“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL”.

“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL”.

My phone blared the alert warning sound, and I'll tell you, that message got us from the living room to the walk-in closet in 30 seconds or less.

Couldn't find anything on line via my phone, at ten minutes wondered why the air raid sirens weren't going, another ten minutes or more before we found news sites saying oops, and forty minutes before the Dems bothered to use the same alert system to tell us they goofed.

We were home so no idea how it went elsewhere, but standing in the closet waiting for the walls to blow in was interesting enough.

Yet another case of the sheer incompetence of the Democratic Party of Hawaii, which has ruled here for over half a century.

Upside to the non-drill: we will move an emergency radio, water, and some food out of the kitchen and into the closet. This is pretty much the only emergency for which this makes sense, but for this one it does.

Downside: US Pacific Command headquarters is on the next ridge, and we overlook Pearl Harbor, so we may well be floating around the ionosphere before we know there is a real attack. So it goes. Do what we can.

Post-Apocalyptic Erotica

I went to Amazon's Kindle book section and started typing 'post-apocalyptic fiction' into the search field to find something inspirational to read, but among the suggestions for the search was 'post-apocalyptic erotica'. Well, I accidentally clikked on that of course and found that there are 28 pages of 435 post-apocalyptic erotic offerings for your panting, I mean prepping, pleasure. Prepper porn: Who knew?

This could open up a whole new market of potential preppers among the erotica-inclined: "Marsha stroked her shapely AN-M14 TH3 incendiary grenades as she softly moaned 'Oh, yes, Dirk, yes! I love it when you go full-auto!'"

Our Responsibility: Preparing for Low Probability/High Consequences Events

Juliette Kayyem, in The Atlantic magazine :

The “never again” standard is as absurd as it is simplistic. It is as vague as it is damaging. It tried to convince Americans, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that invulnerability was a possibility. This has hindered homeland-security planners for a decade and a half: Knowing that no security apparatus can stop all forms of harm, including “lone wolfs,” progress is better measured in how well people prepare and educate themselves for the inevitable. What if the United States simply accepted, as a nation, that bad things happen and get ready for that possibility?

I agree with Juliette Kayyem about preparedness rather than a hopeless focus on prevention, but what does this really involve at the personal level?

With the exceptions of hurricanes in hurricane zones, major earthquakes in earthquake zones, and the like, most threats are individually highly dispersed and/or low probability/high consequences events.

Just as we reasonably expect our home to never burn down, but have insurance anyway, should we consider these individually improbable events like terrorism against us personally something we should individually insure against? If so, what to do?

I suspect that government in a relatively free society cannot deal easily with highly dispersed threats like terrorism or even random crime: police cannot be everywhere at all times, nor should we want them to be.

Several million Americans have gotten concealed carry licenses, while millions more have gotten their state legislatures to do away with the need for CCW licenses entirely. So far as I can tell, there have been no great negative consequences to either of those events. If there have been, the news media, no friend of law-abiding private citizens carrying handguns, has done a lousy job of covering them.

Imagine what might have been different in Orlando or Paris if if even a few people had been carrying guns. Given the US experience with legal concealed carry, background crime would not have been 'blood in the streets', while one or two people shooting back might have saved dozens of lives.

Even a strong defensive mindset might have made huge differences in the kill counts: apparently no one in Orlando or Paris counter-attacked even though the murderers had to pause multiple times to reload. Imagine if someone had the defensive mindset to attack, either with a chair, a bottle, or even barehanded. Instead they got out their cell phones and shot videos.

Wrong mind set.

The less radical preppers may be on to something: personal responsibility for one's self and family. I'm not talking about the quasi-millenarianist End Of The World As We Know It people, but those who take preparing for disasters quite seriously, with food, water, medical supplies, defensive weaponry, communication equipment -at least battery powered receivers so one can hear news reports- a ready reserve of cash (actual cash in small bills, in case the ATMs and cash registers are down for a few days or weeks), sanitation, and the like, sufficient for a few weeks.

It seems outright foolish not to have such preps if one lives in a hurricane or earthquake zone, but perhaps people in the rest of the country might do well by considering their own circumstances and prepare for the more likely disasters.

An interesting aspect to preparing for 'normal' short term disasters is that the preparations are pretty much the same: preparing well for the more probable issues also prepares one for the less probable.

Kayyem:

I have come to believe—as a security expert but also as a mother of three—that among all of its flaws, the worst aspect of “never again” was that it let experts like me run the show. We have failed to show that the conflicts and choices inherent in protecting the homeland are really not that different from those Americans and people around the world encounter every day. In our day-to-day lives, people try to protect those closest to them, but they also plan for the bad things that will happen. The essential aspects of those two priorities—preparedness, planning, flexibility, communication, back-up systems, learning from mistakes—are essentially the same. By too easily separating the homeland from the home, experts have failed to nurture the vigor and resiliency which is the greatest strength of a nation that was built on vulnerability: the American public.

And if the United States could build resiliency one home at a time, maybe, in another 15 years, the country will have stopped asking the question to some anonymous bureaucracy with strange acronyms and esoteric risk assessments: “Are we safer?” Instead, people should start embracing, “Am I ready?”

Taking personal responsibility is self-empowering. What is right about that?

The Slow Overnight Collapse of Venezuela

This is the best short description I've seen recently about the industry by industry collapse of Venezuela -once the richest country in South America- into...well...collapse like tin foil hat wearing preppers worry about. It can take many years for a prosperous country to fall apart, it just looks sudden at the end. No toilet paper, refrigerators are worthless because there is electricity only two days a week, but that's really OK because there is no food to put in the non-working refrigerators.

Now they don't even have enough money to pay for printing more inflationary currency, and the foreign printing companies which were flying it in, in fleets of 747s, have stopped because Why trust Venezuela to pay the printing and shipping bills?

Between corruption and Marxism, and corrupt Marxism, and Marxist corruption, the Venezuelans have well and truly buggered each other left, right, and upside down. Right along with all the good, decent people who did NOT vote this calamity.

How To Open A Can With A Spoon

This looks like fun. It does look a lot less messy that rubbing the top rim of the can against a rock or piece of concrete.

"Pentagon Moves More Communications Gear into Cheyenne Mountain"

Curious:

The Pentagon is beefing up its communications setup inside a hollowed-out section of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains less than a decade after it had largely abandoned the site....

...The gear is being moved into Cheyenne Mountain to protect it from electromagnetic pulses, said Adm. William Gortney, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD.

“[T]here is a lot of movement to put capability into Cheyenne Mountain and to be able to communicate in there,” Gortney said Tuesday during a news briefing at the Pentagon.

Electromagnetic pulses, or EMPs, can occur naturally or by manmade devices such as nuclear weapons. For years, the Pentagon has been working on building weapons that could fry the electronic equipment of an enemy during battle.

Who'da thought the Pentagon was full of tinfoil hat types?

Maybe it isn't.

Yahoo has more here.

Lloyd's Insurance on Solar Storm aka CME Effects On North America

Gotta love that British understatement:

...major and widespread social unrest, riots, and theft…major global financial impacts…major disruption to transport, food supplies, emergency and hospital services…would quickly effect water and fuel supplies, sewage systems and flood defenses… potential for large-scale, long-term economic and societal chaos

Power outage…good scenario: 16 days. If new transformers are needed: minimum 5 months. Ok, maybe 16 months. Bad scenario: 1-2 years.

You can find the whole understated report here. It's only 16 pages.

Why Americans Have Weapons Instead of Guns

I just read a review of a new variant of the AR-15 rifle, which was designed to be legal in all fifty states. It sounds like an interesting response to a bewildering thicket of state level regulations, all of which I believe are prohibited by the Constitution. Big deal: my opinion won't change things.

One of the commentors objected to another's use of the term 'weapon' rather than calling it a gun.

My response:

"should NEVER ever be referred to as weapons(.) they are guns or firearms(,) weapons are what police and military use....we cause problems on ourselves by referring to our gun as weapons"

You have a legitimate point, but I do disagree with it.

My guns are weapons. Every last one of them, from a Belgian Browning 20 gauge A-5, through a Remington pump .22 Model 12A to Mini14s and S&W J-frames, and 1911s.

The Constitution protects arms. Not goose guns, not air rifles, not deer guns, not target pistols, except at they contribute to use and familiarity with military grade weapons or can substitute for them. The Constitution protects militia grade arms precisely for the purpose of killing people. That is demonstrated without any doubt by the 2nd Amendment's explicit tying of the right to keep and bear arms to a well trained militia. The writings of the Founders, published concurrently with the ratification debates and available today, make explicit the role of arms which are protected: they are explicitly for killing tyrants, foreign or domestic.

Anti-gunners freak at the idea, especially at the 'domestic' aspects as they inaccurately associate 'tyrants' with 'politicians', but weapons ownership, use, and the bearing of them should not be controversial in an age where domestic terrorists and ordinary criminals alike can strike anywhere, any time, and the police are incapable of being everywhere, all the time, to protect us.

That it is controversial is in part our fault: For decades we let the anti-gunners frame the debate. It is time to frame that debate ourselves, and force them to respond to us instead of us to them. We can do so only by using terms like 'weapons' and 'shooting people who need shooting right now', and defending those concepts as good and proper. If more people than the LEO at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris had been armed, more might well have survived: Killing murderous assailants is exactly what weapons are for, and that is a good thing. If the observer who videod the killing of the Paris LEO on the sidewalk had had a Mini-14 or AKM at hand instead of a video camera, the LEO might well have been killed anyway, but the murderers might have been stopped right there. They are exactly the kind of domestic tyrants the unorganized militia has a chance of stopping. By shooting them with weapons.

The 2nd Amendment protects 'arms', not just guns, but arms, for the purpose of arming the militia, including the 'unorganized militia', which means us: civilians such as those brave passengers aboard United Flight 93, who gave their lives defending us against the Islamists on 9-11. That means that not only are guns protected, but so are all other militia usable weapons: knives, including bowies, bayonets, and switchblades, cudgels, including billy clubs, and metal or plastic knuckles. Laws prohibiting them are explicitly prohibited by the Constitution. That such laws exist and are widespread today is only evidence of our refusal to submit to the Constitution. Rather than submit, even by amending it, we have preferred to pretend that it does not mean what it clearly says. That is our shame.

The Constitution protects weapons which carry a single round, like the Liberator .45 of the Second World War, and it protects AKMs, AR-15s, and M-16s and their 20 & 30 round magazines. It protects sniper rifles and target rifles which may be used by the unorganized militia as sniper rifles. It protects submachine guns and full auto rifles ie actual assault rifles. The Constitution protects all of them for the explicit purpose of shooting those who would do us and our country harm.

Given that a number of the Founders owned ships with cannons, and given that the Constitution explicitly provides for issuing letters of marque and reprisal to privately owned ships, I expect that a plausible argument could be made that the Constitution also protects crew served weapons such as belt fed machine guns and at least light artillery.

We are on firm ground when we say that the Constitution protects military grade arms, and great big scary ones at that. If we refuse to make that point, the other side is on the way to victory.

Instead of allowing the anti-weapons crowd to cow us into refusing to defend weapons ownership, I prefer to make them confront our issue head on: The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect our ability to arm ourselves against tyrants, foreign and domestic. Those tyrants may be common criminals or politically/religiously inspired criminals such as disciples of al Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, AQAP, and others. In any case, when they strike, the police are almost sure not to be there. The victims are always there, and only armed victims, willing to shoot them with weapons they bear, are capable of shooting people who desperately need to be shot.

The original article, "50 STATE LEGAL AR-15 – ARES DEFENSE SCR" by Sam Trisler in'Guns America', is here.

Preppers Are Right Wing Sickos, Of Course

Just remember: If you take admonishments of the Mayor of New York, the Governor of New York, FEMA, and others, seriously, and actually prepare for disasters, you are an unstable nut case fantasizing about shooting the neighbors.

Panic-buyers flood grocery stores and commuters are begged to stay home ahead of 'historic' blizzard that threatens to drop THREE FEET of snow on New York City and up to 57 million on East Coast
Huge lines were pictured in food stores and warnings flooded in to stay home amid snow falling at 4 inches per hour
Bill de Blasio warned New Yorkers not to 'underestimate' the storm, which could drop 36inches in places
Snowfall expected to be accompanied by hurricane-strength winds blowing at up to 65 miles per hour
New York governor Andrew Cuomo warned commuters to go home early as roads and the subway could be closed

Who would believe that a mere 57,000,000 could strip grocery shelves bare?

Many New Yorkers reacted to the predictions - which could make for the most snow in one storm since records began in 1872 - by piling into local stores to stock up on food.

Shopping with your 57,000,000 nearest and dearest friends. I think I'll pass. Shopping under pressure seems like a great way to buy too much of the wrong stuff, and too little of the right.

Shoppers were pictured lining up round the block in Manhattan just to get inside so they could grab hold of rapidly-diminishing stocks before the bad weather begins.
Warnings have also been issued around New Jersey and New England, with authorities saying inadequately prepared people could die making unnecessary journeys.

Call it Evolution in Action.

If you are interested in preserving the bloodline, see here. It's easy, it's cheap, and it sure beats slogging through the snow and slush to find one lousy loaf of pumpernickel left.

"Your data is our data, your equipment is our equipment."

This really isn't news, but it is something to pay attention to:

According to top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen exclusively by SPIEGEL, they are planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role, with the aim of being able to use the net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money.

No water means cities of all sizes die within a couple weeks. Less, in many cases, maybe a lot less.

One must admire the Remote Operations Center's motto, though: "Your data is our data, your equipment is our equipment."

Better Have A Bunch Of Batteries: FEMA/DHS Says CME Could Leave 100,000,000 Without Electricity For Months

Don't forget to stock a few flats of water:

“An analysis of the space weather impacts indicates that the greatest challenge will be to provide life-saving and life-sustaining resources for large numbers of people that experience long-term power outage from damage to the U.S. electrical grid,” the FEMA document, dated March 1, 2012, states.

The FEMA fact sheet noted...that an extreme solar storm could leave “130 million people without power for years,” and destroy or damage more than 300 hard-to-replace electrical grid transformers.

The problem with such widespread and long lasting power outages isn't the run on candles, but the lack of drinkable water: without power, the water grid and sewage treatment grid also go down. So do the gas pumps which allow people to drive to an unaffected area. If food distributors' computers don't work, they don't know what they have or where they have it, nor, without electricity, do the chillers keep it from rotting. Imagine multiple cities without potable water, with overflowing toilets, for even 10 days. At the same time, in August. It wouldn't be unpleasant: It would see thousands or hundreds of thousands dead. Possibly millions.

One of the problems with preparing for a Carrington type event is that while there is no question whatsoever that they happen, they don't happen often enough to keep people's attention. Their infrequency is a good thing for an electrically based economy, of course, but when the big hits of 1859 and 1921 are so far apart, people don't pay attention to the consequences of a low probability event. Such an event might not occur in our lifetimes, so people naturally discount the possibility despite the horrific consequences.

A brace or two of 55 gallon barrels of water in the garage or basement seems about as stupid and paranoid as a good home insurance policy.

Here is the story.

Trebuchet Throws A Car

No comment needed:

Old Guy With Gun Whups Young Guys With Guns

Good for him. I suspect it will be the last time these armed criminals decide that people in an Internet cafe are safe prey.



As one of the criminals was quoted later as saying: "It doesn't feel good. It makes you think about life's decisions, and how you should live your life."

One should think about decisions to threaten innocent people with murder.

Yes, this is a couple years old, but still fresh.

US Falls To 12th Most Free Economy

America's descent down the ladder of economic freedom is unsettling, in itself. More troubling, however, is the chief factor behind the US decline. The biggest drop in US economic freedom has been in the country's legal structure. The report notes that, "increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States."

Political actions have consequences. Politicize the economy enough, and Atlas doesn't have to shrug. Atlas can be crushed in place.

The rule of law has long been the foundation of America's economic prosperity and liberty. The US ranking in this area has plummeted to a terrible 36th place in the world. This, combined with increased regulation is stifling US economic growth. The report observes, "[t]o a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state."

We no longer live in a free country, and there are very powerful interests indeed which like it that way: Controlling the regulators and the subsidizers is more effective for the bottom line than producing goods and services the consumer wants, at a price consumers are willing to pay.

Curtailing government's leviathan isn't simply solving a math problem, i.e. getting revenue and spending figures for government to balance. A far larger threat is the accumulation of thousands of rules and regulations that not only stifle innovation but also undermine our personal and property rights.

Again: That is the way the Crony Capitalists want it, and they have entrenched themselves deeply in the political system. We may never again have anything like a free economy or a free society: Interests already in place may already be too powerful to overcome.

Breitbart has more here.

The original, at CATO Institute, is here.

"Is The CDC Playing Politics With Ebola?"

Dr. Jason Kissner, associate professor of criminology at California State University, Fresno:

As crazy as it is to continue letting mere “travelers to” affected countries with abdominal pains and low-grade fevers go, it is utterly insane to not isolate newly arrived hot zone nationals who exhibit those symptoms -- the future Duncans of America.

And yet, unbelievably, the CDC still does not intend to isolate future Duncans....

Is it wholly unreasonable to suppose that the CDC is avoiding emphasis on the nationality of hot zone arrivals because it doesn’t want to draw attention to the connection of Ebola with immigration? If that is what they are doing, here is what Obama and RINOS are saying to America: immigration reform is more important than containing Ebola. These considerations perhaps give new meaning to Obama’s statement on October 2 that “no force on earth” can stop immigration reform. “No force on earth” indeed -- not even Ebola.

This doesn't even address the possibility of ebola being brought into the country deliberately by organized terrorists.


More here.

ISIL Infiltrating The US Across The Southern Border?

Thanks to the federal government, it would soooooo difficult.

A senior Homeland Security (DHS) official confirmed to Congress on Wednesday that militants associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) are planning to enter the United States via the porous southern border.

A bit more here.

I have trouble believing they are not already here.

Historian William Forstchen, author of "One Second After" has a new novella out about the consequences of ISIL infiltrating the country. "Day of Wrath" is all too believable.

Just When I Thought It Was Safe To Take Off My Tinfoil Hat And Crawl Out Of The Bunker

Managua (AFP) - A mysterious explosion that rocked Nicaragua's crowded capital Managua, creating a large crater, appears to have been caused by a small meteorite, officials said Sunday.

Amazingly, in a sprawling city of 1.2 million people, the impact near the international airport did not cause any known injuries, but it did leave a crater measuring 12 meters (39 feet) across and was felt throughout the capital late on Saturday.

With any luck, the Guy Upstairs is just warming up for Tehran and Gaza.


More here.

WHO on Containing Ebola

The World Health Organization has a release on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The upshot seems to be that, while containing the outbreak is difficult in Africa, it should be containable elsewhere.

The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in west Africa continues to evolve in alarming ways, with no immediate end in sight. Many barriers stand in the way of rapid containment....

...Fear has spread well beyond west Africa, leading some to suggest that imported cases, also in wealthy countries, could ignite widespread infections in the general population. In countries with well-developed health systems, such a scenario is highly unlikely, given the epidemiology of the Ebola virus and experiences in past outbreaks.

Still:

the possible consequences of further international spread are particularly serious in view of the virulence of the virus, the intensive community and health facility transmission patterns, and the weak health systems in the currently affected and most at-risk countries;

More here.

Honolulu Hurricane Watch

Clear morning here. Supposed to hit Big Island this evening, us tomorrow PM. May be a hurricane here, may not be, may hit us solidly, but looks like will pass to south.

Still sunny and light breeze here at 11:30 AM. I've been putting stuff under cover, we both have been cleaning out and repacking our back packs for quick exit if needed, and I have cleaned out and backed the truck into the carport so we can throw stuff in if it looks like we are going to get hit hard.

I sure hope we are spared. There isn't much which can be done if the house goes. There aren't enough shelters on the island.

Maybe this one will finally get the attention of the government so they will start pounding it into everyone's head that everyone is responsible for their own safety. They need to say it loud, and keep saying it. No one is driving in from the next state to help us. Shall tape windows and put some stuff in truck in case we have to evacuate, but looks now like we won't.

It is scary though. This entire ridge community will blow away in a direct hit by a big one (which it looks like we won't have this time..fingers crossed), as will all the older ridge neighborhoods: they were not designed to survive a hurricane. Wind hits the beach at 125, it funnels up the valleys and gets to the ridges at 175-200 mph. I talked with FEMA people a couple weeks ago at a disaster prep fair at the local mall. They are scared silly of a direct hit.

No electricity means no water as the municipal water system pumps all rely on HI Electric, and Hawaiian Electric says it could take months to restore power grid after a very bad hit. Destroyed houses snap off the water laterals, draining the entire water system so it can't be refilled. No pumps are in hurricane resistant buildings, not one of 200 for the system. Imagine over 900,000 people w/o water for several weeks. It doesn't work. FEMA people said they think more people could die from lack of water after a hurricane than from the storm itself. Hence our water stock, and filters for the neighbor's swimming pool. We can filter 6000 gallons, so we and neighbors should be OK on that issue.

When primary response people say they are 'scared shitless', we pay attention. And unlike the Gulf Coast, no one is trucking in relief supplies from the next state the day after a disaster- 4800 mile round trip makes the Berlin Airlift look like a cub scout project. Hawaiian Electric says they can't stock spare poles because of termites, can't fly them in because of creosote, so have to come by ship. So the grid could take months to restore. When Kauai last got hit it took 4 weeks to restore power to the FIRST 20% of customers.

Fire Department people have extremely emphatically told us the same thing: Everyone will be entirely on their own for minimum of a week after a direct hit, maybe more than a month: no phones, no police, no fire department, no ambulances, no nothing. On our own no matter what the problem- fire, looters, rapists, storm injuries, water, food, everything: they have said in as many words that they will not be around to help anyone. The Fire Department reps told me everyone needs a shotgun because no one is coming to help. Imagine that frankness from the primary relief people. We have a lot of bandages and splints, disinfectants, food. As long as it doesn't all blow away, and it look like it won't this time.

Honolulu Prepares For Hurricane Iselle: Pictures

Pictures here.

Several are in a CostCo, and are pretty much what I saw there on Tuesday. Full, but orderly, people buying lots of water, Spam, rice, Vienna sausages, batteries.

Late, but not too late: There was still plenty...except for water: CostCo apparently ran out shortly after noon Tuesday and Wednesday.

Maybe some people will figure out that they should not wait until everyone else is shopping: They should keep the basics in stock all the time. Everything one buys at the last minute is something unavailable to others who stock up at the last minute.