Your Computer May Not Survive a Collapse But These Off-Grid Archiving Strategies Will

This article was originally published by Jeremiah Johnson at Ready Nutrition

I will admit that I am not the most technologically “savvy” individual, and I’m certainly not armed with all the modern “conveniences” that most people take as a necessity. Cell phones, Kindle devices, M-pad/I-pod/UFO-whatever-for-music…don’t use ‘em. That being said, I know they have their merits, but it’s the same type of lesson I tried to impart to my son when he went into the service.

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He picked up one of those high-speed wrist compasses…the digital kind…but I constantly remind him to use that “old-fashioned” lensatic compass as his mainstay. He listens, although he prefers to use his gizmo. I’m just happy he carries the lensatic with him and knows how to use it. I made sure he knew how to use it.

Create a Survival Library with Hard-Copy Notes and Archives

In this light, remember that all of our technology can collapse in the blink of an eye. The collapse can be precipitated by any number of things…grid failure/brownouts, an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) strike, a nuclear war, or just a societal collapse that has a “downtrickle” of losing critical infrastructure and modern power systems. In that light, it is best to take your digital and electronic libraries and ensure they are duplicated into hard-copy. Consider investing in a typewriter to pass this valuable information on. Let’s give some suggestions, and you can take them, and tailor them to suit your needs.

1. Whenever you watch any kind of training video/DVD, you should always take notes and summarize it. Pick up the key points, supplementing them with your own notes and diagrams to help clarify the instruction. A composition-type notebook works well for this. I take rough notes on a sheet of paper, and then recopy them into the notebook.


2. Summarize books and other works: Turn a 300-page book into 8-10 pages of intense notes…summarize and shoot for brevity and clarity in your notes. This is not to say, “don’t keep books,” but rather, read them and take good notes that you can glance at to glean any important information you may need to use.


3. Print out the important how-to’s and “archive” notes: don’t just store it on hard drive or jump drive! Although that is important, you want to make sure your information is printed off.  Strive for accuracy, compactness, neatness, and organization in all of your notes.


4. File similar subjects in a binder/common protector: This is especially important when you’re dealing with things such as first-aid and medicine. Protect the info, and keep it well-organized


5. Military Med Chests: Yes, made out of strong aluminum, these stackable canisters are perfect to place your archives and books inside after wrapping them up in plastic…preferably contractor-grade bags around 6 mils in thickness.


6. Durable plastic bins: These can work if they’re really tough and are water-tight. The biggest problems with notes, archives, and books are water, mildew, bugs, and fire, in that order.  You want to make sure everything is in plastic and sealed up tight.


7. Duplicate everything…1-6 up there? You should have one copy out for your general use, and another sealed up in a safe place.

The last measure mentioned is not just for you and your family. The last measure is to provide information for those not here with us yet, or those not old enough to use the information right now. Think beyond yourself and your own lifetime, or even the lifetimes of your kids. You want to leave a legacy? Who cares if they know who you are? There will still be those who will thank you for leaving records and how-to’s they can use. Want a good example? Read the book “Lucifer’s Hammer,” by Niven and Pournelle. Be more than a student, or a secretary. Be a custodian…of information…. a caretaker, taking care for future generations. Hard copy for all information…to include books!…is the way to save the knowledge. Stay in that good fight! JJ out!

Additional Reading:

3,000 Survival Books You Can Download for Free

The Prepper’s Blueprint: The Step-By-Step Guide To Help You Through Any Disaster

10 Books That Could Actually Save Your Life

About the Author

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.

Mr. Johnson dries and tinctures a wide variety of medicinal herbs taken by wild crafting and cultivation, in addition to preserving and canning his own food. An expert in land navigation, survival, mountaineering, and parachuting as trained by the United States Army, Mr. Johnson is an ardent advocate for preparedness, self-sufficiency, and long-term disaster sustainability for families. He and his wife survived Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Cross-trained as a Special Forces Engineer, he is an expert in supply, logistics, transport, and long-term storage of perishable materials, having incorporated many of these techniques plus some unique innovations in his own homestead.

Mr. Johnson brings practical, tested experience firmly rooted in formal education to his writings and to our team. He and his wife live in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with their three cats.

Solar Storm Will Strike Earth Tonight, ‘Weak Power Grid Fluctuations’ Possible

The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center forecasts an aurora could light up the sky above areas in the United State including Michigan and Maine.  A solar storm, which occurred Monday, is expected to strike Earth tonight.

On Monday, the sun spit out a slew of charged particles in a moderate solar flare. These particles are now making their way towards Earth. The planet’s magnetic field will block most of the particles, but some will make it into Earth’s atmosphere. The particles collect at the north and south poles and interact with atmospheric gases to create the aurora borealis or the Northern Lights. And some say this show could be quite spectacular.

Solar flares have been known to cause power grid failures, but it looks like we’ll only get the light show this time. Although a grid failure is possible, it is unlikely.

According to Seeker, the forecast calls for a high probability of a G-1 or “minor” storm, which could strengthen to a G-2 or “moderate” storm depending on how the stream of particles hit the Earth. Geomagnetic storms are ranked on a scale, with G at the bottom, R in the middle, and S as the most severe. Forecasts now say the particles will give our planet a glancing blow.

Although this storm has been categorized as “G-1,” which means it is minor, it could still cause some havoc down on Earth. Solar flares and particle ejections are associated with sunspots — dark areas on the sun’s surface — that host intense magnetic activity. As the magnetic fields in a sunspot cross, NASA stated, this can cause a sudden energy explosion, also known as a solar flare. This sends radiation out into space, and that radiation can be hurled toward the Earth.

G1-level storms, such as Monday’s, may affect migratory animals, and can cause “weak power grid fluctuations.” The barrage of particles may even have a minor impact on satellites.  A gird failure would almost immediately fling the United States into a state of panic, and it’s always good to be prepared just in case. But it doesn’t look like there will be any serious damage to the power grid because of this storm as of right now.

Scientists Fear Grid Failures During Solar Minimum

As our sun’s activity slows and the star gets quieter, scientists’ fears of solar minimum are coming to the forefront.  It isn’t the lack of activity that is terrifying those who study the sun, it’s what happens next that worries them all.

There would be nothing any of us could do if the sun’s activity decreases to the point that it causes the outermost atmospheric layer to collapse.  No amount of taxation in the name of “global warming” will save anyone on earth from this outcome. But first, scientists have to worry about the sun reaching “solar minimum” and the possibility of losing the outermost layer of the atmosphere thanks to the rapid cooling.

Solar minimum is when the sun goes through a cycle of minimal activity, and right now, it’s on the verge of reaching this point.  Our sun will near solar minimum in about 2019 or 2020. Unlike the name suggests, this lack of solar activity could cause an outer layer of the atmosphere called the thermosphere to contract and it’s not entirely clear what the effects of this could be on our planet.

The roughly 11-year cycle of the sun is reaching its low point, and soon.  This means less energy is going to be released from our star in the form of solar flares, but it will mean we have solar winds to contend with. Professor Yvonne Elsworth at the University of Birmingham says that the next solar minimum could “be in about two years” but before then, the sun is expected to unleash significantly more radiation towards Earth.  She also said that this cycle could mean that a “fundamental change in the nature of the [the sun’s magnetic] dynamo may be in progress.”

And she isn’t the only scientists who believes that this could amount to doom and gloom.  Her theory is backed up by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory’s daily snaps, which have shown a spotless sun for 44 days in a row.

Solar minimums are known to spark lots of cosmic ray activity that can penetrate our atmosphere. These cosmic beams cause “air showers” of particles when they hit our atmosphere. They pose a health hazard to astronauts, and a single stray cosmic ray could cause a satellite to malfunction. As well as wiping out communication systems, a solar blast could down power grids.

It’s not entirely clear why low solar activity causes our thermosphere to collapse; or what it might be doing to our planet. Without having any effect on the sun’s cycle which will ebb and flow, “man-made global warming,” took some blame. Back in 2008 and 2009 when the sun was going through this same cycle, climate change alarmists claimed that the global warming was “adding to the cooling and contracting in the upper layer of our atmosphere.”

“This is not how it used to be and the rotation rate [of the sun] has slowed a bit at latitudes around about 60 degrees. We are not quite sure what the consequences of this will be but it’s clear that we are in unusual times. However, we are beginning to detect some features belonging to the next cycle and we can suggest that the next minimum will be in about two years,”  Professor Elsworth said.

Not many are prepared for a massive power grid failure thanks to the sun’s cycle, but it’s a growing concern among many preppers, and scientists are now validating that anxiety.

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Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 348 people
Date: July 9th, 2017
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

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Ransomware Is Tip Of The Iceberg: “You Could See 90% Of Americans Die As A Result Of A Prolonged Power Outage Because The Grid Gets Hacked” (VIDEO)

The Ransomware that began spreading across the globe on Friday is still going with more computers reportedly being affected today by new variants of the virus.

What we’ve learned is that the attack hasn’t just taken down personal computers, but core government and business networks affecting everything from health care systems and transportation in Europe, to ATM withdrawals in China.

It’s massive, to be sure. But in the grand scheme of things, up to this point, it has been a fairly minor inconvenience.

But as Joe Joseph warns in his latest news report at The Daily Sheeple, this is just the tip of the iceberg, because now that we’ve seen how quickly such an attack can spread, it’s only a matter of time before rogue groups or state-sponsored players make a direct attempt at taking down core systems that keep millions of people in America alive. As we’ve previously noted, U.S. cyber command has warned that power grids, physical infrastructure and commerce systems will be a major target of future cyber attacks, and the latest Ransomware attack utilizing NSA-created exploits proves just how serious the damage could be:

Experts are saying this is just the tip of the iceberg… what the NSA has done and the damage they have caused as the result of coming up with these exploits in the first place is criminal… but it’s beyond criminal… in our society we have become so dependent on technology.. our computers… our cell phone…

We’ve become so hooked on it that if something happens and it looks like it can very easily happen… where some of these hacks are exploited… we could see an instantaneous change in the way that we live… to the point where you could see upwards of 80% or 90% of the population just in the United States dying as a result of a prolonged power outage because the grid gets hacked…

(Watch full report at Youtube)

Joseph’s figure of a 90% die off in the event of a grid failure is based on the work of EMP researcher Dr. Peter Pry, who recently testified before a Congressional panel on the dangers of “grid down” scenarios resulting from electro-magnetic pulse attack. Though Pry’s research is primarily based on the threat of a nuclear device being detonated a couple hundred miles above the central United States taking out the entirety of the domestic power grid, the end result of a grid-down scenario, whether initiated by a cyber attack or something else, is very much the same.

Without the grid, all life in America would come to a standstill. Gas station pumps wouldn’t work, which means trucks couldn’t deliver food to grocery stores. And even if your local store still had food on the shelves, cash registers and bank payment verification systems would be unavailable, making hard currency like gold and silver the only means of transacting. As we’ve seen in China over the weekend, ATM’s would likely be inaccessible. So, too, would be your access to clean water, as most utility plants are tied to the power grid.

In short, within about 72 hours, there would be pandemonium in the streets, as highlighted by The Prepper’s Blueprint author Tess Pennington in her article The Anatomy of a Breakdown:

3-5 days following a disaster is the bewitching hour. During this short amount of time, the population slowly becomes a powder keg full of angry, desperate citizens. A good example is the chaos that ensued in New Orleans following the absence of action from the local government or a timely effective federal response in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In such troubled times, people were forced to fend for themselves and their families, by any means necessary. This timeline of Hurricane Katrina effectively illustrates “the breakdown,” and within three days, the citizens of New Orleans descended into anarchy, looting and murder.

If the crisis extends for any more than about a week, you can expect full-out war on the streets of America as people race to acquire the last remaining resources.

Within one year, predicts Peter Pry, nine out of ten Americans would be dead because of starvation or violence.

It may sound incredible, but if you consider the reality of our dependence on technology, a multi-week or multi-month hiccup in the system will be enough to bring the entire thing crashing down.

Even the Department of Homeland Security recently warned about the potential for devastating cyber attacks, going so far as to recommend that families need to prepare at least two weeks of food and emergency supplies because the federal government may be overwhelmed and unable to provide assistance.