Next Time You Attend an Insurgency, Can You Be a Bit Less Obvious?

I had to shake my head at the idiocy displayed during the capitol riots a few weeks ago.  I am especially disappointed in the military members who were there.  Were they taught nothing about covert operations?  If you plan to commit a felony/treason/sedition/insurgency, consider how these fools were storming the capital one day then sitting in jail the next.  To keep your next mission on the downlow and avoid being caught, consider these tips...

• Don't splash your illegal activities all over social media.  This is pretty much a no-brainer.
• Don't bring your cell phone with you.  And don't buy a burner phone then use it to log into your email, banking app, and social media apps...that kind of defeats the purpose of a burner phone.
• Wear a mask!  Whether you are pro-masks or anti-masks, and with the pandemic being beside the point, see how easy it was to identify these maskless people?
• Don't wear easily identifiable clothing.  In fact, stop by the Goodwill and pick up clothes to wear then burn them afterwards.  Your clothes can be as identifiable as your face.
• Don't commit a crime on video.  Whether it's reporters videoing the scene or closed-circuit video surveillance as part of the building's security system, it's kind of dumb to have your crime immortalized on video forever.
• Don't plan your crime on social media.  Again, it will be immortalized forever, even if the social media site in questions is of the "super secret squirrel" variety.
• Between facial recognition, being maskless on the news, or telling friends about their nefarious activities, many of the rioters were easily identified and reported by friends and even their own kids.
• Don't bring anything with you that tracks your movements via GPS.  This includes you phone, your vehicle, or your court-ordered ankle monitor.
• Basically, don't leave your digital finger prints all over the scene of the crime.

Onward!

The inauguration went probably better than many people expected.  Now that stability seems to have taken up residence where instability was on display only a couple weeks ago, it's time to move forward both politically and individually.

Now that we have seen what can happen (I mean, who expected to see a riot inside the capitol building?), it should inspire people to prepare even more diligently than we have in the past.  When literally anything can happen, it makes sense to be prepared for everything.  Moving forward with our preps, we need to concentrate on all facets of preparedness including...

• Financial (can you survive a year of financial disaster in your own life?  Many people are still dealing with this very situation)
• Privacy (the vast, and often unknown, ways technology can be used against us was exactly how protestors at the capitol have been rounded up by law enforcement in the past weeks)
• Physical fitness and health (there's covid, a severely lacking healthcare system, a severely lacking health insurance system for many, obesity rates that are off the charts...people's health and fitness needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and it's one of the most basic preps anyone can do)
• Knowledge (when people are freaking out over not having toilet paper and having no idea what they can use instead, it points to an extreme lack of knowledge at the most basic level.  A deep and vast level of knowledge of all topics should be a daily preparedness activity)
• Self sufficiency (if there is one thing the pandemic has taught us, it is that we can't wholly rely on our usual supply chains to bring us everything we need to our local retailer.  We need to work on this)

Now our country and ourselves will move onward and upward.

Inauguration Day Preps

Hopefully tomorrow's presidential inauguration goes peacefully but with everything that has happened over the past weeks--and years for that matter--it's anyone's guess how things will turn out tomorrow.  

Some preps to consider...

• Top off your vehicle's gas tank
• Download all of your financial documents from your financial institutions
• Download movies and books you would want to have available should the power/internet shut down
• Back up all of you computer files
• Have cash on hand in case ATMs go down
• Consider staying home tomorrow until you see how things shake out
• If you must be out and about, take adequate precautions
• Know your rights
• Top off your food and supplies if needed (particularly produce and other perishables)
• Be aware of what is happening via the media/social media but don't take everything you learn from these sources as gospel (there will probably be a lot of misinformation spread around this event)
• Review your bug out bag and ensure it is ready to go if necessary
• Be prepared to defend yourself if trouble comes to you (obviously don't go looking for trouble)
• Make any last-minute preps for those in your care (babies and children, the elderly, the ill or infirm, pets, etc)
• Make a plan if family members will be in different places tomorrow (communications, evacuation, etc)
• Make a quick review of your home security systems (cameras, putting valuables away in a hidden safe, etc)
• Go grey man--don't dress flashy, don't stand out in the crowd, don't partake in seditious or violent activities, don't argue with people over politics or other high-tension topics (you won't change their mind and it is a waste of your energy to do so), etc.

From the Social Media Sucks File...

Just when I think the social media/politics situation can't get more farcical...

• Ron Paul (of all people!) got blocked by Facebook from accessing his page
• Twitter has gone full-on facepalm
• Gab seems to be picking up the slack from the Parler shutdown
• This guy has the best response to the current social media situation
• And this guy has become my favorite YouTuber over the past 24 hours
• Apparently web hosting platforms are getting out the ban hammer
• It would be poetic justice if AWS got turned into a public utility instead of a private service since nearly 50% of all US business sites are hosted on this service.  Monopolies=bad.
• I think Trump is a lunatic but that is my choice to make.  Nearly 50% of the nation doesn't agree with me and that's fine.  I don't think he should be silenced though.  Apparently big tech doesn't agree with me either.
• Elon Musk summed up the situation nicely.
• ALL of the popular platforms use censorship to bolster their sway over what people consume on the internet including Google, Twitter, Instagram, FaceBook, YouTube, Reddit, etc.
• And did you know that six corporations own 90% of the media outlets in the US?
• This can have some truly Orwellian outcomes.
• Or give you Truman Show flashbacks.
• If you haven't seen the Social Dilemma, check it out.
• The bottom line, social media is controlling you.  Prepare accordingly.

When Disaster Strikes

If you are in the US check your local PBS station for a new series called 'When Disaster Strikes'.  The show gives an interesting overview of how the international response is managed when a major disaster strikes a region.  Some things I learned from the first episode: the UN uses disaster response 'clusters' to divide up the responsibilities of major disasters, Team Rubicon is one of the major response organizations from the US, and there are several recipes online for the energy biscuits they were using to keep people from starving right after the disaster.  Check it out!

And the Fallout Continues...

It's been quite a week in American history.  Some sort of half-assed take over of the nation's capital followed by a knee-jerk reaction by social media platforms...is this what we have to look forward to in the future?  Some thoughts...

• If there are this many people who will pick up and go to DC and storm the capital, they should probably be listened to.
• Letting social media decide who can have a national platform and who can't, is a bad, make that really bad, idea.
• The media in general has decided to take sides, yet I don't remember BLM being censored on social media even though their protests led to deaths, looting, and destruction around the country.
• And while I realize that social media services are privately owned platforms and can do what they want, when they can reach billions of people at once, they should fall into a different category than "I can censor whoever I want because I own the platform".
• On the other hand, if you are serious about laying siege to the US capital, maybe don't risk your military pension and freedom by acting in accordance with a bunch of chuckleheads. 
• And maybe don't risk your life, freedom, and pension for a leader who will throw you under the bus faster than you can say 'impeachment'.
• I'm a fan of the freedom of speech for obvious reasons, and by speech, I mean ALL speech--hate speech, incitement speech, etc.  I am also a fan of people being held responsible for their actions.

For now I will continue to watch the fallout from this situation, focus my preps for now on privacy concerns, and try to ignore the media/social media as much as possible because they are just as complicit in all of this mess as anyone else.

20 YouTube Channels to Check Out

Now that things in DC have chilled out a bit, we will move along to other prepping topics.  Here are 20 YouTube channels that preppers should check out:

1. Kit Badger (all things guns)
2. Cheap RV Living (alternative living options)
3. Warrior Poet Society (preparedness, guns, military)
4. Bushradical (rural living skills)
5. Canadian Prepper (preparedness)
6. Provident Prepper (preparedness)
7. Vigilance Elite (preparedness, guns, military)
8. HoboTech (off-grid tech)
9. The Urban Prepper (preparedness)
10. Fieldcraft Survival (preparedness)
11. Sensible Prepper (preparedness)
12. Fy Nyth (off-grid living)
13. Nomad Capitalist (expat stuff)
14. Scottie's Tech Info (technology)
15. Modern Rogue (survival, preparedness)
16. Prep Medic (tactical medicine)
17. MedWild (wilderness medicine)
18. Darwin on the Trail (backpacking)
19. Homemade Wanderlust (backpacking)
20. Survival Dispatch (survival, preparedness)