Free Republic

Hal Kempfer, a noted international security expert, is getting a roomful of California public health officials and emergency responders to think about the unthinkable – a nuclear bomb exploding at the port of Long Beach, about four miles away...News out of North Korea has created a mini-bonanza for local manufacturers of nuclear fallout shelters. But more important to the vast bulk of the population, Kempfer says, is having some rudimentary knowledge of what it means to “shelter in place"...Sandy Wedgeworth, the public health emergency management coordinator, said she and her staff felt energized, not depressed, by what they learned from...

CARACAS - Venezuela’s government this week urged citizens to see rabbits as more than “cute pets” as it defended a plan to breed and eat them even as the opposition says this would do nothing to end chronic food shortages. The “Rabbit Plan” is an effort by the government of President Nicolas Maduro to boost food availability. Authorities have also taught citizens to plant food on roofs and balconies of their homes. Maduro’s adversaries dismiss such ideas as nonsensical, insisting the real problem is a failed model of oil-financed socialism that was unable to survive after crude markets collapsed. The...

When it comes to natural disasters, probably everyone is thinking of Hurricane Harvey and its destruction in and around Houston. In addition to that devastation, there are also wildfires raging in southern California and Montana (hundreds of people have had to evacuate). Aside from those terrible disasters, most people don't spend much time thinking about chemical spills, blizzards, tornados, riots, or terrorist attacks. Now that I have your attention, are you taking steps to protect yourself and family in the wake of a disaster?

Just had the largest X-ray Flare in history while the biggest Hurricane in history is in the Atlantic. CME from previous X-5 Flare is going to hit Earth tonight around 5-6 PM EDT. The initial estimate of the arrival of the X-10 Flare is 6-7 AM EDT on 8 September 2017. This could be a repeat of the 1859 Carrington Event. We could be doing Irma without electronics or electricity.

On a sunny August Friday, people stream past the ornate, Art Deco US Post Office building in Manhattan's East Village, where its forlorn and faded "Fallout Shelter" plaque is an ominous reminder, however distant, of today's nuclear threat. The yellow and white metal sign on the Cooper Station Post Office is one of perhaps thousands that can be found scattered throughout the city -- largely forgotten relics of the days when the threat of annihilation via a Soviet nuclear attack seemed like a very real and terrifying proposition. But as the war of words between US President Donald Trump and...

One thing overlooked in the uproar over Charlottesville is that this was, evidently, merely a dress rehearsal for a much larger-scale effort planned for this Autumn. Activist groups on the left evidently have something big in store for November 4th. The idea seems to be a revival of the 1971 “Days of Rage” – an effort to shut down the country as a whole to force a change in government. Thanks to one of many political mailing lists that AT finds itself on, we received an email last Sunday from the “Stop Mass Incarceration Network,” a little-known left-wing agitation group,...

OK! I am getting ready to drive the 200 miles or so south towards Salem/Eugene Oregon. I figured it's also a good time to test my survival skills, somewhat lightly. So far I have packed: three cans of Chef Boyardee, three cans of sardines, two cans of Dinty moore stew. Forks and knives and spoons as well. A garbage bag for the empty cans. My three cameras, well, two cell phones and an older Vivitar camera. I have an extra gallon of gas in my trunk, plus oil and ATF. Anything else? Any hints/tips?

My daughter and I drove up to Andersen, SC for the eclipse, leaving Sunday early in the morning and hanging out there Sunday afternoon and evening.Let me first put an accolade out to the Hilton Garden Inn -- great people, and very accommodating.  We wound up having to run-n-gun at the last minute as one nasty cloud threatened to obliterate our shots of the totality, but that gamble paid big; we were able to get into the clear with time remaining, and were set up and "on-point" about 3-4 minutes before totality was achieved.The totality itself was surreal.  Photographs, no matter how...

Potentially catastrophic Hurricane Harvey approaching Texas Gulf Coast. Mash image to find lots of satellite imagery linksPublic AdvisoriesNHC DiscussionsNHC Local Hurricane Statements Corpus ChristiNHC Local Hurricane Statements GalvestonBuoy Data near Harvey

At this time 911 is not responding, and pleas for help are going out on social media. https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAqOnSF?m=en-us When the rainfall turned torrential late Saturday night, and water began pouring into his living room, KeRon Hooey sloshed down the block to the highest ground in the neighborhood: his neighbor’s two-story house. He and 10 others, including two elderly neighbors, spent the night on the second floor, watching the waters rising out of the nearby Buffalo Bayou and spreading across their quiet subdivision, Wood Shadows II. All night, Hooey dialed emergency numbers – 911, 311, the Coast Guard, local police stations...

Above: Microwave satellite image of Irma at 4:24 am EDT Thursday, August 31, 2017. An eye is visible as a lighter spot in the solid ring of red that is the storm’s eyewall. Image credit: Navy Research Lab, Monterey. Here comes trouble. Hurricane Irma built an eyewall over the warm waters of the Eastern Atlantic on Thursday morning, and is now rapidly intensifying, becoming a Category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds at 11 am EDT. Irma is the fourth hurricane of this active Atlantic hurricane season, and comes three weeks before the usual September 21 date for the season's...

North Korea openly threatens EMP attack for the first time, changing the game BY ANTHONY FUREY, POSTMEDIA NETWORK The news Sunday morning that North Korea had launched what appeared to be its sixth nuclear test and most powerful one to date is troubling enough. But a statement from the rogue regime took things to a whole new level. The North said it had tested an H-bomb that was “a multi-functional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack according to strategic goals.” This is the first time it has...

The EMP Commission was established pursuant to title XIV of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (as enacted into law by Public Law 106-398; 114 Stat. 1654A-345). Duties of the EMP Commission include assessing: - the nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years; - the vulnerability of United States military and especially civilian systems...

While thoughts and prayers are with our Texas FRiends and neighbors, we are at the peak of the Atlantic Tropical Storm season. Hurricane Irma continues its trek from Cape Verde across the pond and toward the Hebert Box (see below). People with interests in the Southeastern U.S. and Gulf of Mexico should be alert to the forecast path updates for this powerful storm. It is important to note that the average NHC track errors are about 175 and 225 statute miles at days 4 and 5, respectively. Hurricane Irma originally had a small wind field. In the past 24 hours,...

...HURRICANE WARNINGS ISSUED FOR PORTIONS OF THE LEEWARD ISLANDS... ...HURRICANE WATCHES ISSUED FOR THE BRITISH AND U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS AND PUERTO RICO...

The Austin based Anti-fascists group, Red Guards Austin, has been gaining prominence in the Texas Antifa movement. As we have previously reported, they are a self described autonomous Marxist-Leninist-Maoist collective and their website contains multiple reports on their confrontational and often armed demonstrations. They also openly advocate for violent revolution against capitalism. “we must seriously take up the task not only of self-defense on the personal and community level, but we must also struggle to unite all genuine antifascists behind the necessity of revolution. Revolution means the long fight for communism and nothing less.” In a recent blog titled...

a time such as this, you want the guys who can still thread a line when their hands are wet and cold. They’re descending on Houston in their fleets of flat-bottomed aluminum boats, the sport fishermen and duck hunters outnumbering the government rescuers by the hundreds, their skiffs sitting low in the floodwaters with their human catch in the back, clutching plastic-wrapped possessions. The country is suddenly grateful for this “Cajun Navy,” for their know-how, for the fact that they can read a submerged log in the water, and haul their boats over tree stumps and levees and launch them...

The mayor of Houston and Harris County officials were advised two days before Hurricane Harvey made landfall that the storm was brewing into a likely “catastrophic” 5-day weather event that would flood at least 100,000 homes and paralyze Houston. Yet city and county officials refused to call for a mandatory or even voluntary evacuation of Houston. The result: Houston and parts of Harris county look like flooded battlefields, with residents clinging to rooftops of their homes while rescue workers — both professional and volunteer — risk their lives to save untold thousands in distress. Houston and Harris county’s four commissioners...

Well it's not over. That said, what do Big City Freepers recommend??? 1) Bug out and head for high ground and get stuck in traffic 2) Get cases of water/chlorine tablets and pull that inflatable fishing boat out of storage 3) something else?

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A hurricane in the heart of the U.S. energy industry is set to curtail near-record U.S. oil production for several weeks, with the impact expected to reverberate throughout the country and across international energy markets. Harvey hit the Texas shore as a fierce Category 4 hurricane, causing massive flooding that has knocked out 11 percent of U.S. refining capacity, a quarter of oil production from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and closed ports all along the Texas coast. Gasoline futures jumped as much as 7 percent to their highest level in more than two years in early...