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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Whatever Happened to Self Sufficiency? The American nation matures because its citizens displayed resourcefulness and unillusioned self sufficiency. Always, they took adversity by the nape of the neck and the seat of the pants and shook it apart. Those who battled the Great Depression -- especially rualists -- whimpered less and worked more. If they needed fuel to keep warm, they found fuel. If they needed shelter, they created it. Thus the wind charger got its start. Steam power stayed on with those behemoths marching across farms and powering threshing floors with a great umbilical belt fired by cow chips, coal, wood, straw, and fresh or used crankcase oil. All this has attendees at hundreds of steam engine conferences wondering why people perpetually in the path of hurricanes do not install their own small power units, not gasoline-powered generators, but honest-to-God steam boilers and almost indestructible steam engines capable of keeping the electricity on. Such units are available, of course. A machine shop in the Springfield, Missouri, area has about 300 of them on-line around the counry. In Katrina territory, U.S.A., they could be fueled by the mountains of cellulose trash that remained after the waters departed. It isn't so much a matter of resuscitating steam from discarded technology as it is rescuing the art and science from the priviliged oligarchs. Read these lines and you will get the picture. The first steam engines were what the trade called ''the walking beam engines.'' They lasted from about 1600 to about 1784. The piston went staight up and down. There was a beam that rocked back and forth. The art -- if it can be so characterized -- was crude in the extreme. A fire was built under the cylinder. As water was turned to steam, it pushed the piston up. At a designated point fresh water was injected. This would cool the piston, and it would come back down. Thus, industry had an engine that could produce a tremendous amount of power in terms of fuel used. This general technology was state-of-the-art until 1921. Until WWII, steam engines were plentiful on American farms. Case tractor company manufactured perhaps 85% of those steam engines. The problem with the steam engine is that it lasts approximately forever. Those who travel to Brazil, much of South America and even to Asia will recall steam engines on farms, railroad trains and stationary power plants. Along the Amazon in Peru you'll find them running remote sugar mills. There was a time when the little guy could compete with J.P. Morgan and other moguls. Now comes Nicola Tesla and his platoon of patents covering power distribution. Fantastic capitalization made it possible to distribute electircity so that the private household could turn on a switch and have light. The great providers told the cities they'd take this business off their hands. Steam tractors stayed on until WWII. At that point it became a patriotic duty to send them to the scrap iron heap for the war effort. England was demanding the same thing, but we are told that many people hid their machines to keep them from the salvagers. The postwar switch to diesel was incubated by the frog in hot water trick. Diesel was cheap then, but now some farmers rue the day they gave up steam. The power grids, once believed to be indestructible, have faltered and failed too many times recently to bestow confidence, especially on people in the path of a heavy hurricane cycle. FEMA, of course, has exhibited the resourcefulness of lemmings marching into the sea. This puts the survival ball back into the citizen's own court. Admittedly, it takes some energy to stoke the boiler fire, even though there are automatic feeders if pulverized coal is used, steam providing the power. Missing is the resovle, some of which could be restored with counsel and information. After all, there is fuel -- corn cobs, splintered wood, government documents, you name it. One would think that almost two years after Katrina, there would no longer be thousands locked into a ratification of incompetance. As agencies continue to fail the pèople, it may be time for people to stand up for themselves. A three horsepower steam engine will run a 4,000 suare-foot house, all appliances. The heat can be used to heat in the winter. After ten years of testing and on-line demonstration, the new steam engine is ready, according to the maker, a machine shop operator, the son of Mike Brown, a former ACRES USA columist. ''We used a replica of the Creedmore engine, the 350 Chevy of the 19th century,'' Brown explains. It was a horizontal mill steam engine. It was used to grind grain. ''We put the Creedmore back into production, we updated it, we put in steel bearings for the crankshaft, and we used a wick oiler for the crosshead. The rest is standard'' Brown supplied. The machine shop in Springfield, Missouri, has recaptured the values of yesteryear for a modernity that seems to fail a bit too much. One Tennessee farmer reports running his 40-acre farm with a three-hourse engine for about six years. Two folks in Arkansas may provide a good feature downtrack, and Larry Rice of New Bloomington, Missouri, is not secretive about his new found power. The steam people are holding seminars, steam from soup to nuts. For more information, visit http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com.
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