Are You Scared? I am!

This is an article by Bob Rinear and it hit a note with me as I can't help but have this feeling of dread. Other people that I talk to have it as well. Whether it's an investor thinking the stock market will collapse or it some parent who think there will be a great depression and he won't be able to feed his family, or it may be a parent who thinks there will be a total collapse and medicine for his diabetic son won't be available.

Whatever it is, I am heeding it as I have long ago learned to respect my gut instincts. It may be all that keeps you alive in the coming chaos.

Are you Scare? by Bob Rinear

When I talk to people that I consider to be “awake” they all tend to say the same things to me. Almost to a tee, they suggest that they feel something isn’t quite right, but they don’t know exactly what.

They feel like things are out of control, but can’t say why. They feel there’s some form of impending doom, but can’t explain what it is, or why they even feel that way. They just know things aren’t right,but for the life of them, they can’t elucidate just why they feel that way.

I understand that feeling and it is real. You know it in your mind, you almost feel it in your gut. It’s not just the rioting, it’s not just the crazy things like Jade Helm, it’s not just the soggy economy, it’s not just the loss of morals, it’s not just the mindless souls staring like zombies at their cell phones, it’s not just the insane Political Correctness, it’s not just the laws for the privileged versus the laws for the masses, it’s not just any one thing. It’s a combo platter of all of that and considerably more. In a word, many of you are “worried” and I think rightfully so. You just hide it well.

The old analogy is “whistling past the graveyard”. Popular in the 30’s, its definition is “To attempt to stay cheerful in a dire situation; to proceed with a task, ignoring an upcoming hazard, hoping for a good outcome.” I remember quite well using an example of whistling past the graveyard when I was a youngster. I was 12 years old and my neighbor Matt and I had walked to the movies to see a show. Slated to end at 9 pm, the theater was just half a mile from our house and back then kids could walk home safely in the dark.

After our movie was over, the theater announced that they were going to run a “sneak preview showing” of a brand new movie called “night of the living dead”. It was a Saturday evening and Matt and I phoned home quickly to see if we could stay and watch the “free” movie. We got the okay.

If you’re not familiar with the film, it’s about a group of folks that find refuge in a farm house after the population had been turned into flesh eating zombies. Well, it scared the Bejesus out of the both of us. On the way home, we had to take one short path through some woods, and we did our version of whistling past the graveyard by talking really loud to each other and making fun of the ghouls because they were so fake. Truth is we were scared witless and awful glad to get home.

I see a lot of whistling past the graveyard. You ask folks “hey, how are you doing” and they respond, “oh fine, thanks” but then later you find things aren’t so fine. They’re behind on their mortgage, the kids can’t find jobs, medical is eating them alive, etc etc. Every story is different, but similar. They aren’t fine in the classic sense that we all used to be. They’re whistling.

I wanted to write this to let you know, you’re not alone. If you have that feeling that things aren’t right, and you’re concerned about the future, you’re in fine company. You have every reason to feel that way because indeed there’s so many things going on that it becomes overwhelming. Let’s face it folks, the three biggest selling drugs in America are anti-depressants, anti-acids, and Erectile dysfunction medicine. That alone should give you a good insight into the stress of modern day living.

I think the key to remaining sane in this modern world is picking your battles. You can’t fight everything. If you’ve got one pet peeve chewing on you, then go after it with gusto. Maybe you can join forces with other folks bothered by the same topic, and get something done about it. But don’t try and take on all the ills, it will drive you crazy, exhaust you and make you miserable.

People often ask me why I don’t talk about such things as Ferguson or Baltimore. Why I usually don’t comment on the gay movement, or the lesser number of Christians in the past ten years. Well the fact is I have very strong opinions on such things, and many more to boot. When I see a child get expelled for chewing a pop tart into a “gun shape” don’t you think my head explodes? It most certainly does. I think the loss of common sense in America is one of the things that bothers me more than anything else. Where the hell did it go??? When I see the loss of Freedom’s we’ve experienced, it saddens me to the core.

But again, you can’t fight everything. We try our best to tell you what’s happening in global finance, who the elites are, what their angling towards and how best we can profit or protect ourselves from them. That battle alone is all consuming as far as time and energy goes. Why? Because what happens at the upper end of elitist banking will trickle down and affect virtually every aspect of your life.

From taxes, to interest rates, to employment opportunity, to wars, to politicians, to you name it. I have enough battle on my hands, that’s for sure.

I’d love to tell you it’s all going to get better, but alas, I cannot. Each day gets more bizarre than the next. The worst part is that from where I sit, most of it stems from the financial side of the story. The struggle going on globally to deal with a quadrillion in derivatives, and dozens of completely broke nations, tends to toss normality out the window in a big way. Governments can ram all sorts of things
down your throat when you’re more worried about your paycheck than keeping an eye on their criminal activity.

Just consider the abject insanity of this…on Wednesday we had the worst retail sales report since 2009. On Thursday the WSJ reported that we have just come through the worst month of economic reports since the great recession. So what did the market do Thursday? It ran to a new alltime high on the S&P. Are markets supposed to soar to new highs on economic reports this bad? No.

But in 2015 they do, because the market is broken. It’s all about Central planners, central bakers, Wall Street wizards. It’s all about selling debt to buy back stock, it’s about the Swiss National bank owning billions upon billions of US stocks.
You’re right to be confused, concerned and at times mad. The world has been turned upside down.

College costs more than my first house. Race relations are at an all time low. Despite the war on drugs and the war on poverty, we have more of both in huge supply. Civility is gone. Road rage is the norm. The police are being militarized, and scary joint exercises are being played out in 20 states.

The price of protein is out of sight, and chicken, and burger has hit yet another all time high. Seafood has become completely out of the question for tens of millions. I could go on for ages.

My point isn’t to be an “angry white guy” as I was called recently. Hell I keep collecting nicknames all the time. I’ve been Negative Nancy, an angry white guy, and that conspiracy nut Bob just in the past month. My point is simply to say to you all, it’s real. What you’re feeling is legit. Something is coming and only your imagination will limit what it could be. How do I know something’s coming?

Because we cannot keep spinning ever more out of control for ever. Something’s got to give.

I don’t know how we fix inner cities, I really don’t. I don’t know how we get politicians that don’t lie to us. I don’t know how to fix a justice system that has one set of laws for the Hollywood and rich, and another set for us peon’s. I don’t know how to get common sense back. I don’t know how to defeat political correctness. I simply have a feeling that it all has to play itself out, burn itself out.

And I think the spark that lights the fire is some form of economic reset. Something pretty big that shakes us to the core for a while and we collectively wake up and decide we’ve been going down the wrong path for too long and it’s time to rebuild. Empires that begin to lose control don’t tend to fix themselves and return to what made them great, they tend to be faced with something major that forces them to change. War, bankruptcy, revolt, etc. I think we’re on that path. And yes it hurts to say that.

So no, you’re not crazy and things are indeed strange and getting stranger. Everyone’s whistling past the graveyard. Something’s coming and it’s my job to try my best to figure out what it is, and how we can get around it. So far the only thing that makes the most sense to me is a global economic reset, and the disruptions something like that will bring. Maybe I’m wrong and imagining all this…but I don’t think so.

If you’ve been with us for any length of time, you know that the thrust of most of my articles is “what can we do about it?” It’s one thing to rant and rave about all the lunacy we see each day, but it’s something else to try and lay out real plans to deal with it. Well I tend to think that it always starts at “home”. All you can do is make your family the best it can be. That’s financially, educationally, defensively, etc. You’re not going to alter the tides of societal change. All you can do is alter
yourselves. Once your situation at home is as good as you can make it, can you then reach out and try and “fix” other things.

Let me leave you with this thought. The President is working on his pet trade agreement. So secretive is the content of that agreement, that word is if you’re in Congress and want to see it, you have to meet one on one in a basement office. You cannot take in a cell phone. You are given the pages one section at a time and must be returned after reading while you’re watched. You are then sworn to not discuss what you’ve seen. This is what passes today for our “Government for and by the people”. It’s nothing of the sort. This is Government for and of the elitist corporations and one world thinkers. You simply get in the way.

If your elected officials have to create pacts and agreements in total secrecy and then we have to “pass it to find out what’s in it” the idea of a free Republic is no more.

So you’re right to whistle past the grave yard. You’re right to have that ugly feeling in your gut.

You’re right to think that as much as you hope for the best you fear for the worst lately. In all the years I’ve been writing this, which actually started in 1994, some 21 years ago, I’ve never been as “worried” about our future as I am today. That says a lot because I’ve come through some big things in my life, from Vietnam to 9/11 to the 2008 crash.

95% of all my articles are designed to enlighten you to what we really see going on, and provide some path to profit from it, or protect yourself from it. It’s all I know how to do. Stay tuned.

Urban Man

The EMP Issue

It's no surprise to reader of UrbanSurvivalSkills.com that I am a big fan of the International Forecaster and especially Bob Rinear. This article reminds us of the potential Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) threat. This was brought home to me two days ago after a hellacious thunder storm left us without power and even the cellular system was messed up. An EMP event would make this basically permanent. So hopefully, part of your survival plan address a no warning and immediate grid outage. What are you doing to do?

The EMP Issue, by Bob Rinear, The International Forecaster, Wednesday 5 August 2015
http://the internationalforecaster.com

On Sunday I wrote a piece called “Fear Porn”, and it was the first of two articles I wanted to write for a long time, but “things” got in the way. The first article was about the concept of our entire lives now revolving around “the Internet”, and yet the net isn’t as stable as you might think. As I pointed out, your life would be massively disrupted if indeed a terrorist (foreign or domestic) did a massive hack which brought down the routers and pointers of the nets infrastructure.

Not because you couldn’t look at photo’s of your “BFF” showing you his or her breakfast, not  because you couldn’t tweet about some terribly unimportant topic…but because we are now at a point where no net…means no transactions. No credit cards, no ATM’s, no phones, no hotel reservations, no “a lot of things”. Given enough time, a nationwide Internet shut down, could very well cause social unrest, deaths, food supply problems, you name it. But the fact is, that’s just the warm up for the real issue. What if our power grid goes down?

I laid out the nightmares we saw during the NYC blackout of 1977 and the Ohio/Northeast blackout of 2004. Robberies, fires, arson, break in’s, looting, shootings, you name it. Ugly stuff, and that was just 1 and 2 day outages. What if something took the grid down for months?

Over the years I’ve looked at different situations wherein the “grid” as we call it (electrical generation and distribution) could be compromised on a wide scale. There’s several things that come to mind, such as network hacking. But the two that get the big attention are Solar burst of energy, and EMP’s. So what’s the real deal here? Can these things do what we’ve been told or not? Let’s look…

EMP stands for Electro-magnetic Pulse. An EMP is a short burst of electromagnetic energy.

Such a pulse may occur in the form of a radiated electric or magnetic field or conducted electric current depending on the source, and may be natural or man-made. Okay, so what’s the big deal?

Well, if the EMP is big enough, it will follow power lines, long cables, grounding straps, and burn up things with a power surge. Anything not “hardened’ against a massive short term burst, simply burns out. Be it computers, TV, phones, hospital equipment, power generators, high voltage lines, etc. Bad stuff.

We have been aware of the “natural” EMP’s that come from the Sun ( and even severe lightening storms) because the sun caused such a “burst” of electro-magnetism in 1859 that telegraph operators were singed around the country as sparks lit up their transmission lines.

Aurorae were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere as far south as the Caribbean; those over the Rocky Mountains were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning. People in the northeastern US could read a newspaper by theaurora's light. It was named the Carrington Event.

It was (and still is) the largest recorded geomagnetic storm. If something of that magnitude were to hit today, with the incredible amount of electronics we use each and every day, it would fry tens of millions of devices and plunge us into the dark for MONTHS. In fact, in Ontario Canada on March 13th 1989 a solar storm impacted their area. At 2 am on the 13th the Ontario grid went dark, plunging millions of folks into the dark. No power, no phones, no water pumping (electrical pumps) No Natural gas (electrical pumps) etc.

They found the fried equipment and things were up and running in about 12 hours. But think about that for a second. A solar “Coronal mass ejection” knocked out the power to millions. Yet it was “tiny” compared to the Carrinton event. So problem one with EMP’s is that they can indeed be natural, and another like the 1859 version would indeed take down huge parts of our entire countries power grid.

But we found out in 1962 just how dangerous Man made EMP’s could be. During that year, the US Government decided to test a high altitude nuclear blast. The test was named starfish and took place about a thousand miles from Hawaii on a deserted island. When the bomb went off some 250 miles up in the atmosphere, something quite strange happened. Electrical components on the Islands of Hawaii were blowing up. To quote one of the researchers….

The effects were bizarre and almost entirely unanticipated. One effect was an electromagnetic pulse, but nobody knew it was going to be anywhere nearly as large it proved to be. They had all this data and they didn’t understand very much of it, including the EMPs that had been observed and the effects produced…all kinds of electrical disturbances were seen over 1000 kilometers away in Oahu.

Since then we’ve learned that a large nuclear device that gets detonated in the upper atmosphere could easily wipe out the electrical grid, and darned near anything connected to it. Which instantly brought up the question of its use as a military weapon. In fact there’s no question at all as to whether the US and Russia have experimented with EMP as a weapon and we’re also worried about North Korea ( and some say Iran) Here’s why…

Let’s suppose some rogue nation takes an old scud missile and tips it with a nuclear bomb. They get the thing near our coast on a container ship or what have you and fire it. The next thing you know an entire area of the nation sees its grid go down, and the resulting surges and brownout’s spread through the network. It is not inconceivable that the whole country could go dark. Here is the statement from the 2008 committee on researching EMP attacks…

A single EMP attack may seriously degrade or shut down a large part of the electric power grid in the geographic area of EMP exposure effective instantaneously. There is also the possibility of functional collapse of grids beyond the exposed one, as electrical effects propagate from one region to another…Should significant parts of the electric power infrastructure be lost for any substantial period of time, the Commission believes that the consequences are likely to be catastrophic, and many people may ultimately die for lack of the basic elements necessary to sustain life in dense urban and suburban communities.

Now, depending on whom you wish to listen to, the effects of a well coordinated EMP attack on the US could last for 18 months of “dark” (no electricity) and MILLIONS dead. I could EASILY see that.

As you probably know, my biggest “big picture” scare is that we are 100% reliant on the electrical grid for EVERYTHING. We just expect it to be there because it’s “always there”. Yet what if it wasn’t? Then yes, there would be mass starvation, mass riots, bands of roaming hungry thieves. No question.

I try and keep the “wacko stuff” and the real Fear Porn out of the letters. I’m not a “shock jock” like Howard Stern who gets his listeners from being outrageous. But in this instance, I am not just trying to scare the hell out of you all, I’m trying to expose something that seems to be all-too real. Consider this…

As late as the 1940’s once you got out of town, just about every rural household had a couple chickens in the yard for fresh eggs. They usually had a hand driven well pump and a few minutes of pumping that handle would bring good clean water up from the depths. They probably had a nice veggie garden, and “mom” probably knew how to can their produce for use in the winter months.

Dad and the boys most definitely had a few small game rifles, and knew how to hunt rabbit, squirrel, and deer. They generally had a coal or wood furnace, and knew how to cook over wood instead of electricity or Natgas. Oil lamps and candles made at home were frequent. In a lot of homes in rural America 1940 if the power went down, no one noticed for half the day.

Today that very situation would be called a “prepper family”. You’d be looked upon as “one of them people”. But the fact is that for about 80% of our citizens, they have NONE of those skills or resources. A chicken coop in modern America? Horror the thought! People get run out of Home owner associations for parking a vehicle in their driveway let alone a chicken coop. A personal water well on your own property? Not today, it’s all about “city water”. Grabbing a .22 and shooting a squirrel for dinner? Perish the thought! The fact is that the typical American is absolutely and totally dependent on the “grid” for survival.

So if you ask me - Bob, what’s your two biggest fears right now? My answer would be a take down of the Electrical Grid first, and a take down of the Internet second. Now do we have any “proof” that either one is coming? Nope, not really. But sometimes you see things that make you think about it.

For example, the Military is moving a lot of its command nodes back into the depths of Cheyenne mountain, a fortified bunker complex deep beneath the granite rocks. Why? Could they be anticipating something like an EMP attack and want to make sure their command and control center is “hardened” against suck a thing? Could be.

I’d like to say I only have two fears about the big picture, but that wouldn’t be truthful. Others on my list are a global monetary reset which I totally believe is coming. A devaluation of our currency which I think is coming. I think were going to get rocked a bit over that when it happens, and frankly it has to happen. Even the wicked Central bankers know that our present system isn’t working.

So “yeah” there’s things that get my attention.

No one wants to live in fear, and I don’t either. But there’s some things that we have very little control over, that have a lot of control over our lives. Power, Internet and global finances come to mind. All 3 of them have the ability to rock our world.

Urban Man

How to Use Pool Shock to Purify Water

"I read a very interesting article from a site called Back Door Survival on a better way to purify water other than using bleach.- Urban Man"

If I were to ask how many of you store liquid bleach along with your other prepping supplies, I am certain that a good percentage of you would raise your hands.  Liquid bleach is a powerful disinfectant and sanitizer but did you know that there is something better?  Something with an almost indefinite shelf life that is inexpensive and takes almost no room to store?

That something is the chemical Calcium Hypochlorite most commonly known as Pool Shock.

I have known about Pool Shock for years but because it is not readily available in my area, I never took the time to search it out so I could stockpile some for my own emergency preps.  That has now changed and today I plan to show you how to use Pool Shock the easy way, step by step.

Why Not Bleach?

Before we start, you may be asking “why not use liquid bleach?”.  There are a few problems with liquid bleach.  It takes a lot of room to store bleach plus the usable shelf life is only six month to a year depending on storage conditions.

The folks at Clorox say this:

The active ingredient in liquid bleach, sodium hypochlorite, is very sensitive to high heat and freezing, but under normal home storage conditions, it should still perform well for nine to twelve months.

In addition to a limited shelf life, there is another problem. I have had reports from Backdoor Survival readers telling me that in their area, they can only purchase “Clorox Ultra” which is concentrated.  When I called Clorox to ask how to use concentrated bleach to purify water, they said that it was not intended to be used in that manner and why would I want to do that anyway.  Seriously, their representative actually said that.

Pool Shock – The Boilerplate

When I started doing research for this article, I visited some of the most respected survival and preparedness blogs and forums for background material.  After all, pool shock is pool shock and there must be some standards for use, right?

With just one exception, all of the sites I visited included this boilerplate from the EPA:

You can use granular calcium hypochlorite to disinfect water.

Add and dissolve one heaping teaspoon of high-test granular calcium hypochlorite (approximately ¼ ounce) for each two gallons of water, or 5 milliliters (approximately 7 grams) per 7.5 liters of water.

The mixture will produce a stock chlorine solution of approximately 500 milligrams per liter, since the calcium hypochlorite has available chlorine equal to 70 percent of its weight.

To disinfect water, add the chlorine solution in the ratio of one part of chlorine solution to each 100 parts of water to be treated. This is roughly equal to adding 1 pint (16 ounces) of stock chlorine to each 12.5 gallons of water or (approximately ½ liter to 50 liters of water) to be disinfected.

To remove any objectionable chlorine odor, aerate the disinfected water by pouring it back and forth from one clean container to another.

Have your eyes glazed over yet?  Mine have. Being an accountant, I like to deal in absolutes so what is this business about “one heaping teaspoon”?  Plus, what’s up with the references to “approximately” and “roughly”?

I decided that it was  time to do my own testing, and sure enough, each time I measured out a heaping teaspoon, I had different results; they ran the gamut from 1 1/4 teaspoons to 2 teaspoons.  This made my head hurt.

Another thing.  Over and over I read that you should use pool shock that is a minimum of 78% calcium hypochlorite with the balance being inert ingredients.  Fair enough, but there are two problems with this. First, what you find locally may be 68%, it may be 78%, or it may be something else.  I sourced mine from Amazon and it was 73% calcium hypochlorite.  Second, the EPA, makes no such recommendation or at least none that I could find. They simply say “high-test”.

Did I mention this made my head hurt?

But there is more.  I actually found a couple of sites that said to use one heaping tablespoon of Pool Shock for each two gallons of water!  You know, just because you find something on the internet does not mean it is true.

My conclusion?  The exact amount and the exact percentage does not matter as long as it is within a reasonable range and close to the EPA standard.  I do think it is important that the pool shock does not contain other additives that may or may not be safe even when highly diluted.  Other than that, however, it is my belief that the precise percentage of Calcium Hypochlorite to inert ingredients does not matter as long as it is 68% or higher.

For my own use, I settled on 1 teaspoon of pool shock per gallon of water when making up my stock chlorine solution.  Then, to disinfect water, I used 3/4 ounce of my pool shock solution to treat a gallon of water.  This makes it easy to calculate how much to use, regardless of the size of your container.

Step-by-Step:  How to Purify Water Using Pool Shock

The first thing I did was gather my supplies.  Notice that I used eye protection goggles and rubber gloves.  Other supplies included an empty bleach bottle, funnel, shot glass, and measuring spoons.

I verified the size of my stock chlorine solution container, namely a repurposed bleach bottle.  My bottle held 1.42 gallons and I wrote this on the outside with a Sharpie pen.  My intent, however, was to only prepare 1 gallon of stock solution to keep the math simple.

After donning my protection gear, I added water to my stock solution bottle, carefully measuring the quantity.  I used exactly one gallon of water.

I then measured out some pool shock; one level teaspoon to be exact.  I put the cap back on the bottle and swished it around a bit. I gave it a sniff test and it definitely smelled bleach-like.

The next step was to purify water.  I wanted to make drinking water and for me, the smaller the jug the better.  I chose a 64 ounce repurposed apple juice jug.  Remember the easy math?  The EPA says 1 part chlorine solution to 100 parts water so the math is 64/100 = .64 ounces.

Keeping things easy, that translates into approximately 2/3rd ounce.  Remember, the EPA guideline uses the word “approximately” all over the place.  That was good enough for me.  To easily measure the proper dilution, I used a mini shot glass that had measurement markings along the side.

Be sure to pour your pool shock into your water and not the other way around.  The last thing you want is to splash the solution on yourself on the surrounding surfaces (although you have probably noticed that I did this outdoors).

After preparing my newly purified water, I drank up.  Three things.  I did not throw up, I did not get diarrhea and I did not get sick or die.

I am comfortable with the results even though the solution I made may have been slightly stronger than the EPA guidelines.  Then again, given the vagueness of the EPA guidelines, perhaps my measurements were spot on.

Note:  I did not find that my water had an objectionable smell or taste.  True, it was not sweet tasting like the water coming out of my Royal Berkey but it was palatable.  If your own purified water has an unpleasant odor, simply aerate it by pouring it back and forth between clean containers.  This trick applies to any water, not just water treated with pool shock.

Label your pool shock solution.  This is powerful stuff.  Get out your Sharpie and label the jug with as much information as you can.  Store it in the same manner you store liquid bleach, up high and away from pets and children and in a location that is cool, dark and dry.

Also store your unused pool shock safely.  Because it is corrosive, I chose a mason jar with a plastic lid.  Plus, rather than empty the pool shock into the jar, I sealed the plastic bag it came in with a clip and stuffed the bag inside of the jar.

Other Handling and Storage Considerations

I contacted the manufacturer of the pool shock I purchased and requested a Material Safety Data Sheet on the product.  They promptly responded and here is what it said about handling and storage:

Keep product tightly sealed in original containers. Store product in a cool, dry, well-ventilated area. Store away from combustible or flammable products. Keep product packaging clean and free of all contamination, including, e.g. other pool treatment products, acids, organic materials, nitrogen-containing compounds, dry powder fire extinguishers (containing mono-ammonium phosphate), oxidizers, all corrosive liquids, flammable or combustible materials, etc.

Do not store product where the average daily temperature exceeds 95° F. Storage above this temperature may result in rapid decomposition, evolution of chlorine gas and heat sufficient to ignite combustible products.

Now that I have been through the process and understand the math, I am confortable using pool shock to purify water for drinking, hygiene, and sanitation purposes.  It is not, however, an excuse for not storing water nor an excuse for not having a supply of traditional water purification liquids or tabs that are pre-measured and simple to carry with you in bug-out-bags and emergency kits.

As far as I am concerned, the pool shock I have purchased is reserved for dire emergency use, period.  Yes, I feel it is safe, but it is still a powerful chemical solution as is liquid bleach.  I will use it as the water purification method of last resort and if the time comes, I will be thankful I have it on hand.

Disclaimer

I have to say this: I am not a chemist and I am not an expert.  My methods are my own and they work for me.  That being said, if you have any hesitation at all, visit other resources including the EPA and make the decision to use pool shock your own and not just something someone told you to do.  Here is a link:  Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water.

The Final Word

Everywhere you look you will see a recommendation to  store bleach for water purification. I have made that recommendation and so have many, if not most, of my blogging peers.  What you may not have seen is that liquid bleach has a limited shelf life of 6 to 12 months.  I fear that this could be leaving a lot of people ill prepared to produce safe, potable water in an emergency.

This means that a person that began prepping a year ago, and does not know to rotate their bleach, is already living with false security when it comes to water purification.  And what about people that have been prepping longer?

As long as pool shock is stored properly, it will have an almost indefinite shelf life plus, a small one pound package will treat many thousands of gallons of water. Ten thousand to be exact.  It can be mixed and used as potable water and as a disinfectant, just like bottled liquid bleach.

At the end of the day, do your own research and decide for yourself.  All I can say is that for me, the $13 investment was more than worth it for peace of mind down the road.


Urban Man

The Latest Entry In The SR1911 Family

"I just read this post on the NRA website in reference to the new 1911 Light Weight Commander. If you own one, I would like your opinion and comments. Do you feel this would make a good urban personal defense weapon?-  Urban Man"

Nearly five years ago, Sturm, Ruger & Co. launched its first SR1911 pistol. One might wonder how Ruger expected to be successful in a market already so full of M1911-style pistols. Ruger seems to have succeeded by using the most-modern manufacturing techniques and by reaching out to recognized M1911 experts for advice on the gun’s design. The result has been a family of pistols that are extremely well-made at a very reasonable price.

The latest entry in the SR1911 family is the Lightweight Commander in .45 ACP. This pistol features an anodized aluminum frame that, with its smoky gray coloring, contrasts nicely with the stainless steel slide and barrel. More importantly, the pistol is nearly 10 ozs. lighter than the 5" Government Model, making it a natural for those who want to carry an M1911 for personal defense.

Similar to the other Ruger SR1911s, the Lightweight Commander has a beavertail grip safety and an extended thumb safety. It also comes with Novak Lo-Mount fixed combat sights, not foreign copies, but the real deal. Also included are two, seven-round magazines and a zippered carrying case.

Another interesting feature of this Commander is the fact that the plunger tube, located between the slide stop and the thumb safety, is an integral part of the pistol frame. On most M1911s this part is simply staked on and has been known to come completely off of the pistol during strings of fire. Making the tube an integral part of the frame is just another touch of quality from Ruger.

However, the most interesting feature of this pistol is the titanium insert placed in the feed ramp portion of the aluminum alloy frame. In some cases, hollow-point ammunition can gouge an alloy feed ramp. And, when this happens, feeding reliability will usually suffer. By placing the titanium insert into the frame, Ruger has insured that this pistol will feed properly and reliably for years to come.

Ruger also incorporates a lightweight titanium firing pin in its family of SR1911 pistols. This addition makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the pistol to fire upon being dropped on a hard surface. And it negates the need for the troublesome firing-pin-block safety found on some guns of other manufacture.

We tested the Ruger Lightweight Commander with three .45 ACP loads that were chosen to represent modern choices in defensive ammunition. The highest velocity was obtained using the Federal 165-gr. Guard Dog cartridge which produced an average velocity of 1070 f.p.s. However, the most accurate loading turned out to be the Remington 230-gr. JHP cartridge, at 819 f.p.s., with five-shot groups that averaged 2.40" at 25 yds. from a sandbag rest. The third load tested was the Hornady 185-gr. HAP load, at 875 f.p.s. All three of the cartridges tested gave performance and accuracy that would make them good choices for the armed citizen or law enforcement officer.

Following accuracy and velocity tests, we shot the Lightweight Commander in various defensive shooting drills. It was noted that the pistol functioned flawlessly throughout the various tests. Several shooters commented on how comfortable the Ruger was to shoot and singled out the thin, attractive, checkered hardwood stocks as being one of the factors contributing to this impression.

As Ruger undoubtedly learned from the experts it consulted, the key to making an accurate, reliable M1911 is in the attention given to the mating of the slide to the frame. Another contributing factor is creating a solid barrel lockup. Instead of adding various external features that rarely contribute to accuracy and reliability, Ruger seems to have focused on these important areas of manufacture. The various shooters who fired our test pistol, including at least two law enforcement veterans, all commented on the pistol’s smooth functioning and positive lockup.

Ruger produced a quality M1911 that forces others to make a place for it in the M1911 market by focusing on the things that matter in a well-made pistol. And, as usual, Ruger found a way to do that at a price that should be pleasing to the shooting public. Once again, it appears that Ruger has hit a home run with the Ruger Lightweight Commander in .45 ACP.

Urban Man!

Growing Tips for the Suburban Survivalist

Urban Man says - if you are not growing anything in your backyard, on your balcony or even on a windowsill then you are not taking advantage of learning new skills sets nor getting the value of growing (and eating) your own healthy food. And least I mention saving money. In a depressed economy or monetary hyper inflation, the value of growing your own food cannot be over stressed.

You cannot open an internet browser without seeing former Senator Ron Paul warning of a dire economic collapse coming soon. This is echoed by Stansberry Research, The International Investor, Zero Hedge and many others.

Even growing a couple tomato plants, maybe a potato patch, or even just a squash mound or two can provide lessons learned on growing foods, give you some confidence and a sense of accomplishment, save you money and you may very well need that small garden to survive.

This is a main stream internet article on growing your own small garden and I re-post it as we cannot read, research or save enough articles on growing foods as I fear we are going to need these skills and soon.

10 Tips For Growing Your Own Food In Your Garden, by Sarah Wexler on Yahoo! Food.
[source: https://www.yahoo.com/food/the-10-tips-for-growing-your-own-food-in-your-118376985826.html]

There are plenty of good reasons to grow your own vegetables: you’ll spend less at the grocery store, you’ll know exactly what went into growing them, and you’ll have a sense of pride every time you enjoy that just-plucked-from-the-stem tomato.

“You’ll have a great variety of fruits and vegetables, and they taste so much better than anything from the store that’s been sitting on the shelves for days after it was picked,” says Suzy Hancock, general manager at Portland Nursery in Oregon. It’s true — you’ve never tasted a carrot so sweet or a cucumber so crisp as the ones you eat right from your own garden. Here’s her advice for starting your own successful veggie plot at home.


1. Build raised beds. Pick a part of your yard that gets full sun (that’s four to six hours a day), and construct — or buy pre-made — raised beds. They’re easier to weed and warm up faster than the ground, so you can start planting earlier and get better results. It’s also easy to attach hoops to a raised bed that you can cover in case of cold nights or pests like moths or birds.

2. Fill with good soil. Buy potting soil and mix in native soil from the yard as well as compost, mixing so the ratio is half compost, half soil. Mix in a dry organic fertilizer, which is good for long-term feeding, like E.B. Stone Organics Sure-Start, though you’ll still need to add compost every year to replenish your soil. Since vegetables like a close-to-neutral pH soil, buy a pH testing kit at the nursery and see if your soil is neutral. It’s often too acidic; if so, add lime.

3. Wait for warm nights. In spring, it’s generally safe to plant greens (lettuces, spinach, kale, Swiss chard), cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and peas. Plant other veggies too soon and you could kill your starters, so hold off until nighttime temperatures stay above 55 before planting peppers, tomatoes, and squash. The most cold-sensitive plants are melons and cucumbers, so plant those last, only when you’re fairly sure temps won’t dip again.

4. Plant the right fruits and veggies. Corn isn’t good for a small space, since it takes a lot of room and doesn’t produce much. Though plant starters are often sold in six-packs, don’t be afraid to scrap some or give to a neighbor; one zucchini plant is likely all you need because it’ll produce so many. Raspberries and mint are both invasive, taking over a whole garden if they’re planted, so use containers to keep them separate from the rest of your plot. Fennel doesn’t do well when planted next to veggies and tends to die. Generally, look for dwarf or bush varieties of plants, which don’t take up a lot of space even when they’re fully grown. A genius hack: buy grafted plants (often done with tomatoes), which are two varieties of the fruit or veggie growing from one plant, so you get double the variety without taking up twice the space.

5. Sequester your alliums. Alliums including onions, chives, shallots, leeks, and garlic are so much more fragrant and delicious from your own garden, but they tend not to play well with others; they can have negative effects on artichokes, asparagus, many kinds of beans, lettuces, and peas. Plant your alliums in separate containers or at least two to three rows away from its foes and it won’t be a problem.

6. Stagger your returns. Plant a mix of vegetables that mature over different time frames. That way you’ll have a steady stream of produce over the whole season, rather than so much ripening at once that you’re scrambling to use it all before it goes bad. The little plastic sign that comes with the plant will tell you the average number of days before it matures; at the nursery, look for a mix of traditional and early-maturing plants to spread your haul throughout the season.

7. Consider companion planting. This is a technique of pairing plants together that can benefit from being near each other. For example, basil generally thrives when planted next to tomatoes or peppers, but not as well when its neighbors are beans or cucumbers; find the whole list of happy plant pairings here. Generally, root vegetables like radishes, beets, and carrots do well when planted between leafy greens, since the root veggies take up a lot of space under the soil, while lettuces don’t have very deep roots.

8. Follow spacing guidelines. The plastic signs that come with your plants will give a guideline of how much “personal space” each needs from the plants around it. Rather than thinking you’ll get more veggies if you just pack more of them into your raised bed, crowding them in can reduce air circulation, leading to pests like aphids. If the plant’s instructions say three inches, give it at least three inches, and consider it room to grow.

9. Plant flowers, too. No, you’re not going to eat them, but flowers like marigolds are more than a pretty touch. Though it’s a myth that they keep bugs away, marigolds actually do help your veggies thrive by attracting beneficial insects to your garden.

10. Close up shop. After you’ve harvested your crops and you’re putting your garden to bed for the season, get rid of dead foliage to avoid pests, then cover with a thick layer of compost. Or, plant beneficial cover crops like vetch (in the legume family) or beautiful red-topped crimson clover; when you turn it under in the spring, it will add nitrogen and other nutrients to your soil — making for an even better garden next year.

Urban Man

Common Mistakes While Bugging Out

An article posted by Selco on the SHTF School on April 11, 2015. Selco always writes good stuff on website.
[Source: Link to article: http://shtfschool.com/basic-survival/common-mistakes-while-bugging-out/trade post collapse]

Bugging out is something that I once failed to do, because I did not even realize that it needed to be done, actually I saw what was happening but I did not „process“ the information in correct way, so I stay and had to go trough whole period of watching, doing, and getting hit by violence, together with being cold, hungry, sick and everything else.

Because bugging out is so important and survival done right is often not getting into survival situations in the first place I stress importance of bugging out (if you are not already live in great bug out location anyway).

Consider the following couple of mistakes that I witnessed (more than one time):

Right moment Guy figured out that SHTF, something happening in the city, hears screams outside, shots, confusing news on TV, he rounds up his family, puts all bags in his car, they are armed and they go out in order to reach their bug out location in hills some 50 miles away. After one mile of traveling angry mob who just plundering local mall stops the car, pull them out, and beat them, and then kill the guy, he managed to kill few of them before that, but they were hundreds. He is dead. End of story.

If you woke up in the middle of the night, because something strange happens in your town, some event, maybe terrorist attack, or martial law put into effect or whatever, sit down and think for a moment. Your mission is to leave the area and reach your bug out location, do not confuse that mission with any urge to panically run. If you go into the panic you will make mistakes, and it is definetly not time for mistakes. You would be surprised to know how many people are prone to panic, and how many of them end up dead because of that.

Try to gather some information, and act accordingly to that information, who, what, when, how long, where.

Try to figure out what is happening before you start to bug out to your bug out location. What are problematic areas? Who is in control? You will never have perfect information but it is better than having no information at all.

Speak to neighbors, listen to the radio and TV and look on Twitter and other social media. Yes that often means you will need to postpone your trip, maybe for hours, or sometimes for even days. You need to choose the best moment to leave the area (if you already missed to leave the area before SHTF).

"Right way“ SHTF and family get in their pick up, with trailer full of good equipment for SHTF time. They managed to go some 20 miles down the road, where few cars simply „get them“, block them and take everything from them. They manage to save their lives or maybe not. Who knows.

Real problem here is not having right and good equipment, and lots of it. Real problem is that we are being constantly bombarded with information that we (preppers and survivalists) need to have right equipment (a lot) in order to survive. Because without it we are gonna end up dead. We are being instructed that without "things“ we are lost, we are not even right survivalists.

So when SHTF we are becoming something like prisoners of our things. Guess what? I am preparing myself to bug out in my sneakers, with pistol and plastic bag. If I have to I will collect everything else what I need on my way to my bug out location. Do not get me wrong, of course I have my bug out bag, my plans, and my useful stuff for trip to my bug out location, but the point is that I am really expecting that I will find myself in situation where I need to reach bug out location without all those things. Do not accept philosophy that things will save your life. Things will help you to stay alive, but your (correct) mindset will mainly save your life.

Anyway, plan to have what you need at your bug out location (already prepared), do not rely too much on things while you are bugging out, you need to be able to get things done with minimal equipment that’s why skills are more important than equipment and in best case you have both. Right mindset One word-ADAPT.

If you are bug out plan plays out excatly like it should you are a very lucky man. Consider the fact, that most of you are making plans to cover hypothetical SHTF scenarios, that you seen on TV shows, read about it somewhere, member of family went through somewhere, or simply you had couple of bad experiences. It is normal. We need to guess and it is best we can do.

You are building your plans based on that, nothing wrong with that. Except that everything may go wrong in one moment. You have plan to go through the city from point A to point B then to point C etc, and then to reach safe point somewhere. All good, but SHTF and your youngest son is still in school, your car is broken, and at point B in your plan something weird is happening, some kind of riot, let say with all chaos and confusion some trucks with money are rolled over right at your point B and now you need to find out a new way quickly, and your whole plan is gone, you do not know what to do. Welcome to reality! Reality usually likes to blow all your good plans to pieces. But point of planning is to COVER as many problems as you can, so make sure you play through as many scenarios as possible.

For example if you have just one way out of the city it is bad plan, it needs backup and backup of the backup.


UrbanMan's comment: Remember PACE Planning?

Prepare for the fact that your plan will be wrong right at the beginning, and that you need to make new plan very soon, (and couple of more new plans until you reach your bug out location.) Do not end up dead because you wanted to stick to your plan because it looks good, while circumstances changed hourly around you. Survival is about quickly adapting to new situations. That is why it always helps to take a map and whatever else you need to have good sources of information to make new plans on the go. These were just few of the most important things to consider when bugging out. How do you plan to bug out.

Urban Man

Battery Power After the Collapse

Maha Powerex Multi-Charger

Being a huge fan of PACE planning and having redundancies for solutions to survival problems, I have a good supply of rechargeable batteries (both NiMH and NiCD types) and chargers. Some of these are the cheap versions from Lowe's or Home Depot, but my newest charger is the Maha Powerex Multi-Charger which can recharge AAA, AA, C and D sized batteries. The several versions of AAA and AA chargers I have will also be used but give me a barter capacity as I believe many people in a collapse will have not thought about batteries for their vast array of battery powered equipment including radios and flashlights.

Click To Purchase

What I have yet to buy are re-chargeable CR123 3v, also known as Surefire Batteries, and a recharger for these batteries. While I have many Surefire flashlights, which are the best and brightest (considering lumen power) on the market, they are also power hungry so I have intentionally focused my flashlight and lantern procurement on AA power lights.

There is one more portable power tool that I'll be adding soon, and that is the Batteriser which reportedly extends batteries up to 8x longer.

Click Here to read the Yahoo article and watch the video.

The article I was reading stated that it did sound too good to be true, but this new $2.50 gadget promises to bring your AA and C batteries back from the dead.

The article continues,...."You might be skeptical, but the Silicon Valley startup says it’s simply been able to take advantage of a well-known downside of standard batteries. The tiny device works by tapping into the unused energy in a regular Duracell or Eveready. A normal AA or C cell is designed to deliver a steady 1.5 volts, but as the power is depleted the voltage will drop. Once it slips too low, your TV remotes and toys and other devices will stop working. The Batteriser has boost circuitry that will boost the voltage from 0.6 volts to 1.5 volts and will maintain voltage at 1.5—which is a brand new battery.”

Apparently the physics department of San Jose State University also reviewed the Batteriser. “We tested the Batteriser sleeve in our lab and we confirmed that the Batteriser taps into 80 percent of energy that is usually thrown away,” said the university’s Dr. Kiumars Parvin in a statement given to PC World.

So what plans have you made for battery power after the collapse. Remember that in the beginnings or a collapse, much like a natural disaster,. food, bottled water and batteries are the first things that fly off the shelves. Besides who wants to put money into storing one use batteries?

Urban Man

Latest Pistol Caliber Carbine - Suitable for the Collapse?

Probably the highest density of e-mails I receive are questions regarding survival guns. Readers ask me what weapons or arsenal of weapons I would consider suitable to survive a total collapse. The bottom line is: Have a gun, in fact have several; have sufficient ammunition for each gun; be competent with each gun you own and train your family members to use them as well.

Having said that there are some guns that are more suitable than others for particular or general situations. Here are some instances or things to consider:

If you have a bug out location,such as a house of cabin with hundreds of yards of cleared fields of fire or observation, why would someone limit their survival firearms to handguns, pistol caliber carbines and Shotguns? You would run the risk of being out ranged.

If you are an urban dweller and plan to bug in the urban environment or to transit large urban areas during your bug out, why would you limit yourself to long barreled shotguns or rifles?

Consider your environment. Consider your ranges. Consider your potential threats and density of threats.

While the M1911 .45 caliber semi -automatic is a great gun, with a single stack magazine, it may not be the best choice of a high density threat environment. I, for one, would prefer a large capacity 9mm for a handgun. Same as for a rifle. A .308 caliber M1A1 rifle is a great weapon, but perhaps an M-4 carbine could be better suited for the urban environment.

So that bring me to the latest question I received, and that was what do I think about the latest pistol caliber carbine to hit the market, the MasterPiece Arms MPA30DMG 9mm. The question was if I thought a decent survival arsenal would be the MasterPiece Arms MPA30DMG 9mm carbine to go with a Glock 17 handgun.

[Source: http://masterpiecearms.com/shop/mpa20dmg-9mm-carbine-all-aluminum-lower/]

Here is the data on the MasterPiece Arms MPA30DMG 9mm:

Price: MSRP - $966.00

Company Narrative: The grip is our most ergonomically designed grip system incorporating a “Solidworks” designed profile allowing the use of standard Glock style magazines, with a low profile magazine release and “Decal Grip” grip panels. The lower is machined from aircraft grade aluminum, provides cleaner lines and lighter weight than our standard steel receivers. The Hand guard is produced from an Aluminum Extrusion, has no fasteners, and is free floating.

Specs:

Cal: 9mm
Barrel Length: 16.2
Thread: 1/2-28
Side Cocker
Side Folder Stock
Scope Mount
Barrel Extension
Adjustable Front and Rear Sights
Accepts Standard Glock Style High Capacity Magazines (1 Mag Included)
Coating: Cerakote (Burnt Bronze is standard color – other colors available including Black, Tungsten, Sniper Green, Gunmetal and FDE.
Decal Grip Grip Panels
Hammer with Disconnect plus original Hammer
MPA Polymer Case

While I have carbines - M4 and M1's, I do not own a pistol caliber carbine. My reasoning is why have a large platform that only shoots pistol calibers? Although it may be useful for some of your survival teams members, e.g.. ladies, old people and children. But if you have to own one, then own one that has magazines that are inter-changeable with your handguns.

Urban Man

Attack on the U.S. From Cargo Ships As a Collapse Catalyst

"If you think are enemies can not reach out a touch us, then read the below article. What other adversaries have things like this waiting for the right time to pounce?  Urban Man"

Urban Survival Skills and most other Survivalist Prepper sites has concentrated on a financial - economic collapse as a catalyst for chaos in the United States. From time to time we have talked about Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) from terrorist or nation states' nuclear strikes causing the collapse, aka Lights Out or One Second After scenario. And while this is certainly a possibility, that possibility took on new importance and new possibilities upon Russia now manufacturing and exporting a Shipping Container missile system.

You have all seen those shipping container, on flatbeds being pulled by semi trucks, or on trains or even ships. Commonly called Sea Containers or military containers, it is common for ships entering U.S. ports to be laden with stacks and stacks of these containers. Even if all ships and all containers are inspected, and I assure you they are NOT!, it would only take a ship stopping before dockside to fire these missile into U.S. Territory.

And it really doesn't matter if these missiles are guided or not - with a nuclear warhead close enough is good enough.

The Russian Club K missile systems have been placed in Sea Containers in order to be placed on cargo ships and "hide in plain site". They have a range of 180 miles which is a great enough range to sit of the 12 mile territorial waters and fire missiles into U.S. soil.

This missile is basically a part of the Russian anti-ship armament family. It comes in a system of four missiles and can fit inside 20 foot Sea Container, therefore two systems of a total of 8 missiles can fit inside a 40 foot Sea Container.

As one intelligence analyst put it "The Russia Club K missile System is practically undetectable, and it may encounter a potential adversary’s ship anywhere at all, be it aboard a Russia patrol vessel in the northern seas, on the Crimean coast, or emerging unexpectedly from an old shipping container somewhere in Latin America.”

Urban Man

Americans and a General Lack of Preparing for Economic Collapse

 

 

Here is an eye opening article that a friend of mine sent me. Makes for some thoughful reading:

In the past few years, the job market has vastly improved and home prices have rebounded — yet Americans are becoming even more irresponsible when it comes to saving for emergencies - not to mention preparing for a economic collapse.

According to a survey of 1,000 adults released by Bankrate.com on Tuesday, nearly one in three (29%) American adults (that’s roughly 70 million) have no emergency savings at all — the highest percentage since Bankrate began doing this survey five years ago. What’s more, only 22% of Americans have at least six months of emergency savings (that’s what advisers recommend) — the lowest level since Bankrate began doing the survey.

These findings mirror others — all of which paint an abysmal picture of Americans’ ability to withstand an emergency. For example, a survey released in March by national nonprofit NeighborWorks America also found that roughly one third (34%) of Americans don’t have emergency savings.

I would think that is 34% of Americans don't have emergency savings then that percentage of people who don't have emergency provisions and the ability to survive prolonged periods of minimal food and lack of utilities is much greater.

Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com, says these low savings reflect that households haven’t seen their incomes ramp up and thus “household budgets are tight.” Plus, he adds “people don’t pay themselves first — they wait until the end of the month to save what’s left over and then nothing is left over.”

Many advisers recommend that most Americans have at least six months worth of income in their emergency fund — and more if they have children or other dependents. To build this up, most recommend something to the effect to “start an automatic transfer to a savings account and set a task to revisit and increase the amount in a month.”

Additionally, American consumers ended 2014 with $57 billion in personal debt, a historic high. An average of $7,177 and remember this is only counting credit or revolving credit debt, not mortgages, or car payments.

And if families don't have any money to pay off their debt, they don't have any money to pay themselves (savings) then they certainly don't have any money to start preparing for a much different world,..a world where food is not commonly available,...where fuel prices have skyrocketed. Utilities are on and off, then not on at all.

I know a gentleman,..well hardly a gentleman, but nonetheless he took out his 401K plan, paying a giant penalty because he thought preparing for dark times was more important then preparing for retirement 20 years in the future. He bought several guns, much ammunition, common OTC medicines and medical supplies, silver bullion, extra canned goods and survival foods. He stocked case upon case of bottled water and also bought outdoor clothing and boots, sleeping bags and other camping type equipment. About the only purchase I did not agree with was a large gasoline generator. I told him a solar power system would have been more portable and not dependent upon gasoline which may be very scare in any economic or societal collapse.

Then he started paying himself and using what he saved every few months to buy more silver. As I told him, that was nice but he should consider also holding some cash on hand for emergency purchases for right before and right after the collapse is apparent when only cash is accepted and before cash is worthless. This period of time would be before silver and gold bullion and junk silver coins would be readily bartered or used in exchanges for goods and services.

Are you prepared?

Urban Man

7 Examples of Police State Technology that have arisen in 2014 to infringe on Our Rights

Things are not looking pretty for the land of the free.

The year 2014 has made it very clear that privacy is under threat, and the situation is not likely to improve. Mass surveillance – which became a national issue via the Edward Snowden leaks – is not subsiding or under reform; instead, is becoming more bold and complex with each passing day.

It would take several books to catalog the myriad ways in which the rights of The People have been casually infringed by various levels of government just in years since 9/11 and the introduction of the PATRIOT Act.

And not only are federal agencies like the NSA, Homeland Security and the FBI that are taking liberties with our… umm… liberties; it is local police, too. The rise of technology is rapidly fueling these agencies with data and “intelligence” with very little oversight and even less pause for reflection to use these powerful abilities wisely and yes, judiciously.

Here are just a few major areas where privacy is losing badly to surveillance technology in 2014. Not that anyone is paying attention, but they are worth reflecting upon soon – hopefully before it is too late to turn things back around:

1. Militarized Police and Weapons of War on American Streets:

True, this technology has been in use for several years now and has been demonstrated at protests such as those held outside of the G20 in Pittsburgh and, Toronto and other locales.

But the events in Ferguson really allowed this brand of crowd control to come of age. This and other key protests have seemingly justified a massive police response for just about anything now… but… you know, the first amendment is still respected and all.

The Daily Sheeple reported:

Ferguson police have stocked up on less-lethal ammunition in the last few months including “hornets nest” CS sting grenades, which shoot out dozens of rubber bullets and a powdered chemical agent upon detonation, tear gas, riot gear, plastic handcuffs and the like in the lead up to the decision which is expected to come any time now. St Louis County police have spent $172,669 on this stuff just since August.
The Pentagon’s 1033 surplus program, which hands out everything from MRAP armored vehicles, to bullet proof vests, assault rifles, and other military weapons to domestic law enforcement agencies, is one of the major reasons that ordinary police departments, including those in small towns, are gearing up as for battle… and that includes Ferguson:

The Department of Defense Excess Property Program (1033 Program) is authorized under federal law and managed through the Defense Logistics Agency’s Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO) in Ft. Belvoir, Va. The 1033 Program provides surplus DoD military equipment to state and local civilian law enforcement agencies for use in counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism operations, and to enhance officer safety.

The Missouri Department of Public Safety is the sponsoring state agency responsible for administration of the 1033 Program in Missouri.

2. Biometrics Comes of Age:

Fingerprints and iris scans are becoming normalized as identifiers on mobile phones, including the iPhone 5, computers and other platforms.

Increasingly, technology – including devices used by police – are utilizing other bodily features (in addition to fingerprints and eyes) to identify you, including ears, noses, heart rate (via electrocardiogram), blood vein matching, your scent or smell and even “butt biometrics” – no joke – which will allow smart car seats to identify the sitter based on their unique posture.

While these are surely being integrated into law enforcement devices, they are also becoming the mainstays of “wearables,” the new trendy technology that is collecting data on all of those using it to track health progress and etc.

Surveillance cameras have already been used to identify you by your walk for several years now, but advances have allowed technology to even identify the person wearing a camera, such as a police officer with a mounted body cam, by just 4 seconds of footage, revealing a ‘biometric fingerprint’ of the individual.

Of course, roadside blood draws have already entered the picture in law enforcement work, including numerous locales that have implemented mandatory policies during stops. This is sure to pick up. In Seattle, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently conducted a paid, voluntary survey of drivers, who received up to $60 to give blood and breath samples at a roadside stop in effort to study how many people drive impaired.

3. Smart Phone Apps Know Everything About You:

Vocative published a long and unsettling list of apps for smart phones and other similar devices that all collect untold amounts of information about you every day.

Whether you realize it or not, permissions for apps routinely allow the collection and sharing of such information as your contact and address book, your text message, and audio recorded from your device’s microphone, your call log and much more.

Yes, this is really happening, so beware if you are using mobile apps including:

Anti-Virus Security, Viber, Facebook, 360 Security (Antivirus), Tango Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger, Skype, GO Launcher EX, WeChat, CM Security, Waze Social GPS Maps & Traffic, BBM, LINE Free Calls & Messages, Clean Master Phone Boost, BU Battery Saver, Google’s Chrome Browser, Twitter, Maps, Instagram, YouTube, Dolphin Browser, Castle Clash and Trivia Crack …and be sure to actually read over the privacy policy and Terms of Service before accepting or installing anything.

Considering that Angry Birds and Candy Crush were admittedly used to collect surveillance data for the NSA (also revealed in 2014), and law enforcement now regularly investigate persons of interest based upon social media posts and cell phone data, there is no telling how many of these apps may be drawing unwanted suspicion your way… whether you have anything to hide or not.

Need we remind you of all the telecom and internet firms who, according to the Edward Snowden leaks, shared data willingly with the NSA?

4. “StingRay” and “Dirtbox” Cell Phone Interceptors:
2014 is the year that much has come to light about the very secret and awfully quiet use of a data sweeping technology that has increasingly been used by agencies including the FBI, local law enforcement, and likely private, public and foreign intelligence agencies and even military units… though, due to extreme secrecy, it is just too difficult to know for sure.

Moreover, it emerged in 2014 that the FBI has been pressuring police departments to keep quiet about the use of StingRay, which it has also not been obtaining warrants before putting to use:

Not only are local police departments across the United States increasingly relying on so-called StingRay devices to conduct surveillance on cell phone users, but cops are being forced to keep quiet about the operations, new documents reveal.

Recent reports have indicated that law enforcement agencies from coast to coast have been turning to IMSI-catcher devices, like the StingRay sold by Florida’s Harris Corporation, to trick ordinary mobile phones into communicating device-specific International Mobile Subscriber Identity information to phony cell towers — a tactic that takes the approximate geolocation data of all the devices within range and records it for investigators. Recently, the Tallahassee Police Department in the state of Florida was found to have used their own “cell site simulator” at least 200 times to collect phone data without once asking for a warrant during a three-year span, and details about the use of StingRays by other law enforcement groups continue to emerge on the regular.

Although the majority of the December 2012 document is redacted, a paragraph from FBI special agent Laura Laughlin to Police of Chief Donald Ramsdell reveals that Tacoma officers were told they couldn’t discuss their use of IMSI-catchers with anyone… police in Tacoma were forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation before they could begin conducting surveillance on cell users with a Harris-sold StingRay.

It further emerged in 2014 that the Justice Department was overseeing the use of small Cessna aircraft using “dirtbox” technology to collect cell phone data over major urban centers across the nation to pinpoint suspects while scooping up information from thousands of cell phone users. Here’s what the Wall Street Journal revealed:

The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of mobile phones through devices deployed on airplanes that mimic cellphone towers, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.

The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.

5. Radar Sweeps of Residential Homes:

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals made a decision on the use of Doppler radar technology for use in the execution of an arrest warrant. 

The Washington Post considered:

The “grave” Fourth Amendment issues raised by use of a “Doppler radar device capable of detecting from outside the home the presence of human breathing and movement within”. But it is also fair to ask, who is watching the watchers for the use of this technology, anyway? Is this (and much more) being used frequently by authorities or private agencies to collect data in pursuit of investigations, including before the burden of “reasonable suspicion” has been met?
Is such a radar sweep a violation of the 4th Amendment and other rights if the police don’t already have “reasonable suspicion”? The possibilities are foggy… and a bit unnerving.

We don’t normally encounter this question because we normally understand the uses and limits of investigatory tools. If the officer looked through the window and didn’t see any other people, for example, we could intuitively factor that into the reasonable suspicion inquiry without having to think about burdens of proof. I’m less sure what we’re supposed to do when the government uses a suspicion-testing technological device with unknown capabilities. The opinion relies on the language from Buie that “the sweep lasts no longer than is necessary to dispel the reasonable suspicion of danger,” and thus asks whether there was evidence that the Doppler device “dispelled” the reasonable suspicion. But it’s not clear to me that this language from Buie applies here, as it was referring to evidence after reasonable suspicion was established and the entry was made rather than before.

But for the average person, the potential for abuse is pretty clear here. One commenter noted:

Use of this technology on a home is a search. The police don’t know what or who is in the house – they use this technology to survey (i.e. search) the house to determine information that they can’t ascertain without the home owner’s permission.

6. Pre-crime “Threat Assessment” Database:

The 9-1-1 emergency infrastructure now carries a real time “threat assessment” database known as “Beware,” that gives police and first responders a color-coded threat level, with green signifying no threat, yellow identifying a valid threat and red urging immediate caution. The catch? The threat assessment is not just based on the obvious stuff like prior arrests and criminal history, but also compiles billions of consumer records and, yes, social media. In fact, the majority of police now use social media in their investigations… the Beware database just makes it instant and universal.

Even worse, the co-founder of the technology said it flags “offensive speech” in its threat assessment… you don’t even have to make an online threat to be considered a threat, you just have be considered “offensive”! And who decides that, anyway? Not you. You aren’t even allowed to know what has been entered in your privately-held records:

Your local police department is likely using numerous tools and applications that might determine how you get treated during a routine traffic stop, or in response to your neighbor’s call about loud music. One such application, Beware, has been sold to police departments since 2012. It can be accessed on any Internet-enabled device, including tablets, smartphones, laptop and desktop computers, while responders are in route to, or at the location of a call.

This app explores billions of records in social media postings, commercial and public databases for law enforcement needs, churning out “risk profiles” in real time.

‘Beware’ algorithm assigns a score and “threat rating” to a person — green, yellow or red – and sends that rating to a requesting officer. Worst of all, this information is not made available to the very person whose “threat rating” is being appraised. You have no ability to dispute being wrongly designated a high risk potential offender.

And it stands to reason that this concerning database is going to be used against more than just serious criminals. The potential for abuse and use against gun owners and those exercising political speech, including offensive or less than-responsible online rhetoric, is perhaps inevitable and unavoidable with this system, which has been in use for now for several years.

What’s worse? So-called “predictive policing” is just in its infancy… there are multiple platforms still finding a market, and their invasive capabilities are sure to grow in magnitude as the years go on. A federally-mandated network called FirstNet is being constructed, “using federal funding, are set to begin building a $7-billion nationwide first-responder wireless network” that will incorporate these emergency powers into every agency and locale across the country.

7. License Plate Scanning and Traffic Monitoring:

There are already issues for gun owners in Maryland, where concealed carry permits issued by other states are not recognized. Traffic cops there recently pulled over a licensed gun owner in good legal standing from Florida to search his vehicle for a specific firearm – his Kel-Tec .38 semi-automatic handgun – while he and his family were traveling through the state. As it turned out, the gun was locked in a safe at home in Florida, and the incident ended in a traffic warning for speeding. But what prompted the preemptive search, and how did police know this man was a concealed carry?

Likely the stop-and-search was the result of police work involving routine license scanning, traffic monitoring and database threat assessment using software like Beware, which has already been used in some 38 million emergency calls across the country.

Only a few days ago, the mainstream rehashed the fact that the EZ Pass and other toll road transponders are not just used for collecting toll information, but are used for traffic surveillance and police investigations as well.

Forbes’ privacy advocate Kashmir Hill wrote about an electronics tinkerer who “did an analysis of the many ways his car could be tracked and stumbled upon something rather interesting: his E-ZPass, which he obtained for the purpose of paying tolls, was being used to track his car in unexpected places, far away from any toll booths.“

Police subsequently copped to the use of this device in surveillance and tracking activities:

It’s part of Midtown in Motion, an initiative to feed information from lots of sensors into New York’s traffic management center. A spokesperson for the New York Department of Transportation, Scott Gastel, says the E-Z Pass readers are on highways across the city, and on streets in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and have been in use for years. The city uses the data from the readers to provide real-time traffic information, as for this tool… Notably, the fact that E-ZPasses will be used as a tracking device outside of toll payment, is not disclosed anywhere that I could see in the terms and conditions.

They are also used by toll companies themselves, as USA Today disclosed:

Warning to motorists: Don’t speed in the toll lanes. E-Z Pass is watching. Several states, including New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania, say they monitor speeds through the fast pass toll lanes and will suspend your E-Z Pass for multiple speeding violations.Years ago, a hacker explained how the California DOT and law enforcement were able to use toll transponders as an active homing beacon capable of zeroing in on a suspect or monitoring the total flow of traffic over a given period of time:

Each radio frequency id (RFID) transponder sends a unique identification code to scanners positioned at toll booths. A tolling authority computer matches this ID code with credit card and other payment information to collect the toll… [Even] an inexpensive RFID scanner [can be used] to read the ID code of any vehicle remotely, essentially turning the transponder into a homing beacon with a maximum range of about 100 yards.

“You can use it for tracking,” Lawson said. “Once you’ve seen the car, you can pick it out in a crowd.”

That is exactly what California’s 511 system does. Scanners placed throughout the highway network track the movement of motorists with toll transponders as a means of monitoring traffic flow. According to the California Department of Transportation, the system tracks individual ID codes, storing a movement history for each particular car in a database for 24 hours.

Additionally, both Homeland Security and the IRS were in the news this year regarding their use of data collected by both public and private agencies using license plate tracking systems:

The Department of Homeland Security wants a private company to provide a national license-plate tracking system that would give the agency access to vast amounts of information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers, according to a government proposal that does not specify what privacy safeguards would be put in place.

“It is important to note that this database would be run by a commercial enterprise, and the data would be collected and stored by the commercial enterprise, not the government,” she said.
Fox News carried further details:

In June 2012, the IRS awarded Vigilant a $1,188 contract for “access to nationwide data,” according to federal procurement records compiled by the news agency. The contract ended in May 2013, according to the records.

“Especially with the IRS, I don’t know why these agencies are getting access to this kind of information,” Lynch said. “These systems treat every single person in an area as if they’re under investigation for a crime — that is not the way our criminal justice system was set up or the way things work in a democratic society.”

[Source: By Mac Salvo]

The Baltimore (and other) Riots - They Were Planned

[Urban Man's comments: As I was watching the riots in Baltimore, and said out loud that it would be a short period of time before other riots in other large inner cities started up, and I was right, I wondered just how much of this was orchestrated by some entity behind the scenes? And why?]

The over all control of the catalyst of these riots is a no brainer. I know that the people rioting were the dredges of our society and have an issue with mainstream Amercia because of their perceptions of injustice, but when the sames social media sights and personalities, not to mention key rioting words, were used in Baltimore, then in Washington D.C., then Philly and New York, the deduction that these were derived riots canot be swept away.

If you add the facts that there was black leadership in Baltimore (Mayor, Police Chief and Chief Prosecutor) and that there were no facts produced in the wrongful death claim, a rational person would get the idea that the death of one Mr. Drug Addict Career Criminal Freddy Gray.

I was pleased to see Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse post an article on the the Balitmore Riots and the unanswered questions:

12 unanswered questions about the Baltimore riots that they don’t want us to ask…

Why did the Baltimore riots seem like they were perfectly staged to be a television event? Images of police vehicles burning made for great television all over the planet, but why were there abandoned police vehicles sitting right in the middle of the riot zones without any police officers around them in the first place?

Why was the decision made ahead of time to set a curfew for Tuesday night and not for Monday night? And why are Baltimore police officers claiming that they were ordered to “stand down” and not intervene as dozens of shops, businesses and homes went up in flames? Yes, the anger over the death of Freddie Gray is very real.

Police brutality has been a major problem in Baltimore and much of the rest of the nation for many years. But could it be possible that the anger that the people of Baltimore are feeling is being channeled and manipulated for other purposes? The following are 12 unanswered questions about the Baltimore riots that they don’t want us to ask…

#1 Why are dozens of social media accounts that were linked to violence in Ferguson now trying to stir up violence in Baltimore?…

The data mining firm that found between 20 and 50 social media accounts in Baltimore linked to the violence in Ferguson, Mo. is now reporting a spike in message traffic in Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York City, with “protesters” trying to get rides to Baltimore for Tuesday night.

The firm, which asked to remain anonymous because it does government work, said some of the suspect social media accounts in Baltimore are sending messages to incite violence. While it is possible to spoof an account, to make it look like someone is one place and really is in another, that does not fully explain the high numbers.

#2 Who was behind the aggressive social media campaign to organize a “purge” that would start at the Mondawmin Mall at precisely 3 PM on Monday afternoon?…

The spark that ignited Monday’s pandemonium probably started with high school students on social media, who were discussing a “purge” — a reference to a film in which laws are suspended.

Many people knew “very early on” that there was “a lot of energy behind this purge movement,” Baltimore City Councilman Nick Mosby told CNN on Tuesday. “It was a metaphor for, ‘Let’s go out and make trouble.'”

#3 Even though authorities had “credible intelligence” that gangs would be specifically targeting police officers on Monday, why weren’t they more prepared? On Tuesday, the captain of the Baltimore police tried to make us believe that they weren’t prepared because they were only anticipating a confrontation with “high schoolers”…

Police Capt. John Kowalczyk said the relatively light initial police presence was because authorities were preparing for a protest of high schoolers. A heavy police presence and automatic weapons would not have been appropriate, he said. Kowalczyk said police made more than 200 arrests — only 34 of them juveniles.

#4 Where were the Baltimore police on Monday afternoon when the riots exploded? During the rioting, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said that the “disappearance of the police for hours this afternoon is something that is going to haunt this city for decades”.

#5 Why are police officers in Baltimore claiming that they were instructed to “stand down” during the rioting on Monday afternoon?…

Police officers in Baltimore reportedly told journalists that they were ordered by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake not to stop looters during yesterday’s riots.

Rawlings-Blake, who waited 5 hours before even making a statement on the unrest, was already under intense critcism for saying that violent mobs were provided with “space” to “destroy” during riots which took place on Saturday.

One Baltimore shopkeeper said that he actually called the police 50 times asking for help and never got any assistance at all. Other business owners reported similar results. This is so similar to what we saw back during the Ferguson riots.

#6 Why was the decision made ahead of time to set a curfew on Tuesday night but not on Monday night?

#7 Why were so many police vehicles conveniently parked along the street in areas where the worst violence happened? After the destruction of a number of police vehicles on Saturday night, the Baltimore police had to know that they were prime targets. So why were there even more police vehicles available for rioters to destroy on Monday? And where were the cops that should have been protecting those vehicles?

#8 Why is an organization funded by George Soros stirring up emotions against the police in Baltimore?

#9 Why is CNN bringing on “commentators” that are promoting violence in Baltimore?…

Marc Lamont Hill, a Morehouse College professor and regular CNN commentator, embraced radical violence in the streets during an interview Monday on CNN.

“There shouldn’t be calm tonight,” Hill told CNN host Don Lemon as riots raged in the streets of Baltimore.

“Black people are dying in the streets. We’ve been dying in the streets for months, years, decades, centuries. I think there can be resistance to oppression.”

#10 Why did Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake initially tell reporters that a decision was made on Saturday to give “those who wished to destroy space to do that”?

#11 Why were rioters given hours to cause mayhem before a state of emergency was finally declared on Monday? Maryland Governor Larry Hogan seems to think that Mayor Rawlings-Blake waited far too long to declare a state of emergency. Just check out what he told one reporter…

I‘ve been in daily communication with the mayor and others in the city and our entire team has been involved from day one. Frankly, this was a Baltimore city situation. Baltimore city was in charge. When the mayor called me, which quite frankly we were glad that she finally did, instantly we signed the executive order. We already had our entire team prepared.

We were all in a command center and second floor of the state house in constant communication and we were trying to get in touch with the mayor for quite some time. She finally made that call and we immediately took action.

#12 Does the fact that the mayor of Baltimore has very close ties to the Obama administration have anything to do with how events unfolded during the riots? The following is from Infowars.com…

Rawlings-Blake was one of three mayors who provided broad input into President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which advocates the federalization of police departments across the country by forcing them to adhere to stricter federal requirements when they receive funding.

“The federal government can be a strong partner in our efforts in build better relationships between the police and community,” she said in written testimony before the task force.

That would explain her inaction to stop the rioting when it began: by allowing it to spiral out of control, the mayor and her friends at the Justice Dept. could use the unrest to justify the expansion of federal power into local law enforcement, which would also allow her to receive more funding.

And why did it take Barack Obama several days to publicly condemn the violence in Baltimore? Why didn’t he stand up and say something on Monday when the riots were at their peak?

Something doesn’t smell right about all of this. Much of the violence could have been prevented if things had been handled differently.

In the end, who is going to get hurt the most by all of this? It will be the African-American communities in the heart of Baltimore that are already suffering with extremely high levels of unemployment and poverty.

I wish that we could all just learn to come together and love one another. Over the past few days, I have seen a whole lot of “us vs. them” talk coming from all quarters. This kind of talk is only going to reinforce the cycle of mistrust and violence.

Sadly, I believe that this is just the beginning of what is coming to America.