Posted on 03/15/2010 3:05:20 PM PDT by Kartographer
It's time to start paying attention to the financial sinkhole that Iceland is trying to climb out of -- the view from inside of it is eerily similar to our own.
An Icelandic savings bank, Icesave, had attracted billions in deposits from hundreds of thousands of British and Dutch citizens, due to the phenomenally high interest rates it offered. Icesave collapsed in 2008, for much the same reason Lehman Brothers, WaMu, and hundreds of local savings banks did: its bankers used their cash to make complicated, bad, leveraged investments, mostly on real estate.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
-~~Ludwig Von Mises
Any idea what forms of communication will be available “after the fall?”
For the purposes of the novel, the economy has tanked but wireless comms are still going strong. The govt can't shut down a key lubricant to economic function, even if it puts a lot of transactions out of their reach via craigslist type sites. Craigslist becomes a virtual black market the government must tolerate, because hungry people are more desperate and angry and potentially rebellious.
And an overtly free internet/wireless comms universe provides the govt with useful means for seeking out and cracking down on what they consider seditious persons and groups.
But that's just how it will work in my next novel. Another way it could go would be to nuke the internet as a result of a China/USA trade war turned all-out cyber war.
Good info, thanks!
Check the “packet radio” link at 4.
Any potential usefulness in freedom’s defense?
Annex them as the 51st state. They got real cute babes!
Wow, great stuff! Thanks!
A simple Technicaians class ham radio license is about $14 and the book you can get from the library or buy it for $24. Tests are administered at most libraries and fire stations almost every weekend. Anyone can pass the Technician’s license, 7 year olds have done it. It will let you on all VHF/UHF and some HF bands. 1-3 weeks part time study for about 20 hours total and you’ll probably ace the test.
Step up to a General class license again for $14, book for $24. This time you’ll need about 100 hours self study and some electronics principles to get by. That license adds most of the remaining HF bands the Technican’s license doesn’t give you.
Step up to an Extra class, the highest class, license again for $14, book for $24. This time you’ll need about 100 hours study and a bunch more electronics principles to get by. That license adds the remaining HF bands the other licenses don’t give.
The books explain most of everything including the electronics, regulations, principles, rules, procedures, most everything.
There are no morse code tests anymore. All tests are simple multiple choice of about 35 questions, and passing is 70%.
There will always be more to know but those tests will set you on the road to success.
The package we used transmitted using AFSK modems over 2m VHF. You need licensed hams on the radios. It could probably be forced over CB radios, but I would have to review the legality of that modulation/data mode on the CB frequencies.
There was/is also the NETROM servers running on mountain tops that permit extending the network in a useful fashion over a fairly large geographic area.
The APRS functionality combines messaging, GPS and dynamic maps to track nodes in the field. Excellent if that is a capability you need.
The whole concept teeters on licensed ham operators with access to equipment. The FCC could shut it down in a heart beat.
There is also the unlicensed 2.4 GHz WiFi (802.11b/g/n) as a possibility. The mesh networks employed by "Freifunk" networks in Germany are robust and much better carriers of data than amateur packet radio. Most people have the basic skills to set them up and no license is required. You can leverage the full functionality of Linux, Windows and Macs over such a network. Far better than packet.
Self-ping
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