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

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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,956 ✭✭✭Doc Ruby


    grapeape wrote: »
    You seriously need to find a new website to read. :p


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,956 ✭✭✭Doc Ruby


    More welly weather en route...

    http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0706/breaking18.html?via=mr

    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10,271 ✭✭✭✭johngalway


    grapeape wrote: »
    Ive seen them for your driveway somewhere before too they look and work great

    If water was to come that high I'd be worried about drains as well as doors. Could find that the sewer backs up.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,956 ✭✭✭Doc Ruby


    Today is the 50th anniversary of Starfish Prime, the first test of an atmospheric EMP bomb.
    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.



    Happy birthday, end of the world as we know it!


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,956 ✭✭✭Doc Ruby


    No word on whether or not this is a drug resistant/immune strain or just poor public health practise, but TB is rearing its head again...
    The state of Florida has been struggling for months with what the Centers for Disease Control describe as the worst tuberculosis outbreak in the United States in twenty years.

    Although a CDC report went out to state health officials in April encouraging them to take concerted action, the warning went largely unnoticed and nothing has been done. The public did not even learn of the outbreak until June, after a man with an active case of TB was spotted in a Jacksonville soup kitchen.

    The Palm Beach Post has managed to obtain records on the outbreak and the CDC report, though only after weeks of repeated requests. These documents should have been freely available under Florida’s Sunshine Law.

    According to the Post, the coverup began as early as last February, “when Duval County Health Department officials felt so overwhelmed by the sudden spike in tuberculosis that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become involved. Believing the outbreak affected only their underclass, the health officials made a conscious decision not to not tell the public, repeating a decision they had made in 2008, when the same strain had appeared in an assisted living home for people with schizophrenia.”

    That decision now appears to have gone terribly awry, partly because the disease appears to have already spread into the general population but also because just nine days before the CDC warning was issued, Florida Governor Rick Scott had signed a bill downsizing the state’s Department of Health and closing the A.G. Holley State Hospital that had treated the most difficult tuberculosis cases for over 60 years.

    With health officials preoccupied by the challenge of restructuring, the CDC report went unseen, and an order even went out for the hospital to be closed immediately, six months ahead of schedule.

    According to the Post, by April the outbreak had been linked to thirteen deaths, with 99 individuals infected, including six children. Most of those affected were poor black men, ten of whom simply wasted away from the disease before getting treatment or were not treated in time to stop its progression.

    Now it is estimated that as many as 3000 people may have been exposed to the strain over the past two years, mainly in Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, jails, and a mental health clinic. Only 253 of those have been found, of whom one-third have tested positive for TB exposure.

    “The high number of deaths in this outbreak emphasizes the need for vigilant active case finding, improved education about TB, and ongoing screening at all sites with outbreak cases,” the CDC report urged.

    Now the strain has not only spread beyond the underclass but has started appearing in other parts of the state, including Miami.

    I get the feeling we haven't heard the last of this particular bug.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,617 ✭✭✭kildare.17hmr


    Could be nothing but then again..

    http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2056698176


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,738 ✭✭✭mawk


    military taking over you say?


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 15,676 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tabnabs


    Have been following the thread, but reckon Boards would be light up if anything significant was happening.


  • Registered Users Posts: 326 ✭✭evilmonkee


    Possibly not related but a large truck toppled over in the city yesterday (didnt catch the location), may be related.

    When I was in a car crash and the car flipped, witnesses said it sounded like a truck crashing, it was a very small car (VW Lupo, about the size of the old micra). The noise from a truck toppling could be very loud.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,617 ✭✭✭kildare.17hmr


    I was expecting something a bit more than an unexplainable noise and a few unrelated garda and army helicopters :rolleyes: haha


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  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 15,676 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tabnabs


    This is an incredible story about luck as much as anything else!
    William Martin LaFever has lots of reasons for still being alive after wandering for weeks in the remote Escalante Desert of southern Utah. One is the sheer luck that searchers put a rescue helicopter in just the right place; that was what ended one of the most amazing -- and perhaps luckiest -- survival stories in years.

    But Garfield County, Utah, sheriff’s authorities point to one other providential fact: LaFever is autistic, which might have led him to stay close to the life-giving Escalante River.

    “They say that those who are autistic are drawn to water,” sheriff's spokeswoman Becki Bronson told the Los Angeles Times. "He stayed with a water source, that was key. A person can go three weeks without food but only a few days without water. He stayed cool in the river, and he hydrated himself.”

    Following his rescue Thursday, the 28-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., man told officials he scavenged bits of food, captured frogs and drank river water while attempting to walk the 90 miles from Boulder, Utah, to Page, Ariz. He made 40 of those miles over three weeks before being rescued, emaciated but alive.

    Bronson told The Times that the desert landscape from which LaFever was plucked is as inhospitable as Mars.

    “It’s a place where they hold outdoor survival classes, a mixture of jagged lava rock and slippery sandstone, heavy sagebrush and juniper trees, desert terrain marked by sheer cliffs,” she said. “This is some of the most unforgiving terrain you will find anywhere on Earth. Where he was – there just isn’t anyone out there. There are no people. There are no towns."

    Full (and long) story here http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-autistic-man-utah-desert-20120713,0,3210052.story


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,111 ✭✭✭ShadowFox


    Public servants to have their sick leave cut in half they will be going on a super go slow after this
    http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/public-servants-to-have-sick-leave-cut-by-half-559826.html


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,455 ✭✭✭RUCKING FETARD


    grapeape wrote: »
    Public servants to have their sick leave cut in half they will be going on a super go slow after this
    http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/public-servants-to-have-sick-leave-cut-by-half-559826.html
    No worries, they can just say they were sick all through their holidays and take them all again.

    They're encouraged to take all their sick days so I'd say it'll be the same carry on with this.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,414 ✭✭✭touts


    grapeape wrote: »
    Public servants to have their sick leave cut in half they will be going on a super go slow after this
    http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/public-servants-to-have-sick-leave-cut-by-half-559826.html

    So we go from **** all service to **** all service delivered slowly. At least it might bring it all to a head. Two to three weeks of a general public service strike followed by a few days of riots as the general population burn down the union HQs and break the power of the unelected champagne swilling socialists. Then the country will start to get back on its feet. And I'll follow it all on my battery powered radio while eating my canned food and drinking my bottled water. Bring it on.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,956 ✭✭✭Doc Ruby


    “They say that those who are autistic are drawn to water,” sheriff's spokeswoman Becki Bronson told the Los Angeles Times.
    No one can hear you scream when your face is in your palm.
    touts wrote: »
    Two to three weeks of a general public service strike followed by a few days of riots as the general population burn down the union HQs and break the power of the unelected champagne swilling socialists.
    Its tempting to think that might be the outcome, but these lads are big fans of brinkmanship. I hope its as quick and clean as that, but probably it will be a running battle for decades to come.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,455 ✭✭✭RUCKING FETARD


    touts wrote: »
    my bottled water.
    eww, all the leached plastic in that. eww, yuck.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,738 ✭✭✭mawk


    eww, all the leached plastic in that. eww, yuck.

    mmm delicious polyethyleneterapethalate! flavoursome!

    pet is photo sensitive, so if the bottles are kept out of daylight they should be ok for years


  • Registered Users Posts: 428 ✭✭wolfeye


    The number of U.S. whooping cough cases has risen to around 18,000 in an outbreak that is on track to become the most severe in over a half century and could in part stem from possible waning vaccine protection, health officials said on Thursday.


    Waning vaccines thats the start of it!

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sns-rt-us-usa-whoopingcoughbre86j05u-20120719,0,1402745.story


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,407 ✭✭✭Cardinal Richelieu




  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 15,676 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tabnabs


    I wouldn't take too much of that to heart, when you look at longer averages it's not bleak at all.

    http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=wheat&months=120&commodity=soybeans


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  • Registered Users Posts: 203 ✭✭the monk5845


    here is something for those preping for disease outbreaks sounds like it could get worse. it is very bad for causing sudden death in children by attacking the central nervous system


    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/deadly-virus-forces-closure-of-schools-across-south-east-asia-7962402.html


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,956 ✭✭✭Doc Ruby


    These stories keep surfacing, you have the whooping cough, tuberculosis, H1N1, and more, its only a matter of time before we run into one we can't handle. Watch this space.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,635 ✭✭✭eth0


    Someone should tell the yanks we'll gladly take some drought off their hands. They won't have to pay much to get rid of it


  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 15,676 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tabnabs


    In every tragic mass shooting — Virginia Tech, Columbine and Aurora, Colo.’s deadly theater massacre on Friday — there are survivors — a fortunate few who managed to escape, hide or fool the shooters by playing dead.

    Which raises the question: what can you do to survive if the unthinkable happens to you?

    “Whether you are a 7-year-old child or a 70-year-old grandmother or grandfather, there are things that you can do to increase your chances of surviving,” said Eric Greitens, a former navy seal and police trainer.

    Whether you should you hide in place or make a run for it, Greitens said it depends on the situation — the farther you are from the shooter, the better your odds of escaping.

    But if that is not a reasonable option, he said the next best move is to protect yourself by hiding or getting behind something — a wall, a desk, anything between you and the gunman.

    “You might be hidden behind seats in a movie theater…the active shooter can’t see you but those seats don’t provide cover,” said Greitens.

    He said those seats those seats don’t protect you from bullets as someone can shoot through those seats.

    So if you cannot get away or hide, should you attack?

    “Most people should try to evacuate but if you are faced with someone and they are two or three feet away and they’ve been killing other people, you want to viciously and aggressively attack because your life depends on it,” said Greitens.

    But experts disagree on whether playing dead is a good idea.

    “I do not suggest playing dead but if you are really close to an active shooter you want to be an active survivor…if you are active survivor with people around you…your chances of survival are much higher,” Greitens said.
    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/07/aurora-colorado-shooting-how-to-survive-the-unthinkable/


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,348 ✭✭✭Rhinocharge


    Severe climate change

    http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/site/?pageid=event_desc&edis_id=CC-20120726-35934-GRL

    Futher details here:
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120725-greenland-ice-sheet-melt-satellites-nasa-space-science/
    Scientists estimate that if all of Greenland's ice sheet were to melt, the global sea level would rise by 23 feet (7 meters).

    & here:
    http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/24jul_greenland/

    Flood Map available here:
    http://flood.firetree.net/


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,348 ✭✭✭Rhinocharge


    Update:
    http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/site/?pageid=event_desc&edis_id=FL-20120728-35957-GRL
    The water most likely came from melting of the ice sheet - rather than an ice-dammed lake bursting or glacial lake drainage - as the high discharge was maintained for so long, Forster said. The flooding follows reports that 97 percent of Greenland's ice sheets thawed on the surface, according to satellite measurements. Only four days before, just 40 percent of the surface ice layer was thawing.
    The melting characteristics of such a huge ice sheet - spanning 656,000 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers) - is important for various reasons, particularly its potential effect on sea levels. If melted completely, the Greenland ice sheet could contribute 23 feet (7 meters) to global sea-level rise, according to a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

    & just to add insult to injury.
    a massive iceberg that recently broke away from one of Greenland's largest glaciers is making its way downstream and toward the open ocean, as shown by a new satellite photo. The drifting island of ice split from the Petermann Glacier's ice shelf - the front end of a glacier, which hangs off the land and floats on the ocean. The newly birthed berg is estimated to be about 46 square miles (120 square kilometers), and finally broke away from the floating tongue of ice on Monday, July 16.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,414 ✭✭✭touts


    Ebola is loose in Kampala. Is this the first time there has been an outbreak in a large city. And Uganda is a major target for Irish Aid so there are lots of Irish workers based there.

    m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19048998


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,455 ✭✭✭RUCKING FETARD


    ^^^Was reading about that the other day, I thought Ebola was near certain death but it's only like 50/50.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10,271 ✭✭✭✭johngalway


    but it's only like 50/50.

    That all? I'm off to lick a monkey :D


    (Sorry, I couldn't help myself :o )


    (And that's 10k!)


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  • Registered Users Posts: 428 ✭✭wolfeye


    A new flu virus identified in American harbour seals has the potential to pass to other mammals, including humans, say experts.

    Once in a seal which is a mammal the virus can be passed to humans easily enough i reckon.

    http://www.independent.ie/health/health-news/seal-flu-could-pose-risk-to-humans-3186351.html

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19055961


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