I'm curious as to why forums like this one have been less active as of late. I recall when this forum was bustling with lively conversations, and I'm interested in finding solutions to restore that level of engagement.

Jeanette Isabelle

Most forums have gone down in activity with the rise of social media.

Do you believe that the Equipped To Survive forum is still valuable, despite the prevalence of social media?

Jeanette Isabelle

Yes! This is a place where a lot of the social media "stuff" does not happen and is filled with respectful people who truly contribute to conversations.

I come by at least daily to see what's new or even sometimes to explore "old" topics for more information. This site serves a specific population unlike the more generic aspect of the usual social media sites.

There can be an ebb and flow for participation and I expect with nice weather now upon us we will hear from folks a lot more as they venture out and learn/discover new things.

While the traffic volume of forums is lower across the board it still seems cyclical. I still visit at least once per day!

"This Place Is a Ghost Town"

Ah, but there be friendly ghosts here.

It is possible. However, the phrase "This place is a ghost town" is used to imply that the place in question is lifeless.

Jeanette Isabelle

Think of it as a garden in winter. Very quiet, and yet filled with possibilities.

Here there be monsters.

Thank you for standing by us, Chaos. Dueling with spam/bots is a task with no joy.

It seems we are in a season of transition. We have lost some of our stalwarts, retired SAR people who could interpret events through the vast lens of their practical experience on the ground.

Others have moved in different directions, including me: I am more of a homesteader now, as opposed to a self-propelled wilderness traveller. So I'm hanging out at permies.com/forums -- even though the front page seems kooky-ville and off-putting, there are lots of people doing innovative and knowledgeable stuff in the forum, and there is a strict "be nice" policy that makes it welcoming, just like this forum. And there is a lot of survival-related crossover in the topics.

So, my point: even if this forum is mostly quiet, it would be madness for the vast, formidable archive of knowledge that resides here to be lost or forgotten. Somehow we need a ready archive of links that we can copy and post elsewhere, to add value to the world and perhaps drive some traffic back this way.

What do you folks think? Madness? or Wisdom?

If you are referring to the unknown ocean (the future), you are correct. Perhaps the friendly ghosts in these archives will see us through the perilous waters ahead.

I had just happened to see trailer to Stephen King-story Here there be monsters so I thought it wuld be a funny sort of remark.

Even among the current members, it appears that the level of activity has decreased.

Jeanette Isabelle

While participation is down from what it has been there is a lot of truth in the fact this is still a huge repository of knowledge, ideas and information.

I've mentioned this site in some other places I go now and then with the hope a few new folks will stop by and join us. I'm also thinking there may be a group of people who are just reading and not actually getting a log-in and contributing.

I am hopeful that this summer and fall will bring more comments and information as our members have new experiences. I still stop by every day to check and see what is up even if I don't actually log in.

Make a subreddit, "Equipped to Survive" to increase membership possibly by talking about subjects and referring to this site.

But, with no new content on the front page since 2016, correct if wrong, then I am not sure the site owner is too concerned about it?

And, allow others to write new articles for this site and refer back to them from the subreddit.

And the front page looking like something from the 90´s I´m not surprised no new members will come.

This raises the question of how we ended up on this forum. I found this forum in 2006 while researching aviation safety.

Jeanette Isabelle

Jeanette has been here almost as long as me. I don't remember what brought me to this site initially. I got interested in backpacking and something related to that, probably wilderness survival, must have brought me here.

Thought I would log in and say hi.

Although I cruise by here when I have a few, It's been since I long while since I have actually participated here.

Life during and now in the (hopefully waning) period of Covid, has kept me very busy with a new line of work. Moved once again, which makes 4 moves in about as many years. So hopefully this is the last for us.

It is really unfortunate to see this forum slowly fade to only a few core people. However, in the days of social media, which I deplore, there are also many other traditional forums that are seeing a decline in traffic and participation.

Best health and wishes to you all!

ETS is one of the few really nice places to be.

problem is life seems to get more and more complicated and demanding, leaving less time to relax and enjoy being with friends.

lets make more time!

Good to see you around these parts, Teslinhiker!

+1.

I've been the same -- dropping in but not logging on.

P.S. Teslin, I'm still using those Panasonic NiMHs you shipped me 10+ years ago. Perfect for my 4xAA winter headlamp!

Great to see you, Teslinhiker, Phaedrus and dougwalkabout!

While I cannot speak for Doug I suspect that if one or more forum members were willing to write new articles for the ETS homepage, that Doug would at least consider publishing them there.

We could use a sprucing-up of the front page!

I'll interject here. Unfortunately, with all my Knife Rights efforts, I don't have time to do ETS justice with new articles. I would not be adverse to editing an publishing someone's articles/reviews. I have neither the skills or money to update the site to make it look more contemporary. That's a major effort. I just sold the equipped.org domain for a modest sum, most of which is already "spent" on some needed home repairs, and there's a bunch of related stuff from years of not having to worry about links pointing to the old .com domain as well as other stuff to be done that I have to think about whether it's worth spending a not insignificant sum on. There's lots of evergreen info on ETS and I don't want it to just disappear. <shrug>

Thanks Doug.

Words can not do justice to HOW IMPORTANT this site is. I am permanently settled here. Nowhere else on the web has these resources. Nowhere else can I find TRUE information of such varied topics.

Unfortunately life (which occurs when you are busy planning other things) has dumped a number of things on us that require more of our immediate time, leaving less for checking in as often. Rest assured however that I will ALWAYS be here!

Yeah, I check in pretty much every day even if I don't post daily.

Yeah, it's not good when a forum drops off the internet.

BritishBlades vanished overnight, the amount of information lost was tragic.

I'm curious if this forum will become active if an event that we can't discuss happens.

Jeanette Isabelle

Not if an asteroid wipes out life on this planet. Or if Yellowstone supervolcano comes to life.

Even if a supervolcano erupts, people will still discuss it.

Jeanette Isabelle

In the event of nukes or a supervolcano, we will not have access to the Internet. The offline versions you store may still be available, if protected and powered.

None of this will increase traffic to this forum. That is nonsense.

If the Jellystone supervolcano goes off I'll be the first to know! I'm maybe 50-60 miles from it.

Be like: https://youtu.be/1_M925DxxUM?t=49

If there were a nuclear disaster, it's possible that internet access could be disrupted. However, we're not sure what effect a supervolcano might have on internet connectivity.

Jeanette Isabelle

Surprisingly enough, the Internet was originally designed to provide highly robust communications even in the event of nuclear attack. I’m not saying that the Internet of today would stand up in the face of such a thing, however.

There are a lot of moving parts that comprise the Internet. While these parts are designed to be resilient there’s a lot of complexity. Design decisions were made decades ago that limit availability and security. I will attempt to provide a high level overview of the moving parts.

There are some things that need to work for the Internet to work well, and those things in broad strokes are: eyeball devices, non-eyeball devices, last-mile connectivity, transit, enabling services, and servers. I won’t cover electricity here except to say that without power generation, the Internet won’t be terribly useful.

In my terms, eyeball devices are the phones, tablets, laptops and other things used to consume Internet content. It’s where people interact with the Internet. Non-eyeball devices is my term for things like IP cameras, “smart” locks, sensors, and so on that use the Internet to provide value. It’s where things interact with the Internet.

Last-mile connectivity is the landline, WISP, cellular or satellite system that you think of as your Internet provider(s).

Transit is not something that most people think about, but these are landline, wireless WAN or satellite systems used by the last-mile providers to talk to other last-mile providers. Landline is the most common by far, wireless is an uncommon use-case, and satellite is unusual for transit (even as it gets more and more popular for last-mile) due to the cost of providing the large amounts of bandwidth required for transit to be worthwhile for most use cases. Think of transit providers as being your Internet provider’s Internet providers.

The enabling services are (in order of importance in my opinion) routing, DNS, NTP, and everything else.

Routing is how networking devices come to a common understanding of the network topology. On my home network, routing is very simple: There is a default route to my Internet router, which in turn has a default route to my last-mile provider. Think of a default route as being directions to “everywhere else.” If there were only one way into and out of your neighborhood, for example, that would be your “default route” to go anywhere beyond the neighborhood.

Routing gets interesting in large private networks, and gets super interesting on the public Internet, especially where last-mile and transit providers work together. The protocol used to route packets on the Internet is designed to be resilient but it isn’t as secure as it could be. Transit providers in particular have had to learn a number of techniques to keep malicious actors from screwing around with routing. Without routing, the Internet doesn’t exist.

DNS (Domain Name System) is almost as critical as routing. It’s function is to translate from words (like equipped.org) that people are able to easily remember, to IP addresses (like 50.57.173.62) that networking devices know how to reach. DNS is distributed and can be made pretty resilient, but has its own security weaknesses.

NTP (Network Time Protocol) underlies a great deal of how routing, DNS, and other things work.

Finally, servers are where the websites and other things that we like to use the Internet for are. Think of “the cloud” and “servers” as being two terms for “other people’s computers that we use on the Internet.”

In the event of a nuclear attack, internet access may be compromised. If a nuclear weapon hits your city, accessing the internet may not be possible. Similarly, if the power grid is affected, you may not have the necessary power to access the internet. It's worth noting that if the server hosting the Equipped To Survive website is hit by a nuclear weapon, it may also be inaccessible.

Jeanette Isabelle

The effect would be..there would be nobody left to connect to the internet.
https://www.industrytap.com/supervolcanic-eruptions-as-powerful-as-100000-nuclear-bombs/10038

It seems like there may be a decline in population, according to the details shared in the link. However, it's good to know that people can still make use of the internet.

Jeanette Isabelle

I suggest you re-read the article and consider the effects of volcanic winter on all the people and businesses and infrastructure that makes internet access available to you and me.

If software engineers are busy raising rats and mushrooms to eat (neither requires sunlight), they will not be in their cubicles keeping end user services running.

Parts of the internet will survive, primarily for government and perhaps some critical businesses that have prepared for such events.

I sincerely doubt that ordinary peasants like you and me will have access. I would certainly not rely on it.

Certainly not if only thing left of you is a shadow on a wall.

If you are at ground zero during a blast, you will become a shadow on the wall. Those further away may survive but will still not have access to the internet.

Jeanette Isabelle

Speaking for myself-

Only so much "preparing" you can do. Whether it's budget, space available, family buy-in....since logging in here, I've moved to 4 different states, and added a wife and 2 kids. Kind of hard lugging all this stuff around.

Most "disasters" are known and repeatable- tornado, hurricane, snow storm, etc. You get used to having things on hand to handle it. Not every issue needs a full blown radiation suit/gas mask/open the bunker/crank up the generator/bust out the MRE case.

There's life outside of this forum.

The base website, ETS, hasn't changed in years (decade?). If DR isn't putting in the effort to stay updated and relevant, that says something.

I like to be prepared for any situation so that I can always feel comfortable. However, it's important to have perspective so that I don't make mistakes, like overspending on ChapStick.

Jeanette Isabelle

Preparing is more about mindset than equipment, IMO. My goals are probably different than yours, and I don't have the anxiety that you've mentioned on occasion. I plan to keep fed and watered for 5-7 days. I don't need radio, power, warm water, bubble baths, sun screen, 3 changes of clothes..... etc (yes, deliberately over-the-top examples).

And there's a point when prepping is a euphemism for "hoarding."

And at the end of the day, you just have to survive long enough to leave the impact zone. A can of gas and a $50 bill is likely enough for 80% of people. Life goes on outside of a disaster.

I found myself purchasing forty-eight tubes of ChapStick, which made me realize I needed to step back and take a deep breath.

Jeanette Isabelle

NEWS FLASH: You can´t. Not for every situation.

Not any situation. That gets into scenario prepping. My goal is to maintain a set level of comfort regardless of what happens.

Jeanette Isabelle

My record is about the same number of states. For me that means my equipment needs to be moveable. Getting a generator to power the house or storing fuel are out of the equation for me. They are not worth the investment if you're going to move to another state in a few years, or they are too inconvenient to move. That also means I won't keep a garage full of construction material, because I'm not going to move that stuff. If I grow vegetables in my garden, it's just for fun, not for homesteading.

If you aren't so concerned about moving, then you can stock up on all kinds of stuff. The preparation looks like a shopping game. But us mobile folks have to think about what we really need, and if we just need to survive, we don't need that much.

I think that there are many "general purpose" community sites that encompass the topics we cover here - Reddit being most likely the largest, but we can't rule out the Meta platform.

Those are more modern platforms as well, we're definitely in the "Old School Tech" world here.

That said, I do wish to be more active here, and thanks for the reminder to give this community more attention!

I'll post a few things ASAP!

I do hang out at Reddit but so far I haven't found a sub as good as ETS. While I don't post every day here I do visit multiple times per day. Generally I try to post only if I can add something substantive to the discussion.

I don't do Reddit, but agree about posting.

I pop in about once a month.
Notice the same topics and about the same 5-10 posters.

At the end of the day, though, a lot of the posts are pretty similar. For most of us in N America, there's really only a few things to prep for: loss of power in really hot or really cold weather; hurricanes; tornadoes; earthquakes; civil unrest, and the scary but mythical EMP (which I only care about when it knocks out the power grid, not if my radio and car don't work). That covers like 99% of issues, and if you can cover down on those, you should be good for the other 1%.

Biggest prep most people miss is personal health and wealth (which won'tbuy happiness, but waiting out a disaster by taking a trip to Europe for 2 weeks seems better than gutting it out at home), neither of which this board focuses on.

I miss the contributions of the SAR folks. That kept the discussion lively. It's too bad we've lost the connection with first responders.

I'm glad Mr. Ritter has decided to keep this board alive. No doubt that costs money. As a contributor who tried to make it a good resource, I'd like to voice my appreciation.

I still think a few volunteers building an topical index of threads would be of value. It would make the wealth of knowledge much more accessible, giving us a single link we could share in other places.

Good idea on the topical index, dougwalkabout.