Category: Emerging Threats

The following piece of fiction that I penned is just one of example of what might happen sometime in the near future: At 8:15 A.M. on May 1st, an 18-wheel tractor/trailer backed up to one of the hundreds of roll-up doors at the primary Wal-Mart merchandise distribution center in Benton, Arkansas. (It is the largest of Wal-Mart’s 40 distribution centers.) On the trailer was a typical 53-foot long steel transoceanic shipping “continental express” (CONEX) container. It arrived scarcely unnoticed because hundreds of them arrived at the distribution center every day. Inside the CONEX, a 1,800-gallon tank that formerly held propane …

With the growing nuclear threats from China, North Korea, and assorted Muslim terrorist groups, it is important to get prepared for surviving radioactive fallout. At the minimum, I think that there is a very high likelihood that at least one sub-critical mass radioactive “dirty bomb” will be be set off within the continental U.S. sometime in the next 10 years. Near term worst case: One or more of them go off on September 11th. (Two weeks from now.) Plan accordingly. Study the prevailing wind patterns. Get a copy of Nuclear War Survival Skills. (It is available for free download from …

A recent article about job offshoring at Yahoo Business was some serious FFTAGFFR. The global economy is undergoing nothing short of a full scale paradigm shift. Ten years ago I was anxiously looking forward to the day when I could telecommute from out in the boonies in Idaho, and yet still make a good salary. However, the advances in telecommunications have allowed bottom line-driven corporations to leapfrog beyond setting up their American information workers as telecommuters. Instead, they contract out to teleworkers in Third World countries. Increasingly, most new customer service call centers are being set up not in low …

Briefly, SurvivalBlog reader B.H. e-mailed us the URL for a news story about a recent riot over used laptop computers, in which some folks were trampled. B.H. noted: “Can you imagine if this was a rush for food during TEOTWAWKI?”

Jim: In reading the profile I see that I left one concern out. The situation in Venezuela is pretty bad — and the U.S. gets a lot of crude from Venezuela and relatively little from the Middle East. Any disruption in the supply by that Kim Jong Il wanna-be down there [Presidente Hugo Chavez] is going to ripple through the world’s economy. I have a friend in Argentina, the economy is going down the tubes there as well. South and Central America are going to explode, much like they did in the ’60’s, I’m afraid. With corrupt morons (most of …

Because of the urbanization of the U.S. population, if the entire eastern or western power grid goes down for more than a week, the cities will rapidly become unlivable. I foresee that there will be an almost unstoppable chain of events: Power -> water -> food distribution -> law and order -> arson fires -> full scale looting As the comfort level in the cities rapidly drops to nil, there will be a massive involuntary outpouring from the big cities and suburbs into the hinterboonies. This is the phenomenon that my late father, Donald Robert Rawles–a career physics research administrator …

In my lectures on survival topics I often mention that there is just a thin veneer of civilization on our society. What is underneath is not pretty, and it does take much to peel away that veneer. You take your average urbanite or suburbanite and get him excessively cold, wet, tired, hungry and/or thirsty and take away his television, beer, drugs, and other pacifiers, and you will soon seen the savage within. It is like peeling the skin of an onion—remove a couple of layers and it gets very smelly. As a Christian, I attribute this to man’s inherently sinful …