Category: Emerging Threats

Surviving the 2015 Fire of Lake County California- Part 2, by B.G.

Looters- Lessons Learned You don’t need to be an expert killer to deter an attacker. The people who loot an evacuated area are generally cowardly. You need only appear more of a threat than the average person. Buy a gun, learn to use it, but don’t obsess. The survivalist fantasy of defending your home against squads of organized killers is just that– fantasy. What is more realistic is that you will stumble into the opportunist that thinks “mandatory evacuation” means “no one is at home”. Encounters can happen any time. If you are staying, start carrying a gun shortly after …


Surviving the 2015 Fire of Lake County California- Part 1, by B.G.

This is a true story of a thirty-something survivalist/engineer and his family as well as some lessons learned in the second most destructive fire in California history. I had seen other large fires in Lake County over the years, and they would arrive in apocalyptic fashion, as the up swelling of a mushroom cloud. This one started no differently on a windy afternoon as I was pulling pork chops off of the grill. At about one o’clock in the afternoon, the wall of black smoke that erupted to our south immediately flattened out due to the wind. It formed an …


How to Survive Workplace Violence , by SM

The office building where I work was recently the scene of workplace violence that ended in a murder-suicide. While company policies and security measures attempt to prevent such things, we all know that it is nearly impossible to stop people who are bent on destruction; rules and policies are simply ignored, and security can be circumvented. Like I did before this occurred, you may view workplace violence as something that happens somewhere else, maybe in large cities or in other states. But we experienced it in our community, at our workplace, so I want to remind SB readers that it …


Letter Re: TATP

JWR, Regarding the Brussels terrorist incident: While I don’t doubt that TATP was used, something is wrong with this! TATP is an “entrophic”; I believe that is the word, a reaction. There was lots of gas but no heat or fire. The Brussels explosions show fires in several areas. Something else must have been used in conjunction with TATP. The question is what and how did “something else” get past the sensors, dogs, et cetera? As a retired deputy, I still have several law enforcement contacts. Several months ago I was talking with one. He mentioned they were being trained/briefed/educated …


Off-Paper: The Importance of Making Private Arms Purchases

Firearms sales in the United States, as measured by the number of completed National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background checks, are near an all-time high. In February, 2016, there were a whopping 2.6 million background checks! But those sales numbers only reflect the sales of new guns sold by Federal Firearms License (FFL) holders. The bigger and largely unreported news is of the upswing in the sales of used guns (“secondary sales”) by private parties. At a recent gun show, I observed that the folks who were there selling guns from their private collections were met by very …


Occupy Wall Street Versus Occupy Malheur: Clear Cases of Selective Prosecution

This news headline makes it clear that the BHO Administration is widening their net:  Nevada Standoff Indictment Names Bundys, Five More.  These “add-on” indictments are quite troubling. I believe that the assessment by Brandon Smith’s (previously mentioned in SurvivalBlog) may be correct:  A Warning To The Feds On Incremental Prosecutions Of The Liberty Movement.  There may be dozens of more indictments of people who attended the Bundy Ranch protests in 2014 that filter out over a the next six to nine months. Let’s draw a comparison: There were overt and quite visible physical threats and considerable actual violence in the …


An Apolitical Discussion of Politics in the U.S. Today, by W.B.

I would like to start out by saying that most of the people who visit sites like SurvivalBlog know deep in their hearts that something bad is happening or is about to happen. What that is no one is quite sure, but there are so many different things in play that we are deeply concerned. Many things we cannot control because of Nature’s Forces or other Nations’ Forces. The one thing we can control is our Nation’s forces. Can we turn this country around? I don’t know, but I cannot sit around and just get prepared without trying to correct …


Letter: A Forced Digital Currency Swap

Hugh and Jim, Yes, we can be effectively forced into a digital currency swap. Here is a real world example: In the early 1970s (as a young U.S. Army Captain) I was with the G2 Div, 2d Infantry Division in the Republic of Korea (ROK). In those days the military (and presumably civilian) personnel used Military Payment Certificates (MPCs) in lieu of US Dollars. This supposedly helped combat the local ROK black market which was notorious. A decision was made to make a change in the MPC (color, design, etc). The whole conversion process was initially classified until rollout. When …


Letter Re: The Vulnerability of Many Commonplace RF Electronics

Dear JWR, Regarding the recently linked article on the hack of the Simplisafe alarm system, I’d like to alert readers to the fact that many, many radio frequency (RF) devices available on the US market have similar vulnerabilities. But it’s worse than that. These devices operate on one of several unlicensed radio frequency bands authorized under Title 47, part 15 of the FCC rules, most specifically Section 15.231. There are transmitters available for purchase on 433MHz, as used by Simplisafe, and they are quite inexpensive. Many of these evaluation kits only require attachment of a battery and you are ready …


Letter Re: Shielding Electronics From EMP

HJL, Another point on electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and Faraday cages is even something simple can be protective. There are 30 Gallon galvanized steel trash cans with lids (made in the USA!) available at my local farm and ranch store for $22. This makes for affordable and easy storage, and you can wrap things in common aluminum foil. Or even something like a steel cabinet or vault, but generally try to avoid gaps or spaces. It doesn’t have to be zero signal, but reduce the field strength enough to prevent damage. Vehicles have some protection for many years. In the early …


SSL On Your Web Server – A Certificate is Just the Start, by Peter S.

If you are running a web server for your business and taking orders from customers, then you have probably acquired a certificate to encrypt the network traffic between your customers’ web browsers and your web server. However, how well are you really doing it? The SSL Labs website offers a free service to test how well your web server is configured for this goal. Someone may have already run the test and made a decision about your business just based on the results. Remember, if your web server is exposed to the Internet, then anyone can run this test. You …


Letter: EMP Effect and Pacemakers

Hugh, I have an implanted cardiac device (a pacemaker and defibrillator) and, after reading the letter about possible effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on batteries, became curious as to how an EMP or maybe a strong solar flare could affect my device. I searched SurvivalBlog’s archives and saw that such an event could possibly damage the implanted cardiadefibrillator (ICD). Is there any firm evidence as to what may actually happen to an ICD or similar device in the human body and anything that can be done to counter the effects? It seems it will be a bleak future for the …


Letter Re: Passports

Dear Editors: Regarding RM’s question about keeping passports current, here is a Wikipedia link that includes information on which countries allow entry to American citizens without the need to obtain a visa in advance.   That provides some interesting reading.  – JustCallMeAnn


Red List, Blue List, Black List, You List

There has been a lot of conjecture in the past 40 years in patriot circles about the existence of government “round up lists”. Large-scale disaster and war planning exercises, like REX-84 (Readiness Exercise-1984) and Jade Helm 2015, have stimulated endless discourse about whether or not the government maintains a so-called “red list” and “blue list” of people that they deem to be dissidents who they might target for harassment, travel restrictions, or even detention without due process of law. Because any such lists would presumably be developed and updated under the wraps of a security classification and the Need To …


The Latest Wave of The Sagebrush Rebellion

The recent events at the former Malheur Wildlife Refuge (now called the Harney County Resource Center) are just the latest wave of the well-justified Sagebrush Rebellion that has been going on in western states for 30+ years. Even though they lack any constitutional authority over land that should rightfully belong to the States (per Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17), bureaucrats from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have been riding roughshod over the west. They have been doing so through their often capricious and dictatorial policies on grazing, timber cutting, mining, weed control, access to water, hunting, recreational shooting, …