Category: Emerging Threats

Economics and Investing:

Mind-Boggling Budget Deficit (The Mogambo Guru) GG recommended this ShawdowStats article published late last year that was previously available only to their paid subscribers: Hyperinflation Special Report RBS sent us this: The Continuing Decline of the Consumer ….More Struggling Borrowers Face Pay Garnishment Items from The Economatrix: Private Employment Fell in March States Delay Tax Refunds to Help Their Bottom Lines Wall Street is Driving Up Oil Prices More Financial Bubbles Ahead in the US Housing Market US Bankruptcy Filings Highest Ever Since 2005 Hoarding Not Hiring–Corporations Stockpiling Hoards of Cash Geithner Delays Currency Report L.A. City Employees Make Impassioned …


Letter Re: How to Remove Your House Image from Google Maps Street View

James, Your readers might be interested to know that the street view of their house can be viewed by anyone using Google Maps. If they do not wish to have the view showing all your expensive SUVs and G.O.O.D. vehicles, do the following: 1. Using Google Maps, find your address. 2. Activate the Street View for that address. 3. At the bottom of the view is a link that says “Report A Problem.” By clicking that link, you are taken to a form that allows you to request that your house photo be removed. Simply follow the directions on the …


Letter Re: Infoworld’s Take on IT Doomsday Scenarios

James, The magazine Infoworld is a fairly trusted source in the information technology (IT) field. They recently posted an article titled, “Tech apocalypse: Five doomsday scenarios for IT”. Here is a quote: “What could happen [from a wide scale EMP attack]: Workstations? Dead. Data centers? Gone. Cell phones might still work, but the cell towers probably won’t, rendering them useless. Your car won’t start. A large enough attack will also shut down automated controls at power substations, leaving everyone in the dark. Think pre-industrial revolution days. In our scenario the New York Stock Exchange shuts down, causing shock waves to …


Letter Re: Vehicle Shutdown Via Remote Control–No Longer Just a Remote Possibility

Dear JWR: I hope that you are well. I thought that the following news report may be of interest to your blog. Not to get too “tinfoil-hat” here, but many of your readers may not appreciate the vulnerabilities their vehicles’ computers expose them to. See: Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely. The article begins: “More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.” In this case the …


Letter Re: Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs–Planned Tactics for TEOTWAWKI

Hello Mr Rawles About a month ago, I read your book “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It”, followed a week later by “Patriots“. I quickly realized how unprepared I was for even possible but probable emergencies. I started to ask question of coworkers of what they would do in an emergency. One co-worker was a former motorcycle club (gang) member. He told me that he would get with some of the club members in the area. This could be as many as 50 to 60 members. They would have plenty of “bullets” and plan …


Letter Re: Some Notes About SCADA Software

James The pastor/programmer is somewhat correct about SCADA and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), and his resistance of Windows based and “soft logic” is admirable. However, many SCADA systems installed out there recently have been implemented just as their name implies “SUPERVISORY CONTROL and Data Acquisition” in order to save labor costs by minimizing operator and maintenance training requirements on multiple different in- plant control systems. Most major power, refining, waste treatment systems etc. in recent years have utilized a DCS (distributed control system) as a SCADA base for overall and/or supervisory control often also monitoring or commanding smaller PLC systems …


Letter Re: Some Notes on SCADA Software

James: I have been reading SurvivalBlog for some time and have read your novel “Patriots“ and now reading “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It”. Great job and love your work. I work as a SCADA programmer for water, waste water and power plants and was wondering if you had some background on this. I know you are somewhat hard on the system as an overall and it is well aimed. Most of the programs and programmer I am around take much care as possible to keep the Windows based computer as a window into …


Letter Re: A Total Collapse of the Dollar?

James, Chris Wood, of CLSA and author of the Greed & Fear newsletter, was recently interviewed on CNBC and stated that the collapse of the Dollar would likely take place within five years. CNBC’s Dennis Kneale, however, asserts that the Dollar is “self-healing”, so that when the panic begins, “…suddenly people want to go into the Dollar, because the US Government is the most stable government on the planet”. I had to rewind, because I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. This is precisely why looking to mainstream news sources as reliable conduits of factual information is so dangerous. …


It is All About the Means of Production, by Mark. B.

From the beginning of time, ownership and control of quality farm land and raw materials have been closely associated with wealth creation and prosperity. What can you grow or raise? What resources and commodities do you own and control? How much metal, stone, glass, and wood do you own? Do you have the means, knowledge, tools and skills to produce valuable items from this land and these raw materials? As America was settled, the pioneers knew very well the fundamentals of non-electric, independence away from the city and just how critical natural resources were to survival. If a parcel did …


Letter Re: Confronting Kleptocracy–Identifying the Looter Mentality

Dear Mr. Rawles, I would like to make a few comments on your post titled “Confronting Kleptocracy – Identifying the Looter Mentality”. Although my education and profession are in medicine, I have been long interested in social anthropology particularly as it applies to the average “citizen” confronted with a breakdown in modern society. As you are well aware, our society exists by means of a fragile web of precisely balanced interconnected dependencies. This web was not created overnight but has developed over several generations. At present we enjoy life at a time where the poorest people in our modern culture …


Letter Re: Confronting Kleptocracy–Identifying The Looter Mentality

Dear Mr. Rawles, To follow up on your recent blog article, it is sad that we live in a society where people will lower themselves to such activities as crime on the streets. That crime is regrettable, but in the aftermath of TEOTWAWKI, looting will be an absolute unacceptable crime. It will become rapidly, a capital crime. Just as in the 19th Century, horse theft was punishable by death, so will be looting in the aftermath of any societal breakdown which results in any of the scenarios envisioned by either you, or your readers. Essentially, “Rule .308” will apply in …


Confronting Kleptocracy–Identifying The Looter Mentality

A recent opinion column The New York Times was titled: The Moral Ambiguity of Looting. Ambiguity? There is nothing ambiguous about it. Let’s have the moral courage to be forthright and uncompromising on this issue: Looting is the theft of property that lawfully belongs to another. There are no “ifs, ands, or buts”. Looting is unconscionable and cannot be tolerated in a civilized society. Once looting begins, it soon devolves into: “You have it, I want it, I’m taking it.” And once looting is sanctioned, then where is the dividing line on “acceptable” plunder? Do you draw the line at: …


Letter Re: Radio Communications for Retreat Intelligence Gathering

James Wesley: Ron Y.’s article posted on Sunday is interesting and helpful to those who don’t spend much time around radios other than, perhaps, their favorite music station. For those of us who have had a lifetime of radio listening and, in my case, work with public service units in times of disasters small and bigger, there are a few things I’d add. First is the scanner section of Ron’s information. My work desk has four scanners going at all hours that I am awake. Any one of them might flag something that is of interest or warrants tracking. Frequencies …


Letter Re: A G.O.O.D. Memorial Day Weekend Test

Dear Jim, Greetings and thank you, to you and all your wonderful contributors of the past. As most of us live in the ‘City’ or suburb of the ‘City’, there is a feeling of when TEOTWAWKI occurs, we will grab our G.O.O.D. bag get in our vehicle and head out to our personal retreat, hidden from the Golden Horde. One quick question – when will the TEOTWAWKI occur? What date? What time? And how will we know it has occurred? As I have read most of the writings from the beginning until now, I seem to have missed that date, …


Five Letters Re: Long Term Situational Awareness Can Give You The Edge

Jim: I am horrified by Saturday’s posting by Todd. Okay, if we ever get to a position like in The Road, with the huge majority of mankind dead and civilization totally disintegrated, that is another topic. Really, what are the chances of that happening? Extremely slim. What makes Todd S. think he so God Almighty special that his own personal survival makes it okay to loot, steal, trespass, and pillage? Instead of striving to rise to the occasion, to be a better man and set an example of, not our baser selves, but the free will, thinking, compassionate humans we …