The Golden Horde and the Thin Veneer

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Because of the urbanization of the U.S. population, if the entire eastern or western power grid goes down for more than a week, the cities will rapidly become unlivable. I foresee that there will be an almost unstoppable chain of events: Power -> water -> food distribution -> law and order -> arson fires -> full scale looting
As the comfort level in the cities rapidly drops to nil, there will be a massive involuntary outpouring from the big cities and suburbs into the hinterboonies. This is the phenomenon that my late father, Donald Robert Rawles–a career particle physics research administrator at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories–half-jokingly called “The Golden Horde.” He was of course referring to the Mongol Horde of the 13th Century, but in a modern context. (The Mongol rulers were chosen from the ‘Golden Family’ of Temujin. Hence the term “The Golden Horde.”) I can remember as a child, my father pointing to the hills at the west end of the Livermore Valley, where we then lived. He opined: “If The Bomb ever drops, we’ll see a Golden Horde come swarming over those hills [from Oakland and beyond] of the like that the world has never seen. And they’ll be very unpleasant, believe you me!”

In my lectures on survival topics I often mention that there is just a thin veneer of civilization on our society. What is underneath is not pretty, and it does take much to peel away that veneer. You take your average urbanite or suburbanite and get him excessively cold, wet, tired, hungry and/or thirsty and take away his television, beer, drugs, and other pacifiers, and you will soon seen the savage within. It is like peeling the skin of an onion—remove a couple of layers and it gets very smelly. As a Christian, I attribute this to man’s inherently sinful nature.

Here is a mental exercise: Put yourself in the mind set of Mr. Joe Sixpack, Suburbanite. (Visualize him in or near a big city near where you live.) He is unprepared. He has less than one week’s food on hand, he has a 12 gauge pump action shotgun that he hasn’t fired in years, and just half a tank of gas in his minivan and maybe a gallon or two in a can that he keeps on hand for his lawn mower. Then TEOTWAWKI hits. The power grid is down, his job is history, the toilet doesn’t flush, and water no longer magically comes cascading from the tap. There are riots beginning in his city. The local service stations have run out of gas. The banks have closed. Now he is suddenly desperate. Where will he go? What will he do?

Odds are, Joe will think: “I’ve gotta go find a vacation cabin somewhere, up in the mountains, where some rich dude only goes a few weeks out of each year.” So vacation destinations like Lake Tahoe, Lake Arrowhead, and Squaw Valley, California; Prescott and Sedona, Arizona; Hot Springs, Arkansas; Vail and Steamboat Springs, Colorado; and the other various rural ski, spa, Great Lakes, and coastal resort areas will get swarmed. Or, he will think: “I’ve got to go to where they grow food.” So places like the Imperial Valley, the Willamette Valley, and the Red River Valley will similarly get overrun. There will be so many desperate Joe Sixpacks arriving all at once that these areas will degenerate into free-fire zones. It will be an intensely ugly situation and will not be safe for anyone. In some places the locals may be so vastly outnumbered that they won’t survive. But some of the Joe Sixpacks will survive, and then the more ruthless among them will begin to fight amongst themselves for the few remaining resources. They will form ad hoc gangs of perhaps 6 to 30 people.

Once the Golden Horde has been thinned (and honed to ferocity) and they’ve cleaned out an area, the thugs at the pinnacle of ruthlessness will comprise the most formidable rover packs imaginable. They will move on to an adjoining region, and then another. But the inverse square law will work in your favor: Imagine that you take a jar of marbles turn it upside down on a wooden floor and then lift the jar suddenly upward. The marbles will spread out semi-randomly. But the farther from the mouth of the jar, the lighter the density of marbles. Hence, the rover packs will attenuate themselves into a huge rural expanse that is peopled with well-armed country folks. By the time the looters work their way out 150 miles from the big cities, they will be thinned out considerably. The rover pack is your primary threat in a total collapse, no matter how remote your retreat. Here are your potential adversaries: A squad to company size force (12 to 60 individuals), highly mobile, moderately well armed with a motley assortment of weapons and vehicles, and imbued with absolute ruthlessness. Be prepared.

Letter Re: Portable Two-Way Radio Recommendations

Sir,
Could you or your readers recommend any good two-way re-chargeable hand-held radios that are sold at outdoor places such as Cabela’s?
I’m particularly looking for a model that I could use while at University classes while my wife is one mile away at our apartment.
Thanks,.- Chad

JWR Replies: Reliable communication with a one mile range in a cluttered environment–as I assume yours is, if the city is large enough to host a university–is “iffy” for the typical FRS and GMRS hand-held transceivers on the consumer market. My preference is for the MURS band hand-helds. Not only will you get better range, but you will also be operating in a less commonly used frequency band. This will give you marginally better communications security. (Although, of course no radio transmission should be considered 100% “secure.”) I recommend the MURS Radios company (one of our advertisers). as a reputable source of transceivers. They also do custom frequency programming, and sell both accessories and MURS-compatible perimeter intrusion detection systems.

Odds ‘n Sods:

You’ll recall that I promised to feature more good news. Here is some potentially good news for the US Dollar from The Financial Times: Dollar at crossroads amid brighter US outlook

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Jay in Florida sent an article that should come as no surprise: FDIC Fund Strained by Bank Failures May Have to Raise Premium. If the bank runs continue apace, the FDIC may have to rely on much more: Namely, “The full faith and credit…”

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Fitzy in Pennsylvania found this: The bionic exoskeleton future is almost here.

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Wars, and rumors of wars: Russian troops move into western Georgia

Note from JWR:

We were overwhelmed by the generosity of reader R.C. in Arkansas, who just sent us a gift via PayPal, to help defray the cost of some of The Memsahib’s recent hospitalization. Thank you very much! Most of all, we appreciate your continuing prayers.

Letter Re: Getting Third World Experience to Prepare for More Austere Times

Mr. Rawles,
I have been prepping and working on self-reliance for some time now, and starting reading your blog about a year ago. Thank you for your efforts.

I am a dentist and would like to mention a training option that may be of interest to some of your readers. Especially medical personal. For the past 11 years I have been a “volunteer” dentist for a week or two at a time in a very poor, Central American country. I am part of team that includes other dentists, medical doctors (MDs), and assistants.

I picked this country because of its poverty, relative ease of travel (as opposed to Africa) and the lack of armed conflict. There are many reasons that I go, but a main one is for training and equipment testing.

We stay on site; in a village that has no running water or electricity. Every day hundreds of people line up outside the gate, starting about 5:00 a.m.. The Dental team almost exclusively remove teeth. The MDs see a wide variety of ailments, but many parasites, and hand /eye injuries related to chopping wood and cook fires. I am not qualified to go much beyond that in describing the medical team’s activities.

Delivering care in a place like this is a totally different world than my comfortable, climate controlled office. It’s more than removing learning how to extract teeth without great lighting and high-powered suction. The skills required to deliver safe, efficient, high volume oral surgery in what is essentially a ”grid down situation” take some time to develop.

Equipment that works great in the states, only takes up shelf space in the Third World. Without high tech equipment, most dentists aren’t fully productive until they have completed several trips.

The training aspects involve more than my personal skill in removing teeth and running a clinic. I have trained many people in suturing, and given them ample practice. Some trained dental assistants have also learned to inject Novocain as well as removing less challenging teeth.

In addition to the clinical aspect of such trips, these types of missions provide opportunity to practice skills such as off-road driving, crowd control, and improvising. Living for a week or two without running water and electricity gives a taste of what TEOTWAWKI might be like. The parts of daily living that we take for granted in the United States of America, come in to sharp focus. It is also worthwhile to see how yourself and others behave while under a bit of stress from change in diet, poor sleep and other environmental disorientations.

There are many medical/dental mission organizations, both secular and religious. They vary in length of trip, cost and location. Many have personal stay at hotels and drive out to provide services. All could use your support. This type of training is clearly not an option for everyone, but has been very worthwhile for me and my team on many levels, beyond a
training experience. If interested, local dental and medical societies are a good place to start researching. – D.J.

JWR Replies: Some of my relatives have done multiple “tours” overseas with the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), and I have a friend that has worked for several years with Baptist Medical and Dental Missions International (BMDMI). in Honduras. The father of one of my college classmates was a volunteer pilot for The Flying Doctors for nearly two decades. I’ve observed that they all have returned from these trips both strengthened in their faith and much more capable in operating in austere environments. I highly recommend this sort of service. It is a challenging yet incredibly rewarding form of personal ministry, to God’s glory.

Letter Re Binocular Recommendations

Sir:

For our possible retreat security, you’ve written a lot about communications gear, intrusion detection devices (like Dakota Alerts), night vision gear, guns, and even observation post [construction]. But I haven’t seen your recommendations on binoculars. What model/brands [do you] recommend? Thanks, – Ray V.

JWR Replies: I generally recommend 7×50 binoculars for retreat security at fixed sites. For patrolling, I prefer 7 power binoculars with smaller objective lenses–perhaps 7×42 or even 7×35, for lighter weight.

If your retreat is out in open plains country, you might want more magnification and larger objective lenses. (Perhaps even a large 30×50 monocular spotting scope, for early intrusion detection.)

Basically any good brand with coated optics in rubber-armored housings will suffice. If I had to choose between buying just one pair of Zeiss or Steiner binoculars versus several pairs of Simmons or Bushnell binoculars, then I’d go for the latter. You never know when a pair of binocs–even the best–will fog up, get a cracked/scratched/chipped lens, or will get lost or stolen. So I recommend opting for quantity rather than the absolute top quality. You can literally buy four or five times as many pairs for the same money. Just like when buying pocket knives, this strategy should not be taken to extremes. (Don’t buy the “no name” junky Chinese binoculars!)

Regardless of the brand you buy, I recommend that you install Butler Creek flip-up lens caps (we also use them on our scoped rifles), and invest in a padded case, such as the Steiner BinoBag or Cabela’s Snug Rug.

Letter Re: Survival Fiction Recommendations

Mr. Rawles;

I really enjoyed your novel [“Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”.] It was great, and I was amazed at the quantity of useful facts that you squeezed into a piece of fiction. I’ve read it three time and have given away a copies to a couple of my friends and to my dad. It helped him extract his head from the sand. For that alone, I am very grateful.

What other “survival” fiction do you recommend that has any real educational value? (Not just motivational or “what if” situations.) Are there any novels like yours, or perhaps some movies that are “musts”? Thanks, – Ken H., in Cleveland, Ohio

JWR Replies: I enjoyed reading all of the following novels:

Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (Classic nuke scenario)
Pulling Through by Dean Ing (a more modern nuke scenario + a mini nuke survival manual) Not to be confused with my screenplay that has the same title.
Some Will Not Die by Algis Budrys (Plague total wipe out scenario)
No Blade of Grass by John Christopher (Massive crop disease/social breakdown scenario, from the British perspective.)
Vandenberg by Oliver Lange (Invasion scenario) later republished under the title “Defiance”.
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Last of the Breed by Louis L’amour

For my movie recommendations, scroll down near the bottom of the SurvivalBlog Bookshelf page. OBTW, if you enjoy movies with survival themes, then you will like reading my “Pulling Through” screenplay (available–at least for now–for free download.)

Odds ‘n Sods:

Perennial content contributor Cheryl N. found this “must read” MSNBC piece: Credit Crisis Prompts Unprecedented Response. It squares nicely with what I have been writing since the Spring of 2007: The global credit collapse is unprecedented, and will be both deep and prolonged. We are nowhere near the bottom yet!

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From The Guardian: Greenspan warns more banks may be bailed out. (A hat tip, again, to Cheryl N. for the link.)

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John R. recommended a brief speculative piece on state secession, penned by fellow SurvivalBlog reader Bill Buppert, recently posted over at LewRockell.com: ‘Good Morning, Mr. President.’

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I mentioned this slide show linked at The Drudge Report once before: The World’s Most Worthless Money. OBTW, their data on Zimbabwe has now been thoroughly overcome by events.On August 1st, Comrade Mugabe’s henchmen lopped 10 zeros off their new national notes. So one of those pre-August Z$100,000,000 notes is now worth only one 1/10th of a cent. And buying a house that would cost $50,000 if denominated in US Dollars would cost $450,095 in the new Zimbabwean dollars. (Or, Z$4,500,950,000,000,000 in the old currency.) Four and a half quintillion dollars! As Buckaroo Banzai would say “That’s a lot of zeros!”

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“Am I optimistic for the long-term? Absolutely not. I still believe we’re due for the mother of all market crashes, and that the U.S. economy is running on borrowed time — and I do mean borrowed. I think most baby boomers are in serious financial trouble, and that oil will climb above $200 a barrel. Inflation will also increase, causing more pain for the poor and middle class.” – Robert Kiyosaki

Letter Re: Of Bulls and Bears–Some History and a Glimpse at the Future

Dear Mr. Rawles,
Thanks for the great blog, and your “Patriots” novel. Reading your site has become a daily routine for me.
One thing that I am finding amusing in today’s investment market is this mythical line in the sand of when we are officially in a Bear market. At present the market seems to be fighting to stay just above this line and almost daily some market pundit states how one average or another has “officially’ entered an intraday Bear Market.
Few people know, especially those in the investment market, the origins of the terms Bulls and Bears.

In my neck of the woods, the Gold Country of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Bulls and Bears have been battling it out since the early days of the Gold Rush. This was sport for many of the local towns to bring to the town square a large bear captured in the wild and put the bear to do battle with a local prize bull. The men of the town would gather and wager on which of the two behemoths would win out in a fight to the death.

One of two scenarios would play out. In the first scenario (a Bull Market) the bull would gore the bear in the abdomen slashing the bear open in a spectacular display of blood and guts. The bear would die fairly quickly and the townsmen would head off to the bars to tell of their afternoon’s entertainment. In the other scenario, (the Bear Market) the bear would gain position inside of the bull’s horns placing the bull in the proverbial ‘bear hug’. Then things would get ugly! The bear would then bite off the nose of the bull. At this point all the bear has to do is hang on and let the bull bleed out – and that is just what the bear would do. This takes hours of the bull bellowing in pain, blood pouring from the bull’s face all the while. Once the bear had achieved the inside position and the nose was bitten off, it was effectively over, but there were still the hours of bellowing and blood until the bull finally died.

The reason for my writing you with this bit of history is because it is obvious that in the investment arena the bear has gained the inside position, the nose of the bull has been bitten off, and we are watching the bull bleed out (numerous large cap companies reporting colossal, multi-billion dollar quarterly losses – now in a row; the housing market crash; the dollar weakening; and the entire banking industry teetering on complete insolvency to name a few. The efforts of the Fed to gauze the wound will not prevent the inevitable outcome). What amazes me is watching the pundits and talking heads make ridiculous statements about how we are “not actually in a bear market” because we float just above a subjective line in the sand; or my recent favorite, some reporter whining about “why can’t we just get to the bottom of the bear market already and start over”. The history of Bulls and Bears shows, at least in symbolic reference, why a bear market is not a quick, flashy downside where we ‘just get there and start over’. This is a long, slow process and no matter how hard the bull tries to pull away, he is not getting away from the inevitable outcome.

Jim, you, through your blog site, you offer us the opportunity to be prepared for what may come. Those who sit ringside believing that the bull will somehow win out in this scenario are fooling themselves and those around them. Keep up the great work! – Dennis

JWR Replies: As reader Kevin A. recently mentioned to me, the market terms are most often attributed as follows: Bulls gore head first and then raise their heads and thus their horns upwards, while bears fight by striking with their paws in a downward motion. But regardless of the specific origin of the terms, don’t forget the old Wall Street saying: “Nobody beats the bear.”

Letter Re: The Novel The Road is Now in Movie Production

Mr. Rawles,
As you seem to enjoy a bit of fiction with your survival preparedness I thought you would be interested to know that Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Road”, is being made into a Hollywood movie. While certainly not the world’s greatest survival fiction it isn’t a bad morality play of the mindset required to survive a pervasive society ending disaster.
The movie is set to release in November by John Hillcoat and star Viggo Mortenson, Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and 12-year-old Kodi Smit McPhee.
It could be good but the sheeple will no more go see this than they will the survival movie, “Blindness”. – Neal

Letter Re: Preparedness Versus Reliance on God’s Providence and Protection

Jim,
I’ve struggled with the paradigm of preparing versus having faith in God to provide for our needs and protection. There are many Biblical references/analogies regarding both. Would you be willing to share your thoughts? Sincerely, – Short-ckt

JWR Replies: For some relevant Bible passages, please see the latest additions to my Prayer page. In particular, see the sections under these headings:

Clarification on Christianity and Physical Preparedness
Food Storage
Self Defense
Charity

May God Bless You and Yours!

Odds ‘n Sods:

Reader Cheryl N. sent us this article that ran in Australia’s The Age, back in June: Talk of financial system breakdown moves from the fringe to the mainstream

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Both Dean and KAF mentioned an EMP article, in The Wall Street Journal.

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Cheryl N. also flagged this: 2007 Mortgages Going Bad at Faster Pace. “Mortgages issued in the first part of 2007 are going bad at a pace that far outstrips the 2006 vintage, suggesting that the blow to the financial system from U.S. housing woes will be deeper than many people earlier estimated.” Meanwhile, we read: California Housing Years Away From Bottom

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Grut in Colorado told us about a You Tube clip produced by some LDS women, teaching food storage techniques.

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Reader Scot F. mentioned that the State of Ohio is touting pandemic flu preparedness, in a new television public service advertisement.