Category: Emerging Threats

Change Your Mind, Save Your Life, by Marc P.

Apocalypse: en route or ongoing? I won’t argue whether something terrible will happen. It’s a flawed premise. Something terrible is already happening, just not where your computer is plugged in. It is not necessary for the entire planet to be threatened for a single region to be thrown into chaos. It wasn’t necessary for the whole state of Louisiana to be in peril before New Orleans turned medieval after Katrina. The mistake in logic occurs with the base assumption that a survival scenario is the end game. If that’s your assumption, there’s no need for extensive preparations. All you can …


Letter Re: Prospects for the Eastern U.S. in a Societal Collapse

Mr. Rawles, Can you provide more detailed information on what you believe will happen East of the Mississippi River in and around major population centers in the event of a collapse.  You briefly addressed this when you were interviewed by Michael Ruppert in his Collapsenet podcast program last year.  Most of the population simply can’t relocate to the Western mountain states much less realistically get out of debt.  As I believe it was stated on your web site some years ago it will be a “Come as you are collapse” and that is what we all will get.  I’m perhaps …


Preparation Could Mean Survival, by D.S.A.

Some people say you can’t prepare for every situation.  I say, you can because every situation has one common element that can and will hurt you outside of the event itself: other people.  Lets face it, if you die in a storm, a nuclear/biological/chemical event, or terror attack, then you are dead.  There is nothing from stopping God’s will.  You don’t prepare for those events, you prepare for surviving those events.  There are many events, (and not far-fetched crazy extreme events) which people should be prepared to deal with to protect themselves and their families when it’s over and you …


A Christian’s Call to Prepare, by J.P.

In 1919, the Spanish flu killed around 75 million people in a single year (Knobler, pp. 60–61). In 1931, the China floods killed over two million people (NOVA). In 1945, America dropped two atomic bombs that killed around 200,000 people (Radiation Effects Research Foundation). In 2010, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 hit Haiti and killed 316,000 people (USGS). In the past century alone, 29 countries have had to deal with hyperinflation, causing severe economic depression, during which millions died from starvation, disease and looting. These events go to show that disaster has always been an unavoidable aspect of …


Letter Re: National Defense Resources Preparedness

JWR, Thank you for posting the article regarding Executive Order-National Defense Resources Preparedness. It was a very illuminating article regarding where our country is currently at economically, politically, and militarily. I understand that some of the vague language used in government documents often allows the government to exercise more power than may be found on the surface of the writing. The best example in this document is, as you pointed out, Section 201b. However, I think we may be getting ahead of ourselves in saying that the government will show up in times of peace and magic away our preps. …


Rabies – Coming Your Way? by Dr. Cynthia J. Koelker

Rabies – a legitimate concern or fear-mongering?  As I watch my pet Golden Retriever “Doodles” cautiously sniff at the curb sewer, I believe the threat is real.  A family of raccoons lives in the sewer pipes, and just a few months ago a local dog died of raccoon rabies.  Could my children be next? Ohio is on the frontier of raccoon rabies, but despite yearly aerial and ground baiting programs for oral rabies vaccination, the uniformly lethal infection is moving westward.  Bat rabies, the other common threat, is distributed more evenly across the United States.  (If you’re wondering about your …


Letter Re: TEOTWAWKI Is Now

James Wesley: It has been said that you can boil a frog to death by putting it in a pan of water then putting the pan over a burner. However, if you drop the frog into a pan of boiling water, it will instantly jump out. I’ve never tried this experiment, but the metaphor for The End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) seems appropriate. Too many of us fit the first scenario. We’re “comfortable,” even though we recognize that the water is getting hotter and hotter. By the time we realize it is way too hot, it …


Are We Just Preparing Instead of Preparing and Preventing?, by C.W.S.

Generations of Americans have been vigilant in the past about doing what they believed would provide for their families in times of need.  There has always been a large variation in the types of preparations and the extremes each would go to in these measures.  Why?  Because we are all different people with various backgrounds, influences, upbringings, ethnicities, education and finances.  Some people have lived through the Great Depression, or just hard financial times for that matter. Living through this has instilled a belief upon their families to “put a little away for a rainy day.”  This could mean putting …


Two Letters Re: A Parent’s Guide to Surviving School Rampage Shootings

Editor JWR: To paraphrase an old quotation, those that refuse to study history and learn from it are condemned to repeat the same mistakes. In the early 1970s, school classrooms in Israel were favored targets for PLO terrorists. They were favored for several reasons including maximum media coverage, maximum shock value (killing children) and softness of target (little security). The solution was simple and effective: All teachers were required to keep a selective fire weapon and loaded magazines in their classrooms. As another example of historical note of common sense, during the 1600s, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a …


Letter Re: A Parent’s Guide to Surviving School Rampage Shootings

James: I’m writing regarding A Parent’s Guide to Surviving School Rampage Shootings, by Greg Ellifritz. One important item I think that was missed was allowing any/all adults who choose to do so to be armed.  In the October, 1997 school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi an assistant principal ran to his car, got a gun, and stopped the episode.  Gun free zones give the criminal huge numbers of potential hostages and victims.   The presence of armed folks makes it a bit more difficult for the bad guys to prevail. – W.B.


A Parent’s Guide to Surviving School Rampage Shootings, by Greg Ellifritz

I walked into the high school wearing two guns and a bullet resistant vest.  I had a rifle, six spare magazines, and a ballistic helmet stashed close by in my car.  It was Wednesday, April 21, 1999, the day after what had been the worst school shooting in United States history.  Two high school kids had just killed 12 of their fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado.  The television was awash in the news coverage and everyone was scared. Parents, students, and teachers were worried about a copycat shooting in the town where I worked …


Letter Re: David in Israel on Coronal Mass Ejections

James,  I read in today’s SurvivalBlog, ”David in Israel on Coronal Mass Ejections.”  In it, David mentioned that “good grounding is always a good idea.”  That got me to thinking, as I had read in fairly authoritative reports that normal electrical grounding for EMP or CME, unless it is done in very specific and professional ways, is not a good idea for the average person unless he or she has specialized training and equipment.   I checked the references cited below, which covers the effects of both nuclear EMP and solar storms.  In the references below, one finds that of …


Letter Re: The Latest Solar Flares

David in Israel warned of a possible “kill shot” CME after the latest impact. As quoted by UrbanSurvival.com, here it comes, possibly on Sunday night: “SOHO/LASCO detected a full halo CME in association with the M6.3 flare in Catania sunspot group 65 (NOAA AR 1429) this morning. The CME first appeared in the LASCO C2 field of view at 04:14 UT and had a speed around 750 km/s. We expect the CME arrival at the Earth late on March 11 – early on March 12. An evaluation of the possible erupting flux rope orientation on the basis of HMI photospheric …


David in Israel on Coronal Mass Ejections

I’m writing to remind readers that the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that began March 8, 2012 will sweep away low speed particles clearing the way for a few days for a somewhat possible 1859 Carrington Event style kill shot should there be another large CME.  I suggest that SurvivalBlog readers keep up to date on SpaceWeather.com though utilities and emergency services will also be watching this.  Even if there is another larger CME and the utilities disconnect to save their equipment any long conductor can act as an antenna for the radio waves produced by an ionospheric event. So be …


My Vacation in War Torn Yugoslavia, by C.N.

My family is from the former Yugoslavia and it had been a family tradition to go back and visit the homeland of my grandparents. Unfortunately for me, by the time I could go, my father had passed and I found only one cousin willing to do it again. As luck would have it, it was the summer of 2000 and I thought the war had been long over. It was only recently I discovered that the horror continued right up until just before my arrival there.   After a short stopover in Frankfurt, we boarded a smaller plane to Zagreb. The …