Gallery: $6,000 solar-rechargeable doomsday bikes for bugging out when gas is scarce

This is my sixth year at SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, and this is the first time I’ve seen an entirely new product category crop up, here: the hunting e-bike. These new additions to the show floor are ultra-tough mountain bikes with lithium-powered electronic motors — 750W or 1000W — that use microprocessors and

Wuhan coronavirus: key developments for the week of 1/19/2020

A collection of key developments in the fight against the Wuhan coronavirus (nCoV-2019), updated throughout the week for those who just want the signal and not the noise. If there’s something you think we should include, sound off in the comments thread attached to each week’s post. Saturday, January 25 [10:53 pm] The latest clinical

CDC to screen travelers at three major US airports for deadly new virus

We’ve had our eye on a brand new, previously-unknown-to-medicine respiratory virus since we put it in our news roundup on Monday. The situation has evolved quite a bit since then, so here are the latest developments: The disease, a coronavirus that is spread through the air, is being called Wuhan Pneumonia, after the area of

The odds of political violence in Virginia just went up

If you want to see first-hand how America could conceivably slip back into the kind of political violence we saw in the 1970’s, then you should take a look at what’s currently unfolding in Virginia. It’s one of the best case studies in recent years of how social-media-fueled rumors, changing demographics, the growing urban/rural divide,

Fighting climate change by planting trees from airplanes & watering forests from the sea

Of all the carbon sequestration technologies available to us for taking greenhouse gasses back out of the atmosphere, the best by a mile are trees. Forests are nature’s carbon sinks, and instead of trying to improve on them with something man-made, savvy inventors have turned their technological know-how to cooking up new ways to reforest

World’s biggest investment fund, with $7 trillion in assets, preps for climate change

“In the near future — and sooner than most anticipate — there will be a significant reallocation of capital.” Thus writes Larry Fink, the head of New York-based Black Rock — the world’s largest asset manager, with $6.96 trillion in assets under management — in his annual letters to CEOs and shareholders. Fink says the

No matter how big the disaster, smaller preps are usually better

One of the first real-world lessons I learned in preparedness came from volunteering in shelters after Hurricane Katrina: smaller gear is generally better because it’s important to think about concealment. So when I started seriously prepping back in 2008, I started with the small stuff, first — stuff I could conceal on my body in

Review: the Spyderco Genzow HatchetHawk

Sometimes you get your hands on a piece of gear so unusual that you’re not quite sure where it belongs in your kit. This is definitely the case with the Spyderco Genzow HatchetHawk, a three-way collaboration between Spyderco, German outdoor personality Martin Genzow, and legendary American axe-maker Council Tool. The HatchetHawk is supposed to be

Why you shouldn’t worry about a devastating Iranian cyberattack, yet

Now that the US vs. Iran confrontation has entered a dangerous new phase with last night’s killing of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, I am seeing a lot of worry on Facebook and in private forums about the possibility of imminent Iranian cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, transportation, and the like. This breathless Business Insider

How to dress for a world on fire

Everywhere in my news and social feeds right now, the world is on fire. Last summer, it was California, and now it’s Australia. People are fleeing fires and choking on smoke across the developed world, and no matter where you live you watch and wonder if the fires will at some point come your way.