Science and Education Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

The many benefits of garlic

By Joe Knight Issue #113 • September/October, 2008 Garlic, used throughout the world for the taste it adds to foods, is also well known for its medicinal benefits. Known as Allium sativum in the botanical world,...

A doomsday scenario to sleep on

By John Silveira Issue #109 • January/February, 2008 I once wrote a science fiction novel that I never tried to sell. Titled The Perfect Defense, its first chapter appeared in the premier issue of BHM in...

Gee-Whiz: Insects

By O. E. MacDougal November/December 2015, Backwoods Home Some 400 million years ago, in the Devonian Period, insects evolved from crustaceans. Since that time, they have been one of the most successful life forms on the...

How big is the solar system?

By John Silveira Issue #60 • November/December, 1999 In artists' renderings of the solar system we often see the sun represented by a small sphere with the planets drawn fairly close by. In truth, drawings like...

Subduction zone tsunami — What the residents of the Pacific Northwest have to fear

By John Silveira Issue #94 • July/August, 2004 I was sitting in my cubicle poring over a map of the Oregon coastactually, just that part of the coast that is Gold Beach where Backwoods...

Theories of the universe

By Dave Duffy Issue #66 • November/December, 2000 In a relatively short span of time, mankind has travelled from profound ignorance of our planet and the world in which we live to a rather detailed picture...

Gee-Whiz: Presidents

By O.E. MacDougal November/December 2016, Backwoods Home I could spend all day coming up with interesting trivia about the Presidents and those who surround them — wives, children, assassins, etc. I could literally fill this magazine...

Three more ways the world can end … and I’m not kidding

By John Silveira Issue #155 • September/October, 2015 "What are you doing?" a voice asked. I looked up and saw O.E. MacDougal, Dave's poker-playing friend from Southern California, and he's now my friend, too. Accompanying him was...

Zombie Apocalypse

By John Silveira Issue #134 • March/April, 2012 "Can you survive a zombie apocalypse?" a familiar voice asked. I turned in my seat to see O.E. MacDougal, Dave Duffy's poker-playing friend from Southern California, walking toward me....

Gee-Whiz: Alcohol

By O.E. MacDougal Backwoods Home Did early man first cultivate grains just to get drunk? The brewing of beer is older than civilization and goes back at least 9,000, and perhaps more than 12,000, years. Evidence of...

The coming ice age

By John Silveira Issue #86 • March/April, 2004 As little as 30 years ago the talk wasn't about global warming, it was about an imminent ice age. Is an ice age likely? Even possible? Consider this:...

The threat of electromagnetic pulse!

By John Silveira Issue #132 • November/December, 2011 I like "doomsday" scenarios even ridiculous ones, such as the supposed Mayan calendar prophecy for 2012 or what had been Y2K doom-and-gloom leading up to the year...

Gee-Whiz: Trees

By O. E. Macdougal September/October 2015, Backwoods Home We’re told they include some of the oldest and largest living organisms on the planet. But do they? The fact is, only about one percent of a...

The world is ending! … Again?

By John Silveira Issue #85 • January/February, 2004 People love to talk about scary stuff. Especially when it's end-of-the-world scary, such as the big asteroid recently in the news that was supposed to hit Earth and...

The gee-whiz! page — Cats: Why they rule our world

By O. E. MacDougal Issue #170 • March/April, 2018 House cats A recent Gallup poll showed that cat ownership is pretty much evenly distributed between men and women, and that roughly 34 percent of all U.S. homes...

Gee-Whiz: Bad Fish, Big Fish

By O.E. MacDougal January/February 2015, Backwoods Home Fish were the very first vertebrates. That is, they were the first animals with backbones, the purpose of which is to sheathe and protect the nerves in the spinal...