If you have any melted wax left, waterproof some of your strike anywhere matches. Just dip the heads of the matches into the wax, one by one, then set them on aluminum foil to dry. The wax will keep the match heads from getting damp and also allow the match to burn hotter and a bit longer. Even with the waterproof application though, store them in a sealed container, such as a 35mm film canister.
You can also use the melted wax to make a buddy burner. Not truly a fire starter, instead this is a cooking implement. For this, you’ll need an empty and cleaned out tuna or cat food can and some corrugated cardboard. Cut the cardboard into strips just a hair smaller than the inside of the can is high. You want to cut the cardboard such that when you look down along the long side of the strip, you can see the holes in the cardboard. Coil the cardboard into the can, starting at the center and working your way to the outer edge. Be careful as you do this because the inside edge of the can is likely to be sharp. When you’re done, you should see all the holes in the cardboard looking up at you from the can. Pour the melted wax into the can, filling all those little holes. Once the wax is hard, you just need to light one edge of it and away you go. You can control the amount of heat produced by covering part of the can with a piece of foil or other fireproof material. Suspend your pot or pan a few inches above the flame and it will burn plenty long and hot enough to boil water or cook your meal. Cover the can completely with the foil to douse the flame. Because it is the wax that burns, not the cardboard, you can refill it as needed with more melted crayons.
While you’re making a buddy burner, take a minute to put together a hobo stove. Take a cleaned coffee can and cut out the bottom of it, making a cylinder. Then, cut two slits about two inches high and three inches apart, going from the bottom of the can up. Use pliers to fold this newly created flap up. Use a drill or nails to put a series of small holes a couple inches down from the top, going all the way around the can. Space the holes about three to four inches apart. Your heat source goes inside the can and your cooking pot goes on the top of the can. The buddy burner works very well with the hobo stove but you can also just put together a small twig fire inside the can, using the flap opening to add more fuel.
Use these DIY fire starters only as your backup means of getting a fire going. When in the field, get into the habit of looking for natural sources of tinder. Dry pine needles, leaves, grass, lichen, and old bird nests are all make good tinder. As you find these items, put them in your pocket or in a plastic bag in your pack to keep it dry. Making use of these sources first will preserve your fire starters for when you truly need them.
Jim Cobb is The Frugal Prepper. He owns SurvivalWeekly.com and blogs daily at http://www.survival-gear.com/blog. Jim loves to hear from his readers, whether questions, comments, or insults. Email: [email protected].
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On The Road To 2012:
Should We Be Concerned Because One Cycle of the Maya Calendar is Ending??
by Christopher Nyerges
In December 2010, I had the opportunity to travel to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and, among other things, learn about the significance of the December 21, 2012 date to the Maya. For example, were there any actual predictions about 2012? Did the Maya predict that the world would end? Did they predict doom and gloom? Did they predict anything at all?
I went to the Mayan sites under the guidance of Miguel Angel Vergara Calleros, PhD. Vergara is the author of numerous books on the Maya. He was the director of cultural services at Chichen Itza for several years and is one of the foremost authorities on the archaelogical site of Chichen Itza. Additionally, he studied with a Mayan shaman for 17 years, and now continues to share in classes and seminars about Mayan spirituality.
But I wasn’t going to learn about 2012 in a vacuum. I was going to spend nearly two weeks immersed in Maya culture, learning significant aspects of their beliefs, spirituality, and monumental architecture. I would learn about 2012 in the proper context.
We began by visiting Mayapan, the last place where Kukulkan was known to reside. Kukulkan, aka Quetzalcoatl, was referred to as the Mayan Christ, a visitor who came from afar, who uplifted the people, and who created Mystery Schools whose ancient universal teachings are still preserved in stone.
We visited Izamal, where the top of a major pyramid had been leveled to create a large cathedral in the colonial days. There, on the large sprawling plaza of the cathedral, Pope John Paul II came in 1993 to ask forgiveness of the native people for the atrocities committed by the Spanish and by the Church. Ten thousand native people showed up to see the Pope and to hear his plea for forgiveness.
Later in the day, we had lunch at Mani, where in 1562 the zealous Bishop Diego de Landa ordered the burning and destruction of Mayan codices and artifacts. Even though de Landa didn’t understand what the artifacts meant, he was convinced that they were contrary to the teaching of the church.
“This destruction was akin to the burning of the library of Alexandria in the ancient world,” said Vergara. Interestingly, as an afterthought, de Landa thought there might be something of value in the Mayan writings and he saved 4 codices from destruction, and began t
o write down everything he could recall in his famous document, “Relacion de Cosas de Yucatan” (“History of the Things of Yucatan”). Ironically, it is because of de Landa’s writings that much of the Maya writings – including the calendar system -- have been translated and understood.
One night, Vergara and author Richard Jelusich talked about the Mayan calendar. Like our own modern calendar, the Maya had different divisions of time which they kept track of.
HOW THE MAYA FIGURED TIME
First, the Maya did not number each year as is our modern custom. While the western world counts time by the years that have followed or preceded the assumed date of the birth of Jesus, the Maya counted time by the number of days that have elapsed since a day that corresponds to our August 11, 3114 B.C. The historical significance of that date is unclear, but is generally thought to correspond to a mythical date of creation.
The majority of scholars agree on how to correlate our calendar with the Mayan calendar, so the end of the current Long Count is generally agreed to be December 21, 2012, though there are other proposed dates as well. The divisions of time that they kept track of were the following:
One day, which is referred to as a “kin”;
20 days, called a “uinal” – roughly a month;
18 uinals or 360 days, called a “tun” – roughly a year;
20 tuns or 7,200 days, called a “katun”—19.7 years;
20 katuns or 144,000 days, called a “baktun” – 394.26 years.
Thus, a calendar glyph would be represented by 5 symbols, and a number to indicate how many days in each of the periods have elapsed since August 11, 3114 B.C.
The “Long Count” of the Maya calendar is the time it takes for 13 baktuns, counting from August 11, 3114 B.C. This Long Count is a period of 5,125.36 years, and that cycle ends on December 21, 2012. However, the following day does not begin the 14th baktun, but rather, the count from 1 to 13 begins again. One Long Count ends, another begins.
PREDICTIONS?
There are no “predictions” – except one – that specifically refers to December 21, 2012. And there is nothing in the recorded records predicting doom and gloom. In fact, there is hardly any mention about 2012 at all. Only one stele mentions it.
Vergara points out that “(The 2012 date) is date is found recorded in stone in Stele No.6, discovered in Tortuguero, Tabasco and in a fragment found in the Olmec-Maya city of Comocalco, Tabasco. What is the stele telling us? What is going to happen on this date? The stele tells us that we are going to conclude a period of time, an era, a sun, a final cycle, and then initiate a new one. Once the 13 Baktuns end on the 23 of December 2012, Bolon-Yokte-Ku, the god of the 9 pillars, will descend from the heavens.”
OK, the god of the 9 pillars will descend from the heavens. What does that mean? Is this an actual “prophecy”?
The Tortuguero monument 6 is the only known specific date reference to 2012. In his “The 2012 Story”, author John Jenkins refers to the work of epigrapher David Stuart who offered his translation of this reference to the end of the 13th Baktun. The inscription actually reads that “something [the something is effaced and untranslatable] will occur ….It will be the descent (?) of the Nine Support God(s) to the (?).”
Stuart continues: “This is it. The term following uht-oom is the main puzzle, and largely effaced. The ‘descent’ reference is highly tentative, too. Frankly, the Tortuguero passage, buried in lots of other data, hasn’t been a huge deal to most of us because it is damaged and very, very ambiguous. Even if the glyphs there were clear and legible, no Mayanist I know honestly believes that the Classic Maya foresaw something that might actually come true in our day and age.”
Vergara also points out there are dates that go way beyond 2012. In the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, Chiapas, there is a date of 4,772 A.D. He asks, if the Maya believed that “the world would end” at the end of their Long Count, why would they have projected dates so far into the future?
Vergara acknowledges that lots of folks are simply making things up to sell books and fill seminars. “The Maya would have celebrated such a cycle ending, just like everyone today celebrates the New Year.”
Of course, lots of folks have come up with an abundance of details which draw significance to the 2012 date, though very few of those details were written about by the Maya. These are merely inferences, fact and fancy, trying to correlate the end of one Long Count with some catastrophic event.
Plus, it is worth noting that all calendars, regardless how sophisticated and “advanced,” are man-made constructs for allowing us to track time and the natural cycles of our world and universe.
Richard Jelusich points out that the one astronomical event tied to 2012 – the plane of our solar system crossing through the center of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy – has been occurring from 1980 through 2017. “2012 is a process, not an event,” says Jelusich. During my time in the Yucatan, both Vergara and Jelusich downplayed any extraordinary significance of the December 21, 2012 date.
2012 was described as a point where one cycle in the abstraction of a calendar ends, and another begins. In this sense, the value of 2012 is entirely up to us. Whether or not we gain, or evolve, is entirely a function of our own physical, mental, and spiritual work and preparedness. There is nothing inherently “good” or “bad” about the December 21, 2012 date.
We learned that the secret to 2012 is everywhere. In fact, there is no secret at all. 2012 is everything and nothing. It is the ending of the 13 baktuns of the Long Count as another Long Count begins. It is a time, therefore, of increased awareness and internet connections that allows us to be instantly connected. It is a time of potential, and like any other such time, it is entirely up to us to fit ourselves to be ready for such opportunities.
AND SO...
Is there anything that we should do in preparation for the end of the Long Count in December 2012?
Let’s be clear – predicted “end of the world” scenarios are told to us all the time, and most of them turn out to be baseless. On the other hand, disasters (both man-made and natural) happen all the time. These are things such as wars, economic collapses, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis. While December 2012 probably won’t bring with it the “end of the world as we know it,” it never hurts to be prepared as fully as you are able.
GET YOUR PHYSICAL NEEDS IN ORDER
Here is some very basic advice. Keep in mind that whole books are available on each subject listed below.
Shelter
What would you do if your home were destroyed? You should have a simple tent on your premises that you could occupy if the unthinkable happened. You should be able to carry this portable shelter if you had to. Your plan should also include knowing where to go for emergency shelter.
Take some wilderness survival classes so you know how to fabricate some quick shelters in the woods, should the need arise. These would include lean-tos, and body-hollows. My book, How to Survive Anywhere, has pictures of these shelters so you can practice on your own.
Water
Water is arguably the most important part of your survival. You cannot survive without water. First, learn about all the local sources of water near where you live. These can include lakes, reservoirs, springs, rivers, swimming pools, fountains, etc.
Since water storage is the most essential, and also the easiest and cheapest step in survival planning, we suggest that you begin by simply storing all the water you can in whatever containers you can get. While some folks can make water storage seem expensive and complicated, you can just fill empty plastic or glass soda bottles (the ones with the screw-on lids), and then store them in a dark place until needed.
Perhaps the biggest overlooked water source – available to all city dwellers – is rain.
Historically, there have been many communities and nomads who depended, in varying degrees, on rain for their water supply.
The simplest rain-collecting device that I’ve seen consisted of a large plastic sh
eet measuring about four by eight feet, a few clothes pins, and a few five-gallon jugs. After at least 34 minutes of heavy rain (to clean the air), you’re ready to begin collecting rain.
Attach the plastic sheet to bushes so that it is stretched out somewhat, and secure the one point. Place your water jugs under this flow of water, and in a short while, the jugs will be full. A funnel can be helpful. A makeshift funnel can be made from the top of a one gallon jug. Carefully cut off the top third of the jug and presto! – you have a funnel! A clean piece of cotton can be placed into the funnel to filter out small debris.
I’ve also used sturdy five gallon buckets with handles and lids to collect my rain water.
In planning your rain collection system, you simply need to observe the flow of rain off of your roof, and position your containers accordingly.
Survivalist Anthologies Volume 1 Page 38