A former Denali mountain guide and life-long Alaskan survivalist, Marty Raney was featured on National Geographic Channel's Ultimate Survival Alaska. As the host and producer of Discovery's Homestead Rescue, Raney, and his two children, Matt and Misty, use their farming and building expertise to help others who seek to live off the grid. In the first half, he shared tips for self-sufficiency and the off-the-grid lifestyle (living without electrical power). With his homestead located in a mountainous area of Alaska, Raney deals with extreme conditions. The temperature can drop to a staggering 30-40 degrees below zero. He makes extensive use of a wood-burning stove to constantly heat the dwelling. A backup heating source is useful for when people leave their home in cold weather as a wood-burning stove will go out. Off-grid alternatives include drip stoves or propane.
Raney also connected living off-the-grid with the idea of leaving congested cities and apartment buildings and getting closer to nature, and growing your own garden. He praised wind and solar power options and noted they are better for the environment, and that solar panels will increase in efficiency in the years ahead. For rural homesteading in America, community is a significant factor, and neighbors trust and help each other, he added.
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In the latter half, former government UFO investigator Nick Pope discussed the latest developments in the field, including interest in UFOs by the US congress and NASA. He reported on the emergence of a second photo that some believe to be one of the infamous Calvine UFO photos. In 1990 in Calvine, Scotland, two hikers saw a vast, diamond-shaped UFO with a military jet flying nearby. They reportedly took six photos, and the negatives were turned over to the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD). Pope pointed out that the timing of the sighting was just two days after the invasion of Kuwait, and perhaps the witnesses stumbled across a secret military prototype. MoD has not commented on the second photo, which Pope noted is very similar to a recreation of one of the Calvine images he worked on for a TV show a few years back.
In contrast to the tight-lipped attitude about UFOs by the UK government, the US is showing more signs of openness with congressional hearings on the subject. Pope said he was happy to see a bipartisan approach and was hopeful that potential whistleblowers or witnesses would be released from NDAs and allowed to testify freely. NASA's current administrator Bill Nelson clearly has an interest in the UFO subject, Pope commented, but he wondered how meaningful NASA's study (said to be on an unclassified level) would be if they aren't accessing the Defense Department's classified data. Pope also touched on astronomer Avi Loeb's Galileo Project, the Rendlesham Forest incident, an alleged secret space program, and UFOs seen in the Ukraine war zone.
News segment guests: Mish Shedlock, Howard Bloom