READ The Second After

[shinjin]

If a liberal reads this book it will drive them insane .

No, but they will be confused as to why no one sang "KOOMBY-YAA" as they waited for the Government to fix the problem.

[shinjin]

Has there EVER been an EMP experiment, of any level or size, which disabled ANY electronic device?   Or is it just a hypothetical posibility based on some scientific theory?

Seems I read something about how they discovered it during a Nuclear test.  The theory is good and at the risk of being told I'm an idiot by someone who knows what they are talking about I will compare this to a Lightning Strike because both send a charge of Electrical energy through your gear and fry it.  So while I haven't tested the EMP I have replaced a lot of equipment at my 911 Center because of huge-** electric surges due to lightning strikes.

[pab1]

Anybody else hear the One Second After author William Forstchen on Coast to Coast with George Noory last night? Every now and then George has a great guest on. Last night was one of those nights!

Don't know if anyone else has posted this. Here is Forstchens site with EMP info.
http://www.onesecondafter.com/

[teamnelson]

The delivery system mentioned in the book for HEMP was revealed at a defense expo in 2010 I think, made by China. Disguised as a standard shipping container, can be remotely activated anywhere in satellite range. No science fiction involved.
Personally, I thought the book was best when it wasn't trying to be a technical manual. The social dynamics, the psychology, was insightful. Lots of folks stockpiling beans, but have no resiliency for trauma.

[SHOOTALL]

TeamNelson good point if one isn't comfortable living as they are forced to how long can they stand it ? It will add new meaning to cabin fever .

[teamnelson]

TeamNelson good point if one isn't comfortable living as they are forced to how long can they stand it ? It will add new meaning to cabin fever .

In the book they mention a few very sad social dynamics:
- suicide
- swapping pets with your neighbor so you don't have to eat your own dog
- a previously upscale business woman offering her body in exchange for food
- Father worried about his Daughter with Type 1 diabetes
- moral conflict of setting rules for everyone about distribution of food/medicine, then breaking them yourself because you "really" need it
- having the only working car (Edsel)
- dealing with looters and thieves, with some semblance of a rule of law, and the personal cost
- letting violence happen to others and doing nothing

There's not a single thing you can buy right now and stockpile that will make dealing with any of those possible scenarios any easier on your own soul. I like this book for that, in comparison to Patriots (which I enjoyed for other reasons). Rawles went heavy on the shopping lists, and light on the human dynamic.

[reliquary]

 
The part that really worries me is having an insulin-dependent diabetic wife. 
 
We keep an extra 90-day supply of insulin on hand, in addition to the current script.   I have all her previous oral meds and noninsulin injectables stored in the fridge "just in case".  I also have an agreement with our internist for some of her office samples of insulin if TSHTF. 
 
If we go on short rations and lose some weight, maybe that will help things will work out.  Then I plan on using barter metals for her meds.  By the time we use all that up, surely Big Brother will have things worked out, right?      

[bilmac]

Yup and Patriots was a book for rich guys. Those folks were really committed, their wives too, and must have been raking in the really big bucks.

Something I try to impress people with is the need for skills and knowledge to be as or more important as the stuff you buy. Patriots emphasized the huge quantities of stuff they had bought with almost no mention of what they were going to do as the vast quantities of stored food ran out.

My postscript to the book would be, 10 years later, the new "farmers" starved to death because a grasshopper plague wiped out the gardens that produced barely enough to support them in the best of years.

[Couger]

Yup and Patriots was a book for rich guys.  What a stupid comment! Those folks were really committed, their wives too, and must have been raking in the really big bucks.

Something I try to impress people with is the need for skills and knowledge to be as or more important as the stuff you buy. Patriots emphasized the huge quantities of stuff they had bought with almost no mention of what they were going to do as the vast quantities of stored food ran out.  Again you're wrong.  You missed the author's real intentions, which wasn't to tell people to buy tons of stuff, but instead he explained in novel-form what kinds of equipment to acquire in the first place!
 
Rawle's "Patriots" is as much a teaching book as well as piece of entertainment.

My postscript to the book would be, 10 years later, the new "farmers" starved to death because a grasshopper plague wiped out the gardens that produced barely enough to support them in the best of years.

You really didn't read that book, did you Bilmac?
 
When the characters in [that book] weren't standing watch or doing whatever other things needed doing, ALL of them spent all the time needed to farm, hunt, tend their orchard, etc.
 
I bet you've never been to Idaho either, have you Bilmac?
 
A lot of farm families and "clans" with those kinds of resources available are indeed set up to survive indepently just like Rawle's explained, and not just in the West, but many southern, plains, and flyover states too.  And not because they're doomsdayers-survivalists, but rather because they're farmers and ranchers, who live close to the land already and have for generations!

[teamnelson]

Yup and Patriots was a book for rich guys.

No kidding - to hear it told, unless you've dropped a few million on your preps, you are doomed. Don't get me wrong, if I won the lottery tomorrow ... I'd have to play it though ... I'd probably crack that book open and start shopping. But apart from that, no way I can swing it, and I feel I do pretty well.

That's not to say one shouldn't prep, but prepping is a whole lot more than stuff. I had an exchange with a proud older person who had worked their whole life, bought a plot in the right area to miss all the fallout, built a small tight house, stocked it up ... I mean really put their life into it and quite honestly is much better off than most of us I imagine ... as long as no one chucks a road flare on their house. They had no plan B, nor a desire to have one. If they couldn't live with all the stuff they'd accumulated, they wouldn't live. I understand that, it will be hard for many who have prepped to make the tough choice to abandon all the time, $, sweat and energy they'd poured into prepping. I think the most resilient folks when it comes are those who will be willing to live without their stuff if they had to, or at least try. If psychologically you already have a line in the sand, then that will be the end. I'd encourage folks to consider not having a line in the sand ... have a little faith.

[jcn59]

I'd encourage people to partner up with their neighbors.  I'm talking of more of a republic than a democracy.

[txpitdog]

A good complement to OSA is Terawatt.  A completely unprepared guy hits the road to join his family.   Also Lights Out, probably the bugging in companion to Patriots. 

Cormack McCarthy's The Road is the best account of hopelessness in the PAW



Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[Couger]

+1 for "Lights Out"
 
and "The Road Home" by Baze is about a father and son
trying to drive home to Seattle after an earthquake. 
It also discusses how criminals might prey on the injured