TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I’ve been e-mailing “Al” from the story all morning. He’s been pretty concerned about the healthcare bill, and how it affects him and the wife (IRL he’s married). I’ve warned him in the past, but he didn’t really listen, and kinda looked at me like I was crazy. I am crazy, but that’s beside the point. Here is my latest response to him:

I warned you about a year ago… Canned food and a shotguns handy for the zombie apocalypse, too!

The dems will do anything to pass us further into socialism. Most democrats are openly socialist now, Obama has done one thing, he galvanized the collectivist – altruistic – statists into leveraging as much “reforms” as possible to make us into a European socialist state.

Our Debt to GDP ratio has skyrocketed, it’s only a short time before no one buys bonds (the Fed Reserve is buying most now) and the Fed cannot buy all the bonds, the existing holders of the 5year+ T-bills would dump them as worthless paper. That collapses the dollar, and Zimbabwe hyper-inflation sets in.

Great for paying off loans, bad for everything else.

I’ve been reading about all this for a couple years now, and I cannot see any way out other than human stupidity. If the idiots on wall street still think the dollar is strong, and the dumbass investors don’t see the warning signs that are out there, then we might be able to do it. All it takes is one big bond investor to dump their bonds and that will trigger the rest, and the collapse comes in a matter of days, maybe even hours.

China is no longer the biggest holder of US debt. They haven’t been selling bonds, but the ones they hold they have not re-invested as they matured. China not buying bonds was the biggest warning I’ve seen. China doesn’t want to upset the apple cart, they want to divest our debt without triggering the collapse, and so far they have been doing a brilliant job. All it takes is another country to unload too fast and the shockwave panics investors and then we collapse.

The news is not covering this at all, after all these people have all their money tied up in the stock market as well. So these guys have a vested interest in “forgetting” to report the failed bond auctions, and other critical warnings.

Scary-ass shit, man.

Hopefully he will wake up.

I work as a Server Engineer. Recently my company has been looking into planning for Disaster Recovery (DR). In the I.T. biz, that means making sure we have all our data and applications online in case something really bad happens. Things like flooding in the Data Center (DC), or some nitwit in a backhoe cutting all our fiber links to our remote DC. Stuff like that. Computer systems are not designed from the get-go for DR. For example you cannot have a subnet online in two geographical locations without some big $ being thrown around.

So I thought I would see if some of these thoughts would work for prepping. In a DR scenario you split your applications up into different tiers. Let’s take a fictional company’s applications for an example.

Payroll
Accounts payable
Accounts receivable & billing
Inventory
Shipping
Home directories file share
HR file share
Intranet web site
Extranet website
E-mail
Printing

Ok so that’s a small list of the applications used by a small company. Most of the mail order companies of any size will have at least this many apps. The hard part is to group them into levels of importance.

Tier 1
E-mail
Inventory
Accounts receivable & billing
Extranet website
Printing

Tier 2
Payroll
Accounts payable
Shipping

Tier 3
HR file share
Intranet website
Home directories file share

So for our example let’s say we are an online survival store. Now, the idea of the I.T. department is to make sure orders go into the system as the most important. This way users out in cyberspace don’t go run off to your competitors when your DC gets flooded. Picking tickets need to be printed so the warehouse guys can pull orders while the rest of the systems are brought back online.

A word about the tiers. The tier 1 applications are your core. You cannot operate without these at all. Tier 2 need to be available for weekly or monthly tasks, and tier 3 are the little things that make life easy. I think I see some parallels already.

But onto this company. Now what most DR planners forget is that none of these systems will run at all without some infrastructure. A network, account authentication, etc. So let’s add a tier 0.

Tier 0
Active Directory
Network
Power

So many DR consultants forget to plan for power. That wafer of silicon ain’t doing jack shit without some electrons there, buddy!

Well you get the idea. Now in DR planning we talk of an alternate site. This site is either a Cold, Warm, or Hot site. If you are a fortune 500 company we can talk about hot sites, otherwise your too poor. A hot site is fully online simultaneously with your primary site. Downtime (if at all) is measured in seconds.

Warm sites are up, but might need infrastructure to be changed in order to go online. Like shutting down a subnet in one data center and bringing it up in your DR network. Recovery is measured in hours.

Then there is the Cold site, which is just about useless. Sometimes hardware needs to be ordered, or physically carried form your production site, dried out, then powered on and tested. Trust me from past experience this sucks hairy monkey balls.

Ok now after that hour long explanation, let’s see how this works in the prepping world. Let’s start with the sites.

A hot site would be where you have all the equipment and supplies pre-staged and ready to go. Now if you live at your retreat, that’s not a hot site. That’s your primary site, and your DR site might be a debris shelter in a national park… Anyway, very few people will be able to afford this. Since I didn’t win Mass Millions, I’m still poor, and cannot afford this.

A warm site would have the infrastructure ready, but not everything is ready to go. This could also be a friend’s or family member’s house out of state.

A cold site is just that. You got what you can carry, that’s it.

Now onto the tiering of the prepper’s infrastructure:

Tier 0
Health

Tier 1
Shelter
Water
Food

Tier 2
Security
Communications

Tier 3
Power
Gasoline/diesel
Luxuries

Now it’s interesting that I made Health a Tier 0. I did this because you’re not doing squat if you got dysentery, a broken leg, or a new hole somewhere there ain’t supposed to be one. The rest I think are self-explanatory. Hope this simple system helps a few out there get rolling on planning what is important, and what isn’t. Sure, a gas grill is nice to have, along with that nifty new flashlight, but a tent is more critical to your survival.

I also hope people start to think about the next step. There are a lot of people ready to make a stand at their remote homes, but your still need a backup site in case a forest fire or flood, or who-knows-what-else happens. Even if it’s a barn at your brother-in-law’s on the other side of the valley.

Don’t forget now is the time to stock up on mason jars. I bought 5 cases of quart jars for ~$10 a box. I’ll be working my foodsaver overtime this week packing away food.

I’ve been thinking (and writing) a lot lately about the government, politics, healthcare, etc. It’s time for a threat re-assessment. Periodically you need to look at the threats out there in the world and make sure you are doing your best to plan for these threats, and make sure you and your family will be prepared for any of these catastrophes.

The way I am looking at things now, here is the list of “bad things” and the percentage chance they will be the “bad thing” if a “bad thing” does happen.

Economy 45%
Pandemic 10%
Solar Storm/EMP strike 10%
Hurricane 30%
Food Shortages 5%

First on the list for me is economic collapse. My preps in this area have gotten much better, but I still am short in regards to having hard currency at the house. Silver has been a bitch to find anywhere near the spot silver price. I have been saving, and I’m currently on my way to building up 6 months of cash for bills. That is a lot of cash, though. It seems that every time I get past a month’s worth, something I’ve been wanting a really long time goes on sale. The most recent culprit was the vises I need for my woodworking bench. Ah well.

Hurricanes are a fact of life on the east coast. Just because we haven’t had one for a few years doesn’t mean squat. I’m within 60 miles of the cost, so any cat 3 or better storm can cause a lot of damage before it swings back out to sea. I have all the supplies I’d need for this disaster. This was the first thing I worried about way back when I started this journey, so I am the most prepared for it.

Next up is a Pandemic. It could be Swine flu or bird flu or who-knows-what. I’m not as concerned with this as some are. Avoiding human contact is quite easy for me. I did get some N95 masks before the prices shot up. which was good. I also bought several big bottles of the alcohol gel stuff at the dollar store. The hard part would be laying low while FEMA rounded everyone up. I seriously doubt the local fuzz would let me stay in my home. Regardless of my personal rights, In this scenario I fully expect LEO to forcibly try to take me to a FEMA camp if I’m found out. That would be bad. It’s not like I’d be able to hide, as odds are they would go house to house to check for the dead. Of course while they are in there they will search the place top to bottom confiscating guns and such. I need to think about this some more and see if there is a way to keep the LEO’s hands off of me, without a big confrontation.

We are in a low point in the Sun’s natural cycle of solar activity. When the Fusion furnaces kick up again we will see a huge spike in the frequency and intensity of solar storms and CME’s (Coronal Mass Ejections). Our antiquated power grid cannot handle a huge EMP pulse, so I fully expect weeks to months without power. The whole northeast corridor is flagged red on NASA’s danger area for EMP strikes. So if this happens, I expect it to get real bad real fast.

There has been talk of food shortages. This wonky summer weather really has caused a lot of crops trouble. Even my small garden isn’t a lush as it should be. The corn is at least 3 weeks off schedule, it started flowering the week I was on vacation. On the trip out no flowers, on the way back the fields were filled. I recall that usually happened in July. I’m not too concerned as long as I have a job I can make the cuts to buy food at the inflated prices, using my preps when the food riots and rationing breaks out. An unlikely scenario IMHO, so I’ve assigned it a low priority.

Finally we have a small chance of getting nuked. I think New York, LA, or Washington DC would be a higher-value target, but I’m no terrorist and have no clue what they have up their sleeves. But in this day and age, we need to think about suitcase nukes, dirty bombs, chemical or biological attacks. This is the weakest area of my preps, and I don’t see it getting any better anytime soon.

This post is for those who haven’t started prepping yet. With all the crazy stuff going on in Washington, the Middle east, North Korea, etc. doesn’t it seem like a good idea to have a head start? Never mind natural disasters like ice storms, blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.

Ok so you finally have an uneasy lump in your stomach. Your worried for your families safety and food. Excellent! Now we begin.

1) RELAX! sit down have a nice cold glass of water.
2) Make a list. Walk through the house and note roughly how much food you have in the house. Don’t be too exact, your looking for a rough number. Also check how many days worth of prescription meds you have.
3) Now talk to your family. You’d be surprised how all this doom and gloom from the real world news manages to percolate through the nation’s consciousness. Try to work out a plan together.
4) I personally feel it’s too late to head off for the hills if you don’t currently own a retreat property. So that means riding it out in your home or a relatives in the country. That’s one of the harder decisions, but as a family work it out.
5) Now pick a date and a goal. Plan on having enough food and water for 2 weeks for the whole family. Set a date to accomplish this goal. Be sure you have enough prescription meds for this two week period as well.
6) Reduce your debt. Don’t build your supplies up by going into more debt. This is a terrible mistake. Just ask all the nitwits that maxed their credit cards just before Y2K. Do your best to reduce debt by selling junk you don’t use or need.
7) Now you met your primary goal. You can live for two weeks without support. Now go and add the items that make life bearable. Band-aids, Asprin, toilet paper. Baby wipes are unbelievably handy to have. You can give yourself a bath with them. Also don’t forget garbage bags and stuff to cook your meals with. Eventually you will need to address security, but for now worry about food and water first.

Now you are well on your way to saving your family from a FEMA camp. Notice I don’t suggest buying 3 guns for each family member. You don’t need 20,000 rounds of ammunition, hospital beds or bomb shelters. If you want to go that far down the preparedness path, by all means, but don’t put the cart before the horse. Work on shorter goals before running willy-nilly to the higher level goals. In other words work your way up the ladder, rather than trying to ride an elevator.

This summer is going to be pretty interesting. We may see wide scale riots. We may see a economic collapse. We may see nothing out of the ordinary. But now is the time to start. Starting a small garden isn’t that much in the way of money, or even time, but you’ll learn something. that’s another step on that ladder.

If you tackle this in a systematic approach, like two weeks, then three months, then six, then nine then a full year.Then you can fill out your preps with the other necessities on the way without killing yourself. Slow and steady wins the race.

Now I had an idea that might prove to be of some worth to groups of preppers and their families. See, the problem was how to develop patterns of behavior to suit the different levels of threats we prep for. For example you would have one pattern of behavior during a snowstorm, and a completely different pattern of behavior if you were in the midst of a mutant ninja zombie attack.

Now the government has a few, namely the DEFCON (DEFensive readiness CONdition) from the cold war. And we cannot pass up the much maligned HSAS (Homeland Security Advisory System). US military units use the REDCON (REaDiness CONition) to set up unit security details and such.

Although the NSAS is pretty much pointless because of the politics involved with the raising and lowering of the levels, I find a color system is much better to use than a numerical one. It’s much easier to slip into messages to your group or your family than a number. If your part of a group the answering machine message could be changed to “You have reached blah blah blah leave a message after the tone.” In the background play he appropriate music for that level. Black is Metallica or AC/DC, green and/or blue for Weezer, red for the Cure, purple for Prince, white for The Beatles. Etc. Good security and very subtle.

The colors can be used out in the open with little possibility of alerting the sheople. simply putting a red ribbon on the mailbox would be enough to let your kid know to come home right off the bus because bad things are happening. Or a text message of “red front of bldg 5 min” is very evident to the recipient of the message.

An issue I have with all the systems mentioned above is there are only five steps in all of them. I think having a slightly wider range of levels gives your group and family the ability to tailor their preps to different situations. One thing I figured out when cooking up this idea is that the levels should be linear. So each level adds more and more protection and awareness to the levels below it.

These levels are not intended to replace Cooper’s States of Awareness. You could still be murdered in level Violet, for example. These levels are for group and family level security, not individual per se.

Here is an example of some of these ideas assembled into a crude plan. Feel free to use this as the foundation of your own thinking. The levels are arranged from lowest threat to highest amount of danger. All the previous security measures are in effect when moving to a higher security level.

White – no threats – All asteroids and comets have been removed from local space. Politicians, priests, and lawyers have all taken up gardening, leaving their former jobs to men of spotless virtue. Don’t hold your breath, it’s never going to happen.
Violet – minimal threats – Solid economy, record lows of unemployment, no nukes missing from Russia. Food is in abundant supply, and social-politically things are fairly stable. The years of 1990 – 1995 would probably fit this criteria.
Purple (indigo) – Peacetime – Keep prepping, things are bound to get worse.
Blue - Cautious – Avoid “bad areas of town.” Never let your fuel tank drop below 1/2 full. Concealed carry is optional, determined by circumstances. Keep additional supplies in your car in case of emergency.
Green – alert – Keep in close contact with the group for escalated levels and keep everyone updated with your location at all times. Be ready to render assistance if needed. Verify power generation systems are fully functional & tested. Also check chainsaws and/or plows or snowblowers, etc. The good news is you can still go on vacation. This would be an appropriate level for a snowstorm, or during tornado season.
Yellow – imminent danger – Everyone allowed to legally carry a concealed sidearm will do so. If concealable body armor is available, it is always worn outside the home. All stocks of food, water, fuel, and medical supplies will be double-checked and re-inventoried ASAP. Every day a complete security walk though of the home will be done. High-use consumables like fuel will be checked daily. BOB’s are re-checked and placed at the home’s main entrance for easy access. Don’t go to work unless you will lose your job if you bang in sick. Bathtubs are filled in case power is lost. Vacation plans are most likely canceled. This would be an appropriate level for a Cat 3 hurricane or a blizzard.
Orange – danger – Bathtubs and every pot, bucket, etc. are filled with water in anticipation of water/power going out for a long time. People are not lawless, but it can be touch and go if you have something they want (i.e. fuel, food). No one leaves the house alone, a buddy system is used to keep track of everyone. The home’s security will be beefed up as best as possible. One area of the home would be designated a trauma center, with pre-staged medical supplies. Fuck work, your life is worth more than your job. This would be an appropriate level during hurricane Katrina.
Red – imminent disaster – Everyone is armed with a pistol on their body unless they are washing up or fucking. Long arms are always within arms reach. All magazines are loaded, and combat webbing is loaded and ready. Body armor, if available, is worn. Full security measures about the home, such as boarding up windows, 24×7 security patrols/fire watch are set up.
Black – TEOTWAWKI – Weapons free, i.e. longarms are carried openly in public. When moving as a group, full military spacing with pointman. Only leave your retreat only if absolutely necessary. You are your own law – deal with thieves as you see fit. Assume everyone outside your group wants to kill/rape you. Anyone who approaches your home is searched thoroughly at gunpoint.

I hope this gets you thinking, and acts as a catalyst to archive another level of preparedness and security for your family and group. If you develop a full plan for your group, please e-mail it to me for posting for everyones benefit!

And no, I’m not talking about using the rhythm method while wearing a rubber when your girlfriend is on the Pill.

What I mean is using three levels to prepare yourself in every category. These would be a short-term, long-term and (for lack of a better term) a middle level of preps. Dividing up your thinking allows you to split a problem into something more manageable. It also allows you to tackle many categories for the short term without getting yourself lost trying to go whole hog at once.

Let’s face it, it can be so easy to go nuts and max out the credit cards buying the latest Gen III nightvision scope for the customized battle rife with the 300 magazines and 4 billion rounds of ammo you bought. The four pallets of MRE’s are on the way with the five water purification systems and gas masks, etc. were bought with the home equity loan you were going to use to fix the roof… I can’t do that, I haven’t won the lottery yet. Prepping can be done on the cheap. It’s remarkable how little cash it can take, if you spend your prepping dollar wisely and you follow a plan.

Take food for example. My short term solution is what I have in my freezer, and in the cupboards of my house. The moderate level would be all my canned goods and grain I have stored. The long term solution to food would be learning hunting and animal husbandry skills and growing vegetables from open pollinated seed.

For water, I have bottles in my fridge, freezer, and pantry with a few drops of bleach in them to keep them good. That takes care of the short term. For moderate term I need to start catching rainwater and use my Katadyn filter. Longest term is to filter it through coffee filters and boil it. It’s not the best solution for now, but it should be quite serviceable. This allows me to focus on the other areas that need prepping. The amount of time, effort, or resources to improve the water situation, would have a lot more effect if applied to another area.

Every segment of prepping can be broken down this way. Medicine, firearms, security – the list goes on. Also by thinking in these phases, you consume your preps along those lines. Your short term supply is generally has the shortest expiration of all your preps, so it is what is rotated out the fastest, and is most likely stuff you use on a (somewhat) daily basis. So that bag of chips on the counter wasn’t purchased as part of my preps, but when a snowstorm buries the house, it just got drafted into the preps.

Another way of looking at preps is from most likely to least likely to be used. Medical and security preps seem to “fit” better to this path of thinking. Band-Aids are the most used with disinfectants while child birthing kits are a lower probability of use. Or, I should say, less frequency of use. Unless your Irish Catholic, then you better have plenty (just kiddin’)!

To my mind you would more likely need a kevlar vest, than a pile of biohazard suits and dosimeters. But then again I’m not trying to prep for WWIII, I see the biggest threat from social unrest and economic collapse. If Iran ever gets a nuke and ICBMs I would need to re-evaluate.

If you have not started to prep it is not too late. Please go out and try to get others to start to do something, anything to get ready for hard economic times. Even if you have only a weeks worth of food and water saved when the poop his the fan, the you are a week ahead of everyone else. You have a week’s worth of buffer between food in you families belly and starvation.