The AT&T building in Nashville

Lessons from Nashville’s 2020 Christmas Day Bombing

On Christmas Morning, 63-year-old Anthony Warner parked an explosive-laden RV on the usually bustling Second Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee and detonated it. The target is believed to have been AT&T’s “Batman building.” Because of Warner’s own copious warnings and the quick work of Nashville Metro police, there were thankfully no deaths other than Warner’s, and

Key developments for Saturday, December 26, 2020

An explosives-rigged RV detonated at 6:30 AM on Christmas Day on 2nd Avenue in Nashville after playing repeated, eerie evacuation warnings. Locals reported hearing gun shots before the evacuation warning began. There have been widespread communications failures in the area secondary to the blast as it occurred next to an AT&T building. The bombing is

Key developments for Friday, December 17, 2020

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are susceptible to attack and disruption. The Department of Homeland Security sees our reliance on GPS as a vulnerability. We rely on a vastly overconnected GPS web (transportation, energy, communications, emergency services, communication, even financial systems). The right jamming signal could wreak absolute havoc. There’s no real alternative to our over-reliance

Key developments for Tuesday, December 15, 2020

The US Treasury and Commerce Departments have suffered a major data breach by state-sponsored hacking. That “state” is thought to be Russia. A US cyber security company, FireEye, failed to secure previously identified weaknesses in their product SolarWinds which is an asset monitoring and management system for critical supply chains used by affected agencies. The

5 indigenous techniques for getting through winter the old-fashioned way

From the Inuit of Alaska to the Sámi of Finland, the winter survival skills of indigenous peoples were developed over millennia of trial and error. Much of the indigenous knowledge of how to get through winter falls into the following categories: Shelter craft — how to build dwellings from natural, local materials that will trap

Waxed canvas jackets and pants: this old-school prepper outerwear still delivers

Modern outdoor clothing is a miracle of science. Polyester, nylon, and other synthetic fabrics and blends have a combination of strength, weight, comfort, and protection that our fur-wearing ancestors could never have dreamed possible. But this stuff stops being amazing when you get too close to a fire and burn a hole in it, or

Orange candle

Making a candle from a hollowed out orange: hack or hoax?

Candles are still a worthwhile second or third backup option for an emergency light source, even though almost any combination of an LED light and rechargeable battery now blows away the best candle by any metric that matters — size, weight, lumens, reusability, durability, safety, cost, etc.. The one advantage candles still have over modern

A child using a radio

BaoFengs are fine radios, but they don’t have hundreds of miles of range

In our online travels, we sometimes see preppers buying pairs of BaoFeng handi-talkies for themselves and their distant loved ones because they think they’ll be able to communicate over hundreds of miles in a grid-down. Nothing could be further from the truth. The BaoFeng’s range isn’t anywhere close to that. Yes, the popular BaoFengs are