Dear Mr. Rawles,
I am new to your blog (a real treasure chest!) and happened to read your post concerning the Pollys in our lives. I have also spent many of my days what seems like shouting out of the bottom of a barrel to raise people’s awareness of the potential issues that surround us.
I did note that you mentioned [the television series] Jericho as a means of raising people’s awareness concerning survival, etc. Our family has been able to share our DVDs almost like a lending library all summer and had many, many friends and even acquaintances not only like the series (even though I agree wholeheartedly that the information is skewed …who looks at a mushroom cloud to see another day or drink iodine???), but they have consequently started thinking about what they might do personally in the event of a disaster. My biggest hope has been to make the younger generation of people who have never seen any hardship nor thought such thing to be possible, aware of and contemplate the possibility at least once in their lives.
As of October 21, CBS has made Season 1 of Jericho available online on YouTube. There is no registration necessary to view the entire first season. It is a great (and free) way to plunge through the episodes with a minimum of distraction. A number of people have been keeping track over the past couple of weeks on the Jericho message board on NBC universal and the views on the youtube episodes are now averaging 50-60,000 a day and rising for the pilot episode, and 15,000-17,000 a day for the first 14 episodes (each!). Something has started making people become more aware. The final episodes of Season 1 are much lower in views but that, most likely has to do with the view-counters for those episodes being out of whack. Anyway, I thought you might like to be able to get the word out to people that they needn’t even spend any money to buy Jericho, they can simply watch the first season online, or on TV (see the next paragraph) for a short time.
Also, as of November 30th, the network channel The CW [a broadcast television network in the US] started re-playing Jericho on Sunday evenings prior to their big movie. It is finally being broadcast at a time when normal human beings and families can watch it at 7 pm EST (6 pm MST), and on a non-cable channel. UHD [Universal High Definition] TV has been re-broadcasting Jericho for a while and will continue through December. There were only 1.3 million viewers for the pilot episode last week but the CW only advertised it for one week prior to it’s start. For those who are interested, they could probably catch up the Pilot episode online on YouTube and then continue with the rest of the series as a family on Sunday evenings. I have truly seen nothing better for entire families to get them engaged in the preparedness discussion.
While I sound like a bit of an apologist for Jericho it comes from the heart of watching people’s awareness blossom into being able to acknowledge that perhaps they best do something…just in case. One of the new young couples who watched the whole series in 16.5 hours straight (as only young people can do! ) looked at me and said, you know, maybe we better think about buying some food and having some things on hand…just in case. That totally made my day. When is the last time I have seen a young couple even contemplate such thinking. 🙂 Thanks for your amazing and informative blog – TPL
Howdy James,
Reading your SurvivalBlog post on your recommendations of some television shows with survival mindset themes, here’s a few more…
Fiction:
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Season 1 is now out on DVD (available at Netflix)
Current season full episodes available at Fox.com
Jeremiah
[A post-apocalyptic science fiction series that] ran two seasons [as a Showtime series]. No real “end” to it. An, interesting show, though.
Seasons 1 & 2 available on DVD (available at Netflix)
Netflix has it available to watch online as well as on DVD.
Non-fiction:
Hoods Woods (Ron Hood)
I rented his intro DVD from Netflix, and I’m looking forward to getting his 25 DVD set, which is on sale until Christmas.
Survivorman (Les Stroud)
Seasons 1 & 2 of Survivorman out on DVD (available from Netflix)
Les Stroud also made a documentary for Canadian television a while back called “Off the Grid with Les Stroud ” [that is available on YouTube]. A pretty good show, about Stroud and his family moving from the suburbs to 150 acres in the Canadian wilderness with solar and wind power, etc. Off the Grid is available from the Survivorman web site.
Ray Mears
Ray Mears has done several shows for British television, and has consulted on several more, notably, the popular “Long Way Down” motorcycle trek by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. Here are the shows I’ve heard of, seems there’s another new one called Walkabout, but I haven’t seen it…
Extreme Survival
Bushcraft
Wild Food
The shows are available on DVD from the web site.
I hope these are helpful, enjoyable, entertaining, educational, and motivational to some folks! Thanks, – Rick in New Hampshire