I think this is a great product – it’s an LED bulb that has a battery inside, meaning you get 7 hours of light when your power is out – and it doubles as a flashlight! When the grid goes down at 2AM, and you figure it would be smart to flee to your safe spot – you don’t want to be stumbling around in the dark wasting precious time…

http://store.axiomled.com/AX_RUDOLPH_50_p/ax-rudolph-50.htm

In this video, leading presidential candidates Mitt and Newt discuss the merits of the Axiom LED Rudolph:

Emergency Light Bulb + Funny Video is a post from: 2012 Blog

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This time last year there was a lot of talk about mass animal die-offs. These things happen from time to time, but the cluster of events made it newsworthy. Turns out some mass deaths can be attributed to deliberate poisoning by US authorities:

A recent mass die-off event witnessed in Yankton, South Dakota was traced back to the USDA which admitted to carrying out a mass poisoning of the birds.

Read the whole story at Earth-Issues

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Congressman Pete Hoekstra was recently heavily involved in US Intelligence:

Mr. Hoekstra, as a former Chairman of the HPSCI one of the best informed men in the world, will share his views on the global threats Americans face, now and in the future. Here is a rare opportunity for our audience to question the man who, until recently, was taskmaster of our nation’s spy agencies.

On Wednesday, noon Eastern time he speaks with EMPact Radio, a weekly broadcast devoted to educating people about the risks of an EMP attack, from foreign powers or the Sun. Check out their previous guests – quite impressive!

USDA Behind Bird Killings / Hoekstra on EMP is a post from: 2012 Blog

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Michio Kaku on CNN last week, discussing what could happen in 2012. After he explains the peak of the solar cycle is coming up, he says:

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2011/12/27/exp-am-kaku-2012-science.cnn

Kaku:

“Every eleven years the Sun has a temper tantrum, throws a volley of radiation at the Earth. So far we’ve dodged the bullet, but we’re very young in the Space Age, we’re not used to having our satellites knocked out because of a solar flare, but it could happen”.

Interviewer:

“What are the implications of that?”

Kaku:

“Well, that means the Internet, GPS, weather satellites, all of it is on the Internet, plus telecommunications on the Earth could also be disrupted. In Quebec they had a blackout once because a solar flare hit the planet Earth… and our power plants are not reinforced. We physicists have asked Congress to pay a few hundred million dollars to reinforce our power plants, make redundant satellite systems, because at some point it’s going to happen.

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Kaku is not a doom’n'gloom guy, which is a shame because people listen to him. He will know that a probable consequence of the US power grid being knocked out is millions of deaths. But he’s not saying it, and we really need a popular, respected scientist to be telling people this through mass media.

Michio Kaku: Power Grid at Risk in 2012 is a post from: 2012 Blog

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I’ll keep saying this until I am blue in the face: the US power grid is old and overloaded. A once-in-100-years solar storm can wreck it, and replacing all the transformers could take six months. The US government recently decided not to fund an upgrade. This could be the worst mistake the US government has ever made. If the grid goes down, there goes heating and cooling, and the USA has some extreme weather. Gas stations won’t work, and places that will be relying on diesel generators, like hospitals, could be without power within days. Water won’t be pumped any more. Most likely millions will die. And what about money?

The first problems are obvious. ATMs will stop working, and banks won’t have access to account records. That means no more cash will be distributed. Few people carry more than a week’s worth of cash.

Credit and debit card payment systems won’t be working. So there is only cash, and pretty soon everyone has traded the cash in their wallets for any supplies they can get. I can envision stores with products on the shelves, and customers with no more cash – a stalemate. Because security systems are no longer functioning, and police are overburdened and without means of communication, crime will rise significantly. Store owners, or anyone with something worth stealing in this doomsday scenario, will quite likely choose to protect what they have with guns. And they will potentially lose their lives and property to criminals with guns. Before long the toughest, nastiest people will control a lot of the remaining supplies.

The good news is that you and your family will have somewhere safe, away from the city, and there will be 6 months worth of food and water. And your fuel tank will be full, and you’ll know the best back roads to get you there. And you’ll leave while everyone else is still coming to grips with the gravity of the situation.

So what about cash substitutes? What will be the SHTF currency and what can you trade?

Power Grid Down… What Happens to Money? is a post from: 2012 Blog

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Image via Wikipedia

After 9/11 it was freaky to see that the tragedy had been predicted in popular culture, for example the debut episode of The Lone Gunmen. The most under-appreciated disaster scenario facing the USA and the western world is the loss of electricity. I will repeatedly bring this up, because the consequences will be so tragic, and the event can easily occur. The prime risk is the Sun, but terrorists, hackers and war are also potential sources. As we approach holiday seasons, consider reading a book on the topic:

The Great Collapse – When they use the EMP weapon to attack America, the result is the immediate and catastrophic loss of modern technology all over the planet… When societies begin to unravel, refugees flee the anarchy in the cities as people learn how to survive in a world without technology, a world for which they are not prepared.

Lights Out – Another novel in which the USA plunged into chaos following an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack.

Survivors – (released October 4)  - Written by popular survivalist James Wesley Rawles. Practically overnight the stock market has plummeted, hyperinflation has crippled commerce, and the fragile chains of supply and high-technology infrastructure have fallen. The power grids are down. Brutal rioting and looting grip every major city.

EMP Survival – not a novel, but a guide to have if one of the above scenarios come true.

Of course the idea is to prepare now. Making your move after the event will be substantially too late!

Disclaimer, I haven’t read any of the above books (yet) and I’ve included my Amazon affiliate ID in the links (so if you buy it I get like 50 cents)

When Fiction Becomes Reality is a post from: 2012 Blog

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Image via Wikipedia

As our world becomes more and more reliant on technology, so serious system collapses become more likely. I’ve been reading all about GPS jammers at New Scientist (the article is online at Gizmodo), and I learned that they affect more than just your Garmin or TomTom. Actually 90% of GPS receivers use the data for timing not location. If GPS signals are lost, these are some of the services that will be affected:

• Cell phone towers
• Air traffic control
• Emergency pagers
• ATM machines
• Electric grids
• Stock exchanges
• …and navigation (obviously), but not just your car – think freight in a just-in-time environment, emergency services, shipping and train routing

The first four of the above services were affected in San Diego for 2 hours in January 2007. The culprit was later discovered to be a naval exercise nearby, where they blocked radio signals. However you don’t need to be the Navy to have the same effect. Truck drivers using $30 GPS jamming devices from China (to hide from their bosses) have already caused such problems. Imagine if a bunch of Anonymous hackers bought some and ventured out into the real world…

Aside from the potential deliberate harm caused by activists and terrorists, and the accidental harm from truck drivers, the satellites themselves are also at risk:

• The GPS satellites are old and need replacing – the Guardian reported in May 2009, “a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year.” Only two of the twelve replacements have been launched since.
• Satellites can get hit by meteorites, etc.
• More likely is getting hit by man-made space debris. Two items colliding could cause the Kessler Syndrome to kick in, where a cascade of collisions quickly wipes out everything in orbit. This is a serious threat.
• And of course, as I keep saying, the Sun is a threat t

GPS Disasters – More Than Just Navigation is a post from: 2012 Blog

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I guess mainstream media constantly makes decisions on what they should print/air. At one end of the scale they are a commercial enterprise, so they need to be popular, which means airing stories we want to see. Beyond that they also have a moral duty to share important stories with us, even if they are not popular. Also, they should really stick to the facts and avoid speculation and conspiracy theories – yet public speculation can itself become a story, for example the 2012 meme. While there are few facts regarding 2012, there are plenty of facts regarding how people are preparing.

Over at BlackListedNews is a list of 12 stories the media is mostly ignoring, some of which I had not previously heard of:

#9 North Korea’s Super EMP Weapon:

The Soviet Union conducted an atmospheric test of an EMP weapon in 1962 over Kazakhstan whose pulse wave set on fire a power station 300 kilometers away and destroyed it within 10 seconds.

Now Russian scientists are reportedly helping North Korea build such a weapon, meaning the power grids of the USA and Europe have yet another risk to be concerned about. While it might take just $1 billion to protect the grid from EMP weapons (and the Sun), the US Senate decided against passing such measures. It could be the worst political decision in the history of the USA.

#10 Shooter Safety Drills. In numerous US high schools there have been staged events in which a gunman attacks, and the authorities come to the rescue, with as many as 100 law enforcement officials storming the buildings. Unfortunately some poor kids were not told it was a drill. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

#12 The FAA has been creating dozens of temporary no-fly zones recently. I mentioned recently that one was in effect at Fort Calhoun, and it seems these zones are not just for safety reasons, they are also used to keep the media away. Roswell is also on the list. It’s hard to determine the reasons for some of the other zones, because the media haven’t been allowed in… and all the FAA list is “Temporary flight restrictions for Special Security Reasons“

Missing from the list was the recent plane crash in which five Russian nuclear engineers died. Supposedly just a tragic accident, conspiracy theory kicks in when one learns they designed Iran’s reactor. Especially when you consider the previous deaths that may have been carried out by Mossad:

November 2010: Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari was killed in Tehran after men on motorcycles placed an explosive in his car, and detonated it. Nuclear expert Fereydoun Abbasi was injured at the same time from a similar attack.

January 2010: Iranian nuclear expert Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was killed by a motorcycle bomb which was detonated in front of his house.

July 2009: Russian and Iranian nuclear experts were among the fatalities when a passenger plane crashed at Mashhad airport in northeast Iran.

2007: Iranian nuclear scientist Ardeshire Hassanpour, was reportedly poisoned to death by Mossad agents.

January 2008: In Turkey a plane broke up in mid-air in good weather just prior to it landing. Killed were Bosporus University nuclear scientist Engin Arik, and other Turkish nuclear scientists.

UPDATE: Aug 2011 - Mossad shoots dead nuclear scientist in Tehran

Media Coverups is a post from: 2012 Blog

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The US power grid is extremely vulnerable, as are those in Europe. Primarily because they are old and over-burdened, but also because they are targets. If terrorists took out a number of transmission substations or control stations, they could cause chaos. Anarchy and suffering in the US could lead to global turmoil. Now, aside from the Sun and terrorists, Scientific American reports that hackers could potentially bring down a power grid:

• Every facet of the modern electrical grid is controlled by computers. It is our greatest example of physical infrastructure interlinked with electronics.
• The Stuxnet virus that infected Iran’s nuclear program showed just how vulnerable machines could be to a well-crafted electronic virus.
• The grid shares many of the vulnerabilities that Stuxnet exposed; being larger, its vulnerabilities are, if anything, more numerous.
• A sophisticated attack could bring down a large chunk of the U.S. electrical grid.

The US grid wasn’t designed with security in mind:

A year ago I took part in a test exercise that centered on a fictitious cyberattack on the grid. Participants included representatives from utility companies, U.S. government agencies and the military. (Military bases rely on power from the commercial grid, a fact that has not escaped the Pentagon’s notice.) In the test scenario, malicious agents hacked into a number of transmission substations, knocking out the specialized and expensive devices that ensure voltage stays constant as electricity flows across long high-power transmission lines.

By the end of the exercise half a dozen devices had been destroyed, depriving power to an entire Western state for several weeks.

Computers control the grid’s mechanical devices at every level, from massive generators fed by fossil fuels or uranium all the way down to the transmission lines on your street. Most of these computers use common operating systems such as Windows and Linux, which makes them as vulnerable to malware as your desktop PC is. Attack code such as Stuxnet is successful for three main reasons: these operating systems implicitly trust running software to be legitimate; they often have flaws that admit penetration by a rogue program; and industrial settings often do not allow for the use of readily available defenses.

Even knowing all this, the average control system engineer would have once dismissed out of hand the possibility of remotely launched malware getting close to critical controllers, arguing that the system is not directly connected to the Internet. Then Stuxnet showed that control networks with no permanent connection to anything else are still vulnerable. Malware can piggyback on a USB stick that technicians plug into the control system, for example. When it comes to critical electronic circuits, even the smallest back door can let an enterprising burglar in.

The article goes on to mention a variety of vulnerabilities. Security is being upgraded, but it won’t happen overnight. Unfortunately most people are ignorant of how bad it would be if the grid went down.

US Grid: Add Hackers To The List is a post from: 2012 Blog

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According to NASA this week:

In Sept. 1859, on the eve of a below-average solar cycle, the sun unleashed one of the most powerful storms in centuries. The underlying flare was so unusual, researchers still aren’t sure how to categorize it. The blast peppered Earth with the most energetic protons in half-a-millennium, induced electrical currents that set telegraph offices on fire, and sparked Northern Lights over Cuba and Hawaii.

…As 2011 unfolds, the sun is once again on the eve of a below-average solar cycle—at least that’s what forecasters are saying. The “Carrington event” of 1859 (named after astronomer Richard Carrington, who witnessed the instigating flare) reminds us that strong storms can occur even when the underlying cycle is nominally weak.

Photo credit: Martin Stojanovski

An article in The Independent quotes Thomas Bogdan, director of the US Space Weather Prediction Centre, reconfirming how vulnerable the power grids of Europe and North America are:

The most vulnerable parts of the grid are the hundreds of transformers connected to power lines many miles long that can experience sudden current surges during a geomagnetic solar storm, Dr Bogdan said. “It points to a potential scenario where large parts of either North America or northern Europe may be without power from between days or weeks, to perhaps months and, in extreme cases, there are estimates that it could last years,” Dr Bogdan said.

Months and years without electricity will mean a large number of deaths. For example, no water pumped to your home. The US Government has decided not to spend any money upgrading their outdated infrastructure, but fortunately there may be a way of averting disaster – a controlled power cut. Basically, if a major solar storm is predicted, such as a “category 5″, the authorities can elect to shut down the entire grid for a day or two until the storm passes. This will protect transformers and potentially save many lives.

Hopefully this plan will be active ASAP!

New Precautions for Power Grids is a post from: 2012 Blog

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By using nine different genes, and real genetic data (instead of estimates) new research suggests that just 70 people crossed the Bering Strait 12-14K years ago. This means that the wiping out of megafauna in North America, especially the mammoths, is now less likely to have been by human hands. Therefore the odds of a cataclysm being responsible have now increased. More at the Daily Mail.

In the USA there appears to have been a dramatic increase in the number of electrical transformers exploding. These news items could become this year’s sinkholes – weird everyday events getting highlighted a lot in blogs and forums. My take on it is that the increase in the Sun’s activity combined with the extra strain on the US power grid since the last solar peak is the culprit. This would mean that any major solar storms in the next few years are still a major risk – the US grid could be down for months, and that would be massive tragedy. More at SOTT.

70 American Ancestors / Exploding Transformers is a post from: 2012 Blog

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