Prepare or Die

another survivalist article in the MSM

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:43:36 -0700

Dallas-Fort Worth's 'modern survivalists' are ready for layoffs - or war

By MELODY McDONALD | April 4, 2009

Jack Spirko owns a media company, is married to a nurse and has a son in college. He has two dogs and lives in a nice house with a pool in a diversified neighborhood in Arlington.
Spirko, 36, considers himself an average guy with a normal life.
But for the past few years, Spirko has been stockpiling food, water, gas, guns and ammunition. He also has a load of red wine, Starbucks coffee and deodorant stashed away.
"I refer to myself as a modern survivalist, which means I don’t do without," Spirko explained. "I have a nice TV; I have nice furniture. We are not living in the sticks, but I take all of these things very seriously."
Spirko, an Army veteran and self-described "stark-raving-mad Libertarian," is part of a growing movement of people who are preparing for a disaster — natural, economic or man-made. Referred to as "modern survivalists" or "preppers," they are taking steps to protect and provide for their families should something bad happen.
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When Space Weather Attacks (Apocalypse Edition)

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:58:18 -0700

It is midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event—a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that.

That's how Michael Brooks dramatizes a recent NAS report about the possibility that the sun, during a period of intense activity, could shoot off a billion-ton high-energy plasma ball that thwaps Earth and wreaks havoc on our magnetic field. If that happened, the magnetic field could induce extremely strong currents in our power grids that would fry the copper wiring in the transformers. Something like this actually happened in Quebec in 1989—a geomagnetic storm left six million people without power for nine hours—but that was a relatively low-intensity space storm.

How likely is a massive one? Back in 1859, the Carrington event hit Earth—a huge solar flare that produced stunning auroras as far south as the Equator but also disrupted the world's telegraph networks and drove magnetometers haywire. Luckily, the world wasn't totally dependent on high-voltage electric grids back then. But we are today! And if, say, a severe weather event knocked out 300 key transformers in the United States within 90 seconds—as the usually cautious NAS concedes is wholly possible—well, then that'd be 130 million people without power, and it'd take forever to get those transformers back.

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world’s first zero-star hotel — based in a converted NUCLEAR BUNKER

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:52:32 -0800

Fallout of bed ... guest unwinds in old nuclear shelter

By JAMIE PYATT | Published: Today | The Sun

BEDS are on offer for just $6 a night at the world’s first zero-star hotel — based in a converted NUCLEAR BUNKER.

But guests at the no-frills establishment will have to put up with hot water bottles rather than central heating.

And they will be given a pair of EARPLUGS to help blot out the racket from the ventilation system.

Standard beds at the austere Null Stern (No Star) hotel in Sevelen, near Zurich, Switzerland, are military-style bunks.

Eleven pounds extra buys a "luxury" room, with "antique" beds from a condemned hotel.

Complimentary slippers are provided for walking across the icy concrete floors — while customers enter a draw to decide who gets the luxury of a hot morning shower.

And with no windows, the only view of the outside world is via a row of monitors in reception. The bed-and-no-breakfast hotel began life as an art project by twins Frank and Patrik Riklin.

They turned it into a full-time business when interest grew, and plan to welcome their first guests early in the new year.

They could convert 11 more bunkers if the first proves a success.

Patrik, 34, said: �Switzerland has lots more civil defence buildings. We’ve had inquires from all over the world.�

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Mark Steyn on the significance of the Bombay terror attacks

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:28:05 -0800

Mumbai Terror Attacks

It’s Not the Cold War
Updating strategy to fight the ideology.
November 29, 2008 9:00 AM
By Mark Steyn

see photos at the Boston Globe's BIG PICTURE

. . . In the ten months before this week’s atrocity, Muslim terrorists killed over 200 people in India and no-one paid much attention. Just business as usual, alas. In Bombay, the perpetrators were cannier. They launched a multiple indiscriminate assault on soft targets, and then in the confusion began singling out A-list prey: Not just wealthy Western tourists, but local orthodox Jews, and municipal law enforcement. They drew prominent officials to selected sites, and then gunned down the head of the antiterrorism squad and two of his most senior lieutenants. They attacked a hospital, the place you’re supposed to take the victims to, thereby destabilizing the city’s emergency-response system.

And, aside from dozens of corpses, they were rewarded with instant, tangible, economic damage to India: the Bombay Stock Exchange was still closed on Friday, and the England cricket team canceled their tour (a shameful act).

What’s relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events. Try it in, say, Mayor Nagin’s New Orleans. All you need is the manpower. Given the numbers of gunmen, clearly there was a significant local component. On the other hand, whether or not Pakistan’s deeply sinister ISI had their fingerprints all over it, it would seem unlikely that there was no external involvement. After all, if you look at every jihad front from the London Tube bombings to the Iraqi insurgency, you’ll find local lads and wily outsiders: That’s pretty much a given.

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Great Depression Interviews -- learn about what it will be like soon

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:52:01 -0800

A collection of stories from the Studs Terkel Hard Times radio series; the haves and the have-nots talk about life during The Great Depression.

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Coast to Coast interview - SURVIVAL Psychology

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:41:12 -0700

Host Ian Punnett discusses the psychology of disaster response with Amanda Ripley, author of The Unthinkable: Who Survives when Disaster Strikes and Why

MP3 file - 22.64 MB - commercials removed
2 hours, 12 minutes

http://www.amandaripley.com/

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Ask Dr. Helen: Preparing for Disaster — Prudent or Paranoid?

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:57:45 -0700

Dr. Helen Smith

It's wise to be prepared — just don't lose sight of today as you brace for a potential tomorrow.

August 5, 2008 - by Helen Smith

So when does preparing for the worst shade over from prudence into paranoia? That’s a question that often comes up when people talk about preparing for disasters, financial meltdowns, or confrontation with criminals. How much is enough, and how much is too much?

It’s been over a year that I have been writing this column and I happened to take a look recently at the first piece I wrote, entitled “What Kinds of Things Should an Adult Be Able to Do?” The article and your responses got me thinking about being prepared for disasters or incidents in general that require skill and forethought to overcome. Using Heinlein’s quote on generalization, I opined that it was important for adults to be able to do a number of things such as drive a stick shift or swim a reasonable distance. Heinlein’s quote is as follows:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

What about applying Heinlein’s thoughts to disaster preparedness? In my estimation, it is prudent — within reason — to be able to handle a wide range of situations that call for general skills, just as Heinlein suggests. It is important to be prepared for any number of natural or man-made disasters even though the chances of being the victim of any specific one may be small. I will include self-defense here because being a victim of a crime is not necessarily a rare occurence but one that happens all too often; in 2006, for example, an estimated 1,417,000 violent crimes were committed across the country.

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They Will Survive

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:40:16 -0700

John D. McCann, a former Marine drill instructor, invokes the unofficial Marine Corps motto "Improvise, adapt, overcome," in his survival skill courses.

By DAVID WALLIS

Published: August 1, 2008

John D. McCann, survival instructor

UNLESS John D. McCann, the managing director of Survival Resources, based in Hyde Park, N.Y., is wearing a suit for some sort of business meeting, he always carries in his pants pocket an Altoids tin. There are no mints inside it. Instead, he painstakingly packs the tin — which he explains can double as a mini-frying pan if you’re ever marooned in the wilderness — with a remarkable assortment of worst-case scenario supplies.

The contents include — but are not limited to — matches that Mr. McCann hand-dips in Thompson’s WaterSeal to waterproof them, a tiny magnesium fire starter, a small lens for igniting fires should the matches and magnesium fire starter fail, an L.E.D. flashlight, a button-size compass, a thin square of mirror to signal potential rescuers, 20 water purification tablets, a meticulously folded freezer bag to store potable water, a packet of antibiotic ointment, butterfly bandages, a sewing bobbin with 20 feet of fishing line, a dozen hooks, six weights, laminated instructions on tying knots and snare wire for capturing small animals. All in one Altoids tin.

Altoids Tin - Survival Kit

Survival Resources markets primitive-living provisions, and Mr. McCann, 55, also teaches survival kit design, among other do-or-die subjects, to students attending its Survival Skills Weekends in Verona, N.Y., near Syracuse. Consider it an Eagle Scout crash course for adults.

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WaterBob™ --Water Bathtub Oblong Bladder

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:48:25 -0700

WaterBob

The WaterBOB™ is a fresh water containment system used to store up to 100 gallons of potable drinking water in the event supplies become scarce during times of natural or man-made disasters. Water can be stored up to 2 weeks in a controlled environment. Please note: the WaterBOB™ is intended for a one-time use only.

The WaterBOB™ includes instruction for use, liner, two nozzles and endcaps, filling sock, liner hand, and pump with water exit hose.

WaterBob order page via RedCross.org Store

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Are feds stockpiling survival food?

nobody@vox.com(Survival Vox) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:40:26 -0700

food storage

A Wall Street Journal columnist has advised people to "start stockpiling food" and an ABC News Report says "there are worrying signs appearing in the United States where some … locals are beginning to hoard supplies." Now there's concern that the U.S. government may be competing with consumers for stocks of storable food.

"We're told that the feds bought the entire container of canned butter when it hit the California docks. (Something's up!)," said officials at Best Prices Storable Foods in an advisory to customers.

Spokesman Bruce Hopkins told WND he also has had trouble obtaining No. 10 cans of various products from one of the world's larger suppliers of food stores, Oregon Freeze Dry.

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