Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2015 i Popular Mechanics

How Is 2015 Shaping Up? Twenty-fifteen is a coupla months old, but January and February don’t count—it’s cold, and everyone just keeps asking how your holidays were. Only now is the year starting to develop any kind of personality, and it’s time to declare a theme, at least here at Popular Mechanics: empowerment. Anything is possible this year. You’re in control. You can dream up a product, design it using CAD software, and learn to print it on a 3D printer. And: You have a Home Depot or a Lowe’s within fifteen minutes of your home, so you can wander the million aisles, then make or fix anything. And: You have a billion ways to tell the world about your creations, most of which involve nothing more than the phone…

THE UPGRADE: SPEAKERS THAT FLOAT A little secret about Bluetooth speakers: They’re all pretty much the same. Some are clearer, some are louder, some are better at working after you drop them into the pool, but for the most part you pick a price point and you get music. Which is why speakers like the Crazybaby Mars ($189) are following the example of the Om/One ($199) we covered in December, using opposing magnets to float above a base. They’re no better than existing speakers, but they’re also no worse. They’re definitely more interesting. USED SIRI—ONCE, TO SEND A TEXT IN THE WINTER I when I didn’t want to take off my gloves. After that, never again. And I don’t think I’m alone. As good as voice recognition gets, aside from…

COAST GUARD RESCUE SWIMMERS SOMETIMES HAVE TO RAPPEL DOWN cliffs and dangle from helicopters to save people from churning seas. During big storms. At night. How do you get people ready for such fearsome errands? You send them to the service’s Aviation Technical Training Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, home to a $25 million indoor facility that can whip up approximations of the waves, bellowing wind, horizontal rain, and disorienting noise that rescuers will eventually face. In that building over the course of a year, instructors literally wash people out of the Aviation Survival Technician certification process. Only about twenty-five applicants annually—out of 120, most of them men between the ages of 18 and 25—finish the course to become certified rescue swimmers. The facility gets a fair amount of…

A THING YOU SHOULD KNOW Even if your Internet came into your home at the speed of light, your Wi-Fi network would still create a choke point when everyone in the family is online simultaneously. To solve this, you can bypass Wi-Fi entirely and use your electrical wiring like an enormous Ethernet cable. You’ll need a pair of power-line adapters. D-Link and Netgear sets cost about $50. One adapter plugs in to your router and a wall socket; the other plugs in to a socket and the device. This creates a new, unshared data channel for each Internet- enabled item, which means you’ll have only one thing to blame for losing in Call of Duty: your aim.…

THE STUDENTS WE INTRODUCED LAST MONTH from Freedom High School’s auto club in Freedom, Wisconsin, are still hard at work on their project cars, a 1974 Oldsmobile Delta 88 and a 1981 Chevrolet Camaro Z28. They’ve finished stripping the paint and moved on to the next stage in the restoration project: metal repair. Both cars had panels with enough rust and metal damage that they needed to be patched or entirely replaced—by welding and using plasma cutters, much to the students’ enjoyment. But many of the panels had dents the club could fix just with body filler. “My favorite part is the bodywork,” says Cole Woods, a 16-year-old junior who owns the Oldsmobile project car. “I like seeing the progress of an old car from rusty to shiny-new.” It’s especially…

A REFRIGERATOR IS AN UNNATURAL THING: a box of cold air made up of components that use electricity (hot) to move heat (also hot). If you sit next to one on a quiet day, you can hear the appliance paradoxically working— the whispery trickle of refrigerant boiling in the evaporator coil. Looking at this literal black box, you might be inclined to tear it to pieces looking for answers. But you won’t have to, because repairclinic.com technician Chris Zeisler helped us do it for you. He disassembled a standard Whirlpool side-by-side refrigerator–freezer with door-front water and ice dispenser. He found dozens of parts. None of which, it turns out, is particularly mysterious. YES, BUT HOW DOES IT WORK? If you want to make a hot space cold, you need to…

1 EUGENE, OREGON Very mild climate. No threat of hurricanes and only a minor risk of tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Great if you don’t mind ceaseless rain— or plaid. 2 SITKA, ALASKA The big advantage: You’re already used to being isolated. Surprisingly mild year-round, despite being in Alaska. An abundance of wild food sources. 3 MISSOULA, MONTANA Surrounding mountains keep extreme weather at bay. Very low threat of natural disasters. The Clark Fork River runs right through town. 4 HURRICANE, UTAH Unfortunate name, yes. But its desert climate will suit coldweather haters. Two nearby reservoirs and the Virgin River provide water. 5 WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA No major hurricane, earthquake, or tornado threats. Far enough south to avoid lake-effect snowfall. The moonshine keeps you warm.…

DURING THE GOOD TIMES, the preapocalypse, you want a dog that’s loyal, smart, and obedient. You also want a dog that barks like hell when a stranger walks up your driveway. The German shorthaired pointer has these qualities and a lot more. The breed has pulled sleds, carried packs, and gone into battle with elite U.S. forces. Its webbed paws make it a good swimmer. It can be trained to retrieve game that you kill—or to kill small animals itself. The dog’s versatility derives from deliberate breeding: Spanish and English pointers, the dalmatian, the vizsla, and a tracking hound all went into making this crafty canine. Its complex ancestry also makes it susceptible to few ailments and likely to live up to fourteen years. So maybe stock up on dog…

I’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME thinking about and preparing for disasters. To tell the truth, I started out on the fringe, buying enough military surplus Meals, Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, to put me on a government watch list. But then about a year ago, I realized my plan was absurd: My kids won’t want dehydrated veggie burgers. During the apocalypse, your duty is to keep up morale—and nothing is better for that than a great meal. To make one, you still need to be able to cook. Here, a few essentials. FIRE Matches don’t take up much space. Keep them around. And make sure the ones you buy are storm-proof. (You can make your own by dipping standard matches in melted wax.) I also recently discovered the Soto Pocket Torch,…

“This is KD4DYV,” I said, announcing my ham-radio call sign for the first time in twenty years. “Can anyone hear me?” Static. I fiddled with my handheld radio, an old Icom IC-W2A, and tried again. Nothing. The radio was all that remained of a childhood hobby, back when I also had a big, boxy rig hooked up to a thirty-two-foot antenna in my parents’ backyard, and a Morse-code key for tapping out messages. The technical name for all this is amateur radio, an old-timey pursuit in which operators pass a test, acquire a license and call sign from the Federal Communications Commission, and then spend their days chitchatting across the globe. The term ham was once an insult, a name professionals gave to amateurs with clumsy Morse skills and mediocre…

IF THE WORLD ENDS, a lot of folks are going to get very lost. Without email or smartphones, families scattered across the country that rely on long-distance communication will be forced to find one another in real life again, in a countrywide game of postapocalyptic Marco Polo. I’ve read Stephen King’s The Stand. This is not going to be easy. Assuming all goes well, my family will be better off than most: We got drunk at my mom’s birthday dinner one year and unintentionally chose our apocalypse rendezvous location. At the time my brother Joe was living in Boston, and my parents were in Beaumont, Texas. I lived in New York City. With so much country in between us, how would we avoid missing each other? To start, we considered…

The watch: MTM Silver Patriot ($500) The wearer: Albert Vargas, Los Angeles Fire Department The evidence: “The Patriot takes constant abuse. There have been times when I’ve hit it pretty hard with forcible-entry tools or the fourinch hose. It gets bumped when I’m carrying the SCBA, our breathing apparatus. It’s been exposed to house fires hotter than 1,200 degrees.” The watch: Luminox Navy Seal Chronograph ($355) The wearer: Pat LaFrieda, butcher The evidence: “It’s gotten soaked in blood. It’s slammed against bone in production and bounced off wooden pallets in distribution. I wore it hunting in 10-degree weather. I had it on when I flipped my Polaris Sportsman 500 quad off a ridge. Still ticking.” The watch: Casio G-Shock G2310R-1 ($99) The wearer: Mark Clement, contractor; cohost of MyFixitUpLife The…

MINUTE REPEATER A holdover from the pocket watch, repeaters have a lever on the side that, when flipped, activates tiny hammers that hit differently pitched gongs. Three tones, from low to high, signify each hour, quarter-hour, and minute, respectively. Minute repeaters often cost six figures due to the complexity of installing the many gears. Example: Audemars Piguet Minute Repeater PERPETUAL CALENDAR Mechanical watches with annual calendars must be reset three times every four years. (They count twenty-nine days each February to account for leap years.) A perpetual calendar, however, accounts for leap years only when they happen, requiring correction just once every hundred years, since each new century not evenly divisible by 400 (2100, 2200, etc.) does not contain a leap year. Example: Jaeger-LeCoultre Master MOON PHASE Originally used by…

RUBBER PRO: Casual, comfortable, washable (with a little soap and water), waterproof. CON: Inappropriate in most formal settings. METAL PRO: Durable, formal, shiny, sometimes interesting from an engineering standpoint (see below). CON: Occasionally pulls out arm hairs. FABRIC PRO: Casual, comfortable, washable, easy to swap out. CON: Has a relatively short life span, could lead you to consider matching your watchband to your clothing. LEATHER PRO: Classic, formal, elegant, safe. Smells nice. CON: If you are prone to perspiration, that nice smell can be replaced with a pretty terrible one. MORE ON THIS WATCHBAND: The MTM Special Ops Trigger uses a first-of-its-kind bracelet linked with ball bearings instead of pins, making the band much more flexible for a closer fit and no more pinched skin. The face, too, is impressively…

by WeatherTech® TechLiner® WeatherTech’s precise digitally measured products continue to be at the top of the automotive accessories industry. One of their newest products, TechLiner® pushes the boundaries of the standard truck bed protection. The TechLiner® features a virtually perfect fit, that sits snugly to the exact contours of a truck bed. Talk about the product has included much discussion about its easy installation, that does not require the messy sprays or adhesives that are seen for other truck bed protection products. The material is flexible, durable, chemical resistant and UV resistant; exemplifying a high quality, long-lasting WeatherTech® product. TO ORDER WeatherTech.com · 800-441-6287 ©2015 MacNeil IP LLC…

AN EARTHQUAKE CAN HAVE POSITIVE SIDE EFFECTS. LIKE IN 1994, when, in response to an earthquake that damaged many hospitals in the San Fernando Valley, California issued seismic safety regulations specifically for patient-care facilities. But they were never instituted—until last summer. Now a huge number of California hospitals are being retrofitted or completely replaced, and officials are seizing the opportunity to address sustainability by incorporating some of the most advanced technology available. The result is a petri dish of innovation— and a model for the industry. 1 Plant a garden. Rooftop gardens reduce storm-water runoff and provide better insulation, which can result in an average savings of up to 40 percent on heating and cooling bills. Plus, research shows that green space helps the healing process. University of California–San Francisco…

Enough with the stop/start engines. It’s a great idea, in theory. Your engine shuts off at red lights, stop signs, and busy Taco Bell drivethroughs— whenever a momentary pause provides an opportunity to save some fuel. In practice, stop/start systems are annoying, pointless, and sometimes dangerous. Your car is barely using any fuel at idle anyway, and when it fires back up it’s with a burp and a shudder, like someone startled grandpa during his nap. And that’s if you’re lucky enough that it actually restarts. We’ve had three cars from three different companies execute the stop part of the equation and then fail to restart. So on the plus side, you save a thimble of fuel. Downside: enraged truckers slash your tires as your lane sits through two traffic-light…

DESPITE WHAT SOME BARISTAS WANT YOU TO BELIEVE, making coffee is not an art. It’s a mechanical process more akin to culinary science, in which an ingredient is acted upon in ways proved to produce the best-tasting, repeatable results. As master roaster and resident palate at La Colombe Torrefaction, the venerated Philadelphia-based coffee company, Jean Philippe Iberti takes a gastronomic approach. “I treat it like spiced water,” he says. “Coffee beans and spices—which are extracted from bark, roots, seeds, buds, and hard berries—are grown in similar climates, and both require the application of controlled heat to release their essential oils and unlock their endlessly variable flavors.” Although specifics vary with preparation method, Iberti explains here the principles for the classic French press, a laboratorial glass beaker with a plunger lid…

I ’VE ALWAYS BEEN MUSICAL. My grandpa even had a nickname for me as a kid: lekio. It means radio in Hawaiian. At first it was keyboards. I always joke that, as an Asian kid raised by Asian parents, it was either violin or piano, and piano was less boring to me. I started writing music soon after, and eventually I picked up guitar. I moved to Los Angeles to be a singer–songwriter, but I was like every other female musician with an acoustic guitar. I wanted to do something different, so I learned to loop. My first looper was a tiny two-track called the Boss RC-30. I went into the garage to learn how to use it, and I sucked. My timing was terrible. That’s the most important part…

LIKE A FRAME ON A POSTER OR A BEARD ON A TEENAGER, an orderly lawn matures a house, making it look complete, self-assured, put together. You don’t need to hire a landscaping service to have a lawn like this, but you do need a quality edger, the kind that can cut an arrow-straight notch time after time without tiring you out. To find such a tool, we gathered five and put them to work on acres of grass along hundreds of yards of pavement. We emerged covered in dirt and clippings, but we found a few favorites. And you should see the lawn. ARIENS 986103 $420 Engine: 136-cc Depth settings: Four Angle settings: Seven Likes: This well-designed machine easily took first place. Its solid construction virtually eliminates vibration, even on…

EXPERT NATE BECKER DOG MUSHER, EAGLE, ALASKA After spending his twenties and early thirties as a firefighter and paramedic in Wyoming and, later, for the National Park Service in the Grand Canyon, Becker moved to Eagle—a town with a population of 86—in 2008 to lead dog-sledding trips in the backcountry with Bush Alaska Expeditions. Here, he shares his survival rules. GEAR Always take a sleeping bag. You never know when you’ll get stuck out and have to spend the night or just need a quick warm-up. And I bring a preassembled emergency pack. Right on top is a pair of warm mitts in a ziplock bag. History is riddled with stories of people who didn’t survive because their hands froze. You can walk a thousand miles on frozen feet, but…

ALIVE: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read “The last discovery in their search for new tastes and new sources of food were the brains of the bodies which they had hitherto discarded. Canessa had told them that, while they might not be of particular nutritional value, they contained glucose, which would give them energy; he had been the first to take a head, cut the skin across the forehead, pull back the scalp, and crack open the skull with an axe. The brains were then either divided up and eaten while still frozen or used to make the sauce for a stew.” ADRIFT: 76 Days Lost at Sea, by Steven Callahan Because if you have common sense, a little general knowledge, and a lot of fear,…

THE SITUATIONAL GUIDE TO SUPERFLUOUS SURVIVAL Stuff may not absolutely need, but, boy, it’d be nice to have. YOU’VE GOT TO WORK IN THE DARK. With six superbright LEDs embedded in the handle, three flanking each side of the knife, the SOG BladeLight Folder ($85) pulls double duty as a flashlight and a blade. YOU NEED TO KEEP WARM DURING A NUCLEAR WINTER. The waterproof Westcomb Mission Parka ($550) uses synthetic and natural down for maximum insulation. YOU WANT STEAKS, BUT A COOLER IS TOO CUMBERSOME. Made out of the same durable material as white-water rafts, the Yeti Hopper ($350) is incredibly tough, leakproof, and can keep contents cold for two days. YOUR HANDS ARE IN DANGER OF GETTING FROSTBITE. There’s nothing warmer than real animal fur from the arctic.…

BREAKFAST BACKPACKER’S PANTRY ORGANIC CINNAMON APPLE OATS & QUINOA Slightly better than instant oatmeal, and the quinoa ups the nutritional value. MOUNTAIN HOUSE WRAPS BREAKFAST SKILLET The eggs are fully cooked and then freeze-dried, so texture is off. The sausage and peppers help, though. LUNCH BACKPACKER’S PANTRY PAD THAI Delicious food for the pretentious prepper: international, vegan, and gluten free. It also has 460 calories, which you’ll need. DINNER GOOD TO-GO HERBED MUSHROOM RISOTTO Created by an Iron Chef winner, and it shows— perfect risotto texture. Suitable for dinner parties. NATURAL HIGH BBQ BEEF WITH MASHED POTATOES Great idea, terrible execution. Dry potatoes and more BBQ sauce than beef. DESSERT ASTRONAUT ICE CREAM SANDWICH Tastes exactly like an ice cream sandwich, can’t melt, and no brain freeze. So, just fantastic.…

An Appreciation It took two weeks of searching to find my first serious watch, a tide-reading, GPSenabled timepiece that, for $400, would make me punctual and a better surfer. After adding it to my Amazon cart, I asked a friend, a savvy waterman in Hawaii, what he wore: “Cheap Casio.” No mention of any special features—he just appreciated its function. So I ordered one of those instead. Three months in and the W800H-1AV sits on the short list of near-perfect devices I’ve used. The digits are big enough to see the time and date with a quick glance. Its body is thick enough to find the LED light button, even with motorcycle gloves on, yet it still fits underneath a shirt cuff. I actually like it best with a suit—I’m…

You own a watch. You own a smartphone. You own more than one smartphone. You see no problem in owning more than one smartphone. You own a Nest thermostat. You can program a DVR. You have a 4K TV. You prefer the Jetsons to the Bradys. You have referred to yourself, proudly, as an early adopter. You’ve stood in line for a smartphone. You have a friend with a smart watch. You’ve never made fun of that friend. You feel anxiety when your phone is more than five feet from you. You do not need a manual to pair a Bluetooth device. You can reset your own Wi-Fi router. You don’t mind dictating text to a phone or computer. You love getting email. You have to respond to a text…

1850s AND ’60s The first American watch companies, like Waltham Watch Company, Elgin National Watch Company, and E. Howard & Co., are established near Boston and in Illinois. 1914 Radioactive radium paint is used to make watch hands glow in the dark. After clients and employees lose teeth and develop cancer, the radium is eventually replaced by safe photoluminescent materials like zinc sulfide and strontium aluminate. 1940 IWC Schaffhausen introduces the Big Pilot’s Watch, designed with a large onion crown (now IWC’s signature) that allowed pilots to adjust their watches without removing their gloves. 1926 The Rolex Oyster becomes the first water-resistant watch after the free-spinning crown is replaced by a threaded crown, allowing it to screw in to the case. 1917 Louis Cartier creates the signature Tank watch, modeled…

EASY REASONABLE HARD Difficulty: Time: 30 minutes (or less) Ages: 6 to 12 Materials Instructions STEP-BY-STEP 1. Use a hot-melt glue gun to fasten the reducer fittings to the goggles. 2. Cut bungee cord to length, then wrap and glue the cords around each fitting, gluing the ends to prevent fraying. 3. Use scissors to cut the cleaning pad into two arch-shaped “eyebrows.” Fasten them above the fittings with hot-melt glue. 4. Cut of a section of the string mop and glue its supporting band to the goggles’ top shield. • kid-only • parent and kid…

Who are these guys? Bertrand Piccard (far right) is an aeronaut who copiloted the first nonstop trip around the world in a balloon in 1999. In 2003 he teamed up with André Borschberg (right), an engineer and former fighter pilot. With a crew of eighty engineers and technicians, the two devoted the next twelve years to developing one of the most innovative solar-powered machines on the planet. Will this be their first attempt? At traveling around the world, yes. There was an earlier proto type, Solar Impulse 1, that broke eight records, three of them when Borschberg flew it for twenty-six hours straight in the first night flight in the history of solar aviation. They’re now on to Solar Impulse 2, which has greater energy density in its 1,400 pounds…

THE FIRST DISTILLERY WITHIN THE CITY limits of Evanston, Illinois, Few Spirits was founded in 2011 and represents the grain and the glory of the great American Midwest. “We make grain spirits because we’re in the country’s breadbasket,” says founder Paul Hletko, whose distilling philosophy is “grain to glass.” “We’re able to source our corn, wheat, and rye regionally, much of it from farm cooperatives.” A former patent attorney, Hletko overcame antiquated laws in order to root Few in Evanston, one of Prohibition’s birthplaces. Today the alley entrance still evokes the feeling of that era’s hidden production. Located in a former repair shop for “cars of unknown ownership,” Few has a 2,700-square-foot distilling floor and a 400-square-foot tasting room. Although the science of the distillation process is relatively simple, the…

THAT IS SO REMOTE I COULD BE THE VERY FIRST HUMAN TO STAND THERE? A THERE ARE PLENTY OF PLACES. THE INSIDE OF MY CLOTHES dryer, for instance. I’m pretty sure nobody’s ever stood in there. Come on over and make history, Commander Armstrong. Actually, while this is obviously an impossible question to answer definitively without a time machine and a helluva set of binoculars, there is reason to believe that such places—small corners of our country unsullied by the soles of man—do exist. Possibly in Alaska, but that’s cheating—they’re just not easy to find in the contiguous states. “The places left are the ones that are really hard to get to,” says Rich Rudow, an explorer and board member of the Coalition of American Canyoneers, and notably a man…

A COUPLE OF YEARS AFTER my wife and I bought our house, I gutted an unused room and turned it into an office. The project was highly educational, in the sense that by the time it was finished I possessed many skills I ought to have had before I began. Even so, the office turned out pretty well, and in the course of building it I became the owner of virtually every kind of power tool. I also acquired quite a few analog tools— including story poles, which I’d learned about from a carpenter friend. A story pole is a homemade measuring rod on which the only markings are ones you make yourself, specifically for the job at hand. For many projects a story pole is easier to manipulate than…

Innovation is the path to the future. Stauer takes that seriously. That’s why we developed the Compendium Hybrid, a stunningly-designed hybrid chronograph with over one dozen analog and digital functions that is more versatile than any watch that we have ever engineered. We originally priced the Stauer Compendium Hybrid at $395 based on the market for advanced sports watches... but then stopped ourselves. Since this is no ordinary economy, we decided to start at 92% off from day one. That means this new technological marvel can be yours for only $2995! Welcome a new Digital Revolution. The watch’s extraordinary dial seamlessly blends an analog watch face with a stylish digital display. Three super-bright luminous hands keep time along the inner dial, while a trio of circular LCD windows track the…

• Prepper • Casual survivalist COMMUNICATION Establish a dead drop—a secret place to deposit and retrieve messages when communications go down. Tell only trusted confidants about this place. Get your ham-radio license. Plenty of people still use ham radios to communicate, including FEMA. In a catastrophe, it might be your only option. (See page 62.) HEALTH A properly equipped go bag, or bug-out bag, is heavy. Establish a training regimen on various terrains, so that you can flee without getting winded. Pick up a fitness tracker. In a low-food situation, it’ll track your vitals and even count your calories. In the meantime, you’ll just be healthier. FOOD Practice hunting the animals native to your area. Worth noting: Domesticated rabbits are less gamy than their wild counterparts. Nonfood items you should…

BEAR GRYLLS IS A WUSS. Les Stroud (you may know him as Survivorman) is just camping. Mick Dodge—well, that guy is pretty badass, but he’s a barefoot lunatic. And almost all of the other hundred survival shows aren’t actually about surviving, they’re about living in a warm home deep in the woods (I’m talking to you, Alaska: The Last Frontier). The Discovery Channel is the only one that gets survival TV right, with its simple, genius Naked and Afraid. Two complete strangers, a man and a woman, meet completely naked—without food or water—in a desert, swamp, or forest. Then they walk the earth like God intended for a harrowing twenty-one days. Yes, it’s the same damn show every episode: The two people get along, build a shelter, struggle to make…

FIRST PRIORITY Etón FR150 MicroLink AM/FM emergency radio with built-in cellphone charger, hand crank, and solar panel. Essential. Knife. Maglite LED flashlight. Doubles as a weapon. Extra batteries. Whistle. (See “How To: Signal for Help,” page 62.) Mirror. Flint and tinder. Multitool. Mylar blanket. Lightweight and warm. Extra pair of weather-appropriate clothes. Tarp, tube tent, or dropcloth. Paracord (a hundred feet). Durable and versatile. Any necessary medication. First-aid kit. Nonperishable food, such as MREs or canned goods. (See “The Dehydrated-Food Taste Test,” page 61.) Water bottle with filter, LifeStraw, or canteen. Canteen cup. Gloves. Thick enough but not too thick. Rain poncho. Local maps, preferably topographical. Waterproof matches/butane lighter. Potassium iodide/chlorine tablets. A few drops decontaminates your water. SECOND PRIORITY Collapsible shovel. For fire pits and latrines. Metal spork. Insect…

SIGNAL FOR HELP “If you have a whistle, use a one-two-three, pause, one-two-three pattern. This is more recognizable to the human ear. Mirrors are also important. Nothing in nature can be mistaken for a signal mirror. Same goes for brightly colored construction tape.” — THOMAS COYNE, FOUNDER AND CHIEF INSTRUCTOR, SURVIVAL TRAINING SCHOOL OF CALIFORNIA HOW TO: MAKE FIRE WITH A GUM WRAPPER AND AA BATTERY 1 Fold an open wrapper in half, width-wise. 2 Fully cut diagonally from the open side to almost the edge on the folded side. Unfolded, the two ends should be wide triangles and the connecting portion as narrow as possible. 3 Hold the foil side of each end on opposite terminals of the battery. The middle section will burst into flames. Have tinder ready.…

EXPERT A fourteen-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service, Meyers has been the lead climbing ranger of the Mount Shasta Ranger District since 2010. His team is on call year-round to lead search-and-rescue efforts, averaging ten to twelve annually. AVALANCHES An avalanche needs a few things to happen: a slab—a cohesive mass of snow—and a surface for it to slide down, like a frozen crust, hard old snow, or the ground. It needs a slope of between 30 and 45 degrees. Less isn’t steep enough, and more will cause the snow to slough off naturally. And it needs a trigger, like a skier or a snowmobile—which is how you get into trouble. If someone gets buried, finding him is no longer the hardest part, thanks to avalanche beacons. Digging him…

IF WE MAY . . . For generations, if you asked a man the time, he’d snap his arm out to full length so the cuff of his shirt pulled back a little, then bend his arm at the elbow and glance down at the watch on his wrist. “Quarter o’ four,” he’d say. The whole thing took about a second. Here, too often, is what he does now: He shoves his hand into his pants pocket, or into the folds of the suit jacket beneath his overcoat, fishing for his telephone, which he produces and holds in front of his face. Then he pushes the button and the time pops up on the screen and he says, “Three forty-six.” This is no way to tell time. It’s inefficient. It…

QUARTZ A battery sends an electric current to a tiny, tuning-fork-shaped piece of quartz, causing it to oscillate at 32,768 vibrations per second. The watch’s circuits reduce that number to one vibration per second, or one hertz, and those pulses are translated into ticks by a tiny electric motor. (This is why mechanical watches, whose springs steadily release tension, have smoother second-hand movement than quartz watches.) Quartz’s indifference to temperature fluctuations makes it well-suited for harsh conditions. MECHANICAL A balance, or wheel, moves according to the energy expended by the tightly wound spring that powers the watch. On manual-wind watches, that energy comes from regularly turning the exterior crown to apply tension to the spring. Automatic, or self-winding, watches have a semicircular weight that pivots as your arm moves, turning…