[Arktwo] Merry Month of May

[Bruce Beach]

This is the second time
that I have written today's newsletter.
Bright and sunny -
yesterday evening
when the power suddenly went off.

All but my references were lost -
never to be seen again.
Not that it was breathless prose -
or wisdom of such insight -
that it makes any difference.

As is my practice -
when the power went off -
I immediately initiated
my EMP check procedure.

Yep, phone was working.
Yep, my granddaughter 50 miles away
still had power.
Abort extended EMP procedure.

May seem silly to some.
I would feel sillier
if ever it happened
and I had sat around
for the first couple of hours
without checking.

Power out for over 3500
Hydro One customers.
Back on in a couple of hours.
Similar outage 7 miles south of us -
last week.

Some things seem less reliable.
Lots of our service stations
ran out of gas -
for about a month
a few weeks ago.
Refinery fire and rail strike -
were blamed.

JIT (Just In Time)
is what I blame
for a lot of the problems.
Not bad now -
and corporations are very happy
with JIT -
because it saves many dollars
in inventory.

But -
it will cause great problems
in case of nuclear war.
Used to be that there were
massive warehouses stacked
with weeks of inventory.

These divided among fewer people
would have been a good source
for emergency supplies.
But no more.

(Yes, I have heard about the caves of butter -
and yes,
at Ark Two we are in the breadbasket -
with farmer's warehouses -
so we shouldn't starve -
but I am talking about most other people.)

JIT is a North American thing.
I suspect that the Russians and Chinese
maintain emergency supplies -
just as they maintain their shelters,
and trained cadres of nuclear response workers.

But the US destroyed everything.
They took bulldozers and dug
great deep holes
and dumped in the radiation equipment.
They took down the shelter signs -
and trucked away the bunks
and emergency equipment.
Years ago, they stopped giving the public
radiological defense courses.

The US theory was MAD -
yep CRAZY -
but MAD stands for
Mutual Assured Destruction.
They felt that if the US had
a Civilian Defense Program -
then that was saying that
it didn't believe in MAD -
and might attack someone.
So to give confidence to Russia
that the US wouldn't attack -
the US destroyed its
Civilian Defense Program.
Gone. No more.

The Russians and Chinese, however,
did the opposite.
Every Russian high school graduate
has to take a certain number of hours
in radiological defense.
Americans on the other hand -
for the most part -
don't have a clue.

Only old guys.
My EMP expert -
still fixes my equipment -
and builds his own devices -
but he is over 80 years old.

That is the case -
with most everyone -
that I get knowledgeable information from.
Old guys.
Mostly retired.
Almost a hobby.

A hospital administrator
that was on the
National Medical Preparedness organization
when it was active -
wrote to me a couple of weeks ago -

---
"What is going to be very hard for them (the surviving doctors) is to think
about treatments with low technology and limited or no pharmaceuticals...

Supply lines for medical products are indeed thin today with everyone using
just-in-time inventories.  Sadly, our government got rid of the 2,600
Packaged Disaster Hospital (PDH) units that they had which gave us 512,000
beds (cots) and 7,800 fully-equipped operating rooms, plus the 21
warehouses, plus the Hospital Reserve Disaster Inventory units that were
given to hospitals in 100 bed increments.

We have not been this low on supplies since I can't remember. One will be
forced to take simple measures that can help the victim, relieve their pain
and make them more comfortable if they can be helped. We will be back to the
pre-1900s in short order. How and what did physicians do back then?

Mankind survived, albeit it was truly the survival of the fittest back then.
We didn't have immuno-compromised patients, nor did we have neonatal ICUs,
etc.  Those people just died. Today, large numbers of these patients
survive.

As I said in my assumptions--will the young physician and nurse of today be
able to "cope" with the case load and little to offer or will they
simply short circuit and collapse?
---

Among the many things
that Ark Two is doing
is trying to prepare
alternative plans
for medical care.
You all know about
our Project 3000.

The above individual
is providing us with some excellent resources.
One thing that I received from him this week -
was a CD that the US government had prepared -
'back then'
explaining how to jump start
the antibiotics industry.

The CD gives the formulas -
details for building and operating
the machinery,
and so forth.

No one in FEMA is assigned with
this responsibility today.
Anyone that I have spoken with there -
(and I have made very long telephone searches)
has scoffed at the idea of a nuclear war.

And still -
the policy of the present US administration
is one of -
'First Use' of nuclear weapons
and the further development of tactical nukes.
Go figure.

Only at Ark Two -
will you find as large a collection
of such resources such as that above -
and how to remove radioactivity from milk -
and administration of epidemic defense -
and how to restore fuel and energy supplies -
and how to re-establish agriculture -
and how to reconstruct society.

We have thousands of books -
on such related subjects -
and have archived them
at 40 locations throughout the US
and the world.

We have archives in Asia, Europe,
Russia, India and Pakistan.
And this week one reader wrote to me
that the Jihadists have translated our material
into Arabic
and have put it on their websites.

http://www.alnusra.net/vb/showthread.php?p=67005

(Couldn't read it myself -
but I am glad to have people everywhere -
to have the information -
and I hope that they will survive
and help build a better world afterwards.)

It is upon my readers -
that I depend to find for us
such resources.
Paul, yesterday, (and I thank him)
sent me another 38 CDs
filled with manuals on
Engineering
Chemistry
and other related subjects.

One reader pointed out a link -
where you can download
information files on EMP.

There are 25 pages in all,
broken into 4 parts (.pdfs) at:

 http://www2.arrl.org/tis/info/lightning.html

And someone else sent me yesterday
an excellent source on homemade machine tools -
which I have downloaded.

	http://opensourcemachine.org/

Gathering the materials is important.
Equally important is having a system
for distributing them - AFTERWARDS.
It is THAT structure
that we are trying to design and develop.

In principle -
as we manage to expand the
LERN Networks -
and to develop communication between them -
I hope that we will have specialists
in each of them for the
A-O Categories of Project 3000.

These specialists
in each category
will hopefully
communicate to Ark Two -
their experiences and insights -
and Ark Two will then disperse
to the same Categories of Specialists
in other LERN Regions that information -
and those Regional Specialists
will communicate it to their local LERNs.

Presently,
this is largely conceptual -
but we are building the structure -
and getting some practice.
I know of nothing similar elsewhere.

---
The weather window
in the Middle East
is about to close.

But as the saying is -
it isn't over -
until the fat lady sings.
So -
still watching.

Below is a complimentary view
on the subject:
---

    Warships, Warships Everywhere,
    and Many a Bomb to Drop
         By Michael T. Klare
         TomDispatch.com

    Thursday 03 May 2007

Persian Gulf update.

    Today, the Nimitz is rapidly approaching the Persian Gulf, where it will
join two other U.S. aircraft carriers and the French carrier Charles De
Gaulle in the largest concentration of naval firepower in the region since
the launching of the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years ago.

    ...Officially, the Nimitz is on its way to the Gulf to replace the USS
Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is due to return to the United States for crew
leave and ship maintenance after months on station. But the U.S. Central
Command (Centcom), which exercises command authority over all U.S. forces in
the Persian Gulf area, refuses to say when the Eisenhower will actually
depart - or even when the Nimitz will arrive.

    For a time, at least, the United States will have three carrier battle
groups in the region. The USS John C. Stennis is the third. Each carrier is
accompanied by a small flotilla of cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and
support vessels, many equipped with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles
(TLAMs)...

    Rest assured, unlike us, the Iranians have noticed. After all, with the
arrival of the Nimitz battle group, the Bush administration will be - for an
unknown period of time - in an optimal position to strike Iran with a
punishing array of bombs and missiles should the President decide to carry
out his oft-repeated threat to eliminate Iran's nuclear program through
military action. "All options," as the administration loves to say, remain
ominously "on the table."

---
Uhhhh- maybe not.
I can't write a thing but
news contradicts it five minutes later.

http://tinyurl.com/2x7wjw

---


Bush and Olmert are doing a:

	"After you, Alphonse."

	"No, you first, my dear Gaston!"

routine:
(Okay, so most of my readers
are too young -
to understand the reference.)

Anyway - Olmert is in a pickle.

It goes to show that
"Two out of three"
is not always good.

Sharon had a plan.
Bring the peasants back out of
Gaza and the settlements
to behind the castle walls -
and destroy Hezbollah's missiles
in the North-
and then attack Iran.

Olmert executed the plan 1,2,3
like the fellow's:

	(1) go up in an airplane
	(2) jump out
	(3) open parachute

With Olmert -
no parachute -
and now everyone is mad at him
as he is about to hit the ground.

---
Well, I have run out of space.
And this is an entirely different newsletter
than the one that I wrote yesterday.
I don't know if it is better -
because I don't know what I wrote.
As I say -
it isn't deathless prose -
but at least you keep hearing from me.

Peace and love,
Bruce
DawnSayer@webpal.org