TEOTWAWKI…For Real

[bblhd672]

FYI to all before clicking link above...Mountain Guerrilla Blog is written by a former SF soldier whose language is often "colorful," using words that some may find offensive.

"John Mosby" cusses alot, but I doubt you'll ever misunderstand what he's trying to say! Get beyond the frequent "f bombs" and you'll find tons of useful information there. His latest book is on my nightstand waiting on me to finish another book.

[Jago668]

I've got the two Reluctant Partisan books. Good reading.

[Paladin]

God Bless Rand Paul for valuing the America I grew up in.

With the longest running federal government shutdown in effect, everyone should at least read and think about this quote.

You already have TSA officers call out sick in [the] government shutdown. The aviation industry is highly dependent on the government. Boeing Co has warned that a prolonged U.S. government shutdown could hurt its business as well as the broader aviation industry. It's worth a thought to consider how much longer essential personnel will be willing to go to work without being paid.

[Paladin]

In the age of Rep. Eric "nuke them" Swallwell, the words that Prof. Quigley wrote in 1966 in Tragedy and Hope seem more relevant than ever:

Policy and politics are concerned with methods of influencing the behavior of others to obtain cooperation, consent or, at least, acquiescence. In our Western world, power has been based to a significant extent on force (that is, weapons), and to a lesser degree on economic rewards and ideological appeal...For many centuries, from the ninth century to the twentieth, the increasing offensive
power of Western weapons systems has made it possible to compel obedience over wider and wider areas and over larger numbers of peoples. Accordingly, political organizations (such as the state) have been able to rule over larger areas...

new weapons...had become weapons of mass destruction rather than instruments of persuasion. If the victims of such weapons are killed, they can neither obey nor consent. Thus the new weapons have become instruments, not of political power, but of destruction of all power organizations...

If [organizations] become increasingly threatened by weapons of [mass] destruction, the organization can survive by becoming decentralized, with less emphasis on organizational relationships and more emphasis on morale and outlook. [see The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations]. They thus become increasingly amorphous and invulnerable to modern weapons of [mass] destruction. The peoples of Africa are, for this reason among others, not susceptible to compulsion by megaton bombs...any increase in defensive weapon power would stop the growth in size of power areas and would, in time, reverse this tendency...Any drastic increase in the ability of guerrilla forces to function would indicate such an increase in defensive power of existing weapons, and this, in turn, would indicate an ability to resist centralized authorities and thus an ability to maintain and defend smallgroup freedoms.

Such a rise in the strength of defensive weapons, with a consequent decentralization of political power, would require a number of other changes, such as a decentralization of economic production...Such a change would require a plentiful, dispersed source of industrial energy...For example, a shift from our present use of fossil fuels as a chief energy source to the use of the sun's energy directly in many small local energy accumulators might provide a plentiful supply of decentralized energy. More remote might be use of the tides, or of differential ocean temperatures, or even of the winds. Possibly some development in the use of nuclear energy, or, above all, some method for cheap separation of the oxygen and hydrogen in ordinary water that could release energy, perhaps through fuel cells, as they recombine.

Such a decentralized energy source, if developed, could be used to build up a decentralized industrial system using cellulose or silicon as raw materials to produce an economy of plastics and glass products (including fiber glass). These two raw materials found in vegetation and sand are among the most common substances in the world. On such a basis, with the proper development of guerrilla weapon tactics, the costs of enforcing centralized orders in local areas might rise so high that a considerable process of political decentralization and local autonomies (including local liberties) could arise, thus reversing the process of political centralization that has continued in the Western tradition for about a thousand years.

It was Prof. Quigley's opinion that decentralization was of critical importance in the nuclear age and that decentralized energy and industrial production as well as defensive weapons and tactics promote local liberty and freedom.

[Paladin]

Relevant: China, Russia Building Super-EMP Bombs for ‘Blackout Warfare’:

http://scofieldinstitute.org/china-russ ... t-warfare/

Yep. I've got a book called The Illustrated History of the SAS by Ken Connor (2001). He indicates that modern countries are most vulnerable to their electrical system. That pretty much takes down everything else, including IT. Water systems are also vulnerable.

In addition the documentary Zero Days discusses that software has been built to completely take down a country, called Nitro Zeus

And that doesn't include the Edward Snowden disclosure that kill switches were secretly inserted into a whole host of US allied and neutral countries. The switches were designed to shut the countries down like a light switch.

[crazy2medic]

My understanding the large transformers you see at power substations, those are made in Europe and it takes two years from time of order to delivery! That there is no "stockpile" of those, no ready replacements!
Funny that everybody acknowledges the threat of an EMP but little of a CME, we have been missed twice in the last 5yrs by a Carrington level CME! The closest passed between us and the moon! A Carrington level CME will take the entire planet back to the late 1800s level technology in 2 days!
If this should happen people who have no survival skills will lose their minds! I know how to hunt, fish, I know what plants are edible and what can be used for medicinal purposes! What about all those people in big cities that their survival skill is driving to Walmart? When the lights go out it will be interesting times!

[Paladin]

The DHS has stated that US "energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors" have been targets of Russia since March 2016. The US government has accused Russia of remotely targeting the US power grid

[Paladin]

This clip from Snowden (2016): It's Not About Terrorism indicates that power grids, dams and hospitals were specifically targeted in Japan. Snowden indicated that malware was also planted in Mexico, Germany, Brazil, and Austria. As targets like hospitals in friendly nations are explicitly non-threat civilian targets, and legally prohibited by the Geneva Conventions from being targeted... its safe to assume that nothing is off limits to megalomaniacs.

[The Annoyed Man]

I've got the two Reluctant Partisan books. Good reading.

Having trouble finding them on Amazon under the title “Reluctant Partisan”. Can you point me in a right direction?

Edited to add: never mind, I found it on his website. A little pricey. Is the juice worth the squeeze?

[gtolbert09]

I've got the two Reluctant Partisan books. Good reading.

Having trouble finding them on Amazon under the title “Reluctant Partisan”. Can you point me in a right direction?

Edited to add: never mind, I found it on his website. A little pricey. Is the juice worth the squeeze?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233 ... n-volume-i

[Soccerdad1995]

My understanding the large transformers you see at power substations, those are made in Europe and it takes two years from time of order to delivery! That there is no "stockpile" of those, no ready replacements!
Funny that everybody acknowledges the threat of an EMP but little of a CME, we have been missed twice in the last 5yrs by a Carrington level CME! The closest passed between us and the moon! A Carrington level CME will take the entire planet back to the late 1800s level technology in 2 days!
If this should happen people who have no survival skills will lose their minds! I know how to hunt, fish, I know what plants are edible and what can be used for medicinal purposes! What about all those people in big cities that their survival skill is driving to Walmart? When the lights go out it will be interesting times!

Those folks in the big cities will devolve very quickly as they are brutally forced down Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I expect that it will be like a scene from "The Purge" and / or "The Walking Dead". Those who are incapable of getting their own resources will simply take whatever they can from those who are weaker / less well armed. In the end, humans are just like every other animal. The survival instinct will over rule all moral considerations. It definitely will not be a pleasant time for anyone.

[bblhd672]

What about all those people in big cities that their survival skill is driving to Walmart?

90+% fatality rate

[bblhd672]

I've got the two Reluctant Partisan books. Good reading.

Having trouble finding them on Amazon under the title “Reluctant Partisan”. Can you point me in a right direction?

Edited to add: never mind, I found it on his website. A little pricey. Is the juice worth the squeeze?

That's a question asked often about his books. His response is usually read his blog posts and make you own decision as to whether you feel he is putting out worthwhile info. I bought Guerrilla Gunfighter Vol 1 with Christmas gift money but haven't started it yet. The two Reluctant Partisan books are on my radar.

[MaduroBU]

The real weak point in our society is economic. How many people or families could survive 6 months without income? Without any mention of empty grocery shelves (except bread....people freak out and hoard bread at the drop of a hat), just the interruption in income would be catastrophic for well over 50% of families. Add to that the number of older folks whose savings would take a severe hit with a drop in the stock market, and a startling number of people are suddenly unable to provide for themselves. Economic calamity need not and likely won't involve any actually shortage of goods. Never forget that farmers were paid to destroy crops for most of the Great Depression, despite 1930s era technology and the Dust Bowl.

My great grandmother survived on her land in the 1940s and 1950s after my great grandfather was killed in WW2. The rest of the nation was prospering but she and our family were focused upon getting by. She did, but only because she had land and knew how to use it to feed herself and her family. Today, those skills are called "prepping" or "homesteading". I doubt that she knew what either of those words mean as they're used today, but she kept the family fed with those skills. My stepmother's family in Nebraska owned a farm, which until the advent of the tractor was devoted almost entirely to feeding the family.

Those skills are in short supply, and even if they were widespread, there isn't enough land to support a substantial part of the population applying them. Wealth is being warm when it's cold, well fed, healthy, and ideally able to maintain and grow that situation. Taking stock of how many levels of interdependent economic activity must cooperate to provide that "wealth" to me, I find it reasonable to look for ways to secure myself against interruptions in those supply chains.

The most common error in prediction is the Extrapolation of "right now" out to "forever". History is the study of the future, and provides a much better indication of assets and threats.