Check Out the New CNI Website

There's been a bit of remodeling over at the Code Name Insight website.  Check out the new site here.  All of the same info is there but the design has been revamped. Also this blog should be a bit more active over the next few months as my travel schedule has slowed down a bit which will allow me to concentrate on writing (fascinating, useful, interesting) blog posts for your reading pleasure.

10 Things to Be Concerned About Now

On my radar at this time...

1. The price of food will be going up due to the drought.  Stock up now.
2. It's always a good time to stock up on ammo.
3. Grow a garden, no matter how small.  Also due to the drought, produce prices should rise in the near future.
4. Be able to protect your home and family.  Crime stats are rising right along with unemployment stats.
5. Be able to earn an income.  Or multiple streams of income.  When everyone else is relying on a job that may or may not be there, you should rely on yourself to provide you an income.
6. Be debt free.  There is no better way to protect yourself financially than to have as little debt and as few bills as possible.
7. The weather.  Flooding, drought, a wicked hurricane season...this should be much more concerning to people than the supposed end of the world in December.
8. The financial situation in Europe, as well as the rest of the world.  People want to pay the least amount possible for everything they purchase yet they want high paying jobs...go figure.
9. The situation in Syria and the Middle East.  It's always been a hot bed of activity over there.  Things could hit a critical peak in a few months.
10. The possibility of another mass shooting.  Statistically, this is probably one of the things you should be least concerned about.

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting

It's pretty bad when "mass shooting" gets its own blog category because there are so many of them but with a quick count, yesterday's mass shooting in Colorado brings to five the number of mass shootings I have written about here.  There is no way to write a blog post about "do this and avoid a mass shooting" because each shooting is usually quite unique so I will just throw out some random thoughts on the topic:

• Random shootings are, well, random so there is no way to pinpoint with any amount of accuracy places where these events will occur or any way to determine who will carry out such shootings.
• I personally feel that when it is your time to go, you go (based on seeing way to many people die who, medically speaking, "shouldn't have" while an equally large number of people escape death when really, medically speaking again, they "should have").  But anyway, that's my personal view...
• It wouldn't surprise me if the shooter is found mentally ill.  Mental illness is rampant in our society and the care of the mentally ill in the US is atrocious.
• Guns don't kill people, people kill people, although gun grabbers will latch on to such a tragedy as a way to push for more gun control laws--or an outright ban--in order to "keep us safe".
• What is the deal with Colorado?  Two mass shootings in one otherwise unremarkable state. WTF?
• What is it with so many people taking babies and infants to midnight movies?  Not that this has anything to do with the shooting specifically but I was rather surprised that there were so many babies and small children at the theater during the shooting.  Or maybe I am just old but kids that young belong in bed before midnight and small children don't need to be at an R rated movie.  But again, I am probably just old and such a thing is common place now.
• What a media feeding frenzy.  These types of events bring every type of media person out of the woodwork so they can then pounce on victims of the tragedy and ask them how they feel.  How do they think they feel?
• I wonder how many people in the theater were armed?  I can't help but think that a few armed citizens enjoying the movie could have made a difference.  Obviously I mean armed and tactically trained.
• And again I may be old but I don't like crowds, mostly for tactical reasons.  When the spouse insisted on seeing New Years Eve from the Las Vegas Strip I reluctantly went along.  That was the first, last, and only time we will do such a thing.  I spent the entire evening watching everything but the festivities--mostly I was watching visible and plain-clothes security, the movement of the crowd, and listening for sounds other than from the festivities (difficult when there are fireworks going off).  Crowds are a great location for a mass shooting because the crowd is  busy paying attention to the event (a movie in this case), it makes a huge statement (the shooters gains instant and permanent notoriety), the anonymity of the crowd allows the shooter to move around the crowd seeking optimal shooting locations, and the sheer number of people means that the kill ratio will probably be pretty high.
• Finally my prayers go out to the victims and families of victims who were killed or injured in the shooting.  My prayers also go out to the parents of the shooter, I can't image what it would be like to have the police show up at your door telling you that your kid just killed a dozen people.  For those impacted by the shooting, I hope they seek trauma mental health services if necessary because even if the person wasn't wounded or knew any of the dead, this type of trauma can have a pretty serious psychological impact.

10 Things That Kids Used to Carry That You Probably Still Should

When I was a kid we used to carry all sorts of things in our pockets.  These things would be interesting or useful and could even be put to use in a survival situation because back then (in the dark ages) if we weren't in school we would be outside. For the ENTIRE day.  I'm talking leave the house at daybreak and return at night fall with nary a parent actually knowing where we were.  I know this is a foreign concept to most people these days since nine times out of ten, if you are looking for your kid, they will be electronically tethered to you and/or parked on your sofa, but back then we were a bit more self sufficient.  Here's 10 items that I can remember carrying around with me most, if not all, of the time.

1. A pocket knife.  I got it from my grandfather, carried it everywhere, and no one in school freaked out because many kids carried a pocket knife with them all the time.  And no, there was not one single stabbing in nearly two decades of attending school.
2. Rubber bands.  Pick up a rock and you have an instant sling shot (unless we had time then we would find a good branch and make a nice frame for our slingshot).
3. A whistle.  It was a way to signal your friends and/or annoy people.  Generally we would signal in Morse Code which was a big deal back then.
4. A magnifying glass.  Usually for annoying ants and other small crawly creatures but also useful for starting fires (and by the grace of God we never burned anything down but it was close a few times).
5. Candy.  Usually some sort of hard, sticky candy.
6. Change.  While we rarely had actual dollar bills to carry around, we always carried coins for the rare occasion we came across a store.
7. A small, battery-operated transistor radio.  It was a big deal to have this kind of small radio that you could carry around with you so when they became reasonably priced my grand father made sure each kid had one (he was much into technology and I'm sure he would have been quite fascinated with computers which he never lived to see).
8. Matches.  Kids back then seemed to always have a book of matches in their pocket (which came in handy when we hit the age where sneaking a smoke became popular).
9. Something interesting to show your friends.  This could change day by day and range from a cool rock to a small toy to a frog.
10. A pencil and paper.  Well I may have been an odd kid but I always carried a stubby pencil and a small notebook of paper with me.

While old fashioned, many of these items would still come in handy in a survival situation today.

10 (More Practical, Less Philosophical) Deadly Decisions You Can Make

I came across this blog post and thought "this should be interesting, it's always a good idea to avoid deadly decisions."  It turns out the decisions discussed in this post are more deadly for your spirit than for your actual person.  So, in the interest of keeping you physically alive, here are 10 deadly decisions people often make (obviously you will want to avoid making these decisions).

1. Driving under the influence of anything (drugs, alcohol, prescription meds, while reading text messages, while having a heated cell phone conversation, et al).
2. Partaking in physical activities that are a) inherently dangerous, or b) beyond your abilities.  These include but are not limited to: mountain climbing, base jumping, swimming in difficult water, etc.
3. Stressing out on a regular basis.  You always hear that you should reduce stress but I have seen the outcome of years of unchecked stress and it usually ends in death via alcoholism, overdose, or a complete shutdown of the organs of the body (not a pretty thing to see BTW).
4. Partaking in dangerous occupations, everything from the legal to the illegal (drug dealer, gang banger, etc).
5. Who you associate with (everyone from drug dealers--see dangerous occupations above--to people who make you want to strangle them on sight--see cheating SOs or a boss that makes you want to go postal).
6. Treating your body like a garbage can (this can be everything from drinking to excess and smoking to eating anything and everything or choosing not to exercise).
7. Not receiving appropriate medical care (sometimes small medical issues can blow up into deadly/life-threatening situations due to lack of appropriate care).  BTW suicide--mostly from untreated depression--is a common causes of death in our country.
8. Where you live (parts of Chicago are a good example of where not to live).
9. Not making adjustments as you age (it's astounding the number of elderly who die from preventable falls. Ditto for medication mistakes and driving mistakes).
10. Not making adjustments to your environment (ie: in a heatwave, seek cooling; if a hurricane is on it's way, evacuate; if the grandkids are coming over, lock up your firearms, etc). 

How Much Do You Rely on the Grid?

If you are like most people, and indeed most of these people who are currently being affected by the after-affects of the huge storm on the East Coast a few days ago, the answer would be 'a lot'.  And it is this very dependence on the grid (in this case "the grid" refers to ALL services provided by the government and local utilities) that as preppers you need to be preparing for.  So if you were in these folks' situation--in a disaster with limited or no services--how would you prepare for...

• Not having power for a week?
• Keeping the food in your refrigerator and freezer cold or frozen?
• Keeping your home cool, or if such a disaster happens in the winter, warm?
• Garbage piling up?
• Driving in a city with no stop lights or lighted streets?
• Driving on roads blocked by downed trees?
• Getting fuel for your car when there is no power?
• Taking care of elderly family members who rely on electricity (for oxygen systems, etc)?
• Having enough food for your family to eat for a week or two without going to the store?
• Having enough water for your family to drink and wash with if it isn't coming through the taps?
• Protecting your home from vandals and looters?
• Taking care of basic medical problems yourself if there is limited or no medical services available in your community?
• Taking care of human waste if there is no water coming into your home?
• Keeping cooking/eating/washing conditions as sanitary as possible without running water?

These are the very problems that the average person is going to have to deal with.  Mostly likely there won't be one TEOTWAWKI event that will immediately throw you into survival mode but it will be the everyday kind of disasters that can strike at any time and without warning that will have you either kicking yourself for not preparing as you wait in line for whatever kind of help can (eventually) get to you or thanking yourself for taking the time now to prepare for any type of eventuality that could kick you off the grid for a while (it really doesn't matter what the disaster is as nearly all disasters tend to cut you off from the services that everyone has come to rely on such as electricity, running water, gas at the gas station, and food at the grocery stores). Think of these types of scenarios when you are doing your prepping and disaster planning.