Photo by Yahoo! 7 News

I suspect some of you have been wondering why SHTF Blog hasn’t devoted a post to the crisis in Japan yet. “Is SHTF Blog oblivious to world events?” you might ask. No, I’ve just been reluctant to “chase the news” so to speak, basically regurgitating news of the tragic events as though SHTF Blog readers can’t read the news on their own. I’ve seen some prepper sites that are publishing posts every moment a new detail is released, with the tone of their posts seemingly intended to drum up fear and paranoia. Then there are other prepper sites that are using the events to push a “this is why we prepare” justification. I see that as preaching to the choir. Most people reading this site already know the many reasons why anyone in their right mind should take reasonable preparedness measures for self, family and friends.

There are elements of the news stories that have caught my attention, however, elements that I think are worth noting here.

• Little to no looting! Coming fresh off the heals of my is looting ethical post, I was happy to read reports of the Japanese not looting. Reasons for this are believed to be cultural and societal, the Japanese relationships between each other and their government.
• Heroes emerge! Some nuclear plant workers remaining on the job and risking their lives to save others.
• The rich have options! Same as the New Orleans rich that hired private security teams after Katrina, the rich in Japan are scrambling to secure private jets for flights out. This article states:

Private jet operators reported a surge in demand for evacuation flights which sent prices surging as much as a quarter. One jet operator said the cost of flying 14 people to Hong Kong from Tokyo was more than $160,000.”I got a request yesterday to fly 14 people from Tokyo to Hong Kong, 5 hour 5 minutes trip. They did not care about price,” said Jackie Wu, COO of Hong Kong Jet.

Many of the societal lessons that will be learned from this event will happen after the dust finally settles, when hindsight is 20/20; but for the prepper, watching the events unfold highlights a few lessons that can be reinforced (or re-learned) now.

• People freak out! People in California buying and taking potassium iodide, forcing the City of Los Angeles Health Department to issue a notice advising people not to take potassium iodide. The Bush administration even made the controversial step of scrapping a plan to distribute potassium iodide to people in a zone extending between 10 and 20 miles from the site of a nuclear incident stating there are more effective responses like evacuation (read the White House memo here). (Read here for information about radioactive iodine exposure.) Do I recommend people have Potassium Iodide in their SHTF storage room? Sure – why not? But that doesn’t mean you need to freak out and unnecessarily loose your cool. Now is the worst time to buy them as prices are through the roof, and what supplies are available, should instead get sent to Japan.
• The government is a questionable source of information! “Everything will be fine” seems to be the consistent government mantra during times of crisis and Japan’s government response is no exception. Then when things get worse, the government loses credibility making the situation even worse. The Japanese government is telling some people that they’re fine where they are while the U.S. government is telling Americans to get out now. I suspect if the nuclear crisis happened in the U.S., the U.S. would be telling people everything is fine and the Japanese would be telling their citizens to leave.

What do you think? Are there new preparedness lessons that can be learned from the crisis in Japan, lessons that haven’t been discussed before, or maybe new lessons to you?

One thing is for certain, these events will bring more attention and legitimacy to the practical preparedness movement.

- Ranger Man

BTW: if there was ever a reason for me to get a dog, the story of this Japanese dog refusing to leave the side of its ailing K9 friend is a good one. Read the English news article here, YouTube Japanese news story here, and view embedded Japanese story here:

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For those of you that have begun SHTF withdrawals the past few days, because I haven’t updated – sorry, but it may be the wave of the future, the near future anyway. I’ve been so freakin’ strapped for time that I just can’t keep up daily posting. I have a hundred and one other competing interests, and there’s a web project with MUCH higher income potential than SHTFblog that I’ve been itching to get onto, but it’s time consuming, because I need to teach myself more web design than I already know, and I haven’t had a chance to get to it.

So, expect fewer posts from here on. Certainly not daily. Check back from time-to-time or just sign up for e-mail updates and you’ll get any posts I write delivered to your e-mail box the following morning. Your e-mail address is safe, and it’s only used for SHTFblog post delivery.

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The news articles I keep reading about Russia cause me concern. This “the economy is crumbling and we’re all gonna die” chatter doesn’t do much for me. The economy will recover, the world won’t end, and we’ll all survive. Russia’s action, like pandemic flu, cause me greater concern, however – particularly with the new facts revealed on what an EMP hit could do to the United States. One not need even attack the U.S. physically, just make an EMP strike in the sky and the anarchy that follows would make U.S. people do each other in. A counter-EMP strike wouldn’t have the same effect, because countries like Russia aren’t as reliant as the U.S. on systems that an EMP strike would hit.

Russia wants to be the Russia of old – and we should prepare accordingly. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory wrote the “Nuclear War Survival Skills” and YOU should print a copy off. Get the report RIGHT HERE:

nuclear_war_survival_skills.pdf

PRINT IT, because when you need it, chances are high you won’t be able to print it. Hard copies rule!

- Ranger Man

BTW: I brewed a batch of India Pale Ale beer yesterday. Hopefully this batch turns out better than the last. Did you know that India Pale Ale not only tastes great, but it’s the ultimate SHTF brew! Why? It’s loaded with hops and alcohol. The British developed the IPA as a beer that would last through the long shipping journey to colonized India, because you KNOW soldiers conquering other countries need a good supply of beer! Lots of hops and and a high alcohol content helped keep the beer far longer, long enough to survive the journey.

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Yesterday I discussed Iran’s resolve to process and develop nuke juice, and how a nuclear conflict might unfold in the Middle-East if Iran and Israel (and other countries) banged heads. For people living in those countries it’d be total SHTF, but what about for everyone else?

Certainly global economies would go into convulsions, but would there, could there be more? According to a report presented at an international conference at the Royal Society of Medicine – YES! The result – world wide climate disruption and global famine with a total global death toll in the range of one BILLION – from starvation alone! The reason, they argue, is that the debris thrown up into the atmosphere from nuclear explosions and resulting fires would cause sudden global cooling and decreased precipitation for up to 10 years, resulting in shorter growing seasons and lower production. In other words, a nuclear winter.

“We are ill-prepared to deal with a major fall in world food supply,” says Dr. Helfand. “Global grain stocks stand at 49 days, lower than at any point in the past five decades. These stocks would not provide any significant reserve in the event of a sharp decline in production. We would see hoarding on a global scale.”

The thought of a nuclear winter and what it’d mean for the world was dismissed by many people during the Cold War, but those early studies were based on nuclear targets hitting remote missle silos in places like the U.S. Mid-West. That line of thinking is now out-of-date. Today’s nuke juice exchanges would target population centers where buildings would burn and burn and burn, sending FAR more soot into the air than would have otherwise happened.

A paper from Dr Owen B Toon, from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, concentrates on the large global ozone losses which would follow a regional war. “If targed at small cities, low yield weapons can produce 100 times as many fatalities and 100 times as much smoke from fires as was previously estimated for full scale nuclear wars using high-yield weapons.” Toon argues that the resulting global ozone losses will threaten humans and the biota throughout the world and not just in the region of conflict.

News source is here.

TEN years of shortened growing seasons. Of course, for every report of this nature you can find one that would argue otherwise, which, in my opinion, underscores that NOBODY knows what EXACTLY would happen. This report could be right on target, or it could UNDERestimate what would happen . . . OR it could be way off base.

Nobody knows, but with virtually every country in the world trying to hop on the nuke juice bandwagon, I fear younger generations may found out.

- Ranger Man

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