Survive Infinite Dangers: The Family Survival Guide of 21st Century Dangers (9 page)

Here is some late but important news! A new addition to the very useful Internet site Youtube (hundreds of videos on survivalism) is the channel THEPATRIOTNURSE. Watch all of her videos and take notes. Especially note the drug videos (i.e. some veterinarian drugs are similar to human drugs, MAY work for humans and may not require a prescription). I take no responsibility for her videos but the information sounds expert and may save your life! Watch them plus other Youtube videos!

Chapter Five

“
Dirty” Nuclear Bombs

These are almost not even nuclear. They are mostly regular bombs such as plastic explosives or sticks of TNT surrounded by thousands of nails, ball bearings and any small sharp objects meant to cause maximum death and injury when the bomb explodes. An illustrative scenario is such a “bomb” dropped from a window onto an area such as Time Square. With so many people perhaps hundreds would die from the nails or whatever surrounded the bomb. But the intent of the bomb would be to cause mass panic. Used nuclear material, unfortunately, is still too easy to obtain. It was used in minute quantities in liquids used as part of an x-ray process. Old watch dials were often coated with radium to make them glow in the dark. Not enough radiation to cause harm but terrorists can still obtain enough nuclear material to cause nuclear monitors already found in some cities to show radiation has been detected. The problem is it would take hours to determine the radiation is from a “dirty bomb” and, other than moderate loss of life from the bomb (very unfortunate for those people!) no other danger exists.

However, unless authorities react very quickly, mass panic would break out and within an hour people would be hearing the entire city of, say, Chicago is highly radioactive and everyone still there will die unless they can leave now. I’ve read scenario estimates that a dirty bomb would directly kill fewer than a hundred people but kill hundreds of thousands in mass stampedes as people race on foot to exit a city across just a few bridges. Panic is the weapon of a dirty bomb, not the bomb itself. Let’s hope FEMA has better plans to deal with dirty bombs and other WMD’s than they’ve publicly released as “contingency plans” found on the FEMA site on the Internet. They are all based on rational, calm people following orders with no panic. Perhaps they understand basic human nature and I don’t. I believe in raw, unthinking panic with people doing anything to protect their families. I hope I am wrong.

How do you protect yourself from the fall out of nuclear radiation? It is simple and effective unless you were injured by the bomb. Rather than repeat what to do here, skip ahead to chapters five and eight for a moment and read it there. Seek cover, cleanse yourself and ingest potassium iodide tablets for at least six to eight weeks beginning as soon as possible. Wear an N95, or above, mask if one is available (and it should be in your provisions – refer to those chapters). Unless you are located in a near blast area the most dangerous period for you from nuclear fall out won’t begin for a few days when the radiation particles begin to fall to earth. Hopefully, by then, you will have saturated your thyroid with potassium iodide pills (PI) and be as far below ground as possible, be in an area of
poor
ventilation and have as many building floors between you and the sky as possible.

Chapter Six

Bioterrorism

There is little I can say about bioterrorism as there are so many germ warfare scenarios and rumors of germ warfare labs stocked with dozens of germs and illnesses not yet even known. Basically, have N95, or above, facial masks (remember they make small masks for children and even for dogs! Are there masks for cats? – I haven’t found any as yet. Have stocks of surgical latex gloves and you can never have enough bleach. At a few dollars a gallon you should have at least 50 gallons on hand. Bleach kills almost anything even if the germ hasn’t been discovered yet. For a few hundred dollars you can buy full “Hazmat” suits. The Internet contains a plethora of research information so there is no need to waste space here repeating what you can find for yourself.

Chapter Seven

Cyber Terrorism

Yes, “techie nerds” can bring the world to its knees and almost have several times. Yes, technology can bring on deep economic Depressions, chaos, anarchy and all of the “end of the world” scenarios. As a “techie nerd” myself I have faith that even the “best” can not cause chaos long enough to bring forth Armageddon. Other “techie nerds” would prevail and the world would right itself after a period of pure Hell. It might take decades to fully recover but we WOULD recover. The ONLY true long-term world-wide chaos cyber-terrorism could bring on would be if it was used to trigger another WMD such as launching actual nuclear bombs in significant quantity; cause multiple nuclear power plants to explode in series around the world; all highly unlikely. But cyber-terrorism has a VERY high probability of disrupting your life sometime in the next ten years. Financial collapse, power goes dead and so on. BUT the “good guys” will have it going again in a few days to a few months. So what do you do to prepare?

Have cash on hand in the forms of both paper money and “real” money. “Real” money means gold, silver or items to barter to live for a month or two. How much cash should you always have on hand? Guess how long banks will be closed in a really bad disaster then double that number. Credit cards won’t be accepted and ATM’s won’t work. Keep in mind your barter stockpile (refer to that chapter) as it is unlikely cash will be accepted in major disasters or prices will be “sky high” where a loaf of bread might cost $100. But if you have a small bottle of vodka or a jar of honey to trade you become the person in charge of bargaining! Then deduct the true value of what you have to barter in all situations. As I wrote but will expand on a good rule of thumb is to double whatever numbers you come up with in just about everything quantified in this book since no one knows in advance what disaster is going to occur, its severity and how it will affect the economy. Run out of all forms of money and items to barter and you are in real trouble! Cash, as we know it, may become worthless immediately. Then it is “real money” and maybe not even that! You cannot eat gold coins. Your barter stockpile of items people need (or think they need such as vodka) becomes your life line to survival.

A disaster might be caused by a single rouge terrorist who “gets lucky” and blows up half the world with a bottle of Clorox (an obvious overstatement but just written to emphasize the size of an opposing force is no longer very important so second guessing what the next disaster will be is a fool’s game if you profess to be accurate. I can only postulate what I believe are the most likely major disasters that would do the most damage, are doable and would be very difficult to stop. To me (to terrorists) that narrows down to a first “choice” of a series of ground based EMP explosions (ground based because lifting a million pounds 50,000 feet into the air much less trigger the explosion would be VERY difficult) plus couple that with simultaneous worldwide cyber warfare.

It is accepted by many cyber warfare experts that several foreign powers (most notably China) have already infiltrated the control and computer systems of most of our infrastructure such as power stations, communications, military centers, refineries, financial and pretty much everything that makes our country run not to mention the entire Western World. An EMP ground based attack would probably be dozens of electrical charge explosions centered to knock out Washington D.C., Wall Street, most large military bases and so on. An epicenter might be northern Virginia. All of the DOD, NSA, CIA, and the entire federal government would be the target. EMP ground based bombs are so simple to make a few engineering students could probably cause havoc for hundreds of miles with a few million dollars of electrical components. IF this was part of an attack by a foreign power and it’s one who has already gotten into our “command and control” (C&C) they would also launch cyber warfare attack. It’s likely we’ve burrowed into their systems just as much if not more. We would commence a counter-attack immediately. We probably would be equipped to retaliate in kind with our own EMP weapons (currently classified). It might escalate to nuclear with our loss of C&C. It would only take one nuclear powered submarine captain assuming we are in an all out war (since he has lost all communications he might “press the button” and that would be followed by hundreds of nuclear retaliations from both sides plus engage countries who had no involvement but are “nuked” just in case. It would not be smart to electronically “blind” the United States with the weapons we have scattered all over the world many with commanders who probably have Armageddon instructions of “do what you feel is best” if he or she loses all contact for an extended period with the United States, all of our allies and all peer level military commanders.

But as foolish as it would be, I personally visualize a series of ground based EMP explosions coupled with massive cyber warfare which MIGHT lead to true Armageddon. If that happens, this book will be of little use to you past the first six months after the battle began. Keep in mind even after multiple nuclear attacks, EMP attacks and cyber warfare many people would still be left alive. If at least 20 miles away from the nearest nuclear explosion spending your remaining days in your basement equipped with potassium iodide pills and N95 radiation dust masks you and your group would still be alive a month later when the radiation dust has settled to the ground. The nuclear winter scenario is still just a theory so it could be after a month the bright sun would appear and, for those areas outside of blast areas, life would appear normal. Except there would be no people (a few dead people left outside but most would have sought shelter before dying). Your group has all it takes to survive for another five months. Perhaps by foraging you can extend that to a few years. But it truly would be the end of the world at least for this go around unless there really are hidden pockets where people will go to live for centuries (many generations. It doesn’t matter at least to me as I’d make it for a year max before succumbing as would 99.999% of the world.

As a side-note, Google September 15, 2008 to read about the draining of $550 billion dollars from the American banking system by an unknown foreign power (if we know who it was we have never said so) within a matter of a few hours. If the head of the U.S. Treasury had not stopped the “run on the bank” by essentially closing the proverbial “teller’s window” the United States would have been bankrupt by the end of the day and the world would have been thrown into a permanent deep Depression. Instead, as soon as he called a halt to the draining of the dollar, money began to return and, by the next morning, all was back to normal. In fact, this financial calamity barely averted only became known when a congressman on the banking committee accidentally spoke of this incident on C-SPAN months later! What else has happened we don’t know about? Anyway, there is an example of a test of cyber warfare and it worked beyond “superb” for the attacking country. True cyber warfare plus EMP would indeed put the world into the 14
^th
century permanently. Only those prepared for such a life would survive long-term. Think of a Mad Max movie world except much worse. That is far more than I or this book can handle.

Anyway, that is the most likely scenario I see for a man-made mega-disaster, one that would end life as we know it. I suspect every reader of this book will have his or her thoughts of a disaster that stops the world. We won’t know until it happens. At least equipped with this book and having followed all of it to completion your chances of survival to at least learn “what happened?” are quite high. Those who have not prepared will be gone in the first two weeks. That is the primary reason why this book keeps stressing to be “stealth” for at least the first two weeks. Once the chaos has peaked and the remaining population is almost all survivalists like you, survival for additional months will be much easier.

But for those first two weeks plan for panic and chaos caused by every day people who have not prepared for anything beyond tonight’s dinner. People who have never even raised their voice in anger can become almost like wild animals in temperament when confronted with a “life or death” situation especially if they have a family to protect. Yes, guns, gold, provisions and so on. Refer to the chapter on bartering to learn what you should stock up on and the skills of bartering to obtain those few items you forgot or ran out of no matter how thorough your pre-planning was. Be prepared to live ON YOUR OWN for six months! THAT is the premise of this entire book. The world might even learn to enjoy living without computers! You’d have people talking (!) to each other, writing letters and all that old circa 1950 stuff. No Tweeting and No Facebook! We’d lose all that techie stuff that has taken over our communicating with one another face to face. Some small solace would come out of this horrendous disaster! We just might not go back to it once everything we do need is back on line. Would that happen? I’m old enough to remember pre-computer days when people knew each other by their faces, voices and names. Not their Facebook page and Twitter slang term. We can dream!

Chapter Eight

A Real and Massive Nuclear Bomb

Why did I rank this clear down at number eight when the world seems to talk about “suitcase bombs” and ICBM’s. Having been employed in the nuclear weapons industry years ago I know personally how technically difficult it is to just keep such a bomb capable of blowing up when activated. Many terrorist groups have paid millions of dollars for what looked like a suitcase size nuclear bomb but is actually just a masquerade of wires, blinking lights, army surplus parts to make it appear to have been stolen from the military (Russia, Pakistan and even the United States). The con men sellers add in a small amount of “dirty bomb” radiation material so that a Geiger counter DOES register when held close to it. Is it REALLY a nuclear bomb? Would you like to “test drive” it before you buy it? There is a strong rumor that a terrorist group paid over two billion dollars for a fake nuclear bomb.