Latest news with #survival
CNN
2 hours ago
- Climate
- CNN
5 things to know for June 20: Israel-Iran, Hurricane Erick, National Guard, Minnesota shooting, Serial rapist
Raging wars. Climate change. Natural disasters. Global pandemics. These issues and others have some preparing for the worst. They're stockpiling food and water, purchasing guns and medicines, assembling 'bug-out bags' and listening to survivalist podcasts. Yet despite what you might imagine when someone says the word 'prepper,' many of these people are liberals. Here's what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day. Get '5 Things' in your inbox If your day doesn't start until you're up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to your new favorite morning fix. Sign up here for the '5 Things' newsletter. The weeklong conflict between Israel and Iran shows no signs of de-escalation. Israel's military said it struck dozens of targets in Iran overnight, including missile production sites and a nuclear research facility in Tehran. Iran's Red Crescent Society said five hospitals were damaged as a result of Israeli strikes. An Iranian missile was intercepted over Israel, but the fall of munitions reportedly caused several fires in Beer Sheva. Iran also issued an evacuation warning to Israel's Channel 14 news, which it claims is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 'propaganda channel.' On Thursday, the White House said that President Donald Trump will decide whether to launch a US strike on Iran within the next two weeks, and in the meantime, diplomatic efforts may proceed. However, Iran has said that it will not engage in further talks with the US until the Israeli attacks end. Erick slammed into Mexico's Oaxaca state yesterday as a dangerous Category 3 storm. The hurricane unleashed powerful 125 mph winds at the coast and dumped heavy rains inland. Although official damage reports are still pending, photos from the region showed the storm had affected homes, businesses, beaches and boats. Erick is the first major hurricane — Category 3 or greater — on record to hit Mexico before July. As it tracks through Mexico's steep mountains, the storm is expected to quickly deteriorate and should dissipate by early Friday. A federal appeals court has granted a request from President Trump to maintain control of roughly 4,000 National Guardsmen from California. In an unsigned ruling, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by Gov. Gavin Newsom that the president had violated federal law when he seized control of part of the state's militia to quell anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. Last week, senior US District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that Trump had not satisfied any of the requirements that must be met to call up a state's National Guard and that the demonstrations did not constitute an insurrection. More legal wrangling over how Trump is using the guardsmen is expected during a hearing this afternoon. Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, shared details of the harrowing attack that left them critically injured. Around 2 a.m. last Saturday, the Hoffmans were asleep at home when they heard someone pounding on their front door who identified himself as a police officer. But when the couple and their adult daughter, Hope, opened the door, the man began shooting. The state senator lunged at the gunman and was shot nine times. When his wife tried to push the man and shut the door, she was shot eight times. Hope Hoffman managed to get the door closed and locked, then called 911. After undergoing several surgeries, John Hoffman is now in critical but stable condition; Yvette Hoffman is in stable condition as well. The gunman also shot and killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, that same night. Authorities later arrested Vance Boelter for the attacks. One of the worst sex offenders in UK history is going to prison. Zhenhao Zou, 28, who was convicted of sexually assaulting 10 women in the UK and China, was sentenced on Thursday to life behind bars with a minimum term of 24 years. According to prosecutors, Zou would use dating apps to find his victims. He would invite the women to his apartment, then drug and rape them. Zou also filmed some of the attacks using his cell phone and hidden cameras. In March, he was found guilty of rape, false imprisonment, voyeurism and several other offenses, including the possession of extreme pornographic images and the possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offense. Police said there could be more than 50 other victims. Game 7, baby!The Indiana Pacers defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder last night, 108-91, and forced a Game 7 of the NBA Finals. The matchup will take place Sunday at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City. Beaned in the dugoutTampa Bay Rays pitcher Hunter Bigge was in the dugout on Thursday night when a foul ball struck him in the cheek. The 27-year-old right-hander flashed a thumbs-up sign as he was carted off the field in a medical cart. 'Sorry for what happened'Golfer Wyndham Clark has expressed regret for his behavior last weekend at the US Open. The course at Oakmont Country Club frustrated many of the world's best golfers. A 'life-changing' raiseThe Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have received a 400% pay increase, according to the docuseries 'America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.' Previously, many of the cheerleaders had to work second jobs just to make ends meet. He's back!After being banned last year, champion eater Joey Chestnut is returning to the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest. Will he set a new record? Which volcano erupted this week, sending an enormous ash column into the sky?A. Mount St. HelensB. Mount RainierC. Mount Lewotobi Laki LakiD. Mount Doom Take me to the quiz! 70That's how many captive-bred Southern white rhinos — the world's second-largest land mammal — were transported 2,100 miles from South Africa to the Akagera National Park in Rwanda as part of an initiative to 'rewild' them. 'Now I believe that it is a national security interest of the United States for Iran not to have a bomb, but I don't believe that will be achieved by the United States getting dragged into a war with Iran. And I hope that the Congress will vote against that.' — Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who is co-sponsoring a bill with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie to limit President Trump's ability to get involved militarily in the conflict between Israel and Iran. Check your local forecast here>>> Look, up in the sky!An astrophotographer recently traveled to West Penwith, England, to witness the beauty of a truly dark night sky.
New York Times
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Multigenerational Historical Novel. And Only 200 Pages.
I'LL BE RIGHT HERE, by Amy Bloom Amy Bloom's new novel emits the opposite of main-character energy. A German word might be needed to describe its contrast to a bildungsroman. Guppenporträt? Germany, though, is an enemy in 'I'll Be Right Here,' which while not historical fiction in the traditional, door-stopping sense — its many threads are tied up in exactly 200 pages — does use the Second World War as backdrop. Gazala and Samir are orphaned Algerian youths, a girl and her adopted brother, four years older, trying to survive in occupied Paris. He works in a bakery, and she, being in possession of 'good hands,' is conscripted to massage (innocently) its tired old owner. For a time, the siblings meet and mingle with real-life figures. Gazala begins a job tending to, and living with, Colette — 'Famous Writer, Anti-Semite, Beloved Friend,' a chapter title proclaims — even sharing a room with her Jewish husband, Maurice, as he hides from the Third Reich. She also meets Suzanne Belperron, the jewelry designer who made pieces for the Duchess of Windsor (stylish but notorious for her chumminess with Nazis), and swipes one of her brooches. Belperron is trying to save her own Jewish business partner and lover, Bernard Herz, from certain death, having torn up and eaten the handwritten pages of their business directory during his arrest. As if in compensation for this grim act, and the general deprivations of war, 'I'll Be Right Here' is replete with delicious food, or thoughts of it, on practically every page, like the memory of a chicken made in 1939 with rosemary, lemon and 24 cloves of garlic. By my count this is the third Bloom book to feature fruit on the cover, suggesting sweetness, juiciness and, obliquely, sex. There is even a character named Honey, lest you forgot that life, despite its many trials, is sweet. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Daily Mail
14 hours ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
Super Natural by Alex Riley: Boil it, drown it, nuke it - but you can't kill it
Super Natural: how life thrives in impossible places by Alex Riley (Atlantic Books £22, 368pp) A tiny animal called a tardigrade was first identified in 1861, and described as 'a little puppy-shaped animal very busy pawing about . . . a very comical amusing fellow'. They've also been called 'water bears' and 'moss piglets'. What's truly staggering, says Alex Riley in this brilliant new book, is 'that such a squishy and microscopically cuddly animal would turn out to be so extraordinarily tough'. They can live at 6,000 metres above sea level, survive in boiling water for half an hour. They can endure pressures of 1,000 atmospheres and radiation 1,000 times the lethal dose for humans. Oh, and they're fine about being fired into space, and surviving space vacuum and solar and galactic radiation with aplomb. Their secret appears to be an ability to dehydrate, yet remain alive. In this state they don't even age. Tardigrades are a key reason scientists think that total sterilisation of the Earth would be impossible. 'Once life begins on a planet,' said a team from Oxford and Harvard, 'it is likely to endure.' There are fish that live at 2c below freezing, fungi that flourish inside the Chernobyl reactor, and turtles that don't need to take a breath for six months. Riley is good at sketching the geeks at the forefront of the research. One, supposedly an expert on mammalian hibernation, now cheerfully admits, after years of close study, that 'they've confused the living crap out of me'. It's as if the more we learn about nature, the more we don't understand. Surviving on very little oxygen, bar-headed geese migrate over the Himalayas, flying at an impossible 8,000 metres, thanks to some brilliant adaptations in their blood cells and lungs. There's the possibility that the geese have been flying this route for over 50 million years, since before the Himalayas were there. Another lesson from nature is that destruction is also creation. Two billion years ago, photosynthetic bacteria nearly exterminated life on Earth when they began to belch out oxygen, a gas hitherto very rare in our atmosphere. Yet after a huge die-off, new life forms emerged to exploit this resource. Some 440 million years ago, trees quickly colonised the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea, and sucked up mega-tonnes of CO2 in the process, thus abruptly 'turning a greenhouse world into an ice world'. Some 85 per cent of all species became extinct. Today, the disaster of Chernobyl has a sobering lesson, too. Nature flourishes and multiplies here because the humans have left. Nature doesn't really mind radiation; what it can't cope with is people. James Lovelock, of the Gaia theory, suggested that the best way to protect the tropical rainforests would be to dump radioactive waste there, 'to exclude humans'. Riley takes comfort in the resilience of nature. While he's dismayed by erratic climate change and collapsing biodiversity, none of these can really threaten life on Earth, though they may well threaten us. The tardigrades will keep going, evolving into new and unimaginable forms of life.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
28 Years Later: A terrifying vision of Britain turning in on itself
Few places in Britain scream zombie apocalypse less than the Northumbrian coast, which makes it the perfect setting for Danny Boyle 's new film. This transfixingly nasty, shrewdly postponed sequel to 2002's 28 Days Later finds a knot of survivors ensconced on the island of Lindisfarne where the otherwise endemic Rage virus has yet to reach. The menfolk work with their hands, the children sing hymns at school, and in the evenings, bitter is swilled by the tankard, while an accordion leads the revellers in roaring song. This little heaven built in hell's despair is separated from the ghoul-infested mainland by a gated tidal causeway which only the untainted few are permitted to cross. You might say its inhabitants have taken back control – but then so has virus-free Europe, which has the entire UK under a militarily enforced lockdown of the damned. The original 28 Days Later – written, like this one, with a beady sociological eye by Alex Garland – noted the civil unrest that had started to fester as the optimism of the early Blair years began to fade. This follow-up doesn't re-take the temperature of British society one generation on so much as vivisect its twitching remains. Call it Disemb-owell and Pressburger: an unholy hybrid of A Canterbury Tale and Cannibal Holocaust which Boyle was perhaps uniquely placed to pull off, and which stands as his finest film since 2008's Slumdog Millionaire. It isn't 'about' Brexit or Covid or anything else so crudely specific: rather, it's a phantasmagorical vision of a deeply familiar, vulnerable, beautiful nation that has become intent on simultaneously turning in on and against itself. Its plot centres on a 12-year-old lad called Spike (Alfie Williams, a real find) who illicitly leaves his island haven to search the mainland for a much-whispered-about doctor (Ralph Fiennes) who might be able to help his mother Isla (Jodie Comer) overcome an unknown disease. Spike's father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a seasoned stalker of the infected, among whom muscular 'alphas' have begun to emerge. (Presumably because fabric rips and rots, one point of difference with the first film and its now canonically sidelined original successor, 2007's 28 Weeks Later, is that the zombies here are obviously nude; sometimes pendulously so.) Early on in the film, Taylor-Johnson is hungry to induct his son into the hunting rite, and their first joint expedition proves as heart-in-throat for the audience as it does arrow-in-throat for most of their targets. The precise moments of impact are captured by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle with a sickening, time-freezing jerk, as if the camera operator from The Matrix has just had his neck snapped. Mantle shot much of the film on (augmented) iPhone cameras, which give the regularly outrageous action a terrifyingly ordinary texture like Facebook photos from a walking holiday in Alnmouth. Garland employs a strain of peculiarly British pulp humour – very 2000 AD, very Warhammer 40,000 – to undercut the ambient dread. And flashes of Arthurian fantasias and wartime newsreel footage (as well as a pointed double cameo for the now-felled Sycamore Gap tree) serve as regular nudges in the ribs as he and Boyle toy with the notion of a 21st century British national myth. Perhaps more than any of the above, though, it's Fiennes's gently patrician, RP-accented doctor – whose bedside manner is impeccable even when stripped to the waist and slathered in iodine – which gives 28 Years Later its lingering, Kiplingian ache. A brief prologue and epilogue suggest that next January's sequel, titled The Bone Temple and directed by The Marvels' Nia DaCosta, will stir Scottish Presbyterianism into the mix. What British end of the world worth its salt would be without it? 15 cert, 115 mins. In cinemas from June 20
CNN
3 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
These preppers have ‘bug-out' bags, guns and a fear of global disaster. They're also left-wing
Hurricanes Storms Climate changeFacebookTweetLink Follow The day after President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Eric Shonkwiler looked at his hiking bag to figure out what supplies he had. 'I began to look at that as a resource for escape, should that need to happen,' he said. He didn't have the terminology for it at the time, but this backpack was his 'bug-out bag' — essential supplies for short-term survival. It marked the start of his journey into prepping. In his Ohio home, which he shares with his wife and a Pomeranian dog, Rosemary, he now has a six-month supply of food and water, a couple of firearms and a brood of chickens. 'Resources to bridge the gap across a disaster,' he said. Margaret Killjoy's entry point was a bleak warning in 2016 from a scientist friend, who told her climate change was pushing the global food system closer than ever to collapse. Killjoy started collecting food, water and generators. She bought a gun and learned how to use it. She started a prepping podcast, Live Like the World is Dying, and grew a community. Prepping has long been dominated by those on the political right. The classic stereotype, albeit not always accurate, is of the lone wolf with a basement full of Spam, a wall full of guns, and a mind full of conspiracy theories. Shonkwiler and Killjoy belong to a much smaller part of the subculture: They are left-wing preppers. This group is also preparing for a doom-filled future, and many also have guns, but they say their prepping emphasizes community and mutual aid over bunkers and isolationism. In an era of barreling crises — from wars to climate change — some say prepping is becoming increasingly appealing to those on the left. The roots of modern-day prepping in the United States go back to the 1950s, when fears of nuclear war reached a fever pitch. The 1970s saw the emergence of the survivalist movement, which dwindled in the 1990s as it became increasingly associated with an extreme-right subculture steeped in racist ideology. A third wave followed in the early 2000s, when the term 'prepper' began to be adopted more widely, said Michael Mills, a social scientist at Anglia Ruskin University, who specializes in survivalism and doomsday prepping cultures. Numbers swelled following big disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2008 financial crisis. A watershed moment for right-wing preppers was the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Mills said. For those on the left, it was Trump's 2016 election. Preppers of all political stripes are usually motivated by a 'foggy cloud of fear' rather than a belief in one specific doomsday scenario playing out, Mills said. Broad anxieties tend to swirl around the possibility of economic crises, pandemics, natural disasters, war and terrorism. 'We've hit every one of those' since the start of this century, said Anna Maria Bounds, a sociology professor at Queens College, who has written a book about New York's prepper subculture. These events have solidified many preppers' fears that, in times of crisis, the government would be 'overwhelmed, under-prepared and unwilling to help,' she said. This fear is where Marlon Smith's interest in preparedness began. Growing up in Trinidad, he lived through an attempted coup in 1990 that sparked his concern the government would not be there in times of disaster. This only deepened after he moved to New York City and watched the aftermath of 9/11 and then Hurricane Katrina. 'You see the inability of the government to truly help their citizens,' he said. Smith, who now lives in New Jersey, runs a fashion company by day and spends his weekends teaching survival skills — including how to survive nuclear fallout. 'People find it funny that I work in women's evening wear and yet I do this hardcore prepping and survivalism in the woods,' he said. It's hard to pin down the exact number of preppers in the US. Mills says 5 million is a reasonable estimate; others would say much higher. Chris Ellis, a military officer and academic who researches disaster preparedness, puts the figure at around 20 to 23 million using data from FEMA household surveys. Figuring out the proportion of preppers on the left is perhaps even trickier. Mills, who has surveyed 2,500 preppers over the past decade, has consistently found about 80% identify as conservatives, libertarians or another right-wing ideology. He doesn't see any dramatic upswing in left-wing preppers. Anecdotal evidence, however, points to increased interest from this side of the political spectrum. Several left-wing preppers told CNN about the burgeoning popularity of their newsletters, social media channels and prepping courses. Shonkwiler says subscriber numbers to his newsletter When/If increase exponentially whenever right-wing views make headlines, especially elections. He saw a huge uptick when Trump was reelected. Smith has noticed more liberals among his growing client roster for prepping courses. He has an upcoming session teaching a group in the Hamptons — 'all Democrats,' he said. Smith is at pains to keep politics out of prepping, however, and makes his clients sign a waiver agreeing not to talk about it. 'You leave your politics and your religion at the door. … You come here to learn; I'll teach you,' he said. In some ways, there aren't huge differences in how preppers on the left and right prepare, Mills said. Both focus on long-term supplies of food and water, gathering equipment needed to 'bug in,' when they shelter in their homes, and 'bug out,' when they need to leave in a hurry. Many left-wing preppers also have guns. Killjoy is open about the fact she owns firearms but calls it one of the least important aspects of her prepping. She lives in rural Appalachia and, as a transgender woman, says the way she's treated has changed dramatically since Trump's first election. For those on the left, guns are 'for community and self-defense,' she said. Left-wing preppers consistently say the biggest difference between them and their right-wing peers is the rejection of 'bunker mentality' — the idea of filling a bunker with beans, rice, guns and ammo and expecting to be able to survive the apocalypse alone. Shonkwiler gives an example of a right-wing guy with a rifle on his back, who falls down the stairs and breaks a leg. If he doesn't have medical training and a community to help, 'he's going to die before he gets to enjoy all his freeze-dried food.' 'People are our greatest asset,' Killjoy said. When Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction through Asheville, North Carolina in 2024, Killjoy, who used to live in the city, loaded her truck with food and generators and drove there to help. Inshirah Overton also subscribes to the idea of community. The attorney, who came to prepping after enduring Hurricane Irene in 2011, owns a half-acre plot of land in New Jersey where she grows food and has beehives. She stores fruit, vegetables and honey but also gives them to friends and neighbors. 'My plan is to create a community of people who have a vested interest in this garden,' she said. At one point, Overton toyed with the idea of buying a 'bug-out' property in Vermont, somewhere to escape to, but desire for community for her and her two daughters stopped her. In Vermont, 'no one knows me and I'm just a random Black lady, and they'll be like: 'Oh, OK, right, sure. You live here? Sure. Here's the barrel of my shotgun. Turn around.'' This focus on community may stem in part from left-wing preppers' growing fears around the climate crisis, predicted to usher in far-reaching ecological, social and economic breakdown. It cannot be escaped by retreating to a bunker for a few weeks. As Trump guts weather agencies, pledges to unwind the Federal Emergency Management Administration and slashes climate funding — all while promising to unleash the fossil fuel industry — climate concerns are only coming into sharper focus. They're top of mind for Brekke Wagoner, the creator and host of the Sustainable Prepping YouTube channel, who lives in North Carolina with her four children. She fears increasingly deadly summer heat and the 'once-in-a-lifetime' storms that keep coming. Climate change 'is just undeniable,' she said. Her prepping journey started during Trump's first term. She was living in California and filled with fear that in the event of a big natural disaster, the federal government would simply not be there. Her house now contains a week's worth of water, long-term food supplies, flashlights, backup batteries and a solar generator. 'My goal is for our family to have all of our needs cared for,' she said, so in an emergency, whatever help is available can go to others. 'You can have a preparedness plan that doesn't involve a bunker and giving up on civilization,' she said. Despite prepping's reputation as a form of doomerism, many left-wing preppers say they are not devoid of hope. Shonkwiler believes there will be an opportunity to create something new in the aftermath of a crisis. 'It begins with preparedness and it ends with a better world,' he said. Some also say there's less tension between left- and right-wing preppers than people might expect. Bounds, the sociology professor, said very conservative preppers she met during her research contacted her during the Covid-19 pandemic to offer help. There is a natural human solidarity that emerges amid disaster, Killjoy said. She recalls a cashier giving her a deep discount on supplies she was buying to take to Asheville post-Helene. 'I have every reason to believe that that man is right-wing, and I do think that there is a transcending of political differences that happens in times of crisis,' she said. As terrifying events pile up, from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to deadly extreme weather, it's hard to escape the sense we live in a time of rolling existential crises — often a hair's breadth from global disaster. People are increasingly beginning to wonder whether their views on preppers have been misconceived, Mills said. 'There is a bigger question floating in the air, which is: Are preppers crazy, or is everyone else?' Killjoy has seen a huge change over the last five years in people's openness to prepping. Those who used to make fun of her for her 'go bag' are now asking for advice. It's not necessarily the start of a prepping boom, she said. 'I think it is about more and more people adopting preparedness and prepper things into a normal life.' Evidence already points this way. Americans stockpiled goods in advance of Trump's tariffs and online sales of contraceptives skyrocketed in the wake of his election, amid concerns he would reduce access. Shows like 'The Walking Dead,' meanwhile, have thrust the idea of prepping into popular culture and big box stores now sell prepping equipment and meal kits. People are hungry to learn about preparedness, said Shonkwiler. 'They have the understanding that the world as we knew it, and counted on it, is beginning to cease to be. … What we need to be doing now is figuring out how we can survive in the world that we've created.'
