Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)
lcamtuf.coredump.cx101 points by AlphaWeaver 4 hours ago
101 points by AlphaWeaver 4 hours ago
Great time to see this here. This morning I, in Canada, reached out to a friend in Ukraine and asked "I might be over-reacting, but what do you wish you knew before the war started?"
His response was "You're not over reacting, you might be under-reacting, worst case you end up with some cool new toys. Best case, you're more prepared than anyone else."
So yeah, here we are. Good article to add to my research.
Well, don't leave us hanging. What did they say?
LOL sorry, here's the list:
Generator 5kw - you want something with a higher duty cycle than you need so it can run for extended periods
Diesel storage for back of a truck - 330 Gallon (nice to have, after a week or two supply lines got fixed)
Diesel - for said tank
Medical supplies - IFAK kit (NAR is a good vendor). Bleeding control & dexamethasone.
Solar power - 1-5kwh. We still get 10-15 hrs a day on the grid, but this would be ideal.
Batteries - minimum 5+kwh storage
Network cable - 300m+ to start. I'm shocked how many times I need a cable and cant get any.
Hand pumps or small electric pump for different fuels and water
Ice auger - gas, but electric ideally, large / long drill bit 2" works too if you have a drill and smaller pipes?
Take a first aid course - MARCH protocol
Iodine pills not important - way bigger issues if you're resorting to that.
Get a rifle - not good for military but useful against looters and other unarmed crazy people
Get familiar with remote detonation with drones, these are what we use to set off the molotovs: <https://www.amazon.co.uk/100-30cm-Electric-Fireworks-Igniter...>
Edit: formatting
> Get a rifle - not good for military but useful against looters and other unarmed crazy people
If you’re going to do that, become proficient with said rifle.
If you have a solar panels, a battery, and generator, it would be good idea to figure out how to hook them all together. Using the generator near its full output, to charge the battery, will use far less fuel than idling it all day.
Even if things are bad enough for iodine pills, they are only really needed for children. Once you hit your mid teens, your thyroid is fully developed and not pulling in enough iodine to worry about radioactive isotopes.
I assume the iodine is about water treatment and not radiation?
I presume that radiation is why the Ukrainian brought it up.
The article did mention using it for treating water, but it's not very good at that, and it tastes awful. Reverse osmosis works much, much better and it doesn't need to be a large permanently installed system; portable gravity-fed versions readily available.
I was thinking the other day that ALL drones SHOULD be considered LIVE explosives. It's probably never a good idea to handle one if you're not trained.
Last march i was at SxSw and the police drones over head were a first for me. I was in this large crowd of people, and thought "yeah i dont like this". How do i know they're not just some bad actors drone with red and blue lights?
I think my exposure to casual discussions of how to arm drones with my Ukrainian friend, and the videos we've all seen on Reddit about drones in Ukraine, have really made their presence feel unwelcome.
I think in the US legally they have to have a beacon while flying now, but my thought the other day was about them being parked/down.
It depends on a number of factors about legality, but the hardware to make a drone that doesn't have software forcing it to follow the law is cheap and plentiful. Its not particularly hard to get either, even with the drone ban.
For ~$200 you can build a very good FPV drone that can carry a dangerous payload and travel at highway speeds. Another ~$200 buys you the video receiver and a controller.
Drone warfare is terrifying.
is the last point correct? "Get familiar with remote detonation with drones, these are what we use to set off the molotovs:" seems off for this list, like way off and more on military/offence side of type of thing?
and why would you need a 300m+ ethernet cable in a disaster?
In his case i didn't actually bother asking about the cat6 because i already had a huge reel in my garage, but I can think of cases such a remotely mounting satellite dish' and maybe connecting buildings to each other.
The molotov didn't seem out of range for me honestly. Firstly because I know he was one of the first people flying drones for defence, and now they've been mass producing their own for a few years. I have to admit, it seems pretty rational to want to fight back in any way possible.
Depending on the scale of the disaster you may not want your Starlink on your bedroom roof.
Totally valid use case for sure, and we discussed this because I do have a Starlink dish, but honestly, in a conflict with the US...I don't think a) I'd want to use starlink and b) i'd expect it to work.
Smartest thing would've been - move out of Ukraine. Shit went sideways long before borders got closed. There were plenty of red flags.
Funny, not funny, this friend and I met up in early 2020 and had a beer down the road. He was telling me he'd rented his apartment in Liviv and was moving here next week. He had to go home to get some things, hand over the unit, and then he'd be back.
Next week was the pandemic, borders closed. He never left, and now he /still/ cant.
They are proud people who want to defend their country.
Several millions left the country immediately, and the rest cannot do it because borders were closed immediately. Ukraine borders with Europe are all barbed wire, anti-personnel mines, drones and guards with automatic weapons ensuring "proud people" don't even think about leaving.
I work with plenty of people from Ukraine. And recently, someone went abroad. So it's definitely still possible.
That depends on a lot of personal things. I remember a Ukrainian I personally know, leaving after the 2014 invasion.
When Russia was doing "exercises" at their border in 2022, I asked them in a meeting what they felt (guys living in Lviv). Most of them thought Russia would have done it in 2014 already, and now it didn't make much sense. Only 1 person responded he filled up his gas tank. But in the end, nobody left Lviv right after the invasion.
The world we're headed for there is no "other place" to escape to. Many people's view of survival during collapse ultimately assumes the existence of a fairly large "safe haven" space for which they just need to survive until they get there.
Cool new toys! I like it. I've recently been thinking of branching into more water sports such as rowing, ocean swimming and the like to have a better shot at surviving out at sea. Hopefully I've gotten some mountains covered by now.
I've got a few high tech friends (and myself) that have slowly become more and more of the mindset to be self sufficient.
Two things probably have made me initially think more about it. First, the predictions of a major subduction earthquake here in Oregon, and knowing I'd be somewhat on my own for a while after that. And the other thing is Burning Man, which has taught me about self sufficiency and how one can actually have their cake and eat it too now and then.
Then there are guns. I've got two, and both are very much antiques. One a Krag 30-40 from 1908, the other a 1946 Springfield M1903. Both military issue, bolt action, and beautifully crafted. And both quite functional, powerful, and deadly items.
Why do I have guns? First because they are historical (used to work on a WW2 era video game). Then there's in theory hunting if I had to. Then there's protection. I can't deny that yes, I would consider using them if me and mine were truly threatened.
My only rule of thumb for any of this is never shall it say "Tactical" in the product name or the seller. Nor shall it have camo pattern.
One of those things that I have trouble mentally placing in the correct time period is the standardization of the cartridges that we still use today. When they were developed, tractors were still using metal tires and blood type testing for transfusions didn't exist yet. Living on the West coast usually meant that you had to be self sufficient. Some of my ancestors at the time lived in Idaho in a hole they dug in the ground, that they put a roof over. They had another similar dugout that they filled with ice blocks during the winter, to sell in the summer for some income. Most of them were sustenance farmers. One of my great grandparents had multiple acres in Van Nuys to grow enough food and raise enough rabbits to live off of. That land would be worth millions now, but back then it was what you needed to get by. Being rich would mean you had nicer clothes and a bigger house and servants and didn't have to grow your own food, but even the rich rarely had electric power, and when they did it was only routed to lamp sockets.
Do many people think that with their single assault rifle or other weap9n, that they would successfully defend against one or more truckloads of vandals looking to steal whatever they have stored up "self-sufficiently"? History seems to indicate that in the absence of law, those with the most people inside a fortified structure and position are the most likely to survive.
Survival is all about being prepared for all kinds of scenarios, adapting to the situation, and a ton of luck.
I rather have a few weapons, than no weapons at all.
History seems to indicate that in the absence of law, those with the most people inside a fortified structure and position are the most likely to survive.
I don't think that's true. I imagine the people with the highest chance of survival are the ones whose governing/ruling people seek peace and the rule law quickest. Second would be people who flee to the nearest safe and lawful area. A fortification is probably the third best option if you can't have either of the first, but the probability of that structure keeping you alive is very low, especially if the conflict lasts long enough to become a siege. Entire cities managed to hold out from sieges that lasted for years, but the ordinary people inside did not.
Funny the person you replied to mentioned an antique rifle and then you ranted about assault weapons while censoring yourself?
Rifles are great for many things aside from roving bandits. First thing is that hunting is an excellent capability to have and rifles are much easier to use than bows. Another thing is the deterrence one provides. If you're moving around the end times with just your fists, you're an easier target than someone equipped. The final bit is if your point is right and living in a fortified structure is the way to go, someone with a rifle and the knowhow to use it is going to be immensely more useful to the group than someone who just knows how to use a computer. In the absence of law, you will be obliged to defend yourself whether that's individually or in a large group.
People stockpiling only "weap9n"s aren't going to last near as long as people stockpiling only food.
In real life melee weapons are readily available and far more overpowered that you'd think, but what matters more is that robbery is risky. Winning most of the time isn't enough; you'd need to win all of the time.
It depends on if the people with weapons can find the people with food. With no rule of law, everything is on the table. Warlords still exist in many parts of the world today
Modern warlords have large quantities of subjects from generations and generations of consolidation, which itself is a variation of joining instead of looting. Gaining subjects is extremely risky, when you don't already have an army.
Really, modern first-world countries are just the descendants of warlordships that ran out of kingdoms to consolidate with and instead switched to taxation, either relinquishing enough power to their citizens to maintain a stable but effectively symbolic monarchy or overtaxing then losing to a rebellion.
Those folks tend to have a confounding number of firearms, rather than just one. Not that it necessarily shifts the eventual outcome to your scenario.
> History seems to indicate that in the absence of law, those with the most people inside a fortified structure and position are the most likely to survive.
Source?
Every Roman fortification, medieval city & castle? Clarifying, compared to a single villager with a sword or even two.
I think the ultimate form of prepping is meal prepping. By regularly cooking batches of food, you automatically get a really good backup throughout. There are no extra steps required. The last place you want to be during a disaster is at the grocery store or stuck in traffic.
At any moment I could go for at least two weeks without really worrying about food or how it would even be prepared. I've got a standby generator for the house and a smaller unit just in case that one dies. There's enough fuel on site to keep my fridge running for about a month in the worst case.
You want to be the last bear to exit the cave. The longer you can hold out, the less competition you'll have to deal with. The only other option is to get out before the disaster hits. This works great for hurricanes but not so well for earthquakes.
Going out searching for more food after 2 weeks just ensures you're placing yourself amongst people that haven't eaten in 2 weeks and are willing to do anything they need to in order to eat.
I see this page pop up with some regularity, and unfortunately the disasters mentioned within seem to become more and more likely each time I read it. Maybe I am just growing more pessimistic, but COVID-19 felt like yesterday and all the large scale layoffs certainly don't inspire confidence.
I renewed my home insurance policy recently and there was one clause along the lines of coverage being excluded for war/insurrection/rebellion/military related reasons. Previously I would have thought nothing of it. These days I read these exclusion clauses in the same spirit as the "problem space" sections listed in this disaster planning doc.
I'm in California, and I'm lucky that I've been able to renew my home insurance. My brother wasn't able to, because every insurer had pulled out of the area, and he had to buy insurance directly from the state for several times more than what private providers charge, and those rates are likely to go up because the state program that runs it is bankrupt.
If anything happens to the my house, it can take a year or more to get permission to rebuild it, and if fire or earthquake or flood takes out the neighborhood, the permitting backlog can take multiple years. My neighbor tried to build a house on a slope, and it took ten years to get the county to acknowledge that the engineering plans were sound, but by that point my neighbor was too old to build the house.
It's really common to have power outages here at least annually, if not more often, and that's been a problem for decades, but there's significant resistance to building new power plants, including solar and wind, which wouldn't fix the instability anyway, and a tenth of our power comes from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which is past its design life and we'd be lucky to get another five years out of it.
The oil refineries keep shutting down, we don't have any pipelines to bring in oil, and gas stations are required to sell a California-specific formula anyway.
Restaurants are closing everywhere, discount stores are closing, the 99¢ Only chain went bankrupt, eliminating one of the few affordable sources of fresh fruits and vegetables.
We've been so obsessed with NIMBYism for so long that we're losing our infrastructure and quickly approaching a collapse. A high paying job is necessary to barely scrape by, a generator is a must, gasoline shortages may soon become a problem, and electricity outages may grow from seasonal to regular.
I have contingency plans for all of these issues, but long term I'll probably just move to Nevada, Idaho, or Utah.
Its always good to be prepared materially, physically, and psychologically. The best preps are not supplies, but relationships. Social credit matters more, IMHO, than anything else when it comes to long emergencies.
That's probably the best strategy, but no one wants to admit it. Everyone seems to think that Lord of the Flies depicts human nature, when in reality teen boys on a deserted island are more likely to form a band than kill each other (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongan_castaways#Cast_away) and adults are even better behaved.
The breakdown of probability regarding what actually kills people was really interesting to read. I think he is spot on about handling the mundane disasters like power outages before worrying about the end of the world. It is just good common sense to have insurance and savings.
I met someone who had stored food rations in case of emergency. The mundane disaster where it came in ended ended up being unemployment, letting him put his entire budget toward housing.
For finance, I find interesting the other way around. You see many fire types preparing TOO MUCH. Obviously you should not live paycheck to paycheck. But if you prepare for a 3% return fire, wasting years, your chance of dying early is the much bigger worry than running out of money.
I have a local kiwix box that serves the entire english wikipedia (with pictures) as well as the DIY stackexchange:
Lots of good stuff in here. One thing to note about building off-grid self-sufficient abodes for "Problem space #3: The zombie apocalypse" is that the roving hordes of warlord-run gangs will consider finding those to be the ultimate booty. This point is made quite clearly in Six Minutes to Winter, the new book about nuclear war by Mark Lynas. As much as I always wanted a sweet prepper cave, the idea has now soured on me a bit.
That's one of the issues with these if you ask me.
Either you're a hermit, that really can build that hermit cave in the mountains, far off and all the guns they're stockpiling won't really be used.
Or you're way too close to civilization coz you have an actual family and they'd never do / care about any of that "crazy stuff".
And if you're that close to civilization, it's all about who's got the larger stockpile and larger amount of armed thugs. Are you really gonna fight off 30 guys with AR-15s with a family of four, two of which are children to protect your stash of food and gas and generator(s)?
The only way your "prepping alone" is gonna help you is the hermit case, far far out of sight or if it's "not all that bad anyway".
Roving hordes of warlord-run gangs aren't likely to last all that long. Unless they're extremely successful, they're going to be constantly infighting for resources, and success is a very high bar, because if they don't win every conflict, their population will rapidly decline from attrition.
It won't take long for it to become overtly apparent to the members of roving hordes of warlord-run gangs that befriending an off-grid self-sufficient abode is a much, much lower risk option than raiding it.
I feel like a mobile abode is the way to go. You'll eventually be found and there's no way to outlast a group forever. They'll find a way to cut your air or water. Get a land cruiser with a good tent and go fuck off in the middle of nowhere.
i've not read the book, but i've thought about this on and off for a while.
the common trope of a mad max style wasteland where there are roaming barbarians and everyone is in a state of disorganized chaos is imo overstated. a hobbesian fantasy/wet dream.
humans tend to be self organizing and (mostly) altruistic in the face of disaster. we have plenty examples of this: fukishima, the boston bombing, ongoing ukrainian conflict, syrian conflict.
that's not to say that scoundrels do not exist. times of chaos create space for predators to take advantage of people. it happens more frequently at greater scale. there will be plenty of untethered folks with some form of military training.
similarly, the idea that you could simply ride out a long term disaster in a prepper cave is (again coached in an imho) mostly a fantasy. most people simply need community to survive.
fear of warlord run gangs shouldn't dissuade you from having a small stockpile of goods to survive. if they exist, and you meet they'll probably chop your head off regardless.
the most sensible thing to do is prepare within reason and build a community of people around you that can rely on you and vice verse.
Finlands 72hours website is a good starting point:
For those interested, I found this practical experience very informative about preparing for social collapse:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20221004062915/https://organicco...
Build stable societies.
Stable societies fundamentally require increasingly large energy inputs. What we're seeing happening right now, in a large part, is due to a system whose complexity has exceed the available energy required to sustain it.
The idea that what we're seeing is because "too many people voted for the wrong guy" fails to recognize the larger condition for which all of this is merely emergent phenomena. We no longer have the resources to sustain the society we life in so it begins to uncomfortably revert to lower energy states in ways we haven't seen in a long time.
But be prepared for the society you live in to vote for an obviously, significantly destabilising leader...
Trump and his acute destabilizing actions are the symptoms of the chronic, broad, deep destabilization of our society in the form of differing perceived realities, caused by....the internet and its exploitation by sick, greedy social media founders, investors/owners, and, yes, employees.
Some societies can be stable for a while, but all of them eventually become unstable, collapse, and make room for new ones.
Further more, know your neighbors, join mutual aid groups, build social connections before bad things happen. The idea of a single prepper surviving the apocalypse is a farce, humans work in communities.
Care to name any examples?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group
A one hundred year old farmer's collective with deep assets and a membership that makes US preppers look ... uhhh, unprepped.
Literally established well outside what one US astronaut called the most remote city in the world, it is made up of individuals that are all capable of survival in harsh environments and yet choose to work together to lower collective costs and ensure fires are kept in check, floods don't knock out individuals, roving scam artists get talked about on bush telegraph, etc.
My relatively stable high trust society has bunker space for more or less the entire population; if the world goes to hell I'd much rather be* among people who (even on our right wing) habitually put solidarity into practice than be worrying about generators, ice augers, and looters.
* one of the best pieces of advice I ever got, related to skating to where the puck is going to be: "if you know where to be, you can let the young guys run"
That's like saying "Everyone be friendly and helpful to one another"
Easier said than done
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