Exothermic is the leader in self-reliance brand marketing, but we like to share our wisdom with the world. Here are the top stories we’ve identified this week in our markets:

Survivalism

• The list: Will your Gander Mountain store be saved?, “The owner announced that 61 will stay open despite what the signs say. He wants to keep about 70 of them.”
• India’s Silicon Valley Is Dying of Thirst. Your City May Be Next, Bangalore has a problem: it is running out of water, fast. Cities all over the world, from those in the American West to nearly every major Indian metropolis, have been struggling with drought and water deficits in recent years. But Banga­lore is an extreme case.
• Cabela’s Sees Decline in Gun

  

  Sales Post-Trump Win, Cabela’s has stated that demand for firearms and ammunition weakened in the first three months of 2017, citing the election of President Donald Trump.

• Life Expectancy Can Vary By 20 Years Depending On Where You Live, New research documents significant disparities in the life spans of Americans depending on where they live. And those gaps appear to be widening, according to the research.
• Tesla just opened up orders for its Solar Roof — here’s how much it will cost you, “The typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot for Solar Roof and benefit from a beautiful new roof that also increases the value of their home.”
• Emergency Declared At Nuclear-Contaminated Site In Washington State, The Department of Energy has declared an emergency at a nuclear-contaminated site in Washington state, after soil caved in over a portion of a tunnel containing rail cars contaminated with nuclear waste.
• An App That Allows You To Identify Any Plant With A Picture, The new app Pl@ntNet allows users to snap a pic of a plant and identify it in a flash, as long as it’s one of the species currently cataloged in their ever-growing database.
• New NOAA tool shows how climate change will affect your neighborhood, To see what you have personally at stake, tinker around with Climate Explorer, an online tool developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help community leaders, business owners, municipal planners, and residents understand how environmental conditions may alter local conditions over the next several decades.

Sustainability

• Wind and solar-powered Thunder Valley Regenerative Community rises in South Dakota, This eco-friendly, climate-adaptable community was designed from the ground up with local culture and values in mind, using sustainable technologies for solar, wind and geothermal energy.

  

• Amazon’s Expansive Biodomes Get Their First of 40,000 Plants, When Amazon began building its new campus five years ago, it insisted on incorporating nature in the design.
• Tesla battery researcher says they doubled lifetime of batteries in Tesla’s products 4 years ahead of time, Battery researcher Jeff Dahn announced that they have developed cells that can double the lifetime of the batteries in Tesla’s products – 4 years ahead of schedule. However, the cells in question were tested in the lab and are not in Tesla products yet.
• New biodegradable semiconductor could make e-waste a thing of the past, A Stanford University team was concerned over the escalating epidemic of e-waste, so they created a semiconductor that can actually be broken down with a weak acid such as vinegar.
• USA On Historic Streak Of High-Temperature Records, To put the current historic streak in slightly different terms than before, every single month of 2015 and 2016 so far has seen more record highs than record lows across the US.
• These people want you to know climate change isn’t just for liberals, So what does conservative climate policy look like? Inglis thinks it’s pretty obvious once you realize that polluting industries are socializing the costs of their emissions in the form of things like human health impacts and climate change.
• Report: 95% of US car miles will be electric, autonomous by 2030, 2030 isn’t that far off. But it may look very, very different to the world we know today.
• Harley-Davidson embraces the potential of electric motorcycles, Livewire isn’t the only electric bike the company has in the works.
• A 22-year-old is moving ahead with a controversial plan to trap plastic floating in the great Pacific garbage patch, Slat’s nonprofit, The Ocean Cleanup, plans to try to install systems to remove vast quantities of plastic from the Pacific ocean.
• Taking public transportation in San Francisco is going to get even greener, Speaking of which – San Frrancisco’s BART has committed to purchasing 100 percent renewable electricity in the near future.

Self-Improvement

• Fresh Food By Prescription: This Health Care Firm Is Trimming Costs — And Waistlines, The advice to eat a healthy diet is not new. Back around 400 B.C., Hippocrates, the Greek doctor, had this missive: Let food be thy medicine.
• Napercise: Exercise Classes Offering 45-Minute Naps Launches at David Lloyd Gyms, If the thought of a spin, legs, bums and tums or aerobics class makes you want to drearily hobble back to bed, the perfect ‘exercise’ class for you has arrived.

  

• DARPA Is Planning to Hack the Human Brain to Let Us “Upload” Skills, The DARPA Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program is exploring ways to speed up skill acquisition by activating synaptic plasticity. If the program succeeds, downloadable learning that happens in a flash may be the result.
• Meal Kits May Be Winning Us Over—And Unilever Wants A Seat At The Table, The packaged-goods giant’s new investment in Sun Basket shows the allure of niche food markets
• Clever DIY Solutions People Came Up With Instead Of Buying Stuff, Companies are constantly coming up with clever products to help keep our homes clean, tidy and looking cool, but every bank account has a limit and some problems need an immediate solution. So crafty folks come up with clever ways to use what they have on hand to get the job done.
• You Can Learn Arabic—And Empathy—By Connecting With Refugees On Skype, NaTakallam provides an income for refugees struggling to find work and connections after being displaced from their home country.
• The Idea Was To Keep Kids Safe After School. Now They’re Chess Champions, Ted Komada noticed a couple of days after school that a group of kids would get together to play chess. “I said, ‘I know how to play chess. Let me go show these kids how to do it.'”