The Fiscal Cliff,...the new year bringing large tax increases,...the nation's diminished capability to produce food and feed itself,.......natural disasters and drought further degrading our economy and agricultureral capacity,.........our manufacturing base moving outside the U.S. .....and close to 50 million people, more than 20% of the population, dependant upon Government welfare checks to eat, ....and, another large segment of the population dependent upon the government for their retirement pensions. All this spells a perfect storm for a rapid descent once the economic collapse.
I have written before that hyper inflation, or worse yet, a total economic collapse will turn millions or tens of millions of people into "criminals" in short order. All of the people reading this have in some way or form are prepared to provide their own security to counter a threat from hardened predators as well as simply desperate people . It is interesting to look at what is going on in Grece from an economic as well as a social or human dynamic perspective.
I think our pending economic collapse may not be so slow as what we are seeing in Greece right now. But what is going on in Greece with the population is worth studying. The article below, written by Oliver Staley of Bloomberg news and posted on the financial post.com is interesting as it provides a personal look at the gloom from Greece's fall from grace.
Anastasia Karagaitanaki, 57, is a former model and cafe owner in Thessaloniki, Greece. After losing her business to the financial crisis, she now sleeps on a daybed next to the refrigerator in her mother’s kitchen and depends on charity for food and insulin for her diabetes.
“I feel like my life has slipped through my hands,” said Karagaitanaki, whose brother also shares the one-bedroom apartment. “I feel like I’m dead.”
Everyone here is dependent on their parents’ pensions. For thousands of Greeks like Karagaitanaki, the fabric of middle-class life is unravelling. Teachers, salaries slashed by a third, are stealing electricity. Families in once-stable neighborhoods are afraid to leave their homes because of rising street crime.
Karagaitanaki’s family can’t afford gas to heat their home this winter and will rely on electric blankets in the chilly northern Greek city. They live on the 785 euros (US $1,027) a month their mother collects monthly from their late father’s pension. Two years ago, Karagaitanaki sold her jewelry for 3,000 euros, which she gave to her two sons. Her blood sugar is rising because she can’t afford the meat and vegetables her doctor recommends and instead eats rice and beans she gets from the Greek Orthodox Church.
“We are waiting every month for my mother’s pension,” Karagaitanaki said. “If my mother dies, what can I do? Everyone here is dependent on their parents’ pensions.”
UrbanMan comments: What happens when the Greek Government can no longer pay those pensions checks?
No Money. Even as Greece reduces its deficit and accepts a European aid package that may include a 34.4 billion euro loan approved last month, conditions for Greece’s middle class are likely to worsen next year as austerity measures take a bigger bite, said George Tzogopoulos, a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy in Athens.
“I don’t think there is a single Greek citizen who believes that things will be better,” Tzogopoulos said. “There is no money for people to spend.”
UrbanMan comments: People spending money is what drives the economy. Without any money to spend manufacturing and services stop. The economy and indeed the country collapses.
Signs of Greece’s decline are everywhere in Thessaloniki, its second-largest city. Stores are closed in the fashionable shopping district downtown. Near an Yves Saint Laurent store, a man searched the trash bins for scrap metal, which he piled in the same shopping cart where his toddler daughter rode.
Outside a soup kitchen run by the Evangelical Church of Thessaloniki, men and women squabble over their place in line. Attendance at the kitchen’s twice-weekly dinners has climbed from 25 to about 140 in five years, said Antonis Sakellariou, a church elder.
Moving Away. In the once stable neighborhood of Kordelio, the unemployed and drug users gather in the parks, scaring away mothers and children, and crimes like chain snatching are on the rise. Many long-time residents have left, moving abroad or to their families’ villages, leaving behind empty houses, said Evangelia Rombou, 58, who has lived in Kordelio for 22 years.
“We feel like foreigners here,” Rombou said.
Greece’s economy has contracted every quarter for four years and one in four Greeks is jobless. Austerity measures have cut public employee salaries and benefits, reduced government services and raised taxes. Another round of cuts passed Nov. 8 raised the retirement age, reduced wages and pensions and means Greece will become the 17-nation euro region’s poorest country in two years, according to the European Commission.
For many unemployed Greeks, the vaunted European social safety net doesn’t exist. Only 17% of the 1.2 million jobless receive unemployment insurance, said Manos Matsaganis, an assistant professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business.
Poverty Line. Greece’s effective poverty rate has risen to 36% from about 20% in 2009, Matsaganis said. About 8.5% of Greeks now live in extreme poverty and can’t afford a basic basket of goods and services, he said.
The crisis is shredding the middle class, which is feeling the brunt of public-sector salary reductions and private job losses while paying higher taxes, said Elias Papaioannou, an associate professor of economics at London Business School.
Papaioannou, an Athens native who considered a career in Greece and now has no plans to return, compares the situation with the German occupation of Greece during the Second World War, when hyperinflation wiped out the middle class.
“People are suffering massively,” he said. “To me, it’s the collapse of the state.”
Afrodity Giannakis, 52, is a teacher earning 800 euros a month, cut from 1,200 euros a month. When she refused to pay a new, 420-euro annual property tax attached to her electricity bill, her power was cut. She called friends in a neighborhood solidarity group and with the help of an electrician, she was illegally reconnected to the grid within hours.
At War. “We’re at war,” Giannakis said. “The state is against us and we’re trying to protect ourselves and our rights, as much as we can. Things are becoming ferocious.”
Karagaitanaki has bright red hair, expertly applied makeup, and dressed in a white, quilted jacket accented with a Chinese-style pendant. She was raised in a working class family in Thessaloniki and began modeling as a teenager. At 16 she was crowned “Miss Northern Greece,” she said. Runway modeling took her across Europe — to Milan, Paris and Dusseldorf, she said.
In 1978, with her then-husband, Karagaitanaki opened her cafe in downtown Thessaloniki. Based on a Viennese coffee house, the small business attracted the city’s intellectuals and artists. Her younger brother, Maximus, began working there when he was 18, and eventually her two sons joined in. She divorced in 2000.
“We did everything ourselves,” Karagaitanaki said. “We built the cafe ourselves and that’s why people loved it.”
Taxes Surge. When it opened, the cafe’s rent was 400 drachmas a month. By 2010, after Greece’s economy surged and real estate boomed, the rent had climbed to 3,000 euros a month and other expenses rose, Karagaitanaki said. Bills for taxes and utilities climbed fourfold since 2000, she said. To cover her costs, she charged more.
UrbanMan's comment: Tax increases? Where have we heard that before - like that's going to help.
“I had to raise my prices, she said. “That’s why I lost my customers.”
The final straw came when the landlord raised the rent again and demanded an additional 40,000 euros for a new, 12-year lease, she said. She closed the cafe in 2010.
“It’s like losing my life,” she said with tears in her eyes. “The cafe was my life.”
Karagaitanaki said she recently passed the cafe, now a store selling organic beauty products, and cried after seeing that a tree she had planted in front was dead.
Futile Search. Losing the cafe left the family unemployed. Her two sons, aged 32 and 22, moved to Komotini in Eastern Greece, where their father lives, to open a bar there. Karagaitanaki moved in with her 84 year-old mother in April of 2010, joining her brother.
While Karagaitanaki sleeps on her daybed, her 6-foot, 3-inch brother folds himself onto a five-foot couch in the living room each night. Living in such close quarters mean the siblings fight over using the bathroom, she said.
“It’s like being a teenager,” she said. “The only good thing about it is that we can help my mother.”
Maximus Karagaitanakis, 49, said he looks for work daily, going to the unemployment office and asking friends who work in cafes and pubs. Mostly, though, he hangs around the apartment.
“It’s very, very hard,” he said.
Even before the crisis, Greeks tended to stay at home late into adulthood and often depended on parents for support, Papaioannou said. The crisis has made middle-aged Greeks even more dependent on their elderly parents for income, which puts pressure on pensions that are being cut, he said.
Cigarettes and Coffee. Karagaitanaki spends her days cleaning her mother’s apartment and helping a friend run a downtown coffee shop. In exchange, her friend buys her cigarettes and coffee.
UrbanMan's comment: People have to have their vices, cigerettes and liquor. And coffee is also a valuabel barter item. That's why I have roughly 40 bottles of alcholo (wine and booze) and lot's of coffee stockpiled. Some of that coffee I bought at $6 a container and now it's around $10.
In a drawer in her mother’s kitchen, Karagaitanaki keeps a folder of mementos. She has magazine clippings from her modeling days, when she sauntered down the catwalk in boxy ’80s fashions, and photos from parties held at the cafe.
She also has paperwork for a court date over her failure to pay 34,000 euros in back taxes owed by her cafe. Since she has no way to pay, she said she isn’t concerned.
Karagaitanaki also lacks health insurance after falling behind on her payments. While the Greek national health service covers hospital care, there’s no free primary care.
To treat her diabetes, she goes to the Social Solidarity clinic, a free medical center staffed by doctors and nurses volunteering their time. From the clinic she gets insulin and needles, which would otherwise cost her 150 euros a month, and dental care after diabetes destroyed her teeth, she said.
Medication Donations. When the clinic in Thessaloniki’s Chinatown opened in November 2011, doctors expected to primarily serve illegal immigrants who had no other options, said Stathis Giannakopoulos, a general practitioner who volunteers one night a month. Instead, at least half the patients are Greeks who have lost their health insurance. For medicine, they depend on donations of surpluses from drugstores and individuals, he said.
“This isn’t a way to treat a country,” Giannakopoulos said. “This a way to destroy a country.”
Like many doctors in Greece, Giannakopoulos’s salary has been cut, from about 2,000 euros a month in 2009 to less than 1,500 a month now.
While doctors have told Karagaitanaki to reduce starchy foods in her diet to help her diabetes, she said she can’t.
“It’s the most expensive illness because you should eat meat, fish, chicken, everyday,” she said. “How can we afford it?”
Standing in her mother’s kitchen, Karagaitanaki carefully cradles a bandaged hand. On a rainy day last month, she slipped on leaves and sprained her wrist. When she went to the hospital, she had 10 euros her mother had given her for the day. She paid 9 euros for X-rays and bandages.
“I had 10 euros and it cost 9,” she said. “Now I have 1 euro.”
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Will The Anti-Gun Movement After School Massacre Target Preppers?
Really doesn't matter what I think as sales and prices of civilian AR's and Kalashnikov models are reportedly up in the same numbers they were when President Obama won his first election.
There is an emotional cry to "do something" about these unpredicable mass murders. That may result in further firearms restrictions, maybe high capacity magazines restrictions, certainly some type of ammunition controls , maybe taxes, maybe tracking of ammunition sales,......anybody's guess on which previously pro-firearms and pro-constitution legislators will roll over and support such measures.
But as far as legislative or executive order decisions affecting the other efforts of preppers or otherwise targeting us as some sort of state threat? I don't think so...at least not in a great degree. Then lo and behold an article comes out on the internet about "Survivalists worry ‘preppers’ will be scapegoated for Newtown shooting":
Ever since a relative of Newtown, Conn., shooter Adam Lanza suggested that his mother, Nancy Lanza, was a "survivalist" who stockpiled food and weapons, "preppers" have gone online to express concern that they may become targets of unwelcome attention.
"She prepared for the worst," Nancy Lanza's sister-in-law, Marsha Lanza, told reporters last weekend. "Last time we visited her in person, we talked about prepping—are you ready for what could happen down the line, when the economy collapses?"
Preppers, also known as survivalists, have been popularized by the National Geographic reality show "Doomsday Preppers." They range from people who believe the world will end soon to those who want to be better prepared in case a natural disaster hits.
Some preppers pursue "shelter in place" strategies, turning their homes into fortresses and stockpiling food, while others plan to flee their homes when the time comes and survive in the wilderness. Many swap tips and stories on online message boards, where discussions about Nancy Lanza and the possible blowback on preppers from her apparent connection to the community sparked debate over the weekend.
Adam Lanza, 20, is believed to have shot his mother while she slept before driving to a nearby elementary school and killing six adults and 20 children. People who knew Nancy Lanza, 52, and her son have told reporters that she took Adam to shooting ranges and legally owned five guns. It's suspected that three of the guns recovered at the scene of the crime belonged to his mother. On Sunday, the New York Post ran a cover story that seemed to lay blame for the shooting at her feet, titled "Gun-obsessed mom taught murderer son to shoot: Trained to Kill."
One leading prepper, Daisy Luther, was outraged by the cover, and wrote on her blog the Organic Prepper that the media is using the shootings to "demonize" preppers and that the tactic may be a form of "psychological warfare."
"I don’t know why Adam Lanza went on a rampage and killed 26 people last week. But I do know that it wasn’t because his mother was a homeschooling prepper who stored up food and taught him to fire a gun at a paper target," she wrote.
An anonymous poster on the conspiracy website GodlikeProductions also worried that preppers may now become "targets" to blame for the tragedy. "If I was you guys I'd keep any prepper type activities close to the vest," the poster wrote.
Others commented that preppers need to be more careful in keeping their weapons locked away. "I may be out of line (and i know you guys will let me know if i am!) but i am thinking that if i had guns in the same house with a [mentally ill] son, i would have invested in a gun safe and kept the keys on me," wrote one prepper named Peter Simcox on SurvivalistBoards.com. "A good prepper is going to secure the arms almost as a first reponsibility."
Other preppers chimed in to say that it's still unknown how Adam Lanza accessed the weapons in the first place and that they might have been locked away. A friend of the family told NBC's the "Today" show that Nancy Lanza insisted her son use weapons responsibly and taught him to do so when they went to ranges for target practice together.
"Guns require a lot of respect, and she really tried to instill that responsibility within him, and he took to it," friend Russell Hanoman said. "He loved being careful with them. He made it a source of pride."
Monday, December 17, 2012
Survival Planning: Free Topographical Maps
A sharp reader posted how to get free topo mapping files, in a comment to a previous post, so I thought I would re-post where more readers could see it.
Free Detailed Maps
There is an invaluable tool for your pre and post SHTF operations that allows you detailed and accurate mapping for your location(s). Here is a link to the U.S. Geological Survey Map Store where you can download free, detailed topographic, contour, road maps, even including satellite images.
First click on this link.
http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/usgs/maplocator/(ctype=areaDetails&xcm=r3standardpitrex_prd&carea=%24ROOT&layout=6_1_61_48&uiarea=2)/.do
Now Double-Click and Click-and-Drag to zoom in on the area you want. Once you have narrowed down to the area you want, then:
Select “O MARK POINTS:" instead of "O NAVIGATE:" on the right side of the window.
There is a Pull-Down window near the middle of the right side of the window indicating either “30 Minute and larger” or “7.5 to 15 Minute”. For most practical topographic purposes you will do better with the 7.5 to 15 Minute maps.
Click on the map in the center of an area you want to map out. The map will then refresh with a marker pointing to your spot.
Left click on the target dot of your marker. This will create a popup window showing all maps available which include the spot you selected.
Find the most recent map and click on the file size for the map rather than any other column.
This will generate a .zip file name which you can download through a “Save As” window.
Once Saved, go to the folder where you saved it.
Right click on the name of the .zip file, and select “Extract All…”.
Be sure to use the browse function to place the final map where you want it stored on your PC.
The unzipped file will be in a PDF format.
The newest maps (2010 and later) actually contain multiple layers including satellite images. If you download and install the TerraGo software (available free at the lower left corner of the map window) you can select and manage which layers you view with Adobe Reader.
Friday, December 14, 2012
US Power Grid Vulnerable to Attack, Disaster and Collapse
US Power Grid Vulnerable to Just About Everything by Jen Alic of OilPrice.com
As Washington hunts ill-defined al-Qaeda groups in the Middle East and Africa, and concerns itself with Iran’s eventual nuclear potential, it has a much more pressing problem at home: Its energy grid is vulnerable to anyone with basic weapons and know-how.
Forget about cyber warfare and highly organized terrorist attacks, a lack of basic physical security on the US power grid means that anyone with a gun—like disgruntled Michigan Militia types, for instance--could do serious damage.
For the past two months, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been tasked with creating a security strategy for the electric grid and hydrocarbon facilities through its newly created Office of Energy Infrastructure Security. So far, it’s not good news.
“There are ways that a very few number of actors with very rudimentary equipment could take down large portions of our grid,” warns FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff. This, he says, “is an equal if not greater issue” than cyber security.
FERC’s gloom-and-doom risk assessment comes on the heels of the recent declassification of a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Sciences on 14 November warned that a terrorist attack on the US power grid could wreak more damage than Hurricane Sandy. It could cause massive blackouts for weeks or months at a time. But this would only be the beginning, the Academy warns, spelling out an “end of days” scenario in which blackouts lead to widespread fear, panic and instability.
What they are hinting at is revolution—and it wouldn’t take much.
UrbanMan's comment:So what would happen if the grid went down starting widespread fear, panic and instability,....and as the article says, possible revolution?
Several immediate effects come to mind: lack of power for heating in cold winter months could potenially create tens of thousands of casualties - mostly elderly as well as create angry groups of rioters and looters, mainly youths and young adults to begin with.
The combined Army and National Guard could not control these mainly urban population centers as well as food supply depots, lines of comunciations and existing working power stations or protect the workers attempting to repair the problem. It would be a huge problem to provide power to run the plants that produce, package and ship the nations food supply. Look around your community and imagine no food for four or five days,...how about ten to fourteen days? What would your community look like?
So what is being done to mitigate risk? According to FERC, utility companies aren’t doing enough. Unfortunately, FERC does not have the power to order utilities to act in the name of protecting the country’s energy infrastructure. Security is expensive, and more than 90% of the country’s grid is privately owned and regulated by state governments. Private utilities are not likely to feel responsible for footing the bill for security, and states may not be able to afford it.
One key problem is theoretically a simple one to resolve: a lack of spare parts. According to the National Academy of Sciences, the grid is particularly vulnerable because it is spread out across hundreds of miles with key equipment not sufficiently guarded or antiquated and unable to prevent outages from cascading.
We are talking about some 170,000 miles of voltage transmission line miles fed by 2,100 high-voltage transformers delivering power to 125 million households.
"We could easily be without power across a multistate region for many weeks or months, because we don't have many spare transformers,” according to the Academy.
High-voltage transformers are vulnerable both from within and from outside the substations in which they are housed. Complicating matters, these transformers are huge and difficult to remove. They are also difficult to replace, as they are custom built primarily outside the US. So what is the solution? Perhaps, says the Academy, to design smaller portable transformers that could be used temporarily in an emergency situation.
Why was the Academy’s 2007 report only just declassified? Well, its authors were worried that it would be tantamount to providing terrorists with a detailed recipe for attacking and destabilizing America, or perhaps for starting a revolution.
The military at least is preparing to protect its own power supplies. Recently, the US Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $7 million contract for research that demonstrates the integration of electric vehicles, generators and solar arrays to supply emergency power for Fort Carson, Colorado. This is the SPIDERS (Smart Power Infrastructure Demonstration for Energy Reliability and Security), and the Army hopes it will be the answer to more efficient and secure energy.
Back in the civilian world, however, things are moving rather slowly, and the focus remains on the sexier idea of an energy-crippling cyberattack.
Last week, Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) urged House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to pass a bill—the GRID Act--which would secure the grid against cyberattacks.
"As the widespread and, in some cases, still ongoing power outages from Superstorm Sandy have shown us, our electric grid is too fragile and its disruption is too devastating for us to fail to act," Markey wrote. "Given this urgency, it is critical that the House act immediately in a bipartisan manner to ensure our electrical infrastructure is secure."
This bill was passed by the House, but has failed to gain any traction in the Senate.
FERC, of course, is all for the bill, which would give it the authority to issue orders and regulations to boost the security of the electric grid's computer systems from a cyberattack. But it’s only a small piece of the security puzzle, and FERC remains concerned that authorities are overlooking the myriad simpler threats to the electricity grid. These don’t make for the easy headlines, especially since they are not necessarily foreign in nature.
UrbanMan's comment: Survialists have to consider developing some type of power solutions. A minimum level would probably be small solar panels to charge batteries for FRS or other radios, flashlights, small lanterns, etc. Beware of some of the cheap solar panels kits. Most are made in China.
I have several small wattage ridig solar panel kits, all but one still in the box, and I will use for barter or I may rig into my Bug In location grid. Right now they are boxed in order to trade or to pack for Bug Out.
And I have some individual solar powered motion detection lights that I have installed on the sides of my house for perimeter security, and if necessary can use for lights at night inside buildings as they are portable if you install these, with wing nuts rather than lock washers and bolts.
Solutions from Science offers some higher end solar systems that are still portable. This is solidly constructed kit. Getting what is advertised. Click on Solutions from Science to get more information on this solar generator.
As Washington hunts ill-defined al-Qaeda groups in the Middle East and Africa, and concerns itself with Iran’s eventual nuclear potential, it has a much more pressing problem at home: Its energy grid is vulnerable to anyone with basic weapons and know-how.
Forget about cyber warfare and highly organized terrorist attacks, a lack of basic physical security on the US power grid means that anyone with a gun—like disgruntled Michigan Militia types, for instance--could do serious damage.
For the past two months, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been tasked with creating a security strategy for the electric grid and hydrocarbon facilities through its newly created Office of Energy Infrastructure Security. So far, it’s not good news.
“There are ways that a very few number of actors with very rudimentary equipment could take down large portions of our grid,” warns FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff. This, he says, “is an equal if not greater issue” than cyber security.
FERC’s gloom-and-doom risk assessment comes on the heels of the recent declassification of a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Sciences on 14 November warned that a terrorist attack on the US power grid could wreak more damage than Hurricane Sandy. It could cause massive blackouts for weeks or months at a time. But this would only be the beginning, the Academy warns, spelling out an “end of days” scenario in which blackouts lead to widespread fear, panic and instability.
What they are hinting at is revolution—and it wouldn’t take much.
UrbanMan's comment:So what would happen if the grid went down starting widespread fear, panic and instability,....and as the article says, possible revolution?
Several immediate effects come to mind: lack of power for heating in cold winter months could potenially create tens of thousands of casualties - mostly elderly as well as create angry groups of rioters and looters, mainly youths and young adults to begin with.
The combined Army and National Guard could not control these mainly urban population centers as well as food supply depots, lines of comunciations and existing working power stations or protect the workers attempting to repair the problem. It would be a huge problem to provide power to run the plants that produce, package and ship the nations food supply. Look around your community and imagine no food for four or five days,...how about ten to fourteen days? What would your community look like?
So what is being done to mitigate risk? According to FERC, utility companies aren’t doing enough. Unfortunately, FERC does not have the power to order utilities to act in the name of protecting the country’s energy infrastructure. Security is expensive, and more than 90% of the country’s grid is privately owned and regulated by state governments. Private utilities are not likely to feel responsible for footing the bill for security, and states may not be able to afford it.
One key problem is theoretically a simple one to resolve: a lack of spare parts. According to the National Academy of Sciences, the grid is particularly vulnerable because it is spread out across hundreds of miles with key equipment not sufficiently guarded or antiquated and unable to prevent outages from cascading.
We are talking about some 170,000 miles of voltage transmission line miles fed by 2,100 high-voltage transformers delivering power to 125 million households.
"We could easily be without power across a multistate region for many weeks or months, because we don't have many spare transformers,” according to the Academy.
High-voltage transformers are vulnerable both from within and from outside the substations in which they are housed. Complicating matters, these transformers are huge and difficult to remove. They are also difficult to replace, as they are custom built primarily outside the US. So what is the solution? Perhaps, says the Academy, to design smaller portable transformers that could be used temporarily in an emergency situation.
Why was the Academy’s 2007 report only just declassified? Well, its authors were worried that it would be tantamount to providing terrorists with a detailed recipe for attacking and destabilizing America, or perhaps for starting a revolution.
The military at least is preparing to protect its own power supplies. Recently, the US Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $7 million contract for research that demonstrates the integration of electric vehicles, generators and solar arrays to supply emergency power for Fort Carson, Colorado. This is the SPIDERS (Smart Power Infrastructure Demonstration for Energy Reliability and Security), and the Army hopes it will be the answer to more efficient and secure energy.
Back in the civilian world, however, things are moving rather slowly, and the focus remains on the sexier idea of an energy-crippling cyberattack.
Last week, Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) urged House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to pass a bill—the GRID Act--which would secure the grid against cyberattacks.
"As the widespread and, in some cases, still ongoing power outages from Superstorm Sandy have shown us, our electric grid is too fragile and its disruption is too devastating for us to fail to act," Markey wrote. "Given this urgency, it is critical that the House act immediately in a bipartisan manner to ensure our electrical infrastructure is secure."
This bill was passed by the House, but has failed to gain any traction in the Senate.
FERC, of course, is all for the bill, which would give it the authority to issue orders and regulations to boost the security of the electric grid's computer systems from a cyberattack. But it’s only a small piece of the security puzzle, and FERC remains concerned that authorities are overlooking the myriad simpler threats to the electricity grid. These don’t make for the easy headlines, especially since they are not necessarily foreign in nature.
UrbanMan's comment: Survialists have to consider developing some type of power solutions. A minimum level would probably be small solar panels to charge batteries for FRS or other radios, flashlights, small lanterns, etc. Beware of some of the cheap solar panels kits. Most are made in China.
I have several small wattage ridig solar panel kits, all but one still in the box, and I will use for barter or I may rig into my Bug In location grid. Right now they are boxed in order to trade or to pack for Bug Out.
And I have some individual solar powered motion detection lights that I have installed on the sides of my house for perimeter security, and if necessary can use for lights at night inside buildings as they are portable if you install these, with wing nuts rather than lock washers and bolts.
Solutions from Science offers some higher end solar systems that are still portable. This is solidly constructed kit. Getting what is advertised. Click on Solutions from Science to get more information on this solar generator.
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