Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Article – In Japan, the Mormon network gathers the flock
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
No doubt, the world comes to an end the most prepared and cohesive group is gonna be the Mormons.
If it weren’t for that whole beleiveing in god thing I’d join just for the networking opportunities. Sadly, no affiliate memberships are available.
The only thing that rivals the Mormon church’s ability to spread the word is its ability to cope with emergencies.
Within 36 hours of the earthquake striking off the coast of Sendai on March 11, the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that all 638 of its missionaries in the country — 342 Americans, 216 Japanese and 80 from other nations – were safe.
Within a few days, the church also had accounted for all but about 1,000 of its 125,000 members in Japan.
“Whether it is Haiti or Japan,” said David Evans, a senior leader in the church who serves in the missionary department. “This is how it works everywhere.”
Chalk it up to a culture of discipline and emergency preparedness. The church has a detailed hierarchy and network that works in ordinary times to maintain cohesion among followers, and in disaster to locate them.
Dean Ing wrote a series of books that take place in a post-nuke America. The premise was that after the bombs fell, the most prepared would inevitably rise to power since they would be the ones most able to come out of the disaster in a position to rebuild as they saw fit. In the book, the US has become a Mormon theocracy and, like all theocracies, it deviates a bit from the ideal and becomes a bit sinister. I’d say its a virtual certainty, though, that if there is one demographic or social group that is most likely to come out of an apocalypse better than any other its probably gonna be them.
Anyway, good article. If you still havent taken advantage of your local Mormon cannery to assist you in stocking up, you may want to pursue that avenue.
Link – Whats a Japanese bugout bag look like?
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
The widespread devastation caused by Japan’s earthquake and resulting tsunami has been a reminder that even a country well-prepared for such disasters cannot always avoid the brutal blows of nature.
With more than half a million people living in temporary shelters and panic-buying leaving stores empty of supplies, people are being reminded of the importance of government advice, which tells them to have a survival “grab bag” permanently at the ready.
Griswold, the new paradigm, the government line
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
I was tossing out some trash at the shop and when Ii flipped open the lid on the dumpster I saw that, other than two items, the dumpster was empty. Item one was a broken picture frame, item two was a cast iron skillet. Hey, I like cooking with cast iron. Lets see who made it. Flipped it over and, surprise, its a late Griswold 11.5″. Hmmm. Okay, thats going home with me. Sprayed the whole thing with oven cleaner until it was covered in foam, shoved it in a plastic bag, and let it sit for a couple of days. Took it out, ran it under hot water and about 60% of the layers of seasoning washed right off. Excellent. Lather, rinse, repeat. Next week I’ll do the fine detail with some dental tools and steel wool and then reseason it a few times. Cast iron cookware is excellent stuff for cooking in disasters…its at home on a fire of salvaged 2×4’s or on the neighbors barbecue that didnt get swept away. Free cast iron is even better. And free Griswold is even better than that.
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The news about Japan continues to be virtually devoid of anything hopeful. I used to say that Katrina would be the paradigm for disaster planning for quite some time…well, it looks like Japan will surpass that. From here on out this event will be the benchmark that emergency management, rescue, governments and individuals use to proof their plans and gear. “Yeah, thats a great emergency rescue tool…how would it have worked in Japan?”, “Nice cotraflow traffic plan, Steve…would it have helped in Japan?”, “Donna, I want a PowerPoint presentation ready for the county commissioners by Monday about how we’d handle a nuclear accident like in Japan.”
Once the shock wears off and the demand dies down the folks that make nuclear survey gear, like the Nuk-Alert, are pretty much going to have some awesome sales figures over the next year or two.
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The survival/preparedness blogosphere is full of “If you were in Japan, what would you do” type posts. Lotsa Monday morning quarterbacking. Its only natural, I suppose. Certainly, many people are revisiting their ideas on disaster preparedness after this. I’m sure theres a smaller, superstitious faction that are sagely nodding their tinfoil-hatted heads and murmuring that it is all prophecy and that [2012/Rapture/Planet X/whatever] is surely not too far behind.
You know, sometimes all the bad crap just happens at once. No rhyme, no reason. It just does. About the only thing that could make this worse for the Japanese is Godzilla coming outta the surf with a mean look in his eye. Poor slobs.
One huge lesson that I think everyone can take away from this is that, apparently, Japanese government news and updates may be a little, shall we say, “unhelpful”. Or, more accurately, worthless. It appears that .gov has been downplaying, covering up, and otherwise diluting the news. This is further proof that in a crisis you cant afford to trust the official government story. The government isnt concerned about you as an individual, theyre concerned about you as a large population group. That is to say, the Japanese government may care about the population affected by the disaster, but they may not care about your grandmother who is caught up in it. In short, take the government reports with a grain of salt and cultivate other sources of info.
Detection
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Man, I would bet that you could name your price on a plane ticket outta Japan right now and probably get it.
So far the images and stories generated from this disaster are pretty much what you expect…empty shelves, footage of people walking along highways, rubble everywhere, and that sort of things. The pictures of folks running around with nuke survey gear is a new one though.
In his excellent book, Nuclear War Survival Skills , Kearny gives info on how to make your own fallout monitoring device from household goods. Apparently, it works but there are other alternatives.
The Nuk-Alert keychain device has always interested me but not enough to drop the money for one. It is listed as being sensitive to gamma and x-ray radiation but, and I think Im probably off on this one, I was under the impression that most nuclear accidents involved alpha and beta radiation which is, as far as radiation goes, fairly tame stuff. Hmmm…I need to drag out my nuclear war references and double check that. I suspect that once this ‘blows over’ (!) and things quiet down Im going to have to go ahead and pick up a Nuk-Alert or two. The true do-it-yourselfer may simply whip up a scintillator and hope it’s for the right wavelength.
The various surplussed Civil Defense meters that are available (and, amazingly, still in use in some municipalities), would probably work for detecting increased levels of radiation but they need to be calibrated and that is not something that you can do at home with your meter and a broken smoke detector.
:::sigh::: I’ve actually got a pretty good library at home regarding this sort of thing…I just havent read it in quite a while since the likelihood of needing the information seemed to have dwindled. If nothing else, I should go re-read the parts about different types of radiation, decay rates, absorption and lethal dosages just so I can understand the news better.
Link – Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors.
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
This, if accurate, is a fascinating account of what happens in a damaged nuclear reactor like the ones in Japan and explains that all is not as bad as it may first appear. Its a very lengthy blog post..pick it up at “What happened at Fukushima”.
Article – Japan’s massive earthquake has little effect on culture’s impeccable man
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Polite and courteous to the end…
The word ‘civilization’ is usually prefaced with the words ‘thin veneer of’, but if anyone is going to have a polite and orderly apocalypse it would be the Japanese. Contrast this with stories from Haiti, Katrina, and a few other places.
Will it be all smiles and polite ‘thank you’s? Of course not, but I would bet that as far as nation-changing disasters go this will be the least riotous and most orderly. At least, until the reactors explode and everyone realizes its every salaryman for himself.
Im reading as much as I can on the responses and mobilizations of emergency services over there and it is indeed a fascinating thing to watch. Lessons to be learned? Absolutely. But I want to wait some more and see how things shake out before addressing that topic. However, it appears the biggest thing to take away is that in a nation as amazingly high-tech as Japan they are still suffering a tremendous communications problem. This is one of those textbook situations that give ham radio guys wood.
Turning Japanese
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
As I tool around the interweb looking for information about the aftermath of the earthquake/tsunami/Godzilla attack in Japan I keep seeing posts urging people to pray for the people in Japan. Pray to whom? The same god that sent the earthquake and tsunami? Thank you sir, may I have another?
The Japanese are a completely different culture from ours. Their mainstreamed interest in tentacle porn, dressing 40-year-old moms in sailor/schoolgirl outfits, and institutionalized xenophobia and sexism pretty much underscore that. But everyone pretty much agrees that, by and large, the national character of the Japanese, at least as it is portrayed to us Westerners, is that they are, above all, conformists. Part of the hive. “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down” as they like to say.
Will we see the classic post-disaster looting and violence that happens when a disaster strikes elsewhere in the world? I doubt it. Oh, sure…there’ll be some action here and there but by and large I’d imagine that its going to be a rather orderly and professional relief effort. Although the pictures of the damage are compelling, Im more interested in pictures and stories detailing the rescues and relief operations. These people have been expecting this sort of thing for quite some time, Im curious to see how their national preparedness pays off.
Then theres the little matter of that nuclear reactor that may or may not be melting down. Bad luck to get nuked by an enemy in a war…twice, really rotten luck to wind up doing it to yourself. I would think that the Chernobyl episode gave them a little bit of insight into how to manage a crisis like this.
Anyway, it should be interesting to see how things develop over the next few days. Already the interweb is abuzz with predictions that the increased frequency and intensity of earthquakes these days is proof that the end of the word is right around the corner…like, oh, 2012 or so. Still not buying it. Geological processes happen regardless of the calendar. All those Pacific locations are sitting on ticking time bombs and sometimes one of ‘em just goes blooey. No sinister, mystical or religious influence necessary.
Oh no, there goes Tokyo
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Yeah, the Japanese took one in the shorts today. Pretty resilient people, though. They got nuked twice and in the span of forty years they were a global economic giant. And they make awesome consumer electronics. Contrast with, say, Haiti where a year later it still looks like Mad Max.
What you might not know is that underneath that pacifistic exterior, the Japanese actually have quite the civil defense program. Not too surprising since a) North Korea is just a short missile ride away and b) the whole country is sitting on terrestrial Jell-O. I was pretty sure Ive posted this video before but I couldnt find it anywhere so Im posting it again. Its a tour of one of several secret underground stocked emergency warehouses for use in disaster. I wont go into the wisdom of putting your supplies 20 meters underground when you live in a place where tsunamis are a problem. Awesome little bunker they’ve got there. I wonder if they cracked ‘em open for this recent geological rollercoaster ride.
End of the world roadshow
Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
I cannot possibly know what to make of this:
‘Awesome, it’s the end of the world’: Doomsday campers travel the country preaching the Apocalypse…on May 21
According to the Church’s website, there are two ‘proofs’ that May 21 2011 is the judgement day.
According to them, Noah’s great flood occurred in the year 4990 B.C., ‘exactly’ 7000 years ago.
At the time, God said to Noah he had seven days before the flood would begin.
Taking a passage from 2 Peter 3:8, in which it is said a day for God is like a thousand human years, the church reasoned that seven ‘days’ equals 7000 human years from the time of the flood,making 2011 the year of the apocalypse.
In its second ‘proof’ the exact date is revealed by working forward from the exact date of the of the crucifixion – April 1, 33 AD.
According to their reasoning, there are exactly 722,500 days from April 1, 33 A.D. until May 21, 2011 – the alleged day of judgement.
This number can be represented as follows: 5 x 10 x 17 x 5 x 10 x 17 = 722,500.
The church then argues that numbers in the bible have special meanings, with the number 5 signifying atonement or redemption, the number 10 signifying ‘completeness’ and the number 17 equalling heaven.
Seriously? Given the whole bizarre numerology angle you could infer pretty much anything you wanted. I’d love to meet one of these nutjobs and ask them, if they truly believe what they are saying then sign over their house to me since it won’t be doing them any good after next year. See how strong their convictions are then.
That reminds me of the guy selling Rapture insurance for pets. When your invisible man in the sky summons you ‘home’ and you leave this world behind, for a nominal fee this fella will look after your pets. Hey, if you really believe the world is gonna end on a particular date…..
This 2012 stuff is absurd. The notion that because the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 the world will end makes no logical sense. I have a Dilbert calendar that ended on 12/31/2010, by the same logic the world should have ended the day after that.
Someday the word is going to end, but these clowns arent in on any inside secret about when its going to happen.
