Category: Emerging Threats

Letter Re: U.S. Dollar Collapse? I Think We are Getting Close

Sir: Over this past weekend, I began re-reading “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse” . I hadn’t touched it since mid-2000. Wow! page 10 includes:…”just before the Crunch…unofficial debt topped 19 trillion dollars…” a president that didn’t let trifles life ledger sheets and statistics get in his way…the real deficit was growing…”a full scale default on US Treasuries appears imminent…” Then I look at Internet financial and economic news feeds [and see] Fleet Street (London’s Wall Street) recommending that their client firms get out of the US Dollar (USD), China, UAE, Russia and others moving out of the USD. Many estimates …


Letter Re: Kanban: America’s Ubiquitous “Just in Time” Inventory System–A Fragile House of Cards

Jim, I’ve heard many, many people bash our ‘just in time’ distribution model. but, I’ve never heard of even a single military official from any other country brag or boast of the same assertions. Our ‘just in time’ delivery of goods is one of the most survivable, re-configurable and defend-able supply chains ever in the history of mankind. It can grow to surge resources into a disaster area, it can shrink to conserve fuel, it presents fast moving small targets of no individual strategic significance, it can bypass destroyed cities, it can use improvised warehouses, it can cluster around railway …


Letter Re: The Jericho Television Series Returns With New Episodes

Dear Jim: Clearly the CBS TV show Jericho is limited by confines of being an early prime time network show (nothing graphic like on HBO), a for-profit venture (thus requiring advertisers who willing to buy time and be associated with the show), budgetary constraints of a filming a new show, and of course the politically correct pressures of Hollywood. This is very much the antithesis of the 1983 “The Day After” which was conceptualized, financed and produced by ABC, specifically by the Motion Picture Department President http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After who was impressed with the anti-nuclear power movie “The China Syndrome”, and obviously …


Letter Re: The Salt Lake City Trolley Square Mall Shootings and “Gun Free” Zones

James, I’m a concealed carry handgun instructor for the state of Kansas. I haven’t come across any articles or news reports that made mention of whether or not the shopping mall had posted “no concealed carry” signs. Have you heard anything? I would like to know as I can use this incident in my classes. – Rick JWR Replies: According to several published new stories, including this one, there were indeed signs at some of the Trolley Square Mall’s entrances emblazoned, “No Guns.” So we can surmise that ostensibly “gun free zones” such as public schools, public buildings and shopping …


Letter Re: Resource Scarcity in the Near Future

Jim, Here is an excerpt from an article I read in “Fast Company” that provides some insight to the “Coming Collapse” The full version can be found here http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/113/open_fast50-essay.html: “Water provides a typical example: By 2030, more than one in three human beings will not have enough to drink, or will run the risk of dying by drinking what they’ve got. Today, the prospect of such scarcity is causing countries to mine so-called fossil water from deep aquifers that were formed millions of years ago. Parts of India are pumping water at twice the recharge rate, causing water tables to …


Letter Re: Kanban: America’s Ubiquitous “Just in Time” Inventory System–A Fragile House of Cards

Jim, Having both worked in a hospital and worked for hospitals for the last 18 years I must loudly concur with “Mike the MD in Missouri”. As a service specialist in an un-named Level 1 trauma center I had access to almost every inch of the facility(s) including the warehouses where we stored our unused equipment and all the patient care products. Naturally I was able to assess the on hand stock versus the use and replenish rates at a glance. I was always amazed at how little there actually was for a hospital in a city of 150,000 people. …


Letter Re: Kanban: America’s Ubiquitous “Just in Time” Inventory System–A Fragile House of Cards

James: This “just in time” thinking has transformed the medical industry, especially hospitals. The “Central Supply” or stockpile in hospitals has disappeared and in its place are vendors with same day and next day shipping. This includes band-aids, medications, ventilators, equipment etc. In the business setting it makes sense, but in the medical setting it often falters on a day to day basis. In a crisis medical event, surge capacity is limited to how fast the vendors can respond. In a contained disaster, vendors can shift needed supplies to a hospital in as little as several hours. But, in a …


Active Preparedness Planning: Identifying and Mitigating Threats, by Paul C.

Here is my approach to actively preparing for disasters: 1. Identify potential threats. 2. Gather quantitative and qualitative information on impact. 3. Identify which threats are the most likely. 4. Identify critical needs for survival. 5. Estimate outage time that can be tolerated. 6. Compile resource requirements. 7. Identify alternatives. 1. Identify potential threats. Threats will come from two main areas: man-made or natural. Man-made threats include labor strikes, riots, fires, chemical spills, terrorism, and vandals. A labor strike might mean that garbage collection or that public transportation stops. Urban riots have hit cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, and …


Kanban: America’s Ubiquitous “Just in Time” Inventory System–A Fragile House of Cards

When I give lectures or do radio interviews, I’m often asked for proof when I mention that we live in a “fragile society.” Here is one prime example: kanban. The kanban or “just in time” inventory system was developed in Japan, and became popular in America starting in the 1970s. It is now ubiquitous in nearly every industry. The concept is simple: Through close coordination with subcontractors and piece part suppliers, a manufacturer can keep its parts inventory small. (Kanban is a key element of “lean manufacturing.”) They only order batches of parts as needed (“just in time”), sometimes ordering …


Letter Re: Planned NAFTA Superhighway Corridors

James, Your readers who are looking to evade “progress and mass population” need to pay particular attention to the proposed NAFTA [High Priority Corridor] super-highways. These linked pages will cover all projected builds in all 50 states [see details on the High Priority Corridor routes], many of which are planned for “remote” areas favored by survival-minded folks. This is seriously bad news. – Jay in Florida


The CDC’s New “Five Categories” for Pandemic Severity

Several SurvivalBlog readers mentioned an article that ran recently in the New York Times: U.S. Issues Guidelines in Case of Flu Pandemic. The article begins: “Cities should close schools for up to three months in the event of a severe flu outbreak, ball games and movies should be canceled and working hours staggered so subways and buses are less crowded, the federal government advised today in issuing new pandemic flu guidelines to states and cities. Health officials acknowledged that such measures would hugely disrupt public life, but they argued that these measure would buy the time needed to produce vaccines …


Three Letters Re: Pondering Some Personal Consequences of Global Climate Change

Dear Jim, In response to this: “(See the movie The Day After Tomorrow regarding tipping points). Discoveries of animals flash frozen solid with fresh grass their stomachs points to the possibility of a very fast onset to global climate change.” The Day After Tomorrow was roundly slammed by scientists and went beyond ludicrous, and the “flash frozen” animals are a myth that has never been documented. The recovered frozen mammoths have all been highly putrefied. At present, the evidence of warming is mixed, with glaciers in Europe, South America and Antarctica all increasing [in size]. Even with the current Northern …


Letter Re: Pondering Some Personal Consequences of Global Climate Change

James: While the pundits assure us that global warming, if real at all, won’t affect us in our lifetime, other scientific models suggest explosive climate shifts as ‘tipping points’ are reached. (See the movie The Day after Tomorrow regarding tipping points). Discoveries of animals flash frozen solid with fresh grass their stomachs points to the possibility of a very fast onset to global climate change. While suddenly finding yourself in an Arctic climate is likely not survivable, we must consider if we have the flexibility to survive in a radically different or highly volatile climate. Global warming can make warm …


Letter Re: More Evidence of Peak Oil Decline–Preparing for Much Higher Gasoline Prices

Dear Jim and Family, Bad news from the largest oil field in Mexico. The Canterell field, formerly reported to decline at 2% last August, 6% in October, and 11% in December has been rated at 25% today. Oil production has dropped from 1.99 million barrels per day to 1.5 million barrels per day. This is a very bad thing. Most of that oil goes to the USA via NAFTA treaties. There are no fields to replace it, and since Mexico has 51% leftist leanings, no oil company will risk investing there (Pemex was formed from seized foreign oil investments, most …


Two Letters Re: How to Reply to “When the SHTF, I’m Going Over to Your House”, by Rolf in the Northwest

Jim: [In reply to Matt’s comments on Rolf’s original letter:] There are a lot of examples to illustrate why each person needs their own disaster preps, and the “insurance” example (“why should your fire insurance pay for my house burning down, or vice-versa?”) is a good one. Another is the “personalization” aspect: “Sorry, I’m a single guy; I doubt I’d stock your wife’s brand of feminine protection.” But people tend to think of “disaster preparations” as special or different in some way, because they are not “normal accidents,” and most people have a very hard time thinking outside a fairly …