@Pika, the current colors are an homage to the DEFCON array in NORAD. See snaps from War Games a few pages back.

I have to say, I thought it was cool at first, but it adds to the freak out factor now that we're at TickerCon 1.

Showing as tickercon 1, yikes.

When is Zero...?

I have plans this weekend...

momma

Jeffrey wrote..

Pika: The different levels have different colors... think of heat... 3 - Yellow - Warm, 2 - Red - Hot, 1 - White - OMG IT BURNSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

OH!

Rut roh. That was quick.

(Pika ... nice tatoo!)

Can we get a siren mp3 with it too? /just kidding :)

There'll be a Tsar Bomba mp3, no doubt - when the time comes. In fact, you may be able to catch it live...

I imagine more of a low buzzer like subs use when crash diving - for tickercon 1 anyway.

...so 2 of our more conservative, calm bloggers - Chris Martenson & now Karl have issued virtually the same level warning for the same general time frame. Hold me.

Not to mention can we expect price inflation/dollar devaluation or deflation on the boom... seems like last time around the fed let the markets tank to prop up treasurys. Should we fear inflation (using the term in the loose colloqial fashion, devaluation if you prefer) or the fed's anticipatory actions vis a vis inflation? Are powdered milk and eggs the only sure bets here?

Must finish building chicken coop...
no wait, I'm not ready yet.

OK, here's a good set of lessons from Cairo -

http://pierrelegrand.net/2011/03/01/stuf....

Lessons From Cairo – M4Carbine.net Forums

Some good thinking…

From the somewhat guilt filled comforts of Greece, I have been thinking about what I learned from the recent Cairo SHTF experience. I am not putting myself forth as an expert of any sort and, frankly, many or even most items on the list below might be flat out wrong….who the hell knows. We were in Cairo from Jan 25th until late Feb 3rd when the neighborhood gunfire became full-auto and regularly occurring. At that point, we decided that Friday prayers (the next day) might not yield a pleasant experience. We had no way of knowing that we had already seen the worst.

Lesson #1….the best weapon for SHTF is truly whatever F*&$ING firearm you can lay your hands on and it does not matter the slightest bit what it is! I had a borrowed three shot semi-auto Beretta 26" bbl trap grade shotgun. I LOVED IT. It was my baby and I truly miss it now!. That said, I would have given my left nut for my Yugo underfolder or SGL-21. Frankly, I am now of the opinion that if, in the moment, you are being AT ALL picky about firearms then by definition the **** has NOT truly hit the fan. One guy on our street only had a nice little S&W J-frame .22 and he seemed a lot more relaxed than the guys with baseball bats I can tell you that!

Lesson #2…..Good will with one’s friends and neighbors has the power to greatly enhance or even make unnecessary ABSOLUTELY ANY prep you can make (including having money). Bad will with ones neighbors similarly has the ability to completely nullify any prep (again, including having money). I am and was the lucky beneficiary and supplier of the former. As an example, one night on the street a local young cop who lived in the neighborhood asked me "where did you get that shotgun". I winked and said, "I found it". He just smirked and said, "Oh…OK". End of conversation. That’s what is achieved by six years of being the "Cool American" who takes the time to chat with everyone from street vendors, doormen, and neighborhood kids to villa owners and businessmen.

Lesson #3….Bugging out is really only an option if you are lucky enough to be psychic and see the **** BEFORE it truly hits the fan. The bug out plans you have will almost certainly physically be blocked when SHTF. Good luck getting to Alexandria after SHTF in Tahrir square or to Aswan when the government shuts down the rail network! Frankly, we almost realized we had those options before they were blocked off but by they might have been more dangerous than bugging in with our friends and neighbors and banding together to protect the neighborhood. Further, I did not want to be a "refugee" so bugging in was perfectly fine since we prepped wisely. That said, and in spite of the above, when you see an escape route, RUN (see Lesson #4 and #11)!

Lesson #4….Do NOT be too proud to become a "refugee" if you can manage it comfortably. There is a world of difference between being a penniless "refugee" and taking a "strategic vacation" (new term I just invented!) on a commercial flight with a fat wad of cash (see Lesson #13).

Lesson #5…People are stupid. There MAY (repeat…MAY) still be time to prep the very day and even the second or third day the **** is "kinda" hitting the fan (SKHTF! another new term!). Grocery stores MAY still be open and things MAY be as normal for a short time. Now is the time to stock up on little things you may need more of or on comfort items. I saw this happen in Cairo even the first days of the worst rioting. Stores were open even a couple blocks from Tahrir strangely enough….for a while. Day three of the revolution, when Tahrir looked like a legitimate war-zone, the Souq two blocks from the square was selling us vegetables and canned goods and, amazingly, was not all that busy! We cleaned them out and distributed surplus to those in our building who could not or would not go out (See Lesson #2)

Lesson #6….Murphy’s law applies. Preps will fail or break or prove impractical when you least expect. For example, the sat phone I just replaced worked just fine for all of the last five years. I wanted to upgrade and bought the new model that arrived in Cairo a week before the riots when my wife returned from the US. The brand new com equipment that would have totally bailed us out when the govt cut cell and internet….you guessed it….had a bad battery shipped with it!! Moral of the story: Invest in MULTIPLE redundancies! I am now also buying a handheld HAM system.

Lesson #7….Marry well! Perhaps this should be Lesson #1. My wife was calm and collected for the 10 days we were in Cairo during SHTF. She was organizing things around the house and with neighbors and even making improvised weaponry (clubs) even better with the addition of protruding nails etc. She rocks! She also cooked for the "neighborhood watch" and is now absolutely LOVED by the people around us! She helped with Lesson #2 immensely because NO other wives in the neighborhood were bringing tea and food to the guys on the street.

Lesson #8….You don’t have to "bug out" to MOVE and make things a great deal easier for yourself! Just because the **** is hitting the fan where you are does NOT mean it is hitting the fan even 10 miles away. This is not bugging out…just moving. When we were driving to the airport on day ten or eleven, I was amazed that a short 10 minute drive away there were no tanks or APCs and people were calm. The whole vibe was so different that it kinda made me suspect that something was wrong. SHTF had become "normal" for me to the point that "normal" now looked scary and suspicious. We even passed a wedding that was taking place where everyone looked totally calm. We didn’t realize for 10 days that all we really had to do was find a new apartment or take a nice hotel room 20 miles away from our current location. Lesson learned! Don’t become married to your "role" in SHTF.

Lesson #9…When the players in a conflict become ill-defined, it’s time to step aside. If you know who the bad guys are, you can play this game but when it becomes a war of all against all, it becomes imperative to stay out of the game where EVERYONE loses. The Feb 2 riots that took place the night before we left were a perfect example of this. It was no longer just looters we were worried about, it was EVERYONE. Buildings were being occupied in Tahrir presumably by both sides of the conflict and I didn’t want to wait for this phenomenon to come 5 blocks south to us. If SHTF starts to look too much like civil war, it’s "game over" and time to make a change.

Lesson #10…Stockpiling is 100% rational. Even if you wind up bugging out or SHTF is short enough to not use everything you have stashed, your foresight will help others and will contribute greatly to your ability to adhere to Lesson #2. Just because you are able to bug out does not mean others will have the same luxury and these people WILL need your help.

Lesson #11…People WILL sell you out. Be prepared for it and know that it might come from anywhere…."Friends", Relatives, or employers. Someone will almost assuredly ditch you or put you in a tight spot while covering their own ass. The toughest part of this lesson is coming to terms with the fact that at some point, it’s totally justifiable and yes even forgivable. Understand that at some point your OWN family will be the priority and that you will be the one who is selling out people you know and likely care for. I know that this is not at all a comfortable thought, but it is realistic.

Lesson #12…Some people will surprise you. People from whom you might expect animosity, will sometimes provide you with the help you need and incur substantial risk or personal cost to do it. Just like you will at some point very likely be embodying Lesson #11, you will (or definitely F($**ING should) be embodying Lesson #12 as well.

Lesson #13….Diverisfy your financial position. Gold will not buy groceries (but see Lesson #14) and cash won’t buy an emergency flight over the internet. Similarly, your big neighborhood Christian grocer will get freaked out over the religious implications of SHTF and close. Guess what, he is the only guy in a 10 mile radius who takes credit cards…so have cash! Further, diversify your currencies in international terms by holding foreign currency for the place you intend to bug out too (and maybe even one or two others since you never know where you might be going). From now on I will hold Egyptian Pounds, Dollars, Euros, and Jordanian Dinar….at a minimum.

Lesson #14…Gold….OWN IT! It may not work with the grocer you barely know as a medium of exchange but it damn sure makes great collateral eg. "OK…you keep this gold sovereign and I will buy it back from you for the 200 Egyptian pounds I owe you as soon as the ATMs start working". It’s great bribe material too, though I didn’t have to resort to it, when you want to get your beloved dog on a "no-pets" flight.

Lesson #15….Silver….Keep some but only buy it in major quantity with your gold when things have calmed down and you know you wont be bugging out! Silver had taken a good dip about a week before SHTF and I was this close to buying a few kg bars the day or two before the protests started. I didn’t and am VERY glad. Silver is of course bulky and heavy and I would not have needed those extra kgs when we were finally on the move ten or eleven days later. Silver is a great medium of exchange when things have settled down after SHTF but it is not a great prep UNLESS you keep it confined to maybe a single kg of junk silver or small rounds.

Lesson #16….Be flexible and creative. SHTF will be unique to the surroundings and people and cause thus necessitating quick thinking that is outside the box and the formulation of solutions to problems that may work today but not tomorrow. Do NOT become married to a situation, your role in it, or the solution to a problem that may not work for you tomorrow.

Lesson #17….Be intimidating when you think it will work. Develop a war face! Be loud and fearless and look like someone capable of anything…it minimizes negotiation and whining in other parties. Simultaneously, know when to fly under the radar and when to say "Katy bar the door!" The nature of SHTF changes over time and necessitates that YOU change who you are to a very substantial degree.

Lesson #18….Stock your liquor cabinet. Do so partially for barter and good will purposes, but also understand that when a curfew is imposed during SHTF, the impromptu "revolution party" will become common. I was teargassed on day 3 or 4 and scooped up six random study abroad journalism students who were literally trapped by police in my neighborhood. The police had blocked off all entrances and exits so these red-eyed kids could literally not get home. We all went back to my apartment where, over the next 6 hours or so, my wife, these kids, and I did some serious damage to a bottle of red label. On top of that, the realistic reason for stocking up is that after a few days of staying up all night enjoying what SHTF has to offer, you will have trouble sleeping and a wee dram never hurts.

Lesson #19…When SHTF is over, be prepared for a LOT of odd behavior on the part of people you know. There will be lots of unnecessary crap about "who did what" during SHTF and arguments about how we can avoid SHTF in the future or how we can rebuild or "unify" in the wake of SHTF. Everyone will think their ideas are the best and the very real conflict between people you know will push you and those around you back toward a SHTF situation to some degree. The moral of this story is, if you are a foreigner, keep your damned mouth shut. Even if you are a local, the arguments are just not worth it.

Lesson #20…You learned who your friends are during SHTF…now treat them that way! For example, I no longer visit my big neighborhood grocer who closed and locked sh!t up tighter than a drum for the FULL DURATION of SHTF. I do, however, now regularly frequent the tiny-a$$ little grocery store with the mediocre selection around the corner. Why? Because it is owned and operated by a 50 year old guy who was open every single day of SHTF and I saw him regularly at 2:00am guarding the front of his store (and others) armed with nothing more than a hippo-hide whip (sjambok). He was doing this when the very reliable rumor was that looters had stolen police vehicles, uniforms, and guns. I don’t care that this guy doesn’t have the shampoo my wife likes, I am buying my groceries from him!

Awesome find, Tesla.

Well, since there are those here who have hopes that somebody will wake up and address the nation's budgetary and monetary crisis, I've begun to have disturbing visions of this actually happening.

I wonder what folks here would propose, in the way of the difficult choices that WOULD lie ahead, in case Karl's Easter prayers are answered. I mean, figure you can fix Social Security with means testing. What would we do about all the people on disability?

Actually, Medicare and Medicaid seem to be the biggest problems. Since the largest area of abuse of Medicare seems to be in the "end of life" range, should we have a policy that the elderly receive only palliative care for their cancer and heart disease (no surgeries, chemo, and bypasses)? Should the system be paying for dialysis?

What would we do about children on Medicaid, if they have serious health problems?

My perspective on all this is that we would have to dismantle our whole health-care system in order to address Medicare and Medicaid. Otherwise, health care in the US would remain so costly that pulling the rug out from under these programs would mean that many people would die.

While it's true that government withdrawal from providing medical care would ultimately mean that the cost of medical care would decline, that would probably take some time. And this is kind of a bad time for hoping that private charities would be able to step in.

If we're serious about cutting, we should probably be thinking about how we'd do it, because if it's not done thoughtfully there would be hell to pay. Actually there would probably be hell to pay if it were done thoughtfully.

I have been thinking about those issues too, Sharon.

Dialysis is touchy since the people on it may be feeling well enough and will die within days of its withdrawal.

After WWI Dr. Gerson acted as an examining doctor for the German government to identify which veterans disability pensions the government should fund. Maybe a system where there was a quota of say 10% of the total cases could be approved, and the inspector issued the decision for the 10% most deserving reviewed each month. Families used to care for their disabled and can do so again especially since once the government cuts, there will be even more unemployed.

There is so much that can be zeroed out and a system like the above could be used to try to limit it to the worst cases for areas where it cannot.

With out Medicare, Medicaid and employer paid (tax favored) health insurance, health care would be more affordable and rationally distributed. A 1950s system where people got what they could pay for would suit me fine. The unemployed doctors and nurses might be able to find a charity to sponsor their work if they could deliver reasonable value.

This is all just dreaming - they have no intention of disappointing the FSA.

I'm glad to hear that someone else is at least thinking about this.

"""While it's true that government withdrawal from providing medical care would ultimately mean that the cost of medical care would decline,.."

i wonder about that. Providers used to tell me "You have great insurance".

When i went onto Medicare i noticed the providers were suddenly paid less than half what my employer provided insurance had been paying them.

yet my premiums for what became secondary insurance doubled while their liability was reduced to zip. In all of 2010 they paid out $6.53 to providers yet collected over $3,000 of premiums from me in addition to whatever premiums my employer kicked in. By contrast Medicare was out about $2800 on $1300 of premiums from me.

We have a positive feedback loop between paper shufflers in insurance and healthcare industries . And guess who wrote Obamacare....
There's a very good "Frontline" on it called "Obama's Deal".

a.

hey, instead of ****ing the poor with budget cuts to entitlement programs, howabout just reigning in some of the extravagant and ridiculous defense spending. closing half of all foreign military bases and letting the rest of the world fend for itself for a few years would do wonders for our federal budget and cutting off the teat to the military industrial complex would allow us to keep our promises to the elderly, disabled, veterans, students and ****ed-up-in-the-head population without compromising our decent american values.

we used to look out for the poor and those who couldn't help themselves. now we look out for the top .1% elite then turn our austerity sights on the poor who can least afford to pay and will suffer the most.

i'm not for supporting leech****s who could support themselves but choose not to. but seriously, cutting costs on the poor side of town so the squid and haliburton execs can buy yet another yacht just sickens me.

sad, really.

Factor in that people used to be allowed to KEEP more of their resources to help their poor. If you take the people's money on the premise you are going to re-distribute it then of course they expect to see you taking care of those that need it. In reality you see them taking $100 and returning $20 after spending most of it for administrative costs. The idiots will spend $5 to make sure nobody gets $1 they shouldn't...

Ampsucker wrote..

hey, instead of ****ing the poor with budget cuts to entitlement programs, howabout just reigning in some of the extravagant and ridiculous defense spending. closing half of all foreign military bases and letting the rest of the world fend for itself for a few years would do wonders for our federal budget and cutting off the teat to the military industrial complex would allow us to keep our promises to the elderly, disabled, veterans, students and ****ed-up-in-the-head population without compromising our decent american values.

Ok, let's say we take the $750 billion defense budget and cut it in half.

Guess what? The deficit is $1,700 billion. It's still $1,325 billion, and we still need to cut the entitlement programs in half as well.

Barbie days "math is hard"

The best idea, of course, is to get government out of medical care altogether. This would result in the cost of medical care declining to the point where people could pay for all but catastrophic care or major surgeries out of pocket. The reason I say this is because virtually everyone was able to do this before government began paying for health care.

I wasn't an adult in the 1950s, but my impression is that people did not have health insurance through their work for anything but the very high-dollar interventions. They paid for doctor visits and prescriptions out of pocket--at least my parents did--and both the doctor visits and the prescriptions were very affordable. I have a suspicion that even health issues that required a hospital stay had a deductible. I say this because there was some talk about having my tonsils out (to cure my asthma), and my parents finally decided against it, after thinking the matter over for quite a long time--so it wasn't the kind of thing it is today, where people think, "Why the hell not? We're not paying for it."

Cheap private health insurance was available through various organizations and lodges, such as the Masonic Lodge, and there were private charities and charity hospitals.

A return to systems like these is a desirable outcome, but it wouldn't happen overnight. These systems no longer exist. And people would just have to get over the idea that very costly drugs and interventions would be available, unless you were able to pay for the private insurance to cover them, or were able to pay for them out of pocket. My guess is that most of these drugs and interventions would never have been developed without the assurance that government would pay for them.

Bringing government involvement in medical care to a screeching halt would be catastrophic for a LOT of people. People would be dropping dead left and right. The first group of people I envision dropping dead are the thousands of dialysis patients. The reason I think of them is because I had some direct involvement with them at one time, so I'm thinking of a group of people that I knew personally--you know, people you would hate to see drop dead. Some of them were younger people.

Bringing government involvement in medical care to a screeching halt would also throw millions of people out of work. Health care would probably employ less than ten percent of the number of people who are now employed in that field.

No matter how you look at it, it would be UGLY.

Maybe phasing it out would work, but I have my doubts about whether there's enough social fabric left--or financial means--to rebuild the former health care system.

Well, Sharon, I do see the irony in all this ****, as I am an RN in a dialysis unit. So basically I know the service I provide, and the funding for it, is a big chunk of our problem. I love what I do, most of the people at our unit are retired military, and I enjoy the helloutta WWII veterans.

Now I could tell you stories about leech****s....**** that ****ing drives my ass crazy. Money spent and wasted on people things that'd***** most Americans off. But there is HIPPA.

My paycheck comes from ESRD funding under Medicare.

Yeah, I see the irony.

And I do not have a solution.

I know many things that could actually be done to lessen the problem to a degree, but it'd end up being only fractions, and not be a real, viable solution.

I don't know the answer.

But what we're doing isn't working.

And it keeps me up at night.

But this ****ing thing, healthcare in America that we currently have will NOT be able to continue indefinitely....

Even this Barbie can do basic math.

"Actually, Medicare and Medicaid seem to be the biggest problems. Since the largest area of abuse of Medicare seems to be in the "end of life" range, should we have a policy that the elderly receive only palliative care for their cancer and heart disease (no surgeries, chemo, and bypasses)? Should the system be paying for dialysis? "

I really disagree the the biggest problems are "end of life" abuses(?).
I really do NOT want to hear anything like this until ALL illegal aliens who are abusing this system are removed from our country. <<Period>> F#$K That.

Most people eligible for SS now have paid into it their entire life time. Screw you. Get rid of the freaking illegal aliens sucking our medical system dry.

Well, Savant, I kind of suspect that this whole discussion in highly rhetorical. People are going to view any cuts in any of these programs as highly unacceptable.

They're unacceptable because:

They're not fair
Children will die
Grannies will die
Mothers will die in childbirth
People in long-term care in nursing homes and other institutions will die
Sick and dying people will be turned away from doctors and hospitals
At least half the people I know with decent-paying jobs will be out of work

I was posting about this partly to point out just how unacceptable these cuts would be, and partly to see if anyone had any thoughts on a humane way to deal with these problems.