Category: Emerging Threats

Letter Re: Sunspot 11476 Update

Hi James, At about 12:30 UTC this morning Sunspot 11476 flared at the M4.7 level thereafter remaining at an elevated emission state. As of just a few minutes ago it re-flared, peaking to M1.8. Last night’s read at Solen.info gave the area as 1100 SM and noted significant complexity at at least two points within the spot. This morning’s HMIB from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) platform has in the leading spot a section in which very high positive and negative magnetic gradients are immediately adjacent to each other with strong intermixing occurring. This is almost always a sign that …


Letter Re: Don’t Be Blind-sided By a Secondary Event

Dear James: I second the motion – any nuclear power experts on the blog that can comment on the threat from further catastrophes in Japan, or similar catastrophes happening here in the US? Quite frankly I had not paid enough attention to Fukushima.  What I am finally reading is incredibly disturbing.   To summarize, we have a fragile earthquake, and tsunami damaged building, holding tons of highly radioactive and unstable nuclear fuel rods – on the building’s second storey, 100 feet in the air, in an active earthquake zone. Here is a photo. Here is a quote: “If an earthquake or …


Letter Re: Don’t Be Blind-sided By a Secondary Event

Mr. Rawles, Bill W. recently wrote about some of the possible consequences of nuclear power plants when the SHTF. Although I agree that a minimum safe distance during an individual plant emergency is 50 rather than 20 miles, I have to wonder if distance is that important 4 – 6 weeks out during a continent-wide event. I work for an electric cooperative and live less than 25 miles north of the North Anna Nuclear Power Plant in Virginia. During last summer’s earthquake, an electrical engineer told me the plant had tripped offline. I could not find this out from any news outlet on …


Don’t Be Blind-Sided By a Secondary Event, by Bill W.

I’m 62 years old and live in the suburbs of a large town in Georgia (not Atlanta).  I think of myself as an intermediate prepper.  I’ve studied a lot and have plans in place for myself and my family should events turn sour.  I’ve got all the survival manuals in place and have prepared to defend my family should the worst happen.  My family is prepped and ready to go.  Though I’ve not bought much in the way of food stuff, I have all the hardware and I know where to get the food stuff on short order.  I keep …


Letter Re: List of Countries by Real Population Density

James Wesley: As they say in the radio world, “long time listener, first time caller”… First off, thank you for sharing your words of wisdom for those of us who aren’t prepared.  Admittedly, I am one of those fence-sitters, liking the idea of prepping but not having near enough money to start in that direction, let alone uproot the new wife farther from her family than we already are.  Nonetheless, your articles (and those by your contributors on SurvivalBlog.com) are eye-opening and help me remind myself that we are just a few small steps from something really bad. As to …


Letter Re: Disasters and the Dreaded Multigenerational Scenario

Dear Jim, We have already seen how the largely bankrupt USA has dealt with the Hurricane Katrina disaster. New Orleans remains partially empty and its population is much lower. Those who had any money left when the hurricane was announced to hit. If they returned, it was to recover a few belongings and collect their insurance checks before ceding the property/ruin back to the FedGov/State. Surrounding areas where the Hurricane spent its fury have been abandoned. The wrecked 9th Ward of New Orleans was not rebuilt. Someday it will flood again, and this time with few people to complain, it will probably turn …


Letter Re: A New Malware Threat

SurvivalBlog readers: If you have a fairly recently manufactured computer, there is no reason to expose your computer to malware at all. Most computers are powerful enough to host a “virtual machine” (MM) – that is, a session that is completely isolated from the hosting computer and that does not make any permanent changes to your system without your express command. VMs can be modified, saved and discarded as you wish. If you are browsing the web using a VM and suspect that you have encountered a virus or malware, simply discard that session and start a new one. There …


Letter Re: A New Malware Threat

Hello, Mr Rawles: I saw the Odds ‘n Sods piece where Michael Z. Williamson’s forwarded an article on the warning about “thousands of PCs infected” to lose Internet access that refers people to www.dcwg.org. I read the article. Sorry, but I don’t trust going to such a site. It could easily be a government-based data collection site. It’s amazing how much information is passed along with simply browsing a web site. dcwg.org is registered to someone in Cupertino, California. I found that www.DNS-OK.us will give the same information about whether a system is infected or not. That site is registered …


Letter Re: Defending Static Positions in a Survival Setting

Mr. Rawles,   Three thoughts on this topic:   1.  If you are relying on defending your home without outside help then the battle is already lost.  It is too easy to burn down your average residence.  Defense should be a community endeavor with “depth” provided by multiple engagements from multiple locations.   2.  I believe that your average, semi-motivated troublemakers in a TEOTWAWKI will lack training and will become victims of “target fixation”.  In other words, they will be motivated to roam around and loot but will not have a modicum of good tactical skills.  They will fixate on their target and …


Letter Re: An Expat’s View of Overseas Relocation and Expatriation

CPT Rawles, I want to provide a counterpoint to AmEx’s letter about the futility of permanent expatriation.  I too have taken a job overseas, after much effort, and am establishing myself permanently in a particular country in Asia.  I agree with AmEx that renouncing one’s US citizenship is probably a bit much, I think he severely underestimates the danger that the US government will (I believe) present to it’s citizens.  While I am still a US citizen, my wife, who earns all our non-salary income privately, and our children are not.  This is something we worked out years ago to limit the reach of my government into our lives. …


Letter Re: The Expanding Flash Mob Threat

JWR, Last Easter weekend, a twitter message went out and in a few hours 20,000 people descended on Surfside Beach, Texas, population about 600. My LEO contacts tell me there were only six officers available. The crowd turned sour towards the locals who did not want them parking or defecating in their yards. Several residents had to stand on their front porches with weapons displayed to keep groups of hundreds from passing through their property. Several rental beach houses were broken into and one contact said the volume of human feces and trash was unbelievable. The roads were impassable for …


Letter Re: Defending Static Positions in a Survival Setting

Good day, Mister Rawles. Thank you, as always, for the good work you do. Regarding J.G.’s article homestead defence, it occurred to me that stand-off situations would become a likely possibility. Reasonably, a group of attackers will launch an assault on your homestead and either succeed or fail to kill/capture you. If they succeed the point is moot, but if they fail, what then? Unless their force is clustered or small you’re unlikely to kill them all. Odds are strong that after half their force (or maybe less) gets ventilated the rest will attempt to retreat. What will they do …


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 …