hypoluxo
Veteran Lurker
Another humorous gem from the Woodpile report...
http://www.woodpilereport.com/html/index-245.htm
A bug-out bag is a grab-and-go bag should a disaster force your immediate relocation. Typically they include first aid suitable for bug bites and minor boo boos, a flashlight and a radio with spare batteries, a colorful whistle, sensible food, scrips and copies of essential documents, puzzles for the kids and so forth. 'Disaster Preparedness Hints' suggest you buckle up, and oh yes, check your windshield wiper blades for nicks that could degrade your Bug-Out Experience. The idea is to be self-sufficient until help arrives or until you reach a comfy place simply by driving there.
Notice the underlying assumptions. The evacuation will be hurried but orderly. You'll get out of Dodge at the posted speed limit. Help will arrive with latti scremati and twelve-grain donuts in hand, everything will be sorted out while-u-wait by well-mannered and caring DHS subcontractors acting wholly in your interest. You and your rescuers will bond in adversity, maybe you'll have a reunion later to 'remember when'. Your descendents will tell stories of how you survived on kippers and marmalade at some downscale rest stop where you even had to share a bathroom with imperfect strangers.
That's the notion behind the official Homeland Security bug-out, oops, evacuation. DC envisions smartly uniformed Fellow Americans in day-glo vests handing out pamphlets and wet-wipes to grateful, minimally inconvenienced, fully self-supporting, polite and attentive refugees. Disasters are something to be managed by them you see, all as neat and orderly as their flow-charts, thanks to your cheerful compliance. Then it's back to hearth and home with you, please forgive the inconvenience and don't forget to rate our service.
Not bloody likely, unless the disaster is a burst water main in the Hamptons.
At the other end there are bug-out bags designed for the Burt Gummers among us, the ones with an all-wheel-drive armored motor home with a humvee in tow. The equipment list goes heavy on tricked-out carbines and GU Gel-packs and bench-made bespoke knives. Their scenario involves shootouts with menacing but hapless hostiles at every other intersection, then, while living like Fort Lauderdale retirees mind you, engaging witless bad guys in the high country followed by after-action reports, a well-deserved brandy and pithy quotes for their memoirs. All in all, unassailable proof everyone's the hero of their own life story, Obama staffers excepted.
The underlying assumption is a comfortable but action-packed mini-drama where fortune smiles on the bold, namely and to wit: themselves. The narrative is one of encapsulating their normal life, dropping it into Ansel Adams country and doing a credible George Hayduke during the commercial breaks. Their anticipated survival experience is equivalent to, perhaps, a five-mile walk on the Appalachian Trail, in good weather with catering as is unavoidable. Which would be often. After a time the unpleasantness would abate and they'd motor home through the smoldering desolation and personally only need turn the utilities back on and point up the brickwork.
Reality varies notably from these imaginings. Tornadoes and earthquakes differ from national catastrophes, which in turn differ from extinction-level events. Yes, you should have a bug-out bag. Yes you should have a plan and a secure retreat. But no, you can't have any actionable idea of what will really happen much in advance of it happening. As combat veterans understand, "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." The only plan you can have is to be prepared, flexible and realistic.
Don't expect anything of value to you from authorities and don't expect timely information of value to you from the media. Expect government to oppose your escape with threats or force, after all, you're a paying customer attempting to leave the mall. Others may follow. Their interest is in maintaining order, their order, not in passing out valuable resources for free. You'll recall "maintaining order" meant instructing people in the twin towers to stay put and await a professionally supervised evacuation. We know this from people who acted on their own judgment and fled.
Also recall during Katrina how police, those who hadn't joined the looters or decamped to more pleasant venues, forcibly disarmed honest citizens in their own homes with assistance from the National Guard, then cherry-picked the loot for themselves. Assume at the outset your local statists will use a disaster to betray their oath and you.
The federal government hasn't distinguished themselves in recent years either. For example, Steve Kroft of CBS News says,
Karl Denninger at Market Tickerhas been calling for prosecutions for over four years. As he wrote on Monday,
That's the bottom line. So tell me, do you still believe that the government is not intentionally involved in covering this up and keeping the people who should be in prison from facing the music for their crimes?
As to Mr. Denninger's question, "do you still believe that the government is not intentionally involved in covering this up?", well of course they are, duh. They're the same people. We would ask where CBS News and the rest of the press has been all these years, that is, we would if we didn't already know. They're also "intentionally involved." Government and news media work from the same memos because they're in the same business, which is to keep the facts from the populace. It's only when the pile becomes a menace to navigation that news outfits like 60 Minutes jump in front of the parade, often while arranging a major distraction with their DC colleagues to evade such unpleasant duties. A war crisis, say.
We've come to rely on the media to misrepresent facts they don't merely withhold. Surely you've noticed crime stories suppress full and reliable descriptions when their favored felons are the miscreants of record. It would be comforting to think the press won't cover up decisive, actionable facts during a major calamity as well, but the truth lies elsewhere. You can expect the mainstream press to lie early and often in such a case. Big news media is pretty much a holding pen for the irretrievably unprincipled, journalists being the deployable euphemism, some even "award-winning". Say the word ethics to a "journalist" and they'll assume it's the name of someone's yacht, someone they'd really like to know.
Perilous events are Darwinian by nature. Hindsight suggests the casualties often selected themselves, perfect knowledge would probably prove it. The survivors informed themselves of what was actually happening, then extrapolated what may happen, then refined it to what was likely to happen. Survival begins and ends with applied good judgment. Think back in your own life to those little things you did or didn't do, those seemingly trivial stitches in time that kept you from a bad end. It wasn't all luck or happenstance. Now that the storm is upon us, now that ever-larger catastrophes are entraining and we're being pelted with debris, a bug-out bag is evidence of good judgement in itself. Good judgement well applied is the one indispensible survival tool and likely the oldest. Be sure to take yours with you.
http://www.woodpilereport.com/html/index-245.htm
The one thing you must have in your bug-out bag
A bug-out bag is a grab-and-go bag should a disaster force your immediate relocation. Typically they include first aid suitable for bug bites and minor boo boos, a flashlight and a radio with spare batteries, a colorful whistle, sensible food, scrips and copies of essential documents, puzzles for the kids and so forth. 'Disaster Preparedness Hints' suggest you buckle up, and oh yes, check your windshield wiper blades for nicks that could degrade your Bug-Out Experience. The idea is to be self-sufficient until help arrives or until you reach a comfy place simply by driving there.
Notice the underlying assumptions. The evacuation will be hurried but orderly. You'll get out of Dodge at the posted speed limit. Help will arrive with latti scremati and twelve-grain donuts in hand, everything will be sorted out while-u-wait by well-mannered and caring DHS subcontractors acting wholly in your interest. You and your rescuers will bond in adversity, maybe you'll have a reunion later to 'remember when'. Your descendents will tell stories of how you survived on kippers and marmalade at some downscale rest stop where you even had to share a bathroom with imperfect strangers.
That's the notion behind the official Homeland Security bug-out, oops, evacuation. DC envisions smartly uniformed Fellow Americans in day-glo vests handing out pamphlets and wet-wipes to grateful, minimally inconvenienced, fully self-supporting, polite and attentive refugees. Disasters are something to be managed by them you see, all as neat and orderly as their flow-charts, thanks to your cheerful compliance. Then it's back to hearth and home with you, please forgive the inconvenience and don't forget to rate our service.
Not bloody likely, unless the disaster is a burst water main in the Hamptons.
At the other end there are bug-out bags designed for the Burt Gummers among us, the ones with an all-wheel-drive armored motor home with a humvee in tow. The equipment list goes heavy on tricked-out carbines and GU Gel-packs and bench-made bespoke knives. Their scenario involves shootouts with menacing but hapless hostiles at every other intersection, then, while living like Fort Lauderdale retirees mind you, engaging witless bad guys in the high country followed by after-action reports, a well-deserved brandy and pithy quotes for their memoirs. All in all, unassailable proof everyone's the hero of their own life story, Obama staffers excepted.
The underlying assumption is a comfortable but action-packed mini-drama where fortune smiles on the bold, namely and to wit: themselves. The narrative is one of encapsulating their normal life, dropping it into Ansel Adams country and doing a credible George Hayduke during the commercial breaks. Their anticipated survival experience is equivalent to, perhaps, a five-mile walk on the Appalachian Trail, in good weather with catering as is unavoidable. Which would be often. After a time the unpleasantness would abate and they'd motor home through the smoldering desolation and personally only need turn the utilities back on and point up the brickwork.
Reality varies notably from these imaginings. Tornadoes and earthquakes differ from national catastrophes, which in turn differ from extinction-level events. Yes, you should have a bug-out bag. Yes you should have a plan and a secure retreat. But no, you can't have any actionable idea of what will really happen much in advance of it happening. As combat veterans understand, "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." The only plan you can have is to be prepared, flexible and realistic.
Don't expect anything of value to you from authorities and don't expect timely information of value to you from the media. Expect government to oppose your escape with threats or force, after all, you're a paying customer attempting to leave the mall. Others may follow. Their interest is in maintaining order, their order, not in passing out valuable resources for free. You'll recall "maintaining order" meant instructing people in the twin towers to stay put and await a professionally supervised evacuation. We know this from people who acted on their own judgment and fled.
Also recall during Katrina how police, those who hadn't joined the looters or decamped to more pleasant venues, forcibly disarmed honest citizens in their own homes with assistance from the National Guard, then cherry-picked the loot for themselves. Assume at the outset your local statists will use a disaster to betray their oath and you.
The federal government hasn't distinguished themselves in recent years either. For example, Steve Kroft of CBS News says,
Karl Denninger at Market Tickerhas been calling for prosecutions for over four years. As he wrote on Monday,
That's the bottom line. So tell me, do you still believe that the government is not intentionally involved in covering this up and keeping the people who should be in prison from facing the music for their crimes?
As to Mr. Denninger's question, "do you still believe that the government is not intentionally involved in covering this up?", well of course they are, duh. They're the same people. We would ask where CBS News and the rest of the press has been all these years, that is, we would if we didn't already know. They're also "intentionally involved." Government and news media work from the same memos because they're in the same business, which is to keep the facts from the populace. It's only when the pile becomes a menace to navigation that news outfits like 60 Minutes jump in front of the parade, often while arranging a major distraction with their DC colleagues to evade such unpleasant duties. A war crisis, say.
We've come to rely on the media to misrepresent facts they don't merely withhold. Surely you've noticed crime stories suppress full and reliable descriptions when their favored felons are the miscreants of record. It would be comforting to think the press won't cover up decisive, actionable facts during a major calamity as well, but the truth lies elsewhere. You can expect the mainstream press to lie early and often in such a case. Big news media is pretty much a holding pen for the irretrievably unprincipled, journalists being the deployable euphemism, some even "award-winning". Say the word ethics to a "journalist" and they'll assume it's the name of someone's yacht, someone they'd really like to know.
Perilous events are Darwinian by nature. Hindsight suggests the casualties often selected themselves, perfect knowledge would probably prove it. The survivors informed themselves of what was actually happening, then extrapolated what may happen, then refined it to what was likely to happen. Survival begins and ends with applied good judgment. Think back in your own life to those little things you did or didn't do, those seemingly trivial stitches in time that kept you from a bad end. It wasn't all luck or happenstance. Now that the storm is upon us, now that ever-larger catastrophes are entraining and we're being pelted with debris, a bug-out bag is evidence of good judgement in itself. Good judgement well applied is the one indispensible survival tool and likely the oldest. Be sure to take yours with you.
