It really is incredible when you start to think deeply about our reliance upon electricity and the terrible disastrous consequences of being without it for a long period of time. Heck, even a relatively short period of time without electricity will likely result in people “losing it”… How long will it take without electricity until […]
(Driving across Great Salt Lake Desert) I am about to wrap up a journey of more than 8,000 miles while traveling (driving) from the far reaches of the northeast all the way to California and back again along a different route. It has been an amazing and very enjoyable experience, and while I have […]
I have known for quite some time that one’s chances of encountering a dangerous situation or “close call” or everyday risks in general are directly proportional to the population density of the region. I have a unique advantage of being able to tell you that this is 100% accurate… Here’s why/how: 1. Where I […]
Modern cities are not natural in that they are artificial unnatural centers of human existence. Cities rely upon energy and resources from elsewhere to enable their existence and survival. These resources come from mostly invisible and intertwined complicated ‘just-in-time’ distribution networks and systems, and life in the city wouldn’t exist without them. Systemic risk? Yes, […]
I am currently on a road-trip and ‘holed up’ in eastern Pennsylvania under a Blizzard Warning while the forecast 24+ inches of the white stuff is shutting down all trucker transportation (and the rest) for tens of millions in the northeast. As I was driving today I knew of the forecast for a potential record […]
At a bare minimum we have become more vulnerable for ‘disruption’ as our society has become more complex. But it doesn’t stop there. Perhaps more accurately we might say that ‘catastrophe’ or ‘meltdown’ are better words to describe our vulnerability from the systemic risks that are built-in to our modern way of life. Things, life, […]
Los Angeles, Thanksgiving Getaway 2016 When I saw these traffic images of complete gridlock, and whenever I see or experience a nightmarish traffic situation, it affects me in a way that’s probably a bit different than others… While others who are stuck in the same traffic jam are most likely annoyed, angry, or pi$$ed off […]
The coming banking collapses, and the coming failure and disintegration in the global financial system (monetary, credit, and financial asset meltdown), is going to be fast and chaotic — and will crush society and the way of life as we know it. What will be the mechanism of the societal crush? An intertwined systemic banking […]
The Colonial Pipeline runs from Texas to New York and supplies gasoline to an estimated 50 million people a day on the East Coast. On September 9, a 36-inch pipeline was shut down near Birmingham, Alabama where a major ‘leak’ was discovered. The shutdown of Colonial Pipeline service to ‘Line 1’ which normally transports 1.3 […]
Most all of us are very dependent upon other systems (infrastructure) to literally keep us alive. Naturally, this is a result of many technological and societal advances that have enabled a more convenient way of life, a ‘modern’ lifestyle. It’s a good thing in the sense of progress, however the thing is… the more dependent […]
Try this and see what happens in your household… pull the plug on your internet router. How long will it take before there are inconveniences or upset people (especially the younger ones) … I have been having issues with my internet service all week, and this morning it went ‘belly up’ – no internet. Having […]
Change is something that most people are uncomfortable with. We humans live with our familiar routines and habits, and we have some difficulty with situations that are out of the ordinary and out of our ‘comfort zone’. Because we want things to be normal. This is normalcy bias. To make matters worse, when confronted with […]
Are you preparing just for fun? Or is there a specific reason? While the journey can be enjoyable and liberating, most of us have assessed the many risks that we face today and are preparing for ‘just in case’ one of these risks ‘blows up’ into reality… FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) actually promotes that […]
image: ‘Lights Out’ by Ted Koppel Lets say it’s Friday. You switched on the TV News while going about your morning routines around the house while getting ready for work. You’re in the kitchen finishing the last sip of coffee when you hear one of the alphabet channel ‘talking heads’ report something about a cyber-attack […]
The E1 pulse of a high altitude nuclear EMP (electromagnetic pulse) will bring modern civilization to its knees in about 5 nanoseconds. That’s 0.000000005 seconds. To put that in perspective, that’s 60 million times faster than ‘the blink of an eye’. Lights Out. The effects of an EMP will go far beyond just the the […]
Here in the U.S. there is plentiful food on the grocery store shelves. The food supply system is working. At least today it is. But will it always? Because the supply of food to the cities, urban areas, and suburbia implies that food is being produced and transported in from rural areas or imported, we […]
The veneer of civilization is in my estimation, truly thin. If (when) the thin veneer layers are peeled back like an onion, the fragility combined with today’s modern dependence’s and apparent socioeconomic frustrations – will be a recipe for disaster… Civil breakdown. Note: I have updated this article from its original post date in […]
(Whoops…) Here’s a question for you, as well as something to consider going forward… Are you noticing any of your grocery or retail shelves thinning out a little bit? And can you imagine what might happen if and when the public at large notices such a thing? Here’s what I’ve noticed, and here’s what I […]
We are witnessing major societal disruptions around the globe while financial and geo-political tensions are growing in all Western democracies. The Western world is essentially bankrupt and the cumulative total debt is politically and mathematically impossible to repay. The enormous systemic risks surrounding this fact alone should be enough to motivate a critical-thinking person into […]
You may have plans for power outages of a few days, but if you were without electricity for a period of months or even weeks, “there is no master plan for the civilian population” says Ted Koppel, author of ‘Lights Out’ (describing how a cyberattack on the nation’s power grids could paralyze our infrastructure). While […]
Ted Koppel, the anchor of ‘Nightline’ from its inception in 1980 until his retirement in 2005, is now buying freeze-dried food for his family as a result of recent ominous conclusions spelled out in his book, “Lights Out”, revealing the great dangers that we are facing from a debilitating and potentially very deadly ‘grid-down’ cyberattack. […]