Category: Plagues and Pandemics

Letter Re: Being Prepared for an Avian Influenza Outbreak

Sir, Please pass on a reminder to people to prepare themselves with a plan and supplies to deal with for the inevitable event [of an Avian Influenza outbreak]. Begin by practicing impeccable agricultural hygiene and discouraging any visitation of persons near their barn yards, hen houses and migratory wildlife flocks of geese or ducks on or near their ponds, open water sources or feed sources. This is best done with a couple of good herding type dogs who don’t mind getting their feet wet in the ponds or on the property watering holes. Our chickens are free range, yet they …


From the SurvivalBlog Archives: Start With a “List of Lists”

Start your retreat stocking effort by first composing a List of Lists, then draft prioritized lists for each subject, on separate sheets of paper. (Or in a spreadsheet if you are a techno-nerd like me. Just be sure to print out a hard copy for use when the power grid goes down!) It is important to tailor your lists to suit your particular geography, climate, and population density as well as your peculiar needs and likes/dislikes. Someone setting up a retreat in a coastal area is likely to have a far different list than someone living in the Rockies. As …


Prepare or Die, by J. Britely

Throughout my life I have been caught unprepared several times and while nothing seriously bad happened, it easily could have.  I have been lost hiking.  My car has broken down in very bad neighborhoods – twice.  I have been close enough to riots that I feared they would spread to my neighborhood, been in earthquakes, been too close to wildfires, been stuck in a blizzard, and have been without power and water for several days after a hurricane.   I managed to get myself out of each situation, I thanked God, and tried to learn from my mistakes.  I could have …


Sources for Free Survival and Preparedness Information on the Internet, by K.L. in Alaska

Recent comments in SurvivalBlog provided excellent advice on using the public library. You can gain lots of knowledge with no expense, then purchase only those books you want to keep on hand for personal reference. Also, many colleges and universities loan to local residents, so you can use them too, even if you aren’t a student. If your local libraries participate, a great resource is Worldcat. It lets you search for books from home, then go check them out, or get them through interlibrary loan. What will happen to the Internet when the SHTF? There’s no guarantee it will survive. …


Letter Re: Comments on the Movie “I Am Legend”

JWR, My wife and I saw “I Am Legend” last night at the local theatre. The movie house was packed. Almost every seat was filled. Of the most interest was the end. As the movie faded to black and credits rolled, there were more than several spontaneous bursts of applause throughout the audience and a few cheers. Wow! The last movie that I remember ever getting applause was the last “Star Wars” installment. Something really hit deep with many in the audience… My wife was weird’ed out by the zombies though, as they were quite scary. So viewer beware. As …


Letter From SurvivalBlog’s Brazilian Correspondent Re: New Ebola Strain in Africa

Jim, There has been another outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, that already has killed 25 people. It is funny (in a morbid way), but the “good news” that the specialists gave about this new Ebola strain: ” …Because of its scanty history, scientists have concluded that the strain is somewhat containable because it kills its victims faster than it can spread to new hosts…” Sometimes, people around tell to us, survivalists: you are always “over-reacting” to threats that maybe never happen. Well, look at the reason why some medical workers die: ” …The mysterious strain has so far infected 104 …


Letter Re: Preparedness for Less Than a Worst Case, From an Eastern Urbanite’s Perspective

Hello Jim, I am very new reader of your blog and am just now starting to go through the archives. Based on what I’ve read so far, I commend you on putting together a useful, fact-intensive blog on “survivalism” (whatever that means), that isn’t geared towards loony, off-the-reservation, tinfoil hat-type readers, who believe that 9/11 was a plot masterminded by Halliburton. That said, one problem I suspect I will have with your blog is that you consistently seem to be preparing for an extreme, and more-or-less permanent, breakdown of society—or TEOTWAWKI, if you will. In one of your blog posts, …


Two Letters Re: Influenza Exercise Shows the Potential for Major Infrastructure Disruptions

James: In deference to Ben, his numbers are a little off. I have been spending a great deal of time studying everything I can get my hands on about a pandemic flu. (I am the Emergency Preparedness Specialist for my Church) If you go to www.pandemicflu.gov you’ll see that the “experts” expect a morbidity rate (those who will become sick) of 40% of the US population.and a mortality rate that would be about 20%. If you do some quick math: 360 million Americans 144 million Americans sick 28 Million Dead. One of the reasons that the numbers would not be …


Letter Re: Influenza Exercise Shows the Potential for Major Infrastructure

Jim, With all due respect (to Chris in Utah and the folks cited by Computerworld), “If a pandemic strikes the U.S., it will kill about 1.7 million people” is a fantasy, because it is based upon the 1918-1919 flu’s death-rate of 2.5%, and also that the United States’ population of the time was around one-third of the present number. It was said that, in “normal” times, flu killed some 0.25% of those afflicted. In 1918-1919, that figure skyrocketed to 2.5%. Triple the U.S.’s population (in regard to the earlier 20th Century figure), and the post-WW1’s death-rate goes to slightly over …


Letter Re: Influenza Exercise Shows the Potential for Major Infrastructure Disruptions

Jim: I thought you and your readers might be interested in this flu pandemic exercise recently carried out by financial services firms. An article in Computerworld describes the scenario: “If a pandemic strikes the U.S., it will kill about 1.7 million people, hospitalize 9 million, exhaust antiviral medications and reduce basic food supplies…”, and, “Among the other things that may happen in an actual pandemic are school closings, as well as blackouts or brownouts in major metro areas because of degraded service as a result of absenteeism. Internet service throughput could be reduced by 50% due to congestion, and Web …


Homeschooling During the Crunch, by Nathaniel

Let’s say that you and your family having been taking the advice provided here by Mr. Rawles and are squared away for the Crunch—you’ve got your bullets, beans, and band-aids, all piled high in a structurally reinforced home out in the middle of nowhere. You’ve got just about every survivalist book ever printed, plus the tools and skills you’ll need to provide for yourself and your family. You also, of course, have the basic life skills that you’ll need to simply stay alive—things like shooting, tracking, cooking, and first aid. Have you thought, however, about the education of your children? …



Letter Re: BBC/Discovery Channel Documentary on Asian Avian Flu

Hi Jim, Last night I watched a superb two hour documentary on one of the science [cable television] channels about the coming avian flu pandemic. It was a co-production of the Discovery Channel and the BBC, so I’m sure everyone with cable television will have a chance to see it. The documentary weaved between the predictions and projections of top epidemiologists, and a fictionalized account of the breakout in Cambodia, and its spread worldwide. The 1918 Spanish Flue pandemic was also used as a major point of comparison. All of the experts on the show said it is not a …


Letter Re: Asian Avian Flu is Still a Major Threat

JWR, I am currently working on the construction of a pandemic flu vaccine facility (way too far away from my intended retreat locale, but I need to be able to afford my retreat 🙂 and I have a couple insights that most people and some medical folks might not have. First, the new cell culture flu vaccine facilities will have the ability to adapt to mutating strains during production – within reason, and in-process flu vaccine production can either be stopped, or the pandemic vaccine added to the regular vaccine. That is something that is not possible with even the …


Letter Re: Asian Avian Flu is Still a Major Threat

Jim, I am a regular reader with 40+ yrs of prepping and a 10 Cent Challenge subscriber. My current career is as a Hospital Staff Respiratory Therapist. We recently had a seminar on the coming Avian Flu Pandemic that scared the heck out of me. The timeline for human to human vector is 3 to 5 years, if it follows the current rate of mutation. It will probably come out of Thailand, and with air travel, will quickly spread around the world, with entry to the US through the major international airports. With luck and area quarantines, they may be …