The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

17 Comments

1. “kissing bug”

   We have these. I’ve seen them around my door.

2. “Kissing Bug” – Is it just my imagination or, does it seem as if items of interest like this one we once again have to rely on Brit reporting? Propaganda from our friends across the pond or just laziness on the part of U.S. “news” sources? BBC, Daily Mail and other sources outside the U.S. are becoming my “goto” sites, after Survivalblog of course.

3. Venezula saw Haitis experience with US “aid”,a invasion by 82nd Airborne,shutdown of any aid,starvation,disease,prevention of rebuilding (even basic shelter or sanitation-anyone building a shack from rubble was leveled and even latrines were forbidden). Years later they are in tents or tarps,no clean water(not allowed to dig wells),foraging for scraps/weeds(food as a weapon),no economy(jobs,work). A real disaster made much worse. If you think this isn’t planned and on purpose look at the cities we’ve leveled in Afghanistan,Iraq,Syria and elsewhere and left them body strewn piles of rubble. The Deep State loves the destruction and has no interest in the aftermath unless they get “no bid-cost plus” boondogles on your tax debt.

4. Nuke Threat:

   A lot of folks seem to be worried about this all the sudden. I tell them that cities are kill zones and an enemy could wipe out half our population by destroying 146 counties. The destruction of the U.S. capital and all state capitals would wipe out all first and second tiers of government. All of that for less than two hundred weapons. Because of commuting and suburbs, the optimal time for an attack would be when the folks in the East coast and folks in Hawaii are all at work, but wars don’t always start when planned. Contrary to the Hollywood fantasies, after such an event, it will be a long, long time before those areas are rebuilt, if ever.

   My advice to folks are that if any nuclear explosion happens anywhere in the world, for whatever reason, or, if there are signs of an impending attack, to leave the cities immediately, get out of the kill zone. Tell your boss you don’t feel well, and just leave the urban environment.

   ‘Nuclear War Survival Skills’ by Cresson H. Kearny should be required reading for all U.S. citizens. One thing that I do with folks is to lead a directed study of the book, one or two chapters per week, while discussing local considerations.
   http://www.ki4u.com/nwss.pdf or http://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf

   Ignorance of nuclear warfare could lead to countless deaths. The folks that lived through the Cold War are dying off and the younger folks are too distracted to learn about it. Instead of reading one more action adventure, romance, science fiction fantasy, or Harry Potter book, have those folks around you read the ‘Nuclear War Survival Skills’ book.

   https://www.businessinsider.com/half-of-the-united-states-lives-in-these-counties-2013-9

5. Watching the TV series “Jericho” would be useful in understanding what is possible in a post nuke world.
   Among the Books useful is Cresson Kearney’s book on nuke weps survival but I would add that the 1964 edition is the better of the lot- it has all of the original chapters whereas the post- 64 editions do not for PC reasons.
   As well, several of the USMC and US Army CBRN decontamination Field Manuals are very useful-that is, if you want to know how to wash your truck, house, persons and other equipment.

   I for one spent the bucks for 7 rolls of the plastic sheeting that will be used to spread over the garden area and chicken run/coop and house in such an event as fallout. it took some time to unroll and hermetically seal the seams and then re-roll but it is now a do-able measure that may well help.

6. > These men may have committed crimes

   I am pleasantly surprised that Sessions has resisted pressure from Trump. The system is working. Mueller has 5 convictions and 27 indictments. Cohen will go to jail for helping Trump pay hush money to conceal his adultery and sexual immorality with prostitutes, a violation of campaign finance law. The swamp is being drained.

   1. “> These men may have committed crimes”

      Then again maybe not. Maybe it’s just the fear of the Deep State apparatus that is out to get them all. Mannifort had all this investigated years ago by the Feds, the Feds said “Nothing to see here, move along, move along.” By the way, it ain’t over. Oh and what ever happened to the Constitutional restrictions on cruel and unusual punishment? Mannifort has been in solitary confinement for months with virtually no access to his attorney. He is in solitary confinement today. For a white collar crime? Please, give me a break.

      “I am pleasantly surprised that Sessions has resisted pressure from Trump.”

      Sessions should not have accepted the job in the first place if he was going to recuse himself. He serves at the pleasure of the President, he is failing his President by not doing his job.

      “The system is working.”

      Yes, for the Swamp. Yes the system designed to stage a coup d’etat (per Wikipedia – A coup d’état, also known simply as a coup, a putsch, golpe de estado, or an overthrow, is a type of revolution, where the illegal and overt seizure of a state by the military or other elites within the state apparatus occurs.) Yep, it’s coup d’etat alright, and Sessions does absolutely nothing to stop it.

      “Mueller has 5 convictions and 27 indictments.”

      Of the 5 convictions, not a one has anything to do with “Russian collusion”, not a one.

      Of the 27 indictments, virtually all are indictments of Russian citizens, living in Russia, who will never see and American courtroom. Also the only “proof” comes from the same folks that are perpetrating this coup d’etat in the first place. No credibility.

      “Cohen will go to jail for helping Trump pay hush money to conceal his adultery and sexual immorality with prostitutes, a violation of campaign finance law.”

      Let’s see, Trump paid the “hush money” out of his own pocket, per Trump himself. That is not a violation of campaign finance law. Might be if it came from the campaign funds, it didn’t. There is no legal issue to stop someone from paying for silence when no law has been broken in the first place. As for sexual peccadilloes, the only presidents I can think of in my lifetime who haven’t been engaging in dalliances outside their marriages would be Carter and Reagan, maybe Ford, maybe even Nixon. The rest were serious scumbags in the fidelity department. In other words, it’s between Trump and his wife, and between Trump and God.

      “The swamp is being drained.”

      Not by letting the swamp get Trump. This is the swamp fighting back. There is no honor in the Deep State, none. There is no patriotism among the denizens of the swamp. There is no honor in serving the glory of Rome (D.C. or in other words, the swamp.)

      1. “Mannifort has been in solitary confinement for months with virtually no access to his attorney.”

         Manafort has access to a personal phone, a computer, and receives almost daily visits from his attorneys. He’s fine.

         “He serves at the pleasure of the President, he is failing his President by not doing his job.”

         Sessions serves the people and upholds the law of the land. Enforcing the law is his job, not personal loyalty to the president.

         “That is not a violation of campaign finance law.”

         Personal funds spent to influence an election are not exempt from campaign finance law.

         “The rest were serious scumbags in the fidelity department.”

         You’re alleging affairs by Obama, Bush 43, and Bush 41? Character counts. A serial adulterer and oathbreaker should not be trusted.

   2. You are either a fool or a troll. Ask the folks of Farmersville, Texas, their opinion of Jeff Sessions. The entire town has resisted a Muslim cemetary being built on 34 acres. They have fought tooth and nail to keep it out. Guess WHO just stepped into the fray, with the full force of the Department of Justice? Yes, why it’s Mr. Sessions-that bastion of Liberty supporter. For the Muslims, of course. Nothing like threatening a town that does not want or need a Muslim cemetery. Sessions should have been fired months ago.

      1. Ma’am, I know nothing about that case and won’t comment on it. However, banning a cemetery based on the religion of the people using it would clearly be illegal.

7. walmart clearances guns from time to time. they are not getting out of the gun business those are just models they are discontinuing or are not able to buy at bulk pricing again.

8. Re: Nuclear Threat-

   If FEMA is looking at planning for 1,000 kiloton (aka 1 megaton) then they aren’t just worried about N. Korea. I suspect they are worried about the Russians since many of their nukes are right around 1 megaton. When we were looking for our BOL I was looking to be as safe a we could from a 1 megaton nuke. We have the distance but something else that I think will help is the terrain between the target area and us. When the Soviet Union fell apart everyone acted as though nuclear weapons disappeared. That wasn’t the case and now look just a few decades later we have a new Russian threat except this time the guy with his fingers on the launch buttons is a former KGB insider who wants to return Russia to all its greatness by getting back its former satellite provinces like Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, etc. It was the nuclear threat of the 1980’s that really got me into the “Survivalist” movement. One of the things I volunteered for in my time in the Army was being on our company NBC recon team. We were responsible for checking an area out for NBC contamination before our unit moved into it. Gotta a lot of extra good knowledge from that extra duty. Will have to write an article for SurvivalBlog on the topic of Nuclear war survival perhaps. Many people get ther “knowledge” from the movies and that is a sure way to end up dead.

   1. You might want to use NukeMap2 to model the effects of a .8MT (Topol-M warhead) on the closest strategic target. The blast pattern is small enough to be contained within a city, but the fallout plume reaches some 150 klicks (100 rad/hr) for a ground burst. Of course the wind direction will cause the plume to wander a bit if you change direction and speed. But you know that.

      The decay rate calculation for the 100 rad/hr plume shows that after seven hours the dose rate is down to 10 rad/hr, and after 49 hours its down to 1 rad/hr exposure.

      But the 100 rad/hr will give you a half lethal dose in that first seven hours, so everyone should know where the closest fallout shelter is. If you live in the suburbs or out in the country, that fallout shelter would likely be a below ground level basement. Stay in that for 48 hours to two weeks depending on how many fallout plumes cover your area.

9. Reading these comments is depressing, not because of the topic, but because of the gross misunderstanding of the average American. Governments at all levels do not like to talk about nuclear attack. It frightens voters, and frightened voters do not vote for incumbents. The last POTUS to frankly discuss nuclear attack was JFK, who wanted a national shelter program much like Switzerland’s. He was going to unveil his plans for this in Dallas. His untimely death meant the end of that, and LBJ scrapped any chance of an effective civil defense program in the US. We went to Vietnam instead.
   First off, Russia and China remain the most potent threats to the US. Both have vastly modernized their nuclear arsenals. Both have very survivable, potent, accurate, and reliable delivery systems and warheads. The US has not maintained or modernized its nuclear deterrent to nearly the same degree as our adversaries. Today, only the ancient Minuteman III remains available, now with only a single warhead deployed on most of them. Only a handful have their full, 3 warhead compliment, in accordance with a foolish arms control agreement. Russia has replaced its aging SS-18 stockpile with a brand new, 15 warhead ICBM, called the Sarmat. Its ability to attack and destroy our vulnerable Minuteman force is even better than before. They are also “cold-launch” systems, enabling the users to reload the silos in hours with spares. Minuteman is a “hot-launch” system, which destroys the silo upon firing a missile. We didn’t think this out very carefully in the 1970s. Peacekeeper/MX was a modern ICBM, with 10 warheads, that was a hard target killer (counterforce) with great accuracy, but W ordered them destroyed to comply with New START. One third of Russia’s arsenal is road-mobile, which is impossible to track and destroy. Our only mobile platform is the 13 remaining Ohio class subs, only one of which is on patrol at any given time. The rest are in port or dry dock for repairs, or are in transit to or from a patrol area.
   A few Americans have built shelters of varying effectiveness, but the vast majority, even among those who are serious preppers, have not. I am often asked by media, “are a lot of people building shelters?” And my answer is always, “No.” Other builders say yes, and offer inflated production figures to serve their interests, but the real answer is, “No.” I would say a lot of people own smart phones. I would say a lot of people own an automobile. But a lot of Americans do not own shelters. It’s a fact that will haunt Americans of a future generation. If Ford, GM, and Chrysler stopped making cars and started mass-producing shelters at the rate of 10,000 per day, then I’d say, “Yes.” That just isn’t going to happen until war comes, and it will be far too late.
   For the record, the yield of the most prolific warheads in the Russian ICBM force….the silo-busters, is 750 kt. The smaller, mobile SS-27 Topol-M ICBMs, 500 kt or smaller. The SLBMs are now sporting even lower yields to crowd more re-entry bodies onto each bird. Only the older SLBMs packed a 1 mt punch, and I have no recent figures on how many of those remain deployed.
   Something to remember when the press discusses warhead counts and treaties….only the launchers are counted in the arms treaties, not the spare missiles. Ivan and probably China, stock many spares for each fixed silo and mobile launcher. So stated figures on weapon counts are polite lies.
   The most likely strategy from a state-actor is a first strike on our nuclear forces, command structure, government leaders in DC and Omaha. Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles, if launched from 500 miles off the east coast on a depressed trajectory, will arrive in DC in 3 1/2 minutes. The POTUS won’t even get to Marine One, assuming he was informed of the launch as it happens. He likely won’t get the warning before the weapons arrives. Too many layers in the command structure, and an EMP laydown at the beginning of the attack will frustrate comms. Cites are likely to be held ransom after the first strike has demolished the vast majority of our forces, as an incentive to sue for peace quickly. This is also the reason why we will likely not retaliate with our now-meager forces. I could be wrong in which scenario an adversary chooses, there are over 5,000 possible scenarios in our playbook.
   North Korea remains a potent threat, but not so much by their ability to hit a few cities, for which they might suffer terribly. Their biggest stick against the US is the EMP attack, which will eventually kill as many Americans as a full-on nuclear attack from a near-peer rival. It just takes longer for the effects of losing our infrastructure to have the desired outcome. N.K.gives our major rivals a wild card with which to threaten us, while having plausible deniability.
   No matter what the future holds, nuclear, biological weapons are not going away in our grandchildren’s lifetimes, and it never has in spite of the hopeful speculation of the idiots in media and academia.
   I watched a sitting Secretary of Defense lie to 800 people at the U of U in 1993, telling everyone that the nuclear threat from the USSR was “gone”. During Q &A, I got Les Aspin to admit that every bullet point in his talk was untrue (a polite way of saying, he lied). He admitted that Russia could reprogram its missiles to their combat targets in less than a minute and launch a nuclear war while we slept in our beds. That American eyes had never verified the Russian claims of targeting their missiles on the oceans in case of an accidental launch….we were taking their word for it. You should have seen the audience sit up and listen, then.
   In a nutshell, it doesn’t matter what we think, or what Trump thinks, or what CNN thinks. It only matters what Putin thinks, and what the general staffs in Russia and China thinks. In the end, you’re either ready, or you’re not.
   Get Cresson Kearney’s book. Read it thoroughly. Then build the best permanent shelter you can afford and stock the daylights out of it. Do your due diligence and your own research on what constitutes a good shelter. [Hint: You might only need 40 inches of dirt overhead, or you might need 8 feet. You don’t get to know where the heaviest fallout will actually go, nor where the bombs will actually land. Some will MISS.] Develop your own source of reliable drinking water, in sufficient quantity to meet your family’s needs for the rest of your lives, and the energy to sustain it. Once you have done all you can, live your life.

10. Reading these comments is depressing, not because of the topic, but because of the gross misunderstanding of the average American. Governments at all levels do not like to talk about nuclear attack. It frightens voters, and frightened voters do not vote for incumbents. The last POTUS to frankly discuss nuclear attack was JFK, who wanted a national shelter program much like Switzerland’s. He was going to unveil his plans for this in Dallas. His untimely death meant the end of that, and LBJ scrapped any chance of an effective civil defense program in the US. We went to Vietnam instead.
    First off, Russia and China remain the most potent threats to the US. Both have vastly modernized their nuclear arsenals. Both have very survivable, potent, accurate, and reliable delivery systems and warheads. The US has not maintained or modernized its nuclear deterrent to nearly the same degree as our adversaries. Today, only the ancient Minuteman III remains available, now with only a single warhead deployed on most of them. Only a handful have their full, 3 warhead compliment, in accordance with a foolish arms control agreement. Russia has replaced its aging SS-18 stockpile with a brand new, 15 warhead ICBM, called the Sarmat. Its ability to attack and destroy our vulnerable Minuteman force is even better than their SS-18s. They are also “cold-launch” systems, enabling the users to reload the silos in hours with spares. Minuteman is a “hot-launch” system, which destroys the silo upon firing a missile. We didn’t think this out very carefully in the 1970s. Peacekeeper/MX was a modern ICBM, with 10 warheads, that was a hard target killer (counterforce) with great accuracy, but W ordered them destroyed to comply with New START. One third of Russia’s arsenal is road-mobile, which is impossible to track and destroy. Our only mobile platform is the 13 remaining Ohio class subs, only one of which is on patrol at any given time. The rest are in port or dry dock for repairs, or are in transit to or from a patrol area. An Ohio today carries less than 100 warheads on 24 missiles, assuming they all work. Hardly enough to defeat Russia or China.
    A few Americans have built shelters of varying effectiveness, but the vast majority, even among those who are serious preppers, have not. I am often asked by media, “are a lot of people building shelters?” And my answer is always, “No.” Other builders say yes, and offer inflated production figures to serve their interests, but the real answer is, “No.” I would say a lot of people own smart phones. I would say a lot of people own an automobile. But a lot of Americans do not own shelters. It’s a fact that will haunt Americans of a future generation. If Ford, GM, and Chrysler stopped making cars and started mass-producing shelters at the rate of 10,000 per day, then I’d say, “Yes.” That just isn’t going to happen until war comes, and it will be far too late.
    For the record, the yield of the most prolific warheads in the Russian “heavy” ICBM force….the silo-busters, is 750 kt. The smaller, mobile SS-27 Topol-M ICBMs, 500 kt or smaller. The SLBMs are now sporting even lower yields to crowd more re-entry bodies onto each bird. Only the older SLBMs packed a 1 mt punch, and I have no recent figures on how many of those remain deployed.
    Something to remember when the press discusses warhead counts and treaties….only the launchers are counted in the arms treaties, not the spare missiles. Ivan and probably China, stock many spares for each fixed silo and mobile launcher. So stated figures on weapon counts are polite lies.
    The most likely strategy from a state-actor is a first strike on our nuclear forces, command structure, government leaders in DC and Omaha. Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles, if launched from 500 miles off the east coast on a depressed trajectory, will arrive in DC in 3 1/2 minutes. The POTUS won’t even get to Marine One, assuming he was informed of the launch as it happens. He likely won’t get the warning before the weapons arrives. Too many layers in the command structure, and an EMP laydown at the beginning of the attack will frustrate comms. Cites are likely to be held ransom after the first strike has demolished the vast majority of our forces, as an incentive to sue for peace quickly. [not that it matters, the cities will have no energy or drinking water at this point] This is also the reason why we will likely not retaliate with our now-meager forces. I could be wrong in which scenario an adversary chooses, there are over 5,000 possible scenarios in our playbook.
    North Korea remains a potent threat, but not so much by their ability to hit a few cities, for which they might suffer terribly. Their biggest stick against the US is the EMP attack, which will eventually kill as many Americans as a full-on nuclear attack from a near-peer rival. It just takes longer for the effects of losing our infrastructure to have the desired outcome. N.K.gives our major rivals a wild card with which to threaten us, while having plausible deniability.
    No matter what the future holds, nuclear, biological weapons are not going away in our grandchildren’s lifetimes, and it never has in spite of the hopeful speculation of the idiots in media and academia.
    I watched a sitting Secretary of Defense lie to 800 people at the U of U in 1993, telling everyone that the nuclear threat from the USSR was “gone”. During Q &A, I got Les Aspin to admit that every bullet point in his talk was untrue (a polite way of saying, he lied). He admitted that Russia could reprogram its missiles to their combat targets in less than a minute and launch a nuclear war while we slept in our beds. That American eyes had never verified the Russian claims of targeting their missiles on the oceans in case of an accidental launch….we were taking their word for it. You should have seen the audience sit up and listen, then.
    In a nutshell, it doesn’t matter what we think, or what Trump thinks, or what CNN thinks. It only matters what Putin thinks, and what the general staffs in Russia and China think. In the end, you’re either ready, or you’re not.
    Get Cresson Kearney’s book. Read it thoroughly. Then build the best permanent shelter you can afford and stock the daylights out of it. Do your due diligence and your own research on what constitutes a good shelter. [Hint: You might only need 40 inches of dirt overhead, or you might need 8 feet. You don’t get to know where the heaviest fallout will actually go, nor where the bombs will actually land. Some will MISS.] Develop your own source of reliable drinking water, in sufficient quantity to meet your family’s needs for the rest of your lives, and the energy to sustain it. Once you have done all you can, live your life. And enjoy all the blessings of electricity and everything that comes with it. Savor it. You might wake up someday and find it a fond memory.

11. re: Matt Bracken

    He’s spot on when it comes to describing the corrupt cabal of elitists running most of the un-elected parts of the government.

    There’s been alot of talk about the “new Civil War” and I have wondered how exactly this could manifest itself. Here’s a possible scenario:

    Many can see how there is a cabal of insider Deep State lawyers attacking Trump. They have decided to stop him by any means possible. If Trump is either driven from office or impeached, there are going to be a whole lot of people who will be absolutely livid, and possibly driven to the breaking point. This breaking point could drive previously passive people into taking some kind of action. People are fed up with the “swamp.”

    Mark Levin has described how the States could take back control from the Federal government through a Convention of States under Article 5 of the Constitution. Although this is the correct way, I feel it is probably too complicated and slow of a process for most people to get behind.

    It’s probably more likely that citizens in certain areas will demand that their State governments start withdrawing support from the Federal government. California has already proclaimed itself a “Sanctuary State”, claiming it will not participate in, or abide by national immigration law. (ironically, this is similar to what happened in the first Civil War) This sort of thing could produce a backlash in other states that demand immigration laws BE enforced. But it wouldn’t necessarily stop there. In fact, it may ignite a wildfire of legal nullification on other issues. Many states have been irked by laws and regulations handed down by the Fed’s (gay marriage, public land use, etc.).

    Bracken has said we are already in a Civil War, just not the shooting phase. The shooting phase usually involves money or resource control. The police could not care less if an Antifa mob burns cars, beaks windows and assaults people. But if one farmer refuses pay his taxes, they’ll send in a SWAT team to kill him and burn down his house. The Government gets grumpy when it’s not fed. If a State refused to send in it’s share, the Fed’s would send in troops to occupy the capitol, and declare martial law. Here is where you will get a shooting war.

    An impeachment itself wouldn’t be enough to start a civil war, but it might set up conditions that would lead to a civil war.

12. I love Matt Bracken’s short stories, his books, his passion. But I’ll pass on squandering precious time and resources saving a system intent on destroying us, including corporate-loving fascist Republicans. Washington is morally rotten to its core, quantifiably worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.

    Move your loved ones away from America’s evil-ridden cities now. We are witnessing Lincoln’s Northern highly centralized supreme federal government in a near free-fall toward the inevitable breakup. Prepare accordingly. Where do you want your loved ones to be when the breakup happens, an ‘Estonia’ or a ‘Tajikistan’?

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