keep all body parts that one wishes to keep out of way of sharp and or dangerous objects
I am constantly amazed when I go to teach a medical student to draw blood or put in an IV or god help me use a scalpel, that this isn’t blatantly obvious. I see them going with a sharp needle that is about to become contaminated and have their other hand in front of it (often trying to hold tension on the skin or whatever). If the patient flinches or sneezes or whatever, you have a needle stuck in your hand…
Last year I was helping my landlord buck up some big pine trees that had fallen on the property.
He teased me about the protective chainsaw pants and steel-toes clodhoppers that I was wearing. A week later (when I was out of town) he went out by himself to cut up some more. A branch shifted, he slipped, nearly severed his foot, and passed out on the spot with the saw still running. This was pretty far out the sticks, and he would have bled out right there if not for another neighbor (a former Army medic no less, who had left work early and happened along seconds after) who made a tourniquet from his t-shirt and rushed him to hospital.
I learned of the injury when I got back, when he came crutching his way over to my place in bandages to apologize for teasing me and to show off his new chainsaw pants and boots.
point here being that proper gear and training are good things.
True, him indoors will not even start his saws without PPE and he does it all the time (which may be why). He is constantly raving on about the fact (in his eyes) that chainsaws should not be sold to those who can’t produce evidence of training and that those who do should be prosecuted if they are shown to have sold a saw to someone who isn’t qualified to use it.
I never handle my chainsaw without the kevlar chaps, steel toes, hardhat with integral steel face shield and ear protection, and kevlar gloves; and use wedges, etc. Just treated too many people… The other day I watched a neighbor put his 6 year old between his legs as he was chewing through 1’ of snow with his brand new first 9hp snowblower, and since we are good friends had to walk over and stop that. I mean a 300lb meat chopper that has a habit of kicking back when hitting things under the snow, and you put a 6 year old inside the handlebars with his chest sort of under the plate on the top, it would crush the kid in a hurry; I’ve been taken for a ride and I’m 6’2"/220 by mine! I wouldn’t let my son use it until he could pick it up when he was younger.
It is a chemical that can be used for several different things that are important in survival situations. First, a few small crystals in a gallon of water can kill the bacteria, viruses, and parasites in it. Be careful as too much is very bad. Second, various saps, sugars, and/or glycerin can be placed on a small pile of it to produce a flame.
Oh that’s really interesting. So, it basically does double duty in the essential-for-survival department; fire and clean water. Well, I guess apart from water contaminated with other things, like chemicals or something.
I have always been a fan of Macgyver and I have often been compared to him by some of my friends. One idea I think he would like would be to use aluminum as a fuel source. Normally, aluminum does not react with water because a stable oxide coating on its surface protects the metal underneath. Aluminum is actually quite reactive and the addition of a small amount of gallium to it makes it violently reactive with water to produce hydrogen. The gallium disrupts the aluminum oxide coating which exposes the reactive aluminum metal below. Using this concept alone, I have been able to carry out chemical reactions with metals that are unknown to current science. In addition, when gallium oxide is coated onto a plastic and then exposed to liquid gallium metal, it forms a mirror surface of gallium on the plastic.
