Hello James,
I recently found your website and have been reading through the archives. You’ve put together an enormous resource that can only become more valuable over the coming years. I’ve tried to purchase your novel Patriots [4] through Fred’s M14 Stocks [5] but unfortunately he doesn’t ship internationally.
I feel we are relatively fortunate in New Zealand regarding direct threats:
1) The closest part of Australia in 1,275 miles to the west, although the prevailing wind is from that direction.
2) We are an island nation and there are plans to close the borders in the event of bird flu pandemic.
3) With only 3.5 million people on a land mass the size of Colorado State we have plenty of room if TSHTF [6].
4) Our gun laws aren’t overly draconian such as in Australia and the UK. The biggest problem is limited allowable magazine capacity (7 rounds for centrefire and 15 for rimfires). Pistol ownership is a problem as you must be a member of a gun club and shoot regularly with them to maintain the pistol licence
5) We have the largest stocks per capita of Tamiflu in the world
6) Our government does not get directly (and more importantly, publicly) involved in worldwide conflicts e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq etc
Our biggest problems are:
1) Heavy reliance on imports of oil for fuel
2) High cost of shipping for the many products not readily available in New Zealand
3) Small country mentality of “We are too small for anyone to want to attack us”
4) Heavy reliance on imports for finished goods. We export primarily raw materials, meat and fruit.
As a firefighter we do a lot of worst case scenario planning and our country (and probably many others) are entirely unprepared for concerted attempts to disrupt our infrastructure. For example 10 house fires as a diversion in the middle of the night in Auckland would utilize all fire appliances and manpower and leave nothing available to respond to more serious events. Thank you again for providing such a wonderful resource. Regards. J.G. in Auckland, New Zealand