Home » Posts tagged 'Cat Ellis'
Tag Archives: Cat Ellis
THIS IS NOT A DRILL: Why Covid-19 Could Be the Deadly Pandemic That Changes Everything
THIS IS NOT A DRILL: Why Covid-19 Could Be the Deadly Pandemic That Changes Everything
It has been almost three months since the Wuhan coronavirus, now known officially as COVID-19, emerged in Wuhan, China. This novel coronavirus is the latest candidate to be the next major pandemic. We’ve learned a lot about COVID-19 in that time, and unfortunately, there is still so much we don’t know.
One thing that has becoming impossible to ignore, however, is that this not a drill.
Like all outbreaks, it’s impossible to know for sure if any particular one will become the next deadly, global pandemic until it either happens or doesn’t happen.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 is shaping into what appears to be the one that folks will be reading about in a hundred years in the same way we look back in history at the Spanish flu.
What We Thought We Knew
When the first cluster of 41 patients was identified in early December 2019 in Wuhan, China, early data suggested that the virus was only of real concern to the elderly, infirm, and those with comorbidities, such as diabetes and heart disease.
These would be standard expectations of a viral respiratory illness, similar to the flu. However, further inspection of that cluster only showed about half with serious illness fit that profile, meaning the other half who sought hospital care were younger, presumably healthier adults.
This novel coronavirus also had an early reported case fatality rate of about 2%, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). A mortality rate of 2% is concerning, but not all that alarming. It’s a little higher than the typical influenza case fatality rate. But, it wasn’t close to the case fatality rate of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), another coronavirus that can be fatal to humans and has a case fatality rate of 34.4%.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Midwest Flooding Will Cause Shortages of THESE FOODS
Midwest Flooding Will Cause Shortages of THESE FOODS
Floods are dangerous natural disasters. People and animals can be swept away and easily drown. Floods can carry bacteria and pollutants great distances. Floods can bust through levees and tear down bridges. Floods can also lead to food shortages when they destroy farms, like the recent floods in the Midwest have. Smart preppers will take measures to beef up their food storage now.
By now, most US-based preppers have either heard about (or experienced) the massive, damaging floods in the Midwest since this past March. To make matters worse, the potential for more floods in key agricultural states looms in front of us as more rain is predicted for the rest of this spring.
So far, heavy flooding has impacted important agricultural states, including Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. From NOAA:
“Additional spring rain and melting snow will prolong and expand flooding, especially in the central and southern U.S. As this excess water flows downstream through the river basins, the flood threat will become worse and geographically more widespread.”
Let’s take a look at why this is happening, what are the real risks involved, and what steps you can take to keep you and your loved ones fed and safe during a food shortage.
What Caused the Floods
Last fall brought heavy rains which soaked the ground heading into winter. The frozen winter earth was covered in heavier than normal snowfall. As warmer temperatures arrived in early spring, the snow began to melt, but the ground remained frozen underneath.
This would have resulted in minor flooding, except that heavy rains followed. According to The New York Times,
“The flat, frozen land, unable to soak in much of the water, spread it fast and furious, the way liquid would spread across a tiled floor. And the runoff quickly filled many rivers and streams to overflowing.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Bleach, Hand Sanitizer, or Natural Cleaning Products? What to Use When
Bleach, Hand Sanitizer, or Natural Cleaning Products? What to Use When
There’s always a ferocious debate among people who swear by bleach, hand sanitizer, or natural cleaning products. But the fact is, there’s no black and white answer. There are times and places for each of these.
Staying clean is a critical part of staying healthy. We have a wide array of disinfectants and cleaning products to stock up on. This guide takes the most common disinfectants, breaks down their pros and cons, and sorts out how and when to use each item.
Staying clean becomes even more important when access to medical care is not guaranteed, such as during or post-disaster. Therefore, we need to know to know how to remove pathogens from surfaces and fabrics.
Cleanliness Is Not Optional
Good hygiene and good household cleaning habits are essential to good health. While exposure to certain bacteria is good for us, even necessary for good health, there are also harmful microorganisms that can make use very sick. Some of them can live a surprisingly long time outside of the body.
For example:
- MRSA is frequently spread via unwashed hands and bed linens.
- Salmonella can live on surfaces for up to four weeks.
- E. coli was shown to survive for a month on most metal surfaces.
- While we always knew that Influenza was spread by coughing and sneezing, it has now been shown to be spread simply by breathing. Influenza can live for several hours airborne and 48 hours on hard surfaces.
- Hepatitis can live anywhere from 4 days to several months outside the body, depending on the type.
One of the scariest viruses, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) doesn’t live or reproduce outside the human body. However, given the right conditions, HIV can survive outside of the body in blood droplets up to several weeks, though no cases have ever been linked to exposure to blood spills.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Our Dependence on Global Shipping Will Come Back to Bite Us
How Our Dependence on Global Shipping Will Come Back to Bite Us
If the general public understood how vulnerable our reliance on global shipping made us, they’d all become preppers overnight. Trucks, planes, and cargo ships are responsible for just about everything modern life depends upon. This reliance on global goods and long-distance shipping puts us all at risk.
Our Dependence Upon Global Shipping
Modern shipping keeps us clothed and fed. It brings us necessary medicines, fuel to the pumps, and delivers chemicals necessary to municipal water treatment plants. It is truly amazing how seamless it all appears to the average consumer, especially considering shipping’s global scale.
That is until there is a problem. Problems can be anything from a trucker’s strike to a plane crashing to a cyber attack shutting down the largest global shipping company.
Global shipping is a necessary evil in a world where we rely on global goods. When companies take their manufacturing operations overseas, the first thing we think of is lost jobs. But, we also put access to those goods at risk. Some of these risks include:
- Relations with China breaking down over North Korea.
- Hackers taking down software (navigation, customer orders, inventory tracking, systems diagnostics, etc) on ships, planes, trucks, and at ports and command centers.
- An EMP causing all electronic systems to cease working.
- Employees of shipping companies across an industry going on an extended strike.
- Deteriorating domestic infrastructure interfering with the delivery of goods.
- War/terrorism anywhere in the world causing delays and lost shipments of imports/exports.
Just a 24-Hour Delay Causes Shortages
A perfect example of this is shipping fresh food to Alaska all year long. Alaskan grocery stores do what they can to stock Alaska-grown items on their shelves, but due to the climate, Alaskans rely on imported produce and goods. The Anchorage Daily News reported on the impact of a single ship being delayed by just 24 hours for a repair.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How to Build a Dollar Store Dental Kit for Your Bug Out Bag
How to Build a Dollar Store Dental Kit for Your Bug Out Bag
Do you have a dental kit for your bug out bag? I’ve seen a lot of great bug out bags loaded up with all manner of tacticool gear, tiny first aid kits stuffed into Altoid tins, and ultralight camping supplies. That’s wonderful and all, but where’s the dental kit?
What’s a Bug Out Bag?
For new preppers, a bug out bag (BOB) holds the supplies you need to evacuate from your primary location to your (presumably safe) secondary location, aka your bug out location (BOL). Your bag is intended to get you from Point A to Point B.
BOBs are sometimes called 72-hour bags, a 96-hour bag, emergency bag, go bag, or get-out-of-Dodge (GOOD) bag. Whatever you call it, your bag holds your needed supplies for a limited period of time, just long enough to get to your BOL.
Your Bug Out Bag Needs a Dental Kit
Since you aren’t living long term out of your BOB, you may not think that dental supplies are as important as other supplies, like a good knife or paracord. After all, what’re a few days without brushing your teeth going to hurt, right?
Mouth pain is no joke. Imagine you ended up with some food stuck between your teeth. I find that wildly irritating and have to get it out. Otherwise, the gum swells, becomes tender and sometimes bleeds. Food can stay stuck there, rotting, causing bacteria to breed like rabbits. Next thing you know, you have an infection.
If you think mouth pain is miserable now, imagine it post-SHTF, with no access to a local pharmacy and no local dentist. Why deal with that, when simple brushing and flossing can dislodge that bit of beef jerky from your teeth?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Flu Is FAR WORSE Than We’re Being Told: Tens of Thousands of Americans Are DYING
The Flu Is FAR WORSE Than We’re Being Told: Tens of Thousands of Americans Are DYING
We all know that this year’s flu season is bad. I have been pouring over numbers and reports over the past few days, and it’s actually even worse than we’re hearing about. Tens of thousands of Americans are dying. It’s now worse than the 2009 swine flu outbreak and is on track with the 2014-15 strain. And it’s not showing any signs of slowing down.
Despite this, the media is downplaying the severity of the flu and the government makes the statistics pretty difficult to find. Are they trying to avoid a panic? Do they know something we don’t?
Here’s what you need to know about why this year’s flu is so dangerous.
This Year’s Flu Strain Is More Deadly
The dominant Influenza strain this year is H3N2. This particular strain has a history of causing more hospitalizations and more deaths. According to the CDC:
In the past, H3N2-predominant seasons have been associated with more severe illness and higher mortality, especially in older people and young children, relative to H1N1- or B-predominant seasons. Between 1976 and 2007, for example, CDC estimates that an average of 28,909 people died from flu during H3N2 seasons, compared to 10,648 people during non-H3N2 predominant years.
That’s a difference of 18,261 adults each year. And that’s in a good year.
In addition to H3N2 producing a more serious infection in general, this year’s particular H3N2 influenza virus is particularly virulent. The number of deaths due to influenza or complications to the flu, such as pneumonia (a secondary bacterial infection following influenza), varies from year to year.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Who Is Deliberately Killing the Bees?
Who Is Deliberately Killing the Bees?
Last night, my husband attended our beekeeping association meeting. He was looking forward to it all day. Talking with other “bee people” is exciting, chatting about the upcoming spring, opening up the hives after winter, installing new bees, etc. I couldn’t wait for him to come home to with new beekeeping ideas and to see his face light up as he waxed poetic about beekeeping.
Only, that didn’t happen. Instead, he brought back a story that chilled me to my bones about someone deliberately killing the bees just a few towns away from us in Rehoboth, MA.
Just Another Accidental Spraying?
We read about the bee deaths when it happened. Early reports seemed to suggest this was yet another case of farmers in the vicinity being irresponsible with chemicals. That may have been what investigators originally suspected, as hypothesized by Eric Pilotte, the president of the Bristol County Beekeepers Association. In this interview, Pilotte spoke of how bees can forage up to three miles away and may have brought back poisoned pollen and nectar to the hive.
“All indications are it was some type of pesticide or insecticide that’s the culprit,” Pilotte said. “In this case, they were able to bring back some of those contaminants and I think that’s what spread like wildfire through the hive.”
Fellow association member, entomologist and retired superintendent of the Bristol County Mosquito Control Project, Wayne Andrews, thought it had to have happened “closer to home“.
Andrews said bees can fly as far as three or four miles in search of food and water but he suspects the Rehoboth bees consumed the poison closer to home, likely no more than a mile away.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Prepper’s Guide to Cybersecurity
How savvy are you about cybersecurity? Technology is ever-changing, and that alone can make it overwhelming. If you have put off learning how to protect your computer, however, I urge you change that ASAP. Preppers get a lot of information and products from the internet, so you’ll want to make sure to practice good cybersecurity so you don’t give away too much of your owninformation.
According to Ceasar Cerrudo, cybersecurity should be our biggest concern. He would know. He’s a professional hacker.
Cerrudo’s company, IOActive, provides hacking services to find vulnerabilities in order to improve cybersecurity. His predictions should be a wake-up call to get savvy about cybersecurity.
Some experts predict that by 2020 there will be 200 billion connected things. Cars, planes, homes, cities, and even animals are being connected. We are putting software everywhere. This is changing the way we live and how we behave and interact with the world around us. As technology becomes more and more deeply integrated into our lives, we become more and more dependent on it. But this dependence makes us vulnerable if technology fails.
Cerrudo goes on to point out:
I see the same problems over and over again. We are not getting better. And while we depend more and more on technology, technology is becoming more and more insecure.
In my experience, most technology is vulnerable and can be hacked.
Considering how our computers, phones, cars, home security systems, banking, appliances, pace-makers, insulin pumps, and more are becoming “connected”, privacy and security have never been more important.
Cyber Threats: What Are They?
Cyber threats come from hackers and scammers. Hackers will exploit vulnerabilities on your computer or other connected devices to gain access to your private information. They do this through malware. Scammers exploit human error, naivety, and opportunity. Scammers will use phishing emails, websites, malware, or other strategies to break into your device.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
