Search Results for: “Internet” Without Infrastructure

“Internet” Without Infrastructure – Part 1, by R.H.

Communication, outgoing and incoming, is obviously vitally important, but we tend to take for granted the various channels available to us at this time. The telephone, email, and even television and radio media rely on a huge amount of civil infrastructure– the same infrastructure that we rely on for water, sewage service, food, electrical power, transportation, shipping and basic mail, and both fire suppression and law enforcement services. The Internet has become a vital part of that infrastructure. Without a functional power grid and cable or telephone service, the Internet does not exist. It could be argued that, even in the total absence of the rest of the infrastructure, very basic Internet services, such as email and even limited access to local, national, and world news, could mean the difference between survival and death for many, or at least the difference between sanity and insanity. At the very least, they…


Be Ready For Infrastructure Collapse – Part 1, by J330

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…system starting in the 1950’s. The original highways lasted for decades because they were designed to take the weight of jumbo jets, not diesel trucks. Immigrant labor, willing to work for a smaller wage than Americans that had only been in the USA a decade longer, is the reason all of that original infrastructure was able to be completed at such low costs. No unions, no protective labor laws, these things kept costs low. With the advent of unions, laws, higher wages, the post-WWll economy, women in the work force; all these things led to MUCH higher costs to build, and repair our nation’s infrastructure. By the late 1970’s, virtually all of the original bridges, waterworks, electrical systems, steamworks, gasworks, roads, etc., were in desperate need of repair/replacement. Ordinary human graft, and corruption, coupled with thousands of new, and conflicting, environmental laws, meant that utilities were faced with unreasonable, sometimes…


“Internet” Without Infrastructure – Part 4, by R.H.

…of postal service is available, a pouch can simply be mailed from one Postmaster to another. If the Internet, or some form of it, is available in some area, pouches can be passed through it. Anonymity is still mostly retained, especially for encrypted messages. It is possible that, even with the Internet down, some communities could set up Broadband Hamnet networks, which use regular routers with special antennas to connect computers that can be miles apart. Although these networks will not necessarily be able to connect to the Internet, they could certainly be used to transfer files between Postmasters. If the Internet outage is just local, it might make sense to automatically forward any messages that are using email addresses directly on to an email server. This could certainly be overdone, resulting in spam, but when a pouch of messages makes its way outside of a disaster area to a…


Should I Bug Out or Survive in Place?- Part 3, by Jonathan Hollerman

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…ideal survival group in my opinion is five to six family units with a maximum of 20 or so individuals with varying skillsets (Like the book Patriots). A small town of 500 to 1000 people must have a massive (off-grid functioning) critical infrastructure in place pre-SHTF to keep that many desperate people fed on a daily basis for more than a few weeks or months. If your major fear is surviving a massive financial collapse where the electric grid continues to function and major infrastructure like the just-in-time food delivery system is operational, than a small town “could” work out best. In the case of a severe pandemic or long-term grid down scenario, I will have to respectfully disagree on the long-term viability of most small towns in America. As you provided a long response, it’s probably easiest for me to take your points one at a time. 1)I credit…


Two Letters Re: “Internet” Without Infrastructure

…keys, they were exchanged via a small computer on a moped that connected to an access point in each village as the moped drove through. From a technical perspective, the solutions are nearly identical and the two could easily be combined, not to mention combining with amateur radio VHF and/or HF links for high-priority or long distance communications. – J.F. o o o Hugh, The “Internet” Without Infrastructure article by R. H. is very intriguing. It makes sense that part of our preps should be to create part of the system that R.H. proposes, in order to allow that system to be used as quickly as possible after the regular Internet fails. I believe we should exercise this alternate infrastructure in parallel with the current system. Maybe a web site should be setup where practitioners of the alternate internet could perfect the operating rules and exercise it. Regards – C.R….


Top Six Common Questions Concerning An EMP, by Old Bobbert

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…no direct immediate danger for people. The real danger appears to come after the EMP event from “secondary” consequences. “Electromagnetic Pulse: Threat to Critical Infrastructure” Dr. Peter Vincent Pry Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure protection and Security Technologies House Committee on Homeland Security May 8, 2014 Thank you for this opportunity to testify at your hearing on the threat posed by electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to critical infrastructure. Natural EMP from a geomagnetic super-storm, like the 1859 Carrington Event or 1921 Railroad Storm, and nuclear EMP attack from terrorists or rogue states, as practiced by North Korea during the nuclear crisis of 2013, are both existential threats that could kill 9 of 10 Americans through starvation, disease, and societal collapse. We have learned a lot from this simple research endeavor. Thanks for your attention. Your comments are appreciated. SurvivalBlog Writing Contest This has been another entry for Round 73…


The Exposed Backbone: The Risk of Cyber Attack by LockedGate

…powerless to stop an APT without radically changing how they do business. Most of these attacks are not trying to take out infrastructure… yet.  However, the massive botnets of computers that have been built for profit could easily be used for more malicious purposes, or an APT is obvious vector of attack to critical infrastructure. It get it’s worse though. In the same race for efficiency that got rid of manual backups, companies have gotten rid of separate networks that keep critical infrastructure separate from the average employee checking his email.  This puts the Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and other systems systems built decades ago and never patched on the same network as machines connected directly to the internet.  Even worse, this researchers found 10,000 PLCs directly reachable from the Internet. Stuxnet was the shot over the bow and a wake-up call for to expect from this new era of attacks.  There has been much reported about it (including here and…


“Internet” Without Infrastructure – Part 5, by R.H.

…could easily be placed in any of the tools, which could be devastating. There are solutions to all of this, both highly technical and otherwise, but it is something that Postmasters need to be constantly aware of. The above toolkit, once standardized, should be packaged in an encrypted file (possibly using VeraCrypt) and signed with a known public key to help ensure its authenticity. However, even this could be faked, unless some method of certifying public keys (without the Internet) is used. See the document referenced above on how PGP works for more information on certification. There are certainly challenges ahead, but until the Postmaster network has become knowledgeable enough about encryption and skilled enough to use the tools effectively, we don’t want to make things so complicated that we discourage the growth of the network in the first place. It needs to be simple to begin with. The level…


Knowledge is Power: The Value of an Area Study – Part 2, by Viking4

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…one of my best eavesdropping sites (remembering OPSEC of course)! Critical Infrastructure I find that determining and documenting the critical infrastructure in the AO and AI takes the second longest amount of time. Again, depending on where you are some parts of this section may take a considerable amount of digging to acquire. The primary data points for this section include: • Energy and utilities • Hospitals and trauma centers • Schools Depending on your location, the number of electrical energy providers may be one or many. Rural areas may have an electric cooperative (Co-Op) while suburban and urban areas may have a single large power company. Regardless, the infrastructure that provides the power to your AO and AI is composed of miles of power lines and potentially dozens of electrical substations. Rural areas may have this infrastructure spread out over a large area, while more densely populated areas might…


Guest Article: Six Common Misconceptions About EMP, by G.B., PhD

…the more EMP energy will be coupled into the system, and the higher the probability of damage. As such, the electric power-grid network and landline communication systems are almost certain to experience component damage when exposed to an EMP with cascading effects to most other (dependent) infrastructure systems. Misconception 2: EMP Effects Will Have Limited, Easily Recoverable, “Nuisance” Effects on Critical Infrastructure Systems. Although an EMP would not affect every system, widespread failure of a significant fraction of electrical and electronic systems will cause large-scale cascading failures of critical infrastructure networks because of the interdependency among affected and unaffected systems. Mathematician Paul Erdos’s “small-world” network theory applies, which refers to most nodes– equipment attached to a network– being accessible to all others through just a few connections. The fraction of all nodes changes suddenly when the average number of links per single network connection exceeds one. For example, a single…


Building Prepper Infrastructure – Part 3, by 3AD Scout

…magnet for those which special skills or will you let those people be recruited by the likes of “Toe Cutter” and the “The Governor” or “Negan”? As we stated earlier in this article, our critical infrastructures are dependent upon one another. Our defense and security infrastructure will be dependent upon our survival critical manufacturing capability. Those with the best means of production will be able to provide the logistical capability to defend themselves. Dreams into reality As the old saying goes, preparedness is a journey. For many, the quest for disaster preparedness ultimately leads us down a path to homesteading. Why? For the very reasons that we have just discussed. Homesteading is about building survival infrastructures and to a smaller degree the means of production. But you don’t necessarily have to homestead to have prepper infrastructures and the means of production. However those that own land have sufficient space and…


“Internet” Without Infrastructure – Part 2, by R.H.

How the Network Works Basically, as soon as people start transferring files between computers, a network of sorts exists. A complex system can then be developed to get information to the right place as quickly as possible and keep everything running smoothly and efficiently. This is what the Internet does now, using millions of powerful computers and extremely complex software. There is a much simpler way of building a network that requires only the basic technology items listed above and the adoption of a few very simple standards and rules. All we need, basically, is to get a given “file” from point A to point B. If you multiply that by millions or billions, you have a very useful network. The first problem is, how do you identify point B? The second problem is, how do you find a path from point A to point B? The Internet has a…


Thoughts on Surviving Civil War, by 3AD Scout

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…to the dentist and my annual physical before election day as well. I feel pretty good with our stocks of medical supplies. Besides looking at shoring up preps I have started to think about how a civil war might start and some of the ramifications we might expect. As I contemplate those issues, I can use that knowledge to again adjust preps. One of the biggest assumptions that I have is that if the situation “goes south” we may see the internet “kill switch” be thrown thus shutting down many forms of communication such as “Twitter”, “Facebook” and other social media and mainstream media sites. As we have seen over the past few months social media and apps have been utilized by protesters to command and control their forces. How will you communicate with family, members of your mutual assistance group, neighbors and others without the internet including voice over…


A Local Disaster Network – Part 1, by J.M.

There have been a number of articles on SurvivalBlog on the use of mobile devices like cell phones and tablets in survival/disaster scenarios (including one I wrote – ‘Tactical Technology for TEOTWAWKI’ parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). In that article, I briefly introduced the idea of setting up and using a home server/network infrastructure for a disaster scenario, which can provide you with a lot of options for planning, organizing, coordinating, sharing, and communicating information among your team, family, group, or community. In this article, I’ll discuss one possible approach for configuring such an infrastructure for disaster situations. Note that this is based on an actual configuration that I regularly use a couple of times a year at a friend’s off-the-grid cabin out in the wilds of Maine; a group of us outdoor geeks get together to go hiking, fishing, hunting and to practice bushcraft, and we use…


“Internet” Without Infrastructure – Part 3, by R.H.

Basic Techniques and Definition of Terms (continued) Sending a message. Sending a message consists of creating a text file containing the message, naming the file as described above, and getting it into a Postmaster’s pouch or multiple Postmasters’ pouches. If you don’t have a way to create a file yourself, a Postmaster can help you. The smaller your message is the better chance it has of getting through. You don’t need to go crazy with this. A message that is only 20 characters in length is not really any better than a 1K file (1024 characters). When writing out large numbers of small files, computers tend to waste a lot of space, because of the way the data is stored. A 20 character file is likely to use up 1K of space anyway. Even if your file is 2K, 3K, or even 10K, it’s still a “small” file. The point…