Category: NBC

How to Turn a Christmas Popcorn Tin into a Self-Contained, Grab-‘n-Go Bundle of Life-Sustaining Survival, by P.J. in Oregon

I love popcorn tins! I love all the different ways they come decorated – the wonderful Christmas themes, the various John Deere Tractor motifs, professional sports team logos, stock car racing favorite drivers and their race cars, the endless and delightful cartoon characters – just to name a few. They are like time capsules in that their outside decoration reflect what’s popular in the culture during any given year. When they are displayed on a shelf, looking at them is like going back in time. I can’t get enough of them! Not only are they decorative, but popcorn tins are …


Bug Out: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly–You Can Arrive Alive, by Semper Paro

I.  Introduction – Possible Scenarios.   Your automobile becomes inoperable for a period of time while traveling – it is extremely hot or extremely cold and hours to wait. A natural disaster occurs and you have to evacuate. Chaos occurs due to financial collapse or other major event causing civil unrest. An Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) or Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) caused by solar flare(s) renders your vehicle dead miles from home. Or, an EMP occurs as a result of a nuclear strike (with collateral fall-out to follow). Use your imagination…in reality, nothing is too far fetched. While these are listed in …


Improvising PPE by Louie in Ohio

This article is mainly about improvising Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). I have been employed for over 36 years by an international coatings company. I have held several positions in different areas of our plant, including production, maintenance, and raw materials. I also have 35+ years in the field of Industrial Emergency Response. The last few years I have been an instructor for our Emergency Response Team (ERT). Some of the topics we deal with are firefighting, Haz-mat, Medical response, and rescue. Participating with the Team has been both educational and enjoyable as we develop a closeness and brotherhood (and recently …


Letter Re: The Blackout Docudrama

Good Morning, Mr. Rawles: After watching part of last night’s Blackout Docudrama on National Geographic. I turned the television off in total disgust and went to bed.  What insidious propaganda!  I could not help but notice that the “prepper” father was a gun toting, autocratic bully who bossed everyone and refused to act humanely by sharing all his wealth with those less fortunate or less willing to be responsible for themselves?  How interesting. And of course, the compassionate one was the young and hip boyfriend of the prepper’s daughter.  He hadn’t prepared himself but he was more than happy to …


Letter Re: Preparing for EMP and DEW — A Layman’s Guide

Dear Editor: In answer to Norm’s question: Yes, insulating items that are already inside a Faraday shield appears to be superfluous. As long as the shield works (is unbroken and made of the right materials and configurations to counter the frequencies targeted), the overwhelming vast majority of the energy does stay outside. This has been verified in our tests and is a basis for the products we make. For example, we tested our laptop EMP shield against an EMP simulator made by APELC in Texas – no visible upset was observed despite their machine throwing over 150 kV/m at our …


Preparing for EMP and DEW — A Layman’s Guide, by Joel Ho

As and engineer and founder of an EMP protection startup company , I wanted to explain some EMP basics and also educate readers about current Directed Energy Weapons (DEW.) Qualifications: My team has developed the first EMP simulator-tested laptop EMP shield that lets you protect and use your laptop (including wireless.) So, over the past year, we’ve learned firsthand what’s true and what’s not regarding radio frequencies. All subjects mentioned are the opinion of MobileSec Solutions LLC but not legally binding.   General Overview Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is generated usually when a nuclear device is detonated in the upper atmosphere. …


Letter Re: A Handy Small Faraday Cage

James, I found a surprise at the local Wal-Mart the other day: an American made 6 gallon galvanized metal container with locking lid (the bail is shaped to hold the tightly fitting lid closed when pulled up). With the lid on, it is approximately 15 inches high and about 14 inches in diameter at its widest point. The manufacturer is Behrens Manufacturing in Winona, Minnesota. Besides making a great small container for feed, etc., it could be a great EMP shield for your smaller electronic devices that will easily fit under a counter or bench. The price is good also: $14.97 …


Letter Re: Prioritized Prepping

Hi JWR, In response to Sunshine’s research into gas masks online, I’ve purchased from Approved Gas Masks.com before. They sell many different brands of masks, canisters and other NBC products. The canisters I’ve bought use the standard NATO threads, are sealed and dated. They’re going to set you back a little more than the mil surplus but they’re current production from reputable companies. Hope this helps. – S.M. from Pennsylvania


Two Letters Re: Prioritized Prepping

Jim: I couldn’t agree more with the article written by T.Z. regarding prioritized prepping. Many of us lack the needed organization and discipline to distribute our prepping budget evenly between the different survival categories and instead succumb to impulse buys – more ammo, more guns, more dried food, more camping gear. While stocking up on non-perishable supplies that will always have some use may seem like a good idea, what good are 50,000 rounds of ammo if your only water filter just broke, or you ran out of oil for your two-stroke chain saw? My way of managing these impulse …


Prioritized Prepping, by Z.T.

I, like so many people across the country, can’t walk out of my local sporting goods store without buying the limit of ammunition. Now, before you judge me, realize that most places limit you to small boxes of ammunition, and usually one two per caliber. Is it being prudent or just being obsessed? While the firearm and ammo situation is very much a media-hyped thing,  I have even talked about things you must buy every time you are out, like my article on Things Commonly Overlooked.  But what about those items that you pick up, look at the price tag, but pass …


Letter Re: Microwave Oven Method for Decontaminating N95 Face Masks

Dear JWR: I had an interesting conversation with a member of the CDC about decontaminating N95 face masks. The study results can be found here. You’ll notice that the test gives positive results but more research is needed. Here was the conversation I had with Edward Fisher after reading it. Here are some snippets from our exchange: Me: 1. Did you remove the metal nosepieces from the masks before sterilization? 2. Any updates to this study? Edward: We did not modify any of the tested filtering facepiece respirators before decontamination. If the masks had metal nosepieces, they were not removed. …


Letter Re: Protection from Radioactive Fallout

James: To further the excellent article Protection from Radioactive Fallout by Tennessean: The author cites “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, 670 pages, November 2006”.  A reprint version of this book is available, but is more than $50 at Amazon in paperback. As this book is in the public domain, I have made an on-line version of the 1977 Third Edition available at my site for many years. The index points to PDFs for the individual chapters which may be printed or downloaded for offline storage. Accompanying it is a web application which implements the …


Protection from Radioactive Fallout by Tennessean

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Part One About me: I’m a retired Ph.D. biochemist who has worked with beta emitters in the laboratory.  I’ve no financial interest in any of the firms or products mentioned below. This post is dedicated to the late Cresson Kearny and his wonderful hard work in preparing the most essential book Nuclear War Survival Skills available at www.beprepared.com and other sources.   Dr. Stephen Hawking was once told by his publisher that for every equation he placed in his book the readership would drop by half.  Dear reader the author will harass you with only three equations.  The late great thermodynamicist  …


Letter Re: Preserving a Digital Library

JWR: I had to ad my own two cents to the Preserving a Digital Library. As a seasoned IT pro myself (one of my early customers upgraded all the the Windows for Workgroups network I setup for him to Windows 95 himself and called me when he couldn’t get it working) I have reliance on my systems, be it my cache of reference documents and ebooks to documents I’ve written myself to my gear and prep inventory spreadsheets. I see no reason to choose Windows XP over Windows 7 or Windows 2000 or Windows 3.1 when it comes to back …


Preserving a Digital Library, by H335

Many articles have been written on preserving food, weapons, ammo, and various other perishables. While there are also many articles regarding the preservation of digital information, rarely do I see one written with the thought that perhaps the infrastructure itself might no longer be intact. This article will address several key areas, including equipment, media, printing and reproduction, testing, and backups. While books and print materials are critical to maintain, electronics can be preserved and protected even against a Carrington Event or EMP weapon. My approach here is Keep It Simple As Possible (KISAP). The more technologically savvy may argue …