Letter Re: Using Unusual Camouflage to Deter Burglars

Mr. Rawles:
What I’m about to write about really happened.

In 2003 I had an apartment that got broken into when I was at work. At the time I did not own much at the time and had very few valuables. After much thought and not coming up with any unique hiding places, I decided to keep my Beretta pistol, credit cards, cash, checks and so forth in an old liquor box with a pile of “old but clean” underwear on top of the box. The plan worked. My apartment was ransacked and you guessed it, the only box not touched was the one with the old clean underwear on top on the box. (I only had some prescription medication and $30 in spare change stolen) I do not mean to sound disgusting, but I used the old and clean underwear to clean my pistol with so that there were stains on them, and that just amplified the effect.

If anyone wishes to try this unorthodox operational security technique, I recommend using old school white Hanes Briefs. clean your guns with the underwear too. (it will also discourage friends from wanting to shoot your guns also) Keep the label on the underwear facing outward so its more noticeable.

I have a house now with a monitored security system, reinforced locks and some other modifications including hurricane shutters to discourage and slow down intruders. I have to admit, my brand new Kimber 1911 .45 that I keep near my bed has a couple of pairs of underwear on it just in case my security is breached. – Somewhere on the Gulf Coast

Influenza Pandemic Update:

Ukraine Fatalities Spike to 675

News from China: Survey helps to combat H1N1 spread

WHO: Public health significance of H1N1 mutations unclear

2009-2010 Influenza Season–Most recent synopsis

Economics and Investing:

From G.G.: China provides 97 percent of the global supplies of rare earth elements, most coming from a single mine in Inner Mongolia

I spotted this over at the Dr. Housing Bubble blog: Unlocking the Foreclosure Box – The Most Comprehensive Shadow Inventory Housing Analysis for Los Angeles County.

Items from The Economatrix:

Taxpayers Hit Harder as Bank Shares Nosedive

20 Million+ in US Got Unemployment Checks in 2009

Washington Times Slashes Staff 40%

US Stocks Drop as Crisis Causes S&P 500’s First Decade Loss

US Dollar and Treasury Bonds at Risk Following Fannie and Freddie Debt Monetization

A Year on From Financial System Collapse: Something is Not Quite Right

Gary North: How to Protest Against the Big Bailed Out Bankster Run Banks

Letter Re: More About Post-SHTF Anesthetic Medicine Options

Introductory Note from JWR: Warning! The following article is presented for educational purposes only. As previously discussed in SurvivalBlog, using vinyl ether or chloroform for anesthesia can be very tricky. Both can induce deep levels of sedation much more quickly than desired. Thus, at a minimum can can compromise the patient’s airway, and thereby very possibly kill the patient. So unless you have both the equipment and the regularly-practiced expertise to safely intubate and extubate your patient, then do not use vinyl ether or chloroform. Chloroform is also a known carcinogen. Generally, local anesthetics are the best choices for austere medicine! You should only consider using a general anesthetic when there are absolutely no other options, and when aid from trained medical professionals is absolutely unavailable!

Merry Christmas Jim,
I’d like to add something to your knowledge concerning “do it yourself anesthetics”: chloroform.

Be advised: chloroform is carcinogenic and should only be used if no safer alternatives (including no sedation and no operation) are available. Synthesis should only be carried out with regard to proper safety procedures (ventilation, eye protection, …) and consideration for any pertinent laws. I am not a doctor, I do not have any formal medical training. I do however hold a degree in chemistry, I have synthesized chloroform and used it to carry out extractions of organic compounds.

Chloroform has long been used as an anesthetic as well as being a common chemical in many laboratories. It went out of use in medical practice as its carcinogenic nature became known. Yes, this stuff will increase your risk of contracting cancer and should only be used after due consideration. The decision to go ahead and use this on an elderly person will be taken differently than when dealing with a youth for
instance.

Production
I am not a doctor, I will not advise you on how to use chloroform. I will however teach you how to manufacture it. The easiest way to manufacture chloroform is by reacting a methyl ketone with chlorine dissolved in an aqueous environment. In plain English: by mixing bleach with acetone. “Bleach” being any plain hypochlorite bleach solution, will react with acetone and form Acetic acid and chloroform. Chloroform will separate from the solution and float on top. (Theoretically, methyl ethyl ketone [aka 2-Butanone; ethyl methyl ketone, or MEK] could be used instead of acetone, I have no experience with this)

The purest product can be obtained by taking a small amount of bleach and slowly (while stirring) adding drops of acetone in solution until no more chloroform forms. (this minimizes the loss of acetone through evaporation which poses a potential fire hazard) The top layer can be off quite well, but it will be difficult to get every drop without spilling some concentrated acetic acid over as well. A better separation can be accomplished with a separatory funnel, if available.

The amount of each chemical can be difficult to calculate in advance as the purity/concentration of bleach is not a constant, if it is even accurately labeled. There are differences between sodium- ,potassium-and calcium hypochlorite to take into account. You need (ideal ratios) 3.8 grams of sodium hypochlorite bleach for every gram of acetone, or 30 grams per 10 ml of acetone, this would yield roughly 5 ml of chloroform. You will need a sizable amount of bleach to produce enough chloroform to keep someone sedated for any period of time.

The produced chloroform should be washed with water to flush out as much bleach and acetic acid as possible. Mix chloroform with half its volume of water, stir well and pour off the water. Do this twice and your chloroform is ready for storage or use.

“A text-book of practical organic chemistry” by Vogel Lists a more advanced method of producing Chloroform. A web search on “Vogel chemistry” should allow you to review the book in .pdf format on one of the many sites which host it. I would wholeheartedly advise a couple of decent chemistry books in every survival library (aseptics, medication, explosives, glue, dye, … your modern life is supported by practical chemistry, do you know anything about it?)

Uses
Chloroform can be used as an anesthetic by a qualified anesthesiologist. In addition, it may be used as a recreational drug by those truly daft or already dying and therefore may qualify as bartering tender.
A far better use is its use as an apolar solvent. Ether can be used to extract organic compounds from biological matter. For example: the aroma’s from flowers, natural dyes and alkaloïds. (Alkaloïds including the active compounds from narcotic and/or medicinal plants.) Generally, the chloroform is distilled off after the extraction is complete, preferably under vacuum to preserve the extracted compound.

The acetic acid can be purified by boiling off any remaining acetone and most water. There may be small amounts of bleach present. This concentrated acetic acid can be diluted to make strong vinegar. I suppose this vinegar may be useful as a cleaning agent. I doubt it could be considered food safe and useful for food preservation or preparation. Dehydration to yield acetic anhydride would be a chemists preferred destination, but is highly illegal under current drug precursor regulations.

Hazards
(The following is not an exhaustive list of the hazards associated with chloroform)
Chloroform is carcinogenic and contact should be avoided! Do not inhale the fumes or ingest, avoid skin contact.
Chloroform is relatively fire-safe, making it suited for many extractions as it can be distilled off (though presently largely replaced by alternatives)

Storage
Chloroform must be kept away from light, ideally in an amber glass bottle in a cool room not prone to extreme temperature shifts.

I’d also a bit on chloral hydrate as well, but aside from me not having any practical experience with its synthesis, that sort of information may attract the wrong kind of attention (criminals as well as those who hunt them). Still, if you need a powerful sleeping aid post SHTF, any “lab” chemist should be able to synthesize some for you if you bring alcohol, sulphuric acid, salt and a source of electricity or hypochlorite powder. Happy new year and many a year after! – Hawkins

Four Letters Re: Preparedness for Digital Doomsday

Hello Mr. Rawles,
The article by David W. on data storage raised excellent points, and is sure to get people thinking about an often-overlooked subject..

For the prepper on a budget, there are a number of avenues to secure your data that won’t break the bank. While it may be impractical to have several NEW laptops in your stash of supplies, there are plenty of good, used laptops available that will fit the bill nicely. You don’t need a powerhouse just to read your survival documents, and having one or more spares means fewer eggs in one basket. I’ll focus on laptops as the item to stock, due to their low power consumption and compact size. A laptop is a lot more practical to shield against EMP and store compared to a desktop PC, so you are more likely to accomplish the task.

When you purchase your used laptop, have your computer friend (you have one, right?) perform a clean install of your favorite Operating System after wiping the hard drive, to ensure you have a clean system. Apply all the updates, and install a standard set of programs. My standard “laptop for storage” installation has the free OpenOffice suite for word processing and spreadsheet documents, and the free utilities Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader for PDFs. You might find that your computer friend is open to barter, thus minimizing a potentially expensive activity. I would personally fall over myself to help someone for a fresh Pumpkin Pie or six pack of quality Root Beer.

Once the machine is set up for general use, store it away in EMP-proof packaging as discussed previously on SurvivalBlog.

You may wish to save all of your data, as David W. proposed using several excellent methods. In the case of just storing a laptop to review your survival information, you might get away with just using USB memory sticks, a.k.a. Flash Drives. These will also receive the EMP protection treatment. The storage method you choose will be determined by the amount of space your files take up. If you are just storing a copy of all your SHTF reference documents (saved in PDF form for portability) you might only need a 4 or 8 Gigabyte flash drive per stored laptop. Flash drives are inexpensive enough that you could keep extras in your bug out bags, vehicle, cache, key chain, and retreat. Redundancy is important here too. You can have five copies of your docs at home, and if your house burns down, there goes all your data. Mail flash drive copies of your survival docs to friends or family members for your own safekeeping, as well as quietly providing others with vital information if the SHTF.

If your plans include bugging out or having another secure location in case your retreat is overrun, having a stored laptop with all your reference material could be a lifesaving decision. A copy of your critical reference docs on a key chain might be just as useful as a multi-tool in the right circumstances. Remember, half of knowledge is knowing where to find knowledge. – J.T.C.

Dear James,
Thank you for posting David W’s article “Preparing for Digital Doomsday”. There are two important issues which need to be added to the topic.

1. Conventional hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tape all suffer from the same vulnerability — they will lose their data over time even under the best of circumstances. This isn’t a manufacturing defect but
physics. All of these media record data by forcing the microscopic magnetic domains to line up in one of two orientations to signify a ‘1’ or a ‘0’.

Over time, these microscopic domains become randomized through entropy. When this happens, the data is lost. In the case of a hard disk, this is delayed by the data being re-written after it is read. However, if the computer is not used and the data is not re-written, even the data on a hard disk will eventually be lost.

2. It was report a few years back that a large store of information that NASA had gathered from early space probes was “lost” because they no longer had the machines to read the old tapes. The tape machines used to read and write the tapes had become obsolete and were scrapped. No one had given a thought to the data created with these machines, and there no longer exists any off-the-shelf solution for reading them.

Solutions:
The magnetic media problem can be easily solved by using write once CD-ROMs or DVDs. They are simple, cheap, and do not suffer from the magnetic domain problem. The downside to CDs/DVDs is the second issue: will there be machines later that can read them? The only way to address that problem is to keep aware of changing technology and the quantity of data that must be retained. When there is a new, non-magnetic technology, you will need to upgrade and transfer all of the data you need to keep. Best Regards, – Bear in the Sierra

 

Sir:
A couple of minor points:

Netbooks: cost comparative to laptops, and they have a long battery life (lower power CPUs). I’ve not tried, but they could probably be maintained with a photovoltaic panel. There is a wee one with the
[PV] panel built in. Netbooks are about half the footprint of a typical laptop. Consider using SD chips for small form-factor storage.

Archiving the blog: Are you accounting for the noise ratio? I mean, it’s a great site, but not everything written is required. 🙂

I’m putting together a family album using Lulu Press this year. I took the first eight years of marriage and three kids and putting the best shots. That should make for a rugged alternative to ye olde photo
album.

Also consider the options shown here. – Ben

 

James Wesley:
This was a very good article to get people thinking about their digital security preparedness. A couple of other thoughts. Assuming power goes down, the internet will also go down with it. Local backups will be imperative, as anything you have stored remote via network will not be accessible. In the event of EMP, any local computers, hard drives and disc readers (i.e. CD-ROM or DVD) will be at risk, as well. The best backup will be on archival CD-ROM and DVD. These are impervious to EMP and remote access problems. Archival means what it says; these are special discs designed with a gold backing, the CDs should last up to 300 years, the DVDs up to 100 years. The cheaper aluminum discs you buy in bulk at your local electronics store will not last anywhere near as long (i.e. 3-10 years).

If you have valuable digital items that are irreplaceable, i.e. family photos, documents or business records, they should be archived regularly. You should keep multiple sets of back ups and store them off site or in secure, fire and water proof underground storage. Just as you would “cache” supplies in different places, you should cache your data. I send discs with non-confidential data to my relatives in 3 or 4 places around the country — this increases the odds of survival of the data.

Be very careful when you handle the discs, as finger prints, labels and non-archival marking pens can damage the surface. Note: the shiny back of the disc is where the data is written. The clear side is thick to prevent scratches from obscuring the data because the laser focuses at the back where the pits are written, not on the surface that can be scratched. Other than handling by the edges or center hole, discs should be stored in Tyvek sleeves or a jewel case in a cool (40-68F) environment. I recommend waterproof storage boxes, as well.

At some point after TSHTF, the consumers and businesses that remain will want to be able to read these 12 centimeter standard discs, so there is a very good chance you will be able to obtain a way to read them. – CK

Economics and Investing:

GG sent an article link which will not be a news flash to SurvivalBlog readers: What Americans might face next: inflation

CNN: Three reasons home prices are headed still lower. (Thanks to FG for the link.)

Monroe sent us this: Death and Taxes: 2010 Graph of Federal Budget. Monroe’s comment: “Not for the faint of heart… but then if you aren’t using real money…!”

Items from The Economatrix:

US Economic Disaster Worse than Weimar or Zimbabwe
Cities, Counties Take Back Corporate Tax Breaks

China Becomes World’s Biggest Gold Buyer in 2009

Eurozone Credit Contraction Accelerates

The Economic “Experts” Who Stopped Making Sense

Banks Accused of Profiteering in 2009

Odds ‘n Sods:

Bobbi-Sue sent a link to some crunch leading indicators with individual and regional railroads in accessible graphs.

   o o o

GPS-led travel goes amiss; Three Oregon parties rescued

   o o o

Super C. sent a link to some informative text and video about about unexpected immersion in cold water.

   o o o

Reader Mike O. sent us this: Packing Heat in Helsinki; Why do Finns own so many guns? This piece in the liberally-biased Slate, fails to mention several key facts. Among these: 1.) Although firearms ownership is widespread in Finland, its violent street crime rate is lower than in almost “gun-free” England. 2.) The journalist attributes the predominance of gun ownership to the hunting culture. This is partially true, but they failed to mention that many Finns consider private gun ownership “invasion insurance.” I guess the Slate writer never heard about the Winter War, and 3.) The two mass shootings that he mentioned were aberrations. Finns are largely peaceable folk. And whether the folks at Slate want to admit it or not, being well-armed helps keep their society peaceable.

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“I am the good shepherd, and know my [sheep], and am known of mine.
As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.
And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, [and] one shepherd.” – John 10:14-18 (KJV)

Note from JWR:

Today we present another entry for Round 26 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest.

First Prize: A.) A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost between $500 and $600, and B.) Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees, in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources. (A $392 value.) C.) A HAZARiD Decontamination Kit from Safecastle.com. (A $350 value.), and D.) A 500 round case of Fiocchi 9mm Luger, 124gr. Hornady XTP/HP ammo, courtesy of Sunflower Ammo. This is a $249 value.

Second Prize: A “grab bag” of preparedness gear and books from Jim’s Amazing Secret Bunker of Redundant Redundancy (JASBORR) with a retail value of at least $350.

Third Prize: A copy of my “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, from Arbogast Publishing.

Round 26 ends on January 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that articles that relate practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Preparedness for Digital Doomsday, by David W.

One subject I’ve not seen mentioned recently is that of data recovery and security. As a proponent of various disaster recovery plans for large companies during my tenure as in information technology auditor I’d like to propose a few ideas to the readers to increase the chances of keeping data post-TEOTWAWKI. No one plan works for everyone and your mileage may vary.

First off we all generate lots more data then we think. The most common insurance against loss of a home PC is regularly maintained backups to some form of storable media like DVD-r’s. However, in a post-TEOTWAWKI world we might not be able to count on having functional hardware to restore to on the other side of the crisis. The decision to attempt to maintain digital data must first be made. Assembling your family photos and all of the documents will most likely result in a heavy cumbersome item to store and/or move. Printing the entire 2009 year of this very blog results in quite a stack of paper. Keeping a for each monthly archive results in 12 megabytes of data – a very tiny amount to manage when we think of data in terms of gigabytes. Indeed assuming the same amount of content, about 66 years of monthly printouts of survival blog can fit on one CD-ROM, about 400 years on a single DVD-R.

Maintaining a digital store of data of your records, photos, videos and other media has its ups and downs. On the plus side you can store an enormous volume of material (you can even scan your entire paper file) on a small device such as a laptop or external drive. These items are fairly easy to grab and go – and they can be copied for redundancy to fairly inexpensive devices for backup purposes. The downside is that power is required, they are vulnerable to EMP, and in the event of total loss you don’t have a scrap of paper to rely upon. Even after scanning your papers to digital format, be sure to keep the most critical papers ready to go alongside your backup drive. It’s a big decision, however in my case I keep so much data that I’m going all out to preserve as much as possible. Ill lay out my strategy at the end of this article.

Supplying power is the key to using any digitally stored material post TEOTWWAKI. Laptops can require 10x less power than a typical desktop model. In my home office I use a desktop, but I frequently transfer all of the data to my laptop machine. That way I can grab my laptop and go if need be. Readers of Patriots may recall the use of a notebook for movie night years after the crunch. A solar charger and small inverter (175 watts or so) is generally sufficient to power a laptop with its 110/220 adapter. The prescient purchase of a 12 volt car charger for your laptop will save the inherent loss of running an inverter to step up to 120 VAC merely to convert it back down to around 12-14 volts DC. [JWR Adds: I agree! As I’ve previously mentioned in SurvivalBlog, a DC to DC adapter is far more efficient than a DC-to-AC-to-DC solution, with an inverter! Ditto for simple battery charging of NiMH AA, C, D, and 9 VDC batteries! For those, use a DC-to-DC charging tray, available for RV accessory dealers, such as Camping World.]

Another machine type to consider is a Mini PC or Book PC – these are available – and quite small for a grab and go situation. They require a keyboard, mouse and display but otherwise are self contained. Personally I prefer a laptop but there are some other choices out there.

Battery life and survivability is reasonably good with modern laptop batteries. Their life can be prolonged in several ways. First off they generally hold three to five hundred cycles of charge and discharge. They do not suffer the ‘memory effect’ of prior types of NiMh and NiCd batteries. See this site for more information on prolonging Lithium type batteries. That said, the cell will last longer if it is not cycled very often. If at all possible, run the laptop from its power adapter and use the battery only once or twice a month. In this way you should be able to get more years of service. Spare batteries can be purchased as well.

Hardware survivability is the other key. Unless you have deep pockets, buying multiple notebooks for redundancy is out of the question. I’d rather have a backup M1A then a spare laptop any day of the week. That said there are certain parts you can purchase that greatly increase your chances. Whatever machine you have, acquire a spare hard disk drive. These are now so small and cheap and readily available on ebay. Note that spare internal hard drives for laptops differ from external USB drives. There are great advantages to having both spare internal hard disks for your laptop as well as a few external drives. Another consideration can be the new solid state hard disks which are less prone to failure with no moving parts.

Step one is a data inventory. Bear in mind that I use a desktop PC and transfer a copy of the data to my laptop frequently. In my case I am very diligent about storing every file in the My Documents folder. By right clicking on the “my documents” folder, and then clicking the ‘general’ tab, windows will tally up the count of files and give you their total size. In my case, 193 GB

The next step is to make backups. With some quick and dirty math I know that it is quite a chore to burn these to the 41 (193GB / 4.7GB per DVD) but every four months I do so, anyway.. There are many other strategies but this works for me. Other folks like to burn only the data since the last backup. (Do a web search on “incremental backup” for more information.)) These are stored in a CD wallet and placed with my backup materials. I rely on these in the event that hardware and backup drives are all a total loss, and will recover the data after the crisis ebbs. After sizing the “my documents” folder and any other data folders I want, i plug in an external hard drive ( in my case a 1TB free agent drive which cost about $99 ) and before going to sleep, I drag and drop the files to copy on to it. By morning the copy is complete. This is done weekly in my case. I can tolerate the loss of one week of data but no more. Finally, after the copy is complete, I delete the prior documents on my laptop. (Be careful – if you use the laptop to change a file you must save it to another location or risk it’s loss) , and copy the fresh full backup I just made from the external hard drive to the folder on the laptop, which takes several hours and should be done at night.

What I end up with is my desktop PC with all of its data. I do my work here. I also have an external drive ready to go with the most up to date data, and a laptop already loaded with the same information, ready to grab and go at a moment’s notice. Or in the event of extended power failure, while sheltering at home, I can power up the laptop using my small solar charger to use the information stored there. Finally I have a CD Wallet that has most of the data if no hardware is working. Lots of redundancy.

For more advanced users, or those who like to learn and are fearless to experiment, I highly recommend the Linux world. Go to Ubuntu.com and download the latest disc image and burn it to a CD-ROM. You end up with a bootable CD-ROM that loads linux instead of windows (and can be toyed with without making changes to your PC if you just want to poke around.) That has many technical capabilities that exceed the scope of this writing. Many distributions of linux can support booting from a USB Jump Drive – with the ability to see the hard drive in the machine. Since the hard drive has the moving parts it is most prone to failure. One Linux strategy that I employ is having a USB Jump drive bootable to linux and DVD backups of my most critical data. Truly the top 1,000 of my most favorite family photos, and scans of my most important works all fit on a single DVD-ROM. Using that strategy I can boot Linux from the USB Jump Drive and see my most crucial stored data on DVD-R’s without the use of any hard drive. Not one moving part to break.

Everyone should consider developing some strategy. I find the idea of a functioning computer loaded with survival information, literature, my personal information, family photos and archives and other critical data a comfortable thought for TEOTWAWKI. It is also a great item for entertainment, and hopefully after the crisis I can assist others in recovering their digital lives.

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“Look at the means which a man employs; consider his motives; observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself.” – Confucius [Ware’s translation, The Sayings of Confucius, p .26]

Note from JWR:

Today we present another entry for Round 26 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest.

First Prize: A.) A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost between $500 and $600, and B.) Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees, in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources. (A $392 value.) C.) A HAZARiD Decontamination Kit from Safecastle.com. (A $350 value.), and D.) A 500 round case of Fiocchi 9mm Luger, 124gr. Hornady XTP/HP ammo, courtesy of Sunflower Ammo. This is a $249 value.

Second Prize: A “grab bag” of preparedness gear and books from Jim’s Amazing Secret Bunker of Redundant Redundancy (JASBORR) with a retail value of at least $350.

Third Prize: A copy of my “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course, from Arbogast Publishing.

Round 26 ends on January 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that articles that relate practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.