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I spent a lot of years in the military and have worked with many different agencies and countries in that time. One thing I found universally true is the more effective and higher-level a groups (Delta, Special Forces, Navy SEALS, S.A.S, etc, the more they wargame their scenarios and specific missions.

These practice run-throughs (drills, exercises, dress rehearsals) includes everything from being generally prepared for possible missions to building mock-up buildings and neighborhoods and using all available intel to make things as realistic as possible. I’m not saying that you need to be prepared for emergencies to that level (this is their job), but I think you do need to use dress rehearsals to flush out vulnerabilities and deficiencies in your plan(s), and the more realistic you make these rehearsals, the better.

According to a 2015 FEMA report, 60% of Americans aren’t practicing for disasters. Pretty much every part of your emergency plan (your family emergency communications plan, bug out route plan, using a ham radio, dealing with medical emergencies, surviving in the woods, dealing with a power outage at home, and many, many other topics, require hands-on training as well as just walking through the plan you currently have so you can update it and try again. The danger is that if you don’t actually walk through the process in a semi-realistic fashion, you won’t realize you’re not prepared until it’s too late. As they say, “Don’t practice until you get it right; practice until you can’t get it wrong.”

Discovering your abilities and shortcomings

One of the biggest mistakes that preppers or others that try to prepare for emergencies or survival situations (and don’t want to call themselves preppers) make is about what they put in their bug out bag.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How preppers prepare for hurricanes: a comprehensive look

September 9, 2017

How preppers prepare for hurricanes: a comprehensive look

Everybody’s a prepper when the storm comes. Unfortunately this particular portrayal of peripheral preparedness not only did a disservice to the prepper community, it dissuaded many people from pursuing training or meeting others that could have helped them understand how to be ready for emergencies before they happen.

Some people look past the stigmatism and realize you have to be proactive in preparing. This article breaks down what you need to consider when preparing for a hurricane (and to some extent any weather emergency), from a prepper point of view. I’ve spent some time looking for and linking some specific examples for you but they’re only suggestions to get you started (this is only a blog post and not a book). Please do some research after thinking through your plans.

I’m writing this article just after Harvey slammed into Texas and just before Irma is supposed to hit Florida but the details should hold true for years to come. This topic is of particular concern to me because I’m in the middle of transitioning this year from living in the suburbs of Phoenix to living on a sailboat in the Atlantic/Caribbean. I’ll first go briefly over the four basic time periods to consider and then give you some basic ideas of what to start planning in order to handle them.

There are four basic time periods to consider in preparing for a hurricane:

Well before a storm is forming
When a hurricane is likely to hit your area
During the storm
Dealing with the aftermath

Well before a storm is forming

This is normal life. The time that no one really thinks about hurricanes. This is the time to do all the things that take an extended amount of time to complete or must be started well in advance.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Florida Stores Running Out Of Water, Gas As Gov Warns “Make Sure Your Disaster Kits Are Ready” For Irma

September 4, 2017

Florida Stores Running Out Of Water, Gas As Gov Warns “Make Sure Your Disaster Kits Are Ready” For Irma

Hurricane Irma is hurtling toward the eastern US faster than meteorological models anticipated. According to the latest readings from NOAA, the storm will probably make landfall in Southeastern Florida next weekend, or perhaps earlier – that is, unless wind patterns intervene and spare residents of Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach from flooding and winds witnessed in Texas and Louisiana, according to NOAA forecasts.

…Bloomberg chief energy correspondent Javier Blas noted that the Hurricane has “shifted a lot further west,” and that, according to the latest forecasts, there’s still a small chance that Irma strikes the Gulf of Mexico, compounding the devastation that Harvey left behind.

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Javier Blas ✔@JavierBlas2

#Irma forecast has shifted a lot further to the west — with some weather models suggesting a small chance (as today) of US GoM hit #OOTT

8:46 AM – Sep 4, 2017 · City of London, London

Here’s what we know about Irma (courtesy of the Weather.com & NOAA):

The center of Irma is located 610 miles east of the Leeward Islands and is moving west-southwestward at about 14 mph.
Irma is a Category 3 hurricane and satellite imagery shows that it has become better organized in the past day with an eye now clearly evident.
Low wind shear, increased mid-level moisture and ample oceanic heat content favor that Irma will remain a major hurricane (Category 3 or stronger) for the next several days, though some intensity fluctuations are likely.
One potential inhibitor of Irma maintaining its intensity would be if the hurricane’s core interacts with land as it cruises westward near the Greater Antilles later this week.

And Weather.com’s latest impact projections:

Leeward Islands: Late Tuesday-Wednesday
Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands: Wednesday-Thursday
Dominican Republic/Haiti: Thursday-Friday
Turks and Caicos: Thursday-Friday
Bahamas: Friday-next weekend
Cuba: Friday-next weekend
United States: Next weekend into early the following week

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Van Halen, M&Ms, And The Next Market Downturn

September 3, 2017

Van Halen, M&Ms, And The Next Market Downturn

How watching the right indicators will avoid disaster

The planet-sized egos of rock & roll performers are legendary.

Few things symbolize this better than the outrageous requests they often make when on tour.

These requests are referred to as “riders”, and appear in the contract a tour venue receives in advance of the artist’s arrival. These contract riders specify the physical conditions that the singer/band requires to be in place before arriving to perform. Stage lighting settings, sound equipment, furnishings, etc — that kind of stuff.

And these rider requests can get pretty funky – often extremely so — when it comes to backstage perks the performers want.

For example: A wooden pond filled with koi carp (Eminem). A driver who will not speak or make eye contact (Katy Perry). 20 white kittens and 100 doves (Mariah Carey). Seven dwarves (Iggy Pop). 50,000 bees (Slayer). A sub-machine gun (Mötley Crüe). And, yes, even a great white shark (Hank III).

The practice of making these kind of outrageous demands stems from a rider Van Halen inserted into the contract for its 1982 world tour, which insisted on a bowl of M&Ms to be provided backstage, but with all of the brown M&Ms removed.

As this image below of the actual rider shows, the band was very explicit in its seriousness about this:

Once the media got whiff of this, it had a field day roasting the band’s narcissistic chutzpah. A new high-water mark of diva capriciousness had been established, which quickly became legend. A feat of prima donna pampering that subsequent performers have been trying to top ever since.

But as crazy as it sounds, Van Halen’s “no brown M&Ms” rider had nothing to do with caprice. There was a solid rationale behind it.

In fact, it was quite brilliant.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Prepping Lives Of The Rich & Famous: “Far Away From All The Issues Of The World”

January 23, 2017

Prepping Lives Of The Rich & Famous: “Far Away From All The Issues Of The World”

It used to be that the term “doomsday prepper” evoked a certain visual of an ultra-conservative, bearded woodsman with slightly less than stellar hygiene practices living in the middle of no where with an arsenal of weaponry and a sufficient hoard of dried and canned food to live for years. But recently that all seems to be changing. And whether the election of Trump was the catalyst that drove the world’s rich to start prepping or simply allowed them to open up about being preppers all along, one thing is certain, “prepping” is growing in popularity among America’s billionaires.

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Evan Osnos takes a look at some of the super-rich that are taking extreme measures to prepare for the apocalypse. One such wealthy prepper is Silicon Valley’s Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman, who admits that he went so far as to get corrective eye surgery, not for convenience or appearance, but bacause “If the world ends…getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass…without them, I’m fucked.”

Steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery. He underwent the procedure not for the sake of convenience or appearance but, rather, for a reason he doesn’t usually talk much about: he hopes that it will improve his odds of surviving a disaster, whether natural or man-made. “If the world ends—and not even if the world ends, but if we have trouble—getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass,” he told me recently. “Without them, I’m fucked.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Is The Government Preparing For?

July 3, 2016

What Is The Government Preparing For?

You may not be getting prepared for a major national disaster, but the government sure is. I have been informed that in recent months numerous emergency food companies have been contacted by the government, and they have been told that their inventories could potentially be seized in the event of a significant emergency. And as you will see below, the government recently participated in an exercise that simulated “an unprecedented global food crisis lasting as long as a decade”. In addition, NPR has just revealed details about the very secretive Strategic National Stockpile program that is storing billions of dollars worth of medical supplies in warehouses around the nation. This is a program that most Americans do not even know exists. On top of everything else, strange reports of military vehicles with UN markings have been coming in from all over the nation. So what in the world is the government up to? Why are they working so feverishly hard to get prepared?

Let’s begin our discussion with the Strategic National Stockpile. According to NPR, there are at least six of these warehouses at various locations around the country, and they are holding at least seven billion dollars worth of supplies…

Thousands of lives might someday depend on this stockpile, which holds all kinds of medical supplies that the officials would need in the wake of a terrorist attack with a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon.

The location of these warehouses is secret. How many there are is secret. (Although a former government official recently said at a public meeting that there are six.) And exactly what’s in them is secret.

“If everybody knows exactly what we have, then you know exactly what you can do to us that we can’t fix,” says Burel. “And we just don’t want that to happen.”

What he will reveal is how much the stockpile is worth: “We currently value the inventory at a little over $7 billion.“

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Degrowth by designed disaster?

June 26, 2016

Degrowth by designed disaster?

How the conflation with neoliberalism and austerity unfairly reduces the idea of degrowth to absurdity – and where the degrowth movement can turn for answers to the crisis.

The degrowth movement has been developed in response to neoliberal reality, neoliberalism’s comically reductive view of human nature, its ecological blindness and the rise in social inequality it has brought about. Austerity politics embodies one of the most aggressive manifestations of neoliberalism, but curiously, the degrowth movement has been exposed to criticism from the (both liberal and Marxist) Left associating it with such politics. This prompted many degrowth activists to insist that “your austerity is not our degrowth.” Despite the ideological variety and the occasional intellectual ricochets within the movement, I considered this so self-evident that I was somewhat bewildered to see an actual advocate of degrowth openly claim more or less the opposite. In his article on “Austerity and Degrowth” André Reichel attempts to redeem the ideas of neoliberalism and austerity from a degrowth perspective, suggesting that its mode of economic reasoning facilitates a transition to degrowth. I would like to seize this opportunity to reflect on the relationship between capitalism, austerity politics and degrowth.

The crisis as a dilemma for the degrowth movement

Reichel’s point of departure happens to be a formidable challenge for the degrowth movement bringing up the following questions: What would be an appropriate degrowth response to the economic crisis in Greece? Could Greece reasonably enter a degrowth path now – or do we have to grudgingly accept the need for growth-oriented Keynesian solutions for the time being, in order to avoid further economic hardship for the Greek population?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Barack Obama Warns Americans ‘To Be Prepared For A Disaster’

June 4, 2016

Barack Obama Warns Americans ‘To Be Prepared For A Disaster’

When Barack Obama speaks to the public, it is very rare that he does so without a specific purpose in mind. So why is he urging Americans “to be prepared for a disaster” all of a sudden? On May 31, Obama took time out of his extremely busy schedule to deliver an address at the FEMA National Response Coordination Center in Washington. During his speech, he stressed that every American is responsible for preparing for disasters, and that includes “having an evacuation plan” and “having a fully stocked disaster supply kit”. These are basic steps that I have been encouraging people to do for years, but if they won’t listen to me, perhaps they will listen to the man currently residing in the White House. The following excerpt from Obama’s speech comes directly from the official White House website…

One of the things that we have learned over the course of the last seven and a half years is that government plays a vital role, but it is every citizen’s responsibility to be prepared for a disaster. And that means taking proactive steps, like having an evacuation plan, having a fully stocked disaster supply kit. If your local authorities ask you to evacuate, you have to do it. Don’t wait.

This speech was timed to coincide with the beginning of the hurricane season, although hurricanes have not posed much of a threat lately.

In fact, a major hurricane has not made landfall in the United States for 127 straight months.

But without a doubt, we all need to be preparing for disaster. Hurricanes can create a short-term emergency that can last for a few days, but there are other threats that could create a major emergency that could potentially last for an extended period of time.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Welcome To Hell: The Giant Fort McMurray Fire Is The Worst Blaze In Canadian History

May 8, 2016

Welcome To Hell: The Giant Fort McMurray Fire Is The Worst Blaze In Canadian History

The gigantic wildfire that has forced the evacuation of the entire city of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta has been nicknamed “the Beast“, and mainstream news reports are telling us that it is now approximately 25 percent larger than New York City. 88,000 people have already been forced out of their homes, at least 1,600 buildings have been destroyed, and smoke from the fire has been spotted as far away as Iowa. To say that this is a “disaster” is a massive understatement. Northern Alberta is “tinder dry” right now, and authorities say that high winds could result in the size of the fire doubling by the end of the weekend. One-fourth of Canada’s oil output has already been shut down, and the edge of the fire is now getting very close to the neighboring province of Saskatchewan. This is already the most expensive natural disaster in the history of Canada, and officials fully expect to be fighting this blaze for months to come.

At this point, only rain is going to stop this fire. Canadian authorities insist that they are not going to be able to defeat this raging inferno no matter how many resources they throw at it. The best that they can hope for is to try to steer it away from heavily populated areas until the rain comes.

Nobody knows precisely how this tragedy is going to end, but everyone agrees that it is going to last for quite some time. According to the Washington Post, this fire has the potential to keep on burning “for months”…

The images are ones of devastation — scorched homes, virtually whole neighborhoods burned to the ground. And Canadian officials say they expect to fight the massive wildfire that has destroyed large parts of Alberta’s oil sands town for months.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Survival Communications After a Collapse: “Pringles Can And Broadband Routers Could Create a WiFi Network”

May 7, 2016

Survival Communications After a Collapse: “Pringles Can And Broadband Routers Could Create a WiFi Network”

Collapse

Are you truly prepared to survive what is coming?

It could prove to be the darkest period yet for modern civilization and the age of technocracy.

An EMP, a natural disaster, a nuclear attack, an economic collapse or a declaration of martial law rank among just some of the worst scenarios that could befall our society. And if you are not prepared, you will fall along with the masses.

Not long ago, the London Guardian interviewed global crisis expert and author Nafeez Ahmed, extracting lots of great info to think about prepping for survival.

Ahmed, who was involved with advising on a video game that included realistic portrayals of crisis aftermath, brought up lots of good points, including basics like:

1. Don’t hole up alone with hundreds of tins of baked beans
“There’s a survivalist response which is ‘I’m going to hide away all by myself’,” says Ahmed. “You’re probably not going to survive like that – you have to cooperate with other people… The more people who band together, the more likely you are to be able to rebuild something like a society.

2. You need to go rural … but not too rural
“Cities are found to be extremely vulnerable simply because there are so many supply chains that are interdependent… People will be competing with each other for these scarce resources, which creates violence… You need a group of differently skilled people who can work cooperatively in order to build your own supply chains and flourish…”

3. You need access to running water and agricultural land
“There’s also the need to grow your own food,” says Ahmed. “Again you’re better off doing that with a group of people on a large area of land where you can apportion labour. That’s not going to work as well in an urban environment.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Thunderstorm Spiral’: Pentagon Trains for Underground War/Disaster In Densely-Populated MegaCities

March 17, 2016

‘Thunderstorm Spiral’: Pentagon Trains for Underground War/Disaster In Densely-Populated MegaCities

Screen shot 2016-03-16 at 4.51.15 PM

As populations grow into cities across the globe, and increasing majority of people will live in urban areas – places which quickly become very desperate and vulnerable during a major crisis.

Every prepper knows the dangers of being stuck in a major metropolitan city in the event of a major hurricane, a grid down scenario or civil unrest and societal collapse.

In such a situation, as every prepper knows, food, water and other vital resourceswill quickly become scarce or unavailable. The gridlock of survivors trying to get out, or get their hands on assets.

Increasingly, the Pentagon is looking at the likelihood – perhaps the inevitability – of war/conflict inside of a destabilized or decimated megacity urban center like New York.

According to the Daily Mail:

The Pentagon is calling for help from technological innovators to take on the future of warfare.

In the program titled ‘Thunderstorm Spiral,’ the US government solicits demonstrations to tackle the challenges of megacities and underground environments, which will become increasingly prevalent as populations continue to grow.

[…]

A megacity is defined as a city with more than 10 million residents. To put this in perspective, there are currently over 8 million people living in New York City.

As these numbers continue to grow within defined areas, infrastructure will have to adapt, pushing megacities toward the development of subterranean – or underground – environments.

In 2014, there were 23 megacities with ‘vast subterranean structures’; in 2025, it’s expected this number will reach 37.

To meet these needs, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Emerging Capability and Prototyping, Rapid Reaction Technology Office (RRTO) Technology Demonstration Program is sponsoring the request for information (RFI) issued by the Pentagon.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If You Don’t Warn The People, Their Blood Could Be On Your Hands

March 3, 2016

If You Don’t Warn The People, Their Blood Could Be On Your Hands

Why are so few voices warning the people about what is coming? We stand at the door of a period of distress that will be unlike anything that any of us have ever known before. And even though the signs are all around us, very few individuals appear to be willing to stand up and sound the alarm. Instead, there seems to be a large number of people that are quite eager to criticize the watchmen. Earlier today, I was having a conversation with a very prominent voice in the alternative media, and we were reflecting on this. There are so many individuals out there that love to shoot arrows at those that are sounding the alarm, and yet they are doing so little to make a difference themselves.

It is easy to sit back on your sofa munching on potato chips as the world around you goes to hell, and it is easy to criticize those that have chosen to have the courage to stand up and warn the people.

But it is not easy to stand up and say the hard things that need to be said in a society that does not want to listen.

Yes, there are some watchmen out there that are doing a great job of proclaiming the warning message. I have personally met a number of them, and I am proud to be their friends.

Unfortunately, they are few and far between. Most people either don’t believe that we are on the precipice of disaster, they don’t care enough to warn others, or they are too busy criticizing those that are trying very hard to warn others.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Vehicular Survival Basics And Tools That Will Keep You Alive When Disaster Strikes And You’re On The Road And Away From Home

February 12, 2016

Vehicular Survival Basics And Tools That Will Keep You Alive When Disaster Strikes And You’re On The Road And Away From Home

The world we live in today is unstable. We face the possibility of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, viral outbreaks, power outages, water shortages, the list goes on and on. Hurricane Katrina showed proved that the government cannot protect everyone in the aftermath of a large-scale disaster. This was a wake-up call for many that in order to survive you must take your fate into your own hands. Regardless of personal feelings about what may be coming or ending, it is growing more and more important to maintain a basic level of readiness for whatever may disrupt life and interrupt the ability to acquire a supply of water, food, and shelter.

Whether you are a hard-core, end of the world “prepper” or just take the Boy Scout motto seriously, there is no shortage of good information on prepping for disaster. If you plan to “bug out” or “bug in” or just learn what items are best to carry every day, you can find numerous resources and opinions on what gear to buy and what skills are necessary, but one area that often fails to get enough attention in preparedness discussions is preparing and maintaining your vehicle for emergencies.

When disaster strikes, whatever the disaster may be, you might be lucky enough to already be in your safe zone, your “bug-in” site. But what if you’re not? What if you’re caught out and need to get home? Many people focus on what makes up a good EDC or a bug out bag, but your vehicle is capable of handling so much more!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to survive a global disaster: a handy guide

February 10, 2016

How to survive a global disaster: a handy guide

Whether it’s a natural disaster, bioterrorist attack or pandemic, experts reckon society as we know it will collapse within 13 days of a catastrophic event. So what do you do next?

Ubisoft’s role-playing shooter The Division wouldn’t be as much fun if players followed Nafeez Ahmed’s advice and stayed rural.
Photograph: Ubisoft

On 22 June, 2001, Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, organised a war game like no other. The two researchers, working with an array of bodies such as the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, set out to simulate the effects of a biological attack on the US. The project was called Operation Dark Winter.

What they discovered was that the country was ill prepared to cope. Within two weeks there would be enormous civilian casualties, a catastrophic breakdown in essential institutions, and mass civil unrest. Food supplies, electricity and transport infrastructures would all collapse.

In short, the world would get medieval on America’s ass. And the same thing would happen all over the globe.

These days we’re spoiled for choice in terms of potential catastrophes. Natural and ecological disasters, nuclear weapons, terrorism, experimental technological accidents (“Oops, we’ve accidentally created Skynet”) – they’re all in the game. In 2008 a group of experts met at an Oxford University conference and suggested that there was a 19% chance of a global catastrophic event before 2100 (with super intelligent AI and molecular nanotechnology weapons at the top of the threat list). It was just a bit of fun, and they added plenty of caveats to that figure, but still, something to think about, eh?

With all this in mind, the Guardian spoke to the academic and author Nafeez Ahmed, who has studied global crises and mass violence, and recently advised Ubisoft on the authenticity of its post-pandemic video game, The Division.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jack Spirko: The Road To Resilience

February 1, 2016

Jack Spirko: The Road To Resilience

Requires a good map. Got one?

Continuing our focus on solutions, this week we’re joined on the podcast by Jack Spirko. His daily podcast focuses on practical, actionable steps each of us can take to “live a better life, if times get tough or even if they don’t” — a mission nicely aligned with the one we pursue here at Peak Prosperity.

In this wide-ranging discussion, Jack and Chris discuss the need for spreading awareness of the Three Es, the professional challenges in doing so, and how individuals can go about pursuing both security and prosperity in the face of the likely disruptive changes to come:

We’ve had these people predicting: This is the Big One! for 25 years. These people are hucksters who just want to make money. “End of America”, “The world is going to end!”, “In six months the dollar is going to collapse!” — people have been marketed these messages. Here’s my concern: it’s going to become Chicken Little. And when we really are at a point where you and I are going “Uh, guys…”, no one’s going to listen.

So as it relates to preparedness: being prepared for the grid to go down for a couple of months — great goal. Wonderful. But I look at preparedness this way: if you and I are in a car together and we’re going to drive from Miami, Florida to Portland, Maine, we’re going to go to Georgia before we go to Virginia unless we’re really dumb people without a map.

So when somebody asks me about preparedness, my first question is: Do you have 30 days worth of food stored up in your home? No? Then stop worrying about the grid going down. Do you have enough money to go 90 days without income and be okay?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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