Category Archives: Emergency Preparedness

October 18, 2024 · 2:25 pm

Unpacking some conspiracy theories: Diabolical grand strategists or amoral opportunists?

I reworked this blog post from yesterday.

We’re now three weeks past Hurricane Helene and this story is off the national news radar almost completely. The rumors flying on social media, still swirl about among the right-wing echo-chamber. With a presidential election just a couple weeks away, most of our national news will be focused on this race. Many people in western NC and eastern TN still face extreme hardship from Helene, but by and large the national news and most of the American people have moved on. I urge everyone, if it’s within your means, to donate to a charity aiding victims of this storm. I’ve lost trust in many big national charities and look for small charity efforts to support – especially local efforts.

I’ve seen several social media people, who were in the area, and their accounts about what happened vary a bit, but there are some common threads. I wrote about this topic of rumors, especially in a crisis, a few years ago, About rumor control. I experienced a crazy rumor environment during Desert Storm, living in Germany. Our husbands deployed to the Gulf and families were left in Germany, in a heightened terrorist threat environment and scared about the war. As wives called each other, rumors frequently grew into wild tales, that unfortunately many wives believed. In the 1992 we returned to the states and then I began following the Clinton spin information war.

Rumors and spin are almost always false stories being spread, although motives differ. In a crisis often people spread rumors out of fear. The right-wing echo-chamber, even the part that is openly religious, dwells in a community where rumors and fear take hold. Often sentiments of feeling that they and their beliefs are under attack and being threatened by the dominant liberal culture are voiced frequently. It’s hard to stay calm in a crisis or when you feel threatened and it’s easy to link all sorts of happenings, especially unexplained ones, together in overly simplistic ways- “they” – the evil people, are responsible for all of these terrible things.

One Helene grand conspiracy theory asserts some nefarious “they” manipulated the storm clouds and directed the path of the storm. This conspiracy theory gets linked to the evil federal government & Blackrock are going to take the land, where major lithium and other valuable minerals are located, so they can mine them. A very similar grand conspiracy theory spread during the wildfire disaster in Maui. Lithium is a vital resource for the green transformation and another mineral resource was mentioned too that is needed for the AI revolution.

My problem with all of these theories is I’ve watched our government and particularly this administration operate for 4 years – they aren’t grand strategists, in fact, they operate like what we saw in the first few days of this disaster. Private citizens showed up with helicopters to rescue people and get supplies to stranded victims, and they spent the weekend after the storm pleading for the government to send air assets. The NG was sent in, but it wasn’t until near the end of the first week when the 82nd Airborne and 101st were deployed.

Aside from the issue of whether or not technology exists that can steer a hurricane for hundreds of miles, I’m just speaking about how this administration operates – from the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle to the fires in Maui a couple years ago – it’s always a crisis blows up, they drag their feet on responding and spend more effort on trying to spin it away in the media and covering up their ineptitude than actually dealing effectively with the crisis at hand. THEN, they try to spin away their failures and criticism, claim they did a great job and point fingers at the evil right-wing, as the cause all the problems. This was the same operational model of the Obama administration and that’s because the Biden administration is filled with the same Obama people. Heck, look back to the Benghazi crisis and it’s the same response model. The Obama administration initially tried to blame an obscure filmmaker for sparking riots in the attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The administration also dragged their feet on launching a rescue effort, then lied and created more narratives to cover up their failures.

The entire Dem/liberal media COVID response effort was more of the same – lies, cover-ups, blaming Trump for all the problems. Throughout that crisis, the Dem experts kept hyping dangers and rolling out one ill-conceived social mitigation effort after another. They lied consistently and even recruited Hollywood to fuel fears and push their social mitigations – one-after-another that were never presented with real evidence that they worked or were actually based on science. It was a long-rolling example of how they just kept making stuff up to fit their agenda to control the American people, justify government waste of trillions of dollars on policies and even vaccines that don’t work, but most of all they consistently blamed evil right-wingers for daring to question or criticize their policies. When BLM launched the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, all of a sudden all those COVID rules no longer applied and it was safe for large protests and even doctors and nurses in large city hospitals poured into the streets to join the crowds.

Even globally, as the elites driving the COVID policies tried to use the pandemic as cover to launch these policies they envisioned as setting the stage for their green revolution (Klaus Schwab wrote a book called “The Great Reset” in the beginning of the pandemic). None of these “grand ideas” were carried out like some ingenious plan – it was all ill-thought out strategies, poorly executed and lots of revising to cover-up missteps. These weren’t grand strategists, but more like out-of-touch kooks.

That’s not to diminish the real harm they caused with their policies, it’s just to say it wasn’t rolled out as some ingenious plan, but as a piecemeal effort where Dr. Fauci or one of the big name policy people would churn out one stupid policy after another, in a rather ad hoc fashion and then ramp up some lame spin effort in the media to sell it, as resistance grew or people were pointing out how stupid the policies were or that they weren’t practical. So, even in this case there were elites with an actual “grand vision,” but they weren’t very good at turning their vision into some coherent plan. What we got was a big media spin show to try to con us into submitting.

This is why I’m very skeptical of some grand conspiracy theory with Hurricane Helene, involving some evil genius “they’ who plotted all of this. I think mother nature can wreck havoc and bizarre events of all sorts that we never envisioned. Growing up in the mountains, well, massive geological upheavals created those very mountains without any human hands involved and strange weather events, climatic events, and even geological upheavals can happen again.

There very likely are big business interests in lithium deposits in Appalachia and sure they might swoop in to try to buy out victims in this crisis, but that’s a far cry from some grand plan that caused all of this so the evil globalists could get their hands on these lithium deposits. It’s more that big vultures watch victims struggle, then swoop in to plunder the wreckage. I saw one video by someone there helping , who asserted that since we left Afghanistan and lost access to those huge mineral reserves, we need new lithium reserves. Well, since I criticized US policy since GWB ordered our invasion of Afghanistan and allowed the Chinese to buy all rights to those mineral reserves – we never had access to Afghanistan’s vast mineral reserves – I remembered we let China buy all the rights to those. There’s some issue of those contracts were up for renegotiation and I don’t remember all the details, but that led to some of the political turmoil that led to the Taliban seizing control of the government in Kabul, but my point is the US never had rights to the mineral reserves in Afghanistan – we let the Chinese buy those… while we put blood and treasure into trying to stand up the Afghan government and provide security for the country all those years. That’s how stupid our foreign policy was.

Of more immediate concern to me is the reports of highly toxic waste in the flood sludge. I don’t know what all industrial and other toxic waste might have washed into those flood waters. but that should be a an urgent health issue to identify and inform people in those areas. Yet, all the Biden administration wants to hype is right-wing misinformation and how that’s hurting FEMA’s response efforts.

Sure, the US needs lithium and other mineral reserves for the green transformation, but what I’m getting at is this conspiracy theory, as presented, about Helene, has a lot of holes. The administration trying to cover-up their response failures seems much more likely. This administration wants this disaster off the front pages, especially this close to a presidential election. Imagine headlines if there really is highly toxic waste present in the floodwaters and mud and the federal government knows about it, but is trying to downplay it (I think this is likely true). I know how much effort has gone into Dems covering up other big scandals and this often fuels more wild right-wing conspiracy theories, that often get in the way of exposing the real Dem cover-ups and corruption.

From what I’ve seen in this sequence of events – the governor of NC & WH were slow to respond in the first days after the disaster. And I believe there’s likely some effort at covering up that slow response and perhaps there’s a serious health hazard the federal government might be downplaying. I’ve seen no evidence of some grand plan of some “they,” including controlling the weather.

I believe the victims of Helene will be forgotten by the federal government and by most Americans (including most of the loud, right-wing online crowd), who quickly move on to the next big story to fight about. The left vs. right spin battles aren’t about helping Americans, they’re about driving narratives and ginning up controversy.

Among the right, there are many popular pundits and social media personalities, whose bread and butter is “connecting dots” of all sorts of truly unconnected events into big conspiracy theories, Many people buy into almost all of them, even though 99.9% of these connected dots theories are bs. What they are is constant money-making by feeding right-wing grievances. Grand conspiracy theories that lack hard evidence linking the pieces together only fuel more anger, more divides and can get in the way of helping the actual victims. The worst effect of these grand conspiracy theories is they work to spread fear and disempower people. Fear weighs you down and gets in the way of unleashing all our human potential – it sucks us of our God-given power of personal agency – to forge ahead, even in the most extreme adversity.

I’m not saying people need to hush, don’t have a right to their own views, or that I know it all about anything. In America we do have the right to believe in and talk about conspiracy theories – and sometimes those do turn out to be true, even though most don’t. I’m all for people expressing their views, even controversial ones. What I’m saying is tread cautiously about buying into grand conspiracy theories, because they usually aren’t true – especially with this inept bunch of nitwits in the Biden administration. They always cover-up their failures to respond promptly or assess a crisis situation accurately. And rather than a grand conspiracy theory, what’s unfolding could much more likely be a chaotic cover-up effort, like in Benghazi, the pandemic, the Afghanistan withdrawal or the wildfires in Maui.

Don’t assign superhuman powers to these corrupt nincompoops, that leave you feeling powerless.

In Helene, the WH has been busily churning out photo-ops about all their grand relief efforts and one press conference after another about their “whole of government” approach to dealing with this disaster, to cover-up for their slow response and failures. However, their biggest narrative about Helene is to rant about right-wing misinformation impeding FEMA’s efforts and endangering FEMA workers… At the same time they’re ramping up alarm about dangerous right-wing misinformation and even a story about NG reporting two trucks of armed militia hunting FEMA workers.

No matter what the crisis, at home or abroad, this administration, just like the Obama administration, can be counted on to be leading from way, way behind, then spending more time trying to do damage control for their failures than actually finding solutions. And in the end, the Dem spin crowd will blame Trump or the right-wing conspiracy theories for causing all of the problems with this disaster response. The evil right-wing will become the obscure filmmaker of Benghazi scapegoat for this crisis.

By the time government investigations into this disaster response happen most of the country will no longer care and none of the lessons learned that could improve disaster response will likely be implemented. That’s the way the federal bureaucracy operates – each partisan side embarks on endless investigations, hurling allegations of nefarious wrongdoing back and forth, while American victims suffer. I’m not wasting a lot of energy or fuming about the government in this disaster.

The big lesson I’m learning is that individual citizens have real power and personal agency to respond quickly, to effect real results fast. In this disaster they demonstrated the ability to network in innovative and creative ways. Individual YouTubers and people on other social media initiated fundraisers, coordinated with local churches and other people on the ground to get assistance rolling in before the government even responded. Many churches and religious groups jumped into action. Teams of private groups and organizations rolled in and organized amongst themselves, even bringing air assets before the government responded. Individual citizens showed the true spirit of America and the best of us. If we call the government, especially in Washington, to come save us, well, we will probably find out no one’s answering.

Americans all over the country and even some people beyond our borders saw people in crisis in NC & TN and wanted to help. That’s the spirit of America that will save our country, not all the partisan fighting, political drama, and definitely not letting fear of the government and corrupt elites take hold.

America is a country dedicated to the empowerment of individuals and individual liberty. Individuals rushed into action and saved lives in this disaster and mobilized. That should be the lesson learned.

The photo above is a small piece I stitched a long time ago. The more chaotic and crazy things become, I’m finding more calm and inner peace by trusting that God is in control. I spent a good part of my adult life avoiding religion, even though I was raised going to church. I used to consider myself pretty much agnostic. In the past 25 years, I came to know that it is only by the grace of God that I am still here and free to speak my mind. I hope more Americans start trusting in each other rather than placing trust in politicians or the government. Individuals united in common causes can work miracles, as we’ve seen with the relief efforts in NC & TN. People just saw a need and pulled together to help. They’ve provided a true beacon of hope, in a world filled with cynicism and distrust.

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Filed under American Character, Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Information War, Politics

October 6, 2024 · 9:06 pm

The spirit of America is still alive

This blog post is a long ramble, but I want to get this stuff off my chest. I realize most people don’t follow the news as closely as I do, but I’ve been analyzing the Dem spin information war closely since 1999.

I heard a crazy story at the grocery store the other day, from the lady in front of me in line at the check-out. She told me that this past week, when the power was out in a nearby town, there was a confrontation at a gas station where a customer pulled a gun fighting over ice. One of my sons told me there were stories like that in Augusta too and he said the Walmart had a security person by the ice. I never thought about people going berserk over ice, but when the power’s out and you aren’t prepared to keep you fridge and freezer going, ice might become a precious commodity. Civil order can degrade quickly – that’s something we should all understand.

Most people aren’t even minimally prepared for emergencies and there are way more people with learned helplessness, who expect other people to save them, than people with a self-reliant mind-set. Watching this hurricane Helene disaster, made me think of a blog post I wrote in 2012, Survival: The Mind-Set. I’ve been committed to preparedness since I was a Girl Scout, as a kid, but I avoided the term “prepper.” In 2012 I wrote:

“Reality TV garbage, like Doomsday Preppers and the fixation on extreme survival skills, like Bear Grylls, marginalize  the seriousness of learning practical steps to take to be prepared.  In fact, stockpiling and building a fortress probably won’t increase your odds of survival anyway. The surest way to survive lies in building that team, where individual strengths and skills can lead to  innovation, creative-brainstorming and more ideas on how to tackle our problems, even in the most dire situation.  If you are stranded by rising water, calling Washington won’t help you, but calling your neighbors, who can pool resources sure might.”

The first responders are almost always going to be your neighbors and local officials, like your police and fire department, but in a massive disaster, like with the flooding in NC and TN, we should expect a prompt state and federal government response. The people in TN & NC are shining examples of neighbor helping neighbor in this disaster. They should be very proud of their people, who often get ridiculed as backward hicks from Appalachia. I grew up in rural PA, in the mountains, that are part of the Appalachian Mountain range and close to the Appalachian Trail. I understand how backwoods people get treated.

There’s plenty of time to do a post mortem on FEMA and problems with this disaster response and that should happen, so that problems can be addressed and better policies and procedures implemented.

Every American watching this on the news should be motivated to start taking practical steps to become better prepared for emergencies, learn more skills, and even if you’ve been committed to personal preparedness for a long time, it’s time to go assess your supplies, skills, and look for gaps in your preparedness plans and supplies. I have a list of things I want to do better or stock up on.

Elon Musk’s Starlink has been mentioned repeatedly as a lifesaver for communications in a disaster. Donald Trump wasn’t the only one who didn’t know anything about it. I had heard about it, but not being interested in technology, it wasn’t something I learned anything about, so I googled it. One of my sisters told me buying a Starlink kit might be a good thing to have and I think so too. These are the kinds of things I’m reassessing.

Sure, I’m disgusted with the Biden administration and yes, I do believe they were very slow to respond – Biden was on the beach and Kamala was at a big fundraiser in San Francisco last weekend, they weren’t concerned about the hurricane at all. Fort Bragg in NC and Fort Campbell in TN weren’t called in until a week after the storm. They were awaiting orders. Now, it’s all about how to spin it for damage control, but I am trying to leave my anger and disgust aside and trying to focus on positive things.

One of my sisters messaged me that she has attended two FEMA emergency communications webinars with her civilian job. She’s retired from the Air Force and worked in Public Affairs at the Pentagon years ago. She was lamenting that she thinks we aren’t as prepared as we were more than a decade ago and she expressed disgust at the DEI focus in her FEMA webinar training. She said the one before hurricane Helene focused mostly on climate change and pushed out a concept of Radical Collaboration, whatever the heck that means. She said they talked at length about stakeholders in shared spaces. And this is a direct quote from my sister, “It was all bullshit from a practical standpoint. It seems FEMA is mostly absent from meeting Helene victims in their shared spaces.” She also told me FEMA’s top communications person worked in campaigns for various high-level officials her whole career and has no practical experience in disaster response. She said they knew Helene was coming & the focus was on climate change, not disaster response.

I believe my sister is telling the truth about this FEMA webinar and I think most Americans watching this on the news or online know something is very, very wrong with this hurricane response and in this WH.

Dems and their liberal media allies are going to gaslight us any way they can to win this election. Today, some liberal media flacks were back on hyping signs of Trump’s cognitive decline and at the same time Axios has a piece out:

It’s totally insane. We have no information on the two men who tried to assassinate former President Trump. We have no answers on what condition President Biden really has, despite the almost dozen visits of a Walter Reed Parkinson’s specialist to his WH physician since January. The media just breezes past all of this. It was only a week before the hurricane, when Biden held his first full cabinet meeting in almost a year, and he turned it over to Jill to run, but now Kamala is vouching for Biden’s mental fitness. Only a few months ago Dems & liberal media claimed Biden was so impaired that he needed to step aside and let Kamala become the candidate. Trump does lie a lot, but he’s got nothing on Dems and liberal media with their non-stop gaslighting.

These people are recklessly endangering all of our lives with this charade – all for power and control. We have a seriously cognitive-impaired POTUS and CINC.

Finally, because she never goes away, Hillary did an interview and she’s angry that if they can’t force X to censor speech, they will lose total control of social media:

It’s amazing that so many Americans are now talking about how free speech is under attack and alarm about these Dem efforts at censorship, like it’s something that’s new and alarming that Dems are trying to control information in America. For years I’ve felt like a lone voice in the wilderness, as I tried to explain the 1990s Clinton spin information war, which expanded to the Dem spin information war. This isn’t some sudden new plan – they have been working on this since the 1990s. Most of the media in America, Hollywood, social media (except for X), and Silicon Valley tech giants are all big players in the Dem spin war This cabal of elites is the most corrupt, political machine in American history and they’re determined to control information and to not let Trump get in the way of their “total control.”

I don’t care for Trump and have loads of very anti-Trump posts on my blog, Almost every time Trump speaks he blurts out something that offends me or hits me wrong, but at the same time I sympathize with him. He’s also been right about many issues and his administration implemented many policies I support.

Trump is the #1 target of the Dem political machine, which will do anything to, not just defeat him in this election, they are trying to destroy him financially and use lawfare to send him to prison. I don’t know if the two assassination attempts are connected, random crazies, a foreign plot, or some nefarious plot by domestic political enemies. All I can say is I do know how far the Clinton machine went to silence a nobody homemaker (me), when I got in the way of their spin effort on a popular online political message board, during the Clinton impeachment. Trump poses a much, much larger threat to their power. I’ll be amazed if he survives to election day, but if he wins it will only get crazier.

I do not believe Dems will peacefully transfer power.

The wheels are coming off the American bus.

I hate to sound alarmist, but we are not living in normal times. Last week, with most of the southeast US reeling from severe hurricane damage, a thug union boss announced a strike of port workers along the entire east coast and all the way to Texas. The secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo, was asked about this potential strike the day before and she said she hasn’t been very focused on that. She had no clue about the impact a major port strike would have on hurricane disaster recovery? The Biden crew don’t have a clue how to think ahead, piece information together to identify potential threats, and certainly no ability to prepare ahead of time.

There was also a large Verizon service outage and then a Bank of America outage, while over a million people in the southeast were still without power.

It wasn’t Biden or Kamala who put pressure on the thug union boss, who said he would shut down the economy to get what he wanted. It was governor Ron DeSantis, in FL, who stood up to that thug:

Hours later the union delayed their strike until January and Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, tried to take credit for negotiating this settlement, but it was DeSantis who really called that thug’s bluff.

There’s another hurricane approaching FL this week.

Things seem very uncertain these days, so we should all put some time into becoming better prepared – this isn’t something to procrastinate about. Just do the best you can and if you need inspiration, just look at the people in TN and NC, who just loaded up whatever supplies they could muster to help their fellow citizens in trouble. That organic emergency response is very heartening.

The spirit of America is still alive across our great land, even if it’s dead in Washington.

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Filed under 2024 Election, Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Information War, Politics

July 17, 2024 · 11:06 am

It’s time to mainstream emergency preparedness

Over the weekend former president, Donald Trump, was shot at a rally in Butler, PA. A rally attendee died trying to protect his family from bullets flying. The Secret Service failed in a shocking way to protect a former US president and all the security efforts failed to keep rally attendees safe.

Conspiracy theories on the left and right immediately took on a life of their own, but I think this City Prepping video hones in on the more important issue, beyond the politics – we came close to an event that could have triggered major civil unrest. We all need to make sure our homes are stocked with an adequate emergency food and water supply. Situations can change in an instant, as we saw over the weekend. Now would be a good time to calmly talk to family and loved ones about this important topic.

A week ago on X, I shared City Prepping’s three week emergency food supply guide:

There’s no need to panic or go into debt on a massive shopping spree, just start seriously assessing how much food, water and basic supplies you have on hand, in case there is some sort of serious disruption in this chaotic time we’re living in. Leading up to this election in November isn’t only about domestic chaos. America’s adversaries would find a time of heightened American divides as a vulnerability to exploit. How many times do officials have to warn you about increasing attempted attacks on our most critical infrastructure, particularly our power grid, before you think you should prepare, as best you can? I sincerely urge you to start working to beef up your emergency food and water supply.

Many people do not pay attention to the news at all, while many others pay too much attention to every detail of the news and spend way too much online scrolling and clicking. getting immersed in all the political drama. I’m trying to take some breaks from online political drama. It’s important to keep in mind we’re always being manipulated by social media algorithms to keep funneling info to us that keeps us viewing and participating in this drama. I’m trying to devote more time to my own home and personal preparedness.

We can’t change anything that’s happening in the news, but we do have the power to make sure our families can carry on basic functioning, no matter what crisis befalls us.

Here are two book recommendations, one non-fiction, the other fiction to get you thinking about the seriousness of an extended power outage or grid down situation. This isn’t a situation like the power’s out for several hours or a few days and then everything gets back to normal. I didn’t understand that until I read these two books. First, Ted Koppel, a fixture on TX news for decades, wrote Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath in 2015. This book opened my eyes to how devastating this situation would be. The second book is a 2009 fictional novel, One Second After, by William R. Forstchen.

Being prepared for emergencies used to be part of our American mainstream culture, not treated as something weirdos and apocalyptic wackos engaged in. It’s time to bring emergency preparedness into the mainstream again, where it’s considered a prudent and practical part of our lives.

Note: 7/17/2024 – 4:45 pm – I just came across this video and think this is very timely information:

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Filed under 2024 Election, Emergency Preparedness, General Interest

June 30, 2024 · 3:05 pm

The 25th Amendment should be under consideration

After thinking about the situation with our presidential race, almost all the debates center on polling and the November election, but I’m more concerned about today and the window between now and January, when the next president gets sworn into office. Presently, we have a president, who obviously has impaired cognitive capacity, so first Americans deserve to know where medically he is assessed with his dementia. There are stages to dementia and professionals can assess a patient’s abilities through various testing – brain scan and various diagnostic testing. Has he had brain scans and other cognitive tests? If not, then why haven’t his loved ones had that done? My late husband had brain scans and other diagnostic assessments with performing various tasks.

The issue isn’t about polls and who wins in November, it’s that we need a functioning president now and every day. The true state of President Biden’s weak condition was exposed for all the world to see during that 90 minutes. Trump promised to take tougher actions against our adversaries during that debate.

Our adversaries won’t care one iota about all the spin war games and polling garbage. Stepping into our adversaries shoes, you should be asking yourself if you would see the window of opportunity to take more hostile actions against the US and our interests from now until the next POTUS is sworn into office in January or wait until possibly Trump is elected?

Watching Team Biden and Dem/liberal media spin games since that debate, our adversaries know that this crowd is only concerned with polls and their spin word battles. Trump’s team and his supporters are focused on winning in November too.

All of our elected officials in Congress and the White House swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Safeguarding American citizens and our troops all over the globe should take precedence over the partisan politics. There should be some adults in the room in Washington who understand the national security risk with a mentally incapacitated president and a volatile election year.

My position is that the 25th Amendment should be under consideration, because we have troops around the world in harm’s way now and every day. And it’s reckless to have someone with dementia entrusted with the nuclear football.

Having said that, I believe it would be prudent for every American to work on becoming better prepared for emergencies. I’m not suggesting panic-buying, but assessing basic supplies – food, water, medical supplies, personal security needs, etc. Don’t rely on this crowd in Washington or “the experts” to have a plan to keep you safe, that’s for sure

After watching that debate, do you sleep better knowing President Biden is supposed to take those 3 am calls?

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Filed under 2024 Election, Emergency Preparedness, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics

April 12, 2024 · 8:03 pm

We can all try to pay it forward

It’s been a couple weeks since I wrote a blog post and mostly I’ve been feeling like why add to the online glut of online opinion pieces, when I could be outside working in my garden or working on other things. I’ve also stepped away from following so much news and social media content.

What’s particularly unhelpful in my life is social media content that’s hyping lists of things to buy now, before something dire happens and it’s not available. There’s quite a bit of social media homesteading/prepper content where that constant drama and fearmongering has become their daily bread and butter. Those content creators rail about criticisms that they’re fearmongering and stand firm about their righteousness, as their apocalyptic clickbait titles suck in viewers… and revenue for them. Fear and drama sell.

The news media has followed that formula in their coverage for decades too and it’s true, that “if it bleeds, it leads.” On Monday there was a total solar eclipse over a swath of the United States. I live in an area that had a partial eclipse, but two of my children and the grandkids live in areas where there was a total eclipse. I normally follow big astronomical happenings and find them fascinating, but between the right-wing doomsday type crazy that erupted weeks before this solar eclipse and left-wing crazy with fearmongering about closing schools to protect children from looking at the eclipse with bare eyes and then the all-around fearmongering about threats of large crowds/terrorism, well, I didn’t feel anything but annoyed. I turned on FOX News that day too and their coverage was insultingly phony- trying to generate enthusiasm and ending up acting like this was some earth-shattering event that would change the world. It was over-the-top on faked excitement.

The thing is pop culture and most of America have reacted accordingly to these media-generated events and now since the advent of social media, millions of Americans react and follow their favorite social media content creators in the same way. Heck, I’m susceptible too, especially when it comes to content creators promoting kitchen gadgets, gardening stuff and I limit my consumption of needlework & crafting videos, because I will be tempted to purchase more supplies – that I definitely don’t need.

Where I draw the line though is people talking like they are God’s messenger promoting their fearmongering. It’s not helping people to constantly hype the sky-is-falling to scare people into action and there’s a lot of that on social media. I personally don’t believe God wants us to live in fear and even in a crisis, I prefer to surround myself with calm, cheerful and upbeat people rather than the sky-is-falling type people. Most people function better with positive leadership.

The other tried and true manipulation is to talk about “people like us” vs. “them,” to con viewers into believing they are the good people. It’s not being good to work at dividing people. I know lots of good people who hold totally different views than mine – they have different political and religious beliefs, but that doesn’t make them part of some “them” group, because they’re Americans and entitled to believe whatever the heck they choose to believe. If a major SHTF event happens, we likely will be around the people who happen to be where we are when the event happens. If you’re surrounded by your hand-picked group, well, wonderful, but most people will be dealing with the people who are around them when the event happens. We likely will have to deal with all sorts of people to survive.

There are definitely many big things happening – wars spreading, climate/weather events, economic turmoil, political and social turmoil too, but I don’t see how creating constant drama about “the collapse is happening” or “beware of April 8th” or any of the other online conspiracy drama helps anyone become better prepared for adversity. It’s more constructive to figure out ways to manage cheerfully, even through adversity, than it is to try to borrow trouble every day. By nature I’ve always had a preparedness mindset and I try to avoid problems, by planning ahead for “what ifs.” Often I fail or something I hadn’t thought about happens. There have been plenty of times when I’ve had to ask other people for help.

True story: My son recently visited a friend. My son told me that one day his friend was at work and the power went out in his friend’s apartment, so he texted him and asked where he keeps his emergency lighting supplies. His friend didn’t have any emergency lighting supplies. I ordered a box of 4 more LED battery-powered lanterns on amazon and I told my son to take two of those for his friend when he visits again. That’s a very small thing to help someone.

Many people have done small things that helped me out a great deal and I’ve been very grateful for that. We can all pay it forward, as we can. Robert Heinlein’s 1951 novel, Between Planets, popularized that phrase, “pay it forward,” but the concept is probably as old as there have been groups of people. Trying to help people, where we can and with a cheerful heart seems a better approach than this constant drama that has been spreading, especially within the online homestead/prepping communities

It’s best to take people as you find them and then work to find some common ground. America used to have a culture of preparedness. Certainly a good bit of that was Cold War fearmongering, but there was also the Boy Scout/Girl Scout type preparedness, where kids were taught that being prepared was part of being a good citizen. The scouting preparedness was about acquiring skills. America could definitely benefit from a people who learn more skills and practice good citizenship, but we can leave the hiding under our desks in fear behind.

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February 24, 2024 · 1:04 pm

A bit about the cell phone outage on Thursday

Wild flowers on my back fence.

On Thursday there was a large cell phone outage across the US. Here’s a FOX News article: Cellphone outage hits AT&T customers nationwide; Verizon and T-Mobile users also affected. So far there’s been a lot of speculation about what caused this outage and it’s under investigation, but thus far no definitive answer.

Last night I watched a prepper video, by Mike Glover, discussing this outage and he discussed things he’s thinking about now and ways to be better prepared. He included statistics on how few Americans still have landline phones and mentioned that’s something he’s considering. Always being reluctant to get rid of things I’m used to, I still have my landline phone. I do have a cell phone too. He mentioned various radios and other things to consider and I found this video informative, even though I’m completely clueless on technology stuff. I skipped by some videos about “The Collapse Is Upon Us” “type headlines. This man discussed the situation calmly.

I had a medical appointment Thursday morning in a city an hour away and I had never been to this location before. I had asked the receptionist where this office was located when I scheduled the appointment and she had given me general directions and told me to watch for the CVS store on the left-hand side of the street and their office was directly across from that on the right-hand side. Having landmarks to watch for has always been very helpful information for me with directions. When I saw the news about the cell phone outage on my PC, I googled a map with directions from my home to the location of my appointment and printed it out. I figured that if the GPS in my car stopped working, having this printed out map would be useful. My GPS worked, but it felt good to have a back-up map.

Yesterday, I was thinking more about this outage and GPS. I googled road maps for my state and ordered two for free print versions from my state’s Department of Transportation. They had downloadable maps available too. I do have a Rand McNally Road Atlas book of the USA, but I thought a new GA road map would be good to have.

The more I’ve tried to learn about emergency preparedness, the more I’ve realized there is to learn and the information overload can feel overwhelming, especially if you consume online preparedness content, where lists upon lists of items you need and more and more critical skills get discussed. I’ve realized that I’m only one person and that I can’t become an expert on everything, nor can I afford to buy everything mentioned in prepper lists or videos. I’ve been narrowing my focus to one or two areas at a time. By steadily taking steps toward learning more and working on my own preparedness, I can see definite progress, especially with my attitude when something out of the ordinary happens. Some people are naturally calm, cool and collected, but even though I usually can maintain an outward appearance of calm, inside my head my default reaction is momentary panic and feeling unsure of what to do.

No matter what point you’re at in life, your life can take unplanned turns and you can find yourself facing challenges you didn’t expect. I’ve been learning to do some of the things my late husband handled, but I’m also learning to ask for advice and help sometimes.

This cell phone outage didn’t affect my cell service and I haven’t spent time pondering what caused it. In the video I watched, there were arguments made for it being due to a solar flare, an argument for malignant actions and perhaps even some sort of equipment failure, but truly I’m totally clueless on technology and I could listen to persuasive arguments for all three of those options and think, yes, that’s it. I don’t understand enough about cell phone technology or solar flares to make an informed decision on what actually happened, but printing out the Google map directions to my medical appointment location seemed like a good thing to have in my car, in case my GPS stopped working and I thought having a new state road map might be a good thing too. I’m not going to rush out and buy a ham radio set-up or other expensive communications equipment, that I know nothing about or even how to use.

Violas sprouted in a crack in the concrete slabs of my patio.

I’m working on my container garden set-up and trying to make improvements with that and I’m spending some money on some hobbies too. I learn so much on YouTube and I’ve been watching an older man who does videos on drawing and an older lady who does videos on painting, so I’m working on that. Plus I’ve always wanted to learn some calligraphy, so I’m reading up, buying a few supplies and I’ve begun practicing on improving my handwriting too.

I stuck in a few flower photos, because flowers make every day brighter.

A viola grew on the side of a grow bag on my patio.

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February 6, 2024 · 5:58 pm

I’m happy to be a weirdo

Sunday night thunderstorms rolled through my area. As the wind picked up and the thunder became much louder, I decided to get out two of my LED lanterns, even though my cell phone has a flashlight and I keep flashlights in several rooms in my house, so they’re easily accessible. This habit of checking that I have emergency lighting is something I’ve done throughout my entire adult life and probably started because I hate being caught in the dark and having to fumble around.

Sure, enough about a half-hour later the power went out. The next issue was the claps of thunder had my two dogs in panic mode, so I went out in the sun room and brought the cheap weather radio into the living room and tuned in to a local country music radio station. The music helped calm down the dogs. I keep this weather radio charged now, although for about a year after I bought it, it just sat in the box. I had taken it out the box, after I bought it, looked at it, and stuck it back in the box. It was after listening to some online prepper lecturing about how prepping supplies aren’t going to do you any good, if you don’t know how to use them, that prodded me to get this weather radio out of the box. It can be charged with a USB cable, has a little solar panel and a hand-crank. So, since then I keep it charged.

My cell phone was working and my power company has an outage map, that provides updates on outages and how many people are without power. My outage was a very small area and the power company said it was due to an event, so I figured someone hit a pole or the wind caused damage. It took around 4 hours for power to be restored.

This outage was a minor inconvenience. Most of us have been through much longer power outages, plus thanks to modern technology, I had immediate access to the power company, via my cell phone, for information about the outage. In the old days, before the internet, we had no idea how large the outage area was, what caused it, and we definitely didn’t have any idea how long the power was going to be out. We could just tell all the neighbors were without power too.

Most people would just memory hole a minor power outage like this and I used to do that too. Now, I review what I did and what I might do better, as far as being prepared.

Until recent years, I didn’t even understand the vulnerabilities of our power grid in America or the magnitude of the threat of attacks on our critical infrastructure. Sure, I had read about the threat of asymmetrical attacks for decades, but didn’t consider them likely. 

Then 9/11 happened and the US government jumped into fighting terrorism mode. After trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives lost in that fight, the reality is America lost – that’s the truth. Lots of military contractors and “experts” made lots of money, but our military spent 20 years eroding our military readiness. We withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban is back in charge there and Hamas, another terrorist regime, last October, waged a catastrophic attack on Israel. Many Israelis likely had faith in their government to ward off a catastrophic attack too. Sure, seems like we’re back to where we started with 9/11 when it comes to terrorist attacks and and we haven’t learned much of anything. 

The same scenario played out with the 2020 “pandemic,” another crisis, I never gave much thought to, let alone thought about being prepared for. There again, years ago I had read a very interesting book, The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry, which chronicled the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1920, which killed more than 50 million people worldwide. I didn’t rush to prepare for a pandemic after reading this book, but according to Wikipedia, President George W. Bush read this book in 2005: “In the summer of 2005, then-President George W. Bush read the book while on vacation at his ranch in Crawford.[26] His study would later set forth plans for the federal government to prepare for future pandemics in a November 2005 speech.[27]“ So, 15 years later, I think our government’s 2020 pandemic response failed miserably.

I have little faith in the government to respond adequately to a major crisis here in America, but even worse, most Americans aren’t prepared for even more common weather emergencies, in their own area and there’s been a concerted liberal media effort for decades to denigrate “preppers” as far-right doomsday kooks. Most Americans, at the same time, express concerns about the uncertain state of the world now, with wars spreading, domestic divides growing, border chaos, political chaos in Washington, and all sorts of fall-out from the crazy 2020 BLM “defund the police” efforts, that have resulted in a rise in crime and police retention issues.

Despite working on my preparedness in a much more serious way since 2020, I am still not adequately prepared for a long-term emergency. I am much better prepared than I used to be and continue to work on it.

A couple years ago I decided to buy a Mr. Heater Buddy when I bought one for my daughter in IN. I’m in GA and don’t really worry about freezing, plus I have a fireplace in my house, but I thought having this little heater was a good idea. I went to Lowe’s to buy more 1 lb. propane tanks and the friendly, young man who assisted me in locating them was very helpful, but what he told me stuck with me. I told him I’d become a bit of a prepper in recent years and he told me about his neighbor being an old guy, who is a sort of weird prepper, but he said that guy knows a lot. He told me if he needs help in an emergency he’ll go to his neighbor. That is the mind-set of a lot of people – they mock preppers and emergency preparedness. Rather than think about unpleasant things like emergencies, their plan is to just go to the “weirdo” preppers they know, who are stocked up. I told him that he should want to learn to be able to take care of himself, no matter what happens.

Books often spur government action. The 2009 William Forstchen fictional novel, One Second After, imagines the US grid being taken down by a hostile foreign attack. The story is set in a small town and the characters are very relatable. So, I’m a technology-challenged person and I didn’t even understand the magnitude of the impact if our grid went down and really, who wants to think about worst-case scenarios? This fictional novel got the attention of some Washington national security types and the author has made presentations about the threat of EMPs to Congress and other experts. I had heard the terms EMP and grid-down, but didn’t really understand the ramifications, because I had faith in my electric company to fix things and get the power up and running, even after hurricanes and I trusted the government had some contingency plan for worst case scenarios, so there was no need to worry about any of this. 

So, what’s the big deal about grid-down and why even think about it?

About a year ago, I read Ted Koppel’s book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, which was published in 2015.  I watched Koppel’s Nightline show for years and he’s definitely not some far-right kook. On pages 14-15 of Lights Out, Koppel wrote:

“Ours has become a largely reactive culture. We are disinclined to anticipate disaster, let alone prepare for it. We wait for bad things to happen and then we assign blame. Despite mounting evidence of cyber crime and cyber sabotage, there appears to be widespread confidence that each can be contained before it inflicts unacceptable damage. The notion that some entity has the ability or the motive to launch a sophisticated cyber attack against our nation’s infrastructure, and in particular against our electric power grids, exists, if at all, on the outer fringes of public consciousness.”

So, our grid is actually three grids, different areas of the country, is my understanding. Then there was this term, black start, which is starting the grid back up from nothing. Here’s a 2022 Practical Engineering article, How Long Would Society Last During a Total Grid Collapse?, which explains the threat of grid-down in easy to understand terms and the difficulties. Here’s a key point about preparedness:

“At both an institutional and personal level, finding a balance between the chance of disaster striking and the resources required to be prepared is a difficult challenge, and not everyone agrees on where to draw the line. Of course, the other kind of preparedness is our ability to restore service to a collapsed power grid and get everyone back online as quickly as possible. That’s called a black start, and it sounds simple enough, but there are some enormous engineering challenges associated with bringing a grid up from nothing.”

Here’s a 2022 follow-on Practical Engineering article on a black start, What Is A Black Start Of The Power Grid?.

A month ago there was this warning: “FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday he has never seen a time during his decades-long career when so many threats against the US were all as elevated as they are now, warning senators he sees “blinking lights everywhere.”

Last week, FBI director, Chris Wray testified to Congress about the threat Chinese hackers pose to our critical infrastructure. Here’s the warning from an NBC report, FBI director warns Chinese hackers aim to ‘wreak havoc’ on U.S. critical infrastructure :

““China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities, if or when China decides the time has come to strike,” said excerpts of Wray’s prepared testimony released by the FBI.”

“Wray also argued that “there has been far too little public focus” on Chinese hackers’ targeting critical infrastructure in the U.S., such as water treatment plants, electrical grids, oil and natural gas pipelines and transportation systems, according to the prepared remarks.”

““And the risk that poses to every American requires our attention — now,” his prepared testimony said.”

I’m not suggesting we should all panic, but I do believe every American should think about having adequate basic supplies to manage a few weeks (or longer) in a power outage. Most people don’t want to imagine worst-case situations and that’s understandable, but when you’re warned that a hostile country is actively working now, to be able to wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure and the world situation has become very unstable, with wars starting and other chaos spreading, then perhaps we should all heed these warnings 

Most people can’t afford to buy a private island for a getaway location in a crisis or some high-tech bunker, like some billionaires, but most people can afford to gradually start storing some extra water, buying some extra food, considering home security measures, learning basic first-aid, etc. I had a neighbor years ago, who told me she did not have a flashlight in her home, when she was talking to me the day before a hurricane was ready to make landfall, where our area was in the “cone of uncertainty.” The conversation began with me asking her if she was prepared for the storm and she told me she doesn’t mess with that. I then asked her if she at least had a flashlight. She didn’t and she didn’t seem concerned. I felt like I was talking to an alien. I insisted on giving her an LED lantern and extra batteries. She looked at me like I was a weirdo. Our power was out over 24 hours. Was she an alien or am I a weirdo?

These escalating warnings (Wray’s blinking lights everywhere) are like being in that hurricane “cone of uncertainty,” even if your area doesn’t take a direct hit, it can still cause a lot of devastation. There are usually severe thunderstorms, tornados, and plenty of wind damage and flooding to go along with them as they move inland. I have no idea how well prepared our power companies or government are for attacks on critical infrastructure – but I do know the likelihood of this sort of attack is way more likely than it was even just a few years ago. Wray said FBI cyber staff is outnumbered at least 50 to 1 by the Chinese hackers. So, let’s think about those Iranian proxies continuously firing missiles and launching drone attacks against the US military since last fall – we didn’t suffer any fatalities until a week ago. 

That’s enough doom and gloom for today, but I am going to keep talking about this. I understand that most people don’t want to hear any of this, but I believe it’s very important. 

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January 28, 2024 · 4:17 pm

Are your eyes wide open one year after the Chinese spy balloon incident?

This is going to be a one year after blog post. From January 28 – February 4, 2023 an unmanned Chinese spy balloon drifted across America’s most sensitive military sites. As that balloon was drifting off the east coast, President Biden finally ordered the balloon to be shot down. It took a week for the Biden administration to respond… There have been numerous government assessments, but mostly it’s been to downplay this incident and do face-saving for the Biden administration. If you were assessing response times of a leader of a country to react to a threat and it took a week to shoot down an unmanned spy balloon, from a hostile country, flying over that country’s most sensitive military sites, you might conclude you were dealing with clueless idiots in charge of that country.

For several years, I’ve thought about pivoting my blog away from the partisan political battles that have consumed our nation over the past few decades, but I invariably end up back to the politics. So, while I may write about other things on my mind, the partisan battles raging right now will largely determine the path America heads down and what our future will be like. So, there’s going to be more politics here.

What happens with the election in November definitely matters, but I’m preparing to expect the unexpected this year, because I believe there could be even more defining events than the American presidential election. 

People like to make binary choices- it’s either Biden or Trump or I’ve seen some people trying to say it’s the globalist elites trying to transform the world who are the biggest threat and not the nation-state alliance (China, Russia, Iran) that’s aligned against the West. This form of binary-thinking gets used in right-wing punditry often, with trying to sway Americans against supporting Ukraine and presenting Putin as not a threat.  What if both the globalist transformers and the China-Russia led alliance pose serious threats to America? What if neither Biden nor Trump are the life-preserver to save America, that we think they are? What if the election in November isn’t the most pivotal event this year? Lots of questions to ponder. This isn’t going to be a warm and fuzzy blog post.

There’s a whole lot more than the domestic political battles going on, but definitely who is elected president in America impacts all of those and is tied to all of them. I was watching a news report recently, I can’t remember who the reporter was, but she mentioned being at the WEF meetings in Davos and she said the two things everyone was talking about were stopping Trump and disinformation and misinformation. What’s going on with the liberal media is trying to stop Trump and hype right-wing disinformation and misinformation. What’s going on in right-wing media is largely promoting Trump and downplaying disinformation and misinformation or accusing the liberal media of spreading disinformation and misinformation. 

The global elite/WEF crowd definitely wants to stop Trump, because Trump would likely get in the way of the green transformation and the larger UN 2030 Agenda, but what do Russia and China really want? They might just add fuel to the partisan dumpster fire or they might act before the 2024 election in ways we are not prepared for. 

Russia had been working to destabilize Ukraine for years and it wasn’t until the hapless Obama administration mishandled things, that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea and the Donbas region. The Obama administration did nothing and let Russia hold that territory. It was no surprise that once the Obama crowd was back in the White House in 2021, that we had the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, with the same Obama crowd bungling that and then in 2022 Russia was emboldened to invade Ukraine. 

Watching the Biden administration foot-drag military aid to Ukraine for almost two years, despite big announcements of big dollar aid packages, it’s obvious the Biden administration isn’t really committed to helping Ukraine defeat Russia, it’s more kicking the can down the road, trying to look for a way to spin this as winning. Many Americans are tired of sending aid to Ukraine and Russia, with the aid of some right-wing media, has squashed a great deal of American support for Ukraine and simultaneously conned Americans into believing Putin is a victim and Ukraine is at fault for Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Cold War mindset in me, just gets disgusted to hear Americans champion Putin and dismiss the Russian threat of toppling governments in Eastern Europe, but at the same time Biden and the European leaders, who are mostly high on Great Reset fumes, are more committed to the green transformation than the war in Ukraine. There seems to be more passion for imposing hate speech laws, attacking farmers, and monitoring people’s carbon footprints than in Ukraine’s fate or what Russia does. These same European leaders, just like the Biden administration, believe they can eventually cut deals with Russia.

Then we move on to October 7, 2023. Hamas launched an asymmetrical invasion of Israel and massacred over a thousand civilians and took over a thousand hostages. That should have been a wake-up call for America. Israel was undergoing a lot of internal domestic divides. Hamas did not act alone and had training, aid and direction from Iran.

At this point, I don’t even know if Biden will be the Democratic nominee. I do expect Trump to be the GOP nominee, but I keep watching the timeline of Russia, China and Iran aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine, even while the goobers in the Biden White House believed they were achieving diplomatic success at preventing an invasion 

The Western effort to aid Ukraine and launch their Great Reset at the same time has led to degradation of readiness in NATO and the US, economic hardships and fueled populist uprisings in Europe and the US. The October 7th Hamas attack, orchestrated by Iran, has created more drains on Western aid and increased political instability. The Democratic Party sounds bipolar since October 7th – trying to support Israel and appease Palestinian extremists at the same time. Much of Europe is in the same boat.

The goobers in the Biden White House restored aid to Gaza in 2021 and in 2021 Hamas also began intensive planning for the October 7, 2023 attack. Right before the October 7th attack, the Biden national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, was taking a victory lap for the administration ditching Trump’s Middle East policies and deescalating tensions in Gaza and restoring direct diplomacy. Sullivan penned a piece for Foreign Affairs magazine doing a victory lap and the print edition had already gone to print when Hamas invaded Israel. Foreign Affairs magazine allowed Sullivan to stealth edit the online edition to rewrite his piece (I wrote about that here). Rewriting his piece doesn’t rewrite the outcome on the ground from the disastrous Biden foreign policy failures – the Biden administration restoring US aid to Gaza in 2021 actually aided and abetted Hamas terrorists in carrying out an attack on Israel.

China’s already ramped up aggression in the Pacific and there’s definitely hostile foreign involvement in our border invasion that started in 2021. China has also expanded their Belt and Road Initiative, expanding economic influence and deals in Central and South America. 

Kind of disturbing timelines since 2021, so perhaps we should be concerned about who is next in line for being a China/Russia/Iran target? There certainly seems to be a pattern there with China, Russia, Iran destabilization efforts targeting countries. 

Timeline:

August 2021 – Biden administration: Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. Also in 2021, Biden ditched the Trump Mid-East policies, he changed US policy in Ukraine, restored aid to Gaza, removed Yemen’s Houthis from the terrorist watchlist, unfroze billions of dollars to Iran, rescinded the Trump border policies, which opened the border.

February 2022 – Russian Invasion of Ukraine

October 2023 – Hamas invasion of Israel

Today – Three US troops killed in drone strike. Border crisis escalating. Internal divides growing.

In the 2016 election, when Trump made securing the border a key campaign issue, the number that kept being thrown about was 11 million illegal immigrants in America. In 2021 Biden reversed Trump’s border policies and border security officials keep saying they’ve never seen numbers like this. Customs and border enforcement reported roughly 2.5 million encounters at the border in 2023 alone.  Now we have former top FBI officials noting that this shift in demographics, to mostly fighting aged males, crossing the border began in 2021, and that it is a serious potential threat. So, just like the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, where the Biden goobers trusted the Taliban, they also believed their grand diplomacy was working in Ukraine and their restoring funding to Gaza, which Hamas controls was a big success – until it wasn’t, we’re now supposed to believe they’ve got the border situation well in hand.

Everything the Biden administration has done with border policy has made America more vulnerable to hostile countries being able to exploit our open border. Republicans in the House have just unveiled impeachment articles of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who has been an unmitigated disaster at safeguarding America. The Pentagon has readiness and recruitment problems, along with leadership problems. Recently, the White House did not even know the Secretary of Defense was hospitalized for almost a week. That’s a serious chain of command gap. Then again the UK’s got its own craziness going on with reports the undermanned Royal Navy is redeploying officers to diversity and inclusion teams.

I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed this year and hope I’m reading the big picture warning signs wrong.  At the same time I’m rethinking and reassessing all of my emergency preparedness efforts. For many years there’s been a concerted media effort to caricature people who get involved in emergency preparedness as far-right kooks or Doomsday fanatics. I grew up during the Cold War and still believe we should all treat emergency preparedness like a civic duty. We should all want to be an asset and not a liability in our family and community, if there’s an emergency situation. If you’re not even prepared with basics, like food and water, how on earth are you going to be an asset to anyone? In a real crisis, you’d be in a dire situation and panic mode from the first minute.

Events can change quickly and that’s why I want to try to be as prepared as I can to weather the storms ahead, as best I can. The question everyone should ask is, “How long can I and my family survive if the power and utilities stop working or there’s a civil disturbance?” I’ll be following the news, but I’m also working more on my personal preparedness and still trying to maintain a positive attitude. Instead of approaching alarming information with fear and anxiety, I look at information as expanding opportunities. Whatever we learn now and being able to troubleshoot problems that might arise, allows us to calmly consider practical ways to be prepared and is one less thing that can throw us for a loop in an actual emergency situation, that involves that type of challenge. The more information, training and skills (and supplies) you acquire, the better able you should be to adapt and manage in an actual emergency. 

I was reading a 2018 government report, Surviving a Catastrophic Power Failure: how To Strengthen The Nation’s Capabilities and it was both informative and alarming at the same time. There was a lack of clarity of who is in charge of what and chains of command and communication between federal, state, local and corporations, because power and utilities in America are privately owned. The same goes for communication. That report said FEMA was working to promote personal preparedness:

People “no longer keep enough essentials within their homes, reducing their ability to sustain themselves during an extended, prolonged outage. The nation needs to improve individual preparedness.

o Most preparedness campaigns call for citizens to be prepared for 72 hours in an emergency, but the new emerging standard is 14 days.

o For example, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii have a standard recommending that individuals have enough food and water to support themselves for 14 days. These efforts could serve as a model for federal and state preparedness resources, campaigns, and training.

o The idea of individual preparedness is not a new concept. Civil defense, an older term used to elevate a level of individual preparedness and activate communities, used to be more widely accepted.

o FEMA offers a number of tools, resources, and guidance on emergency preparedness, including recent efforts focused on better financial preparedness for disasters, and work

(page 14) https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/NIAC%2520Catastrophic%2520Power%2520Outage%2520Study_FINAL.pdf

That’s advice from FEMA – take it or leave it. I decided in 2020 that I wanted to expand, to try to be prepared with basic supplies for 6 months to a year, but having even 14 days, which is the FEMA recommendation, is better than not having enough for a few days. Don’t wait to see if anyone around you is preparing – just go ahead and get busy. 

February 1, 2024: I decided to add this note since this Dec. 28, 2023 NBC report, U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate, is another iteration of US accounts of that Chinese spy balloon incident last January:

“WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. this year used an American internet service provider to communicate, according to two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the assessment.”

“The balloon connected to a U.S.-based company, according to the assessment, to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation. Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.”

The phrase “primarily related to its navigation” is meant to deflect, since that leaves shrouded what the information that wasn’t about “its navigation” was. 

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December 30, 2023 · 10:37 am

Feeling out of touch with Hollywood

This past week I watched the Barbie movie on Max. Rather than get on my soapbox about the feminist ideology oozing out of perfectly pink Barbie, what’s more important are the millions of people (largely women and girls) who got excited about the hype with this movie. A bit of a craze started as girls and grown women began dressing in pink and heading to movie theaters this past summer to watch Barbie. I didn’t wear pink to watch the movie this past week, but I felt like I might be reaching for a bottle of pink Pepto Bismal, as I tried not to gag on so much stomach-churning feminist claptrap in that script. 

The movie presents the history of Barbie with little girls literally smashing their baby dolls heads in, as they were liberated from playing only the role of mothers. Along came Barbie to give them the world… A “girl power” movie wouldn’t be replete without an evil patriarchy challenge, which was led by Ken. The big winner though was Mattel: “Mattel on Wednesday said Barbie sales jumped 16% in the third quarter, riding the wave of the blockbuster movie. The “Barbie” film, released in July, is largely responsible for the bump, Mattel said. It is the highest-grossing film this year, clearing more than $1.4 billion worldwide.”

It’s always interesting to me how so many Americans will rush to don t-shirts, hats, etc. all to snap photos and videos to post on social media to become part of a craze. The left doesn’t have a monopoly on this, because there are loads of people on the right who rushed to wear red MAGA hats too and for many of them posting photos on social media was part of that craze too. Millions of people, I think, long to be part of something larger than themselves and many seek that sense of belonging on social media.

To compound my misery, I watched the Netflix apocalyptic movie, Leave the World Behind this past week too. I felt very out of touch with Hollywood. This movie was filled with all sorts of racial and political overtones, plus social commentary and no wonder since the Obamas were executive producers.  

I’m going to describe the characters by race, since the political racial overtones in this movie smack you in the face. The plot is about a white couple with two teenage children, who rent a gorgeous vacation home away from the city. Their electronic devices stop working and all sorts of strange events begin to happen. Without spoiling the entire plot, the black home-owner and his daughter return to their home, due to concerns about a reported blackout in the city.

So, the black home-owner is the guy with all the geopolitical/military/technical knowledge, who begins to piece together the big picture of what’s happening. As for the vacationing couple, the white woman is obnoxious, self-absorbed and patronizing, while her husband – the white guy – is the most useless person imaginable. He doesn’t know how to do anything, figure out anything and he awaits other people (usually his wife) to tell him what to do. There’s also a stereotypical “bad” white guy – one of those President Obama labeled bitter clingers years ago when he was president – the clinging to their guns and religion type white guy- he’s labeled a “survivalist” in this movie. Actually, that character was the only person in the movie whose actions and behavior seemed logical to survive a catastrophe, but he was portrayed negatively. And to top it all off – the movie shows that survivalist with an American flag flying in front of his house. 

I kid you not, there’s an actual line by the spineless husband, played by Ethan Hawke: HAWKE: (As Clay Sandford) I have no idea what I am supposed to do right now. I can barely do anything without my cell phone and my GPS. I am a useless man.”

Sometimes characters grow on me in movies, but I went from being indifferent to the characters in the beginning of the movie to actively disliking the main adult characters by the end. Even the teenage children were unappealing, with the white couple’s kids being a young teen girl, who I thought was weird and the teen boy who was just a stereotype of a sex-obsessed teen male. The black home-owner’s daughter was worried about her mother who was supposed to be flying home to the city, but she kept making racial political statements about white people and considering the Obamas were executive producers, fanning the flames of racial grievance wasn’t surprising. The characters, even the kids, seemed more like caricatures than fully developed characters, but all of them, except for the “survivalist” were displaying an alarming amount of normalcy bias:

 ”Normalcy bias is the tendency to underestimate the likelihood or impact of a negative event. Normalcy bias prevents us from understanding the possibility or the seriousness of a crisis or a natural disaster.”

A September Vanity Fair piece, Leave the World Behind: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke Face the End-Times: Barack and Michelle Obama executive produced this unsettling apocalypse thriller. offers this take on the plot:

“If society actually did begin to completely break down, you probably would never know exactly how or why. You’d be aware that something was wrong, but the specifics would get cloudy once phones stopped working, the internet was severed, and media networks turned to dead air. Ominous late-night electronic shrieks from the sky; explosions in the distance; planes and boats plowing into the ground, and animals flocking in eerie patterns would only hint at the chaos. A whisper network of survivors might convey contradictory rumors, but how would you know if any of it was true? That’s the unsettling premise of Leave the World Behind, the new Netflix thriller that compounds its terror through uncertainty.”

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve tried to learn more about emergency preparedness is many of the online prepper content creators who delve into the geopolitics and big picture stuff rush to give blanket advice based on totally unverified information and they parrot alarmist hot takes that stoke fear and encourage rash decisions. This type of content generates a lot of clicks. You’ll see the same predictions of the same life-altering catastrophes, with recommended drastic measures you need to take now, year after year after year. 

While you can overreact, this movie did cast into stark relief a glaring reality – how these characters were struggling to make sense of their world as a life-altering catastrophe is unfolding around them and all the security of normalcy is being ripped out from under them is probably how most of us would react too. So, no matter how much I disliked the way the characters were scripted in this movie, I think most of us would be struggling if we were cut off from technology and information that are part of our everyday life and even people who do invest time, energy and resources into prepping would not be immune from all the emotions and reactions that make us human. We would all be struggling to make sense of the world if things started to fall apart in a massive catastrophe and chaos replaced our normal everyday routines. 

None of us can escape being mere mortals – that’s the big takeaway.

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November 8, 2023 · 12:18 am

The craziness isn’t going away any time soon

This was an image from the weekend pro-Palestinian protests in Washington DC. It felt to me like Western civilization was surrendering:

There was a lot of weirdness going on with the authorities in Washington DC, as statues and the gate of the White House were defaced – no reports of anyone arrested. Defacement of government property is a crime, but like most things in Washington, it seems the laws only apply to some people. At the White House gates, they put up big black screens to cover up the the defacement, while they clean it up:

On a much smaller scale, last night I watched a video on YouTube by a prepper/homestead couple and they were explaining why they’re removing all their videos of their family and will no longer be posting family stuff. They’re Jewish and said they’ve received hateful anti-Semitic comments and are concerned about the safety of their family – here in America. I felt both angry that this is happening in America and alarmed.

Then today I saw news reports of an elderly Jewish man in CA, who was waving an Israeli flag at a protest, where there were both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protestors. He was reportedly hit in the head with a megaphone, by a pro-Palestinian protestor, and knocked to the ground. He suffered blunt force trauma to his head and died of the injuries. Also, this story, UPenn president calls in FBI to investigate ‘vile’ antisemitic emails sent to staffers.

Over the weekend I watched the Netflix mini-series, All the Light We Cannot See, and that story is set in WWII. The scenes of devastation of the small town in France, where most of the story unfolds, as the Allied forces are bombing to liberate France from the Nazis, made me think of the situation in Gaza, where civilians are caught in the midst of all this. I also was thinking of all the Israeli families who had family members massacred or taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7th.

I don’t have any big ideas to deal with any of this world chaos. If you feel that somehow you’re making some important statement by marching in large protests, have at it, but I’ve always believed large crowds are not safe places and I avoid them. With angry crowds or crowds where there are a lot of drunk or drugged up people, well, those crowds are even more volatile. And when you get to crowds where there are likely political zealots, who believe violence is an acceptable way to make political points, as we saw in 2020 and we’re seeing again, well, those crowds are very unsafe places to be and likely have plenty of drunks and drugged up people too.

That Netflix mini-series was good, but not nearly as good as the novel. I had read that novel several years ago and loved it, so I was familiar with the story. I don’t want to be a spoiler, but just as a general statement on people in the French Resistance, is many were ordinary people, who took great risks, just by passing along information, but they tried not to draw attention to themselves. There really is sense in trying to be the “gray man” in dangerous public situations. My rebellious side wants to speak out and argue or debate the other side into the ground, but that is a wasted effort. You aren’t likely to convert anyone to your side and the people who do listen to you or follow your social media content likely already agree with you. That’s the reality. I can admit I was furious when I saw the news of the Ben Franklin statue with a keffiyeh on it and this is the same reaction I had in 2020 when statues and public spaces were defaced and wrecked, but anger won’t change a thing.

Yes, speaking out is important, but when you’re in public where there are crowds of angry, screaming people, no one’s going to listen to you and you could end up seriously injured. I do understand the elderly Jewish man standing out there waving the Israeli flag, just like I understand people who showed up in London waving British flags against a sea of Palestinian flags and I understand Americans showing up to wave the American flag when other flags are being waved and American monuments are being defaced. However, I hope people do consider personal safety and sometimes finding other ways to speak out and work to support the things they believe in besides public screaming matches or confrontations might be a better option.

I think since many Dems, liberals in academia, radical Islamist organizations in America and the liberal media are aligned to amplify the pro-Palestinian messaging in the media and on the streets, just like in 2020 with the BLM protests, that people who disagree might need to change tactics and find other avenues to reach people.

What I wish more Americans understood, is that while Israel was attacked on October 7th and Iran helped mastermind this attack, Israel is the Little Satan. America is the Big Satan. We’re the big target. That doesn’t mean we need to run around in a panic or start building a bunker in the backyard, but we all should start practicing to be more observant in public places. In our homes, well, there are various home security measures, both firearms and non-lethal options, plus a variety of home safety measures to better secure your home. There was this crazy story from Indianapolis over the weekend too: Indiana woman hit with terrorism charges in attack on supposed Jewish school, police say That woman was upset about signs on the school she thought were Jewish, and she drove her car into that school. The school was actually a Black Hebrew Israelite school and that sect is anti-Semitic and listed as a hate group. She admitted to police she was angry and thought she was attacking a Jewish school… Crazy!

With the volatility in the world political situation, the economic issues, the continuing reports of supply chain and shortage problems, and the random crazies running around, working to acquire some self-defense skills (I am lacking there), emergency supplies, like extra water and food, supplies for weather emergencies, and becoming more familiar with emergency preparedness would be a very good thing to do for yourself and your family. Plus, the more you delve into emergency preparedness, the more you’ll find there are more skills to master and things to learn how to do and by doing more things, you’ll begin to feel more empowered to tackle harder tasks.

There’s a lot of free information on preparedness online and while some is of the Doomsday variety, there’s plenty that’s sensible advice. All the information in the world won’t make a difference if you don’t get busy and start taking some steps to actually be prepared. You can’t become prepared just by watching videos or reading books. It takes learning how to do things, practicing, then working to hone those skills. There’s a meme about buying crafting supplies and actually using them are two separate hobbies. And that’s true for most things. Often, things can look very easy to do, but once you try doing it, you realize it takes some skill and skill is developed by practice. Even world class athletes didn’t just wake up one day as Olympic athletes – they put in years of practice and training. That’s been the case with many of my needlework projects – they looked easy, but then turned out to require more skill than I possessed and had to develop.

One of the best things all of us can do for our emotional well-being is to cultivate interests, hobbies, or doing things with family or friends that we find some joy in. There’s nothing wrong with taking some time to relax and enjoy life – even if there’s a lot of craziness going on in the world. The craziness doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Politics