survival [scenarios] almost always happen when the day starts out like any other day, he says. Survival is 90 per cent psychological.

Shaynefasts for 72 hours once a month in order to prepare himself for hunger. He does a dry fast for 24 hours every other month to inure himself to thirst. Theres a rule of threes, he says. We can survive for three minutes without oxygen. We can survive for three hours without shelter. Shelter in this context includes appropriate clothing. We can survive three days without water... and we can survive three weeks without food.

He starts by talking about the importance of shelter. Even on a warm day in Ireland, he says, if you were wet and injured you could become hypothermic. He is currently dressed in cotton, he tells us, and because cotton cools you down, hes dressed for death.

For an Irish climate he swears by wool clothing. Four hundred million sheep cant be wrong. Wool maintains 80 per cent of its insulator properties when totally submerged in water. All those fisherman off the west coast they know something.

Thats my only survival skill, says Brenda. Im a spinner.

When were making fishing nets youll be flying, says Shayne.

He carries several items with him everywhere he goes a good knife, a small torch, a military poncho, a whistle (three blasts is an international distress signal) an,d because fire is so important, a military-grade lighter, a second plastic lighter, a ferrocenium rod and a second smaller ferrocenium rod. [The survivalist] Corey Lundin says, If you dont carry sh*t in your pockets, you end up with sh*t in your pants.

Every dayShayne practises making a fire with a primitive bow drill. He demonstrates this for us now and generates an ember in minutes. Once we have fire, he says, we can get warm and make water drinkable by straining it through some cloth then boiling it. He also carries a bottle of 2 per cent iodine and says that five drops of this into water strained through cloth will make it drinkable in the absence of a heat source. In Ireland, he says, there is nearly always some fresh water to be taken from a stream, dug from the ground or transpired from plants.

What about urine? asks Caroline, an alternative medicine practitioner from Limerick.

Shayne sighs. I knew Bear Grylls would come up, he says. He has no time for Bear Grylls and his showboating, urine-drinking ways. Hes not a survivalist... How do you die within the first 20 minutes? Do what Bear Grylls does. We never drink our own urine. I mean, whatever youre into in your own time, but its waste products poison our body has decided to get rid of.

It turns out Caroline (not her real name) actually has drunk urine, while doing a course on urine therapy. I felt great afterwards, she tells me later. Shes here because she believes that society may collapse at some point soon and wishes to be ready.

She believes the Irish Government is corrupt and lying to the people about the nature of the pandemic and that things are going to get ugly sooner than we think. Ive been following this whole thing very closely, she says. We should all be stocking up... Just put a bit aside every month.

Shayne doesnt have that much time for prepping. Prepping is just a buzzword for storage, he tells me. And the one thing these [preppers] arent prepping is their skills. No matter how much you store, sooner or later it will need to be replenished. You could even make yourself a target for having so much stuff. Ultimately, if you want to go down the route of prepping, become a farmer.

He thinks theres a lot of posing done by so-called survivalists who enjoy running through the woods like Rambo. The only reason to run in a survival situation in Ireland, he says, is if you hear rescuers or your fire is going out. In survival everything slows down, and we move with the pulse of nature. Apart from everything else, [slowness] makes sense because we burn less calories.

For now, were making fire. Beyond its warming, cooking and water-purifying properties, says Shayne, its caveman TV. You never have to change the channel and you always know whats on...When you manage to make fire and hear that cracking, its like winning the lottery.

He distributes knives and shows us how to make feather sticks sticks feathered with tiny curls of wood at one end to help kindle a fire. He spends time on knife safety, telling a story about a survivalist he knows who accidentally embedded his knife in his knee. And the last thing you want in a survival situation, he says, is to be bleeding from a major artery.

He shows us how to make a fire with a pile of these feather sticks, a spark from a ferrocenium rod and an ember extender like char paper or, even better, cotton wool soaked in coconut oil. He carries six of the latter in an old camera roll he was once a photojournalist and they double up as anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal agents. He has a thrifty love for things with more than one function.

Neil OGrady, a firefighter, has been watching a lot of YouTube videos on how to make fire. I have an eight-year-old, and I was trying to transfer a few things and then I realised that I didnt know half of this myself. Neil says he thinks that modern man misses being out in nature and has a need to feel like prehistoric man.

Is that why hes here? He laughs. Yeah.

Engineer Eoin Murphy, on the other hand, is the most modern of modern men and got the course as a Fathers Day present. The last thing you need in a survival situation is someone who can work a computer, he says.

Does he think his family is trying to toughen him up? Maybe. I think it says a lot that my wife told me that I needed to bring a packed lunch to a survival course.

At this point I have to go fetch the photographer from the entrance to the heritage park and get lost for 20 minutes. When I return the photographer is already there and everyone is amused by my inability to survive even the short trek to the visitors centre.

Next Shayne shows us how to efficiently cut branches and how to make rudimentary deadfall traps with which to catch rats and squirrels. We move on to cordage how to make usable twine/rope by entwining strands of cordyline or nettles and later he shows us how to whittle a fishing gorge hook.

Its a pleasant, pragmatic and information-filled course. Its very enjoyable. But Shayne also teaches a course in which he takes people into the Wicklow hills for 72 hours with just a poncho, water bottle, knife and ferrocenium rod each. No tent. No food.

Netflix? asks Eoin.

Once when he was in his 20s, Shayne went into the Wicklow hills and survived there for 28 days with just his knife, water bottle and ferro rod. He lost three stone, and the culinary high point was eating a magpie. Some wannabe survivalists, he says, imagine themselves in such scenarios, hunting deer and eating like kings. In reality, on the 72-hour course, people count themselves lucky to eat crow, squirrel, rat, mouse, fox and worms.

Id tape a load of Mars bars to my legs, says Eoin.

Are any of those animals tasty? Squirrels quite nice, says Shayne. Its nutty... Hoppers [young crows] are quite tasty... Rat does not taste well but you can eat it. Fox tastes awful.

Caroline notes that where she previously lived in the US, there were dangerous animals like snakes and crocodiles.

Shayne laughs. I consider that an extended menu.

My wifes vegetarian, says Eoin. How do you catch wild tofu?

There are plenty of edible plants out there, says Shayne, but in a survival scenario you have to be willing to eat anything you can get. He shows us how to make fishing nets and tells us that these nets can also be used to trap birds like wood pigeon. We get loads of wood pigeons in our garden, says Lindsey.

Not for much longer, says Eoin.

A lot more women have been doing Shaynes courses in recent years. He thinks women often have a better attitude. Some young men get this idea, Yeah, Im going to beat the sh*t out of nature. He sighs. You will not beat the sh*t out of nature.

He wants us to respect nature and its dangers. He thinks if we really care about the environment, we should immerse young people in it from a young age. Because nobody wants to destroy what they love.

Anyway, Im now pretty sure that Id be dead within hours of a survival event. If not for my fellow survivalists I would have got lost a second time on the way back from lunch (smoked salmon on brown bread in the heritage parks restaurant, not magpie or rat caught in a deadfall trap).

The course reinforces all the things I take for granted: readily available food and water, string, fire, good shoes. For Shayne Phelan, this is partly the point. Hes not, he says, one of those apocaloptimists, hoping for an apocalypse. He truly hopes none of us ever need the skills he teaches. But he would like if it gave us a respect for nature and an understanding of how dependent we are on each other and wider society.

Covid really showed the fragility of society and the weakness of modern man and woman, he says. If you think about what past generations had to do to secure their existence. We were asked to stay at home on the couch and watch telly and people still had difficulty six weeks in.

Shayne Phelan can be contacted via his website eagleridgesurvival.com

See the original post:

Squirrels quite nice ... fox tastes awful Learning to survive in the wild - The Irish Times

A former police community support officer who stored a makeshift explosive device and potentially dangerous chemicals at her home has been jailed for 27 months.

Zoe Watts was dismissed as a staff member at Lincolnshire Police last December, two months after being arrested in a raid which saw bomb disposal officers called to her three-bed semi-detached home.

Police carried out searches at the rubbish-strewn property in St Helens Avenue, Lincoln, on October 4, leading to a number of weapons being recovered, including stun guns and an illegally-adapted electric fly-swatter.

The 35-year-old admitted making an improvised explosive device (IED) as her trial was due to start at the citys crown court in May.

The homemade IED found at the house of Zoe Watts (Lincolnshire Police/PA)

She had previously pleaded guilty to three charges of possession of a prohibited weapon and two counts of inappropriately importing goods, namely butterfly knives, after ordering them from a firm in The Netherlands.

Watts attended Wednesdays hearing via a video-link to HMP Peterborough and was described in court as a hoarder with an interest in survivalism.

Andy Peet, prosecuting, told the court some of the substances found at Watts home were inherently dangerous, but conceded the offences did not have a sinister background.

Defence lawyer Nicholas Fooks told Judge John Pini QC, the Recorder of Lincoln: The reality here is that this defendant is a hoarder and the items found, she said in interview, were used on two occasions.

One in the woods where there was nobody else present and therefore of no danger to anybody, and the second was when she lit a fuse in the garden.

On that occasion there was a small bang.

She may unwittingly be guilty of what I would describe as a slight lack of realism.

After Mr Fooks said Watts was not a political activist either on the right or on the left, Judge Pini said he accepted, as did the Crown, that the defendant had no malicious intent to cause harm.

Sentencing Watts, the judge said: The clear purpose of the Explosive Substances Act 1883 is to protect the public and property from harm by explosions as possessing explosives is inherently dangerous.

Story continues

You were not trained or approved to have these substances.

Your interest, as you made very clear in your interviews, is that you have a YouTube channel concerning survivalist issues.

To you this may all be harmless fun but we are in fact dealing with highly dangerous and volatile substances which can cause significant injury.

A mobile phone converted for use as a stun gun by Zoe Watts (Lincolnshire Police/PA)

Lincolnshires Assistant Chief Constable Kerrin Wilson said: This has been a difficult case involving a staff member at Lincolnshire Police, who has now been held accountable for her actions.

We expect our officers and staff to uphold the law and always maintain high standards.

Clearly in this case that has not happened, and Id like to reassure members of the public that we have engaged in a robust process to investigate these crimes.

While these incidents are very rare, it is absolutely right that we prosecute where appropriate and Id like to pay tribute to those who carried out a thorough investigation which has resulted in todays sentencing.

Although there was no evidence to suggest that Zoe Watts planned to use any of the weapons that she had bought, its entirely understandable that our communities would have been concerned by this. I thank them again for their patience and understanding while we carried out our investigation.

Todays sentencing sends out a clear message that we will take action against those who commit such serious weapons offences.

Read this article:

Ex-police community support officer jailed after IED found at her home - Yahoo News UK

Im late to the party. But thats the way Loki would like it. He strikes me as someone who arrives fashionably late, if at all. The internet is celebrating Alligator Loki, the darling of Loki on Disney+.

If youre reading this, you already knew that. You love Gator Loki. I love Gator Loki. Lets talk about it.

In the fifth episode of Loki, Journey into Mystery, Gator Loki was one of the weirdest things in a show that clearly prided itself on being Marvels version of the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. Its totally different and psychedelic and better for it. Gator Loki is the physical personification of Lokis eccentricities. In a show where weve seen Frog Thor (Throg), Lokis in love and a sentimental speech about a jet ski, Gator Loki might be the strangest thing the show has gotten away with. The show-runners tried it. And my goodness, did it work.

The gator is an enigma who inspires so many questions. Does it come from an alternate timeline where ALL the Avengers are animals? Can it enchant? Can it wield a dagger? Can he lie? Will we ever see it again? And, the biggest mystery: Is he even a Loki?

I know, but I want people to wonder,Loki head writer Michael Waldron told Marvel.com. I want that to be the next great Marvel debate. Is Alligator Loki really a Loki or not?

Oh, you cunning member of the Crocodilia. You demi-god and demi-dinosaur. You ridiculous, RoxxiWine-drinking reptile.

We see you. Respect.

And we get that if we dont show respect, well lose a hand. So seriously: respect.

Id respect Gator Loki even more if he wasnt actually a Loki. His biggest common threads are survivalism and the color green. Otherwise, he has shown no powers. He cant even speak unless Classic Loki is translating Alligator Lokis unamused looks. But thats helped him deliver high comedy in his supporting role. The muted cutaways to his (non) reactions are perfect. And then there are the cutups of Gator Lokis appearances set to music, which are #art.

Want to get even more weird? Check out what the actors had to look at when they were in his company on stage. The actors were working with a googly-eyed stuffed animal.

It sounds like director Kate Herron genuinely grappled with how Gator Loki should look: Cute, cartoonish and cuddly or cold and calculated? Its Loki. Gotta be the latter.

We had some early versions when we were doing visual effects that probably were a bit too cute, in the sense of it was a bit more like a cartoony kind of alligator, Herron told Marvel.com. But it just became funnier and funnier the more it looked like a real alligator that just happened to be wearing the horns. That was the sweet spot. Once we landed in that spot where it felt like a real alligator, but with a kind of slightly jaunty horns on, thats where we were like, Oh, there he is.

Brilliant.

Now I know you want me to say Gator Loki is better than Baby Yoda from Star Wars universe and Mandalorian on Disney+. The conversation is raging on Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. Lets not turn this into an episode of ESPNs First Take. Im not here to be Stephen A. Smith with an anger-invoking opinion. Thats not what Gator Loki is about. Thats not what Baby Yoda is about. My nuanced take is theyre both wonderful and different.

Apples and oranges. Lokis and Yodas.

Am I right? (I am.)

Its likely weve seen the last of Gator Loki. He will live forever in The Void and in our hearts. Farewell, sweet prince(ss).

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Alligator Loki is the MCU's newest, most amazing obsession - For The Win

Grow your innate survival abilities and watch your sleep improve and your worries lessen. Often your greatest fears become your greatest strengths; consider teaching others as you hone your skills.Here are a few ways to establishyour independence.

Learn how to grow your own food. Also, learn how to store, pickle and dry food. Learn how to cook with minimal ingredients. Consider growingmedicinal plants and learning the edible and medicinal plants that naturally grow in your local environment. When you grow your own food pre-apocalypse, you may even save $24,000 per year. Composting skills are also extremely valuable, especially if biomass energy is generated.

Read about the cycles of the sun and moon. Document eclipses, astronomical changes and learn to navigate by the stars. Master navigators were often the explorers and elders of ancient civilization, revered for their understanding of earth systems. Now a lost art, some cultures still use Old World navigation: Polynesians are still considered genius navigators and useancient techniques to travelthe ocean by canoe.

Learning to hunt, fish and raise livestock are invaluable skills. Hunting and fishing may involve various weapons or trapping techniques. The Boulder Outdoor Survival School teachesthree basic hunting strategies; the strategies are based on the tactics used by animals, such ascanine (chase/pack hunting), feline (spot and stalk) and raptor (ambush). Urban agriculture programs are surfacing all around the world, which supports efforts to raise chickens, rabbits or even apiary endeavors. Explore the urban agriculture policies of your local government.

While your first step is to measure and lower your energy use, you may also invest in renewable and alternative energy sources. Invest in solar panels, a generator, wind turbines and property with geothermal energy.Teslas solar shingles are inspiring new home designs: consider following the work of energy progressives like Tesla and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Learn how to heal yourself. How to take care of yourself. If you are dependent on medicine, find a natural remedy you can grow. If you need glasses, consider getting laser eye surgery. Steve Huffman, CEO and Founder of Reddit and survivalist, got laser eye surgery so he would no longer be dependent on his contact lenses or glasses. If you have allergies, exploreimmune-building tactics you can take to increase your tolerance.

Take technology, engineering or construction classes. Learn how things work, how to take them apart and put them together. In large part, survivalskills involve understandingnature and learning how to use natural materials and processes to survive. Take survivalist courses: learn how to build a snow cave and start a fire without matches. Here are some other training courses to consider:

Establish a meeting place or signal system with loved ones. FEMA provides guidelines for emergency preparation, including organization of identification and financial documents. However, in the event that government emergency services are not operating, consider drafting a basic plan on whereand when to congregate with family members, on high ground and at a certain time driven by nature, such as sunrise.

Throughout history, many indigenous cultures have lived in harmony with the planet, with respect for nature, animals and the cycles of the planets. Learn about indigenous cultures in your area: how they handled weather extremes, the plants they ate and used, and how they built shelter. These practices were refined over centuries and offer ingenious survival tricks.

The lone wolf survival strategy is only one approach to survivalism. According to Gregg Braden, cooperation, not competition, is the most successful evolutionary driver and thus, adaptation strategy. Create a network, understand each others strengths and weakness, work together to create and implement solutions.

Learn how to defend yourself. For some this may mean stockpiling ammunition, but considering that is not a sustainable tactic,try learning martial arts, archery or basic defense strategy. Placement of a shelter, on high ground and with a birds eye view, is an example of a tactical defense strategy.

The principles of Ubuntu may seem idealistic, but a survivalist future based on contributionism is certainly possible. To prepare, develop a craft people will need and appreciate. For example, learn to grow strawberries for a world wanting sweetness or knit wool hats for cold winters. Consider your personal strengths and leveragethem.

It may seem counterintuitive, but survivalism requires practice. Embody a mindset of sustainability and independence. Set aside time each year to test and advance your survival skills. Try a survival field course:you can find courses and schools that offer urban or wilderness survival training. Eventuallyyou may even consider living off the grid full time.

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Survivalism 101: A Survivalist Preparation Guide | Gaia

After Download surprised us all last month with the announcement that the festival would be putting on a 10,000 capacity event in June, weve spent weeks speculating on what the hell that would actually look like.

With the gates of Donington opening for the first time in two years on Friday, heres what went down on the first day of a history-making Download.

Even given Friday's solid downpour (which, to be fair, still cleared by theevening), and a bit of drizzle during Enter Shikari's set on Saturday, Download has been far from the mud-laden wash-out we started to anticipate. There's even been sneaky spots of sun over the three days, and today, come the late afternoon, the clouds disappear for good and Donington is bathed in glorious evening sunshine. Nowthisis what's it's all about.

Spitting lines such as 'I got a bigger fucking dick than you, frontwoman Kitty Arabella Austen thrusts, stomps and thrashes her way through a set of rebellious anthems that make one thing clear Saint Agnes are out to make their mark. With a wicked, lipstick-smeared grin on her face, she howls between songs and gnaws at the microphone, like a caged zoo animal in search of freedom. As the set progresses she gets even more feral, smashing her guitar and smothering herself in fake blood. Well, why not?

Opening with the mighty Eternal Forward Motion, EmployedTo Serve are relentless in their quest to banish peoples third-day lethargy, Justine Jones ordering circle pits and flashing smiles between screams. A glimpse into the future comes as she orders us to scream THIS IS HELL a line from their blistering upcoming single, Exist. If the rest of their fourth album sounds anything like this, itll be special.

Having released a pair of gloriously forward-thinking, challenging and eclectic records in the pandemic era, Liverpools Loathe have been tipped by many to be one of the weekend's highlights. Unfortunately, today fate conspires against them.

Frustratingly, the sound is incredibly unbalanced, with the drums and bass drowning out the guitars and making frontman Kadeem France barely audible at all. Audio levels rise and fall throughout their set, robbing the band of the dense, lush and crushing soundscapes that made I Let It In And It Took Everything such a beloved album last year. Even worse, as the band close with Two Way Mirror, the sound cuts out completely, leaving Kadeem to run through the song alone,acapella, with the audience backing him.

Its clear the band are frustrated by this turn of events, but there are still positives to be taken from the day. Loathe look like superstars, throwing themselves around with wild abandon, each member with a clear and distinct style and personality of their own. To be perfectly blunt and basic about it: they just lookcool,and the jump to a festival main stage looks utterly effortless. Plus, Loathe have more ambition and creativity than pretty much any other band on the bill today, perfectly merging metal and hardcore with their more ambient and shoegaze-y leanings. And, perhaps most importantly, the crowd adore them. The reception at the end of the set is huge, despite the sound not going to plan; the people that love Loathe really,reallylove them. They will be back, and when they are, expect them to use this experience as fuel to prove without doubt just how great a band they are.

Coming across like the weirdest wedding band youve ever seen, Elvana dress in 50s gear and cover Nirvana with snippets of Elvis. Smells Like Teen Spirit elicits a joyous, field-wide sing-along, but the silliest moment is a hip-shaking cameo from the Download Dog during a rendition of Hound Dog. Probably not what the King or Kurt had in mind, to be honest, but the band are proud of it. We are Elvana from Disgraceland! bellows Elvis as they exit. Sure.

Jamie Lenman is a born ringmaster and quickly turns the second stage tent into his own bizarre bazaar. An early guest spot for Wargasm on The Future Is Dead sets things off with a bang and from there the sing-alongs fly thick and fast. It's a delightfully riffy set mostly culled from Jamie's more recent output, the likes of All Of England Is A City, I Don't Wanna Be Your Friend, The Road To Right and Long Gone Day (dedicated to Justine Jones of Employed To Serve and, as Jamie points out, a "Number 1 best-selling single in the UK on vinyl at least!") showing a muscular prowess that quickly has the tent screaming, bouncing and moshing.

By comparison everyone else that has gone before that day feels timid as a church-mouse, Lenman roaring, quipping and generally charming smiles onto every face in the tent. "This is a rock Oval and I'm the motherfucking umpire!" he jokes, clearly thriving on the amassed energy. A thundering extreme metal cover of Popeye (yes, the song from the cartoon) offers a perfect summation of Jamie's idiosyncratic brilliance, mixing humour and genius to great effect. There's nobody else quite like Jamie Lenman in Britain and that is exactly why he is such a uniquely brilliant creative force.

"When I say Rogan you say Mosh!" Massive Wagons are as daft as it comes, a delightfully quirky mixture of classic rock riffs, roar-along choruses and Northern humour. The crowd go absolutely wild for it bouncing, singing and moshing throughout the set with joyful abandon. MW's sheer exuberance marks the difference between a band that want to replicate the Kiss and Cheap Trick records in their collection and a band who truly understand the underlying spirit that made those records so brilliant in the first place. The decidedly Terrorvision-ish The Curry Song proves to be a highlight of the set, apparently making its live debut 12 months after it first appeared on the brilliant House Of Noise album. Massive Wagons played a tent last time they were at Donington too, but judging from today's performance, it's high time they get their shot at wowing the main stage.

The Wildhearts have almost been destroyed many times, but their main stage performance seemingly comes closer than 30 years of misadventures with drugs, mismanagement and Thai prison. A meagre gathering in front of the main stage is the least of the band's problems as they fire through a calamitous rendition of Disconnected, vocalist Ginger Wildheart quite rightly pointing out that they sound "like a bag of shit." They certainly aren't the only band to have played the main stage this weekend to encounter such issues, but when the usually bruising Suckerpunch is left entirely impotent by a lack of guitars in the monitors and absolutely no vocal harmonies, Ginger is done with politely soldiering on.

"Only The Wildhearts could come out into the new world and sound like a bag of shit," he jokes. "But then, all of this is surreal I keep expecting to wake up in jail sucking cock!" Brusque words with the sound desk bring things flaring to life for a glorious moment - the one-two punch Everlone and Vanilla Radio actually have real-life guitars and bring that Beach Boys-by-way-of-Motrhead vibe to life but it isn't enough to save the show and Ginger's initially jocular manner breaks as he decides to cut the set short, simply stating "this is a waste of time have a nice day". Ironically, deciding to cut and run rather than continue as a pale shade ends up being the most disappointing part of the performance; a rare instance of the band admitting defeat in a career often characterised by dogged determination and survivalism in the face of disaster.

Let's be honest: there was no fucking way a Skindred main stage set at the first Download in two years was going to be anything other than great. And yet, rocking up just as the sun arrives to send the last of the weekend's dodgy weather packing, there's something that feels more than a little like destiny as Benji Webbe et al arrive to bring the biggest party of 2021 so far. Download is ready for them, and from the opening seconds of Stand For Something Donington is a writhing, jumping, fist-pumping, dancing mass of bodies. It's been an emotional weekend, but there have been few happier momentsthan Skindred'shour on stage every single second they're here is pure, unadulterated joy.

Benji remains metal's most lovable frontman and has the crowd cracking up at least once between each song, be it gamely taking sides in a classic 'left vs right' crowd face-off or pretending to ring Boris Johnson to demand permission to begin the Newport Helicopter. Obviously, 'Boris' concedes, shirts and jackets come off, and we get a raucous Newport Helicopter two years in the making. What a moment, what a band.

It'd be daft to say a band as polished and experienced as Bullet For My Valentine weren't up to the task of headlining a festival like this one, but given the wholesome, celebratory vibe of Enter Shikari last night and the pure, raw energy of Frank Carter the night before, it certainly feels like the Welshmen have plenty to do to make their mark on what has been a quite incredible weekend. The early part of their set is solid enough fare, squeezing a live debut for heavy-as-hell new single, Knives, in between two cuts from their somewhat patchy most recent record, Gravity. Knives in particular sounds big, but it doesn't all make for the most awe-inspiring start to proceedings. Still, Matt Tuck and the crew look as assured and atease as ever on the big stage, and an impressive light show does just enough to give the set a Big Game Feel.

That said, things really start to kick off when Bullet dip into the classics, firstly for a raucous Your Betrayal and then even more so for hallmarkPoison anthem, 4 Words (To Choke Upon). The level-up in atmosphere is immediately palpable, and it sets a precedent for the rest of the set. Because make no mistake about it: Bullet For My Valentine have bangers, and when they start dropping, peoplelose their shit. After a stretch of tracks picked from across Bullet's post-2010 output, a rollocking Scream Aim Fire kicks off a run of classics that reminds everybody here exactly why Bullet became the most hyped British metal band of their generation. Suffocating Under Words Of Sorrow, Hand Of Blood and Waking The Demon all draw huge responses, but it's unquestionably Tears Don't Fall that steals the set. An anthem that soundtracked a whole generation of rock club nights, it gets oneof the very biggest singalongs of the whole weekend, the crowd awash with people moshing, pitting and hugging the ever-loving shit out of each other. It's the final, emotional reminder of what we've been missing in a weekend full of them.

Oh, and we should probably mention the quite frankly ludicrous cover of Iron Maiden's Run To The Hills that gets snuck into this part of the show, featuring none other than Skindred's Benji Webbe on lead vocals, who attempts to read the lyrics off of a scrappy piece of paper before giving up and just making them up as he goes along. It's surreal, it's messy and it's fucking hilarious.

All in all, Download Pilot was like many other Download festivals we've had across the years a weekend of many highs, a couple of lows, and plenty of emotion and catharsis. But there was something truly special about this year, not just because of the pandemic-induced circumstances, but because of the opportunity to have a smaller, more intimate version of Download that celebrated the young bands that have moulded the British rock scene into what it is today. It was a stark reminder of how lucky we've been to see so many amazing artists grow up in this country in recent years, and why now, more than ever, they and the venues they thrive in need our support. What the immediate future holds for live music remains up in the air, but one thing's for sure: we'll never take moments like these for granted again, and the next rock festival cannot get here soon enough. Long live Download. Long live music.

After a slow start yesterday with only a pair of bananas spotted in the pit, the drier weather brings out the extroverts: Angry Birds, a brace of crabs, dudes in Christmas suits, Disney princesses, mad scientists, a witch, priests, a T-rex, plus a giant shark dishing out hugs. Its fair to say we felt underdressed, but it's nice to see festival silliness back in full swing.

Set off like a rabid badger and with breakdowns that sound like someone chucked awoodchipper down a flight of stairs, Lotus Eater don't tread gently around day two's potential hangovers. Metallic hardcore with an almost supernatural sense for nastiness, the band prove the only true cure for a hangover is RIFFS. We even get a T-rex bouncing around in the pit, proof that even an apex predator can't resist getting absolutely bodied to the thundering beats. There is one emotional moment during the brutality, though, when frontman Paul Collins dedicates a song to his dad who passed away 11 months ago.

Download is always a festival that goes to lengths to represent rock in all its forms, but without a Gojira or Neurosis-shaped band on the bill, Conjurer feel a little like the odd kids out as they arrive to take their slot as today's first main stage band. Not that it stops them levelling the place, laying down riff after riff of monstrouslyheavy post/sludge/doom metal. They remain one of our country's most promising young bands, and if there was any doubt they can command a stage this size with the right bill, at least said doubts are noisily put to rest.

With Download Pilot organised in record time and on a smaller site, we didnt expect much in the way of production, but Glaswegians Bleed From Within did us proud. Jets of flame punctuated their blistering metalcore,the bandfinally able to air songs from 2020's mammoth Fracture album, as frontman Scott Kennedy riled up the pits andproclaimed it the best day of his life. Finishing with The End Of All We Know, the flamescoincided with his scream of, 'LET THE FIRES RISE!', in the mostmetal-as-fuck moment of the weekend. We'll even forgive Scott running out for said last track in a Scotland kit. The cheeky scamp.

Given that they don't even have an album out yet, the reaction to Wargasm's animated set is nothing short of extraordinary. The band's relative inexperience together shows at times this is far from the tightest set we'll see at Download today but when you have a near-delirious crowd screaming along to every word of Spit and Your Patron Saints, what does it matter? Frontwoman Milkie Way is as ready-made a rockstar as the scene has produced this decade, and if they can curate a full-length record to match the level of their output so far, they could turn into a very special band indeed. Bonus points for the raucouscover of NERD'sLapdance with bonus Metallica Fuel segment thrown in.

Some grossly uneducated heathens have dared to suggest that former Metal Hammer cover stars (yes, really) A are merely one hit wonders. Shame on whoever reduces one of our most uniquely idiosyncratic artists to this! Today, A prove it to be a nonsense.

Opening with the Queens Of The Stone Age-meets-Banana Splits robo pop of If It Aint Broke, Fix It Anyway, frontman Jason Perry enters the stage wearing a Deliveroo box on his back, swinging his arms and yelping his high pitched yelp like an 80s kids TV presenter. Its clear that A dont really take any of this too seriously, but to dismiss them as a gimmick band or a dumb, guilty pleasure is to miss the genuine craft of their songwriting. The layered vocals of Old Folks are pure Beach Boys, guitarist Mark Chapmans riffs and solos on Monkey Kong are impressive enough to feel like Eddie Van Halen has joined The Bloodhound Gang and the propulsive punk clatter of Foghorn still sounds like Pennywise jacked up on blue smarties and Sunny D.

Its all pieced together by the sheer enthusiasm of Perry, who gets the crowd to do an age appropriate walking circle pit during a fantastic I Love Lake Tahoe. By the end, even those who were just curious have big, beaming smiles on their faces.

They also play some song called Nothing. It was pretty good too. One hit wonders? not on your nelly!

"I am shitei-ng myself," Vukovi vocalist Janine Shilstone admits a couple of songs into her band's set in the Second Stage tent. You wouldn't believe it though to hear the excitable response from a crowd that hang on her every word. Every inch a born performer, Janine has a down-to-earth earnestness that cuts right through the usual corniness of crowd-baiting to incite an honest and impassioned response. It's also her birthday, and she celebrates by throwing herself headlong into the crowd. With some excellent bouncy pop rock backing her every move, Vukovi feel reminiscent of the weird and wonderful Marmozets while sounding entirely confident in their own identity.

Stepping out to the tolling of church bells and throwing a single rose into the crowd, Creeper are in full-theatre mode for their second stage headline set. Sparks fly literally from the off as the band kick right into Hiding With Boys before launching through a brisk set absolutely rammed with bangers from both of their records, as well as a couple of choice cuts from their EPs (including Midnight, the lead single from the upcoming American Noir).Creeperinspire a sense of passion like few bands can and the atmosphere in the tent is positively lightning-charged as fans howl along to Suzanne, Cyanide, Poisoned Hearts and Crickets (featuring Hannah Hermione in a wedding dress). Stylistically swinging between Misfits/Ramones-stylepunk-poweredragers to intimate sing-alongs and Britpop-inspired flights of whimsy, Creeper mark themselves as one of Britain's most chameleonic sonic entities, emotions running high as the band throw every trick and flourish in their arsenal into a monumental set.

Back in 2014, Loz Taylor made headlines when he scaled a production tower,precariously hanging above the crowd with wildabandon. This year he repeats thetrick,to the joy of their devotedcrowd. Two months after releasing storming fifth album Sleeps Society, the Sheffielders are treated like returning heroes, with chants of 'YORKSHIRE YORKSHIRE YORKSHIRE' ringing out across a packed field as they tear through their highest-energy material, saving new hits Nervous and Systematic for a glorious finish. For a band who have come back from the brink several times, this was a deserved triumph that will be spokenof for years to come.

St Albans' finest export seem like a natural choice for a headliner of this kind of festival, and the rave-punk mavericks do not waste the opportunity to remind us why they are one of the UK's most beloved bands. This is a celebratory, career-spanning set, taking in everything from breakthrough anthem Sorry You're Not A Winner to The Great Unknown, the epic opener from last year's acclaimed Nothing Is True And Everything Is Possible. A dazzling light show peppered with bursts of confetti gives the set a big-show feel, and the band are evidently every bit as delighted to be here as we are. "I'm gonna take a few chances to take this all in, if that's alright with you," beams Rou Reynolds. Fine by us, pal. We've waited two years for moments like these.

Some things are just meant to be. After three solid weeks of stunning weather, the day before Download saw the heavens finally open and the UK receive an unholy battering of Noahs Arc-sized proportions. Prayers that the rain would let up come Download day one went unanswered, but it doesnt matter there's a vibe around this site as wholesome as any in this festivals history. Plus, there is a merciful break in the weather come the evening. Phew.

One of the biggest questions about Download Pilot was: how the hell is this actually going to work? Even for a smaller capacity festival, ushering in 10,000 people while juggling testing, registration and, yknow, tickets and stuff seems like a big ask. And yet, people stream through, negative tests are registered and theres no noticeable fuck-ups in the system. Come mid-afternoon, the site is bustling and it feels like a festival in any other era. The lack of social distancing and masks once inside the arena almost feel emotional its as close to a normal music experience as weve felt in a long, long time.

Fewer fans and bands means a far smaller festival site, and while it means you dont quite get the pure spectacle of a full-throttle Download, the intimacy and, quite frankly, the ability to nip between both stages, the toilet and the bar in ten minutes flat is a joy. It creates a unique atmosphere where its easier to find people, bump into friends you havent seen since pre-pandemic and be spontaneous. We dig it.

Liverpool new-nu metallers Death Blooms take on the honour of being the first metal band to play a UK festival in two summers, and the roar that goes up when they finally stroll onto the second stage almost collapses the whole tent. Sorry for the silence, Im trying not to cry, stutters frontman Paul Barrow in between songs. We dont blame you, mate were choking back a tear or two ourselves. The Scouse crew put on an imperious showing that brings the bounce, and we get our first mosh pits, circle pits and even crowd-surfers of the pandemic era. Bliss.

How are Malevolence not fucking massive already? By far the heaviest band of day one, the Sheffield mobs mash-up of Pantera-sized groove metal and rollocking hardcore sets the second stage alight. The near-endless run of monstrous riffs and brutalising breakdowns only takes a backseat for a short but heartfelt speech by singer Alex Taylor about the unseen effects of the pandemic. The last 16 months have been some of the hardest shit weve all ever had to endure, he muses. Its ok to not be ok. Lets look after one another. Its an unexpectedly emotional moment, and it hits just as hard as every riff.

Since releasing their second albumThe Greatest Mistake Of My Lifeback in April, there has been a real sense of momentum building around Welsh post-hardcore rockers Holding Absence. The crowd response is rapturous as they take to the stage and it isn't long until we get our first full-tent singalongs of the weekend. "We've waited 18 months for this point," vocalist Lucas Woodland beams.The emotional connection between crowd and band is palpable, the band often settling back to let their fans serenade them with songs that at this point are barely two months old. It's exactly the kind of thing that Download Festival was built around, and this kind of experience speaks volumes to the intangible weight that a successful set at Donington can lend to a band. If it was good enough for Trivium in 2005...

The Frank Carter headlining the Main Stage of the first night of the Download Pilot is not the same man that persuaded an audience to create an enormous circle-pit (in knee-high mud, no less) around the outside of the third stage tent in 2016. Five years hasn't so much softened him as changed the shape of his ire, while The Rattlesnakes' venom is replaced with serpentine sleekness. That said, shades of the old Frank still shine through during his set; not least in the fact Sleep Token have barely finished playing and Frank is already wading through and over the crowd.

Set to the rhythmic pound of bass and drums (especially potent in the set's early numbers), Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes look to be making a bid for the mainstream while still keeping their punk roots alive. Even older songs like Juggernaut are given a tonal and stylistic re-tooling, toning down some of the aggro aspects while dialling up the anthemic quotient of each song. The crowd seem to absolutely love them for it, and in turn Frank loves the crowd; part bear-baiting, part-ringleader, but 100% showman. Frank even cuts one song off just as it gets going to check on the safety of the crowd getting everyone to back up and give the front row room to come over and grab a breather if needed.

Not that anybody wants to, mind. One mud-spattered fan even gets Frank checking on her personally, not quite believing she can be plastered in mud but still having the time of her life. "Covered in mud, but alright?" he asks. "There's no good place at a show to take a fucking nap you know!"

There's a whole heap of Donington spirit to be found in Frank's set, guest appearances from IDLES vocalist Joe Talbot and rock singer Cassyette proving that a reduced capacity event won't get in the way of a good ol' fashioned festival team-up. Frank sets the bar high for the rest of the weekend but then what else would we expect from the same man that galvanised British hardcore a little over a decade-and-a-half ago?

See more here:

Download Pilot as it happens: Music, moshing and a whole lotta rain - Louder

Last week, the Helsinki-based video game developer Housemarque released Returnal for the PlayStation 5. Its a spectacular showcase for the brand-new console: a survival horror game set on a distant, menacing planet determined to kill you over and over again.

The lonesome astronaut Selene Vassos, seeking the source of a mysterious signal known as the White Shadow, crashes onto the ruined planet Atropos. She recovers from the landing and abandons the wreckage in order to explore the hostile terrain, overrun with beastly hordes and littered with copies of her own corpse. Atropos appears to be a strange new world until Selene, deep in a forest, stumbles upon her own house, filled with hints of her troubled life on Earth and haunted by a second, faceless astronaut who observes Selene without speaking. Selene later encounters titanic opponents who bombard her with lasers, missiles, and orbs. Inevitably, Selene diesin fact, she dies a lotonly to once again relive the crash, revive by the wreckage, and restart her journey into the heart of darkness. Gradually, Selene learns shes caught in a time loop. To escape Atropos, Selene must scavenge and fight her way straight from the wreckage to the White Shadow at her journeys end.

While Sony still struggles to satisfy the retail demand for the PS5, Returnal is the most impressive early demonstration of the consoles key technical merits: better graphics and faster load times. The latter improvement proves crucial in the seamless transition from death to rebirth; a high death count in Returnal might be unbearable, not just challenging, on an older console with slower loading gates. Still, there are some technical limitations that prove a bit too conspicuous in Returnal. The developers, expecting the player to beat the game in a single, high-stakes run, declined to implement a conventional save system. This constraint might be tolerable if not for the games tendency to crash, wiping the players latest run without warning or recourse. Housemarque has acknowledged the widespread complaints about lost progress in Returnal, but theyve yet to say whether theyll improve the games stability and revise the save system with software patches. For now, Returnal remains a frustrating but nonetheless brilliant challenge.

Selene must defeat the boss of each biome in order to recover a key to the next. Whenever she dies, she keeps her keys, meaning Selene must vanquish each boss only once. But each time Selene dies and relives her crash landing, she must once again fight her way through the hordes loitering between her and the latest boss. Though swift, Selene is small, outnumbered, and easily overwhelmed in hostile encounters. She cant just evade the hordes without foregoing the crucial items they supply for overcoming the bosses: better weapons, higher health, and stat bonuses. But she might also live to regret risking another horde encounter in order to salvage just one more upgrade; maybe the health she loses to the horde wasnt worth the new resources she manages to harvest from the battleground, maybe she dies.

Once a horde descends on Selene, the musical score swells into a pessimistic progression that seems to take the players demise for granted. But if Selene defeats the horde, the chord dissipates and the battleground is cleared for her to scavenge before proceeding to the next arena. Theres no getting too comfortable with the topography of Atropos. Though youll memorize the layout of certain areas, each new run will reshuffle the room-to-room arrangement of areas as well as the enemies and items inside the areas. Selenes fortitude in any given run is, to some great degree, a matter of luck.

The survivalism in Returnal is stressful enough, but then theres the cosmic horror in the design, which often promotes the stress into dread. Theres slime and tentacles everywhere, theres crabs and androids and angels and supersoldiers, and from beginning to end they remain shrouded in inscrutability. For the most part, Returnal resists the urge to overexplain the mysteries of Atropos. On her own corpses Selene finds logs of her past selves explaining her latest discoveries, milestones, and pitfalls in exploring the planet, but as the player pushes deeper into Atropos her logs become delusional, revealing her descent into madness as she struggles to escape the planet. Selenes childhood home contains the most straightforward revelations about her distress, and even there the hints are abstracted into mementos: an astronaut figurine, an octopus doll, and a mess of empty pill bottles. Theres much more intrigue than plot in Returnal, and thats the games great strength. Its less interested in looking more realistic or seeming more cinematic than earlier shooters. Its far more determined to employ its state-of-the-art specifications toward a new vividness, thanks in large part to haptic feedback in the new controller.

Theres far more prominent franchise titles on the early release calendar for the PS5. Theres a new Resident Evil game this week and a new chapter in the Final Fantasy VII Remake series next month; Im sure both will unlock new levels of technical excellence in a long-running series. But Returnal emerges as the consoles first grand and original thought, a new title for a new generation.

Link:

Returnal Is the First Showcase for the PS5, and Its Stunning - The Ringer

When the pandemic hit last year, it didnt take long for grocery stores to have their shelves wiped clean. Long lines sprung up as shoppers scrambled to stock up on canned goods, water, and toilet paper. For some, however, preparing for the apocalypse is a serious business. Doomsday preppers are more than just fringe survivalists. High-end luxury apocalypse shelters are increasingly popular among the mega-rich, and, fuelled by times of chaos and uncertainty, end-times preparedness has become a multimillion-dollar industry.

In Notes from an Apocalypse, a Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back, Irish author Mark OConnell explores survivalist destinations around the globe and examines why people feel the need to go to extreme lengths preparing for The End of Time. Though survivalism has global appeal, he says that Americas rugged individualism is particularly suited to the prepper movement.

KCRWs Jonathan Bastian talks with OConnell about the need and practice of prepping, from luxury underground bunkers to garages stuffed with canned goods, water and, gasolineand why battening down the hatches has as much to do with fantasy as it does with fear.

Mark O'Connell. Photo by Richard Gilligan.

KCRW: Is survivalism a 20th century phenomenon, or something that goes far back into history?

Mark O'Connell: Survivalism, as in the kinds of doomsday prepper kind of movements that I look at in my book, is, I think, very much a modern contemporary phenomenon. But it has its roots in cyclical moments of apocalyptic fervor that have cropped up throughout history. It's been something that tends to rear its head at times of particular social and political upheaval. Apocalyptic myths tend to be something that people grab on to as a way of explaining, I suppose, the sense of chaos and uncertainty around the future.

It seems like psychologically, the human mind is drawn to this idea of end-of-times. Do you think its one that thematically plays out over and over again?

To put it in sort of pop psychological terms, we are creatures who thrive and move through the world via stories. We're narrative-telling creatures. And one of the things that the apocalypse does is it creates a sense of narrative. The literary critic Frank Kermode has an amazing book called The Sense of an Ending, where he talks about the fact that we're born as, he says, in the midst of things, in medias res. And we have no sense of really where we came from, or where we're going. And what the apocalypse does is it allows us to kind of project ourselves into an end. So it gives a kind of a sense of narrative coherence to times of chaos and uncertainty.

As you began this exploration into survivalism, did you find that those feelings were particularly fervent in the US, that this is where a lot of the action was taking place?

Yes, for sure. I started at the book really looking at the whole scene of doomsday preppers, of people who are digging bunkers and stockpiling tinned goods, and talking about the imminence of the End Times. And it's an international movement, there are a lot of preppers in Ireland and in Britain and across Europe, but really, the most kind of fervent and intense stuff tends to come, unsurprisingly, out of the U.S. And there's a couple of reasons for that.

One of which is that America seems, to me, to be a country with a particularly kind of intense relationship historically and culturally with the apocalypse. The United States, as a colonial enterprise, was born out of a moment of apocalyptic fervor in Europe, with the Pilgrims, and so on. And there's something about the prepper movement that sort of recapitulates that sense of fervor of the first European colonizers of America and the Pilgrims, and so on.

When preppers talk about the collapse of civilization, they're often talking about a situation where there's no more government, where you can't rely on society, you can't rely on your fellow people. And it's just you, the kind of rugged individual, pitting yourself against the wilderness or other people, savage people, and so on. And there's a sense of a return to some of the darker mythologies at the heart of that moment in American history with the prepper movement, I think.

When you began to sample these different prepper movements across the U.S., did you find that there was an archetypal figure or a certain personality that kept cropping up across the landscape?

Yes. To some extent, it's a broad church, but certain kinds pre-existing ideological conditions kept cropping up. One of which is a real investment in the idea of the individual, as opposed to community. So many of the people that I looked at in the book, and so many of the movements, are predicated around the idea that you cant rely on other people to get you through times of difficulty and catastrophe. So preppers tend to be all about looking after themselves, their families, battening down the hatches, stocking up on as much stuff as they can, and to hell with everyone else, but also kind of defending themselves against others.

That was a strand that I saw cropping up in lots of different kinds of movements that I looked at. One of the things I did was I spent some time in a very remote part of South Dakota ... on a former dairy farm that a guy called Robert Vicino, who is kind of an apocalyptic real estate entrepreneur, had bought.

He specializes in, you could say, luxury apocalyptic solutions. Very well-appointed, sort of five star quality bunkers with things like private cinemas and wine cellars and hydroponic vegetable gardens and so on. And he had bought this place in South Dakota and was converting it into what he called the world's largest survival community. And really, that sort of sales rhetoric around it, and also quite conspiratorial political rhetoric, was that some kind of collapse scenario was coming. You could almost take your pick of what you were most afraid of, or most sort of fantasizing about, whether it's your nuclear war, or viral pandemic, or whatever it might be, but in these scenarios, the government is not going to protect you. And you're going to need to band together with a small group of other like-minded individualists, if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms, and protect yourself against humanity at large.

All of these things seem, to me, to be implicitly political, in that if you're arguing that you need to protect yourself, and that other people are what you need to protect yourself against, whether it be sort of urban populations or what have you, that that seems to be quite a political standpoint. And it's no coincidence. I think that most of the kind of doomsday preppers and apocalyptic preparedness aficionados that I'd looked at in the book tend to, though not exclusively, come from quite right wing political milieus.

You said that these folks envision many different ways in which the world could be turned upside down, and they'll have to rely on their own kind. Are there any more common theories you came up with? Would it be a plague? Would it be some kind of civil war? What does the end of times look like for a lot of these people?

I started the book out of a place of my own anxiety about the future for myself and for my family. And for me, climate change, of course, is the big locus of apocalyptic unease. But what I started to find was that, actually, the more fervent kind of apocalyptic obsessives, for want of a better term, tended not to be all that concerned about climate change.

They tended to be concerned about the prospect of nuclear strike from North Korea, for instance. A viral pandemic is quite a common one. Asteroids hitting things, electromagnetic pulse attacks, all these kinds of things that your average person would not spend that much time thinking about. But if you have an anxious disposition, learning about these things is quite a trip.

How big is the doomsday prepper economy?

It depends on who you listen to. If you listen to the people who are selling it, you're going to find that it's a boom area. I think it's still pretty niche. But things like wealthy individuals buying land in New Zealand, that is a genuine thing. The other thing is dedicated companies whose whole thing is to build these compounds with golf courses and defensive provisions and so on. And there's quite a few of those companies. Unsurprisingly, most of them tend to be American. And a lot of their customers tend to be American, but they have facilities all over the world, including, including Europe.

So Robert Vicino, who was the guy that I spent time with in South Dakota, he's got a number of these facilities. The place that I visited was on the sort of less luxurious end of the scale, the kind of lower middle class apocalyptic solution. But this was a situation where you buy a bunker that is basically an empty shell, and you fit it out to your own specifications. And the idea would be that it would develop into a community of like minded individuals. But there are all different kinds, depending on your level of wealth, and how much you want to spend and the various different levels you can go into.

Did you ever find anything that kind of blew your mind, or anything very bizarre, when you entered some of these bunkers?

The only bunkers that I physically entered were those empty shells in South Dakota. That's an extraordinary place. And I write quite a lot in the book about the landscape and almost surreal aspect of the place. It was built initially in the Second World War as a munitions storage facility. So they're all these hexagonal, I think 550 of them, across the ranch, which is about three quarters the size of Manhattan. It almost seems like an alien landscape. Incredibly beautiful, and also very strange, and a little bit uncanny.

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Why American individualism is perfectly suited to the doomsday prepper movement - KCRW