Blow Morpheus Blow

With the Sun whipping up a seemingly endless supply of major storms and earthquakes around the world, this seems like as good a time as any to revisit one of our favorite topics: prepping.

A few people may remember the the very old school fable of Aesop fame - the Ant and the Grasshopper.  As you (gods forbid) read or (even worse) watch TeeVee, anyone you see panicking is a "grasshopper."  Anyone you see sitting on their porch with a shotgun is an "ant."

In Aesop's fable, the ants worked all summer to stock up for the coming winter, while the grasshoppers played in the sun and mocked the industrious ants.  Come winter, the grasshoppers were freezing to death with no food, while the ants were safely underground with their stores, riding out the deadly cold.  In some versions, the grasshoppers even mount a war against the ants to take the supplies by force.  This latter group is what we call "government."

One thing that is highlighted by Harvey, Irma, Katia, and the Mexico earthquake is how one preps.  Most people will think of grizzly, bearded wildmen burrowing in the desert floor and piling up boxes of dried food, water and LPG gas tanks.  While effective in some cases, the recent tragedies worldwide show the ultimate futility of this kind of prepping.

Some people spend inordinate amounts of money stocking up on these kinds of things only to find they can be lost, abandoned or stolen when it comes to the nut cutting.  Ask the people in the wakes of Harvey or Irma how effective their caches were in the wake of the storm.  Ask the folks in Mexico whose houses collapsed how well their supplies helped them.  Ask the folks in the Caribbean how useful their food and water stores were after their houses vanished in the storm.

Yes, I agree that having stored food, water, a genset, gas stove, guns, ammo, and some basic tools are essential for any well-prepped individual.  I have personally enjoyed myself with power, a decent meal, fresh cup of coffee and a loaded shotgun, while everyone around me sat in the dark unable to cook or even see at night.

But putting all your effort into supplies that cannot be easily carried, and are just as easily stolen or lost, means that you are only partially prepped.  None of it makes a good goddam when your house is underwater, or surrounded by a hungry mob, or simply gone.

The well-prepped individual can be dropped in the middle of any situation with nothing but a knife and within 24 hours, he can have shelter, food and fresh water.  He can also navigate to (or away from) the nearest outpost of civilization.

Real prepping takes place in the mind.  It is a set of skills and mental preparedness that allows one to take advantage of whatever comes to hand, and the mental capacity to remain calm and rational while everyone else panics and the world turns to chaos.

Skills and mental discipline are highly portable.  They require no packaging, weigh nothing and cannot be stolen.  The only physical items a well-prepped human needs is a good, sharp knife.

When all else fails, the abilities to hunt/trap and fish, build a lean-to, forage for fruits and vegetables, and determine location and direction from the Sun and stars is all one needs to survive the worst disasters.  Along with a good knife and a calm, rational mind, one can manage in even the worst situations.  Even better, one doesn't have to watch year's worth of work and thousands of dollars invested vanish or fall into the hands of ill-prepped mobs.

It is rather difficult for rampaging mobs to see, much less steal your skills.  You appear to have nothing worth stealing if your entire survival investment is tucked neatly in your brain and strapped to your leg.  Even if someone commandeers your shelter and food, you can easily move on and acquire all it again in a safer location, using your navigation skills.  You also have nothing to carry to weigh you down or that requires constant guard.

An additional benefit is that you will require absolutely nothing from government "officials."  If the recent disasters have proved anything, it is that all government assistance comes with enough strings attached to hang a hundred men.  When your hand is out to anyone, much less a government goon, they have all the power and can make you do anything they want to get your treats.

Most people will argue that they are too busy to practice these skills.  Maybe they prefer a vacation in Cabo San Lucas to a week of wandering naked in the desert trying to survive on wits.  Maybe they are too pacifist to become handy with weapons.  Keep in mind these are the people who will become the rampaging looters and mobs when the world ends - and the world ends at least once in everyone's lifetime.

Here's some simple tests of your preparedness.  Go outside at night and see if you can determine where north is and your approximate lattitude by looking at the stars.  Walk around your neighborhood and see how much edible food you can find in an hour (hint - there's a lot).  How much water can you collect overnight using nothing but found items (leaves, sticks, etc.)?

If you are truly prepped, you should be able to figure the cardinal directions in 30 seconds, and your approximate latitude in an hour.  You should be able to make a decent salad out of found food within 100 meters of your house.  You should be able to collect one cup of water in most locations overnight.

That's prepping.

Water stores are good when the public supply is contaminated, as it usually is after major storms.  What will you do if your supply runs short?

Food stores are great when stores are shut and roads are blocked, but what to do when your rations don't stretch far enough?

A house and a genset are wonderful when the power is out and the rain is pouring down, but gensets need fuel and houses can be destroyed.

Take your prepping to the next level.  Buy a high-quality hunting knife and learn some useful skills in your spare time.  Remember, the time to learn these skills is NOT when you need them.  Teach yourself how to build water purifiers out of found items.  Don't rely on having stores for emergencies.  Not only might you have to abandon them, but they make your a prime target of the masses who didn't do anything to prepare.

Most importantly, discipline your mind so as not to panic.  The worst thing anyone can do for their survival is panic.  Once one stops thinking clearly and rationally, the rest of the fight is over.

If you are lucky enough to have avoided all the recent disasters around the world, count your blessings and start some real prep.  Two things we can always count on: disaster will strike at some point, and government never helps anyone but itself.

Rock Me Gently

Few people take the time to really understand Earth's plate tectonics.  It's one of those subjects in school where everyone's eyes glaze over and they spend their time writing notes to the cute girl next to them, or (nowadays) sexting the girl in the next room.

At any rate, there are fewer subjects that have more immediate impact on our daily lives, and fewer still that anyone pays any attention to.

To visualize this, imagine a cauldron of seething hot molten iron.  On the top of the liquid iron are black islands of impurities called slag.  That's where we live...on the slag.  We are the impurities that float up to the top of the cauldron of molten iron.  If you look at a video of this, you'll notice that the little islands of slag move around and bump into each other.  That's analogous to the tectonic plates on which the slag floats.  Basically, it's a semi-cool skin that forms across the top of the molten material.

Because of the time and size scales involved, it's hard for humans to visualize what the Earth is doing.  Earth is a living, breathing organism, and we are parasites on its skin.  The Earth expands nad contracts as it respires.  It reacts to its environment.  It grows and changes on a daily basis, but we are so puny in comparison that we can only notice such things when a large scale change takes place.

Down the center of the Atlantic Ocean is a ridge where the plates are spreading.  Simply, liquid rock rises up through a crack and spreads the plates apart.  Among the more interesting features of this ridge is that it records the Earth's magnetic polar alignment over billions of years.  A fairly simple scanning process results in a series of magnetic stripes that show Earth's magnetic poles flip-flipping quite frequently over geologic time.  In other words, pole shift is nothing new, nor does it involve the planet rolling over.  Rather the liquid core of the planet is dynamic and as it shifts, the magnetic poles move around.  This process is little understood in terms of whether it is caused by inside or outside forces.  Nor is it much appreciated that the icing at the spin-axis poles is partially a result of the magnetic poles.  Thus, when the magnetic poles shift, ice ages come and go.

Another interesting bit of geologic lore is that at least one plate has completely disappeared.  It slid under the west coast of North America and bunched up the overlying land like kicking a rug.  The result is the Sierra Madre and Rocly mountains, not to mention a string of volcanoes like Mount St. Helen.  Baja and Southern California are also results of this process, and despite appearances, aren't actually part of the North American slag heap.

On a tectonic map, the item to really pay attention to at the moment is the Pacific Plate.  You should notice that it's just a big, roughly round disc that covers most of that hemispere of the Earth.  The reason this is interesting is that a quick scan of the rim of the bowl will locate places like Japan, the Aleutian Islands, the west coast of North America, Mexico and Chile, the Drake Passage, and the islands of Southeast Asia.  A scan of the headlines from the past two weeks should cause a light to go off.  This is the legendary 'Ring of Fire'.

This geologic bowl is surrounded with active volcanoes and is currently the site of hundreds of earthquakes ranging from hardly noticable to life-threatening.  Just the past few days have seen hundreds of quakes in Sumatera, Japan, Oregon, Mexicali, Mexico, Chile, and the Drake Passage.  There's also been a number of quakes down the mid-Atlantic Ridge.  Make no mistake, these are all intricately connected events.

Sumatera provides an interesting study, because in the last eight years, we have witnessed several massive quakes with very different outcomes, because they involved two completely different processes.

The 2004 quake, which reached over 9 on the magnitude scale and caused a massive tsunami affecting a significant part of the globe, was a thrust event.  Two plates bumping into each other snapped and one side popped up vertically causing a massive displacement of water.  Fukushima is another example of a thrust quake.

The quakes last week, in the same region, were strike-slip events, in which the two sides of the fault slide horizontally.  This is usually a weaker quake and rarely causes a tsunami, but these quakes are reported to be the strongest strike-slip quakes ever recorded, though only causing a 60cm tsunami (about a 2-foot wave).  A strike-slip quake normally doesn't cause a lot of damage, too, much as we saw with these two recent shakers.

So, with some background in place, let's put back for the proverbial Big Picture.  I have this little desktop app that gives a read-out of quakes around the world.  I have it set to display anything over 5.  It was relatively quiet for a long time, but in the last two weeks, it has gone nuts, but in a definite pattern.

Quakes are popping off at very specific and regular points around the Pacific: Honshu, Japan; Drake Passage; Ouxhaca, Mexico; Chile; and Aceh, Sumatera.  Almost every quake in the past two weeks has been in a circle surrounding the Pacific Ocean, lterally ON the Ring of Fire.  It would take quite a bit of number-crunching and research to determine what exactly is going on, and we can be sure that someone is doing it, but let's speculate on possible causes.

1) Earth is shrinking: since the globe spreads in the Atlantic and converges in the Pacific, the Earth could be contracting and causing the Pacific plate to receive massive amounts of pressure on all sides.  As the sides converge, the plate would shift and slide under or over other plates, causing a great number of thrust quakes, as well as large strike-slips, as it tries to relieve the stess.  Volcanoes would start popping off all around the region.

This scenario would likely result in a cooling of the Earth's core.  Other signs would be a weakening of the magnetic, as well as the mag poles starting to wander around.  This event would also likely cause the Pacific Ocean to become shallower, thus causing disasterous sea-level rises worldwide.

2) Earth is expanding: in this scenario, the Earth is expanding and causing a massive release of stress all around the Pacific Plate, as it suddenly has more room to move around and reposition itself.  This, too, would likely cause more vulcanism, as pressure was released on magma vents, allowing the swelling core to push more molten rock out the holes to relieve pressure.  This scenario would imply a feedback loop of release of pressure, allowing the core to expand more, creating more pressure, causing more release.

This scenario might also imply wandering mag poles, as the core swells and pressure is relieved, it would tend to shift its spin axis, and thus the mag pole axis.

3) Steady-state Earth: this scenario states that the Earth is neither expanding nor contracting, but the continual spread of the Atlantic Ridge causes a continual increase of pressure on the Pacific Plate, which builds to massive release events on an occasional basis.

All three scenarios would explain a great number of observed phenomena right now.  Even wild weather events could be traced to large-scale vibrations, the release of tremendous amounts of electro-magnetic energy and a number of other energetic events resulting from mass Earth movements.

A shockwave would stir the atmosphere, causing warmer air to rise and colder air to fall, resulting in huge hail storms, increased tornadic activity, strange seasonal changes, and lower hurricane/typhoon activity.

The massive release of piezoelectric forces would be perceived as anything from strange sounds (horn blasts and random 'crack-booms') to wild electrical storms and plasma events (northern/southern lights).  Certainly, there's been plenty of reports of these types of events in recent times.  Of special note are active aurora when there's no corresponding solar storm.

Conclusions could run to any of the three scenarios.  It would take a lot more time and money than I have to research all the quakes, whether they are thrust or strike-slip, associated land movements, and timings.  I'm sure that research is in progress, but whether we little people are privy to it is questionable.  It depends on what outcome is expected, I suppose.

In the meantime, we are left to watch and speculate.  Since I live in Indonesia, I am paying special attention to these matters.  Just this afternoon, there was a 6.5 in the Banda Sea just west of us.  We felt it as a minor jiggle for about 30 seconds, with the Chinese lanterns swinging back and forth.  If you look at a fault map, Indonesia sits on top of an area that looks like a smashed egg shell, on the southeastern extent of the Pacific Plate.  We are in a war zone between the Pacific and Austral-Asian Plates.

The world is basically like one of those number puzzles with 15 tiles and 16 holes, and you have to move them around to get them in the right order.  The primary problem in all this is that when the tiles move, people get hurt.

We are at the mercy of forces far greater than we can control.  All our wailing and gnashing of teeth about saving the planet just went out the proverbial window.  That we assume our activities can have more than a miniscule effect on Earth, or that we can control and master the Earth, are little more than egotistical pipe dreams.

You'd think we had learned this long ago, when King Knutr had his throne placed on the beach and he commanded the tide to stop.  He had to swim out of that one.  No report as to whether the throne survived.  Indeed, folks who think humans have any say whatsoever over natural processes don't get a lot of interaction with Mother Nature.

Come to think of it, Knutr also proved that kings and rulers are pretty much useless, though we haven't learned that lesson, either.

So, as our collective roller coaster clicks and clacks to the top of the first drop, we either choose to ignore the impending plunge, or hold on for dear life.  I'm kind of in the middle.  One arm is waving furiously in the air, while the other is wrapped firmly around the crash bar.

Here we goooooooo...

Through Bot-Colored Glasses

Euro Riots

It's that time once again.  Clif and the gang at HalfPastHuman have released the latest Shape of Things to Come (SOTTC) report, and depending on your perspective, it's either hopeful or harrowing.

If you are a tourist in life, then the report will likely keep you awake nights worrying about things to come.  If you are a traveler, then you will find the adventure promised in the 51 pages something to anticipate as the birth pangs of a new order in the world.

And when I say new order, I am NOT referencing the NWO.  In fact, the NWO, as anyone who has followed my rantings here knows, is really the Old World Order, dating back thousands of years.

The bots are outlining a truly new order of things, in which the reptilian guard of yesteryear have finally pushed the last button and have reaped the harvest of what they have sown.

Within the pages of the SOTTC report, we learn that anyone holding a title of royalty or whose job description contains the word "pope" will not be happy with events forcast for the next two years.  The image we should form in our minds is of a lump of clay being squeezed in an iron fist.  The tighter the grip, the more of the clay squirts through every least opening.

As I posited in my article Dog Days of August, the PTB are running scared.  They are losing control of their Monster, a la Frankenstein.  The only response they can formulate in their pea-sized, inbred brains is MORE control...more cameras, more police, more brainwashing.  They can't conceive of any other way.  They are a hammer whose only view of the world is a box of nails.

The problem they don't seem to be able to wrap their puny minds around is that when the crowd knows the trick, the magic doesn't work, and nothing you do will get it back.  I think it's safe to say that they had envisioned the internet as yet another channel of control, but it backfired.  Now it is the very medium of their own undoing, which is why they must shut it down.

Mount Merapi, Java, Indonesia

The bots, however, say something different.  The PTB will attack the net and they will shut it down, but it will only be temporary.  The truth has an amazing facility for leaking from any outlet it can find.  Though the number of people that have truly awoken are a small percentage, great changes have ridden the backs of small numbers.  The (first) American Revolution was spawned by no more than 3% of the population, but they had the most powerful weapon know to us mortals...Truth.

Where the bots turn foreboding, though, is in the Terra entity.  Clif calls the coming Terra changes part of Expando-Planet.  The theory goes something like this: in an electrically active Universe, our planet has a plasma core, and when charged particles from the Sun and Universe enter the core, they convert to additional mass, thus swelling the core and expanding the crust (where we live).  During times of particularly active solar and cosmic bombardment, the core expands rapidly, with the result that we crustal denizens are subject to volcanoes, earthquakes, rips, splits, sinkholes, and any number of other fun and interesting things.

Living in a country with the greatest number of volcanoes on Earth, and sitting on a shattered piece of the crust, as Indonesia does, doesn't engender great solace, in this regard.  Just recently, Mt. Tambora started rumbling for the first time in 200 years.  It is known as the volcano that caused the worst volcanic disaster in modern times, and caused the Year Without Summer in 1816.  Considering the bots also advise aware folks to invest in firewood and heating oil this coming (long) winter, one has to wonder if there's a connection.

Certainly, the number of 6+ earthquakes has been steadily rising over the past decade.  Having already experienced a 7.2 here in 2009, I can tell you I am in no particular hurry to reprise the experience.  But, it does make for a nice segue into Fukushima...

Inspired by the bot output, consider this scenario:

ANNOUNCER: "That's right!  Our cucumbers are guaranteed to give off 12 microsieverts or less of gamma particles!  And if you order now, we'll throw in this handy pocket Geiger counter, absolutely free!  But, that's not all!  The next 100 callers will receive a full bushel of unradiated raw wheat and enough barley seed to produce three month's supply of healthy sprouts for a family of four.  Remember, our produce is certified to glow one-third less than any other food products on the market today.  In fact, if you can find kidney beans with less Cesium-137 than ours, we'll happily refund your money.  Call now!  Operators are standing by!"

Can't happen?  Impossible?  Believe me, we good folks of the world haven't heard half the story out of Fukushima, and that's just one of a dozen reactors with problems that have made even the slightest mention in the MSM (mind shinking media).

In yet another prophetic post, my last two columns (Of Secrets and Lies, Bugging Out and Other Hobbies) eerily leaped off the pages of the SOTTC report.

One major theme is the coming exposure of the Zionists.  It seems much of what I wrote in Of Secrets and Lies will become common knowledge over the next year or so.  Once again (as in WWII), the Zionists will try to deflect the ire of good folks onto the Jews, who have been the whipping dogs of the Zionists for centuries.  Unfortunately, it seems they will be successful, at least for a time.  However, we are entering a time when the old tricks don't work anymore, and this is one of the most egregious of them all.

The rise of great numbers of transnationals was also covered in SOTTC.  It seems that combinations of a Nazi resurrection, unfriendly winters and economic woes will cause a never-before-seen diaspora of people seeking more comfortable climes (in every sense of that term).  It's interesting that a number of countries have been reforming their immigration laws of late, to make them friendlier to transnationals.  I'll cover that in more detail in a later article.

The most worrisome tale woven by the bots is the economic 'perfect storm' approaching.

As in all Depressions, we are sailing head-long into deflation.  Deflations favor those with NO debt and lots of disposable cash, as prices fall making money more valuable.  The problem is that the forecast is for the complete collapse of fiat currencies, starting with the dollar.  "Great," you say, "I've got my gold!"  Well, about that...FDR's Executive Order confiscating gold and silver has never been rescinded, and similar actions on the part  of other governments is quite conceivable.

In a nutshell, if you're in debt (which most folks are), you're screwed.  If you're in cash (which some folks are), you're screwed.  If you've got gold and silver tucked away, you're screwed.  So what's a man to do to protect his family?

Food, water, tools, firewood, guns/ammo...basically anything that's useful for flat-out survival will be the new currency.  A little farm land and the means to protect it would be useful, but it does have the draw-back of locking you into one spot.

The biggest problem people are facing is what Clif calls the normalcy bias.  In other words, being incapable of thinking outside the box.  Coming events will favor those who can conceive of novel solutions to novel situations.  Most folks will be running their generators (if they have one) to keep the plasma TeeVee going, when abnormal responses are what will ensure survival.  Making your way to a tropical rain forest while everyone else is huddling in the cities...a back-pack rigged for deep wilderness while everyone else is trying to haul around their C-rations...that sort of thing.

And why rain forests?  Well, you'd be in a year-round growing season, with wild food for the picking, and you're surrounded by people who are used to having nothing and living off the land.  Beats even the most rural patch of farmland in North America.  It's one reason I live in Indonesia now.

Fukushima, Japan

Up to this point, I've just touched on a few of the bigger issues raised by the bots.  We're on roughly page 25 or 51, and I haven't mentioned half of what's in the front of SOTTC.  Universe favors the prepared mind.  I spend free hours thinking of scenarios and coming up with solutions that few if anyone else has thought of.  The hardest thing to overcome is the 'normalcy bias'.  You have to be prepared to shed everything in an instant and go against the crowd, which is why I try to get folks thinking about touring and traveling in so many of my articles.  Travelers are almost always ready for just about anything the Universe throws our way.

Something like having a knife, pair of scissors and magnifying glass anywhere you go at all times.  Even if I'm completely caught off guard, I can always skin a cat and start a fire.

The Shape of Things to Come report is available at HalfPastHuman.com, for $10 (downloadable PDF file). It's worth ten bux if for no other reason, it gets you to think about "what if".  Once you start doing that, you're well on your way to being a traveler.

Shake, Rattle and Roll

Hoarding Food, Water, Supplies
People Without Basic Necessities
People Wish They Had Prepared Iodine Supply At Home

Honshu, Japan got hit with a whopper last night.  An 8.9 nerve-wrecker woke the residents up, then proceeded to flatten the area, followed by a tsunami to finish off whatever was left.  The wave was 33 feet high, according to reports.

I have experienced precisely ONE earthquake in my life.  As if happens, it was here in Jakarta on 2 September 2009, at 3pm round-abouts.  I was sitting on the couch in my apartment on the 23rd floor, watching TV, when I got the strangest feeling in my gut.  It was kind of like butterflies, but was centered in the pelvic girdle.  Within seconds, the world began to bounce up and down rhythmically with a period of about half a second.  That lasted for less than a minute and subsided to be immediately followed by lurching side-to-side for a full two minutes.

There was no way I could walk safely down 23 flights of stairs, so I simply stood helplessly in the bedroom doorway, holding on to the door posts and trembling like a Chihuahua on speed.  The coffee table was sliding back and forth across the room, along with the chairs.  Pictures were flapping on the walls and glasses were clanking in the cabinet.

I was a completely helpless feeling.  There was nowhere to run and no shelter.  There was only one choice and that was to ride it out.  It's a very strange feeling when a large, concrete building begins to shake as if a large child were grabbing it by the top and shaking it back and forth.

I have been through eight major hurricanes, a couple of dozen tornadoes, blizzards, floods, fires, and insect swarms.  For the most part, they are predictable and can be fought in a way to minimize damage.  It's not easy and preparation for them takes a lot of work, but you can at least get your mind set for them.

Not so earthquakes.  They happen with no warning.  You can't tune in the news and get moment-by-moment reports on the location and strength of an earthquake.  They defy preparation and in fact, the more rigid a building is, the more likely it is to experience damage.  Even fires are somewhat more controllable.  You can buy document safes, install sprinklers, set up exits, and distribute extinguishers.

But how to prepare for the world suddenly going soft under your feet?

Following my experience with a 7.4, I moved to a house.  I figured it was far better to be able to run out into the street naked than to try to surf slabs of concrete to the ground as a building collapsed.  Having the house also meant having the room to set up water storage on every level, with a resulting total of about 400 gallons divided between three floors.  I then bought a small generator that is enough to power a refrigerator or TV or phone charger.  Finally, I bought 7 hectare of land in the mountains as an escape hatch.

However, the problem with earthquakes is they can strike any time of the day or night.  You never know how strong they will be until they are done.  They can hit a hundred kilometers away or beneath and still destroy your house.  And counting after-shocks and tsunamis, they can have recurring attacks for up to several days.

Even volcanoes are nicer than that.

I'm sure there is a place in the world that is statistically the safest place to stand, and I am equally sure it is in the center of the Gobi desert.  The rest is all preparation.

Being prepared has nothing to do with surviving an event, like an earthquake.  That part is pretty much chance.  Take a look at tornado damage.  Those boogers can rip a house to shreds while leaving the neighbor ten feet away completely in tact.  Preparation is all about what happens if you live through it.  If you're dead, there's not much else to worry about, but if you're the poor sot that makes it through, then you're faced with not enough of at least a few things.

Thus, I have about a month's worth of severely rationed water and a Berkey filter, a month's worth of rice and other staples, an indoor garden, self-defense tools, and limited electrical generating capability, so long as the gasoline lasts.  That's enough to do one of two things, restore some normalcy or bug out.  It also let's me wait out the panic that invariably follows something that momentous.

The thing about preparation is that you never need it until you need it.  It's not all that complex.  You figure out what you need to survive, buy enough and rotate stock as you go to keep it fresh.  You would not walk into my house and think, "Oh my God, he's one of those people."  Other than a few supplies, preparedness is a mental process.

Looking at the rather horrific pictures coming out of Japan, I recall my limited experience with earthquakes.  The Richter scale is a logarithmic progression.  A 7.4 is significally less powerful than an 8.9.  I can only imagine the terror and adrenaline rush those poor folks are going through.  For the ones who've lost everything, no amount of preparedness can help them, other than the preparedness of the mind.

If one has thought out various options, explored escape routes, made mental notes about what to do in the event of certain variables, at least you have something to occupy your mind in the aftermath, other than shock at the horror in front of you.

At moments like those, people go into a kind of autopilot.  Those who are not prepared simply perish as they stumble blindly through the rubble begging for a glass of water.  Those who are prepared drop into whatever mode they hae mentally rehearsed and proceed to think their way forward until the shock wears off.

No matter what I've done, I have never managed to defeat the shock of the moment, but I have learned how to shift into a productive form of autopilot.  There are far too many changes to daily life for the mind to process, so giving it a routine of some sort is the best way to deal with the situation.

Ultimately, it comes down to: what will you do if you live?  Trying to live is pointless.  If the Universe has your number, there's not much choice in the matter.  But how will you live afterwards?  That's the question.  Will you wait for the Red Cross truck to drive through the rubble and toss a few boxes to hundreds of starving people who will fight to the death to get at them?  Or will you hunker down with your supplies and wait until sanity returns?

Hoping and praying you'll never have to face a disaster is not a rational course.  At some point, most of us face at least one.  Being physically and mentally prepared to face a disaster pays dividends beyond just survival.  It preserves dignity and hope, the two greatest civilizing forces.  Keeping both in the face of complete destruction pays a dividend that can not be measured.

Fate favors the prepared mind.  I figure it's always better to have Fate on my side in any case.

私達の祈りは悲しさの時の支えるように努める。

Life in the Land of Lava

I'm getting close-up reports from the scene of a volcanic eruption:

Here's a text message with a first-hand account of the situation in Jogjakarta:

"Ya my representative at Jogjais closes coz hot air n make skin burn many2 kambing dead n the tree ar burning. People try for run away can not coz the tool frm BMG ar not function so many people dont get information. im very sad."

To translate from English-nesian, the employees closed the store because there is a hot wind that is burning people's skin. A whole lot of goats are dead. People want to evacuate, but the warning and information system from the geological service is not functioning, and many people are not getting the necessary information on evacuation routes and efforts. In other words, the situation in Jogja is becoming more and more grave. The volcano is about 45 miles outside the city of Jogjakarta (about 600 miles southeast of Jakarta), so if residents are getting burned by super hot winds in Jogja, then you have to think things are pretty dire.

I got a later message saying that the ash cloud had reached Bandung, which if the volcano were in New Orleans, the ash has reached Beaumont and presumably will get to Jakarta at some point.

I'm working on direct word from Anak Kerakatoa, which is a more direct threat to us here in Jakarta. I have felt some small tremors, but nothing major so far; just little tickle vibrations in my gut and ripples in the water glass.

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The reports from HalfPastHuman have pointed to a major toss-up around the Ring of Fire for some time. There are warnings out for over 20 volcanoes in Indonesia. Three volcanoes have erupted in Sumatra and Java in the past month and a half. The number of quakes around the Pacific Rim have been numerous and sever (Chile) over the past year of so.

Basically, it's pretty darned exciting here. The electo-magnetic effects of the volcanoes are causing severe weather as well. There have been wild storms in the area, including deadly flash floods in the past two days here in Indonesia. In Jakarta yesterday, there was a wild thunderstorm that included heavy winds that sounded, for intents and purposes, like tornadoes.

I, and a good number of other folks that I know, are taking precautions, such as buying extra water, non-perishable foods and face masks. Short of flying boulders and lava lakes, I'm pretty much ready for what may come.

Something's happening here, Mr. Jones. Just trying to figure out what it is...