Urban Surival Planning - New Pandemic Threat: NDM-1

A new pandemic threat has cropped up with a SuperBug originating from India that could spread around the world -- in part because of medical tourism -- and scientists say there are almost no drugs to treat it.

Researchers said on Wednesday they had found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain . U.S. health officials said on Wednesday there had been three cases so far in the United States -- all from patients who received recent medical care in India , a country where people often travel in search of affordable healthcare,….or Medical Tourism. By the way, we may see more of that as Health Care in America gets more expensive and scarcer.

NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called Carbapenems. Experts say there are no new drugs on the horizon to tackle it. "It's a specific mechanism. A gene that confers a type of resistance (to antibiotics)," Dr. Alexander Kallen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said in a telephone interview.

With more people traveling to find less costly medical treatments, particularly for procedures such as cosmetic surgery, Timothy Walsh, who led the study, said he feared the new superbug could soon spread across the globe. "At a global level, this is a real concern," Walsh, from Britain 's Cardiff University , said in telephone interview. "Because of medical tourism and international travel in general, resistance to these types of bacteria has the potential to spread around the world very, very quickly. And there is nothing in the (drug development) pipeline to tackle it."

Almost as soon as the first antibiotic penicillin was introduced in the 1940s, bacteria began to develop resistance to its effects, prompting researchers to develop many new generations of antibiotics. But their overuse and misuse have helped fuel the rise of drug-resistant "superbug" infections like methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus, or MRSA.

In a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Wednesday, Walsh's team found NDM-1 was becoming more common in Bangladesh , India , and Pakistan and was also imported back to Britain in patients returning after treatment.

" India also provides cosmetic surgery for other Europeans and Americans, and it is likely NDM-1 will spread worldwide due to the Medical Tourism," the scientists wrote in the study.

Walsh and his international team collected bacteria samples from hospital patients in two places in India , Chennai and Haryana, and from patients referred to Britain 's national reference laboratory from 2007 to 2009. They found 44 NDM-1-positive bacteria in Chennai, 26 in Haryana, 37 in Britain , and 73 in other sites in Bangladesh , India and Pakistan . Several of the British NDM-1 positive patients had traveled recently to India or Pakistan for hospital treatment, including cosmetic surgery, they said.

NDM-1-producing bacteria are resistant to many antibiotics including carbapenems, the scientists said, a class of the drugs reserved for emergency use and to treat infections caused by other multi-resistant bugs like MRSA and C-Difficile. Kallen of the CDC said the United States considered the infection a "very high priority," but said carbapenem resistance was not new in the United States . "The thing that is new is this particular mechanism," he said.

Experts cited two drugs that can stand up to carbapenem-resistant infections -- Colistin, an older antibiotic that has some toxic side effects, and Pfizer's Tygacil. For many years, antibiotic research has been a "Cinderella" sector of the pharmaceuticals industry, reflecting a mismatch between the scientific difficulty of finding treatments and the modest sales such products are likely to generate, since new drugs are typically saved only for the sickest patients.

But the increasing threat from superbugs is encouraging a rethink at the few large drug makers still hunting for new antibiotics, including Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. Anders Ekblom, global head of medicines development at AstraZeneca, whose Merrem antibiotic was the leading carbapenem, said he saw "great value" in investing in new antibiotics. "We've long recognized the growing need for new antibiotics, he said. "Bacteria are continually developing resistance to our arsenal of antibiotics and NDM-1 is just the latest example."

What does this mean to the Urban Survivor faced with possible wide spread viral outbreaks? Minimize contact with personnel outside your Survival Group. Develop safe protocols for handling or communicating with refugees as well as standard operating procedures for disinfecting people and material or equipment. Plan on a quarantine area and measures to provide water, food, shelter and warmth to personnel who have to be placed there for the general safety of the Survival Group.

Urban Survival Planning - More Economic Indicators of a Coming Collapse

Two recent economic indicators reached out of the newspaper and banged me on the head this week, indicating not only are we not on an economic recovery as President Obama promised, but we are heading for rougher times and a lot of people know it,...maybe not intellectually, but at least they know something is wrong.

Not only from the newspaper, but from a friend of mine who went to the gun show this weekend. He said he has not seen as large as crowd in memory. He told me he saw a 60 year old woman buy a folding stock Mini-14, then bought eight 30 round magazines at another table. My friend said he later saw her empty handed except for a heavy sack which he thought she put the Mini-14 rifle in the car and was buying ammunition. He had many examples of this. Some of the vendors told him they could not keep ammunition on hand.

There is a just published financial report on Americans wanting to be closer to their cash. They are cashing out Certificates of Deposits (CDs) and putting the money in bank checking and savings accounts so they can have it closer and more ready at hand.

People have pulled a reported $145.3 Billion dollars out of mutual funds in the first 8 months this year. That jives with my first and second hand information on many government employees borrowing money from their Thrift Saving Plans (TSP). I know maybe a dozen people who did that just to purchase Survival items,..solar power generators, canned dehydrated foods and Gold - Silver bullion.

A VP at a financial analysis company states "At times of uncertainty, there is a natural human tendency to stay liquid and have money easily accessible."

Certificates of Deposit have declined by $200 Billion in the first six months of this year. Savings accounts have increased by $171 Billion, but we have not seen the difference invested into consumer spending that is tracked by government and public organizations. My bet is that it is going into the untracked markets such as firearms, ammunition, survival and camping gear, and related Survival material such as power supplies, batteries, and solar panels....maybe even land purchases.

To make the economic indicators much worse is the record increase in the U.S. Poverty rate, expect to move to the 15% level when the final report is finished.

This is what the news states: "2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent. Largest increase on record and highest it has been since pre-1973 levels which spawned massive Government welfare program development and spending."

"Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis."

This is in keeping with our assertion that a very probably spark of either a gradual collapse or a dynamic collapse will be when the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" (also know as the people below the poverty level) get so big as they government cannot tax us enough nor divert spending enough to provide the basics for the people below the poverty line. This is a recipe for full blown anarchy and violence.

Get ready for it.

Urban Survival Planning - Can You Recomend the Two Best Survival Books?

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following question on a Private Message from Facebook: "Hey UrbanMan, I have been exposed to some type of Survival concepts or another for a few years now. I thought most of it was either people just wanting to live on their own or the gun nut type. Since looking at several Survival websites I have begin to think that there is something more mainstream about Survival than not. I have a family (wife, two daughters) and live in a townhouse. I'm in the insurance (underwriting) business, so I have a background in looking at and assessing risks. I'm looking at getting educated more on Survival and about all the possibilities you all are calling a potential collapse. Can you recommend one or two of the best books to read to get an idea of what Survival and Prepping are all about. I don't have much time to read, so maybe two books at the most? Oh, and thanks for your articles on Map Reading and Guns, as I find them very interesting. P.S. Actualy was drove me to start researching this was the movie, "The Road". Do you get many comments on this movie?"

Okay, fellow Urbanman. For the sake of giving some examples and entertaining you as you read through these survival books, I am going to assume that you would want to read some Survival stories based on potential scenarios as opposed to a "how to" type book.

I would have to recommend you read "Patriots", by James Wesley, Rawles,......comma before the last name? don't ask,.....and "One Second After" by William Forstchen.

Patriots is about a group of alike minded individuals and couples who envision a economic collapse and plan for it including a stocked and prepared retreat in Southern Idaho to rally at. Good lessons in this book,..good story,...and, well written.

One Second After is about a EMP attack on this country, which destroys the utilities infrastructure and plunges a small town in North Carolina into the dark ages. The benefit of this book is it is basically a "what not to do" story or otherwise a story about people who are totally unprepared. Good story though.

Read both and see which example best suits you. If you are in the insurance business, you can think of Survival Planning and Preparation, at whatever level, to be a family type insurance policy for uncertain times ahead, which we are surely looking at now.

I have short reviews on both books in my Book Review section of this page (see left hand side) as well as a book carousel at the bottom on this site with both these books as well as others.

Even small amount of Survival planning, Gear and Material acquisition and some knowledge and training would go along way in case something happened along the lines of a economic collapse, EMP attack, civil unrest leading to wide scale violence,...disease pandemic,....and other catastrophic events that would place you and your family in danger. Probably the four primary things you should think about are: Survival Firearms mainly for protection; stocking water; stocking food; and, a plan to go somewhere that is safe - perhaps you have family or friends in rural areas.

P.S. The movie, The Road, is fanciful and best serves to show people where you do not want to be, come the collapse. And don't get me wrong here. I hope that we never see a collapse, but I'm not willing to bet lives on it.

Urban Survival Preparation - Civil Unrest into a Collapse

Civil Unrest into a Collapse,...or perhaps civil unrest as a result of a collapse.........

With the recent civil unrest occurring in Los Angeles after Police shot and killed a Guatemalan immigrant who was threatening them with a knife, we starting thinking about the potential for civil unrest and anarchy resulting from large scale protests and civil unrest over social issues.......and not just from the protests over perceived injustice. We must face the fact that the policies of this Country has bred a dependancy upon Government.

When the Government is no longer able to provide for people,...this change will create large groups of angry people demanding their "share". There will come a point when the government just cannot provide anymore. With the growing gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" and the elimination, or at least great reduction of the Middle Class, we will hit a point where there are a great percent of the population who think they are not getting theirs.

Add possible, nay probable, unrest and anarchist activity from radical ethic groups, such as the stated on-going strategy of militant Hispanics to implement the “Reconquista Plan” where parts of the Southwestern United States revert back to Latino control, or God Forbid - Mexican Governmental control - and we have a caldron of problems brewing. Whether it will cause a collapse or be initiated from another form of collapse remains to be seen.

In fact there is a series of books of post collapse on the Reconquista Movement, called “Domestic Enemies” by Matthew Bracken that is actually pretty good reading and I’ll probably get around to doing a book review on it sometime.

Mob mentality and behavior, spawn more Mob mentality and behavior, not necessarily to the intent where it can threaten large areas of population especially for durations longer than a few days. However, the ability to hunker down, protect yourself and your family and live for a few days to a week or so if you found yourself in an area influenced or controlled by a Mob, could be life sustaining.

Imagine if these riots went on for longer than the 4 days that it did and you found yourself forced to leave a safe and defendable position in order to procure food items. That would be dangerous, especially looking like an Anglo in a Hispanic riot or vice versa.

The lesson learned from this is to add the indicators of a riot or civil unrest into your pending collapse indicator tracking system especially if you live in or near urban areas where the lower income level of the population live as this group of people are more pre-disposed to demonstrate and/or demonstrate violenetly against all levels of government as they actually are or just feel more slighted by authorities than other groups. Concentrations of ethnic minorities are also viable subject groups from which mob’s are raised due to the same reasons.

Now to be clear here, I am offering no judgment on the validity of complaints that generate first civil un-rest, then mobs and the resultant possibility of violence. Every group’s perception is their reality. I am more concerned about the resulting dangers from mob operations than the “why”. You should be too. And then plan the "what" you are doing to do.