• Storing colloidal silver solution: Silver colloidal solutions are light sensitive. Store them in brown glass bottles (beer, wine, root beer, or prune juice bottles) out of sun and fluorescent light, or in a dark cabinet. Do not store in the refrigerator or near microwave or magnetic fields. Do not store in plastic or metal containers. Wash and rinse bottles thoroughly, with a final rinse using colloidal silver solution. If capping a bottle with plastic or metal, be sure the cap does not touch the colloidal silver solution. If the solution is put into an eyedropper bottle, the dropper stem should be glass.
In an emergency situation, you could use silverware, old silver coins, or jewelry for your colloidal silver generator, although you would get other non-silver materials in your solution because of impurities.
CAUTION: There is a rare medical condition, known as argyria, which is caused by the ingestion of large amounts of silver, typically in the form of the silver salts and nitrates that were common in patent medicines of the 1800s and early 1900s. Argyria is a cosmetic condition that is physically harmless, but results in an undesirable bluish tint in some parts of the body. The recent news headlines about a “blue man” suffering from argyria makes it clear that it is possible to overdo it with colloidal silver. Apparently, this man had been suffering from a bad case of dermatitis, and had treated it for over a decade both by drinking large amounts of colloidal silver daily, supposedly a quart or more per day, and also rubbing colloidal silver on his skin every day. Proponents of ionic silver state that the particles of silver in this type of solution are so small and the actual amount of silver in these solutions is so tiny that the chance of getting argyria from the consumption of ionic silver is practically nonexistent. In the period 1900–1950, when most cases of argyria were reported, silver-based medicines typically contained large concentrations of silver nitrates or silver chlorides and were not based on colloidal or ionic silvers, which are typically effective using far smaller net amounts of silver. At any rate, I suggest that you proceed cautiously when ingesting significant quantities of colloidal or ionic silver on a regular basis.
Mat Stein is the author of the acclaimed book: “When Technology Fails” (Chelsea Green 2008) a comprehensive manual on sustainable living skills. Stein is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he majored in Mechanical Engineering. He is an active mountain climber and serves as a guide trainer for blind skiers with the Ski for Light cross-country program.
The Folding Utility Knife as an EDC tool
By Steve The Survival Sasquatch
Over time I have gotten tired of constantly having to resharpen and/or purchase replacement Every Day Carry (EDC) knives due to damage from constant use. In my research I came across a great idea to solve this problem. Carry a folding utility knife. A utility knife is sufficient for most cutting tasks that I run into in my day to day life, so when I heard this idea from Jack Spirko on The Survival Podcast, I thought to myself; “why didn’t I think of that?” Protect the knife that may save your life by using a separate knife to cut all the regular stuff that you cut everyday. Though this is certainly not a new idea, there are lots of new products available to suit the purpose.
One such product that I really like is the folding utility knife from Jeep. It is very similar to (possibly from the same manufacturer as) the Husky model from Home Depot. I got mine at Auto Zone for $11.00.
It has a sturdy, well made clip for hanging on the belt or or inside a pocket (I like to put it in the hammer loop on my carpenters pants). The wooden handle scales are well made and feel good when gripped. It has a ambidextrous thumb knob on the back of the blade holder for very easy one-handed opening. I loosened the main pivot screw so I could flip it open with a flick of the wrist. The liner lock mechanism is well done and properly machined and finished allowing for smooth, single- handed closing.
It uses standard utility blades available at any hardware or auto parts store. These blades are also very easy to resharpen to a utility edge with a sharpening stone. Three passes on each side with a standard stone and it’s good to go again for most purposes. When that’s not good enough, grab a new blade out of your wallet and pull back the easy blade lock/release lever (my favorite feature of this knife) which is also located on back of the blade holder, pull out the blade and put in the new one and you are back to the races.
This newer design of utility knife takes up less space and and is much more convenient than the old fashioned, Stanley-type knife. The rapid, no screwdriver blade lock/release lever makes it a much easier tool to use. The fact that it folds also makes it much safer to carry in a pocket than the old slide open box cutters. I give the Jeep Folding Utility Knife a “Buy It” rating and have added it to my EDC tools.
Steve “Sasquatch” Mayka is a Survival and Disaster Preparedness Consultant. Through more than a decade of continuous study, he has developed an holistic approach to preparedness that is based on budget, moderation, and continuous practice. He gives monthly talks in his community and consults clients on various subjects related to prepping and survival and self-reliance. You can read more of his articles at: www.TrackTheSasquatch.wordpress.com.
When The Next Super-Bug Strikes
Will You Be Prepared?
by Mat Stein
It appears that the “next pandemic” may be budding right now in the form of a new strain of antibacterial resistant E. coli bacteria that has infected more than 1500 people in Germany. Similar to the new strain of E. coli, there are a host of other antibiotic resistant superbugs that are already well established in our world, each with the potential for bringing great tragedy to an individual, or to explode into a global pandemic.
Most of us tend to think that widespread plagues are a thing of the past, that diseases can never again slaughter huge numbers of people and ravage the planet as they have for countless centuries. Quite the opposite is true. Due to the potential for viruses to mutate into deadly new strains, the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, the widespread opportunities for bio-weapons to fall into terrorist hands, and the almost instantaneous intercontinental transport of humans and animals via air travel, the risk of worldwide plagues is probably worse now than ever before.
Imagine a Hurricane Katrina–sized catastrophe occurring in 50 major U.S. cities at the same time, and you have some idea of the worst-case scenario for a crippling global pandemic. Medical centers, essential services, and government personnel would be overwhelmed. If there were no viable vaccines, or if one was only available in limited quantities, most healthcare workers would desert medical facilities to care for the sick in their own homes or to simply get out of the cities to improve their own chances for survival. When things get real bad, most buses, trains, trucks and planes stop running, causing food and fuel deliveries to slow to a trickle. If this sounds far-fetched, realize that this was exactly the scenario when the Spanish flu hit the United States in 1918-1919, killing more people in a few short months than had died in all of WWI.
In general, viruses do not respond to antibiotics, and the few antiviral pharmaceuticals that have been developed may have little or no effect on new strains of viruses. Most people do not realize it, but typical anti-viral drugs, such as Tamiflu, should be taken within 24 hours of the onset of flu symptoms in order to be effective, and show little or no positive effect if taken more than 48 hours after symptom onset. It can take decades to develop vaccines for specific viruses. For example, after spending billions of dollars on research, scientists have yet to produce viable vaccines for the AIDS, Ebola, and hemorrhagic dengue fever viruses. Additionally, viruses have the capacity for “gene swapping”— the ability to share genetic material between different strains, sometimes resulting in mutations that combine the deadly properties of one strain with the contagious properties of another.
Experts are gravely concerned that this could still happen with the extremely deadly HN51 strain of avian flu, and it appears that this is what has already happened in the cas
e of the less deadly, but still quite serious, Mexican swine flu strain of virus. DNA analysis performed on specimens from Spanish flu victims, taken from tissue samples that were preserved in wax, indicate that the Spanish flu was originally an avian flu virus that mutated into a swine flu virus before mutating into a human flu virus. According to the CDC, the new strain of swine flu that showed up recently in Mexico contains gene sequences from North American and Eurasian Swine flus, North American bird flu, and North American human flu.
Additionally, a significant and growing threat is cultivated right here in the United States, as a result of our modern factory farm methods for growing livestock. Some bright researchers figured out that farm animals fed sub-clinical doses of antibiotics grow faster than animals that eat regular feed, they get sick less often, and fewer animals are lost to disease. This has been a boon to the pharmaceutical industry (40 percent of U.S.-made antibiotics are fed to animals), but it is also contributing to the end of “The Age of Wonder Drugs.” Since bacteria reproduce at 500,000 times the rate of humans, natural genetic selection has made antibiotic-fed farm animals (and our own bodies after we ingest the antibiotics contained within the flesh of these farm animals) into perfect breeding grounds for growing super-microbes that are resistant to modern medicines. When Jim Hensen, the beloved inventor of The Muppets, succumbed to a pneumonia-like infection from an antibiotic resistant form of strep (Group A beta-hemolytic streptococci), the best doctors and antibiotics that money could buy were unable to save his life.
MDR (multidrug-resistant) and XDR (extensively drug-resistant) tuberculosis are major concerns for health officials around the world. Estimates for the number of people in the world infected with these strains of TB vary from one-half million to 1.5 million people. The XDR version is much rarer than MDR. However, it is also much more difficult to treat, with a treatment success rate of only about 30 percent in areas with good TB-control programs, and is often fatal without special treatment, so it has officials worried about the potential for pandemic should the XDR form start to show up more often. Since roughly one-third of the world’s population is infected with TB, and some 1.5 million people annually die of it (mostly from regular TB, and not the MDR or XDR strains), the specter for a near-term drug resistant TB pandemic is quite real.
“XDR-TB is very serious ––we are potentially getting close to a bacteria that we have no tools, no weapons against.”—Paul Sommerfeld, Stop TB, from BBC News, September 6, 2006
The good news is that there are many alternative medicines, herbs, and treatments that can be quite effective in the fight against a wide variety of viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, to which mainstream high-tech Western medicine has little or nothing to offer. The bad news is that 99 percent of the doctors in our hospitals are not trained in these alternatives, and don’t have a clue about what to do when their pharmaceutical high-tech medicines fail to heal. If you wait until a pandemic starts, you will have only a slim chance for locating an available health practitioner familiar with alternative herbs, medicines, and methods. In the words of Robert Saum, Ph D, the typical attitude amongst most of his medical colleagues in this country is, “If I didn’t learn it in medical school, it can’t be true.”
“During Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which killed up to 50 million people worldwide, homeopathic physicians in the U.S. reported very low mortality rates among their patients, while flu patients treated by conventional physicians faced mortality rates of around 30 percent. W. A. Dewey, M.D., gathered data from homeopathic physicians treating flu patients around the country in 1918 and published his findings in the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1920. Homeopathic physicians in Philadelphia, for example, reported a mortality rate of just over one percent for the more than 26,000 flu patients they treated during the pandemic. Today, a number of homeopathic remedies for the flu are available, including oscillo, or oscillococcinum, which has been shown to shorten the duration of symptoms when taken within 48 hours of onset. Homeopaths have been given this remedy since 1925. Interestingly, it’s made from the heart and liver of ducks, which carry flu viruses in their digestive tracts.”—Excerpted from “Could Homeopathy Prevent a Pandemic?” by Tijn Touber and Kim Ridley, Ode Magazine, January 2006, issue 30.
When it comes to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and deadly viruses, so-called “alternative medicine,” including herbs and a variety of other treatments, may well be your most effective form of treatment and prevention. A few years ago, my wife Josie suffered from an antibiotic-resistant urinary infection that was probably caused by the same strain of antibiotic-resistant E. coli that reportedly plagued women across the country (San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 14, 2001). We spent nearly $2,000 on doctors and multiple courses of three different antibiotics, including three full courses of the infamous Cipro, but the infection returned every time we tried to discontinue the Cipro, which was the only antibiotic that had any positive effect.
After nearly two months of unsuccessful medical treatment, Josie was finally able to kick the infection in less than one weeks time, once she resorted to self-treatment with a combination of grapefruit seed extract (from the health food store) and large quantities of homemade antibiotic colloidal silver solution (roughly one quart a day).
Based upon personal experience, here is a short list for some of the herbs and alternative remedies that I can recommend to have on hand:
Astragalus. One of the most highly regarded herbs used in Chinese medicine, astragalus is an efficient immune-system booster. Do not take astragalus if you are already suffering from a fever. Many herbal immune system booster combinations, available at health food stores, are based around astragalus.
Colloidal/ionic silver. The medicines that hospitals use to fight skin infections on severe burn patients are typically based on the active component of silver. Colloidal/ionic silver is a broadband antibiotic solution that has been used against a myriad of harmful protozoa, bacteria, and viruses. It is available in health food stores or can be made for just pennies a day with a simple commercial or homemade colloidal/ionic silver generator. It appears that all colloidal silver solutions work to varying degrees. There is some junk out there, that has essentially no silver in it or varies tremendously batch-to-batch, so I recommend you stick with commercial brands that have documentation to prove their quality control and effectiveness, or make it yourself. In my experience, the homemade stuff is not very stable and should be kept out of direct sunlight and used within a few days after it was made. American Biotech Labs has developed a patented process for multivalent nano-particle metallic silver solutions that have gone through extensive independent laboratory testing showing they are extremely effective, safe, and very stable for long term storage. This product is being used successfully in African clinics to rapidly and cost effectively heal malaria (even drug resistant varieties), and has been shown in clinical studies to be quite effective against most known pathogenic bacteria and viruses, including HIV and avian influenza.
Echinacea. A traditional Native American medicinal herb, echinacea has become a part of mainstream self-help medicine. It is now available at most drugstores, since its antiviral and antibacterial properties have been scientifically documented.
Elderberry. This herb has excellent anti-viral properties, and has been referred to as the “medicine chest” of the country people. Laboratory studies on Sambucol®, an Israeli made elderberry extract, have shown the product to be effective against human, swine and avian flu strains. Unlike Tamiflu, the well known antiviral pharmaceutical, Sambucol has no negative side effects.
Garlic. A true “wonder herb”, garlic has powerful antibiotic and antibacterial properties as well as tremendous nutritional antioxidant value. Whereas the number of active ingredients in penicillin is one, at least 35 active ingredients have been identified in garlic, making it much more difficult for bacteria to grow resistant to garlic than to penicillin. Use raw, fresh cloves, since cooked or powdered garlic usually loses most
of its potency.
Goldenseal. Goldenseal is one of the most popular herbs of all time. It has powerful antifungal and antibacterial properties against organisms such as Candida and E. coli. The powdered root has strong cauterizing properties and can be used directly on wounds to reduce or eliminate excessive bleeding.
Grapefruit seed extract (GSE). Like garlic, GSE is another true “wonder herb”, exhibiting powerful antibiotic, antiviral, and antibacterial properties. It has been used successfully to battle numerous diseases and ailments, including Lyme disease, Candida, Giardia, amoebic dysentery, many kinds of parasites, athlete’s foot, ringworm, gum disease, herpes, colds, flu, and some forms of arthritis.
Homeopathic medicine. Homeopathy appears to stimulate the body’s own immune system in ways that Western science still doesn’t fully understand. For a reasonable price, you can buy homeopathy kits that contain 10 to 30 common remedies for treating a wide variety of ailments. Trained homeopaths typically have a huge number of homeopathic remedies on hand, and can select the appropriate remedy, or combination of remedies, for their clients.
Hyssop. Though little used in the West, hyssop is another powerful herb, exhibiting strong antiviral and antibacterial properties. One of the few herbs that has been proven effective against active tuberculosis, hyssop is often prescribed by Chinese herbalists for lung ailments. In today’s world, where there is a constant threat that antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis might blossom into a global pandemic, I like to keep at least a pound of hyssop on hand.
Oregano oil. Oil of oregano is another broad-band super-herb with powerful ant-oxidant, antiviral, antifungal, anti-parasite and antibacterial properties. Traditionally used for treatment of wounds, headaches, sinusitis, lung infections, colds, intestinal worms, athlete’s foot, and so on. I like to supplement my diet with two oregano capsules a day.
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