The United States: United in a State of Un-Readiness

On Saturday, we witnessed a mistake (perhaps genuine and perhaps purposeful) regarding the emergency alert system in Hawaii. Yes, we know most of the parameters: the warning of an incoming missile, that it was “not a drill” was broadcast, and 38 minutes of panic.

First, the warning sent to cell phones: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”  (Hawaii Emergency Management Agency)

After 40 minutes, another message rescinding the alert was sent out. Then, the usual “conga” line emerged after it was revealed to be a false alarm, and here are the statements proving these “authorities” (officials and other nabobs) are either cloned or made in the same mold:

“An investigation is underway, and it appears human error was responsible for the alert.  The alert was sent out by mistake during a shift change at the agency. Such shift changes occur three times a day every day of the year.  This is a day that most of us will not forget. I know this was totally unacceptable.” (David Ige, Governor, State of Hawaii)

“The FCC is initiating a full investigation. The agency (FCC) will vote at its January meeting to enhance the effectiveness of wireless emergency alerts, which have been in place since 2012.” (Ajit Pai, Chairman, US Federal Communications Commission)

“I take responsibility for what happened. We are doing everything we can to make sure this never happens again.” (Vern Miyagi, Administrator, Hawaii Emergency Mgmt. Agency)

And to finish the kicking for the “Rockettes,” the White House pointed the finger at the state of Hawaii to round things off, ensuring the audience knew no feds were involved before the curtain call:

“It was purely a state exercise.” (Lindsay Walters, White House Spokeswoman)

There you have it: Mr. Miyagi of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency…Mr. Miyagi, mind you…took responsibility (without being held accountable) and will make sure this never happens again. No sweat: Wax on, wax off.

That is simply business as usual for the establishment “caretakers,” continuing to reassure, continuing to calm, to placate, to promise… The reality comes from interviews conducted with the average citizens. A professional golfer (John Peterson) sent a phone message that he was hiding in a bathtub under a mattress with his wife, baby, and in-laws. Must’ve been a pretty big bathtub! Others ran to shelters that were locked, or simply stood around and tried to telephone others…family members or officials, to see if this was really happening.

I found a faded, sky-blue, cardboard-cover-jacketed book…little more than a pamphlet just over a year ago. It is SM 3-11-A, dated November 1966, entitled “Personal and Family Survival” by the Department of Defense and the Office of Civil Defense. The book is the Student Manual for the Civil Defense Adult Education Course, as printed on the cover. People could enroll in the course with the same name as the book’s title.

Now what do we have? Nothing. No “Civil Defense” agency, no courses for the average citizen. Courtesy of Bill Clinton (excuse me, President William Jefferson Clinton) in 1996…canceling the entire Civil Defense program and all of the fallout shelter signs and supplies in one fell swoop.

A continuation of that quisling Jimmy Carter’s actions in 1976 and forward, doing everything from weakening our military to repealing the Homestead Act. The latter? Clinton finished it off in 1996 by revoking permanent land deeds for miner placer claims through the BLM…Bureau of Land Management)

Then Obama’s eight years to wring the blood out of the nation and eviscerate it from top to bottom. President Trump (to his dis-credit) punctuated all of this with a “period” by allowing the Commission to Assess the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) Threat Against the U.S. to disband due to de-funding in September of 2017.

We are in a weakened state militarily, with economic growth only in appearance…not considering an economy based on 75% consumption and consumer spending, where the manufacturing base has been outsourced, where unfunded liabilities and credit deferred swaps (CDS’s) are not factored into account. We are relying on a millennial generation that prefers to escape reality within the stultifying world of television and the Internet…where instead of learning a trade they amass debt with degrees in nebulous subjects and expect their elders (and the government) to pay for their debts.

Returning to the first sentence of this article, all of this is purposeful when the big picture is considered. The country has been substantially weakened over the past fifty years, successively within the Democratic administrations, with a brief “hiatus” from the artificially-shifted paradigm with intermittent Republican administrations. The march toward global governance…making new inroads, as with Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, and other “Monopoly Money” gimmicks designed to remove all financial transactions and savings from scrutiny: the elimination of privately-held funds.

We saw a weakness in Hawaii that is extant throughout the United States: the inability of citizens to be able to function in the face of a potential attack. Other countries prepare entire underground cities for their citizens, as with Russia and China. We do not do that for a simple reason: it is the intention of globalist oligarchs and politicos to eradicate (or allow/create a war to eradicate) as much of the common populace as possible. Then they will take their seats at the table of the global government…seats “earned” through their wealth, power, and actions: the actions taken to destroy the U.S. internally and either kill off or subjugate her citizens to this governance…this world rule.

“Purposeful” also given the climate between an unbending North Korea that will not capitulate to U.S. demands and gives no indication of inability to continue under the paper tiger of U.S. and UN sanctions. A new Cold War has been developing for the past several years, now. The reasons are always the same: pursuit of power and monetary gains.  The “mistake” in Hawaii does more than show us how inept we are in civil defense…it also shows other nations how we are neither united in purpose, or in a state of readiness. This is going to cost us in the long run, and time will reveal just how high that cost will be.

But you may rest assured of this guarantee: of that “conga line” mentioned above? Every one of those individuals…when the attack is real and is not a drill…will be on their way to their shelters…paid for with our tax monies…and safe from whatever occurs to the rest of us.

The next world war will be initiated by an EMP attack against the United States, followed by a nuclear exchange and conventional warfare.

---

Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne).  Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape).  He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.

This article may be republished or excerpted with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.

Global Disasters Wreaked Havoc In 2017 – Total Economic Losses Top $300 Billion

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

According to a new reinsurance report issued by the Swiss Re Institute, total economic losses from natural and man-made disasters have soared 63 percent in 2017 to an estimated $306 billion, up from $188 billion in 2016.

Globally, insurers lost $136 billion from natural and man-made disasters in 2017, up from $65 billion in 2016, the third highest on record. This is “well above the previous 10-year annual average, and the third highest on sigma records,” Swiss Re said in its report. Natural disasters accounted for $131 billion of 2017’s insured losses, and man-made disasters for the remaining $5 billion. The human loss totaled around 11,000 deaths, similar to 2016.

Martin Bertogg, Head of Catastrophe Perils at Swiss Re said, “in recent years, annual insurance losses from disaster events have exceeded USD 100 billion a few times. The insurance industry has demonstrated that it can cope very well with such high losses.”

“However, significant protection gaps remain and if the industry is able to extend its reach, many more people and businesses can become better equipped to withstand the fallout from disaster events,” he added.

According to Swiss Re, “extreme weather in the US in the second half of 2017” has been the primary driver for high insured losses:

In August and September, three category 4+ hurricanes – Harvey, Irma, and Maria (HIM) – made landfall in the US. Destruction from the three hurricanes stretched from the Texas coast (Harvey) through West Florida to the Caribbean (Irma and Maria), together causing insured losses estimated to be almost USD 93 billion.

Given the vast geographic footprint of the hurricanes, which affected multiple locations in quick succession and impacted multiple lines of business, a full assessment of the insured losses is still ongoing.

The economic losses from the three events will be much higher given the significant flood damage – often uninsured – from hurricane Harvey in densely populated Houston, Texas, an extended power outage in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, and post-event loss amplification.

The United States was the hardest hit according to the report, which indicated hurricanes: Harvey, Irma, and Maria made 2017 the “second costliest hurricane season on sigma records after 2005.”

Wildfires and thunderstorms in the US were also mentioned in the report:

Also in the second half of 2017, hot and dry weather in California created favourable conditions for wildfires to ignite and spread to urban areas. There were three major fire events in October in Northern California: Tubbs, Atlas and Mendocino Lake. Both residential and commercial property (including vineyards) were impacted. According to preliminary estimates from Property Claims Services, the major fire events triggered combined insured property losses of USD 7.3 billion. Fires are still raging in Southern California in December, and the as-yet undetermined full-year losses from wildfires will likely be higher.

Other extreme weather in the US led to a high number of severe convective storms (thunderstorms). Five separate severe thunderstorm events from February to June caused insured losses of more than USD 1 billion each. The most intense and costly event was a four-day long storm in May with heavy damage to property inflicted by hail in Colorado and strong winds in other parts of southern and central states. The economic losses of this storm alone were USD 2.8 billion, with insured losses of USD 2.5 billion.

Elsewhere, Swiss Re discussed extreme weather events of various forms around the world:

In mid-September, two powerful earthquakes in Tehuantepec and Puebla, Mexico, led to numerous building collapses, claiming a large number of victims and resulting in insured losses of more than USD 2 billion. Earlier in the year, in late March, the category 4 tropical Cyclone Debbie hit the northeastern coast of Australia. Wind gusts of up to 263 km/h and widespread flooding in central and southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales led to insured losses of USD 1.3 billion.

And at the end of April, Europe suffered a cold snap, followed by a summer of heat waves and record temperatures in several locations, making 2017 a year of weather extremes. Further, severe floods in South East Asia caused large devastation and, sadly, a large number or victims.

Worldwide losses (USD bln) for man-made and natural catastrophes have absolutely exploded since 1990, according to a Swiss Re.

While natural and man-made disasters wreaked havoc globally and in the United States for the 2017 time period. Will the S&P Insurers index break the neckline?

Fact: Your Chances of Surviving a Post-Collapse Urban Environment are Slim

This guide was originally published by Jeremiah Johnson at ReadyNutrition.com

Simply put, urban survival will be quite a bit different from survival in a remote wilderness area or even a sparsely-populated suburban area. Let’s game some options, remembering that these options are general. These actions aren’t specific to the type of breakdown of society (external by an attack from a foreign nation, or internal from economic collapse, for examples).

So, we have our collapse. Let us “X” out a nuclear war/nuclear terrorist attack, as we can deal with all the other scenarios in variables without radiation to contend with. Let’s identify the largest challenges faced for that high-rise apartment resident in Manhattan, or the family in the brownstone on the South side of Chicago. First, let’s game the scenario:

After “The Day,” the city was almost completely without power. You and your wife and two children were not able to leave town. All mass transit was halted or discontinued. It has been three days, and your family has been listening to static on the radio for the most part, with “campy” pre-recorded disaster broadcasts that have not been helpful or informative. One of your neighbors left this morning after saying goodbye: he and his family had a boat, and they were heading out of the harbor, hoping to use one of the major rivers to make an escape.

They didn’t have room to take you or yours, but you wanted to stay put and not follow your neighbor’s idea: that there were plenty of boats whose owners were not going to use them…probably dead following the rioting and civil breakdown. You’re beginning to think you should have listened to him. Now you can hear angry voices outside, and you go to the window. A mob has gathered at the top of your street! They’re armed with rifles, bats, axes, machetes…and there are about 500 of them. As you watch, they’re making a move toward the first house on the opposite side of the street. Your house is less than half a block away. There are no more cops, no more laws, no more order, and no help will be coming…on The Day After Doomsday.

Sounds pretty bleak, huh? That’s because it is unless you keep a cool head about you and stay in focus. Here are your primary tasks, and in this order:

1. Defense: without a clear plan and the means to execute that plan, you’re going to have problems.


2. Secure Domicile: in itself a part of the defense, as if you live in an easily-entered structure, you’re going to need to fortify it and have a security system and a guard/lookout schedule.


3. Food and Water: always critical. We touched on some of this in the last segment with water. You should have at least a one-year supply for each member of your family of nonperishable food.


4. Medical supplies and equipment: This entails the ability to perform first aid, to perform long-term supportive measures, and both short and long-term definitive care for special needs members of the family.


5. Cohesion: your family needs to function akin to a well-oiled machine, as best it can. Faith will be a key element: in God, in one another, and in what you are doing. The inner discipline for each family member and for the group as a whole are key to enabling success for you and ensuring your survival.

Now let’s talk about what you’ll be facing, keeping in mind we already did not specify what type of disaster caused the end of it all. A nuclear war will have radiation and probably foreign invaders at some point.  An asteroid impact will have traumatic weather catastrophes and cataclysmic effects all over. What we are focusing on here is a city that is (for all intents and purposes) physically “intact” but is no longer functioning…its infrastructure is crippled, the social order is defunct, and chaos is the word for the day. What are you facing? Here are some of the challenges:

1. Complete lack of food outside of your supplies: akin to a swarm of locusts, people will descend upon the grocery stores, convenience stores, dollar and discount stores, and big box stores…until the stores are no more…looting everything and anything they can grab. Happened in New Orleans, I’m here to tell you…and it’ll happen again. Dogs, cats, birds, and anything else that crawls, walks, flies, or runs…will be eaten. All of this within the first week to two weeks.


2. Cannibalism: when the disaster strikes, there will be a lot of people who will actively hunt other humans for food. For those smiling naysayers, you may wish to read about the Donner Party, the Andes aircraft crash, and numerous other accounts of such things. You can take it to the bank that it will happen again…and the “Drive By” also becomes the “Drive Thru.”


3. Disease: it is a well-known fact that dead bodies, poor sanitary conditions, and lack of clean running water and working sewers will all contribute to diseases. Typhus, E. coli, and plague will all return…diseases that are not a threat will quickly become out of control after the SHTF.


4. Bad Guys:  Lots and lots of bad guys (and gals, not to leave you out of the loop!) doing really bad things and trying to do more bad…to you and yours. We’re going to do a piece just on this, so I’m not going to burn out all my fire at once. Suffice to say there will be gangs and small packs of “opportunistic entrepreneurs” out roaming the streets of your town…and they’re not looking to sell you on “Amway.” They’ll take what they can…including your life.

So, what to do? Well, here’s the first step to defeating all these factors:

Have a plan, and work that plan until it takes effect, and get out of town!

You’ll need to train, game out the scenarios, and work on your preps if you must hunker down. The best thing to do is get out of the city or town. In a high-rise apartment building, you’re going to be very limited in what you can take out of there effectively if the vehicles are not working and the electricity is out. It’s hard to carry hundreds of pounds of gear and supplies down a dark staircase fifty stories and then escape a city in ruins or turmoil. The odds are against it. The key is to have a place…a safe place with supplies that you can reach…and when the time is right, get out of that city.

It will be important to form teams, within your own family, and potentially including others who live near you of a like mind. Here’s a rule to follow:

No “free rides,” any allies outside of the family must have their own supplies and be self-sustaining to be a legitimate ally.

You must trust them implicitly: A real trust, not the BS handshaking of men and the hugging of women once a week at a card party or barbeque. No, a real trust based on knowing them well, and for as long a time as possible.  You don’t want to undertake an endeavor, and then end up at the rendezvous point, and having them kill you and take your supplies. Gasp! Ohh! Perish the thought, right?

Wrong: Know that human nature means in a disaster a “switch” can be flipped at any time and those you thought were your allies are now attackers.

You’re going to have to get together with your family and the other family or two who are on your “team” and figure a way to exfiltrate out of the city with as many supplies as you can carry. Most of the gangs will be looking for easy pickings, therefore if you present a unified defensive posture…everyone knowing their functions and carrying their weapons and moving as a unit…this will dissuade them. Wolves usually prey on the young, the weak, the old, and the sick first. Men are no different. They would prefer a bunch of fatsos sitting around in their living room with their supplies than a group of families that has their “S” together and can defend themselves.

This is not to give you false bravado. There are skills you need, happy family, to be able to make it through. I hope one of your family members is a veteran. If not, seek one out and pick up some training.

“Thank you for your service,” is the BS line that everyone uses on you when they haven’t served…it makes them feel good when they say it to you…as if they have checked the “patriotic block” on a form.

You’ll really thank a vet if you’re trained by one. How about this for an idea? If there’s not one in your family or on your “team,” then find one…and pay the veteran to train you. I can see the frowns now. Nobody likes to open that wallet. I guess you’ll have to weigh what is more valuable to you and determine where your priorities lie.

Thank the veteran with more than lip service in this instance, and learn valuable skills that you could have picked up if you had served. You will need some combat skills, such as how to work as a fire team, how to clear a room, and communication between members, be that vocally or with hand-and-arm signals. In the end, it will be up to you, and you will only receive in proportion to what you extend of yourself.

You’ll need to practice and drill getting out of your locale. You’ll also be wise to equip your team (your family and another family working with you) with Motorola’s and stick them in Faraday cages until it’s time to move out. There is still time to game and implement this thing; however, the more quickly you move on it the smoother you can make it for yourself and others. The time to be prepared is yesterday, and the disaster can come tomorrow. Let us know your thoughts and any suggestions you have, and stay in that good fight! JJ out!

 

This article was originally published by Jeremiah Johnson at Tess Pennington’s ReadyNutrition.com

Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson was a Special Forces Medic, EMT and ACLS-certified, with comprehensive training in wilderness survival, rescue, and patient-extraction. He is a Certified Master Herbalist and a graduate of the Global College of Natural Medicine of Santa Ana, CA. A graduate of the U.S. Army’s survival course of SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape), Mr. Johnson also successfully completed the Montana Master Food Preserver Course for home-canning, smoking, and dehydrating foods.

Too Good For Too Long...

I"m writing this from my home in Sonoma County at the end of an intense week of witnessing firsthand the devastation caused by the many current fires burning in northern California. While it"s hard to focus on anything other than the moment-to-moment developments of this still-unfolding disaster (which I"ve been chronicling here), it"s already clear that the implications for my part of the state will last for many, many years to come.

It"s amazing how instantly the status quo where I live has changed. The world my neighbors and I lived in when we all went to bed on Sunday night simply no longer existed by the time we woke up on Monday morning. Lives have been lost. Entire neighborhoods - thousands of homes - have burned to the ground. Businesses, hospitals and schools are now shuttered.

Having now experienced this personally -- on top of watching news reports over the previous weeks of similarly abrupt "before/after" transitions in Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico, Mexico City, Las Vegas and Catalonia -- I have a new-found appreciation for the maxim that when it arrives, change happens quickly -- usually much more quickly than folks ever imagined, catching the general public off-guard and unprepared.

We humans tend to think linearly and comparatively. In other words, we usually assume the near future will look a lot like the recent past. And it does much of the time.

But other times it doesn"t. And that"s where the danger lies.

The Cruel Math

In 1987 a Danish physicist named Per Bak released a landmark paper introducing the concept of self-organized criticality. Bak observed that complex systems draw stability through an ongoing cycle of corrective collapses that keep the overall system from becoming too over-extended.

His point is best understood by watching a sand pile being formed. The pile rises as more grains of sand are added to it, until it hits a critical mass. At that point, the addition of more sand grains is likely to cause a limited collapse of the pile. The more grains of sand added, the more frequent these localized collapses are:

The key takeaway is that the end result of these collapses is that the overall size and shape of the sand pile as a whole is maintained -- i.e. the smaller corrections are necessary for maintaining the ongoing stability of the larger system (in other words, the sand pile retains a constant shape over time)

Without them, the system would grow unchecked until toppled by other laws of physics, yet at this point the energy displacement of the collapse is so large that the system is destroyed or re-set (in other words, the sand pile would rise in height over time until it collapsed entirely)

In his later 1996 book, How Nature Works, Bak showed how the same rules apply to the complex systems around us -- earthquakes, traffic jams, biological evolution, forest fires, the distribution of galaxies in the universe — and financial markets, too.

His findings are universal to complex systems. Ongoing smaller corrections are necessary for long-term stability of the larger system. And while you can"t predict exactly when the next correction will occur, the longer it takes to happen, the larger it will be (as it has more pent-up energy to displace). 

Another way to look at this is: If the smaller corrections don"t happen, the system is being set up for a much bigger and more painful collapse in the future.

In many ways, we"re seeing this manifest via the rash of recent disasters.

Let"s look at hurricanes. 2010-2016 was one of the most mild periods on record when it comes to damaging storms making landfall in the US. For whatever reason, the usual seasonal "smaller corrections" just weren"t happening as frequently in the Atlantic.

Bak"s work would predict an increasing probability of an unusually busy season of destructive hurricanes to arrive. And, right on cue, 2017 has now been recognized as the 9th most-active Atlantic hurricane season in recorded history (and the season isn"t over yet!). Underscoring the point, September 2017 proved to be the #1 single most active month for Atlantic tropical cyclones on record.

Similarly, the US West is coming off of a long stretch of regrettable forestry management practices -- logging large trees, fire suppression, and livestock grazing -- which reduced the natural occurrence and frequency of smaller-scale forest fires that prevented the build up of combustible flora. As a result, the system has become much more vulnerable to unchecked fires -- a situation made worse by the effects of the prolonged recent drought (just as the warmer temperature of the Gulf of Mexico is making hurricanes there more potent). Which is why the American West is experiencing its third most severe fire season in history this year.

Et Tu, S&P?

Don"t forget that Bak"s rules for complex systems also apply to financial markets.

With that in mind, it makes the inexorable mania and lack of micro-corrections since 2009 downright frightening. Just take a look at this price chart of the S&P 500, which is currently in its second-longest-ever bull market run:

We see that as stock prices have been on a one-way ride higher over the years, downside volatility has dried up, to the point where it now practically no longer exists:

Going back 55 years, the average cumulative intra-day losses over a 25-day period is about 660 basis points, or 6.6%. As of yesterday (October 10), the last 25 days have seen a grand total intra-day loss of just 96 basis points, or 0.96%. If that seems small, it is.

In fact, outside of the period ending November 26, 2014, this is the smallest cumulative 25-day intra-day loss in the past 46 years – and the only one registering less than 100 basis points.

(Source)

Just as (until this fall) with the US east coast and hurricanes, or like my corner of California with wildfires, things since 2010 have been "too good for too long" for the financial markets. The usual cycle of smaller corrections has not been allowed to happen, resulting in an unnatural build-up of the system to a height from which a destructive re-set is increasingly probable.

How much longer this can continue is anyone guess. But Bak"s work explains why it can"t go on forever, and why the resulting collapse will be more devastating the longer it takes to happen. And with the world central banking cartel set to reduce total global QE -- just as with hotter water temperatures in the Gulf -- the conditions for catastrophy are ratcheting up.

We are getting closer and closer to the day when we awake to find the markets we had the day before no longer exist. Change happens that fast, even with financial markets. If you think you"ll be one of the smart ones to sell your current positions before things get too bad, talk to someone who was invested in the market on October 19, 1987 when it suddenly lost nearly 25% of its value in just a few hours.

While you"re at it, talk to someone in Houston, Tampa Bay, Puerto Rico or Mexico City. Or I can put you in touch with one of my friends from Santa Rosa. Any one of them will tell you how stunningly swiftly fate can upend your best-laid plans.

Takeaways From Tragedy

Fortunately this week, I was one of the lucky ones. My family and property were spared.

But I can"t say the same for many in my community. From their loss, as well as from the threat I experienced earlier this week when the fires were much closer, here are some of the key learnings that came out of this crisis:

• Preparation only matters if it"s done in advance. And it matters a LOT -- Those who had "go bags" and disaster kits in place before the fires fared much better than those who didn"t. They were able to evacuate faster, more safely, and with better self-sufficiency. And even a few small steps can make a big difference. I found that already having a stash of emergency cash as well as several containers full of gas for my car put me at a great advantage when it first looked like we were going to have flee our home. Putting it more bluntly: if you don"t have some sort of emergency prep kit at this point, you"re being unforgivably reckless. Need guidance on what to put in it? Read our free Guide To Emergency Preparedness.


• People matter much more than property -- for those who had only minutes to flee the flames, they only cared about getting their loved ones to safety. All the "stuff" they accumulated in life didn"t even factor into their thinking at that moment. The big learning here? Don"t let possessions take an undue importance in your life. A disaster can quickly take them from you, and when forced to choose, you"ll pick people over things every time. So instead, place your focus on nurturing the relationships you value and maximizing the quality of time you can spend with those people. If you could use some professional help in this area and are having trouble finding it, consider contacting the therapist we endorse (full disclosure: she"s my wife)


• Community is priceless -- no one can be prepared for everything. Community will provide for the things you lack. I"ve been blown away by the magnitude of the response from the generous folks living both within and without Sonoma County. As I wrote last week, tragedy offers a way for people to step into their best selves. Invest in your community now, so that it"s as robust as possible when you need to count on it. Looking for ways to build community? We have a free guide for that, too.

These learnings apply to any crisis, but of course, depending on the type -- natural, financial or otherwise -- additional preparations come into play.

In our recent report Part 2 -- Crisis Preparation: What To Do, we detail out, point-by-point, our complete list of the most important steps concerned individuals should take now -- before another disaster arrives -- to safeguard their investment capital, their property, and the personal security of their families. Because whether caused by Mother Nature or man"s own recklessness, we are due for more crisis. Don"t be caught unprepared. Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

Puerto Rico: What It’s Really Like After the SHTF

This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

photo credit

Things are dire in Puerto Rico. We haven’t heard much directly from people there since Hurricane Maria took out power for the entire island, but what we do know is that the situation is desperate. This is a shocking, real-life glimpse into what it’s really like when the S hits the fan.

I saw a post from a friend of a friend who has family in Puerto Rico. I don’t have permission to share names, but here’s what she said:

“My family has lost everything. My uncle with stage 4 cancer is in so much pain and stuck in the hospital. However conditions in the island are far worse than we imagined and my greatest fear has been made reality. The chaos has begun. The mosquitos have multiplied like the plague. Dead livestock are all over the island including in whatever fresh water supplies they have.

My family has been robbed and have lost whatever little they had left. The gang members are robbing people at gun point and the island is in desperation. People are shooting each other at gas stations to get fuel.

They’re telling us to rescue them and get them out of the island because they are scared for their lives. We’re talking about 3.5 million people on an island, with no food, no drinking water, no electricity, homes are gone. Family if you have the means to get your people out, do it. This is just the first week. Imagine the days and weeks to come. These are bad people doing bad things to our most vulnerable.

Imagine a few weeks with no resources and the most vulnerable become desperate. What are you capable of doing if your children are sick and hungry? We have to help.”

I decided to vet what I could, and I believe this horrible story is absolutely true. I confirmed that there is very little food, no fresh water, 97% are still without power, limited cell signals have stymied communications, and hospitals are struggling to keep people alive. There is no 911. Help is not on the way. If you have no cash, you can’t buy anything. As people get more desperate, violence increases.

Never doubt that such an event could happen to any of us, no matter how carefully we prepare. Your best-laid plans could be swept away by a storm, flood, or fire. The immediate support most people have grown to expect might not be on the way.

Here’s what I learned.

Many homes were completely destroyed.

In the town of Catano, more than 60% of the residents are homeless due to the storm. At the shelter in Catano, the bathrooms flooded and sewage backed up into the building. There is food, but no water. It’s hot, dark, and the stench is overwhelming. There is more than one person at the shelter who is diabetic, and there is no ice for their insulin. (source)

Rivera Aviles, a Cataño city council member who set up the shelter with the help of her husband, found that her home was devastated, too.

She and her husband evacuated before the storm because their house — made of wood — is close to the water’s edge. After Maria passed she returned home and was shocked that “the entire roof was blown off.”

“Everything got wet — the beds, furniture, everything,” she says. The water damage has made it unlivable. (source)

The homes that are still standing were horribly damaged. “Even in homes that remain standing on the island, water damage and power outages have destroyed most belongings, medicine, and food.” (source)

photo credit

There is hardly any potable water.

Nearly half the people in Puerto Rico are without potable drinking water. The tap water that is restored has to be boiled and filtered, and others are finding water where they can. You can expect a health crisis soon due to waterborne illnesses. When I researched my book about water preparedness, I learned that waterborne illness is one of the deadliest threats post-disaster. Although FEMA has delivered 6.5 million liters of water, on an island with 3.4 million people, it isn’t enough.

Isabel Rullán is the co-founder and managing director of a non-profit group called ConPRmetidos. She is very concerned about the water situation. She said that even if people were able to acquire water “they may not have the power or means to boil or purify it.”

She added that the problem went beyond access to drinking water — it was becoming a real public health concern.

Compounding that issue was hospitals lacking diesel and being unable to take new patients, she said.

“There’s so much contamination right now, there’s so many areas that are flooded and have oil, garbage in the water, there’s debris everywhere,” she said by phone.

“We’re going to have a lot of people that are potentially and unfortunately going to get sick and may die,” she said. (source)

According to the Department of Defense, 56% of the island has potable water, but in one town, Arecibo, the only fresh water comes from a single fire hydrant. (source)

Hospitals are struggling to keep people alive.

And speaking of hospitals, 59 of the 69 on the island were, according to the Department of Defense, “operating on unknown status.”

Only 11 of 69 hospitals on Puerto Rico have power or are running on generators, FEMA reports. That means there’s limited access to X-ray machines and other diagnostic and life-saving equipment. Few operating rooms are open, which is scary, considering an influx of patients with storm-related injuries. (source)

A hospital in San Juan reported that two people in intensive care died when the diesel fueling the generator ran out. The children’s hospital has 12 little ones who depend on ventilators to survive, and once they ran out of fuel, they have gotten by on donations. FEMA has delivered diesel fuel to 19 hospitals.

But many darkened hospitals are unable to help patients who need it most.

Without sufficient power, X-ray machines, CT scans, and machines for cardiac catheterization do not function, and generators are not powerful enough to make them work. Only one in five operating rooms is functioning. Diesel is hard to find. And with a shortage of fresh water, another concern looms: a possible public health crisis because of unsanitary conditions…

The hospitals have been crippled by floods, damage and shortages of diesel. The governor said that 20 of the island’s hospitals are in working order. The rest are not operational, and health officials are now trying to determine whether it is because they lack generators, fuel or have suffered structural damage. All five of the hospitals in Arecibo, Puerto Rico’s largest city in terms of size, not population, are closed. (source)

One emergency room director said, ““This is like in war: You work with what you have.”

And it isn’t just the hospitals that are dealing with medical crises.

“We are finding dialysis patients that haven’t been able to contact their providers, so we are having to transport them in near-death conditions,” Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said, recalling a group’s visit to two San Juan-area nursing homes this week. “We are finding people whose oxygen tanks are running out, because … small generators now don’t have any diesel.” (source)

Residents of Puerto Rico are also having trouble getting necessary medications.

A shortage of open pharmacies is another stressor, especially for the chronically ill and elderly residents. Most pharmacies in Puerto Rico remain closed, although they are slowly beginning to reopen. A CVS spokesman said that 21 out of 25 Puerto Rico-based CVS stores are now open, including 17 pharmacies. The first one reopened last Thursday. A Walgreens spokesman said about half of the island’s 120 stores are open and running on generators, but that hours vary. The stores are also receiving supplies of medication.

But many pharmacies in Puerto Rico are independently owned. With so many people pleading for medication, some pharmacists who know their clients are dispensing drugs without the required prescriptions or refill bottles.

Hospitals still have adequate supplies, and so do many of the open pharmacies, but there are concerns they may run out because suppliers are unable to get to them, said Dr. Victor M. Ramos Otero, the president of the College of Doctors and Surgeons of Puerto Rico.

Even when people find the drugs, they often cannot pay for them. Without electricity, A.T.M.s do not work and stores cannot accept credit cards or process insurance plans. (source)

The people who were already weakened by illness will fare the worst, shortly followed by those who become injured or ill in the aftermath.

There isn’t much food.

Much of the food on the island has spoiled or been contaminated.

In the town of Utuado, Lydia Rivera has started to ration crackers and drink rainwater to keep her two grandchildren alive. “No water, no food,” Rivera told CNN. (source)

The few markets that are open are rationing food with only 10 items per person allowed. People are standing in lines for hours to purchase their 10 items. There’s no way to keep perishables fresh. (source)

And there won’t be food produced anytime soon. 80% of the crops were completely wiped out and it will take a long time to produce more.

José A. Rivera, a farmer on the southeast coast of Puerto Rico, stood in the middle of his flattened plantain farm on Sunday and tried to tally how much Hurricane Maria had cost him.

“How do you calculate everything?” Mr. Rivera said.

For as far as he could see, every one of his 14,000 trees was down. Same for the yam and sweet pepper crops. His neighbor, Luis A. Pinto Cruz, known to everyone here as “Piña,” figures he is out about $300,000 worth of crops. The foreman down the street, Félix Ortiz Delgado, spent the afternoon scrounging up the scraps that were left of the farm he manages. He found about a dozen dried ears of corn that he could feed the chickens. The wind had claimed the rest.

“There will be no food in Puerto Rico,” Mr. Rivera predicted. “There is no more agriculture in Puerto Rico. And there won’t be any for a year or longer.” (source)

There is little communication.

The lack of communications means that more remote areas have no idea what rescue operations are on the way, nor can they contact loved ones. And the lack of communication is vast:

1,360 out of 1,600 cellphone towers on the island are out. Many communities have been isolated from the outside world for days, relying only on radios for news. The communications shortage means the full extent of the crisis has not been assessed. (source)

photo credit

Surprisingly, one of the most reliable ways to contact the outside world is with Facebook Messenger.

In fact, Facebook has dispatched a “connectivity team” to help more people contact loved ones. AT&T is bringing giant floating antennas in an effort to restore cell service.

It won’t be any surprise to preppers that ham radio operators are the only people still reliably able to communicate.

When things went dark and quiet in Puerto Rico, a cadre of amateur radio operators became a lifeline on the island.

About two dozen amateur radio operators on the island helped police and first responders communicate when their radio networks failed completely. Some of the radio operators, or hams traveled on trucks to provide communications to the power company, PREPA…

Now the ranks of operator are about to get reinforcements.

At the request of the Red Cross, the league planned to send 50 radio operators into Puerto Rico with “enormous” radio gear in water proof containers, their own power supplies, new generators and solar arrays. The crew and equipment were to leave Thursday from Atlanta.

Their job, once set up and in place, will be to be the communication pipeline for the Red Cross Safe and Well program, helping people on the mainland trying to connect with loved ones on the island or get news of their status. (source)

CNN offered the following links for those trying to check on loved ones.

People are waiting four hours or longer for a gallon of gasoline and fights are breaking out in the lines as tensions run high.

A curfew is in effect to try to squelch looting but success has been limited.

Incidents … are common in the capital, where men carrying bats and clubs have been seen on the streets during curfew hours. The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, told WAPA Radio, “We highly advise everyone not to be on the streets at night. It is not safe,” warning that reports of looting are on the rise.

“That is definitely something I don’t want to hear. Especially when the only lighting I have during the night is candlelight,” said Bianca Nevarez, who lives in Bayamon, where the scenario is much more tense since 13 prisoners escaped while they were being transferred to another criminal facility after the Category 5 storm caused severe damage in the prison. “We have captured eight of them, so five are still on the loose,” Ramon Rosario, secretary of Public Affairs of La Fortaleza told The Daily Beast.

Rosario added that 21 arrests have been made across the metropolitan area as a result of those breaking the curfew, which now runs from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. No expiration date has been set.

“We will leave it active until the emergency period that we are suffering settles,” said Governor Ricardo Rosselló, noting that anyone caught on the streets during curfew hours will face up to six months in prison. (source)

Others talk about brazen crimes.

“We heard about an apartment building where four people broke in,” Rullan said. “People are worried … and just trying to be really cautious. Someone told me today that a person went into a gas station with rifles and told everyone, ‘It’s our turn to fill our tanks.’” (source)

OpsLens reports that the military is now joining forces with local police to curb the lawlessness.

Despite the significant threat to life, those who prey on others during strife and otherwise weak states are lurking. As has been reported here on OpsLens, public safety assets from the US mainland and elsewhere are striving to get boots-on-the-ground reserves in place to join the Puerto Rico factions of police trying to quell these sinister sorts from exacerbating inexplicable circumstances. (source)

Expect this to get even worse as the desperation increases.

Why has help been so slow to arrive?

Why is it that hardly any aid has arrived for this US territory? Geography and infrastructure damage are definite factors, and red tape and ridiculous laws are making matters even worse.

Difficulty lies in the fact that harbors and airports were severely damaged by Hurricane Maria. Roads are blocked with debris and some areas are still flooded. Lack of communication also plays a part. Relief supplies are stranded in port because there isn’t a way to distribute them. (source)

As always, bureaucracy is slowing things down. San Juan’s mayor said:

“We need to get our s— together because people are dying,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said on CBSN. “People are really dying.”

“It’s life or death,” Cruz said. “Every moment we spend planning in a meeting or every moment we spend just not getting the help we’re supposed to get, people are starting to die. This is not painting a picture. This is just the reality that we live in, the crude aftermath of a storm, a hurricane, that has left us technically paralyzed.” (source)

This is a perfect example of the United States having far too many laws.  One, in particular, has slowed relief. The Jones Act is a law from the 1920s that makes it illegal to ship foreign goods on American ships with an American crew.

The Jones Act, otherwise known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires goods shipped between American ports to be carried out exclusively by ships built primarily in the United States, and to have U.S. citizens as its owners and crews.

Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson two years after World War I ended, the Jones Act was passed as a protective measure against foreign competition, particularly Germany. By restricting domestic trade to U.S.-flagged vessels with U.S. crews, America would always have a robust fleet of boats and sailors on hand in the event German submarines attacked the U.S. (source)

President Trump immediately suspended the Jones Act to allow fuel to get through after Texas and Florida were hit by back to back hurricanes but last night, an entire week after Puerto Rico was cut off from the world, he was still “thinking” about it.

“We’re thinking about that, but we have a lot of shippers and a lot of people, a lot of people who work in the shipping industry, that don’t want the Jones Act lifted.” (source)

Mercifully, this morning, Trump finally made his decision and lifted the Jones Act. (source)

To be fair, some aid has gotten through and FEMA says they have 10,000 people on the ground in Puerto Rico to help out with search, rescue, and recovery. President Trump also waived the legal requirement for a state to pay for one-fourth of the cost of the disaster since Puerto Rico is bankrupt. The military is airdropping food and supplies to more remote areas of Puerto Rico that are unable to be accessed by roads.

Help is also coming from private sources. Musician Pitbull is using his private plane to fly cancer patients to the US for treatment, and Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks is sending a planeload of supplies. (source)

Lessons from Puerto Rico

It would be delusional to think that this kind of disaster could never happen to us. Of course, the size of our mainland means that disasters tend to be regional and that it is fairly easy logistically to get aid to different areas, but don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. There are some kinds of disasters that could affect the entire nation, like an EMP, just to name one chilling example.

These lessons could save your life in such a situation:

Having a plan is essential but it isn’t foolproof. No area is completely immune to disasters…earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes, floods…these can happen just about anywhere. It’s easy to say, “Oh, it’s their own fault for living on an island/not prepping/not evacuating” but this attitude belies the fact that a disaster could wipe out any of us at any time. Maybe it’s callousness, or maybe it’s really just denial.

The terrible situation in Puerto Rico is proving true many theories about the aftermath of an all-out SHTF disaster. Particularly, it has proven that help is not always on the way, you have to know how to survive when absolutely everything is gone, and that desperate people do desperate things.

These are lessons we should all take to heart.

FEMA Director Urges Americans to Develop “a true culture of preparedness” But No One Is Listening

This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

It looks like preppers aren’t that crazy after all. FEMA’s new director, Brock Long, has repeatedly said that Americans do not have a “culture of preparedness,” something that is much-needed with the startling uptick in natural disasters. Long has only been the director of FEMA since June 20 of this year and already has had to deal with a historic number of disasters in this short period of time.

It appears that Mr. Long has a mindset of self-reliance based on a couple of recent statements he has made to the media, but the MSM doesn’t seem too interested in his ideas about fostering a culture of preparedness, despite the practicality and essential nature of his suggestions.

First, in an interview from Sept. 11 that I personally only heard about yesterday, Long spoke with journalists to discuss the response to Hurricane Irma. In the interview, he said some things that vindicate all of us who have spent time and money working toward being prepared.

“I really think that we have a long way to go to create a true culture of preparedness within our citizenry in America. No American, no citizen, no visitor to this country is immune to disaster. And we have a long way to go to get people to understand the hazards based on where they dwell, where they work, and how to be prepared financially, how to be prepared through insurance, how to have continuity of operations plans for their businesses, so that we can avoid the suffering, the strife, and the loss of life. It’s truly disappointing that people won’t heed the warnings.

Straight out of our favorite prepper handbooks, right?

Of course, the reporter quickly shifted from the actual useful information to start asking about climate change, because for some reason she felt that was far more essential than the practical advice Mr. Long was offering. You can watch the interview below.

Some of those numbers were shocking – FEMA is spending 200 million dollars a day in relief efforts and desperately-needed help has hardly even begun for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

In a more recent statement, Mr. Long re-emphasized the need to be prepared, and to start kids off young with this mindset.

I think that the last 35 days or so have been a gut check for Americans that we do not have a true culture of preparedness in this country. And we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Whether it’s in education and being ready, it’s not just saying, hey, have three days worth of supplies ready to go. It’s greater than that. It’s also people having the finances and the savings to be able to overcome simple emergencies.

We have to hit the reset button and create a true culture of preparedness starting at a very young age and filtering all the way up.

We in the preparedness community have been saying this for ages, Mr. Long, but thank you for attempting to put this front and center.

One thing that is different about Long’s approach is the practicality. Many government officials seem to forget about the financial end of emergencies. They can’t seem to wrap their brains around the fact that while they have 200 million dollars a day, most folks do not. This is why financial preparedness is of such massive importance. If you had to live away from home without access to a kitchen, the expenses would rack up pretty quickly. As well, think about how thinly those millions are spread.

FEMA is eventually going to run out of money.

As well, think about how thinly those millions are spread. One person I know who lost her rental home will receive $4000. That has to replace everything she owns: furniture, clothing, personal items, food, cleaning products…you get the idea…plus pay first and last month’s rent for a new apartment. People without flood insurance who lost their homes will be eligible for a maximum of only $21,000. But if their property wasn’t paid for, they’ll still owe the mortgage payments on a place that is uninhabitable.

Don’t forget that FEMA is also providing aid for those displaced by more than 2 million acres of wildfires throughout the Western US. (Although initially, they turned down requests for assistance, they reconsidered.)

When you look at the true cost of disasters on this scale, it’s hard to imagine that FEMA will have enough money should these emergencies continue, or even enough to cover our current tab.

There were reports that FEMA had run out of money shortly after Hurricane Harvey, but more appeared for Hurricane Irma.

One article blithely suggested that FEMA can never run out of money because Congress will just vote to give them more when addressing concerns that FEMA was down to its last billion dollars.

 But the U.S. Congress quickly put such worries to rest on Sept. 8, 2017, by hastily passing legislation that gave the DRF an infusion of cash.

“The emergency supplemental appropriation of $7.4 billion allows FEMA to continue to fully focus on the ongoing preparation, response, and recovery needs,” said an agency spokesperson via email.

While legislators may have cut it a bit close, there was little chance that FEMA actually would run out of cash. According to a Congressional Research Service analysis, Congress made 14 supplemental appropriations to the fund between 2004 and 2013, for a total of $89.6 billion. In one year alone — 2005, the year that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other areas in the Gulf Coast — legislators bolstered the fund with three extra appropriations amounting to $43 billion. (source)

This, of course, naively assumes that there will always be more money to give to FEMA. Eventually, we’re going to run out.

Is this the reason for the slow response to Puerto Rico?

Personally, I keep wondering if a lack of money is the reason for our slow response to the desperate situation in Puerto Rico. Add to this the logistical problems, and you have a recipe for chaos.

Another thing to keep in mind about Puerto Rico is that this is one of the rare situations in which stockpile preparedness may not have done any good. While some folks like to say that Puerto Ricans shouldn’t be out of food within 6 days after the disaster, what they aren’t considering is the totality of the destruction.

photo credit

What food people may have had stored was destroyed when homes were turned into piles of rubble. Other food spoiled soon after the power for the entire island was taken out. If you look at these photos, you will understand why few people have food.

I imagine in such a situation, my own carefully preserved jars of food would have been smashed to bits and my freeze-dried food would have been soaked in flood waters. In most situations, your stockpile will see you through, but in a disaster of this magnitude, even the most well-prepared person could be left with nothing.

Maybe money is why the director is urging a culture of preparedness.

Perhaps this reality is why Mr. Long is so adamant that Americans need to get prepared to take care of themselves and that we need to raise our children to understand this too. That’s not the warm fuzzy thing that people who refuse to prepare want to hear, so the mainstream media gives his advice little attention.

A culture of preparedness is indeed the answer, and preppers have known this for a very long time.

“People Are Going To Start Dying” – Puerto Rico’s Battered Hospitals On Verge Of Failure

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.com

A week after then-category 4 Hurricane Maria made landfall in densely populated eastern Puerto Rico, electricity remains offline across most of the island, while supplies of staples like gas, food and water are dwindling. Shelters on the island are reportedly running low on food, and the government managers of the emergency response effort are scrambling to evacuate 70,000 people from a river valley that’s in danger of being completely submerged after a nearby dam failed.

And now, Reuters is reporting that hospitals across the island are struggling to continue providing medical services to patients after the storm left many of them flooded, strewn with rubble or relying on diesel-powered generators that will soon run out of fuel. For some, the only option is to evacuate to the United States for treatment.

Among these patients is a baby with a heart defect who had the misfortune of being born just before Maria hit.

“Among them is Cheira Ruiz and her baby girl Gabriellyz, who was born two weeks ago with a serious heart defect. The newborn was admitted to the Centro Cardiovascular de Puerto Rico in the capital shortly before Maria slammed into the island last Wednesday, but it was impossible for doctors to operate in such precarious conditions.”

Gabriellyz was among the first infants cleared to take a medical flight out of Puerto Rico since the storm. Her parents, who live two hours south of the capital, found out the good news Friday when emergency officials knocked on their door in the town of Guanica and told them to pack for the trip to Miami. With phone service out, the doctors had called one of the island’s radio stations, which broadcast their plea for help in locating the couple.

Hours before the flight was scheduled to depart, the parents learned there was only room for one of them. Mother and baby would fly alone to Miami.

“I’m trying to be strong,” Ruiz said on Saturday.”

Across the island, the scene is nightmarish as motorists and pedestrians line up for blocks waiting to purchase scare resources like fuel to power the generators. Cellular service, internet, and email have vanished, and radio has become a primary source of information. In what sounds like a plot detail from the Mad Max movies, fuel is in such short supply on the island that deliveries to hospitals are made by armed guards to fend off looters. Hospitals trying to transfer critical patients are being turned down by other facilities, simply because there is no room, or they can’t afford to purchase fuel.

For hospitals across this region, the challenges are mounting. After the power went out, back-up generators at some hospitals failed quickly. Other hospitals are running critically low on diesel. Fuel is so precious that deliveries are made by armed guards to prevent looting, according to Dr. Ivan Gonzalez Cancel, a cardiovascular surgeon and director of the heart transplant program at Centro Cardiovascular.

“Another hospital wants to transfer two critical patients here because they don’t have electricity,” Gonzalez Cancel said. “We can’t take them. We have the same problem.”

Another problem is that nurses and doctors are running low on gasoline for their daily commutes to work. Puerto Ricans are waiting as long as seven hours at the island’s few functioning filling stations. Marilyn Rivera Morales, a nurse at a hospital cardiovascular center run by Dr. Ivan Gonzalez Cancel who spoke with Reuters, said she had enough gas left to drive to the hospital for two more days.

“How will they keep coming here if they don’t have gas?” Gonzalez Cancel wondered.

Gonzalez’s cardiovascular center was “in shambles,” he told Reuters. Running without air conditioning, the walls of the operating room were dripping with condensation and floors were slippery. Most patients had been discharged or evacuated to other facilities, but some patients remained because their families could not be reached by phone. On the sidewalk outside the cardiac center on Saturday, Jorge Rivera and his wife Dorca approached Gonzalez Cancel to ask about the woman’s father, a patient still inside waiting for triple-bypass surgery. The couple are residents of Savannah, Georgia who were in Puerto Rico to care for their loved one.

The Doctor responded with what we imagine was unwelcome news: They’d have better luck if they took Dorca’s father elsewhere.

With the hospital scaling down operations and the island’s infrastructure on its knees, Gonzalez Cancel estimated he would not perform another open heart surgery for a month or more. His advice to the couple: leave.

“I am talking to you, not as a physician, I am talking to you as a human being,” he said. “Get him on a plane. You can be in Miami in two and a half hours.”

But of course, even leaving the island is a process fraught with difficulty.

With the island’s main airport still crippled, Gonzalez Cancel said he needed to secure a special waiver from authorities to obtain the medical evacuation flight for baby Gabriellyz. Travelers at the airport on Sunday were told that passengers who do not already have tickets may not be able to secure flights out until October 4.

With the situation on the island set to get worse before it gets better, some – Hillary Clinton among them – are calling on President Donald Trump to send the navy to Puerto Rico to help with the recovery effort. The devastation caused by Maria is similar to that wrought by hurricanes Katrina, Harvey and Irma, Reuters noted. But Puerto Rico’s remoteness and fragile infrastructure have made the logistics of organizing a disaster response very challenging.

Dr. Gonzalez Cancel also said the island needs the military to help with its recovery effort.

“We need a massive military response,” surgeon Gonzalez Cancel said. Because if more help doesn’t arrive soon, “people are going to start dying.”

Waiting for news about his father-in-law, Rivera, the Georgia resident and a 49-year-old Iraq War veteran, said the U.S. military could only do so much. He forecast the island would take months to get back on its feet.

“You need God pretty much to fix every light bulb,” he said.

Dr. Juan Carlos Sotomonte, the medical director of the Centro Medico‘s cardiovascular unit, said intervention – divine or otherwise – is needed fast.

“If this is not taken care of, people are going to start dying,” he said.

Making matters worse, the difficulties facing Puerto Rico’s hospitals may just be the calm before the storm. As supplies continue to dwindle and the island’s strapped finances hinder the recovery effort, the precarious situation facing Puerto Rico’s hospitals will probably worsen before it gets better.

Sales To "Common Sense Preppers" Soar Amid Nukes, Quakes, Floods, & Storms

With North Korea threatening to detonate a nuclear weapon over the Pacific Ocean as its leader and President Donald Trump casually bandy about threats of thermonuclear annihilation, people in the US and Japan are understandably starting to worry.

After all, US intelligence agencies revealed during the summer that they believe the North will soon possess a nuclear warhead-tipped ballistic missile capable of striking most of the continental US. In fact, chances are good that, with a little luck, the North already has missiles in its arsenal that could probably strike a large area of the western US.

But, aside from nuclear threats looming in North Korea and Iran, the worst hurricane season in the Atlantic in more than a decade, and the continuing rumblings underneath the Yellowstone caldera, which could signal a potentially humanity-extinguishing eruption, it’s understandable that Americans and Japanese are increasingly worrying about their safety, and have begun purchasing more “doomsday preparation” gear to help assuage those fears.

Now, Reuters is reporting that survivalists across the US are clearing store shelves to stock bunkers in anticipation of Earth’s final chapter. A few survivalists who spoke with Reuters said that North Korea’s threats, and the images of the destruction caused by Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma, have inspired them to stock up.

“It’s been a very busy six or seven weeks here - sales tripled practically overnight,” said Keith Bansemer, vice president for marketing for Idaho-based My Patriot Supply, an online store catering to preppper needs.

“It all started when North Korea shot the missile that was capable of reaching the U.S. Then the hurricanes and two Mexican earthquakes increased sales from California and Cascadia in the Northwest,” he said, referring to the corner of the country where many survivalists have settled because of its relative isolation.

One guy on the west coast said he’s worried about a catastrophic earthquake. He has piled enough survival supplies in a closet that could last he, his wife and their dogs for a month, if necessary.

David Yellin, a self-described prepper who lives in California’s San Diego County, said his main concern was the long-expected “big earthquake” along the West Coast.

The 31-year-old police officer has piled enough survival supplies in a closet of the apartment he shares with his fiance and their two dogs to allow them to hunker down for a month.

“I‘m more of what I consider a common sense prepper,” Yellin said. “Because at the end of the day, we are responsible for our own safety.”

Both he and his wife have “bug out bags” prepared should disaster strike.

If disaster forces the couple to flee, each has a “bug-out bag” stuffed with three days of food, water, first aid and water purification supplies, fire-starting materials, a tent and sleeping bag, change of clothes and important documents.

One purveyor of survivalist gear said sales on items like gas masks have spiked over the last two months, a period which notably featured the US’s escalating war of words with North Korea and the catastrophic hurricanes.

At Ready To Go Survival, founder and chief executive Roman Zrazhevskiy said gas masks were quickly moving off the shelves and overall sales “are up like 700 percent over the last two months.”

A prepper himself, he said his greatest fear was a U.S. economic collapse as a result of the country’s unsustainable debt.

“Once people go hungry, they are going to get to the streets and look for food,” said Zrazhevskiy, 31, who grew up in New York City’s borough of Brooklyn and now lives in Texas.

Customers were snapping up $500 CBRN suits to withstand chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attack and $200 gas masks in sizes that fit children as young as 5.

Another prepper who has spent thousands of dollars on gear said he fears political and economic collapses as much or more than North Korea.

“Gas masks? I’ve got tons of those,” said prepper Jerry McMullin, 62, a retired risk assessment analyst whose bunker-like home in Yellow Jacket, Colorado, was built to withstand nuclear attack, biological warfare and a range of natural cataclysms.

Although North Korea is one of his biggest concerns, McMullin is also worried about political instability in Washington leading to riots and mayhem in the cities, he said.

“I‘m not a paranoid guy. I just want to be in a position that when it does go to Hell, I‘m in a good location to get whatever I need,” said McMullin, who has his own water filtration system and burns his own trash in his solar-powered home.

In addition to the obvious threats, many continue to believe in “doomsday" hoaxes like 7/7/2007 and end of the Mayan calendar on Dec. 21, 2012.

Now, some Christians are touting a Bible prophecy that marks September 23, 2017 as the beginning of a seven-year period of catastrophic events that will bring humanity to its knees.

David Meade, a Christian numerologist and author, has said that, based on the Book of Revelations, a constellation would appear over Jerusalem on Saturday that would start the seven years of mayhem.

But McMullin said his own respect for Bible prophesy assures him that disaster is not around the corner.

“As far as getting wiped out this weekend, I‘m not too worried about that,” McMullin said.

“Maybe it’s a timeline marker and things are going to start getting really ramped up. We are not about to go through mass destruction and fatality. I think people are a little more stable - except for Kim,” he said, referring to North Korea’s President Kim Jong Un.

After spending thousands on gear, some preppers told Reuters that the flooding in Houston, Florida and Puerto Rico have left them feeling vindicated.

We imagine that feeling will persist as economic and political tensions, coupled with the impending economic disenfranchisement of much of America’s working and middle classes, continue to simmer, while the US’s leaders continue to risk an unparalleled disaster by trading threats with unstable North Korea.