Survivalist, Prepper/prepping issues

[G M]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-hacks-into-ukraine-power-grids-may-be-a-sign-of-things-to-come/

Ukraine power grids a sign of things to come for U.S.?


Russian hacking to influence the election has dominated the news. But CBS News has also noticed a hacking attack that could be a future means to the U.S. Last weekend, parts of the Ukrainian capitol Kiev went dark. It appears Russia has figured out how to crash a power grid with a click.

Last December, a similar attack occurred when nearly a quarter of a million people lost power in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine when it was targeted by a suspected Russian attack. 

Vasyl Pemchuk is the electric control center manager, and said that when hackers took over their computers, all his workers could do was film it with their cell phones.

“It was illogical and chaotic,” he said. “It seemed like something in a Hollywood movie.”
williams-ukraine-grid-pkg-new-013.jpg

Vasyl Pemchuk in the control center that was hacked
CBS News

The hackers sent emails with infected attachments to power company employees, stealing their login credentials and then taking control of the grid’s systems to cut the circuit breakers at nearly 60 substations.

The suspected motive for the attack is the war in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists are fighting against Ukrainian government forces.

But hackers could launch a similar attack in the U.S.

“We can’t just look at the Ukraine attack and go ‘oh we’re safe against that attack,’” said Rob Lee, a former cyberwarfare operations officer in the U.S. military, investigated the Ukraine attack.
williams-ukraine-grid-pkg-new-01.jpg

Rob Lee
CBS News

“Even if we just lose a portion, right? If we have New York City or Washington D.C. go down for a day, two days, a week, what does life look like at that point?” he said.

He said that some U.S. electric utilities have weaker security than Ukraine, and the malicious software the hackers used has already been detected in the U.S.

“It’s very concerning that these same actors using similar capabilities and tradecraft are preparing and are getting access to these business networks, getting access to portions of the power grid,” he said.

In Ukraine, they restarted the power in just hours. But an attack in the U.S. could leave people without electricity for days, or even weeks, according to experts. Because, ironically, America’s advanced, automated grid would be much harder to fix.

[G M]

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/columns/paul-harasim/survive-the-hacking-power-grid-it-s-time-stockpile-food-water-and-medicine


To survive the hacking of a power grid, it’s time to stockpile food, water and medicine
Paul Harasim

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Heather Murren, the wife of Jim Murren, chairman and CEO of MGM Resorts International, doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of a survivalist or prepper.

Her hair and makeup is just so. Instead of fatigues, she prefers designer wear. She lives in a mansion, not a cave or a shack in the forest.

But when she talks about what she learned as a member of the Commission on Enhancing National Cyberesecurity, what she has to say often sounds much like something we’ve generally thought of as coming from the lips of a backwoods, paranoid, tobacco chewin’, gun totin’, doomsday conspiracy theorist.

It’s time, she says, for Americans to stockpile food, water, medical supplies and other essential everyday items. She says she’s talked to representatives with the American Red Cross and urged them to get the word out to people.
 

The reason is simple: The nation’s electric power grid is susceptible to cyberwarfare.

Should hackers shut down much of the electrical grid and the critical infrastructure accompanying it, we would have to live for an extended period of time without much of what we now take for granted.

Murren notes experts believe Russia hacked Ukraine’s power grid twice in the past year.

Forget having heat or air conditioning. Water couldn’t be pumped into most homes. ATMs, debit and credit cards wouldn’t work. There would be no banking or air traffic control or traffic lights or Internet. Pharmacies couldn’t dispense medicine. Gas stations couldn’t pump. Say adios to commerce for days or weeks or even months.

“Hacking of the power grid is a significant concern,” said Murren, appointed last year by President Obama to the commission that recently released its report to the nation.

“We can recover from a natural disaster faster than a cyberattack, ” she said. ” When Hurricane Sandy hit we could bring people from throughout the country to help out. But if there’s a cyberattack on the grid in that same region we couldn’t send people from other places because they all use other computer systems. They won’t know the system, what to do.”

What makes Murren’s comments all the more compelling is that they are delivered in the crisp, authoritative, unemotional tone of a Wall Street financier, which she was before moving to Las Vegas.

“Americans should be very concerned,” she stressed.

More people seem to be with each passing day. You can even find directions on the Internet about how to make the water in a swimming pool safe for drinking in an emergency.
 

While what commission members have to say is in the spotlight today because Russian hacking to influence the presidential election has dominated the news, the observations made on cybersecurity four years ago by then-U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are no less riveting.

“We know foreign cyberactors … are targeting the computer control systems that operate chemical, electricity and water plants … We know of specific instances where intruders have successfully gained access to these control systems. We also know they are seeking to create advanced tools to attack these systems and cause panic, destruction and even loss of life.”

Murren said more urgency is needed toward cybersecurity, both in government and private industry.

“Technology tends to be viewed by business management as a silo,” she said. “But cyber now touches everything. New board guidelines suggest that at least one board member should have cybersecurity knowledge and that the full board should receive a presentation annually on the subject of cybersecurity. Most businesses don’t do this.”

On the other hand, she said government has too often made businesses go it alone and not played a critical role in coordinating a well-thought-out national digital security system.

She said an appropriate response by the American government to foreign-sanctioned cyberware must be worked out.

“When does it constitute an act of war?” she said.

Murren said the country can’t wait any longer to enact a workable security system.

“Failures in cybersecurity leading to theft of intellectual property are extraordinarily costly … Left unchecked, it can cost us our economic strength and global leadership. Some estimates put the theft of intellectual property — airplane schematics, drug formulas, etc., at $300-$350 billion per year.”

Paul Harasim’s column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Nevada section and Monday in the Health section. Contact him at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @paulharasim on Twitter

[G M]

http://www.zerodaysfilm.com/

I don't agree with every point in the film, but it is a very important movie.

[Crafty_Dog]

Just bought a shit load of good-for-thiry-years food.

[G M]

https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-gain-switch-flipping-access-to-us-power-systems/

HACKERS GAIN DIRECT ACCESS TO US POWER GRID CONTROLS

IN AN ERA of hacker attacks on critical infrastructure, even a run-of-the-mill malware infection on an electric utility’s network is enough to raise alarm bells. But the latest collection of power grid penetrations went far deeper: Security firm Symantec is warning that a series of recent hacker attacks not only compromised energy companies in the US and Europe but also resulted in the intruders gaining hands-on access to power grid operations—enough control that they could have induced blackouts on American soil at will.
Symantec on Wednesday revealed a new campaign of attacks by a group it is calling Dragonfly 2.0, which it says targeted dozens of energy companies in the spring and summer of this year. In more than 20 cases, Symantec says the hackers successfully gained access to the target companies’ networks. And at a handful of US power firms and at least one company in Turkey—none of which Symantec will name—their forensic analysis found that the hackers obtained what they call operational access: control of the interfaces power company engineers use to send actual commands to equipment like circuit breakers, giving them the ability to stop the flow of electricity into US homes and businesses.
“There’s a difference between being a step away from conducting sabotage and actually being in a position to conduct sabotage ... being able to flip the switch on power generation,” says Eric Chien, a Symantec security analyst. “We’re now talking about on-the-ground technical evidence this could happen in the US, and there’s nothing left standing in the way except the motivation of some actor out in the world.”

Never before have hackers been shown to have that level of control of American power company systems, Chien notes. The only comparable situations, he says, have been the repeated hacker attacks on the Ukrainian grid that twice caused power outages in the country in late 2015 and 2016, the first known hacker-induced blackouts.

The Usual Suspects
Security firms like FireEye and Dragos have pinned those Ukrainian attacks on a hacker group known as Sandworm, believed to be based in Russia. But Symantec stopped short of blaming the more recent attacks on any country or even trying to explain the hackers' motives. Chien says the company has found no connections between Sandworm and the intrusions it has tracked. Nor has it directly connected the Dragonfly 2.0 campaign to the string of hacker intrusions at US power companies—including a Kansas nuclear facility—known as Palmetto Fusion, which unnamed officials revealed in July and later tied to Russia.
Chien does note, however, that the timing and public descriptions of the Palmetto Fusion hacking campaigns match up with its Dragonfly findings. “It’s highly unlikely this is just coincidental,” Chien says. But he adds that while the Palmetto Fusion intrusions included a breach of a nuclear power plant, the most serious DragonFly intrusions Symantec tracked penetrated only non-nuclear energy companies, which have less strict separations of their internet-connected IT networks and operational controls.

As Symantec's report on the new intrusions details, the company has tracked the Dragonfly 2.0 attacks back to at least December of 2015, but found that they ramped up significantly in the first half of 2017, particularly in the US, Turkey, and Switzerland. Its analysis of those breaches found that they began with spearphishing emails that tricked victims into opening a malicious attachment—the earliest they found was a fake invitation to a New Year's Eve party—or so-called watering hole attacks that compromise a website commonly visited by targets to hack victims' computers.
Those attacks were designed to harvest credentials from victims and gain remote access to their machines. And in the most successful of those cases, including several instances in the US and one in Turkey, the attackers penetrated deep enough to screenshot the actual control panels for their targets' grid operations—what Symantec believes was a final step in positioning themselves to sabotage those systems at will. "That’s exactly what you’d do if you were to attempt sabotage," he says. "You’d take these sorts of screenshots to understand what you had to do next, like literally which switch to flip."
And if those hackers did gain the ability to cause a blackout in the US, why did they stop short? Chien reasons that they may have been seeking the option to cause an electric disruption but waiting for an opportunity that would be most strategically useful—say, if an armed conflict broke out, or potentially to issue a well-timed threat that would deter the US from using its own hacking capabilities against another foreign nation's critical infrastructure. "If these attacks are from a nation state," Chien says, "one would expect sabotage only in relation to a political event."

The Ukrainian Precedent
Not every group of hackers has shown that kind of restraint. Hackers now believed to be the Russian group Sandworm used exactly the sort of access to electricity control interfaces that Symantec describes Dragonfly having to shut off the power to a quarter million Ukrainians in December 2015. In one case they took over the remote help desk tool of a Ukrainian energy utility to hijack engineers' mouse controls and manually clicked through dozens of circuit breakers, turning off the power to tens of thousands of people as the engineers watched helplessly.

Operations like that one and a more automated blackout attack a year later have made Russia the first suspect in any grid-hacking incident. But Symantec notes that the hackers mostly used freely available tools and existing vulnerabilities in software rather than previously unknown weaknesses, making any attribution more difficult. They found some Russian-language strings of code in the malware used in the intrusions, but also some hints of French. They note that either language could be a "false flag" meant to throw off investigators.
In naming the hacking campaign Dragonfly, however, Symantec does tie it to an earlier, widely analyzed set of intrusions also aimed at the US and European energy sectors, which stretched from as early as 2010 to 2014. The hackers behind that series of attacks, called Dragonfly by Symantec but also known by the names Energetic Bear, Iron Liberty, and Koala, shared many of the same characteristics as the more recent Dragonfly 2.0 attacks, Symantec says, including infection methods, two pieces of malware used in the intrusions, and energy sector victims. And both the security firm Crowdstrike and the US government have linked those earlier Dragonfly attacks with the Kremlin—a report published by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI last December included the group on its list of known Russian-government hacking operations.

Symantec says it has assisted the power companies that experienced the deepest penetrations, helping them eject the hackers from their networks. The firm also sent warnings to more than a hundred companies about the Dragonfly 2.0 hackers, as well as to the Department of Homeland Security and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which is responsible for the stability of the US power grid. NERC didn't immediate answer WIRED's request for comment on Symantec's findings, but DHS spokesperson Scott McConnell wrote in a statement that "DHS is aware of the report and is reviewing it," and "at this time there is no indication of a threat to public safety."
But Symantec's Chien nonetheless warns any company that thinks it may be a target of the hackers to not only remove any malware it has identified as the group's calling card but also to refresh their staff's credentials. Given the hackers' focus on stealing those passwords, even flushing all malware out of a targeted network might not prevent hackers from gaining a new foothold if they still have employees' working logins.
The Dragonfly hackers remain active even today, Chien warns, and electric utilities should be on high alert. Given that the group has, in some form, been probing and penetrating energy utility targets for the past seven years, don't expect them to stop now.

[G M]

http://gatesofvienna.net/2017/10/a-bang-followed-by-whimpering-and-silence/

A Bang Followed by Whimpering… and Silence
Posted on October 18, 2017 by Dymphna
EMP blast

Gotta love The Swamp. Now that North Korea (probably) has the capability to fire a missile into our airspace, TPTB have shut down the one governmental organization with the ability to do anything testicular to deter the Fat Boy driving the looming disaster.

Did you think NoKo is going to do something fissionable with its missiles and is going to simply try to “bomb” us? Well, it would seem that’s the intention, but the real problem is the payload on their missiles. All they need is one EMP detonated in our skies (over the East Coast, where lies most of our outdated electrical infrastructure) to send the continent back to say, 1850…and that will mean ninety percent of our population gone within six months or less. One can envision the follow-up: a leisurely walk-through by China. It would be easy-peasy to sort through the pieces of what remained of Canada and the United States.

From The Center for Security Policy [with my emphases — D]:

Inexplicably, just when we need the country’s most knowledgeable and influential minds advising about how to protect against a potentially imminent, nation-ending peril, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Threat Commission is being shut down.

For seventeen years under the leadership of President Reagan’s Science Advisor, Dr. William Graham, this blue-ribbon panel has warned that we had to protect our electric grid from just the sorts of EMP attacks North Korea is now threatening to unleash upon us. Successive administrations and the electric utilities have shamefully failed to heed those warnings and take corrective action.

Consequently, we could experience on a national scale the sort of devastating, protracted blackouts now afflicting Puerto Rico. President Trump should give Dr. Graham and his team a new mandate as a presidential commission to oversee the immediate implementation of their recommendations.

This disaster happened at the end of September, while the MSM dithered away on their fiddles about the eeevil Trump. Meanwhile, two men who served on the panel appeared in front of this subcommittee to get the views of the panel into the permanent record, i.e. the Congressional Record. If/when it all goes down, their warnings will still exist, if anyone can access them after an EMP explosion:

STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD
DR. WILLIAM R. GRAHAM, CHAIRMAN
DR. PETER VINCENT PRY, CHIEF OF STAFF
COMMISSION TO ASSESS THE THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES FROM
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP) ATTACK
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT EFFICIENCY HEARING
“EMPTY THREAT OR SERIOUS DANGER:
ASSESSING NORTH KOREA’S RISK TO THE HOMELAND”

Here is an excerpt from that “Statement For the Record” [any emphases are mine — D. The footnotes, which have been omitted here, can be found in the pdf linked at the end of this post]:

During the Cold War, major efforts were undertaken by the Department of Defense to assure that the U.S. national command authority and U.S. strategic forces could survive and operate after an EMP attack. However, no major efforts were then thought necessary to protect critical national infrastructures, relying on nuclear deterrence to protect them. With the development of small nuclear arsenals and long-range missiles by new, radical U.S. adversaries, beginning with North Korea, the threat of a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. becomes one of the few ways that such a country could inflict devastating damage to the United States. It is critical, therefore, that the U.S. national leadership address the EMP threat as a critical and existential issue, and give a high priority to assuring the leadership is engaged and the necessary steps are taken to protect the country from EMP.

By way of background, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack was established by Congress in 2001 to advise the Congress, the President, Department of Defense and other departments and agencies of the U.S. Government on the nuclear EMP threat to military systems and civilian critical infrastructures.The EMP Commission was re-established in 2015 with its charter broadened to include natural EMP from solar storms, all manmade EMP threats, cyber-attack, sabotage and Combined-Arms Cyber Warfare. The EMP Commission charter gives it access to all relevant classified and unclassified data and the power to levy analysis upon the Department of Defense.

On September 30, 2017, the Department of Defense, after withholding a significant part of the monies allocated by Congress to support the work of the EMP Commission for the entirety of 2016, terminated funding the EMP Commission. In the same month, North Korea detonated an H-Bomb that it plausibly describes as capable of “super-powerful EMP” attack and released a technical report “The EMP Might of Nuclear Weapons” accurately describing what Russia and China call a “Super-EMP” weapon.

Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Homeland Security has asked Congress to continue the EMP Commission. The House version of the National Defense Authorization Act includes a provision that would replace the existing EMP Commission with new Commissioners. Yet the existing EMP Commission comprises the nation’s foremost experts who have been officially or unofficially continuously engaged trying to advance national EMP preparedness for 17 years.

And today, as the EMP Commission has long warned, the nation faces a potentially imminent and existential threat of nuclear EMP attack from North Korea. Recent events have proven the EMP Commission’s critics wrong about other highly important aspects of the nuclear missile threat from North Korea:


Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea’s nuclear arsenal was primitive, some academics claiming it had as few as [six] A-Bombs. Now the intelligence community reportedly estimates North Korea has [sixty] nuclear weapons.
Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea’s ICBMs were fake, or if real could not strike the U.S. mainland. Now the intelligence community reportedly estimates North Korea’s ICBMs can strike Denver and Chicago, and perhaps the entire United States.
Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea was many years away from an H-Bomb. Now it appears North Korea has H-Bombs comparable to sophisticated U.S. two-stage thermonuclear weapons.
Just six months ago, most experts claimed North Korean ICBMs could not miniaturize an A-Bomb or design a reentry vehicle for missile delivery. Now the intelligence community reportedly assesses North Korea has miniaturized nuclear weapons and has developed reentry vehicles for missile delivery, including by ICBMs that can strike the U.S.
After massive intelligence failures grossly underestimating North Korea’s long-range missile capabilities, [its] number of nuclear weapons, warhead miniaturization, and proximity to an H-Bomb, the biggest North Korean threat to the U.S. remains unacknowledged — a nuclear EMP attack.

North Korea confirmed the EMP Commission’s assessment by testing an H-Bomb that could make a devastating EMP attack, and in its official public statement: “The H-Bomb, the explosive power of which is adjustable from tens of kilotons to hundreds of kilotons, is a multi-functional thermonuclear weapon with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack according to strategic goals.”

As noted earlier, Pyongyang also released a technical report accurately describing a “Super-EMP” weapon.

Just six months ago, some academics dismissed EMP Commission warnings and even, literally, laughed on National Public Radio at the idea North Korea could make an EMP attack.

Primitive and “Super-EMP” Nuclear Weapons are Both EMP Threats

The EMP Commission finds that even primitive, low-yield nuclear weapons are such a significant EMP threat that rogue states, like North Korea, or terrorists may well prefer using a nuclear weapon for EMP attack, instead of destroying a city: “Therefore, terrorists or state actors that possess relatively unsophisticated missiles armed with nuclear weapons may well calculate that, instead of destroying a city or military base, they may obtain the greatest political-military utility from one or a few such weapons by using them — or threatening their use — in an EMP attack.”

The EMP Commission 2004 Report warns: “Certain types of relatively low-yield nuclear weapons can be employed to generate potentially catastrophic EMP effects over wide geographic areas, and designs for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter-century.”

In 2004, two Russian generals, both EMP experts, warned the EMP Commission that the design for Russia’s Super-EMP warhead, capable of generating high-intensity EMP fields over 100,000 volts per meter, was “accidentally” transferred to North Korea. They also said that due to “brain drain,” Russian scientists were in North Korea, as were Chinese and Pakistani scientists according to the Russians, helping with the North’s missile and nuclear weapon programs. In 2009, South Korean military intelligence told their press that Russian scientists are in North Korea helping develop an EMP nuclear weapon. In 2013, a Chinese military commentator stated North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

Super-EMP weapons are low-yield and designed to produce not a big kinetic explosion, but rather a high level of gamma rays, which generates the high-frequency E1 EMP that is most damaging to the broadest range of electronics. North Korean nuclear tests, including the first in 2006, whose occurrence was predicted to the EMP Commission two years in advance by the two Russian EMP experts, mostly have yields consistent with the size of a Super-EMP weapon. The Russian generals’ accurate prediction about when North Korea would perform its first nuclear test, and of a yield consistent with a Super-EMP weapon, indicates their warning about a North Korean Super-EMP weapon should be taken very seriously.

EMP Threat From Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a U.S. city, the threat here and now from EMP is largely ignored. EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack against an entire nation.

North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole U.S. mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Electric Power Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of U.S. electricity.

Or an EMP attack might be made by a North Korean satellite, right now.

A Super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight and could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites. These two satellites presently orbit over the United States, and over every other nation on Earth–demonstrating, or posing, a potential EMP threat against the entire world.

North Korea’s KMS-3 and KMS-4 satellites were launched to the south on polar trajectories and passed over the United States on their first orbit. Pyongyang launched KMS-4 on February 7, 2017, shortly after its fourth illegal nuclear test on January 6, that began the present protracted nuclear crisis with North Korea.

The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.

Ambassador Henry Cooper, former Director of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative and a preeminent expert on missile defenses and space weapons, has written numerous articles warning about the potential North Korean EMP threat from their satellites. For example, on September 20, 2016, Ambassador Cooper wrote:

U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) interceptors are designed to intercept a few North Korean ICBMs that approach the United States over the North Polar region. But current U.S. BMD systems are not arranged to defend against even a single ICBM that approaches the United States from over the South Polar region, which is the direction toward which North Korea launches its satellites…This is not a new idea. The Soviets pioneered and tested just such a specific capability decades ago — we call it a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS)…So, North Korea doesn’t need an ICBM to create this existential threat. It could use its demonstrated satellite launcher to carry a nuclear weapon over the South Polar region and detonate it…over the United States to create a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP)…The result could be to shut down the U.S. electric power grid for an indefinite period, leading to the death within a year of up to 90 percent of all Americans — as the EMP Commission testified over eight years ago.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
This is the link to the whole report, fourteen pages long, which was read into the Congressional Record. Takes about twenty minutes to skim.

Here’s the website for The Oversight and Management Efficiency Subcommittee. Scroll down the list of members to see if your Congressman is on that committee. Better yet, write your own Congressman and tell him to get going on this critical issue. He doesn’t have to be a member of that subcommittee to nudge it forward. While you’re at it, send a tweet to Trump.

That commission was extant and active for seventeen years. Yet for some strange reason, it’s been disbanded now that we have two irrational actors on the world stage capable of bringing us to a neck-breaking halt.

At least Maine seems to be aware and active about the problem. Whether it’s past the initial stages of deciding what to do is hard to say, but its preliminary actions show the way forward for other states. States don’t have to wait for the Federal behemoth to move toward safety. They could even act regionally in a co-operative. This is especially important for our vulnerable northeastern corridor.

Here’s where you can find the contact information for your Congressional representative. It would be a good idea to lean on your state representatives, too. Send their assistants the pdf.

This time we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

[Crafty_Dog]

Please post on
a) ACTION Items
b) Nuclear War

[Cruces]

https://medium.com/s/story/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical-case-of-the-tin-foil-hat-gun-prepper-15fce7d10437

Thought provoking look at the statistics that at a subconscious level, and at a conscious level may underpin people's desire to prepare for diverse disasters.  Solid read.

...
I’m not a writer by trade. I’m a stormwater hydrologist, and in my opinion, a pretty good one. Hydrology is the science of tracking water as it moves through the water cycle, from ocean evaporation through cloud formation, precipitation, groundwater infiltration, runoff, evapotranspiration, riverine hydraulics, and the time series behavior of reservoirs. It is a deep and fascinating field, but one of its most relevant applications to our lives is delineating floodplain boundaries.
...
Let’s quickly walk through this. The chance of flooding, P(F), is 1%, or 0.01. The chance of not flooding, which we notate P(F’), is 100%-1%, or 99%, or 0.99. To see the chance you don’t flood two years in a row, you would have to “not-flood” the first year, and then “not-flood” the second year, so you multiply the two probabilities together, and get 0.9801. The chance of “not-flooding” 30 years in a row is calculated by multiplying the chance of not flooding with itself, over and over, 30 times, which is a power relationship. P(F’)³⁰. That’s 0.7397 chance of 30 consecutive years of no flood, which means a 26% chance of at least one flood.
...
Stepping through this, the average year for colony establishment is 1678, which is 340 years ago. Two qualifying events in 340 years is a 0.5882% annual chance of nationwide violent revolution against the ruling government. Do the same math as we did above with the floodplains, in precisely the same way, and we see a 37% chance that any American of average life expectancy will experience at least one nationwide violent revolution.

This is a bigger chance than your floodplain-bound home flooding during your mortgage.

It’s noticeably bigger.

...

Pretend you’re someone with your eyes on the horizon. What would you be looking for, exactly? Increasing partisanship. Civil disorder. Coup rhetoric. A widening wealth gap. A further entrenching oligarchy. Dysfunctional governance. The rise of violent extremist ideologies such as Nazism and Communism. Violent street protests. People marching with masks and dressing like the Italian Blackshirts. Attempts at large scale political assassination. Any one of those might not necessarily be the canary in the coal mine, but all of them in aggregate might be alarming to someone with their eyes on the horizon. Someone with disproportionate faith in the state is naturally inclined to disregard these sorts of events as a cognitive bias, while someone with little faith in the state might take these signs to mean they should buy a few more boxes of ammunition.

[G M]

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060575609

'Most dangerous' hackers targeting U.S. utilities — report

Blake Sobczak, E&E News reporter Energywire: Friday, June 14, 2019
electric grid substation. Photo credit: DOE/Flickr

A North American Electric Reliability Corp. report finds that a notorious hacking group has engaged in "reconnaissance" activities directed at U.S. electric utilities since late last year. An electrical substation is pictured. DOE/Flickr

Some of the world's most dangerous hackers have zeroed in on the U.S. power sector in recent months, according to a nonpublic alert issued by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. this spring and new research.

The grid regulator sounded the alarm on March 1 with the industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos Inc. over a notorious hacking group known as "Xenotime" in the report. Xenotime has been spotted hitting U.S. electric utilities with "reconnaissance and potential initial access operations" since late last year, the alert said.

The hacking group, infamous for infecting the safety systems of a Saudi petrochemical plant with highly specialized, life-threatening malware two years ago, isn't known to have broken through to the sensitive controls of U.S. power plants or substations.

The fact that the attackers behind the "Triton" malware can switch gears from hacking oil companies to electric utilities is significant, experts say, given the group's sophistication and its suspected ties to Russian intelligence agencies (Energywire, March 7).

"Xenotime remains the most dangerous cyberthreat in the world, with the capability and intent to kill people," said Sergio Caltagirone, vice president of threat intelligence at Dragos. "We've been very proactive at working with hundreds of electric utilities, preparing them with intelligence and defensive recommendations to best defend the U.S. electric grid against an attack from an adversary of this caliber."

Dragos reported last year that Xenotime had expanded the scope of its malicious operations to include U.S. targets, although the firm did not specify which sectors came into the hackers' crosshairs.

Today, the company issued a blog post detailing Xenotime's activity dating back to 2017. After hackers "successfully compromised several oil and gas environments," Xenotime has demonstrated "consistent, direct interest in electric utility operations" spanning North America to the Asia-Pacific region, Dragos said, citing work with unidentified clients. Dragos added that Xenotime remains interested in oil and gas targets, calling the group's foray into a new industry "emblematic of an increasingly hostile industrial threat landscape."

While there's not evidence "at this time" that Xenotime is capable of executing a prolonged attack on utility operations, the hackers' latest efforts are "cause for definite concern," the Dragos post said.

FireEye Inc., which responded to the 2017 Triton infection at the Petro Rabigh petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia, warned earlier this year that the same hackers had claimed at least one new "critical infrastructure" victim (Energywire, April 10). FireEye's report did not clarify whether the latest target saw its safety systems taken offline with Triton malware, which was tailor-made to override the Tricon line of Schneider Electric SE emergency shutdown equipment.

By disabling Tricon systems, the Xenotime hackers cut away a vital safety net from the Petro Rabigh complex, exposing workers there to potential explosions or chemical poisoning if the plant drifted outside normal operating conditions.

U.S. electric utilities have many of the same Schneider Electric safety devices installed at generating plants and some large electric substations, although the Tricon line is more commonly found in the oil, gas and chemicals industries.

The power sector isn't taking chances, and NERC is pushing to divert more resources into the fight against hackers.

The nonprofit grid overseer is seeking millions of dollars in new funding for its Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), a hub for getting the word out about the latest threats and weaknesses in the grid.

NERC's draft 2020 budget would set aside nearly $31 million for the E-ISAC — a 13% increase from this year — even as it trims spending outside the center.

The boost is part of a long-term strategy to upgrade the E-ISAC into a "world-class intelligence" nerve center for the power sector, according to NERC budget documents.

'They might not be hiding anything'
The NERC report on Xenotime occurred in the same week that Larry Bugh, chief security officer at ReliabilityFirst Corp., shared an eye-catching statistic at a grid reliability meeting in Pittsburgh: U.S. utilities haven't suffered a single cyber incident since at least 2015.

The day before Bugh's March 6 presentation, an unnamed electric utility in the western U.S. reported a cyber event that disrupted grid operations spanning Utah, Wyoming and California. The case — separate from the Xenotime alert — didn't cause blackouts, and sources later said it was likely an automated denial-of-service attack with a simple fix.

Bugh, as chairman of the Security Metrics Working Group at NERC, is looking to answer basic questions about the U.S. grid's vulnerability to such threats, be they basic DOS attacks or more sophisticated attempted intrusions like those from Xenotime.

At another meeting of NERC's Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee in Orlando, Fla., last week, participants pointed out that the power sector still lacks a comprehensive picture of its cyberdefenses.

Officials are still hoping to settle fundamental questions vexing Bugh's team: How often do physical and cybersecurity incidents strike? How many actually interrupt electricity service? Are gaps in utilities' digital defenses growing wider?

"My guess is that NERC and E-ISAC don't have the answers in hand," said Rebecca Slayton, an associate professor at Cornell University who has studied NERC's security strategies in the past. "The other question is, do the utilities even know? They might not be hiding anything and just don't know what's going on in their networks."

NERC, as the federally designated Electric Reliability Organization, sets and enforces physical and cybersecurity rules for large utilities to follow. It has already handed down record-breaking penalties this year for security violations at several major power companies as new critical infrastructure protection standards take effect (Energywire, June 3).

Officials at the E-ISAC, meanwhile, are betting that additional outreach and round-the-clock staffing can entice utilities into sharing more data on cyberthreats barraging their systems. The E-ISAC pledges to keep information fed through its private portal well away from auditors at NERC's regional divisions or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has final say on any fines.

The dual approach has had NERC firing on all grid security cylinders in recent months — ramping up cybersecurity penalties while staffing up the E-ISAC.

NERC is also pursuing ways to extend its view beyond the bulk power grid through the "Neighborhood Keeper" project with Dragos.

That research and development effort, partly funded through the Department of Energy, would offer small power companies the chance to install Dragos' cyberdefense products in exchange for an anonymized stream of data from their systems. Smaller distribution utilities fall outside NERC's purview and don't typically need to share any details on hacking incidents (Energywire, Oct. 2, 2018).

"We are excited about the Neighborhood Keeper prospects, but it's too early to have a good sense of the actual insights," NERC spokeswoman Kimberly Mielcarek said in an emailed statement.

Near hits and misses
NERC is also widening the scope of cybersecurity data it collects from utilities that fall subject to its authority.

After many years of radio silence from big utilities, FERC recently ordered NERC to make changes, concluding that "the current reporting threshold may understate the true scope of cyber-related threats facing the Bulk-Power System" (Energywire, July 20, 2018).

Even as grid specialists in the halls of FERC and NERC's headquarters in Atlanta seek cybersecurity information, intelligence officials claim to have a handle on the extent of the danger.

Dan Coats, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said earlier this year that "Russia has the ability to execute cyber attacks in the United States that generate localized, temporary disruptive effects on critical infrastructure — such as disrupting an electrical distribution network for at least a few hours."

He cited a pair of cyberattacks on Ukraine's power grid, in 2015 and again in 2016, that each left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in the dark for several hours midwinter.

No similarly destructive grid cyberattacks have been seen before or since.

But last month, Chris Inglis, former deputy director of the National Security Agency, said Russian hackers are "managing 200,000 implants in U.S. critical infrastructure" — a claim that turned heads at last week's grid reliability meeting in Orlando (Energywire, May 22).

"If this is real, why hasn't there been a directive to do something about it?" noted Bryan Owen, cybersecurity manager at technology vendor OSIsoft, who attended the Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee meeting.

Owen said that utilities' efforts to gather data on the cyberthreat "still feel modest" when compared with available metrics for safety incidents. He suggested expanding the scope of metrics to account for cyber "near misses" — not unlike the March 5 incident that didn't actually lead to a blackout.

"Ideally, we would be proactive enough that we don't have to have a lot of outages to improve," he said.

Twitter: @BlakeSobczak Email: bsobczak@eenews.net

[DougMacG]

From Pol-Econ (virus):

DM: Yet I would think home is where you want to be in a crisis.

G M:  It depends where home is. Also, things happen in the middle of crisis times, like fires or natural disasters.
-----------------------------------

That's right, part of the prepping is for home to be the safe place, but with fire or ? maybe it isn't.
-----------------------------------

First you have to realize your restrictions.  Meaning you cannot pack your entire house up if you need to leave. So, keeping the list simple and executable is important.

I contacted my home owners insurance carrier and bumped up my coverage.  The thought was that if I had to leave and upon my return my home was burned down what is the worth of everything I would need to replace.
A check list – I started my prep with a check list of items I have on hand, items I need to buy and where those items are located.  This will help if you need to leave quickly.
Exit strategy – If I have to leave where am I going?  I have a pre-determined location where I can meet up with others.  Simple rule Safety in numbers…
Food and Water, non-perishable food items and plenty of water.  I didn’t mess around with water bottles rather I purchased the big water cooler style bottles of water.  Everyone is buying cases of water and these jugs are left unpurchased
Clothing- no need to pack all your cloths grab functional clothing, not clothing for fashion. Durable shoes, jackets socks and underwear
Personal Hygiene products – enough for a long period of time how long is up to you
Medications, pain killers, vitamins
Flashlights, with spare batteries
Pocket knives preferably utility tool such as a Leatherman
Refillable water bottles
Medical kits, gauze alcohol, bandages, tourniquets, band-aids, Neosporin
Lighters and candles.  Candles should be in containers so when burned the melted wax is contained. Candles are fore light not for fragrance.
Pet food, collars, leashes if you have pets.
Trash bags, zip locks bags
Fuel Cans for vehicle gas, filled
Sleeping bags, blankets and pillows
Towels, hand and bathing
Plastic cups, bowls, plates, forks, knives, spoons
Pot, Pan and minimal cooking utensils
Paper products – Paper towels, toilet paper, wet wipes
Soap – dish soap and laundry soap
Physical Cash – minimum of $100
Charging cords for your devices
Backpacks
Spare reading glasses or prescription glasses
Personal items, laptops, paperwork, jewelry etc.
Optional items if you can, camping stove with propane, generator, ice chest
Lastly guns and ammo and personal protective kit.  Some may see this as controversial however if you are put in the worst-case scenario how else to you expect to protect yourself and your family?

Once you have packed what you can, stage it for easy access.  This list is by no means everything you could consider however I believe it is realistic and executable by anyone.

People are smart, mobs of people are dumb.

Yes!

Also recommended:  a vehicle - if the government still lets you have one.  In the gas crisis days of the 70s, my parents who liked to ski in the mountains had a second gas tank installed on their van.  With today's possible fuel efficiency, you could drive a thousand miles without having to stop and fill if you did that.  Our family also had a plan long before cell phones that in an emergency, when you can't communicate and have to evacuate, meet 'up at the lake'. 
-----------------------------
from G M's post:  "I have a pre-determined location where I can meet up with others.  Simple rule Safety in numbers"

Can we all agree that in a national emergency we all meet at G M's place.  Let me know if you want me to bring anything.   )

[Crafty_Dog]

Added to my supply of gas cans yesterday.

=========================================

   
    Quarantine and the Supply Chain
By: George Friedman

The global medical community appears to have devised a strategy for mitigating the coronavirus that depends largely on quarantine, or limiting contact among the infected and potentially infected, thereby limiting the virus’ spread. No one expects this strategy to eliminate the virus, of course. The hope is to keep it at bay long enough for it to fade away on its own or, as many experts believe, die in the more hostile conditions of warmer weather. In the meantime, it’s possible that scientists will develop more effective treatment for the disease it causes.

This is all speculative. What we know for sure is that the world’s governments are kicking the can down the road, hoping that later is better than now. It’s not an irrational plan, but it does come with economic costs, not the least of which involve supply chains. What we need to survive must travel from where it’s made to our homes, and every step along the chain is at risk of breaking down.

For our purposes, there are three indispensable supply chains: food, pharmaceuticals and energy. The need for food is obvious. The inability to obtain pharmaceuticals for pre-existing medical conditions could kill more people than the coronavirus itself. Electricity is essential to refrigerate foods and possibly pharmaceuticals, allow information to flow, and drive facilities needed for the supply chain. Gasoline must be delivered if the trucks that distribute food and pharmaceuticals are to run. There are undoubted other supply chains we have missed, but these are the essentials to get us through until the weather turns.
When my wife and I shop for groceries, we order online so that it is ready for pickup when we get to the store. Two weeks ago, we were able to place an order for same-day pickup. We ordered a two-week supply since we thought we’d be traveling a bit and wanted to make sure we had plenty of supplies when we returned home. (I saw this coming and my wife thought me mad. Please note I finally got one right.) Last week, however, we ordered online for some additional supplies, and there was a three-day wait. On Sunday, we tried again, and the earliest we could pick it up was in eight days. We checked with Amazon, the king of supply chains, and their wait on some basic food and household items was anywhere from five to 10 days. Some items were completely unavailable.

This means there are people who are just beginning to stock up who can’t because the initial surge in demand has overwhelmed supermarket stocks and has overloaded the supply. Warehouses undoubtedly have substantial resupply, and their sources – food packagers and the like – are also able to obtain food from producers. The food supply chain is robust, but we have seen a simple breakdown due to demand that may have some impact in the next few days.

But the problem is that the food supply chain and social distancing, not to mention quarantine, run against each other. No matter how automated it has become, it is staffed by people who deliver products to people. Warehouses still employ human workers. Truckers and loaders go from one node in the supply to the next. Stockers and cashiers touch food packaging. The list goes on. It is not that the quarantine is ineffective; it’s that it runs counter to the principles of its intent.

There is a social cost in all this too. Poor people cannot buy three weeks of food at a time. And the entire picture is complicated by the whims of workers, who may decide that they need their wages to survive or may determine it is safer to forego their jobs. The workforce will contract, possibly at all levels. These all involve the availability of workers who choose not to quarantine in spite of the risk to themselves and their families, a rational structure of demand from an economically variegated society, and the inevitable rage that builds under pressure.

The pharmaceutical industry has these problems too, plus the breakdown of the system would be disastrous. The maintenance of power plants involves numerous people, more when there is a problem. It requires the delivery of fuel along pipelines that must be maintained, and storage and production facilities. (This is to say nothing of the upkeep of water purification plants, pumping stations and all other essential services.)

My point is two-fold. First, a total quarantine is impossible, and second, the more aggressive the quarantine is, the more pressure it puts on vulnerable supply chains that sustain life. The systems require staff, and the staff cannot avoid contact with the public.

This is not to say that the quarantine is not a reasonable solution. Under the circumstances, it is the only reasonable solution. It may even be as effective with the number of essential workers breaking. But it is important to bear in mind that supply chains, no matter how robust, can break, and it takes armies of workers to maintain them. The cycle that is envisioned by the quarantine confronts the cycle that maintains the supply chain. The question is the math of the quarantine. To what degree does the workforce maintaining these and other supply chains – and their end-users – change the math. I assume that has been calculated and that it is understood that these supply chains cannot be allowed to break and to some extent will sustain the virus’ spread.   

[G M]

https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/03/you-really-have-no-idea.html

TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2020
You Really Have No Idea



This isn't a ramble. I have a number of lines of thought I've been stewing over at work all weekend, and I'll be going down each one until I'm done.
Let's begin.
           4000
          8000
        16000
        32000
        64000
      128000
      256000
      512000
    1000000
    2000000
    4000000
    8000000
  16000000
  32000000
  64000000
128000000
256000000
512000000

4000 is the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. now.
(That we know about. Reality could be 100,000 or more.)

If that original number doubles seventeen more times, the product is a number larger than the populations of the U.S. (330M), Mexico(137M), and Canada(37M), combined. IOW, it's virtually everywhere in North America at that point. (No, I'm not particularly concerned about the banana republics between Mexico and South America in this regard. They can lump it.)

What I've read is that the outbreak is doubling every 4-6 days. So somewhere between 68 and 102 days from today, the shit sandwich on this continent reaches full maturity.

If the spread of the disease is moving at that rate.
If the current voluntary measures don't halt that growth, or even slow that pace.
If it doesn't run out of people stupid enough to keep doing things to spread it.

With the above caveats:
May 22nd, to June 26th, give or take.
It crests 100M cases a week to two earlier.

Long before then, we'll have a great view of how lethal it is, and how many cases are serious. So by somewhere between mid-May and Mid-June, we'll either have metric f**ktons of people requiring hospitalization, and dead, or not. How much better or worse it is then will be a foolproof look at whether this is a nothingburger, or Spanish Flu. Oh, and if there are really 100,000 cases now, we get there a full month earlier.

Now maybe you can figure out why POTUS said this will last through July or August, at minimum.

And remember, the 85% (or more, or less) of all infected people who have symptoms ranging from none, to moderate flu, aren't the problem. They never were. They'll be just fine.

It's the hordes dying in droves, and crashing the entire U.S. medical system that could put a kink in this country that'll last for decades. And crashing the stock market. And everyone going broke. And crashing the economy even after this passes. And so on. And so on. And so on.

That's 5 1/2 months from now.
How much food do you have?
How much cash on hand do you have?
How much of each of those does Gilligan's family have, and how far are they from you?
So, how much ammo do you have??

That little thought exercise should concentrate your minds wonderfully.

----------

Now, a reminder about some other numbers.
900,000 staffed  hospital beds.
93,000 staffed ICU beds.
60,000 ventilators.
1,000,000 medical doctors.
2,800,000 registered nurses.
106,000 respiratory therapists.
That is the army you're gong to war with, in this pandemic.

And when I say staffed beds, I don't just mean doctors, nurses, and RTs. I also mean D.Os, PAs, EMTs, CNAs, pharmacists, radiology techs, facilities engineers, clean-up crew, supply workers, registration clerks, administration people, IT geeks, and hundreds of other clerks and jerks, without whose constant efforts and hard work, plus medical supplies in small mountains every single day, Dr. Hero and Nurse Awesome are just a couple of people in funny pajamas, and with about as much lifesaving ability on their own as there is actual magical ability in Rupert Grint and Matthew Lewis.

If it was just beds we needed, we could take all the surplus army cots from the 2M guys RIFFed from Uncle Sam in the 1990s, unfold them, and Presto!, have another 2M spots to dump patients. It doesn't work like that.

I bring this up because if "only" 10% of Kung Flu victims require a hospital bed, because they're really that sick, then long about the time we hit 16,000,000 victims, in (44 to 66 days, so let's average it to) 55 days, we have more patients than we have beds for them. At that point, we're Italy. Say about May the 12th or so. (We may also have up to 480,000 dead, which if it happens would have crushed every ICU in the country 5 times over long before that point.)

We've covered this before, but it bears keeping in mind. Keep your thumb in this spot, as we move along.

----------

This weekend, all considered, from purely a Kung Flu cases standpoint, was just ducky.
We had maybe half a dozen to ten "rule-outs" (meaning "maybe it is, maybe it isn't; look for other things that rule out Kung Flu. Like actual influenza flu.) Given the abysmally slow return time, I believe at least one was positive for Kung Flu.
"Ten patients? Is that all?!? Aesop is fulla sh*t! This is a big conjob nothingburger!" - every two-digit IQ soopergenius who ever read a word I wrote on this topic.
And herewith, we digress for a bit.

Scenario One: You're in the military. In a combat zone. The enemy is known to have chemical weapons. One day, a shell whistles over from the enemy side of things, and goes off with a less than enthusiastic bang. Then another, and another. You see a hazy white cloud forming at each impact site, coalescing into a large white cloud, now drifting lazily towards your position.

Do you
a) send the company dumbass Gilligan over there to have a sniff for you, and report back
b) send the whole company of men over, and see what happens
c) put Gilligan in temporary command, and have him lead the whole company over there
d) Yell "GAS! GAS! GAS!", while clanging metal-on-metal, and then rapidly don your MOPP gear and gas mask, before the cloud blows into your position, and prepare to treat anyone nearby who was slower on the uptake.

Scenario Two: You're working in a hospital. An ambulance arrives, and unloads a patient spurting blood everywhere, who tells you he just arrived from the Congo, where he runs an HIV and Ebola Survivors Clinic, and tripped on the jetway and cut his leg open.

Do you
a) run over and apply direct pressure with your bare hands, while fountaining blood cascades into your eyes, nose, and mouth, and lick yourself clean afterwards
b) yell at all your other co-workers to join you in performing "a"
c) Both "a" and "b"
d) put on appropriate gown, gloves, and mask with splatter shield, and apply an emergency tourniquet

In case you were wondering, the correct answer to both scenarios is "d".
You always assume the worst, from common sense, and institutional policy, and over-prepare, so you can deal with it easily if it turns out to be less-than.
You don't grab your .22 to go take on that African Cape Buffalo, and then find out you needed a bit more to get it done. Unless you're a farking moron.
I told you that story so I could tell you this one:

----------

Some days back, I stated that I didn't think we'd bring Kung Flu patients into the hospital, but instead, triage them in tents outside, then send the ones meeting criteria to some FEMA-set-up Kung Flu Treatment Center, staffed as possible, and serviced by dedicated Hazmat 9-1-1 ambulances, whisking members of the community there as appropriate, in full protective gear, 24/7/365.

Because, as I argued with flawless logic, to do otherwise would be to
a) risk our entire healthcare system being overwhelmed and destroyed, a la Italy, and
b) make every other medical emergency impossible to deal with, thus doubling casualties from every other treatable and preventable cause of death, from heart attacks and strokes to appendicitis, because the entirety of any and every hospital would be filled with Kung Flu-infected plague petri dishes, in every nook and cranny.

Turns out, TPTB, top to bottom, make the Italians look like Leonardo da Vinci.

1) We're not putting tents up everywhere.
2) We're not segregating people out of the hospital.
3) We'll do a half-assed triage assessment outside the building somewhere (fill in the blank where___________)
4) Using screening criteria overtaken by reality a month ago, because the CDC, no matter how asinine, is always the CDC
4a) to wit, asking about foreign travel, even though homegrown community-acquired cases outstrip foreign travel candidates, and have for two weeks
4b) ask about exposure to known Kung Flu patients, even though the CDC and local public health  departments refused to test for Kung Flu until four days ago, in most cases, (due to jackassery, fuckwittery, and a dearth of functional kits for two months) thus insuring via Catch-22, that if you never test for King Flu, nobody anyone was in contact with ever officially has Kung Flu
5) then bring the infected into an appropriate sealed negative airflow room
5a) which cleverly has no patient monitoring equipment
5b) will not allow you to get portable chest x-ray equipment into the room with the patient with respiratory problems (which, cleverly, no one thought about prior to then)
5c) which would contaminate said portable x-ray equipment every time you got it into the quarantine room
5d) which would require an extensive, nigh impossible decontamination of said X-ray equipment for each and every subsequent patient
5e) thus leading to shooting x-rays outside the building, or in other places that probably violate 27 hospital safety policies, local health and safety codes, and probably eleventy Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations regarding radiological safety of patients, staff, and bystanders, in a slow-rolling Chernobyl sort of way
5f) and taking them to CT scanners which are then contaminated, and failing to do a full terminal clean of said rooms and equipment each and every time, which would take them offline for hours each shift, and necessitate closing the hospital to ambulance traffic, so why bother cleaning?
6)unless you're fresh out of negative airflow rooms, in which case you
7) put them into open rooms with no protection or containment
thus insuring that all staff members and other patients are exposed over and over again
9) to cases which will not be tested for Kung Flu unless they're first proven negative for the flu
10) Or not
11) All such "policies" being rather more like the Pirates Code ("just guidelines, really"), purely at the whimsy and caprice of whatever doctor(s), charge nurses, or cranky old bat nurse has phone duty that day at the Public Health office, and their personal and capricious interpretation of the current (of four or five or six, so far) CDC guidelines
12) which apparently are changed every hour, if not more frequently
13) while the managers, and senior management, who should be living in the same shoes and underpants 24/7/365 until they sort this shit out, weekend or no, but whom are instead nowhere to be seen, heard from, or in any wise directly involved, until the total colossal clusterfuck falls over from its own weight seven or eight times over, between Friday afternoon and the middle of the following week.
14) while staff and patients having to deal with the results of people with Acute-on-Chronic Head-Up-The-Ass-Syndrome are repeatedly subjected to potential pandemic exposure, leading to sickness, preventative quarantine, lawsuits, and death
15) as the Low IQ staff members, who still think this is no big deal, continue to half-ass every bit of their response, 24/7/365, because half of them were below the upper/lower cut in their graduating classes as well.

THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE GETTING.
The CDC (as per usual, going back years decades) has no f**king idea that it doesn't even know what it doesn't even know, including how to find its own ass with both hands, a map, a compass, and a rearview mirror.
ManageManglement has no idea the CDC can't find its own ass either, and is looking for their own as well.
Supervisory staff puts on its Lemming Suicide Squad Crash Helmet and blinders, and announces that the Light Brigade will smartly charge right over the cliff.
Grunt-level staff, doctors, nurses, ancillary members, etc. will continue to work until
a) they can't take the bullshit
b) they get sick
c) they realize their own family's safety trumps a paycheck.

Instead of learning from Italy's mistakes, and trying to save people and the overall healthcare system, we're going to keep on half-assing this until we're in it over our heads, and then drown. Instead of making the hard call early, and working the kinks out now, when it would have been easy, when it's five patients a week, we'll wait until it's 500 patients an hour, and then crash and burn in a glorious orgy of stupidity.

I expect people to hit the wall.
This is all new to everyone.
There hasn't been a pandemic like this in 100 years.
BUT I ALSO EXPECTED THEM NOT TO BE SO GODDAMN STUPID AFTER THEY HIT THE WALL AS TO NOT RUN HEADFIRST INTO IT TEN OR TWENTY MORE TIMES, IN RAPID SUCCESSION, SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY CAN.

That last expectation was misguided, being most clearly irrational hubris overcoming a solid and well-founded pessimism about people in general, the universality of the Peter Principle, and the inevitability of people, left to their own devices, shooting themselves in the feet until they run out of feet, or ammunition. And then, reloading.



Having said (and witnessed, firsthand) all of the above, and after understating it by at least half (you really have NO idea) there's only one way to deal with this, for me:



I mean that last, most sincerely. We're all going to go through this. Harden the fuck up.
Take care of yourselves.
Take care of your families.
Take care of your friends.
Take care of Your People.

No one is coming to save you.
Not me.
Not the government.
Not. Any. One.


























Everything is Your Responsibility.
Deal With your Shit.
Get It Done.
YOYO = You're On Your Own

Best Wishes. Really.

And if, watching the economy do a SMOD impact into your life, and the entire nation go onto a (mostly voluntary) full lockdown quarantine, you still think this is just a hype and a nothing burger, I can't help you. If you're right, I don't need to; and if I'm right, no one will miss you.

[ccp]

I was calculating a doubling every 6 d and got about 2.5 to 3.5 months
hoping we can contain the spread to some degree

[Crafty_Dog]

That grim assessment article is seriously scary GM.  You have me looking like a Jewish Don King 

[G M]

That grim assessment article is seriously scary GM.  You have me looking like a Jewish Don King 

In my area, reports of people physically fighting over the last loaf of bread in a grocery store today. Things haven't even gotten bad yet.

[G M]

https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/live/coronavirus-covid19-philadelphia-pennsylvania-new-jersey-confirmed-case-updates-news-20200317.html

Lawless.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.04.20031120v3

[ccp]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/don-king-waves-israeli-flag-at-trump-event/

[Crafty_Dog]

I met him the night before the Douglas-Holyfield heavyweight title fight (year?) and actually got to read his hand.  Remarkably short headline, all three of the major lines of his hand were clear and deep IIRC.

[DougMacG]

Regarding prepping right now, I was asked today about cash.

What say G M, others?

I don't see any reason in this crisis to go crazy on cash.  Bank lobbies will close.  Retailers are putting a squeeze on cash back transactions.  But I don't see why drive through tellers will close or ATMs and they already have limits on how much paper money you can take at a time or in a day, as do banks with a higher limit at the teller window,

So little of what we do today requires cash.  I buy a lot of used appliances and building materials and sometimes labor with cash.  Young people barely know what cash is.  They know miles or credit card rewards.  Yes, data lines and computers could go down, but why?  I'm more worried about cash being banned, not accepted for the germs.  Do you really want change from your drive through fast food server? 

If cash, then small bills or a variety of bills.  $100s are hard to get broken and large amounts are hard to count if smaller than $100.  Large amounts create a security problem.  Amounts over $10,000 get tracked by the IRS.

That said, why not take your daily cash limit from the ATM ($300?) for a while up to your comfort level limit.

[G M]

I recommend keeping the minimum of several hundred dollars at the minimum on your person (Not all together) and at least a month's worth of cash at home.

Regarding prepping right now, I was asked today about cash.

What say G M, others?

I don't see any reason in this crisis to go crazy on cash.  Bank lobbies will close.  Retailers are putting a squeeze on cash back transactions.  But I don't see why drive through tellers will close or ATMs and they already have limits on how much paper money you can take at a time or in a day, as do banks with a higher limit at the teller window,

So little of what we do today requires cash.  I buy a lot of used appliances and building materials and sometimes labor with cash.  Young people barely know what cash is.  They know miles or credit card rewards.  Yes, data lines and computers could go down, but why?  I'm more worried about cash being banned, not accepted for the germs.  Do you really want change from your drive through fast food server? 

If cash, then small bills or a variety of bills.  $100s are hard to get broken and large amounts are hard to count if smaller than $100.  Large amounts create a security problem.  Amounts over $10,000 get tracked by the IRS.

That said, why not take your daily cash limit from the ATM ($300?) for a while up to your comfort level limit.

[ccp]

kind of surprised gold and silver are down

a buy?

[G M]

kind of surprised gold and silver are down

a buy?

I would buy junk silver and very small gold and silver coins with cash from a small local business that verifies the coins are real.

[Crafty_Dog]

Ammo is a better currency for serious times , , ,

[G M]

Ammo is a better currency for serious times , , ,

Yes.


Guns, ammo and the training to use them. Otherwise you are just buying things for the guys with prison tats and machetes that will be kicking in your doors.

[DougMacG]

I'm not on the doom side of this, but still smart to prepare for the worst.

Virus is the first kick in the gut and second and third waves etc are a part of it.  The deeper trouble starts with the second kick.  I think it was Peggy Noonan who wrote, think grid, grid, grid.

My experience with a gas (from the gas station) generator is that I could run a pump or a circular saw for about an hour and need to refill it.  Then if the grid is down, the stations stop selling gas.  Worthless for long term needs planning. 

Where I live, I believe a natural gas generator would be the key.  Like everything else, you need to buy and install before you need it, like in summer before you need it in winter.

If you don't have NG piped to you, then a giant propane tank might help, if it's full.

[Crafty_Dog]

Yes.

These thoughts are very much in mind with the probability of moving out of CA to NC this year on the radar screen.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://nypost.com/2020/03/19/we-didnt-have-to-have-ventilator-shortage-leaders-chose-not-to-prep-for-pandemic/?utm_source=facebook_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site+buttons&utm_campaign=site+buttons

[DougMacG]

Yes.

These thoughts are very much in mind with the probability of moving out of CA to NC this year on the radar screen.

Wow.  Almost breaking news here...

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2020-03-30/hedgelesshorsemans-day-late-and-dollar-short-fun-filled-survival-activities-passing

[G M]

Long term food. Buy a lot!

Don't say you weren't warned.

[Crafty_Dog]

We have had ours for about a year now.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://jennifermargulis.net/glyphosate-and-covid-19-connection/

[G M]

https://jennifermargulis.net/glyphosate-and-covid-19-connection/

The link appears deader than a Chinese whistleblower.

[Crafty_Dog]

That is very witty, but

1) it is working for me; and

2) my error putting it in this thread-- I just posted it in the Epidemic thread.

[G M]

That is very witty, but

1) it is working for me; and

2) my error putting it in this thread-- I just posted it in the Epidemic thread.

Ok, now it's working.

[G M]

Long term food. Buy a lot!

Don't say you weren't warned.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8212777/Farmers-dump-5-milk-plow-fresh-vegetables-soil-coronavirus.html

[G M]

Long term food. Buy a lot!

Don't say you weren't warned.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8212777/Farmers-dump-5-milk-plow-fresh-vegetables-soil-coronavirus.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/perilously-close-meat-shortfalls-worlds-largest-pork-producer-shutters-key-factory-after

[Crafty_Dog]

Bought more meat today-- buffalo and lamb!

[DougMacG]

Surprised to Peggy Noonan and our G M making the same point:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-is-the-epicenter-of-the-world-11585869852

The hidden gift in this pandemic is that this isn’t the most terrible one, the next one or some other one down the road is. This is the one where we learn how to handle that coming pandemic. We are well into the age of global contagions but this is the first time we fully noticed, stopped short, actually reordered our country to fight it.

This is when we learn what worked, what decision made it better or worse, what stockpiles are needed, what can be warehoused, where research dollars must be targeted.

We’re on a shakedown cruise. Knowledge of how to handle a coming, more difficult pandemic is being gained now, by all of us.
---------------------------------------------------
A $1200 check in 2020 doesn't begin to buy what $11 could buy in 2019, a $10 N95 mask and a $1 bottle of hand sanitizer. 
https://www.homedepot.com/b/Safety-Equipment-Respirator-Masks/N95/N-5yc1vZc25kZ1z195hh

[G M]

https://www.offgridweb.com/survival/your-moneys-no-good-here-surviving-an-economic-collapse/

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/cracking-americas-food-supply-chain-serious-problem

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.kadn.com/content/news/New-Law-Requires-Portable-Gas-Containers-to-Add-Devices-to-Protect-Against-Explosions-573513261.html

and for those who find the new nozzles irritating, here are some possible solutions:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=gas+can+nozzles&ref=nb_sb_noss

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyLMwzDR4qY&feature=emb_logo

[ccp]

sounds like environmental terrorism to me

maybe not  Russian

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/06/01/cyberattack-on-jbs-n2590301

if MSM says Russian it likely is not

[DougMacG]

https://modernsurvivalblog.com/survival-kit/winter-preps-to-keep-in-your-car/

I give the credited for noticing that your emergency water supply freezes; must bring fresh every day, which I do.

Add to their point on carbon monoxide danger, PUT A CO DETECTOR IN YOUR CAR for that time you will leave your car running in winter.  What do they cost, $20-30 and save your life in an emergency situation.

I would add that the hybrid vehicles don't have to run constantly to maintain the inside the car temp; most will turn the car off and on as needed.

[G M]

https://traveljohn.com/

I can strongly recommend the above product.

https://modernsurvivalblog.com/survival-kit/winter-preps-to-keep-in-your-car/

I give the credited for noticing that your emergency water supply freezes; must bring fresh every day, which I do.

Add to their point on carbon monoxide danger, PUT A CO DETECTOR IN YOUR CAR for that time you will leave your car running in winter.  What do they cost, $20-30 and save your life in an emergency situation.

I would add that the hybrid vehicles don't have to run constantly to maintain the inside the car temp; most will turn the car off and on as needed.

[Crafty_Dog]

Drove 14 hours yesterday getting back from visiting my mom in upstate NY so I am not particularly crisp today , , ,
===================
Working from memory, the blackout hit around 2100.

All traffic lights, all stores, supermarkets, gas stations etc were 100% out.

Our first concern was not losing all the food in our two large refrigerators/freezers-- both of which are packed to the brim.  We did not open either one at all so as to maintain temp!  In the morning I ventured out and was blessed to discover that Harris Teeter had a generator and was up and running at near full capacity.   Huge line at its Starbucks haha.   Plan was to buy ice but good news!  They had dry ice so I bought several bags. With this our immediate concern for the refrigerated food was solved.

Second step was to get our generator up and running.

We had bought a tri-fuel Firman Power T07573 at Costco many months ago ($850, Cindy says now selling for $1400?) 
7500 Running Watts

We had been trying for a few weeks to get someone to hook it up to propane (we have several spare tanks) but in the absence thereof got in running on gasoline.  Started very easily. 

Had 22.5 gallons of gasoline on hand, but being unsure of our ability to refill (nearest functioning gas station was in the next county and there were many others from Moore County so sustained availability of gasoline was unclear) so for the first two days we just ran it during the day.  At that point a gas station in the neighborhood became available so we ran 24/7. 

At first our extension cords were 16 gage but an electrical contractor friend through the 37PSR Gun Range told us we would be better with 12 gage so we bought that and with it we were able to hook up our hydroponic indoor garden and save the greens therein as well as use the light from it.

First night was very cold (28?) and the first electric heater we plugged in created a problem so lots of clothing and blankets at night.  Subsequent days and nights were much warmer.  Gas fireplace in the living room made that the place to be.  If necessary, we could have run the burners on the gas stove as well-- which is where we did our cooking.

Our electric contractor friend tells us for about $1500 we can get a permanent throw a switch type hook up to the house which will obviate the need for extension cords and given the capability of our generator we should be able to run the heat for the ground level of the house as well as the refrigerators.

A good practice run for us.

We will be getting insistent on getting a propane hook up for the generator-- if gasoline supplies had been shut down we would have been fuct into losing serious amount of food after our 22 gallons had run out.  Our understanding is that we can have a much longer running capacity with propane. We have dry food supplies for several months too but the $$$ loss of refrigeration would have been substantial.  Also, we will be having that connection with a proper electrician installed panel made.

Also, we became aware that we did not really understand how to use our walkie talkies.  Phone system did stay up and running but a phone cell tower was part of the sabotage, so this is something that needs to be thought about.

We were very pleased with the generator.  Easy to start, the flexibility of different fuel sources is a big plus, and our contractor friend tells us it can run a very practical % of our house once a proper panel connection is set up.  Small enough that two men could put it in the back of a pick up truck and take it elsewhere should that be necessary.  The two wheels mean we were able to roll it into the garage at night as an anti-theft measure.

[Crafty_Dog]

second

   Michael Yon
 

Hi @Username321,
Michael Yon just posted something!

Michael Yon @MichaelYon
Dec 14, 2022 at 8:21am
Survival and Comfort Tip: INVEST IN WOOL
14 December 2022
Texas

Wool mind-dump, sans edit

Folks often asking for survival advice. Invest in wool. Top to bottom. Not cotton. Wool. Wool is undisputed King for most things that matter.

Downside of wool is more money up front. But materials like cotton synthetics are expenses. Wool more edges toward investment.

Guaranteed some folks reading this are wearing wool from their parents or grandparents and it’s as good now as it was fifty years ago. I guarantee someone reading this has an old wool blanket over a century old that is good as new. Cotton…no chance.

I wear a pair of smart wool socks now to the point that I wonder if they ever will wear out. Quality wool socks are FAR more comfortable than cotton. Not even in same class. After you wear truly nice wool socks you look at cotton socks as if wrapping your feet in newspapers.

I sleep in a thin wool shirt and wear wool almost daily in summer and winter.

Army saying: COTTON KILLS. I was in 10th Special Forces Group. Huge amounts of cold weather training. We never took cotton to the field other than bandages. We were issued mostly synthetics, though, like Polypropylene. I’ve worn all that stuff a lot, and wool…am sticking with wool.

I’ve been to a lot of cold weather places such as walked to Mt. Everest twice, lived in Poland, and other cold places for years, and I also spend much time in jungles and deserts. GO WOOL.

100% wool. Not X% this and x% that. 100% wool. You will thank me five years from now. But you must study a bit on how to use and care for your wool. Treat your wool with respect like it’s a little sheep with you. Know how to use it…you gonna be happy. Wool blankets, socks, underwear. Get it.

We soon will begin some rough times and so if you have the right clothing you can check that off. Your quality wool is not going to fall apart like cotton. Also is flame retardant.

I called my friend Matt in Panama this morning and we were talking about wool for next Darien Gap recon. Matt said it’s raining more, and cooler now than usual. Might be due to Tonga eruption. Don’t know.

Matt mentioned an old-timer he used to spearfish with. Said the old-timer — before wetsuits — said they would use wool as their wetsuits and they stayed warm.

Interesting that pharma-scientists pretend they are masters of the universe with vaccines. They are lying or naive. So they say they can snap their fingers and make sophisticated ‘vaccines,’ but after centuries nobody can be wool. You could become fantastically rich if you could beat wool

Anyone who could make a material as cheap as cotton but with the qualities of wool could become a billionaire very quickly. They cannot even beat the simple wool made by sheep and ox but pretend they can print human organs. It’s a scam.

Beat wool and I will be impressed.

Many people think about wool as for cold only. Untrue. Wool can be very good in warm weather. Wool can be superior to cotton even in hot weather. Wool is King. Invest it in now. You will be happy. Cotton is an expense. Quality wool becomes part of the family property.

I found this random video for some comparisons. Wool has other very good qualities not mentioned here. Again, biggest downside to wool is upfront investment. Cotton and the synthetics are expenses. (Down is great, too, but that is another story).

Get wool.

https://youtu.be/RIZ_Ton-X7c

[DougMacG]

https://www.amazon.com/Preppers-Long-Term-Survival-Guide-Grid/dp/1612432735?pd_rd_w=0TLyp&content-id=amzn1.sym.bdcf3697-5086-45e8-ae4c-7b611e0ab43a&pf_rd_p=bdcf3697-5086-45e8-ae4c-7b611e0ab43a&pf_rd_r=RPEA75F6QRMXDGYZPXWH&pd_rd_wg=3jkIA&pd_rd_r=522b09bc-7838-4103-95ab-381f0e22d723&pd_rd_i=1612432735&psc=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=drhelenblog-20&linkId=0f345e8049d133660add5d9ed6e6cadb&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl