The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR ^[1]”. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. Today, I’m starting off with news about a City-Killer Asteroid.

Approach of ‘City-Killer Asteroid’ was Missed

By way of Whatfinger.com ^[2](my favorite news aggregation site): Scientists almost didn’t detect approach of ‘city-killer asteroid’ ^[3]. An excerpt:

“Alan Duffy was confused. On Thursday, the astronomer’s phone was suddenly flooded with calls from reporters wanting to know about a large asteroid that had just whizzed past Earth, and he couldn’t figure out ‘why everyone was so alarmed.’

‘I thought everyone was getting worried about something we knew was coming,’ Duffy, who is also lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia, told The Washington Post. Forecasts had already predicted that a couple asteroids would be passing relatively close to Earth this week.

Then he looked up the details of the hunk of space rock named Asteroid 2019 OK.

‘I was stunned,’ he said. ‘This was a true shock.’

This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, roughly 110 yards wide, and moving quickly along a path that brought it within about 45,360 miles of Earth. That’s about one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers ‘uncomfortably close.'”

Land Expropriation Without Compensation

A hat tip to D.S. for sending this from South Africa: Three major criticisms of the government’s land expropriation position ^[4].

Google Marginalizing Anti-Vaxxers

No longer even trying to appear neutral: Google has recently (June 2019) used their power to manipulate public opinion in favor of the Pro Vaccine Argument ^[5]. (Thanks to reader DSV for the link.)

Federal Death Penalty is Back

Fox News reports: Federal government to resume capital punishment, schedule executions for first time since 200 ^[6]3.

The CapitalOne Hack: 100 Million Accounts Affected!

By way of Whatfinger.com ^[2]: 100 million Capital One customers were hacked — everything you need to know about data breaches, but were afraid to ask ^[7]. A snippet:

“The hacker got information including credit scores and balances, zip codes, email addresses, dates of birth, self-reported income and payments history, fragments of transaction data, plus the Social Security numbers of about 140,000 customers and 80,000 bank-account numbers from credit-card customers, the bank said. It will offer free credit-monitoring services to those affected. Consumers and small businesses who applied for credit cards from 2005 through early 2019 are most at risk.”

Brazil Gold Heist

H.L. sent this: 1,500 pounds of gold gone in 3 minutes during Brazil heist ^[8]

Life Imitates Art: Baron Trump

I’m closing this Odds ‘n Sods section with something genuinely odd: Late 1800s Books On ‘Baron Trump’ And ‘The Last President’ Creating Quite A Spook ^[9].

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You can send your news tips to JWR ^[1]. (Either via e-mail of via our Contact ^[10] form.) Thanks!