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News for week of 2023-01-30 (all current event convos go here).
Carlotta SusannaStaff - February 22, 2023 Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MoreNews for week of 2023-02-06
Carlotta SusannaStaff - February 18, 2023 Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MoreNews for week of 2023-02-13
Carlotta SusannaStaff - February 16, 2023 Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MoreNews for week of 2023-01-16 (all current event convos go here).
Carlotta SusannaStaff - February 4, 2023 Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MoreNews for week of 2023-01-09 (all current event convos go here)
Carlotta SusannaStaff - January 16, 2023 Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MoreFavorite source for storm warnings?
Hardened - January 13, 2023 There have been some extreme weather effects in the US lately and San Francisco is about to have an another one. The National Weather Service’s Bay Area office issued “a frank and dire warning to citizens”:
“To put it simply, this will likely be one of the most impactful systems on a widespread scale that this meteorologist has seen in a long while,” the warning read. “The impacts will include widespread flooding, roads washing out, hillside collapsing, trees down (potentially full groves), widespread power outages, immediate disruption to commerce, and the worst of all, likely loss of human life. This is truly a brutal system that we are looking at and needs to be taken seriously.”
I find it helpful to get a “heads-up” about storms like this and sometimes they will appear in my regular daily news (The New York Times), but I’d like a more specialized source to check regularly. My built-in iPhone weather app is pretty good at providing forecasts when things are normal but it didn’t warn me about the artic blast we received in December.
What’s your favorite source to check for storm forecasts?
Read MoreNews for week of 2023-01-02 (all current event convos go here)
Gideon ParkerStaff - January 10, 2023 Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MoreNews for week of 2022-12-26 (all current event convos go here)
Carlotta SusannaStaff - January 1, 2023 Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MoreNews for week of 2022-12-19 (all current event convos go here)
Carlotta SusannaStaff - January 1, 2023 Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MoreJust another reason to be prepared!
Steve Martin - December 26, 2022 News story this morning out of North Carolina where a massive power outage hit….deliberately caused by gunfire.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/intentional-vandalism-leaves-40-000-without-power-in-n-c/ar-AA14SalO
Read MoreNews for week of 2022-12-12 (all current event convos go here)
Carlotta SusannaStaff - December 19, 2022 This is the replacement for the twice-weekly news roundups I stopped publishing last week. Instead of all the content coming from me, we’ll instead make a blank forum thread like this every Monday, and then anyone can chip in the news and thoughts they have. We’ll keep this weekly thread going for as long as ya’ll find it useful.
Make a top-level comment for a new story/topic. Discussions about the topic should be in the replies to the top-level comment. That way things stay organized and every main comment as you scroll down is a different piece of news.
Read MorePrepper demographics updated with 2020 FEMA survey data: over 20M people in the US alone!
Dr. Chris Ellis - November 19, 2022 Editor’s note: Colonel Chris Ellis, PhD, directs a disaster cell for the US military at India-Pacific Command. In part via his fellowship as a Goodpaster Scholar at Cornell University, he’s spent years analyzing data about the preparedness community.
The last time we analyzed FEMA survey data, it caused a bit of a splash, becoming #1 on google for “prepper demographics” and leading to a wave of mainstream press coverage about how this community has grown and moved into the mainstream. (Such as today’s 60 Minutes episode about the market growth!)
But that was using 2018 pre-Covid data (which is released years later), and we’ve since been anxious to get hands on the data FEMA collected after the pandemic changed everything. Everyone’s been expecting that Covid — and everything else that’s made ’20-22 so much fun — did nothing but continue to pour fuel on the fire of this growing community.
I’ve finished crunching the numbers using FEMA phone surveys collected in the first half of 2020, comparing it with annual data from the National Household Survey (NHS) going back through 2017.
So this does capture the Covid effect, but perhaps may have been too soon to really reflect the long-term changes, as people were still caught in the chaos the first months of 2020, just trying to figure out how to get toilet paper or not be a cat on their courtroom Zoom. The future batch of data that covers ‘20-21 should be more telling.
Key takeaways:
The number of people who can handle >31 days of self-reliance grew 50% over the 2017-20 period. The 20 million US preppers mark has solidly been crossed. If you use the broader definition of a prepper as someone who can handle at least two weeks of disruption, the number gets even higher. That means around 7% of all US households were actively working on self-reliance in ’19-20, solidly increasing from 2% to 3% then 5% in recent years. 10% is only a matter of time. While the “basic preppers” segment was consistently growing year over year before Covid, the “advanced preppers” segment had been flat or even shrank a little — but that trend reversed in 2020, showing that many people saw the need to go beyond the basics in response to world events. Nothing major changed around geography: the same states that prep a lot (eg. Montana) and those that don’t (eg. Washington D.C.) stayed in their relative rankings. Islanders, such as people in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, continue to prep at rates 50% higher than mainlanders. Rural households are still more likely than urbanites to prep, but we continue to see strong growth among city dwellers. Asians disproportionately embraced prepping in ’20, which perhaps makes sense given what they may have been hearing from friends and family back in Asia during early Covid combined with some of the anti-Asian racism that grew in the US in ’20. Perhaps most surprising: the trend in recent years was that preppers were getting younger. But that trend reversed in 2020, with the average age actually increasing a little to 52.6. The number of younger preppers still grew — 25-34 year olds are still the largest segment on The Prepared — but there was even more growth among the older crowd during this period. There’s some weird results in this data, though, which show there’s still a disconnect between reality and how a typical household thinks about risk. But we’ve started getting a peek at the ’21 data, where FEMA changed some of the survey questions to be clearer, and I think it will result in better data going forward.While the term “prepper” is ill-defined quantitatively, in my research I use a simple heuristic from the NHS: how long can you survive at home without publicly provided water, power, or transportation? I quantify anyone with 31 days or more of self-reported preparedness as a Resilient Citizen. Those with 30 days or less are Regulars. Highly Resilient Citizens (HRCs) have 90 days or more and Ultra-High Resilient Citizens (UHRCs) are at 97 or more days (the maximum allowed response in FEMA’s survey).
Preparedness trends
Americans collectively have increased their levels of disaster preparedness from 2017 to 2020. For Regulars, the effect is small – an average of seven days in 2017 to just over eight days in 2020 – but still measurable. For this group, each year saw a slight increase. When including Resilient Citizens and averaging all Americans, the mean jumped from just under 10 days of resilience in 2017 to 12.4 days in 2020.
The overall number of Resilient Citizens in America has also increased every year. In 2017, approximately four out of every 100 people was a Resilient Citizen. In 2020 it had increased 50% to nearly six per 100. In sheer numbers this means 14.9 million Americans had 31 days or more of at-home preparedness in 2020. Ultra-Highly Resilient Citizens (97 days or more of preparedness) jumped from four million people in 2017 to 6.7 million in 2020. There is still a heavy stereotype against “preppers,” but as more people prepare from across the political spectrum – and in various ways – the stigma appears to be slowly eroding.
Geography
Where do these households reside? I analyzed the data in two different ways. First was by US state or territory. Generally speaking, lower population, rural states have the highest rates of preparedness. Montana, Idaho, Alaska, New Hampshire, Maine, Utah, Wyoming, West Virginia, Delaware, and Hawaii make up the top ten, in descending order (i.e. Montana had the highest average). The lowest average states were, with the exception of Texas and Illinois, all east coast states or the District of Columbia (Washington, DC was the lowest, followed by Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina). A cursory look at yearly changes, by state, yielded no discernable pattern. California and Florida saw annual increases in Resilient Citizens all four years, but Texas and New York saw random fluctuation.
Another pattern that held from my previous research was that of higher aggregate rates of preparedness in US islands (Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands). The four-year average of residents of island locales indicates preparedness rates ~50% higher than those on the mainland (15.7 days versus 10.8 days respectively). I maintain my original conjecture that primary drivers of this disparate finding are a “fear of state failure” coupled with an inability to easily flee larger disasters for island residents.
A second way to geographically analyze the data is by an urban-rural delineation. The US Department of Agriculture bins zip codes into one of ten population density categories (1 = an urban area with 50,000 people or more, 10 = rural at less than 2,500 people). There is a positive correlation between ruralness and higher levels of preparedness across all Americans. 80% of Regulars surveyed lived in an urban area. However, a sizable two-thirds of all self-identified Resilient Citizens and 56% of UHRCs lived in an urban area as well.
Race
In regard to race, the four-year aggregates of all Americans yields that the category “Alaskan or Native American” had the highest average at 14 days of preparedness. After this was Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, then Whites, Hispanics, Blacks/African Americans, and Asians, in that order. Whites and Blacks saw yearly increases while the other races had fluctuations. Asians were very stable from 2017-2019 but saw a major jump in 2020. Several possibilities explain this latter finding: increased discrimination, higher cultural or social transmission of preparedness, news consumption patterns, or affinity to stories emanating from China and Asia writ large at the beginning of COVID.
The story among Resilient Citizens is slightly different. For four-year aggregates, Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders topped the list at 92 days, followed by Alaskans/Native Americans (79 days), then Hispanics (77), Whites (76), Blacks (71), and Asians (65). A large word of caution is in order here though, with all races other than Whites, the number of minority resilient citizens is quite low in any given year. There are not enough respondents in these categories for me to confidently depict any racial patterns among Resilient Citizens on a yearly basis. Relatedly, when conducting multi-variate analysis and controlling for things such as income, education, and an urban vs. rural home location, the variable of race was a poor indicator of being a Resilient Citizen or not. The maximum observed impact across numerous calculations was only 2%.
Age
Resilient Citizens are slightly older (52.6 years old) overall than Regulars (51.7), but this difference is less than a year. Interestingly though, the steady growth in Resilient Citizens is NOT among the young. The 35 and under crowd make up a much smaller percentage of Resilient Citizens in 2020 (14.4%) than they did in 2017 (20.6%). Comparatively, growth in those aged 36-49 is nearly 50% and for those 50+ it is 62% from 2017 to 2020. Isolating those 60 and over saw a near doubling; the increase was 92%! Some of this differentiation between young and old could be due to income levels and overall net worth.
Other variables
In all of the data analyzed, the most shocking finding to me was the reported rates of experiencing a disaster. FEMA asked, “Have you or your family ever experienced the impacts of a disaster?” Among all respondents, the 2020 data – in the midst of COVID – was slightly down as compared to 2017. Among all Resilient Citizens, it was down nine full percentage points. The 2020 survey was conducted in the summer of 2020, at the height of the first lockdown and several months before any vaccines were developed and available.
A higher percentage of women reported being Resilient Citizens in 2020 than in 2017, but the numbers were too small for any statistical significance. Another interesting jump was in the number of Resilient Citizens with a disability. There was a 50% increase from 2017 to 2020. Of note, the FEMA data indicated, at best, only a 3% rise in disabilities in the overall population during the same timeframe.
Among preparedness circles is the concept of “bugging out”. That is, quickly leaving your home at – or just prior to – disaster onset with an already assembled bag of emergency supplies. Among Regulars, even though they reported higher rates of at home preparedness, their reported ready-to-go rates saw no discernable patterns among the four years studied. By contrast, Resilient Citizens reported a 35% jump in bug-out readiness in 2019 and maintained that new high in 2020.
Homeowner’s insurance levels increased in both groups slightly, however there were just three years of data, so this could be observed randomness. Money saved for an emergency increased among Regulars but decreased among Resilient Citizens. My hunch is that Resilient Citizens converted cash into preps.
What didn’t change? Education levels between Regulars and Resilient Citizens continues to be nearly equal across all four years. Income levels were relatively stable with Resilient Citizens on average earning a few thousand dollars more per year than Regulars. Resilient Citizens still report higher levels of confidence in their ability to take the steps necessary to prepare for a disaster than Regulars. Resilient Citizens also maintain they are far more likely to have had a disaster plan for at least a year.
Looking forward to 2021 data
FEMA has just released the 2021 National Household Survey raw data. The survey instrument has undergone some substantial changes. First of all, it’s a larger query of America. 2021’s sample size is around 7,200 people versus the roughly 5,000 per year in each of the 2017-2020 datasets. Secondly, some of the key questions have been modified. For example, people are no longer asked their monthly income, but rather their annual income. I personally think this will yield clearer results.
Another question modification that will have significant impact on comparing 2021 to previous years is my key variable of days of total survival at home. 2021’s new survey instrument no longer asks about how long one could last at home without power, water, or transportation. It now breaks these down into separate questions. For example: “How long could you live in your home without power?” And, the answers are no longer discrete numbers, but rather chronological heuristics such as “More than one week” or “More than three months.” If you assume that those who answered at more than one month and more than three months, combined, for both the power question and the running water question are analogous to Resilient Citizens, then the percentage of Americans in 2021 at this higher level is now 8.3%, or roughly 21.5 million Americans. Analysis is ongoing and I hope to release findings in 2023.
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Preview of whole new TP website launching soon
John AdamaStaff - November 11, 2022 Timing update: The person building the website got sick with the ‘tripledemic,’ so we’re delayed at least into January.
Crossposting this from the blog since some people only visit one or the other (which we’re fixing in the new site, haha!)
This first version is more about cleaning up the existing site/experiments and laying a solid foundation for faster future improvements. For example, the current site tech prevented us from improving the way threaded convos happen here in the forum / how you could track what was the newest comment. The new foundation will let us do that.
More details and sneak peeks here. Example:
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Giveaway: New survival guide book from Alone’s S9 Juan Pablo Quinonez
John AdamaStaff - October 23, 2022 Edit: All copies are spoken for
To spread the news about the books release, current Alone season contestant JP is sending out 3 free copies to the TP community, with the expectation of a fair review shared here later! (Your help is how we keep the best books list updated too!)
The book is THRIVE: Long-Term Wilderness Survival Guide. (It’s 120,000 words, so you’re not expected to read the whole thing. Just a fair shake.) Seems like more of a reference guide “covering modern survival skills with bushcraft techniques, step-by-step instructions, and over 400 illustrations.”
First come first served. Reply here (we’ll email the address on your account) or contact us directly via email: hello@thissite
Read MoreHikers caught in a wildfire
Kira - September 19, 2022 Hi all,
Came across this article about how two hikers that got caught in a wildfire survived (no pay wall) and thought some of y’all might be interested: https://www.khq.com/news/hikers-stranded-atop-mountain-by-bolt-creek-fire/article_d6cc054e-322e-11ed-9165-231473ca123d.html
They assumed the smoke was coming from the other side of the mountains. They weren’t able to be evacuated by first responders, came close to the fire several times, ran out of water, and nearly fell of a cliff, but were ultimately able to find their car and evacuate. I’m curious what, if any, different choices or preparations you might have made? I’d have avoided going outside in smoke full stop (it’s thick enough to coat my yard in ash, and I’m several towns over!) and would have checked the fire map (again, thick smoke).
Read MoreStudy: scientists should research possibility of human extinction from climate change
Ant0kneeguy - September 12, 2022 A study was published on August 1st (Edit: 2022) in a collaboration from researchers from various countries and universities, including the esteemed Oxford and Cambridge. It doesn’t assess the likelihood of human extinction, but instead looks at how much research has been done on this crucial topic. And a popular news broadcaster in the UK even took up the story.The authors conclude that science is sorely lacking. To quote the paper directly: “The closest attempts to directly study or comprehensively address how climate change could lead to human extinction or global catastrophe have come through popular science books”. Not scientific, peer-reviewed research. Pop-sci books.
As far as I can tell, the closest current science actually gets is examining individual risks (e.g: how food production will be affected by rising temperatures) rather than taking them together, let alone looking at how risks might cascade into or exacerbate each other.But I suppose what surprised me the most, and why I’m writing about this, is this. Exisitential risk is actually making the news in a highly-regarded, mainstream news outlet, and is becoming the subject of serious research from respected academic institutions. The fact that Cambridge University actually has a Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at all I think shows the beginnings of a step change in attitudes. Naturally, we have a way to go. I laughed out loud at how the news article described the study: “The researchers said that seriously studying the consequences of worst-case scenarios was vital, even though it might scare people.” It would seem that most are (understandably) still of the attitude ‘we shouldn’t talk about scary things because it paralyses people’, but things may be beginning to change.
What do you all think about this? The study is here, and the news article talking about it is here.
Read MoreFree FEMA webinar with TP and myself
John AdamaStaff - August 8, 2022 Excited to share that FEMA has partnered with The Prepared to improve their public content and training! (How many other “prepper websites” can say that?!)
Our first webinar is in a week, Wednesday July 13th from 1-2:30ish US Eastern. A recording will be available after, which I’ll share here.
Update: Link to recording.
Registration: https://fema.connectsolutions.com/theprepared/event/registration.html
Their announcement:
I’ll teach/soapbox for 45 mins or so, then up to 45 mins of Q&A. We’ll cover the modern preparedness framework TP’s credited with popularizing, show specific gear examples, talk about skills and next steps, and so on. Basically a crash course for both personal prepping and how to teach others / be a community leader.
If you’re already familiar with TP’s teachings, there won’t be anything new (I’m essentially teaching what’s already on our website), but you’re of course welcome to join anyway — there will be a few hundred leaders from various CERT organizations, leaders of big FEMA chapters like New York City, and so on.
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Prepping in old German barracks, an article about trying to stay positive about a collapse of the food supply
Juna - August 8, 2022 Yesterday I read this interesting article by The Guardian about a prepper who bought an old German barrack
Change is coming’: Meet the Englishman prepping for climate apocalypse in an old German barracks
Read MoreNew affordable online pharmacy saves people thousands on life saving medicine
rebecca - July 2, 2022 You may have seen Mark Cuban on Shark Tank as the famous billionaire investor/businessman. He recently opened up an online pharmacy that is trending all over the news right now with the amazing cost savings that it is offering to people. Instead of selling drugs for ridiculous amounts, they only mark it up 15% (still a healthy profit for them). A traditional pharmacy may charge you or your insurance company $9657, but at this place it is only $39. Isn’t that insane how much of a savings that is for you? Important medications are now accessible to people who may have just gone without, rationed, or went bankrupt trying to stay alive.
If you need a lifesaving prescription medication, check out costplusdrugs.com and see if you can get it cheaper on there.
They don’t take insurance cards to pay for the drugs, but the savings are still so incredibly good that you might end up paying less for the same medication then you were with your co-pay or deductible.
It is easier to store up some extra $40 medication than it is a $9500 one. Hopefully this allows people to not only have what they need, but save some up for a rainy day if there are supply chain issues, job loss, etc.
Read MoreHow has rising gas prices influenced you?
Conrad B - June 12, 2022 I really thought that we would see a small spike in gas prices with the conflict in Ukraine and then level out, but it doesn’t seem to stop.
Chart from Gasbuddy.com and is the national average.
How has the rising gas prices affected everyone? Are you driving less? Have you bought a more fuel efficient vehicle? Did you switch jobs to commute less?
I’ve been driving much less often and combine all my errands into one trip so that I don’t have to go out. It changes the way I prepare because I need to store more items on hand and sometimes just go without something like bread for a couple days until I build up enough reasons to go out again. I don’t visit family or go out for entertainment as much as I used to either. It feels like I am back under quarantine and is starting to affect my mental health like during covid.
I also rotate through my stored gas cans every 6 months so I don’t have to buy fuel stabilizer, but maybe it would be cheaper to stabilize the fuel because 6 months from now it might be much higher.
Stupid me is going to laugh and be wish for $4.90 gas in 2 months time when it’s then around $6.25 or something.
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Be aware of infectious disease outbreaks near you with this free map tracker
CamilleContributor - June 11, 2022 Wanted to link a resource I was recently introduced to that lets you track health including: animal diseases, environmental disasters, hospital acquired infections, vectorborne diseases, STDs, respiratory infections etc across the world. You can narrow it down to your local area and see what is in your region that you can think about preparing for.
https://www.healthmap.org/en/
Read MoreCost-of-living crisis changes Brits’ shopping habits: Hard-pressed shoppers are bulk buying
Bill Masen - June 2, 2022 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10712489/British-shoppers-resorting-bulk-buying-amid-cost-living-crisis.html
Ala Prepping style:)
British shoppers are bulk-buying groceries to save money amid the ongoing cost of living crisis, a new report has suggested.
The Barclaycard consumer survey found that 35 per cent of card users were stocking up on everyday items such as tea and coffee, tinned tuna and hygiene products such as shampoo and hand soap.
Buying in bulk can equal less trips to the supermarket – meaning less money spent on increasingly expensive fuel – while there are often savings to be had in buying products at wholesale.
According to the report, gathered using data from March, 13 per cent of shoppers are stocking up on canned tomatoes, baked beans, tuna, pasta, flour, rice and grains.
Meanwhile, 11 per cent are bulk-buying household supplies such as toilet roll, while 10 per cent are stocking up on laundry detergent and shampoo.
At least 10 per cent are also getting extra supplies of tea and coffee.
Shoppers also admitted to bulk buying over-the-counter painkillers (8 per cent), pet food (7 per cent), fizzy drinks (6 per cent), alcohol (5 per cent), Easter eggs and chocolate (5 per cent) and baby supplies (3 per cent).
José Carvalho, Head of Consumer Products at Barclaycard, said: ‘Many sectors saw strong growth in March compared to the same period in 2019, as sunnier weather encouraged Brits to socialise at pubs and bars, book staycations and update their wardrobes for spring and summer.
‘However, rising fuel prices and household bills are clearly starting to influence consumer behaviour, with many Brits changing their travel and shopping habits to save money.
While this may dampen growth in the months ahead, we shouldn’t overlook the expected heatwave later in April, and the fast-approaching Easter holidays, both of which are likely to boost non-essential spending.’
The data from Barclaycard, which sees nearly half of the nation’s credit and debit card transactions, revealed that spending on essential items grew 18.1 per cent in March, the highest uplift since September 2021.
However this was largely driven by spend on fuel, which soared 26.1 per cent as prices at the pump continued to climb.
Card spending in general grew 17.7 per cent last month compared to the same period in 2019, as Brits took advantage of the sunnier weather and lifting of all remaining Covid restrictions to visit pubs, dine out, and update their wardrobes in preparation for the months ahead.
However, the cost of living is causing increasing concern for most UK adults, with travel plans and shopping preferences changing in response to rising fuel and food prices.
Some two fifths of drivers (41 per cent) said they are changing the way they travel.
Of these, over half (54 per cent) are walking more often, almost two-fifths (38 per cent) are cutting back on long car journeys, and 22 per cent are opting to cycle instead.
Supermarkets saw a 16.9 per cent jump in card spendings – higher than the growth recorded in both January (15.5 per cent) and February (16.0 per cent) this year – but much of this was likely due to inflation and rising food prices.
Spending on essentials was also boosted by a demand for convenience and the popularity of local shopping, with food and drink specialist stores (butchers, bakeries and online meal-kit providers) up by 76.9 per cent compared with three years ago.
Barclaycard made comparisons with three years ago because consumer spending was so heavily affected by the lockdowns in March 2020 and March 2021.
Read MoreAnother article on UK preppers
UKSeb - June 1, 2022 In the “prepping goes mainstream” series…
Everyone should prep’: the Britons stocking up for hard times
Read MoreComputer Fraud and Abuse Act News
Karl Winterling - May 25, 2022 I migrated this from the news blog discussion because I thought it was a little tangential.
I thought the following news could potentially be of interest to preppers, especially if you take OpSec very seriously and don’t always like saying who you are.
The Department of Justice made revisions to its Computer Fraud and Abuse Act policy (see also here, though I want to clarify that I don’t consider myself a libertarian and I don’t necessarily agree with everything on the Reason Magazine Web site):
The DOJ will not prosecute “good faith security research” or “White Hat hacking.” In most circumstances, companies won’t be able to arbitrarily make it a felony to violate terms of service. In severe cases (maybe “stalking-like” behavior that doesn’t rise to the level of being illegal, like a guy writes about a woman without directly harassing her) the violator must discontinue the behavior after receiving and reading a cease and desist letter.Of course, social media companies will know who you are if we end up with a left-wing dictatorship, right-wing dictatorship, or some other form of authoritarian government. Prep accordingly.
Read MoreWhat shortages/price hikes are you all anticipating?
CamilleContributor - April 26, 2022 I feel like I’ve seen a lot of news about higher fuel prices and an expectation that wheat will be in short supply and higher in price, but I was reading this article and found that Russia is one of the leading exporters of fertilizer. Fertilizer shortages could ultimately really impact agricultural yields globally. What shortages/price hikes are you all anticipating and prepping for?
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