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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Urban Survival - Radiation Protection

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following e-mail this morning: "Hey UrbanMan, what do you think is going on with the radiation from the Japanese nuclear sites? We're up in Washington State and have radiation alert equipment and we are monitoring the radiation levels very closely. There has been no significant rise in normal radiation levels yet. We are taking turns monitoring the levels. When do you think we should start taking Potassium Iodine? Before the radiation gets bad? or can we afford to wait until the radiation levels go up? Where should we get our source of potassium iodine? Okanogan Survivalist."

UrbanMan's reply: Potassium iodide use to block the Thyroid's collection of radioiodine and offer protection from radiation due to to nuclear accidents and emergencies, and, nuclear weapons has been approved by the FDA since 1982. The idea is to take potassium idodine in the event of an a nuclear power plant accident of nuclear strike if you are in the danger zone or located in the path of fallout.

The World Health Organization has published recommended doses of potassium iodine in milligrams per age group:

130 mgs per day for persons over 12 years old

65 mgs per day for persons 3 years to 12 years old

32 mgs per day for children 1 month to 36 months old

16 mgs per day for babies less than one month old

The apparent idea is to take potassium iodine daily, every 24 hours, until the risk of significant exposure to fallout by either inhalation or ingestion no longer exists.

Having said that, I won't be taking any potassium iodine. I have yet to figure out if I would change my mind if I was located in the normal wind patterns. I just don't know. I do know that you can buy potassium iodine over the counter at your local Walgreens or comparable pharmacy. If not, here are some sources from Amazon.


Monday, March 14, 2011

Survival Chronicles of Jim - Chapter 23 Evaluation of My Survival Preparations

I haven't written an article for UrbanSurvivalSkills.com for some time. Been too busy both with my contractor job with the government and my business, as well as contining to prep.

By far my biggest preparation is in the area of developing a source list of financial blogs, web sites, newsletters and such to keep on track of the, what I believe, it an impending economic collapse.

In fact, this past week I got pretty scared with the clamity in Japan, the news of Chinese inflation, oil prices rising as well as Gold and Silver, so concerned in fact that I went to Costco and bought a bunch more food. I think I have at least a years worth now for me and my son. Of course, I am expecting the straphangers (family and friends) that UrbanMan always warns us to expect.

Speaking of UrbanMan, I had him stop by my house to talk to me and look around so I could get an honest evaluation of my preps to date. This is what he told me:

Handgun, shotgun and Mosin-Nagant rifle are better than nothing, but I need a better long gun. UrbanMan recommended an SKS is I wanted to go cheap, or an M-4 or M-16 type rifle if I wanted to spend near $1000. When UrbanMan saw my ammo supply, he said "That's all?!,...that's all you have on hand?" I was advised to buy more .22 LR, 12 gauge and Mosin-Nagant ammunition.

I have a good supply of water. But I need to buy some 5 gallon plastic cans and store water in my garage or basement as well as continue the water delivery to maintain my purified drinking water supply.

I also have a big supply of food, but mostly pantry items. I was advised to buy some more cases of dehydrated food as well as some MainStay granola bars for emergency food when I can't cook or otherwise need something to eat during travel.

UrbanMan told me to pickup another good set of boots. He recommends a quality similar to the Danners he wears. He also told me to organize my hot weather and cold weather clothing better (I have them basically handing up in the closet. He recommended putting some in space saver bags then into military style kit bags or duffle bags,..which I don't have.

I am lacking in first aid supplies, so I am to procure more bandages, alchohol, hydrogen peroxide, bacitracin ointment, sterile eyewash, self sticking ace wraps, as well as some common medications (asprin, cold meds and such). UrbanMan actually wrote out a list which I don't have in front of me at this moment.

I have been avidly buying silver. But since I can afford more, UrbanMan told me to buy more

The last things UrbanMan told me was to get my outside basement door replaced and with better locks as well as get a battery powered radio shack anti-intrusion device for it; buy a solar powered motion detector light for the part of the house; buy some more re-chargeable batteries; and, get ready to plant my spring garden.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far. UrbanMan said "Go ahead and pat yourself on the back,...one time,....then get back to work prepping - he believes it only a short matter of time before the collapse as well.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Urban Survival Planning - U.S. Dollar Collapse At Any Time

U.S. Dollar Collapse Could Occur at Any Time

Very good and succint article on the impending collapse from Inflation.us
You should bookmark and add to your sources of collapse indicators.

Highlights from the article is below; please go to http://www.inflation.us/ to read the article in it's entirety.

China this morning reported 4.9% price inflation for the month of February

China was at least smart enough to raise interest rates last month by 25 basis points to 6.06%, while the Federal Reserve continues to leave interest rates near zero with there being absolutely no talk of the Federal Reserve ever raising interest rates again.

China will be successful at containing inflation, as U.S. inflation spirals out of control and becomes the greatest economic crisis in American history.

China this week reported a $7.3 billion trade deficit for the month of February, its largest trade deficit in seven years, which surprised many global economists. NIA believes China 's trade deficit is temporary and that China will quickly return to having a trade surplus.

The Federal Reserve's QE2 along with China 's destructive monetary policies, which artificially devalue the yuan, have led to a massive rise in China 's raw material costs this year. NIA believes that in the upcoming months, Chinese manufacturers will raise the prices of their products that get exported to the U.S., to counteract rising commodity prices.

With most products used by Americans today having been manufactured in China , this will mean Americans will soon see massive price inflation in just about all consumer goods they use. NIA projects that by the end of 2011, we will begin to see the U.S. CPI increase by 4.9% or higher on a year-over-year basis, with real U.S. price inflation rising north of 10%.

The mainstream media is proclaiming that China 's trade deficit will silence calls for the Chinese to allow their currency to strengthen against the U.S. dollar. The fact is, China 's government has for long been making the major mistake of printing too many yuan in order to artificially prop up the U.S. dollar. Their fear was, if the U.S. dollar was allowed to decline too rapidly, prices of Chinese goods would rise in terms of U.S. dollars and Americans would no longer afford to import them.

The truth is, if China allowed the yuan to strengthen, the Chinese would have enjoyed a much higher standard of living. Sure, prices would rise in dollars and Americans would import less, but the Chinese would have the ability to consume more of their own products. Now, as a result of China expanding its own money supply in order to keep the yuan pegged to the U.S. dollar, Americans will be forced to pay a much higher price for Chinese goods.

The U.S. government has been successful at temporarily paying off Americans into not rioting in the streets like in Arab nations. It was just announced a few days ago that the number of Americans on food stamps in the month of December of 2010 was a record 44,082,324, up 13.1% from one year earlier and 1.1% from one month earlier. That is more than 14% of the total U.S. population!

Combined with President Obama extending unemployment benefits up to 99 weeks, American citizens are too busy and distracted playing with their iPad 2s and gossiping on Twitter about Charlie Sheen, to have any time to protest in Washington, DC.

NIA believes the U.S. government's entitlement spending is currently having the unintended consequence of making Americans dependent on government. It is like when you take wild animals into captivity and you feed them, teach them to do tricks and take care of them for a period of many years; if you just dump them one day back into the wild, it will be very difficult for them to survive. Americans who have become dependent on unemployment checks and food stamps will likely soon abruptly find out that they must begin to fend for themselves without any help from the government. The result will be many Americans turning into wild animals and becoming so desperate that they will have to rob and burglarize their fellow neighbors who were smart enough to prepare, or else they will risk starving to death.

This is what UrbanSurivalSkills has been saying, that we will have 80-120 million people that can't feed themseleves - this is a recipe for anarchy.

The U.S. budget deficit in the month of February reached a record $222.5 billion or $2.67 trillion on an annualized basis. With the Federal Reserve now monetizing our debt in full swing, a complete and total loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar could be imminent.

Just like how nobody in the mainstream media was calling for the collapse of Egypt's government a few months ago, almost nobody in the media believes a collapse of the U.S. dollar could possibly take place anytime soon.

NIA members are educated enough to see that the writing is on the wall. The Federal Reserve can deny all it wants that the U.S. is experiencing inflation, but with the cost to print a single U.S. dollar paper note rising by 50% since 2008, massive inflation is here right under Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's nose.

So few Americans are presently preparing for hyperinflation that if hyperinflation broke out today, approximately 90% of Americans won't have the means to put food on the table or put fuel in their automobiles. During the upcoming hyperinflationary crisis, food stamps will no longer have any value at all and all U.S. entitlement programs will come to a complete halt. Americans will take to the streets like the world has never seen before.

The biggest question NIA has today is, will the U.S. government resort to firing at its own citizens?, if major riots take place in Washington, DC. On Thursday, police in Saudi Arabia shot and wounded three protesters. The price of oil rose by a few dollars per barrel as soon as this news hit the wire, which shows just how nervous the world's financial markets have become in recent weeks and the Dow Jones has declined significantly in recent days.

From April to August of 2010, the last time the Federal Reserve allowed its balance sheet to shrink, the Dow Jones fell by over 1,000 points. If we see a major sell off in stocks, we could see gold and silver rise along with the Dow Jones falling.

NIA believes the worst decision any American can make is to sell their gold and silver and go long U.S. dollars, hoping to buy their precious metals back at a lower price in the future.Amen to that!


You can become a member of NIA for free at: http://inflation.us/

Friday, March 11, 2011

Urban Survival Planning - Basic Message Encryption (Secure Your Communications)

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com has received several requests for information on encrypted radios or otherwise an ability to code messages.

The security of communications is dependant upon who you want to protect it from and how much money you want to spend doing so.

Non-encrypted radio communications are vulnerable to handheld or larger scanners. Privacy codes can be easily overcame by hand held scanners. Inversion of verbal communications - same thing,...easily decrypted with a plug in SD card.

Verbal communications can be protected to a degree through the use of brevity codes. This is nothing more that anticipating what you need to verbalize on the radio and condensing that to a pre-planned brevity.

An example of a brevity code would be an element from your survival site is conducting a security patrol around the survival site. Maybe you use a brevity code like this: ALPHA = Situation normal, conducting patrol; BRAVO = in Sector One; CHARLIE = in Sector Two; DELTA = in Sector Three; ECHO = conducting short term halt; FOXTROT = have eyes on armed group; GOLF = <10; HOTEL = <20; INDIA = >20; JULIET = moving back to camp; KILO = 15 minutes from re-entering Survival Site. So with this brevity code, if the patrol sends a "DELTA, FOXROT, GOLF" it means they are in patrol sector three and are observing an armed group of less than 10 people. This keeps transmission times down and protects the information you are sending over the air.

So the bottom line on brevities is that a one or two word phrase has an elaborative meaning to condense transmission times. However, continued use of the same brevities would allow a intercepting station to piece together your code.

Another, much more secure method, abeit time consuming method of encrypting messages is through letter transpositions using a tri-graph. See the diagram below:


You need a key to encrypt your message against. A book is a good example, and in some circles this is called a “book code”. Let’s say you and your survival partners decide on a book, and a method of ensuring the other party knows which page to use to decrypt. At the beginning of each message you can say or write “ONE THREE HOTEL FIVE XRAY”. The end user knows to remove the letters to get 135 and that would be the page to start on.

You are part of a survival group that is Bugging Out tomorrow night to a Bug Out Location and you want to let the people in your group at the BOL to know to expect you. You want to send the message “WE ARE MOVING TOMORROW NIGHT, TUES NIGHT, TO YOUR LOCATION”. You add “ONE THREE HOTEL FIVE XRAY” to the message to tell the other group that this is the page they should be encrypting from.

From page 135 of the book, you writes the text from the book in groups of five letters. In this case “Out in the meadow was a blue van with all four tires flat and all windows busted,….” In groups of five letters and underneath those letters you write the message “We are moving tomorrow night xx Tues night xx to your location” (note 1: use double x to indicate a commo or repeat - or to fill up spaces; use triple x to indicate a break or period). (note 2: writing out the book code in groups of five letters just makes it easier to encrypt with tri-graph).

(from book)
OUTIN THEME ADOWW ASABL UEVAN WITHA LLFOU RTIRE SFLAT ANDAL LWIND

(message to be encrypted and sent)
WEARE MOVIN GTOMM ORROW NIGHT XXTUE SNIGH TXXTO YOURL LOCAT IONXX

From here you use the Tri-Graph to transpose the letters. From the Tri-Graph find the “O” on the top line then the “W” in the left column then see what letter intersects,.... it should be the “K”. From the “U” and the “E” you should get a “Y”, and so on.

Your final encrypted message would be: KYTZR FVZUR GQCII OJRPH HMBHG TFMBE DYNUB KQFKS QTFRE LBFAE TKVKA

You would send that via e-mail, text or voice communications,....if by voice then you would phonetically sound out each letter,… “KILO YANKEE, TANGO, ZULU, ROMEO, etc.

At the other end your encrypted message would be written underneath the same phrase, it would look like this:

(from book)
OUTIN THEME ADOWW ASABL UEVAN WITHA LLFOU RTIRE SFLAT ANDAL LWIND

(message to be de-crypted)
KYTZR FVZUR GQCII OJRPH HMBHG TFMBE DYNUB KQFKS QTFRE LBFAE TKVKA

It would be decrypted at the other end by locating the “O” on the Tri-Graph, going horizontally across to the “K” then looking across the top of the Tri-Graph to see what letter than pertained to, and in this case a “W”. The same for the next letter, which is a “U”. Locate the “U” on the left hand column of the Tri-Graph, go across to the “Y” then up to the top of the Tri-Graph and you should get a “E”, and so forth.

Messages using this manual encryption could be written on paper and passed either face to face or through a dead drop if you are in a situation where a threat has the ability to intercept and direction find your phones or radios, and the telephones are either down or monitored. If a occupation force or a nearby threat has intercept and DF capability, then talking in an obvious code would spin them up and draw attention to you.