Today's post is just meant to be a quick update on the status of the Paracord Project, where we're heading next, and an update on my own personal prepping and survival goals. I'm also including a follow up to the Fire Basics post as well with a little more information that people may find useful.
As you all likely know the Paracord Project came into existence as a result of needing a way to keep track of my survival and prepping goals, as well as a way to store and keep knowledge at hand for myself and other people. The Paracord Project itself has been active for a little over six months now, and more and more people are coming to take a look at the posts. There are also a few people who are posting comments as well, which is great! I love hearing from all of you.
So far the Paracord Project is succeeding in providing information to people around the world. Maybe not millions of people, but already more people than I ever expected. In the next month or two I will be starting to do some posts on those disasters that people think are most likely to happen and that people are preparing for. This will cover everything from Peak Oil to a Global Pandemic. I will try to go into as much detail as possible, and what the possible effects and outcomes from these types of disasters might be.
As for my own personal survival goals, I have just met one specific survival goal. One of the most important things to me as a survivalist is to become debt free. Out of high school, I went straight into college, which is what was expected. However, going to college, came with one thing that has been harder and harder for college graduates in these days to get rid of. Debt. With rising school costs and less and less jobs everyday many college graduates are in the same boat.
One of my goals for this year however was to pay off one set of my student loans. Today I can happily say that I have achieved exactly that. So now its one down, and three more sets to go. I am on my way to debt free living.
Now the last post that I put up was on the basics of fire. I put this up to cover just the very basics. Most people, I assume, would already know these, and if anything the post can at least act as a refresher for some people. I wanted to put it up though just in case there was someone out there who didn't know the information.
Zee-Man posted up a comment about a second triangle which is also important for combustion. He has a short description of it in his comment so if you get a chance go ahead and take a look at it. I'm going to cover the basics of this second fire triangle as well here.
This second fire triangle is made up of the three T's. Time, turbulence and temperature. This second triangle is important, not so much for creating a fire, but for the efficiency of a fire. Most often this triangle comes into play with mechanical combustion, such as with a car engine or an Hvac system. However in a survival situation, you may have limited fuel resources, and then it would be very important to make sure your fire is burning as efficiently as possible so you don't waste fuel or heat.
Temperature is the first part of this triangle and is the easiest to explain. It coordinates very well with the heat side of the original fire triangle. This portion of the three T's is looking at the temperature your fuel is burning at. When you have combustion, if you want an efficient fire, you have to make sure that your fire is burning hot enough to burn all the fuel, otherwise some will be left behind.
The second part of the triangle is turbulence. This combines together the aspects of oxygen and fuel in the original fire triangle. Turbulence, when referring to combustion, is the process of having air and the fuel source mix together. To burn your fuel particles need to come in contact with oxygen particles. To have the combustion process take place efficiently you need enough turbulence in the system to allow these two elements to mix well enough that all your fuel can burn.
For example, if you have a room full of a flammable fuel that needs oxygen to burn, as long as there isn't any oxygen in the room, you could light a match and nothing would happen. This is because none of the fuel particles have contact with oxygen particles and you are missing one side of your fire triangle. Therefore no fire is created.
The third part of this second triangle is time. For the most effective combustion to take place you need time to allow your fuel particles to contact with oxygen particles. In some science classrooms teachers will use gasoline as a visual aid to help explain this concept. They pour the gasoline into a small container, and then they will wait a minute or so before putting a match to the gas. This is because the gasoline vapors expand and interact with the air, allowing for a large ball of flame to be produced. The longer you wait, the more interaction between the gasoline and the air, and therefore more of it will burn.
So that is it for today's quick update here at the Paracord Project. I look forward to hearing from more of you in the upcoming days and weeks. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts here or through our twitter: @ProjectParacord.
~Sara
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