I had my first live radio interview tonight, and was on the American Voice Radio network for 2 hours this evening. I was interviewed by Michael Lehman, and the topic of the day was family preparedness.

I’ve got the show right here. Just click the player button below and listen to the entire show…

 

 Rich Fleetwood on Civil Defense, Nuclear Preparedness and Fallout Shelter: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rich

I found this jewel of an article reposted on Timebomb2000.com, and felt it covered all the bases of survival in hard times (disaster, ecomonic downturn, civil strife, etc.) that I just had to make sure it was seen by a wider audience.   Many of the items here could by applied and used in worse case scenarios, including pandemic bird flu, which seems to have the biggest echo on the governments “Fear Radar”.

Rich

From the old Greenspun board

Fair use
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0011Lt

How to Survive Really Hard Times
greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread
Moderator: ed@yourdon.com

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How to Survive Really Hard Times
In the old days, folks were accustomed to periodically having to live through hard times. They knew how to survive the hard times with the least amount of wear and tear on their families. Nowadays, most folks don’t know what hard times really are. Even those folks who think they have it hard right now can usually still depend on some type of government handout or charity assistance, and therefore they don’t truly know what hard times really are.

My definition of hard times is when things ain’t what they use to be and they don’t look like they will return to normal anytime soon. This frequently happens in times of war, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Which are also usually accompanied by power failures that last for days, weeks, or months.

Following are some suggestions for surviving these types of hard times.

Shelter:

Let’s start by assuming you now live in some type of dwelling and your dwelling is not in the immediate path of a flood, hurricane, marching troops, etc.

First, stay inside unless you must absolutely go outdoors. In the old days, folks had enough sense to come in out of the rain. During hard times, you don’t need to get wet, cold, or frost bitten. That just makes matters worse.

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How to Survive Really Hard Times

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This weekend was the one hundredth anniversary of the Great 1906 San Franscisco earthquake, which killed over 1,800 people. While this is one of the strongest earthquakes in history on the west coast, another quake of even larger proportions is just waiting to happen. The article below is a review of what has been accomplished in preparing for the next quake…and what has NOT been accomplished.

In other words, lots of work still needs to be done. Nothing can stop the next big quake…only mitigate the effects and damage that might happen, so that less people are hurt or killed.

Read the article, and then review your own preps…could YOU make it through a huge catastrophic event, on your own, with food and water for you and your family…or would you be dependent on the GOVERNMENT to provide for you….just like the Feds did for those folks gathered in the Superdome in New Orleans a few months ago…for DAYS without help?

Make the call. Get your preps ready, and know what you have to do, if it’s only YOU, and no government coming to your rescue.

Rich

Bay Area far from ready for the next ‘Big One’
Repeat of 1906 earthquake would leave San Francisco region devastated

By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 10:48 a.m. ET April 17, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO - 1906 will happen again. And it will be worse than you can possibly imagine.

Years of work costing billions of dollars to shore up infrastructure and retrofit buildings, bridges and procedures will mitigate the impact of a “major” or “great” earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, but only a little. When the Big One finally hits, the destruction will be immense, utterly overwhelming rescue and recovery efforts, according to a review of more than a dozen recent government and academic reports and interviews with numerous experts in seismology and disaster preparedness.

Among other things, the review — assessing measures taken over about the last 20 years — found that only about a tenth of the region’s governments have shored up their municipal water systems to survive a major disaster. Disaster-response experts identify the water supply as the crucial link in the recovery chain both to fight inevitable widespread fires and to help keep survivors alive.

And while doctors say critical care in the first 72 hours is what keeps most people with major injuries in hospital beds and out of body bags, most of the region’s hospitals would be unable to provide any reliable patient care.

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The 1906 San Francisco Quake…

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Source from KUTV

Plans Being Developed To Avoid Asteroid Collisions
Nov 4, 2005 3:45 pm US/Mountain

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Imagine last year’s tsunami, last month’s earthquake in Pakistan, and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma all rolled into one – and then some. If nations can’t handle those calamities, what’s going to happen when an asteroid collides with Earth?

In 30 years, there is a 1-in-5,500 chance that a smallish asteroid will land a bull’s eye on our planet. At 360 yards wide, it could take out New York City and much of the surrounding area.

Fortunately, experts believe further observations of the asteroid, 99942 Apophis, will almost certainly rule out an impact in 2036. Nevertheless, it’s precisely that kind of predictable and preventable threat – and the thought of being ill-prepared for it – that alarms the world’s normally intrepid spacefarers who are calling for action.

They issued an open letter at the Association of Space Explorers’ annual congress last month in Salt Lake City, making a rare, united push for strategies and spacecraft to prevent a cosmic pileup.

Two of the astronauts – Apollo 9’s Rusty Schweickart and shuttle and space station veteran Ed Lu – have even helped establish a foundation to spotlight the issue.

“There are always natural disasters and it always seems as though the preparation is somewhat less than adequate. But we have had a series of quite substantial ones here in the last year,” Schweickart said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Hollywood’s depiction of cosmic collisions – think “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” – has heightened public awareness, “but regrettably with the wrong solutions and overdramatization,” Schweickart said.

“You don’t want to send up Bruce Willis and others to save us. That’s Hollywood silliness,” he said, chuckling. Instead, technology is far enough along that an asteroid could be deflected before hitting Earth, he said.

For now, the astronauts are being cautious – some say too cautious – in their approach.

“A lot of the folks working in this area are really attuned to not being Chicken Little, saying, ‘Hey, this is going to kill us, it’s going to kill us,’ “ Lu said. “That’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that you need to start thinking about it ahead of time because afterward is way too late.

“The possible consequences are way worse than your run-of-the-mill natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes. As bad as they may be, this can dwarf them.”

Astronauts know better than most just how small and fragile and vulnerable the planet is.

“When you go around it in an hour and a half, again and again and again and again, day after day, in some cases now, month after month after month, the Earth becomes a pretty small place,” Schweickart said. “And then, of course … most astronauts tend to be aware of things like asteroids and their impacts. I mean, we romped around the moon after spending years in preparation by looking at every impact crater and volcano here on the Earth.”

It’s time, the space explorers say, for NASA to step up to the plate.

The association wants NASA to expand its Spaceguard Survey, a program that discovers and tracks near-Earth objects – asteroids and comets – that are at least two-thirds of a mile across. So far, 807 of an estimated 1,100 of these big rocky asteroids have been discovered in the inner solar system along with 57 comets; California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is plotting their future tracks.

An asteroid two-thirds of a mile wide, at impact, would be enough to easily take out a good-sized European country. By comparison, an asteroid or comet believed to be six to seven miles across wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

The space explorers want the many smaller, but still dangerous asteroids tracked as well. Altogether, 3,611 near-Earth asteroids of all sizes have been discovered, with an estimated 100,000 more capable of setting off a tsunami the size of the one that shook the Indian Ocean last December.

Scientists are carefully watching Apophis, which will whiz by Earth in 2029, passing within an unnerving 18,640 miles. That’s a few thousand miles closer than many communications satellites and 220,000 miles closer than the moon. In 2036, the concern is that it will move in even closer, leading to the 1-in-5,500 chance it will strike.

For a few hundred million dollars, the astronauts say, NASA could launch a scouting mission to Apophis in the next decade or two to place a radio transponder on the surface and thereby plot its course. But Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA’s near-Earth object program, contends that mostly likely, radar and telescope observations will ultimately rule out any risk of impact.

Schweickart agrees that based on the current odds, a deflection mission for Apophis would be a waste of money. “But the question is, do I agree with it when it’s 1-in-100, when it’s 1-in-50, if it’s 1-in-20. That is a policy question. At what probability do you begin to spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in order to do something?”

That’s not the only sticky policy question.

Are some places on the planet more dispensable than others? The point of impact, for instance, could be inadvertently shifted from one part of the world to another by an intervening spacecraft, jeopardizing one country instead of another. Who’s liable if an asteroid-deflecting mission goes awry? Indeed, who decides if such a mission is needed and how far in advance should that decision be made?

Nuclear electric propulsion would be ideal for quickly getting spacecraft to potential killer asteroids and nudging them out of Earth’s way, the astronauts say. But the technology for such an “asteroid tugboat” is on hold, a recent casualty of budget cuts.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, is sympathetic to the astronauts’ concerns and has asked NASA to see what might be needed to protect Earth from asteroid impacts.

Nuclear-powered spacecraft could either land on the asteroid and apply a small but continuous force over months in order to alter its Earth-smashing course, or hover above the asteroid and use its gravity to push it aside. Forget about any sensational last-minute asteroid crackups, “Armageddon” style; the pieces could wind up on a collision course with Earth.

Schweickart and Lu’s B612 Foundation – named after the home asteroid of the Earth-visiting prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “Le Petit Prince” – is pushing for an orbit-altering demonstration by 2015 on a harmless, way-out-of-the-way asteroid.

The European Space Agency also is proposing a practice mission called Don Quixote to alter an asteroid’s course, but it’s yet to be formally approved. NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft smashed into a comet for scientific reasons in July; by design, it barely altered the comet’s path.

“We’re sitting in a shooting gallery, with hundreds of thousands of these things whizzing around in the inner solar system. So it’s just a matter of time,” said Schweickart, board chairman of the B612 Foundation.

Fortunately, the technology to protect us is ready for the task, he said, and that’s “the beauty of it.”

Source from MyWay news

Scientist: Comets Blasted Early Americans
Oct 28, 8:43 PM (ET)
By MEG KINNARD

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A supernova could be the “quick and dirty” explanation for what may have happened to an early North American culture, a nuclear scientist here said Thursday.

Richard Firestone said at the “Clovis in the Southeast” conference that he thinks “impact regions” on mammoth tusks found in Gainey, Mich., were caused by magnetic particles rich in elements like titanium and uranium. This composition, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist said, resembles rocks that were discovered on the moon and have also been found in lunar meteorites that fell to Earth about 10,000 years ago.

Firestone said that, based on his discovery of similar material at Clovis sites, he estimates that comets struck the solar system during the Clovis period, which was roughly 13,000 years ago. These comets would have hit the Earth at 1,000 kilometers an hour, he said, obliterating many life forms and causing mutations in others.

“I’m not going to tell you that there’s Clovis people on the moon, or that they had a space program,” Firestone said. But these particles look “very much like the material that comes from the moon, which is the only place we’ve found with this same high titanium concentration.”

Amateur archaeologist Richard Callaway said he was surprised by Firestone’s theory.

“I’ve always considered myself a pretty open-minded person,” Callaway said, while browsing some of the artifacts on display at the conference. “And it’s kind of shocking to hear that something from the solar system could have done something like this.”

Callaway, an Episcopal priest from Atlanta, said that he and his wife have volunteered at the Topper site in Allendale County for the past two summers.

“To be a part of this … and find something no human being has touched in 15,000 years - that’s something,” Callaway said. “That’s what I like about what we do. You don’t find the next answer. You find the next question.”

Earlier Thursday, University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear lectured on his discoveries at Topper, where he says he has found evidence that man existed in North America much earlier than previously thought. Goodyear showed slides of the many tools he has recovered from Topper, as well as a charcoal strip he discovered in soil two meters beneath a 16,000-year-old level of the site.

“Topper’s like a box of chocolates,” Goodyear said. “Every time we dig a hole, something new comes up.”

As the final event of the four-day conference, partially sponsored by USC, Goodyear will lead attendees on a visit to Topper on Saturday.

Source from CNN

Levee repairs may not protect New Orleans

WASHINGTON (AP) — Repairs to New Orleans’ levees may be insufficient to protect residents moving back to the devastated city if another hurricane comes before the tropical storm season ends this month, engineers said Wednesday.

Dozens of breaches continue to mar the city’s levee system, including a large seep at the Industrial Canal last week, according to engineering experts who have examined the floodwalls.

Repairs have gotten better in recent days, the experts told a Senate panel investigating floodwall failures after Hurricane Katrina. But the initial rebuilding process was done with little or no engineering guidance and perhaps substandard materials, they said.

“Short term, without a storm, they are probably adequately safe,” said Dr. Peter Nicholson, a University of Hawaii engineering professor, representing the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Certainly with a large storm, as we are not yet out of hurricane season, and certainly for next hurricane season, there is significant risk.”

At the Industrial Canal levee, which abuts New Orleans’ obliterated Ninth Ward, repairs to breaches “were not adequate for a high-water incidence — for instance, another hurricane storm surge with the storm season that isn’t yet behind us, or even a very high tide,” said Raymond Bolton Seed. Seed, a University of California at Berkeley engineering professor, participated in a National Science Foundation study investigating the levee failures.

The large seep at that levee, which occurred October 24, “was not entirely unexpected,” Seed told the panel.

However, he said, deeper walls “that will be far more stable than they were before” have been dug in at least some areas since the NSF first examined the levees.

“I don’t think there is a long-term risk to the city of New Orleans,” Seed said.

The findings highlighted what Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chaired the panel, called troubling concerns about whether the repairs have been insufficient.

“These rebuilt levees may be at risk of failing in another storm, a disturbing finding that raises questions about the safety of the city’s returning residents,” Collins said. She heads the Senate Homeland Security committee, which was holding a hearing on why New Orleans’ floodwalls failed after Katrina hit on August 29.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, top Democrat on the panel, said reconstruction efforts were done, “we all understand, in haste and in very urgent circumstances.” But he echoed Seed’s questions about whether the levees could now “protect the city of New Orleans from high tides, let alone another hurricane.”

The Senate hearing also examined the NSF’s report showing that the levees may not have been designed to protect a major city. Moreover, engineers who designed the levees did not fully consider the porousness of the Louisiana soil or make other calculations that would have pointed to the need for stronger floodwalls, the study shows.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/11/02/levee.probe.ap/index.html

Source from CNN

Lawmaker: E-mails show Brown ‘out of touch’ during Katrina

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former Federal Emergency Management Director Michael Brown, who resigned after stinging criticism of his handling of the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina, exchanged e-mails about his appearance on the day of the storm and seemed “out of touch” after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, a Louisiana congressman charged Wednesday.

“In the midst of the overwhelming damage caused by the hurricane and enormous problems faced by FEMA, Mr. Brown found time to exchange e-mails about superfluous topics,” including “problems finding a dog-sitter,” according to Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Louisiana, who posted the e-mails on his Web site. (Copies of e-mails — PDF)

Some of the e-mails from Brown indicate he may have been overwhelmed by his responsibilities, Melancon said.

In an e-mail he sent the morning of the hurricane to Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs, Brown wrote, “Can I quit now? Can I come home?” A few days later, Brown wrote to an acquaintance, “I’m trapped now, please rescue me.”

Melancon, whose district south of New Orleans was devastated by the hurricane, said Brown’s lack of leadership and concern is illustrated in more than 1,000 e-mails provided to the House committee now assessing responses to the disaster by all levels of government.

Melancon said that on August 26, just days before Katrina made landfall, Brown e-mailed his press secretary, Sharon Worthy, about his attire, asking: “Tie or not for tonight? Button down blue shirt?”

A few days later, Worthy advised Brown: “Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt all shirts. Even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this [crisis] and on TV you just need to look more hard-working.”

On August 29, the day of the storm, Brown exchanged e-mails about his attire with Taylor, Melancon said. She told him, “You look fabulous,” and Brown replied, “I got it at Nordstroms. … Are you proud of me?”

An hour later, Brown added: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god,” according to the congressman.

The e-mails came from Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, who oversees FEMA, following a request by Melancon and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Virginia, chairman of a House committee appointed to investigate what went wrong during Katrina, Melancon said.

Although Chertoff has not turned over all the documents requested by the committee, Melancon charged that the material received so far contradicts testimony by Brown before the committee in which he described himself as an effective leader.

Brown resigned in September amid accusations that FEMA acted too slowly after Katrina hammered Louisiana and Mississippi, killing more than 1,200 people. He defended the government’s response and blamed leaders in Louisiana for failing to act quickly as the hurricane approached.

He acknowledged he made some mistakes as FEMA’s director, but he stressed that the agency “is not a first responder,” insisting that role belonged to state and local officials.

Brown could not be reached for comment Wednesday night on the e-mails and Melancon’s charges.

The lawmaker cited several e-mails that he said show Brown’s failures. (Melancon’s analysis of e-mails — PDF)

For instance, two days after Katrina, Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA employees in New Orleans, wrote to Brown that “the situation is past critical.”

“Here are some things you might not know. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes,” Bahamonde said.

“The dying patients at the DMAT (Disaster Medical Assistance Team) tent being medivac. Estimates are many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for [Superdome] evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans in works to address the critical need.

“FEMA staff is OK and holding own. DMAT staff working in deplorable conditions. The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out. Phone connectivity impossible.”

Brown’s entire response was: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”

Two days later, on September 2, Brown received a message with the subject “Medical help.” At the time, thousands of patients were being transported to the New Orleans airport, which had been converted to a makeshift hospital. Because of a lack of ventilators, medical personnel had to ventilate patients by hand for as long as 35 hours, according to Melancon.

The text of the e-mail reads: “Mike, Mickey and other medical equipment people have a 42 ft. trailer full of beds, wheelchairs, oxygen concentrators, etc. They are wanting to take them where they can be used but need direction.

“Mickey specializes in ventilator patients so can be very helpful with acute care patients. If you could have someone contact him and let him know if he can be of service, he would appreciate it. Know you are busy but they really want to help.”

Melancon said Brown didn’t respond for four days, when he forwarded the original e-mail to FEMA Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks Altshuler and Deputy Director of Response Michael Lowder.

The text of Brown’s e-mail to them read: “Can we use these people?”

Melancon also charged that few of the e-mails from Brown show him assigning specific tasks to employees or responding to pressing problems

On September 1, FEMA officials exchanged e-mails reporting severe shortages of ice and water in Mississippi. They were to receive 60 trucks of ice and 26 trucks of water the next day, even though they needed 450 trucks of each.

Robert Fenton, a FEMA regional response official, predicted “serious riots” if insufficient supplies arrive.

Brown was forwarded the series of e-mails about the problem, but no response from him is shown in the e-mails provided to the committee, Melancon said.

Katrina came ashore along the Louisiana-Mississippi state line, after being downgraded from a Category 5 to a Category 4 storm. It flooded 80 percent of New Orleans. It was followed about a month later by Hurricane Rita, which caused more damage and flooding.

Melancon and several other Democrats from districts directly affected by Katrina were invited to participate as a ex-officio members of the Katrina investigative committee, though they have no formal role. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi refused to appoint any Democrats to the panel after GOP leaders rebuffed Democratic demands for an independent probe.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/03/brown.fema.emails/index.html