Basic Intro. to Smart Welding for DIYers: Guest Article

Welding is an important skill for farmers, ranchers, DIYers, and people who wish to live in remote areas far from skilled craftsmen for hire.

The previous article on welding contained several links to multiple welding tutorials. Today, we will present a guest article on welding first published on Survival Blog by "GM". This article is a good introduction to the DIY welder.

I am a retired journeyman pipefitter who is a Certified Welding Inspector. I teach at a nearby community college two days a week. Welding encompasses such a large body of knowledge that no one person can know all there is to know and certainly cannot condense everything into a short article, but let me start with some basics.

First of all, if you can’t tell the difference between steel, stainless steel, aluminum or cast iron you shouldn’t be welding. You have to know what process to use and which filler metal to use. Some things will hurt you or kill you if you try to weld on them. Never, under any circumstances, weld on a gas tank, or any container that you don’t know what was in it. Welding is “hot work” so you need to know if there is anything around that can catch on fire. Remove all flammables or cover them so they don’t cause a problem. Be sure what you’re welding on is adequately restrained or supported so as not to injure you or someone else.

The selection of the right filler metal is very important. If the wrong filler metal is selected the weld can have major defects and not be fit for service. Shielding gas selection is also very important. Preheat and postheat is important on cast iron or high strength alloy steel. Preheating is required whenever the metal to be welded is below 70 degrees F because the cold metal quenches the weld. When large welds are needed, it is better to make more small welds than a few large ones. Low carbon steel also called mild steel is easily welded by all common welding processes.

However, long-arcing of the weld will allow air to enter the shielding envelope, so proper welding technique is needed not to induce air which will cause porosity and other bad effects.

If you still have access to electric power, then wire or stick welding would be the preferred method of welding. This also holds true if you have a generator available. If not, then one is left with oxy-fuel welding. Wire welding is the preferred method of welding for any novice. It is much more intuitive for a novice to get the feel of it, but setting the machine can be intimidating. Let’s start with the machine. If you are going to invest in any machine, consider one of the new smaller more portable inverter welding machines that can do four major welding processes i.e.: wire with cover gas, flux cored gasless wire, stick and TIG. Older machines that are strictly constant current or constant voltage are larger, heavier and can basically only do one dedicated type of process with the exception of TIG. If you are going to spend your money on a new welding machine, why not buy the most versatile machine? I own a THERMAL ARC FABRICATOR 211i but others are available. The new machines can operate on either 110 or 220 volt with reduced capacity on 110. The difference would be the necessity of 3000 watts of power for 110 volt operations or 6000 watts for 220 volt operations. The new machines have very clear manuals and charts for welding operations.

But let’s say you have or have the opportunity to buy a used wire welder. You’ll want a wire welder that is rated at a minimum of 130 to 140 amps of power. Why, because it takes one amp of power to weld each 1/1000 of an inch of metal thickness and I wouldn’t recommend a machine that wasn’t capable of welding at least a 1/8 inch of metal thickness.

So now you have a wire welder, how do you go about setting it to weld? With a wire welder your heat is controlled by the wire speed, there is no setting for amperage. The rule of thumb is this: 100 inches per minute (IPM) of wire speed for each 1/16 of an inch in metal thickness plus add another 50 IPM at the end of each calculation, thus, 150 IPM for 1/16” metal thickness, 250 IPM for 1/8”, 350 IPM for 3/16” and 450 IPM for ¼” in metal thickness. It is not recommended to weld over ¼” metal with a wire welder, unless you do multiple pass welds.

Next, you set the voltage. If you are welding 1/8” metal, set your wire speed to approximately 250 IPM and start with your voltage to 17 or 18 volts. Turn your voltage up or down as you practice on a test piece to get the machine “dialed” in. You’ll have to practice setting the machine to get the desired result.

Wire welding can be done with either a push or a pull technique. Pushing the weld from right to left is easier for many right handed people. This method does not penetrate into the parent metal as deep as dragging or pulling the gun from left to right. Be sure you are holding the gun with the tip at a 45 degree angle to the surface that you are trying to weld. Electrode extension is very important. You shouldn’t be more than ½” away from the metal, where the wire comes out of the contact tube. You lose heat or amperage with a long arc.

Flux cored wire welding is cheaper than normal wire welding, though not as good. The normal gas for wire welding is 75% argon 25% CO2 but straight CO2 can be used, although it causes more splatter. We won’t go into inductance in this short article. Wire welding is not tolerant of contamination nor is it recommended to use outdoors. Any rust, grease, oil dust, paint or contamination of any kind will cause porosity. If you are going to wire weld, you have to start out with the metal clean at least an inch on each side of the weld. There is more expense in setting up a wire welder as compared to a stick welder but less practice is required to make an acceptable weld.

Stick welding is more portable than wire welding and more versatile. Stick welding is a very versatile process, because the same SMAW (Shielded Metal Arc Welding) machine can be used to make a wide variety of welds in different weld joint designs, metal types, metal thickness, and in all positions. Stick welding is more portable in that it requires less equipment and is easier to move, especially an engine driven generator-welder. Stick welding can be performed outside. Most major construction of new buildings, plants and piping is done outside with either stick or TIG welding. Wire welding and stick welding are negative ground positive electrode processes and TIG welding, flux cored wire welding being positive ground, negative electrode process.

Stick welding is harder to learn than wire welding and takes much more practice. If possible, take a course at your local college or high school. The difficulty comes in maintaining a constant length arc off of the parent metal, electrode angle, speed of welding progression, and manually weaving the electrode, in some cases, to make the bead profile. Low hydrogen (E7018) electrodes are the best for welding mild steel, but require a pretty steady hand to weld good beads. E6011 is the best electrode for a novice to learn with but requires more electrode manipulation to achieve a good bead i.e.: small circles, a C shaped or other pattern as recommended in any good text on welding. E6011 welds will be less ductile in service than E7018, the welds will break in time with hard usage, thus the bad name for “farm rods”. If you are using and old AC only farm welder, try to buy the newer AC-E7018 electrodes. There is no substitute for practice when it comes to stick welding, only with practice will you be able to lay down good serviceable weld beads that will hold your project together.

Now for oxy-fuel welding. During its prime, plates up to 1” thick were wire gas welded to produce ocean-going ships, to large industrial machinery. Today, due to improvements in other processes, gas or oxy-fuel welding is seldom used on metal thicker than 1/16 of an inch. Newer processes are faster, cleaner and cause less distortion from heat than oxy-fuel welding. However, when nothing else is available, welds can be made using this process. All that is required is a compressed gas bottle of oxygen and a cylinder of fuel, usually acetylene, the appropriate torch set, which will have regulators, a Siamese hose and a combination torch, for both welding and cutting. I will discuss important safety factors in both cutting and general welding at the end. Needless to say, once you have your “rig” properly set up (refer to your manual), turn on the gas just enough to let some gas escape, light the gas with a spark lighter near the end. With the torch lit, increase the flow of acetylene until the flame stops smoking. Slowly turn on the oxygen and adjust the torch to a neutral flame. Too much fuel and you won’t get a decent inner cone of flame, too much oxygen and the inner flame turns whitish blue. In either case, too much of one or the other increases the size of the flame. The neutral flame will produce the most concentrated heat at the end of the inner cone of flame. The maximum gas flow rate for the size of tip will give the flame enough flow so that when adjusted to the neutral setting it does not settle back on the tip. This will keep the tip cooler so that it does not backfire.

Factors affecting torch welding: torch tip size, torch angle, welding rod size and torch manipulation.

Torch tip size is used to control the weld bead width, depth of penetration into the parent metal, and speed. Tip sizes should be changed to suit the thickness and overall size of the metal being welded. Lowering the gas flow rate on a larger tip to weld thinner metal will just make it overheat and backfire. You should have a tip size chart with your torch outfit and each manufacturer has a different size which is proprietary to that manufacturer. Consult your chart and pick the tip needed to cut or weld that thickness of metal.

Torch angle – the ideal angle for torch welding is at 45 degrees to the metal. At the end of the welding tip it curves downward, if this end of the torch is pointed straight down into the parent metal this is 90 degrees, a compromise angle of half way between this and parallel with the surface of the metal is best. Hold the inner cone between 1/8” and ¼” off the surface of the parent metal.

Welding rod size and torch manipulation can be used to control the weld bead characteristics. A larger filler rod can be used to cool the molten weld pool, increase weld buildup above the parent metal and reduce penetration. The torch can be manipulated so the direct heat from the inner flame is flashes off the molten weld pool for just a moment to let it cool, keeping the secondary flame over the pool. The weld pool must be protected by the secondary flame (the larger outer flame) to prevent the air from contaminating the weld pool. If this flame is suddenly moved away the pool will throw off a large number of sparks. This is a real problem when the weld is stopped. The torch should be raised or tilted at the end, keeping the outer flame over the molten weld pool until it solidifies. Often the number of sparks increases just before a burn through when the molten metal drops through the backside of the plate.

Novices should practice pushing a molten pool on a clean piece of plate before attempting to add filler metal. Start at one end, hold the torch tip at a 45 degree angle in the direction you intend to weld. Establish a molten weld pool at the end of the inner cone of the torch. When the metal starts to melt, move the torch in a circular pattern down the sheet toward the other end. Try to get a uniform bead all the way along the weld. You may have to speed up or slow down to keep an even bead. Practice this until you can keep the width of the molten weld pool uniform and the direction of travel in a straight line. You should try this process next adding filler rod. Always bend one end of your filler rod, usually in a U-shape to know which end is hot. The straight end is dipped in the molten weld pool, as filler rod, is added to the weld pool, the flame can be moved back so as not to melt and drip the rod into the pool. The rod should be melted by the leading edge of the pool only. Once you can make good welds in the flat position then it is time to try other positions and other styles of joints. Try butt joint, T joints, lap joints in the flat position. Try welding these joints vertical up or overhead. Get a good book on welding and see what you can do. Now, for the most important part of welding: SAFETY. All welding involves heat and the possibility of burns can never be over emphasized. Your safety is your own personal responsibility and you must address it yourself. Many burns are caused by contact with hot metal or slag. I have seen students try to reach out and grab something they just welded and you can get burned even though you are wearing welding gloves. Be careful of hot weldments and sparks and splatter from your own welds and others. Ultraviolet light from welding will cause flash burn to the eyes. Wear shade 5 lenses for cutting and oxy-fuel welding. Wear shade 10 or greater in your welding hood for stick welding. Always wear safety glasses when doing any work and ear protection when necessary. Actual welding should be well ventilated. Fume sources that are bad for your health include: paint, oil, grease, coatings on metals such a zinc and cadmium. Older machinery and farm equipment may still have lead based paint. No welding or cutting on refrigeration or air conditioner piping. Wear the appropriate welder clothing: long sleeve shirts, long pants, leather shoes, a welders cap or beanie to protect your head. Special welding jackets of leather or flame proof canvas and leather welding gloves should be worn. Oxygen and acetylene cylinders should be chained securely in separate areas at least 20 ft. apart unless they are in a bottle cart and chained to it. Never lift a bottle by the cap or safety valve. When in use, oxygen bottles and cover gas bottles should be opened all the way to the back seat position after the regulators are properly screwed on. Open the valve on a full cylinder just briefly to blow out any dust, then attach the regulator. Acetylene bottles that have been laid on their side should be stored upright for at least 4 hours before being used. After attaching the regulator open the acetylene bottle enough just to get full pressure on the gauges.

Again, welding is considered to be “hot work” so you are responsible for fires. Keep a fire extinguisher handy. A 5 gallon bucket of water wouldn’t hurt either. Welding can cause electrical shock, so keep your leads and other equipment in good shape. Use the right type of regulator for the process you are setting up. Acetylene and fuel gases use left hand connections with a notched nut. Back off the adjusting screw of all regulators after use so as not to distort the diaphragm.

I’m sure I haven’t covered everything and maybe forgotten a few things that should have been included, but if at all possible, take a welding course. You’ll have a skill that will stand you in good stead and be very valuable, especially in a TEOTWAWKI situation. _GM at SurvivalBlog

Quite a good introduction to some basics of welding, for such a short and easily readable article. Consult experienced practitioners when getting started or when progressing to a new technique or equipment, to make sure you are not overlooking serious safety problems.

At least one person in a rural or practical suburban family should be able to weld basic iron and steel. More complex and difficult metals will require more training and practise.

Levitin: 10,000 Hours to Mastery

Academy/Beck: One of the many things I appreciated in the first book was your discussion of the "10,000-hour" rule. Can you please review that?

Levitin: Yes, of course. It's not a rule so much as it is an empirical finding. But in the final analysis, it comes down to that in order to be a world-class expert in anything, be it audiology, drama, music, art, gymnastics, whatever, one needs to have a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that if you put in 10,000 hours that you will become an expert, but there aren't any cases where someone has achieved world-class mastery without it! So the time spent at the activity is indeed the most important and influential factor. We find this with music all the time. Some people may have a biological or genetic head-start in music. In fact, we know that people, and children in particular, may all start at different levels when they get interested in music, but without 10,000 hours of practice, they probably won't achieve world-class status, regardless of their innate ability. So on a pragmatic level, it takes about three hours a day over 10 years to acquire 10,000 hours. Of course, this is consistent with what we know about how brains learn new tasks and skills. In other words, learning requires the assimilation and consolidation of knowledge within neural tissue. As the experience is repeated and enriched through practice and skill development, the stronger the memory and learning of that experience becomes. _Daniel Levitin Interview

Fluency.org (PDF)
Daniel Levitin's "10,000 Hour Rule" is reminiscent of K. Anders Ericsson (PDF)'s maxim that 10 years of smart practise is required for world class mastery of a subject, or complex skill, by a top prodigy -- and between 15 and 25 years are required for those who are "mere elites."

Always keep in mind that practise alone is not enough -- one needs to indulge in "smart practise."

Practice is, of course, the crucial element to be a great performer. But smart practice will take you to the same place faster. It is important to distinguish practice from playing though. Playing in orchestra, chamber music and any other kind of rehearsal is not considered practice. You still perfect things as an ensemble but your technique as an individual musician is not being worked at is best potential.

Music performance is a preparation of many hours in the practice room for that one day, for the moment where everything comes alive through you and your talents- that is why having a plan beforehand is essential. You can repeat things for 8 hours and not come up with the greatest results- it happens especially when you are under pressure.

...You can practice as much as 4-5 hours a day but know that resting is extremely necessary and that there are other ways to grow as a musician and learn your music like: listening to a recording with the score in hand, make an analysis of the piece, find out some of the hit points or key places where music changes suddenly, etc. You can also read about the composer and the time the piece was created. All of the above will be reflected in you music making. _Tips for Classical Musicians

The musician's experience above provides a crucial lesson: Time is required to achieve mastery. You cannot fruitfully compress 15 years of training into 5 years. You must put in the time, but you must also pace yourself so as to allow your brain to create the proper circuitry.

This brings us to an important point: When should a child begin training toward mastery in music, chess, athletics, foreign language, or other complex skills?

The earlier a child starts on the road to mastery, the sooner he can arrive at his destiny. But it isn't quite that simple.

If you give the child a sufficiently stimulus-rich early environment, and pay close enough attention to the child, he or she is likely to tell you when they are ready for a trial beginning. Over a period of time, it should become clear whether the child is ready to embark on the voyage to mastery for this particular skill -- or whether this area of training is a "false start" or "red herring" which may keep the child from finding a path to mastery better suited for him or her.

Remember the concept of the "critical developmental window?" The concept of the critical period is important, but different children may pass through a particular critical period at different times.

Daniel Levitin looked at the concept of "absolute pitch," or perfect pitch -- an auditory sense important to composers and elite musicians. He found that different persons who possessed perfect pitch began formal musical training at different ages.

Levitin (PDF)

It is not possible for every young music student to acquire AP sense. But apparently most of those who do acquire that skill, begin training at a relatively young age.

In reality, most of our children will not grow to be world class golfers, chess masters, or musical prodigies. Most of them will not win Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals in advanced mathematics. In the same way, most children will not make world changing discoveries, nor become mega-billionaire tycoons.

But we do want our children to grow up to be competent across a range of skills, and to be masters of themselves, experiencing a deep sense of confidence, fulfillment, and satisfaction in the living of their lives. We want them to be able to support themselves financially, to raise a family if they wish, and to be able to pass along lessons of competence and mastery to their progeny and those whom they mentor.

And we want them to be dangerous to the status quo of global incompetence and decay which seems to slip in unannounced at any opportunity. Children are not born competent in the skills and complexities of adult human life.

It takes many years and thousands of hours of smart practise to achieve that.

More: An interesting blog riff on the 10,000 hour to mastery concept (including comments)

The Road to Mastery

We talk a lot about competence in the dangerous child, and certainly competence is crucial when dealing with dangerous (and valuable) skills. But on the road to mastery, competence occurs somewhere near the half-way point.

In 1980, Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus described A FIVE-STAGE MODEL OF THE MENTAL ACTIVITIES INVOLVED IN DIRECTED SKILL ACQUISITION (PDF). In the document, they describe 5 steps, or stages, in the growth from beginner to master:

1. Novice
2. Competent
3. Proficient
4. Expert
5. Master

Since then, the Dreyfus and Dreyfus model has been altered so that the 5 stages are now:

Novice -- Advanced Beginner -- Competent -- Proficient -- Expert

When reduced to just 3 stages common to both ancient and modern guilds, we would describe the model as Apprentice -- Journeyman -- Master.

Slideshare presentation of the Dreyfus & Dreyfus model

The road to mastery is a long one, which modern western educational systems are reluctant to follow. The resistance to mastery learning among modern educators is extremely strong, perhaps due to the time and effort required of both teacher and learner.

Famed psychologist of expert learning, K. Anders Ericsson, says that world class mastery requires at least 10 years of directed practise by the most gifted, and more like 15 to 25 years of hard directed practise by the merely elite (PDF).

In Ericsson's view, it is the duration and quality of practise which determines who will master the skill, rather than innate talent or IQ. Perhaps it is best to adopt that view, and teach students to enjoy the hard effort required to achieve mastery, even if it is not entirely correct.

After all, even among the elite, there are those who are clearly superior, who took much less time and practise to achieve higher levels of mastery than the masses of those who are considered "expert" or "master." But again, perhaps it is best to focus on teaching students to enjoy mastering challenges, and solving difficult problem after difficult problem. Students who incorporate persistence and grit along with expertise, are more likely to succeed.

But each child is different, with different propensities and likelihood of achieving mastery, for a wide range of skills and practises. Some children are more likely to be happy as specialists, while others are more naturally generalists. Not only must we provide the child with a likely path to mastery in his general field of choice, we must also learn to gauge his optimal balance of depth vs breadth.

For students who wish a shallower level of mastery for a large number of different fields, the mastery of "heuristics" in each field is likely to be very important.

For those who wish to master a smaller number of fields, the utilisation of customised "mastery learning" should take them to a deeper level, as appropriate.

And for those who are compelled to take the field or profession beyond the level of its current masters -- to achieve creative innovation and genius level work -- a working through the entire 5 stage Dreyfus and Dreyfus model is required, plus just a little extra.

When a master is doing genius level revolutionary innovation, he is working at a hypothetical "level 6" or higher. He is devoting his entire being to the problem, over an extended period of time. This is something that is not easily taught -- if it can be taught at all.

Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, illustrates some of the problems in making decisions and judgments at different stages from novice to expert.

Typically we think of the early stages of mastery as involving more conscious and deliberative thinking, while the more expert stages involve more automatic and intuitive types of thinking.

But if experts and masters cannot "keep their hand in" with the earlier skills of deliberative and conscious thinking and fact-checking, they may be at a loss when entirely new problems arise which do not succumb to their intuitions and learned automaticities.

Early stage learning -- before the ages of 12 or 16 -- will provide the child with a wide range of competencies and mid-level skills which fall far below mastery. But if sometime between the ages of 5, and 12 to 16, the child experiences a special affinity to and talent for one or more skills, he should be encouraged along a road that might lead to mastery of the special skill or skills. The more high quality directed development time the child can put in for a particular skill, the closer to world class mastery he can come.

Early stage learning focuses upon heuristics and rules of thumb. These are practical and easy to remember scaffolds of learning, for building more detailed structures of learning later.

Many people go through their entire lives without ever going beyond the early heuristic level of learning for any given field. And some do not even get that far.

For those who wish to raise truly dangerous children, it is important that you learn to provide the important heuristics which will keep the child safe even in a dangerous environment. And should the child show a marked preference for any particular dangerous environments, the child should not only be given the crucial heuristics to keep him safe, but should also be helped further along the road to mastery so that he can shape both himself, and the environment itself to his own advantage.

Finally, a caveat: IQ and innate ability do play an important part in the road to mastery along with innate inclinations -- despite what well-meaning experts such as KA Ericsson may claim publicly. Pay close attention to cues which may indicate an especially fulfilling direction of development for a particular child.

Children can become infatuated with a particular field without understanding the incredible amount of difficult work that is necessary for mastery of it. It is important that children be given a chance to prove themselves, but in a realistic -- not pampered or sheltered -- way. Force them to see what the thing really is, and what it will take to achieve it. Be brutally honest here, or you may do far more harm than you realise.

The child does not have time for a large number of abortive attempts at mastery, if it takes between 15 and 25 years for him to achieve top level mastery. And most parents don't have the time, patience, or the money to support multiple failed attempts.

Yes, you want the child to aim high. But: Do not pamper. Do not shelter. Do not encourage fantasy dreams which are without realistic possibility. Make the child prove himself each step of the way, but be sure to provide the opportunity for him to do so.

More: We have pointed out in previous articles that dangerous children should be able to support themselves economically -- in multiple ways -- by the time he or she is 18. This is due to the multiple skills and competencies which the child will have learned on the path to becoming dangerous.

This is a very good thing for parents, who will no doubt have their own uses for their hard-earned wages. A widely-competent dangerous child should be able to finance his own long experimentation into mastery over the decades of early to middle adulthood.

Dangerous children typically remain dangerous over entire lifetimes. They are far less likely to sink deeply into time-killing entertainments and mind-wasting amusements and intoxicants. Parents give dangerous children their start, but it is the children themselves who must find their own way.

Tales of a Self-Directed Childhood and Adolescence

Self-directed individuals often learn to follow their own lead at a very early age. With such a head start, many of them become quite successful, and sometimes drop out of traditional educational programs so as to get on with their lives.

The excerpt below comes from "Principles" by Ray Dalio (via Forward Base B), the founder of a $120 billion hedge fund:

In order to be motivated, I needed to work for what I wanted, not for what other people wanted me todo. And in order to be successful, I needed to figure out for myself how to get what I wanted, not remember the facts I was being told to remember.

One thing I wanted was spending money. So I had a newspaper route, I mowed lawns, I shoveled thesnow off driveways, I washed dishes in a restaurant, and, starting when I was 12 years old, I caddied.

It was the 1960s. At the time the stock market was booming and everyone was talking about it, especially the people I caddied for. So I started to invest. The first stock I bought was a company called Northeast Airlines, and the only reason I bought it was that it was the only company I had heard of that was tradingfor less than $5 per share, so I could buy more shares, which I figured was a good thing. It went up a lot.It was about to go broke but another company acquired it, so it tripled. I made money because I waslucky, though I didn’t see it that way then. I figured that this game was easy. After all, with thousands ofcompanies listed in the newspaper, how difficult could it be to find at least one that would go up? Bycomparison to my other jobs, this way of making money seemed much more fun, a lot easier, and muchmore lucrative. Of course, it didn’t take me long to lose money in the markets and learn about how difficultit is to be right and the costs of being wrong.

So what I really wanted to do now was beat the market. I just had to figure out how to do it.

The pursuit of this goal taught me:

1) It isn't easy for me to be confident that my opinions are right. In the markets, you can do ahuge amount of work and still be wrong.

2) Bad opinions can be very costly. Most people come up with opinions and there’s no cost tothem. Not so in the market. This is why I have learned to be cautious. No matter how hard I work,I really can’t be sure.

3) The consensus is often wrong, so I have to be an independent thinker. To make any money,you have to be right when they’re wrong.So …...

1) I worked for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do. For that reason, I never feltthat I had to do anything. All the work I ever did was just what I needed to do to get what Iwanted. Since I always had the prerogative to not strive for what I wanted, I never felt forced to doanything....

2) I came up with the best independent opinions I could muster to get what I wanted. Forexample, when I wanted to make money in the markets, I knew that I had to learn aboutcompanies to assess the attractiveness of their stocks. At the time, Fortune magazine had a littletear-out coupon that you could mail in to get the annual reports of any companies on the Fortune500, for free. So I ordered all the annual reports and worked my way through the most interestingones and formed opinions5...

3) I stress-tested my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them soI could find out where I was wrong.about which companies were exciting. 6 ...

4) I remained wary about being overconfident, and I figured out how to effectively deal withmy not knowing. I dealt with my not knowing by either continuing to gather information until Ireached the point that I could be confident or by eliminating my exposure to the risks of notknowing.

I never cared much about others’ conclusions—only forthe reasoning that led to these conclusions. That reasoning had to make sense to me. Throughthis process, I improved my chances of being right, and I learned a lot from a lot of great people. 7 ...

5) I wrestled with my realities, reflected on the consequences of my decisions, and learned and improved from this process.

By doing these things, I learned how important and how liberating it is to think for myself. _Principles by Ray Dalio (PDF)

In other words, Ray Dalio became self aware and self-directed at an earlier age than is generally the case for modern youngsters. But his story is not that unusual in terms of others who began to blaze their own trails at an early age.

It is true that in the United States, before the public school system became such a dominant part of the lives of children and adolescents, large numbers of young people learned to make their own way -- via self-study, apprenticeship, trial and error, rites of passage, sheer willpower and persistence, and blind luck. But Ray Dalio and many other successful people, acquired self-direction despite society's expectation that children should be put in their place by the educational and societal powers that be.

That is the challenge for concerned parents and significant others in the lives of children, who would like to see these children grow to be self-directed, independent, and very dangerous to the status quo of psychological neoteny and lifelong incompetence. What sort of environment should these concerned guardians and mentors create for children, in order to set them on the path to competent independence?

More on this later.

Practical Competencies: Power Welding

Caution: Be sure to learn dangerous skills from qualified teachers and practitioners, and to use top quality equipment, eye protection, shielding, and protective clothing.

Welding metals together to produce a strong joint, is an extremely useful skill for the dangerous child to master. Ideally, the dangerous child will learn to weld with both a torch and with electrically powered welders between the ages of 12 and 16, depending upon the rate of maturation and the judgment of parents and teachers. Here we will take a quick look at some aspects of electric welders.

Popular Mechanics

Wire-feed welders are great, but there's a lot to be said for stick welders, which use a rod-shaped electrode held in a clamp. Here's how it works: A ground lead runs from the welding machine to the workpiece. When you touch the stick electrode to the metal, you make a welding circuit and create a high-­temperature arc that melts the rod. As the electrode melts, the flux coating on it is gasified, shielding the molten metal from the air. When the metals cool, they are fused together. A major advantage of stick welding is that you can easily switch among various electrodes. For example, some achieve high-strength joints; others repair cracked cast iron or fill in pitted areas. Also, there are stick electrodes designed to deal with rust or dirt, a good thing when you're repairing a machine outdoors where achieving a clean weld surface is impossible.

The downside to stick welders is that they are more difficult to learn to use, especially if you're teaching yourself.

Wire-feed welders are more mechanically complex, but they're simpler to operate. These machines drive a thin wire electrode off a motorized spool and through a cable to a welding gun.

And wire-feed welders can join metal ranging from automotive sheet steel all the way up to ½-inch-thick plate. _PopularMechanics

Tests of best wire-feed welders

Arc welding tutorials

Making your own spot welder using a microwave oven transformer. Such projects are for those who have already mastered high voltage transformer safety.

One of the things that makes dangerous children so dangerous, is that they learn to master skills which would be deadly to the untrained and unskilled. The safe mastery of several dangerous skills tends to set persons apart from the herd.

Most modern parents tend to treat children like precious trophies or jewels -- to be sheltered from all possible danger or practical use. And to top it off, they want to instill these helpless incompetents with an abundance of self-esteem!

Do your children a favour, and make them truly dangerous, competent, and deservedly confident. But don't tell anyone you don't trust. These days, raising strong, competent, independent and truly dangerous children is often enough to get you locked up, depending upon where you live and who runs your local social services department.

Musical Prodigies in Diapers? Science and Early Music Training

A recent study published in Developmental Science suggests that early training in active "participitory" musical experience boosts a six month old's communications and social skills.

We found that random assignment to 6 months of active participatory musical experience beginning at 6 months of age accelerates acquisition of culture-specific knowledge of Western tonality in comparison to a similar amount of passive exposure to music. Furthermore, infants assigned to the active musical experience showed superior development of prelinguistic communicative gestures and social behaviour compared to infants assigned to the passive musical experience. These results indicate that (1) infants can engage in meaningful musical training when appropriate pedagogical approaches are used, (2) active musical participation in infancy enhances culture-specific musical acquisition, and (3) active musical participation in infancy impacts social and communication development. _Developmental Science (abstract)

Six months has always been considered too early to begin musical training for infants. But if, in fact, the infant brain is particularly "plastic" to musical training at, or near, the age of six months, it may someday be seen as a sign of parental neglect to deprive infants of active participatory musical training!

More:

The researchers describe a six-month experiment featuring 34 infants and their parents. The babies’ average age at the time of the first session was six and one-half months; the last week of classes occurred around their first birthday. Twenty of the infants and their parents participated in weekly, hour-long interactive music classes, which utilized the well-known Suzuki method.

“Two teachers worked with the parents and infants to build a repertoire of lullabies, action songs and nursery rhymes,” the researchers write. “Parents were encouraged to use the curriculum CD at home and to repeat the songs and rhymes daily.”

The other 14 infants and their parents enrolled in passive music classes, where they listened to “a rotating series of recordings from the popular Baby Einstein series” while playing together with balls, blocks or books. After six months, those who took part in the active music lessons demonstrated a preference for tonal over atonal music—a pattern not found in the passive group. In addition, the researchers found “significantly larger and/or earlier responses” to piano tones in the brains of the babies who took active lessons.

But the benefits of this training went far beyond early indications of music appreciation.

“After participation in active music classes, infants showed much lower levels of distress when confronted with novel stimuli than after participation in passive music classes,” the researchers report. All the babies smiled and laughed less as they aged during the experiment, but the fall-off was greater among the passive listeners.

Communication skills were also positively affected. “Use of gestures increased greatly between six and 12 months of age,” the researchers note, “but increased more so for those in the active compared to the passive music classes.”

Trainor and her colleagues do not view these developments as isolated. “Positive social interactions between infants and parents likely lead to better communication and earlier acquisition of communicative gestures, which in turn lead to more positive social interactions,” they write. _PSMag

It is important to emphasise that parental participation was key to the positive social and communication skills results obtained from the "active participatory" training group. Parent-child bonding was almost certainly enhanced as well.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of parental involvement in critical period training of children. If parents are too busy to help children take optimal advantage of developmental windows, it is unlikely that anyone else will take the necessary amount of care in such training opportunities.

If parents are there every step of the child's critical development and skills acquisition, the bonding of common experience and the building of trust as the child gains confidence and competence, will pay lifetime dividends for both parent and child.

Dangerous Child Basic Skills: Knots

Dangerous children should be introduced to boating, climbing, fishing, and camping no later than the age of 10. But before a child can enjoy those activities, he will need to be able to tie basic knots. Basic search and rescue knots are pictured below, as a good overview of useful knots. Different activities may require other knot skills.

Animated Knots by Grog

The website, Animated Knots by Grog, provides several pages of useful knots by activity, along with animated illustrations of how to tie each knot.

The US Search and Rescue Task Force also has a useful webpage on ropes and knots. This page is useful as a quick reference or basic review, once one has already learned the knot.
This video, "Six Knots You Need to Know," is interesting, but is perhaps most useful as a quick way to get to the knot tying videos on YouTube.

All dangerous children should learn basic first aid and basic rescue techniques by the age of 10. Knot tying is a basic part of rescue skills. The first knot that children tend to learn to tie is the bow knot when tying a shoe. But the bow knot is actually a very poor knot for tying the shoe, since it comes untied so easily by accident, sometimes leading to accidents. A better way of tying one's shoe is by one of the variations of the Ian knot. The sooner the child learns such superior knots, the better off he will be in even the most ordinary situations.

This might be a good time to clarify simple terminology. Some readers assume that a "dangerous child" will be a violent child, and that teaching a child to be dangerous is the same as teaching the child to be violent. But that would be a basic misapprehension of the intent here.

The "Al Fin Dangerous Child (AFDC)" is dangerous mainly to those who want to confine and control him, to abridge his rights in some way that is convenient to them, but unjust to the child. To everyone else, the AFDC is a lifesaver and a fount of useful and creative ideas.

The AFDC is nothing if not skillfully versatile, and generally competent all around. But different skills need to be taught at different stages in development. Many skill require the prior mastery of other skills, to be mastered in their turn. And since each child is different in terms of strengths and interests, teaching a child to be maximally dangerous, in the Al Fin sense, requires some delicate loom work and knot tying in itself. Stay tuned.

Peter Thiel's Avalanche Effect on College Education

Peter Thiel is a successful entrepreneur, visionary, and venture capitalist. One of his recent investments involves sponsoring youth under the age of 20 years old, in the starting of their own enterprises. The young people must forego a college education during the time that they are engaged in their intensive entrepreneurial training and startup experience.

Interestingly, one of Thiel's young hopefuls -- 19 year old Dale J. Stephens -- has embarked on an entrepreneurial campaign in opposition of the phenomenon of excessive college education. The excerpt below is taken from Stephens' article in CNN: College is a waste of time:

I have been awarded a golden ticket to the heart of Silicon Valley: the Thiel Fellowship. The catch? For two years, I cannot be enrolled as a full-time student at an academic institution. For me, that's not an issue; I believe higher education is broken.

I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.

...College is expensive. The College Board Policy Center found that the cost of public university tuition is about 3.6 times higher today than it was 30 years ago, adjusted for inflation. In the book "Academically Adrift," sociology professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa say that 36% of college graduates showed no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning or writing after four years of college. Student loan debt in the United States, unforgivable in the case of bankruptcy, outpaced credit card debt in 2010 and will top $1 trillion in 2011.

... Learning by doing -- in life, not classrooms -- is the best way to turn constant iteration into true innovation. We can be productive members of society without submitting to academic or corporate institutions.

... We who take our education outside and beyond the classroom understand how actions build a better world. We will change the world regardless of the letters after our names. _College is a waste of time

Brave words, which will need to be backed up by braver actions. Stephens will receive $100,000 and access to expert advice and assistance in reaching his entrepreneurial goals. Stephens has already been signed by Penguin Press to write his first book, "Hacking Your Education."

What is most interesting about this phenomenon is that Thiel's initial investment is spurring a downstream expansion in interest in entrepreneurial alternatives to mainstream college education. And this downstream expansion is likely to spawn further downstream expansion, and so on etc. . . .

Wise people understand that school is not the education. Life is the education. The efforts of modern society to place emphasis on the educational effect of schools at the expense of the educational effect of life, has led to a society of Peter Pans and Cinderellas, perpetual incompetent adolescents of the psychologically neotenate variety.

Peter Thiel aims to change that emphasis back, in an effort to help save at least a few youth from wasting their time and lives. Peter Thiel aims to misbehave. And he is hoping that the attitude will be catching.

Unschooling: "Growing Without School" -- Beyond Childhood Competence

Almost every parent wishes their children to become skilled, competent, confident, accomplished adults. But almost no parents in the modern world understand how to help their children to achieve such a happy result. Instead, parents almost inevitably turn their children over to the governmental school system, with increasingly dismal results.

John Holt wrote several books on the state of modern education and its alternatives -- including "Unschooling" and "Growing Without Schools". Besides his books, he founded and published "Growing Without Schools" magazine. Growing Without Schools has provided free access to 24 years of the magazine's issues.

Holt was particularly interested in how to endow children with the competence to face the challenge of an ever-changing world. He understood that children developed this competence themselves, when given the opportunity. Unfortunately, modern government school systems represent the antithesis of the ideas that Hold discovered and wrote about.

The video above was presented at a homeschool conference by parental practitioners of "unschooling," with their own children.

Al Fin educational theorists are grateful to John Holt for his contributions to the field of childhood competence. But if children are to help build a better world -- and not to simply keep the current world from collapsing under its own weight -- they must go beyond mere competence.

Our children must be allowed to learn to become not merely competent -- but to become truly dangerous. Dangerous to whom or what? More about that in future entries.

The Importance of a Citizenry Possessing Practical Skills

For decades, the emphasis in US secondary education has been to prepare every student for college. As a result, dropout rates have soared, too many incapable HS graduates are attending college (and dropping out with huge debts), and vocational and technical skills have languished and US industry has found it difficult to field a skilled workforce.

The National Association of Manufacturers found that 81 percent of the manufacturing companies surveyed reported that they were facing a moderate to severe shortage of qualified workers; 53 percent of manufacturers reported that at least 10 percent of their total positions where unfilled simply because they were unable to find people with the skills to do the jobs. Part of the story was the general tightness in the labor market around 2005. Fully 39 percent of the companies were having trouble hiring enough unskilled workers. But the real problem was finding skilled tradesmen—electricians, glaziers, cement masons, sheet-metal workers, and the like. Of the manufacturers surveyed, 90 percent reported that they could not find enough skilled workers to fill their needs.

The trend is seen throughout the skilled trades. Case in point: welding. A study by the American Welding Society and the Edison Welding Institute reports that in 2000, there were 594,000 welders working in America. By 2005, that number had dropped to 576,000. By 2009, according to the Department of Labor, the number was 358,000. The average age of a welder today is in the mid-50s. In 2006, 50,000 welders retired, but fewer than 25,000 new welders entered the field. Those trends have continued diverging, resulting in a current shortage of almost 200,000 welders.

A big part of the problem—as the case of welders shows—is simple demographics. Baby Boomers are heading into retirement. By 2020, the number of people over 55 will increase by 73 percent, while the number of younger workers will increase by only 25 percent. This squeeze will leave America with a shortfall of 10 million skilled workers by 2012. And the squeeze only gets tighter. Some 70 million Baby Boomers will exit the labor force over the next 18 years, but only 40 million workers will enter it.

Another aspect of the problem is educational. Vocational education, once a staple of American secondary schools, seems to have undergone a general decline for decades. Take the state of California, for example. Prior to 1980, nearly every public high school in the state offered a comprehensive industrial arts program. By the late 1990s, according to the California Industrial and Technology Education Association, 75 percent of these programs were gone. What happened? As guidance counselors and administrators focused relentlessly on college admissions, the industrial arts became an afterthought. When shop class teachers retired, they were never replaced. Once the teachers were gone, the specialized classrooms were converted to weight training rooms, study halls, or computer labs. _Much more at Philanthropy

Intel's Andy Grove has some very strong feelings about this topic as well, and aims to do something about it:

Can you tell me about your efforts to make vocational or school-to-career education more available and more attractive?
MR. GROVE: We fund scholarships for students at community colleges and in other vocational programs. The value of the scholarships ranges from $500 to $5,000 per year, depending on the type of training and needs of the student. The people for whom we provide support are not those who intend to transfer to four-year universities. Rather, we are funding scholarships for those students who intend to enter a career immediately upon completion of their studies. Our program has changed over time but we have been giving these kinds of scholarships for more than a decade, and have typically given more than 100 scholarships per year. _Andy Grove Interview

Not as much as is needed, but it helps.

This profile of a 2 year vocational boarding school in Pennsylvania gives an idea of how dedicated some remarkable men are to the concept of American vocational training.

A society must have an ample complement of persons with practical and technical skills, or it will slowly collapse from neglect of its infrastructure. This is what has happened to some extent, in many otherwise affluent (or formerly affluent) parts of the US. Shortsighted planners, educators, politicians, and bureaucrats have shortchanged practical training in exchange for more politically correct funding policies which pleased more feminised political power groups.

While vocational programs are primarily oriented toward men -- who are the ones primarily interested in vocational skills -- the political power structure has become far more oriented toward the needs of women, at the expense of men. And so society as a whole tends to suffer from the neglect of a key part of its essential human infrastructure. And the repercussions reverberate throughout society.

More on this topic later.

Wilderness Videos of Two of the Last Rough Men

Dick Proenneke http://www.talkingcircletv.com/flash/videos/DickProenecke.swf (via Evenfall Woodworks)

Dick Proenneke learned many practical skills during his childhood in Idaho, his time in the Navy, his schooling as a diesel mechanic, his work on a sheep ranch in Oregon, and his life as a skilled mechanic and salmon fisherman in Kodiak and King Salmon, Alaska. He put those practical skills to good use in the 30 years he lived alone in the Twin Lakes, Alaska, wilderness.

Dick Proenneke Alone in the Wilderness


Dick Proenneke Alone in the Wilderness Part II


Dick Proenneke The Frozen North


This video documents a week in the life of Heimo and Edna Korth. Heimo Korth is "The Final Frontiersman." He and his wife Edna are the last legal full time residents of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They move between three cabins every year, so as not to deplete the game as they trap and hunt for a living. (more here)

It is interesting to draw parallels between the lives of Richard Proenneke and Heimo Korth. Both moved far away from civilisation, deep into the Alaskan Wilderness. Both men thrived in the wild, despite the many hardships and challenges.

While Proenneke chose the solitary life, and Korth chose to raise a family in the far North, both men chose to challenge themselves to the utmost.

Lori Gottlieb and the Collapse of the American Empire

The message we send kids with all the choices we give them is that they are entitled to a perfect life—that, as Dan Kindlon, the psychologist from Harvard, puts it, “if they ever feel a twinge of non-euphoria, there should be another option.” Mogel puts it even more bluntly: what parents are creating with all this choice are anxious and entitled kids whom she describes as “handicapped royalty.” _Lori Gottlieb

Pity meek and mild Lori Gottlieb, an intern in family counseling who has made some interesting observations in the course of her work. Gottlieb discussed her observations in a recent piece in the Atlantic. The piece has raised a firestorm of online debate, snark, and condemnation, almost entirely undeserved. The fault in Gottlieb's piece lies not in what she says, but in what she leaves out -- what these disturbing findings imply for the future of the American empire.

...Here I was, seeing the flesh-and-blood results of the kind of parenting that my peers and I were trying to practice with our own kids, precisely so that they wouldn’t end up on a therapist’s couch one day. We were running ourselves ragged in a herculean effort to do right by our kids—yet what seemed like grown-up versions of them were sitting in our offices, saying they felt empty, confused, and anxious. Back in graduate school, the clinical focus had always been on how the lack of parental attunement affects the child. It never occurred to any of us to ask, what if the parents are too attuned? What happens to those kids?

...Dan Kindlon, a child psychologist and lecturer at Harvard, warns against what he calls our “discomfort with discomfort” in his book Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age. If kids can’t experience painful feelings, Kindlon told me when I called him not long ago, they won’t develop “psychological immunity.”

“It’s like the way our body’s immune system develops,” he explained. “You have to be exposed to pathogens, or your body won’t know how to respond to an attack. Kids also need exposure to discomfort, failure, and struggle...

...Wendy Mogel is a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles who, after the publication of her book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee a decade ago, became an adviser to schools all over the country. When I talked to her this spring, she said that over the past few years, college deans have reported receiving growing numbers of incoming freshmen they’ve dubbed “teacups” because they’re so fragile that they break down anytime things don’t go their way. “Well-intentioned parents have been metabolizing their anxiety for them their entire childhoods,” Mogel said of these kids, “so they don’t know how to deal with it when they grow up.”

...A few months ago, I called up Jean Twenge, a co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic and professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who has written extensively about narcissism and self-esteem. She told me she wasn’t surprised that some of my patients reported having very happy childhoods but felt dissatisfied and lost as adults. When ego-boosting parents exclaim “Great job!” not just the first time a young child puts on his shoes but every single morning he does this, the child learns to feel that everything he does is special. Likewise, if the kid participates in activities where he gets stickers for “good tries,” he never gets negative feedback on his performance.

...This same teacher—who asked not to be identified, for fear of losing her job—says she sees many parents who think they’re setting limits, when actually, they’re just being wishy-washy. “A kid will say, ‘Can we get ice cream on the way home?’ And the parent will say, ‘No, it’s not our day. Ice-cream day is Friday.’ Then the child will push and negotiate, and the parent, who probably thinks negotiating is ‘honoring her child’s opinion,’ will say, ‘Fine, we’ll get ice cream today, but don’t ask me tomorrow, because the answer is no!’” The teacher laughed. “Every year, parents come to me and say, ‘Why won’t my child listen to me? Why won’t she take no for an answer?’ And I say, ‘Your child won’t take no for an answer, because the answer is never no!’”

... _theAtlantic

And so on... An interesting glimpse into the modern state of child-raising in the US from someone on the front lines of family therapy.

If Americans truly are raising generations of fragile, entitled children, who is going to do the hard work that needs to be done? As long as the US economy was doing well, America could import its hard workers and many of its hard thinkers, so as to keep the wheels of commerce and invention moving along. But with the rapid emergence of crisis levels of debt and demography, the US economy may not be able to import so much of its needed human capital -- to compensate for the disastrous failures of its parents and educational system.

Children need to learn practical competence in a wide range of skills. They need to learn to focus on a difficult task, and learn to work hard at it until it is done. Children must not be age-segregated in prison schools for so many of their formative years, kept away from any responsibility or opportunity to explore the real world.

The Roman Empire collapsed over a few centuries for many of the reasons the American empire is threatened: debt, demography, social problems that were swept under the rug, entitled and abusive ruling classes, etc.

American parents have only one or two children, on average, and far too many of them are being raised as "trophy children," pampered perpetually childish pets rather than skilled, competent, and responsible proto-adults. This failure to reproduce -- and failure to competently raise the meagre progeny which they do produce -- is what truly threatens the collapse of the American Experiment (not actually an empire in the Roman sense at all).

Gottlieb was actually rather tentative and modest in her conclusions -- not taking them as far as she perhaps should have. Yet she was castigated by the "pampering nannies" of modern academia, journalism, and the blogosphere. The dysfunction can probably not be reversed before catastrophe ensues, at least not in the many strongholds of the destructive philosophy.

It is up to parents who wish to raise competent and functional children to structure an environment around the child which facilitates the acquisition of skills and an ongoing successful adaptation to adult world responsibilities.

The Final Frontiersman of ANWR: A Week in the Life

Heimo Korth is "The Final Frontiersman." He and his wife Edna are the last legal full time residents of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They move between three cabins every year, so as not to deplete the game as they trap and hunt for a living.

The book linked above is quite good, written by a cousin of Heimo's who lived with the family for several months and dug deeply into the couple's lives, and those of their daughters.

Living in the Arctic is not for the weak of heart, or for faux environmentalists such as those who occupy highly-paid lobbying positions for Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and the rest of the dieoff.orgy gang.

Living in such a rugged environment is proof of a residual toughness living in at least a portion of western men. In case of catastrophe, most westerners could not cope without their supermarkets, convenience stores, and ATMs.

If you are curious what a north country pioneer's life might be like, check out the 52 minute video about the Korths above.

Last Bastions of Competence: #1 The Military

Regular readers of Al Fin blog are familiar with the concept of psychological neoteny. The societies of western developed nations and particularly North American societies, have adopted a method of child-rearing that results in the perpetual incompetence of an idle adolescence. By age-segregating children in classrooms of indoctrination, by removing children from all responsibility and exposure to the adult world of work, western societies are creating entire generations of incompetent and narcissistic know-nothings and do-nothings.

But there are notable refuges from the world of perpetual incompetence and irrelevance--one of which is the military. In the military there is no escape from responsibility, and no excuse for not developing the competencies of your current rating and assignment. You are thrown in with persons of all ages, backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, and experiences. You are expected to learn how to do your job, and to do it professionally.

The modern military is as much about disaster relief, and providing order for rebuilding a devastated region, as it is about fighting and killing an enemy. Military members are encouraged to improve themselves, and many gain degrees while in the service, through online courses.

Joel, who is stationed in Baghdad with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Stryker Brigade Combat Team, earned his degree through online courses and hopes to be able to watch the ceremony through an online link-up.

"A lot of it has involved slipping in homework in between missions and rest time. But there's always the unforeseen, though," Joel, 36, said Wednesday in a phone interview from Iraq. "Taking courses online gives me a sense of normalcy. ... As one class completes, I'm that much closer to being home."

According to military publications, more than 40,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq have enrolled in online college courses.

Denver Post

By acquiring real world skills in a genuine world atmosphere, while still being able to earn credits and degrees online, members of the military are able to bypass the academic lobotomy that millions of on-campus university students receive every year.

While their home societies are preparing their civilian cohorts for perpetual incompetence, military members are seeing much of the world firsthand, and working side by side with people from other cultures for both peacekeeping, disaster relief, and making war.

Military members who do not make a career of the military often join reserve units or national guard units, to combine their civilian lives with continued service to their country. Career military members often retire by age 38, at which time many of them join city, county, state, or federal agencies of law enforcement or other active civil service agencies that require competent workers.

Competence is rare in a neotenous society. You have to look for it.

Originally published in Abu Al Fin.

Are You Competent for What May Come?

Because, personally, I seriously doubt that you are--if you are a typical psychologically neotenised, academically lobotomised, child of the western world.

You might try the "Jericho Test." If you have not seen the episodes of the doomed television show Jericho, go here and watch at least the first few episodes. Imagine yourself in such a circumstance. Would you be useful. How?

I recall sitting in an insurance office in a new town, transferring my policy to my new location. My young, attractive female agent was processing my paperwork and chatting with two co-workers who had gathered around the desk out of boredom. Somehow they were discussing a collapse of civilisation and what they could do to survive. My agent made the offhand comment, "at least I could work as a whore."

But there is only so much need for whores, and some of the male survivors of a holocaust would not treat their whores very kindly. So the rest of you might start thinking about other possibilities, while you have a little time. Particularly the college professors among you, who--if you pardon me for saying so--are almost certainly particularly useless in an emergency (unless your training is in applied engineering, technology, or biomedical sciences).

Your politics, religion, and ideology will probably be irrelevant, as long as you are not a psychopath. It is your useful skills that will count.

People always assume that things will continue as they are, in a straight line extrapolation of current trends. People are always wrong about that. Most people need shock therapy to acknowledge things that might go wrong, and to be motivated to prepare.

No matter how busy you are, you still have time to take steps to make you and your family more survivable.


Everyone needs a stockpile of clean water, food, and basic hygienic and first aid supplies. If you depend on a medicine such as insulin, you should have extra medication on hand, and rotate it to maintain the expiration date. If your vital medicines require refrigeration, you should have a way to power a small refrigerator off the electrical grid. (generator with fuel, solar panels with batteries, etc.)

There are many important things to think about, in connection with surviving a massive natural or man-made disaster. The Al Fin blog sidebar has an entire section of links dealing with these issues, about three fourths of the way down. As an added one-time-only bonus, here is an online book on surviving a nuclear war.

Watch the first few episodes of Jericho. Think about it.
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