Riots + Panic + ... Evacuation? Quarantine?

They've given up on trying to name it. The media, I mean. It's sure as hell not swine flu or rabies, or some media-invented combination of the two. Whatever it is, it's fast and it's scaring the hell out of anyone who's seen it. Whatever it is, it's not just at the Exempla anymore, and it's not just something as random as increased frequency of street muggings (seriously, 9News?). It's got people in a panic, and every time I hear more news of a small riot I'm wondering if it's really just these people who are "sick" or if it's healthy people scared to death and acting out.

Not that I've seen much of the mini-riots for myself. I was passing by the museum and saw some people fighting out near the big dustpan sculpture on the north side. There were 15, maybe 20 people. I didn't really get a good look at them, though. I just wanted to get back to my apartment, so I just sped up. From what little I saw, though, it seemed like most of the people were... I dunno. Messed up. They looked sick and clumsy, and were ganging up on just a few people. If I had to guess, maybe 2/3 of them were attacking the other 1/3, or else stumbling around looking confused. I think the police had just arrived, too, because I remember seeing what looked like two or three cops running across the the pavement on the opposite side toward the crowd. I didn't see anything in the news about it, but then I stopped watching the news so much when those ditzes on channel 9 started going off about swine flu.

I was hoping to hear from my friend at the Exempla by now. The smoke I mentioned last time was just the beginning of it there. The other week when I saw that, there wasn't much, but it escalated afterward. That building to the east, the one that's connected by the bridge to the western wing? It was burning to a crisp a few days ago. There were fire trucks out there. I'm obviously no firefighter so I don't know what's the right response to a big ass fire... but it seems to me there should have been more than 2 firetrucks. I didn't notice any police cars or ambulances there, but maybe I wasn't looking close enough. I didn't want to get near the place, not after the things I've been hearing about around there. I talked to a woman a couple of days ago who saw it, too, and she said she'd talked to someone who got out of the hospital before the fire got bad. What she recalled from that person made it sound a lot like that weird fight I saw at the museum.

There's been talk of evacuation and quarantine, but no one seems to know anything. If we've got some kind of crazy epidemic, I can't imagine that there would be some sort of government sanctioned exodus out of the city. I don't know how it would even be logistically possible. Quarantine sounds like it's out of the question. How would anyone think they could keep 2.5 million people from leaving the area? If any public figure starts talking about quarantine, you can bet that the interstates and highways will instantly become choked with people trying to evacuate before there's a chance of quarantine. I just don't think either is very likely.

I've got a generator now; power became so spotty for a while that it reminded me of the hurricanes on the coast. I bought some extra gas and tested it out with some power tools and lamps. It's loud and I think my neighbors will get pissed if I try it again, but it worked. Maybe they'll have bigger things to worry about if the shit really hits the fan. Heck, maybe they won't have anyone to complain to by then.

And now it's... swine flu?

How short are people's memories when they're worried?

How did we go from calling it "rabies" to "swine flu," which makes even less sense than "rabies?" While Gov. Ritter is talking about "utilizing all of the resources and expertise at our disposal" to fight the swine flu outbreak here, no one is even acknowledging that just days ago there was a riot at the Exempla hospital. Something tells me that someone suffering from some uber-flu is going to be able to fight over anti-virals... not that the media is claiming there was any violence at all. They won't even talk about the smoke that was coming out of the hospital.

Swine flu.

Yeah.

Sure.

It's almost like they're welcoming the swine flu outbreaks elsewhere, it gives them a name to put on whatever the hell is happening here. Not that calling it "swine flu" would explain the rumors of Exempla patients biting each other and the staff. I can see the worry in people's eyes on the street. But 9News? Denver Post? Why the hell aren't they saying anything about it? Crazy as this sounds, something bad is about to happen. Riots maybe, or evacuation, maybe even a quarantine. I guess I'm ready for just about everything except an evacuation; I don't know how they would cram the population of Denver county out through the interstates or highways.

Freaky Happenings in Denver.... and Pickles!

Things are getting a little weirder here around Capitol Hill. While everyone's whining about the possibility that they might get swine flu, there's some crazy stuff going on right here that the national media just refuses to acknowledge.

It's this "rabies" thing. Everyone knows it's not rabies, but no one knows what else to call it. No one even seems to agree on what the symptoms, either. My friend from Exempla? I haven't heard from him since last week. I drove by there yesterday, and there were firetrucks and police lined up near one of the entrances. I think I saw smoke, but it was faint and I might have just let my imagination get the better of me after seeing the firetrucks.

On top of that, not only has my internet service been shaky, but so is my phone service, so I don't even know if my friend has even tried to call me to let me know what's going on there. I'm thinking about ditching my cable internet and using a wifi service (http://www.downtowndenverwifi.com) instead. Hopefully it will be a little more stable than what I've got, and it looks like they do a free limited trial.

Ugh. The power has flashed twice since I started to write this. If this keeps up, I might start looking at generators.

I've lived in disaster areas before, where food and water quickly became scarce, so the emergency planner in me is about to go buy a ton of canned food and bottled water. I think I'm also going to pickle some veggies. It's easy and will make food last a hell of a long time. I'm really looking forward to getting some peppers from my garden just for that.

To pickle something, you need at a minimum the food to be pickled, vinegar, and a mason jar. You can work with much more than that, though. Here's the last recipe I came up with:

- 2 poblano peppers
- 5 pearl onions
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 carrot
- 1 serrano pepper
- White vinegar
- 1/2 cup of lime juice

Preparation is pretty simple. Chop all solid ingredients small enough to fit and evenly distribute in the jar. I like to leave my pearl onions whole, but it's not necessary. Mix it all like a salad, and toss it into the jar.

Next, add the lime juice, and fill the remainder of the jar in with vinegar. Some people swear by heating the vinegar first, so that it permeates the veggies faster. It also makes a good vacuum seal once it cools off. I think it makes the veggies a little too mushy, so I don't heat mine.

After that, just let it sit in a dark, cool place for 2 or 3 weeks. Once it's done, you'll have a mildly spicy and tangy mixture of pickled peppers and other veggies, and it will last even if (sigh) the power goes out for a while.

Rabies? Reporting? WTF?

I'm a little bewildered at the moment. It's not rabies, no one else is talking about it, and frankly it's getting a little creepy. New happenings:

• I have been trying to go back and find the articles that first brought the whole rabies thing to my attention. There was a site for both Estes Park and Lyons, but both have been down for a while. I've been looking for other media coverage without much luck. I'm actually finding my internet service to be all around kind of spotty.
  
• I mentioned the rabies thing to a nurse friend who works at Exempla, and he kind of laughed about it and said rabies can't possibly have set in that fast. If something was wrong with them, he said, it was not rabies. Then he told me something kind of quietly (we were at the Buckhorn Exchange) that had been bugging him. He had seen a few patients brought in earlier showing showing the same symptoms as they reported for that kid in Lyons. They were, for the most part, incoherent and dazed, but he said he heard one of the patients mumble something like "hungry" over and over.
• Another friend called me last night to tell me what happened a few blocks away from 16th St. close to the Curtis Hotel. She said some guy was hopped up on something and stumbling around groping at people, and looked really pale and sick. He got violent with one person, so she called 911, who responded that they were already aware of it. Police showed up and wrestled the guy to the ground, restrained him and took him away, but not before he bit a finger off from one of the officers. The description she gave me of the crazy guy reminded me of the descriptions my friend at Exempla gave me.

So.... Ok. Rabies? Seriously? I don't think so. Why isn't this being talked about on 9News? I mean, I know they take a ham-fisted approach to journalism, but surely they'e heard about this.

I know I probably don't have much of a readership yet, but is anyone else in Denver getting word of this??

Water in the backcountry

Going to be in the woods for a few days? Got that 6-pack of bottled water ready to go in your backpack? Ready to get dehydrated and cut your trip short?

A typical person needs to take in around 2.5 liters of liquid every day to replace fluids lost to sweat, breathing, and going to the bathroom. Around 20% of that comes from food. The remaining amount (~2 liters) comes from liquid intake. Assuming you've got 1-liter bottles in a 6-pack, you've got 3 days of water. If we're talking about being outdoors, where you'll have a lot of increased activity, and (in my case) at high altitudes, the needed amount of water will sky-rocket. Let's assume an hour of exercise per day (you are outdoors, right?), a reasonable weight of 150lb., and a warm environment. This handy dandy calculator says such a person would need ~3 liters every day. I'm at 170lbs, so I need about 3.2. I'm also at high altitudes, so let's factor in another half liter for 3.7. That's more than 3 bottles of water / day.

For an extended stay in the backcountry, you probably won't want to carry all of that water with you. You do, after all, need space and strength for food, camping supplies, clothes, etc. The only option you really have is to learn how to purify water. Why purification? How about a nice helping of giardia-infested water that gives you really messy digestion problems? Giardia is increasingly common in many parts of the world, and unless you've got a nice microscope with you, you can't tell if the water you found in a pond or river carries it. And, yes, it does live in flowing water, too.

So, what to do? Fear not, there are several companies out there that make water purification chemicals. There are also ways of using heat to kill the organisms living in your water. We'll talk about iodine first.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Have thyroid problems? Alergic to seafood? Iodine may not be your prefered solution. Consult your doctor before trying it.

For purification via iodine, carry a 2% iodine tincture with you. You can find this in some first aid kits and drug stores. Make sure you're carrying it in a dark bottle, as exposure to light will lessen its effectiveness. To kill most organisms in 20-degree Celsius (~68 Farenheit) water, add 5 drops of your iodine solution to every quart (.95 liters) of water, if the water is clear. If the water is murky, use 10 drops. Once added and thoroughly mixed, let it sit for 30 minutes. If the water is colder than 40 Farenheit (10 Celsius), make it an hour, as a lack of heat inhibits all chemical reactions.

Sounds easy, huh? It is! Of course, it's not as thorough as boiling the water for a minute. Boiling can be inconvenient, requiring fuel for heat, a suitable container (you should have a pot, though), and the time to put it all together and start a fire. Boiling will kill everything living in that water, though, unless you somehow got your water from one of those crazy undersea volcanic ecosystems. Then, maybe you're screwed, but under most circumstances you'll be fine.

I'll be giving other purification methods a go when I take a long-ish hike. I'm really interested in solar stills and other more DIY distillery methods. Not sure when that will be, though. That rabies case I posted about a while back? There have been a few more. Most recently some kid wandered out of the woods in Lyons (kind of close to where that first case was reported), and walked right out into the busy traffic of a highway. Luckily he was moving slowly and the drivers there were able to avoid him, but I heard there were a a couple of fender benders. Someone was nearby on foot and ran out into the road to collect him once it was safe to do so. She reported that he was incoherent and sickly looking, and was bleeding from his leg. Ambulances showed up soon and whisked him off to a local hospital, and the rumors are flying that there's rampant infestation of rabid animals in the area.

I hope the kid's ok. I think I'll be looking into that conceal/carry permit soon.

Post-hike at Rabbit Mountain

So, what better way to get into it than to go in unprepared?

I went to Rabbit Mountain over the weekend just to get a feel for it, and decided to hike all the way through the Little Thompson Overlook Trail. It's an easy 3-mile round-trip hike with moderate elevation change. I figured I could cut it with my normal shoes and a bottle of water.

Turns out I was about half-right. My feet are killing me. My tennis shoes don't protect against the jagged sharp rocks strewn across the paths, and I occasionally found my foot bending the wrong way around the edges of those rocks. Then, the blisters started as I got close to the end of the trail. It wasn't long before I had to change my stride to keep from agitating the blisters.

Lesson: get good hiking shoes... Done!

I grabbed these for a pretty penny from a local outdoors store that's going out of business. These shoes must be worn by the gods, and I think I made a great choice to invest in them. If all the reviews I've read are right, these should last me for years. They're also so comfortable that they hardly agitate my existing blisters. I tested them out on some sharp rock edges, and found the soles are flexible enough to remain comfortable while being firm enough to allow me to put all my weight on to a sharp edge with little or no discomfort. I've also gathered that with the right socks they are well-insulated and should be suitable for winter hiking, whenever I get around to that. These things are definitely going with me on all my outdoor excursions from now on.

On a minor note, I bought a few cheap metal latches to make it easier to carry stuff. I had my water bottle latched to a belt loop, which made it very comfortable and accessible.

And, on a weirder note: a case of human rabies was reported nearby. Apparently some camper came out of the Roosevelt National Forest in a daze. Some hikers at the trail head tried to help him, but he got violent and pursued them. They called the police, who rounded the guy up after they heavily restrained him. I think they took him to a hospital in Estes Park. The people who were attacked commented that he had a bite mark on his forearm, so they think he got too close to a rabid animal for whatever reason.

Anyway, I'm kind of considering getting a pistol and a conceal/carry license to protect against the rare dangerous animal or psycho. I hear it's pretty easy to do so in CO. Purchase of the weapon, background check, firearm safety training, and probably a reasonable fee. I've never been a fan of guns, but I'll be damned if I'm letting a rabid coyote turn me into an asshole.

Hiking and survival

First post!

With spring setting in and the last of our low-altitude snow melting away, hiking trails are becoming more accessible throughout Colorado. I've been wanting to acquaint myself with the wild around here in Denver since I moved here two years ago, and just haven't made time. I'd love to learn how to survive out in the mountains with minimal supplies, and complement that with a DIY attitude that I can apply at home or out in the woods. I'd like to learn a thing or two about firearms, as well, and maybe start hunting.

First up: learn something about hiking! I found a "beginner/intermediate" trail at an open space park called Rabbit Mountain, a bit to the north near Lyons. Here's a photo:



I can't wait to get started, but first I need to go find a good pair of boots, a water bottle, etc. I think I'll also look at some good cargo pants, too.

So, this is where I start. If you're interested in off-the-grid survival and DIY projects, regardless of your experience, hang around here for a bit. Every DIY-er can always use a bit of advice or fresh ideas!