Potential SHTF scenarios & tinfoil hat thread (Please read post 1)

grapeape wrote: »

Some good points here mostly aimed at America but out of the 10 points i could see at least 8 happen here if not all 10
http://offgridsurvival.com/shtfprepperthreats/

4. Gangs & Raiders If things go bad, there will likely be more people who mean to do you harm than there will be people who are prepared. This is something that you must accept and learn to deal with. The fact is, most people have no idea what it really takes to survive and once their safety net is removed they will become increasingly desperate and unpredictable.

bonniebede wrote: »

But..
1. It's smart to have both... reader and books. Why not?

bonniebede wrote: »

2. If the disaster is that big where are you leaving for? Sure you need your library at your bug out location, but presumably one hopes to be able to stock that in advance.

bonniebede wrote: »

3. Libraries are the way we have managed and transmitted civilsation for the last several millenia, and I know you are invested in that idea.:)

bonniebede wrote: »

So not either/or but both/and. Especially as putting everythng onto a reader, which I think is a great job, also means putting all your knowledge into one device which could get lost or damaged.

bonniebede wrote: »

further, some advice is necessary in the immediate short term, like how to purify water from various sources, and so on. This is the kind of info that is absolutely necessary to get through that bottleneck, so why not have it in multiply redundant ways.

bonniebede wrote: »

what if i die of the plague, and my loved ones are relying on whatever I prepped and left behind?

bonniebede wrote: »

Finally, while I agree with you in your various observations about how people are as likely, if not more likely to pull together rather than turn into psycho nut gangs of roaming bandits, when there is no law enforcement back up it only takes one or two people to be an immediate threat to me. It is no consolation that the majority of people are being decent and helping their neighbour if the one pyscho has decided to knock on my door.

After all, we currently have as much law enforcement and army as we can afford, and live in a reasonably decent society, but I still have to take precautions to protect myself from random assaults/muggings. (not so worried about burglary its only stuff) So why not be prepared for a scenario which might not get much worse, but certainly would not be better.

(Reuters) - More than 1.4 million people from Illinois to Virginia remained without power Tuesday morning after the weekend's violent storms, and a heat wave continued to bake much of the region, the regional power companies said. The power companies warned some customers could be without power to run their air conditioners for the rest of the week in the worst hit areas.

High temperatures across the region were expected to reach the 90s Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) over the next several days, according to AccuWeather.com.
The storms crossed the Eastern United States with heavy rain, hail and winds reaching 80 miles per hour starting Friday night, leaving more than 3 million homes and businesses without the power, according to a federal energy report.

The storms also claimed at least 15 lives, mostly from falling trees and branches across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states.

American Electric Power Co Inc of Ohio said Tuesday morning that crews were working to restore power to 357,000 customers in Virginia and West Virginia; 298,000 in Ohio; 32,000 in Indiana; and 14,000 in Kentucky.

FirstEnergy Corp of Ohio said it had 216,000 customers out in its five-state service area of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey. That was down from about the initial 566,000 affected by the storms.

Illinois-based Exelon Corp said its Baltimore Gas & Electric (BG&E) unit in Maryland had about 170,000 customers out, down from about 600,000 homes and businesses affected.

Virginia power company Dominion Resources Inc said it still had more than 170,000 customers without electricity in its Virginia and North Carolina service areas.

Washington, D.C.-based Pepco Holdings Inc said it had more than 116,000 customers without power in the District of Columbia and Maryland and more than 69,000 out in New Jersey.

Met Éireann has warned of possible flooding in parts of Leinster and east Munster today as heavy rain spreads westwards across the country.
The forecaster said a band of heavy rain which affected Wales and central England overnight has pushed its way across the Irish Sea, with coastal counties of Leinster already experiencing heavy downpours this morning.
Rain will become heavier in the east and continue throughout the afternoon. All areas of Leinster are expected to experience heavy rain but Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford will be worst affected with 25 to 30mm of rainfall forecast in some areas.
“Ground conditions are very saturated at the moment all over the country,” said Met Éireann meteorologist Vincent O’Shea.
“Getting another 25 or 30 millimetres of rain in the southern half of Leinster today will lead to a high risk of flooding. Eastern counties of Munster, most notably Cork and Waterford, could also be at risk,” he said.
Rainfall is expected to be more widespread than the deluge in Cork and Antrim last week which caused severe localised flooding.
Rain will be more scattered in Connacht and west Ulster, with some spells of sunshine. It will be mild and humid, with temperatures reaching 21 or 22 degrees in some parts.
There will be outbreaks of rain across the country tonight, with a risk of heavy, thundery showers.
Some bright and sunny spells are expected in the south and east tomorrow, but the west and northwest of the country will experience scattered showers and heavy rain at times.

On July 9, 1962, the US launched a Thor missile from Johnston island, an atoll about 1500 kilometers (900 miles) southwest of Hawaii. The missile arced up to a height of over 1100 km (660 miles), then came back down. At the preprogrammed height of 400 km (240 miles), just seconds after 09:00 UTC, the 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead detonated.

And all hell broke loose.

---

One immediate effect of the blast was a huge aurora seen for thousands of kilometers around. Electrons are lightweight and travel rapidly away from the explosion. A moving electron is affected by a magnetic field, so these electrons actually flowed quickly along the Earth’s magnetic field lines and were dropped into the upper atmosphere. At a height of roughly 50 – 100 kilometers they were stopped by the atoms and molecules of Earth’s atmosphere. Those atoms and molecules absorbed the energy of the electrons and responded by glowing, creating an artificial aurora.

Heavy ions (atoms stripped of electrons) are also created in the blast, and get absorbed somewhat higher up in the atmosphere. The image here shows this glow as seen by an airplane moments after the nuclear explosion. The feathery filament is from the bomb debris, while the red glow may be due to glowing oxygen atoms; this tends to be from atoms higher than 100 km, so the glow is probably due to the heavy ions impacting our air.

Taking the pulse of a nuclear weapon

But the effects were far more than a simple light show. When the bomb detonated, those electrons underwent incredible acceleration. When that happens they create a brief but extremely powerful magnetic field. This is called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The strength of the pulse was so huge that it affected the flow of electricity on the Earth hundreds of kilometers away! In Hawaii it blew out hundreds of streetlights, and caused widespread telephone outages. Other effects included electrical surges on airplanes and radio blackouts.

The EMP had been predicted by scientists, but the Starfish Prime pulse was far larger than expected. And there was another effect that hadn’t been predicted accurately. Many of the electrons from the blast didn’t fall down into the Earth’s atmosphere, but instead lingered in space for months, trapped by Earth’s magnetic field, creating an artificial radiation belt high above our planet’s surface.

When a high-speed electron hits a satellite, it can generate a sort-of miniature EMP. The details are complex, but the net effect is that these electrons can zap satellites and damage their electronics. The pulse of electrons from the Starfish Prime detonation damaged at least six satellites (including one Soviet bird), all of which eventually failed due to the blast. Other satellite failures at the time may be linked to the explosion as well.

The overall effect shocked scientists and engineers. They had expected something much smaller, not nearly the level that actually occurred. Because of this, later high-altitude nuclear tests made by the US as part of Operation Fishbowl were designed to have a much lower yield. Although the explosion energies are still classified, it’s estimated they ranged from a few dozen to a few hundred kilotons, a fraction of the 1.4 megaton Starfish Prime explosion.

Ripples downstream

The long-term physical effects from the explosion died down after a few months, but the ramifications live on today. In 2010, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency issued a report called "Collateral Damage to Satellites from an EMP Attack", and I highly recommend reading it if you’ve gotten too much sleep lately. It details the effects of a high-altitude nuclear blast, and how one could be used to disable an entire country in one blow.

I am of the opinion that knowing is better than not knowing, even when the knowledge is terrifying. In this case, forewarned is forearmed. This EMP knowledge has been out there for decades, so the more we understand it, the better we may be able to use it to prevent damage from the bad guys from trying something like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXlrn6-ypg