Survivalist Team

Caomhnair

Looking for rounding up people who are seriously into surviving any potential disasters.
Would like to meet up to talk about proposed ideas and brainstorming. Also looking at touching up any skills that would be necessary; such as bushcraft or self defense. Leinster area, but not restricted.

Also would advise if serious and want to be discreet, please PM me.

belcampprisoner

potential disasters


fianna fail getting back in


you dont get disaters in ireland maybe flooding

belcampprisoner

belcampprisoner wrote: »

potential disasters


fianna fail getting back in


you dont get disaters in ireland maybe flooding

FF getting back in is the greatest possible disaster conceivable!

As for the rest, while Ireland isn't prone to disasters, prepping for potential disasters is of no harm at all. "Be Prepared", and all that!

Druss.

amber69

[Deleted User] wrote: »

FF getting back in is the greatest possible disaster conceivable!

As for the rest, while Ireland isn't prone to disasters, prepping for potential disasters is of no harm at all. "Be Prepared", and all that!

Druss.

Fail to prepare prepare to fail

silentrust

Caomhnair wrote: »

Looking for rounding up people who are seriously into surviving any potential disasters.
Would like to meet up to talk about proposed ideas and brainstorming. Also looking at touching up any skills that would be necessary; such as bushcraft or self defense. Leinster area, but not restricted.

Also would advise if serious and want to be discreet, please PM me.

I live in Dublin and would love to brainstorm with you if you're willing. I am rather put off by the constant spiel about weapons and "living off the land" but am working on developing an urban garden and have done some work with solar energy and stockpiling food and supplies. You need to have made at least 25 posts to do PM's I think, perhaps we can talk privately once we're both there.

silentrust

amber69 wrote: »

Fail to prepare prepare to fail

Words to live by Amber. :-)

Caomhnair

silentrust wrote: »

I live in Dublin and would love to brainstorm with you if you're willing. I am rather put off by the constant spiel about weapons and "living off the land" but am working on developing an urban garden and have done some work with solar energy and stockpiling food and supplies. You need to have made at least 25 posts to do PM's I think, perhaps we can talk privately once we're both there.

silentrust; am really with you on this, renewable fuel all the way, animal husbandry and crop cultivation are definitely something I am interested in. Sadly, wasnt up for reading the usual terms (a bad habit I am sure we all have), so I will get to that point and give you a shout in no time.

The Aussie

Caomhnair wrote: »

so I will get to that point and give you a shout in no time.

Just wander over to After Hours and start up a deep and meaningfull conversation on 2 different threads you don't particularly care about, you will be past the 25 post mark in under 10 mins :pac:

ShadowFox

Id like to do a meet up in the Dublin area if something is arranged let me know Id also like to try set up a channel on the pmr446 network of radios as i noticed they are getting longer and longer ranges each year (hopefully like America soon their Gmrs and Frs radios range up to 50km)

silentrust

Caomhnair wrote: »

silentrust; am really with you on this, renewable fuel all the way, animal husbandry and crop cultivation are definitely something I am interested in. Sadly, wasnt up for reading the usual terms (a bad habit I am sure we all have), so I will get to that point and give you a shout in no time.

Good man, good thinking! I can only hope your interest in animal husbandry is academic! :-D

Seriously though my darling girl and I have toyed with the idea of keeping chickens (her idea) or bees (my idea) but it's simply too high maintenance. Day to day growing our food means we can go away for a few days if necessary but imagine a SHTF scenario where you're away from home and it takes you a day or two to get back, only to find your goats etc. have died due to lack of clean water. It would break my fragile heart!

I have got past the 25 posts, so let me know when you're ready.

silentrust

ShadowFox wrote: »

Id like to do a meet up in the Dublin area if something is arranged let me know Id also like to try set up a channel on the pmr446 network of radios as i noticed they are getting longer and longer ranges each year (hopefully like America soon their Gmrs and Frs radios range up to 50km)

I would love to know more about this Shadowfox as I have always steered clear of private radio, on the basis I couldn't imagine a use for it come the collapse as I am staying put - what is the range of the radio sets like here in Dublin? I imagine the fact this is an urban area must make a signal difficult?

Have you thought about ways to encipher what you're saying to make sure that no one else can tune in and overhear when you'd next be trading for supplies with your buddies? If not, this is something of a hobby of mine, would love to swap notes with you.

ST

spynappels

silentrust wrote: »

Have you thought about ways to encipher what you're saying to make sure that no one else can tune in and overhear when you'd next be trading for supplies with your buddies? If not, this is something of a hobby of mine, would love to swap notes with you.

ST

I believe this might break the terms of the license under which PMR446 radios operate. Possibly not the number one priority in a SHTF scenario, but for now might get you noticed more than you want to be....

Very useful bits of kit though, I have 2 in my go-bag, plus my 2m ham H/H also has the frequencies and CTCSS tones programmed in, just in case.

Sorry for the Fred Drift.

silentrust

spynappels wrote: »

I believe this might break the terms of the license under which PMR446 radios operate. Possibly not the number one priority in a SHTF scenario, but for now might get you noticed more than you want to be....

Very useful bits of kit though, I have 2 in my go-bag, plus my 2m ham H/H also has the frequencies and CTCSS tones programmed in, just in case.

Sorry for the Fred Drift.

Really - are you not permitted to encode what you say? As I said I am woefully ignorant about private radio, although naturally I have a multiband receiver under the bend - I suppose it's always been difficult for me to imagine SHTF scenarios where they'd be useful -I suppose if you'd formed a team beforehand and wanted to stay in contact though...?

ShadowFox

silentrust wrote: »

I would love to know more about this Shadowfox as I have always steered clear of private radio, on the basis I couldn't imagine a use for it come the collapse as I am staying put - what is the range of the radio sets like here in Dublin? I imagine the fact this is an urban area must make a signal difficult?

Have you thought about ways to encipher what you're saying to make sure that no one else can tune in and overhear when you'd next be trading for supplies with your buddies? If not, this is something of a hobby of mine, would love to swap notes with you.

ST

I also plan to stay put but 1 or more of us may have to leave for some reason so i find knowing how to use radios a good idea. The pmr446 ones i have are 10km line of site my parents live about 3/4km away from me in a built up area and the radios work fine I do plan on testing them longer distance

If the SHTF I plan on using GMRS 50km radios they are illegal to use without a licence but in a SHTF case who cares or i might pick up some dual band radios as I might be able to "borrow" someone else repeater and get super coverage

waterfordham

spynappels wrote: »

I believe this might break the terms of the license under which PMR446 radios operate. Possibly not the number one priority in a SHTF scenario, but for now might get you noticed more than you want to be....

Very useful bits of kit though, I have 2 in my go-bag, plus my 2m ham H/H also has the frequencies and CTCSS tones programmed in, just in case.

Sorry for the Fred Drift.

I'm sure you can get some with voice inversion, doubt they could be sold if it was illegal. Post SHTF, no one will care anyway. With Line-of-sight, and decent radios, over kms is doable with PMR radios.

In urban areas though, it's highly unlikely you will get the advertised 'range'. Interestingly 5W UHF handhelds will just about get 2000m between cars on Motorways.

spynappels

waterfordham wrote: »

I'm sure you can get some with voice inversion, doubt they could be sold if it was illegal. Post SHTF, no one will care anyway. With Line-of-sight, and decent radios, over kms is doable with PMR radios.

In urban areas though, it's highly unlikely you will get the advertised 'range'. Interestingly 5W UHF handhelds will just about get 2000m between cars on Motorways.

You certainly can get Chinese handies which can do voice inversion, but they are not type approved PMR446 radios. In a SHTF it wouldn't really matter, but for now, you are less likely to be noticed if you use a non type approved radio with a higher power output 1-2 or even 5W rather than the approved 0.5W, than using any type of voice scrambling/inversion.

From the point of view of using repeaters, post-SHTF they'd likely be down, although they are certainly very useful when they are working, both 2m and 70cm repeaters on my route to work get used pretty much every day.

Thing about using radios is that it works well when everyone knows how to use them properly, less so if some in your group are clueless about how to use them (speaking over each other, not releasing PTT, talking too much, never mind repeater spamming) and if you're in NI, a few pounds spent on doing a Foundation Amateur Radio Course is definitely well spent. 2 days, £65 and you can legally use all the ham bands and get used to using radios properly.

Just my tuppence worth of course, not sure how licensing in ROI works exactly.

silentrust

waterfordham wrote: »

I'm sure you can get some with voice inversion, doubt they could be sold if it was illegal. Post SHTF, no one will care anyway. With Line-of-sight, and decent radios, over kms is doable with PMR radios.

In urban areas though, it's highly unlikely you will get the advertised 'range'. Interestingly 5W UHF handhelds will just about get 2000m between cars on Motorways.

Well if a Survival Team were put together now would voice scrambling be necessary? Surely a good old fashioned code book would do just as well? I'm personally a big fan of the "Book Cipher" - can take a while to encode messages but is very secure provided the keytext is sufficiently long.

waterfordham

spynappels wrote: »

You certainly can get Chinese handies which can do voice inversion, but they are not type approved PMR446 radios. In a SHTF it wouldn't really matter, but for now, you are less likely to be noticed if you use a non type approved radio with a higher power output 1-2 or even 5W rather than the approved 0.5W, than using any type of voice scrambling/inversion.

From the point of view of using repeaters, post-SHTF they'd likely be down, although they are certainly very useful when they are working, both 2m and 70cm repeaters on my route to work get used pretty much every day.

Thing about using radios is that it works well when everyone knows how to use them properly, less so if some in your group are clueless about how to use them (speaking over each other, not releasing PTT, talking too much, never mind repeater spamming) and if you're in NI, a few pounds spent on doing a Foundation Amateur Radio Course is definitely well spent. 2 days, £65 and you can legally use all the ham bands and get used to using radios properly.

Just my tuppence worth of course, not sure how licensing in ROI works exactly.

Its a bit more involved in getting the licence down south. It is the full HAREC syllabus, with the exams being run by the IRTS. Proper procedure does help reduce waffle and increase the signal-to-nose ratio enormously (pardon the pun).

ShadowFox

silentrust wrote: »

Well if a Survival Team were put together now would voice scrambling be necessary? Surely a good old fashioned code book would do just as well? I'm personally a big fan of the "Book Cipher" - can take a while to encode messages but is very secure provided the keytext is sufficiently long.

With regards to cipher I think these would be ideal http://www.ebay.ie/itm/NSA-National-Security-Agency-Confederate-Spy-Cipher-Wheel-Disc-Brass-Cryptology-/380638421104?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item589fd16070
put A on a different letter each day to make it harder to break

waterfordham

ShadowFox wrote: »

With regards to cipher I think these would be ideal http://www.ebay.ie/itm/NSA-National-Security-Agency-Confederate-Spy-Cipher-Wheel-Disc-Brass-Cryptology-/380638421104?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item589fd16070
put A on a different letter each day to make it harder to break

Actually, they're pretty easy to break. silentrust mentioned a "book cipher".

When used as a one-time-pad, it could be perfectly secure, assuming that the no one else but both parties know what book (key) is in use.

Cheers

silentrust

waterfordham wrote: »

Actually, they're pretty easy to break. silentrust mentioned a "book cipher".

When used as a one-time-pad, it could be perfectly secure, assuming that the no one else but both parties know what book (key) is in use.

Cheers

Thanks Waterfordham,

With apologies to everyone for the thread drift the OTP (One Time Pad) will offer perfect secrecy if:

- You keep the code book safe.
- You only use each set of codes once i.e destroy each page as it's used.
- The combination of numbers/letters used for codes is truly random.

These are actually the conditions for any "perfect" cipher but in practice OTPs have been broken as all it takes is for a code book to fall into the wrong hands and the game's up. They're useful for situations where you might not be able to exchange code books for a long time e.g German submarines during WW2 had them but as Soviet/US spies found out during the Cold War era, possession of a code book clearly signals you're working for the other side!

The elegance of the book cipher is that when the stormtroopers hoof in your door, all they see is a row of books on a shelf not some mysterious looking code book with arbitrary numbers in it which would blow your cover.

As waterfordham rightly says, provided the letters from the book are chosen randomly (it's very easy to generate random numbers using a deck of cards), it can be just as secure as an OTP cipher.

Of course it would mean that if a team of Survivalists wanted to do this in advance they'd have to meet and agree in advance to buy a good number of the same editions of the same books - sounds troublesome I know but if you want to keep your location a secret from eavesdroppers, perhaps it's for the best?

Would be interested to hear all your thoughts on this.

KrustyBurger

Some of the most annoyingly secure ciphers use a very simple system.

The sender and receiver agree on a book say Alice in Wonderland. You also agree on a starting page number, paragraph and sentence say page 100, paragraph 2, sentence 3.

The first letter of the starting sentence is A, second is B etc. Only you and the sender know the book, starting page and starting sentence. The letters don't repeat and also use spaces and punctuation. When you get to Z the next letter in the book is now A etc

Deceptively and elegantly simple.

Sorry just saw this mentioned above!

silentrust

KrustyBurger wrote: »

Some of the most annoyingly secure ciphers use a very simple system.

The sender and receiver agree on a book say Alice in Wonderland. You also agree on a starting page number, paragraph and sentence say page 100, paragraph 2, sentence 3.

The first letter of the starting sentence is A, second is B etc. Only you and the sender know the book, starting page and starting sentence. The letters don't repeat and also use spaces and punctuation. When you get to Z the next letter in the book is now A etc

Deceptively and elegantly simple.

Sorry just saw this mentioned above!

Thanks Krustyburger,

The type of cipher you mention is known as a "running key cipher" and a book lends itself well as the keytext. Theoretically it's not as secure as the OTP cipher as in the nature of things certain more common letters will still combine in a certain way e.g "e and e" - modern computers can make fairly short work of them for this reason but of course in the scenario we mention, there wouldn't be an easy way to apply a bank of computers to cracking the problem.

One way to increase the security of your system considerably is instead of encoding individual letters, to encipher entire words. Gen. George Scovell*did this during the Peninsular Wars by using a small Spanish/English dictionary as the main text and writing numbers down corresponding to the page, column and numbered entry for a particular word.

Problems can arise if you use a text other than a dictionary but need to use a word that's not there e.g you might have a hell of a job telling someone how to build their own solar panel using a copy of "A Tale of Two Cities".

Naturally the time to overcome these issues and work out a reliable cipher system is now, before the SHTF! :-)

*For any fellow francophiles out there he is also the man responsible for breaking Napoleon's Grand Chiffre (Great Code).

booom

Might I recommend Simon Singh's book The Code Book here? You can pick it up cheap as chips second hand and is an excellent history of cryptography- right up to the quantum end of things. Also explains PGP really well.

silentrust

booom wrote: »

Might I recommend Simon Singh's book The Code Book here? You can pick it up cheap as chips second hand and is an excellent history of cryptography- right up to the quantum end of things. Also explains PGP really well.

Well said boooom, it's an excellent read, one of my favourite non fiction books, gives an excellent overview of hand ciphers, Also David Kahn's The Codebreakers gives a good rundown of everything pre-PGP. They're both available for download as e-books if you know where to look.

ScottStorm

Back on topic, so has anybody arranged to meet up? in Meath myself and would be interested in having a face to face sit down over a cold beer/hot coffee.

It would be good to put together a network of like minded and potentially helpful people.

Feel free to pm me.

silentrust

ScottStorm wrote: »

Back on topic, so has anybody arranged to meet up? in Meath myself and would be interested in having a face to face sit down over a cold beer/hot coffee.

It would be good to put together a network of like minded and potentially helpful people.

Feel free to pm me.

Good thinking Scott. Perhaps it would be most helpful if people with different skill sets were brought together so we could teach and learn from one another.

I enjoy growing food and herbs for instance but know next to nothing about DIY which will be vital when the time comes.

Re : the idea concerning a private radio channel, it might be a good way for people in different areas to liaise. Am going to see if it's possible to find an inexpensive one on eBay.

thehippychippy

ScottStorm wrote: »

Back on topic, so has anybody arranged to meet up? in Meath myself and would be interested in having a face to face sit down over a cold beer/hot coffee.

It would be good to put together a network of like minded and potentially helpful people.

Feel free to pm me.

I'd be on for a meet and chat. I hail from and do a lot of work in the beautiful Royal County.

silentrust

thehippychippy wrote: »

I'd be on for a meet and chat. I hail from and do a lot of work in the beautiful Royal County.

We might as well meet and get to know one another, considering when the SHTF we'll be the only ones left. :-)

H.O.T.A.S.

Would be interested in meeting up with any other Dublin preppers. Pint in town some night?

silentrust

H.O.T.A.S. wrote: »

Would be interested in meeting up with any other Dublin preppers. Pint in town some night?

Good man, sounds like a plan. Where's good for a drink where you can hear yourself think? (I'm a poet and I know it...)