Those of you in the Seattle area probably associate the letters EMP with Paul Allen’s quirky Experience Music Project at the Seattle Center. But that’s most definitely not what we’re sharing with you now. We’re talking, instead, about electromagnetic pulses – a type of radiation burst typically created by the detonation of a nuclear device high above the earth, which creates electrical and magnetic fields capable of destroying just about any and all modern electronics […]
Here is an interesting two page article on the CNBC website. It is interesting and also has some irony in it. The irony is that one of the best known ‘virus hunter’ companies out there, Kaspersky Labs in Moscow, is rumored to be associated with the Russian intelligence services. Are they really friend or foe – good guys or bad guys? And even if not controlled by or working in cooperation with Russia’s security services, […]
In our recent article about the implications of a war with Iran, we mentioned the potential of Iran to mount a bloodless cyber-attack against us, with their hackers attacking our infrastructure’s computers from the comfort of their homes and offices in Iran, rather than soldiers attacking us more directly. It is our feeling that few people appreciate the dangers and risks of a cyber-attack, and in the last couple of days there have been a […]
In a Level 2/3 situation, the omnipresence of modern medical care that we have come to rely upon will be much less available. We will be well advised to plan our lives so there will be less need to seek medical help. One issue to consider when choosing the location for our retreat is the presence of any insect-borne diseases, any particularly dangerous animals, and other such issues. This involves not just looking at challenges […]
The war drums are beating ever louder in prelude to a possible war with Iran. What will this mean for us back in the US? Although it might seem at odds with our current President’s world-view and values, it is hard to overlook the increasing amount of news stories that are being released or strategically leaked, all of which seem to indicate that we may be initiating war with Iran shortly. For our part, we […]
NASA announced this week that it has recalculated the number of PHAs – ‘Potentially Hazardous Asteroids’ for those of us who aren’t rocket scientists (your humble writer included!). Its earlier estimate of 2350 objects has been doubled, and now NASA says there are probably 4700 PHAs out there. A PHA is an object larger than 110 yards/330 ft across, and which come dangerously close to the Earth from time to time. This size means that […]
Do you even know what cloud-based computing is, and do you know how much of the things you do on your computer rely on cloud computing? More to the point, do you appreciate the potential downside to using cloud resources? If you use a computer for anything (and you’d not be reading this if you didn’t) you need to understand the downsides and risks associated with cloud based computing. We’ve written this in reasonably non-technical […]
Two things make our society massively more vulnerable to what we term bio-risks – anything from deliberately introduced lethal diseases to the results of random mutation of regular viruses and bacteria already in our environments. But to start with, here’s an interesting fact. Most diseases don’t like to kill too many people too fast, because they rely on living people for their own survival – as a host to live in, and as a means […]
We came across an interesting article on a survivalist blog. The writer said he believed that too many people are being too negative in terms of their projections about what will happen after TEOTWAWKI. This writer spoke about his belief in the basic goodness of the American people, and offered up various high-minded platitudes to this effect. As well as platitudes, he also described in some detail a scenario that he believed would apply. Basically, […]