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How Horrific Will It Be For The Non-Prepper? Be Informed May 12th, 2012 SHTFplan This article has been made available by regular SHTF Plan contributor Be Informed. Editor’s Note: You have no doubt had your own set of issues dealing with friends and family members that simply don’t see the writing on the wall. The following article may serve to assist you in convincing those who simply don’t know, don’t want to know, don’t care, or have never even thought to contemplate. Some of the scenarios outlined below may be frightening, as they should be, because when it hits the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve says four major banks failed to show they have enough capital to survive another serious downturn. The list includes Citigroup, the nation's third-largest bank. The Fed says 15 of 19 major banks passed the stress test. The Fed noted that all of the banks have built up their capital reserves since the 2008 financial crisis. SunTrust and Ally Financial also failed the test.

Doomsday Scenario: 'America Alone' Monday , October 23, 2006 This is a partial transcript from "The Journal Editorial Report," October 21, 2006, that has been edited for clarity. PAUL GIGOT, FOX HOST: "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" forecasts a dark future in which the nations of Old Europe fall to Islam fundamentalism. And the United States remains the last Western democracy. Earlier, I spoke to the author, columnist Mark Steyn. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) GIGOT: In your book, you write that much of what we loosely call the "Western World will not survive the 21st Century....

WASHINGTON -- Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson stayed away from the Capitol Tuesday night in case of a catastrophic attack or accident as President Bush delivered his State of the Union address. House and Senate leaders of both parties also asked four top lawmakers to skip the speech, which is given in the House chamber. By long-standing tradition, a member of the president's Cabinet misses the speech to Congress as a precaution against the entire administration being wiped out and to maintain the presidential line of succession. The last two years then-Commerce Secretary Donald Evans did not attend.

WASHINGTON - The Senate approved a bill Tuesday to raise the homeland security secretary from last to eighth place in the presidential line of succession, just after the attorney general. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, passed without objection just before the chamber adjourned. The companion House bill, sponsored by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., is pending before the Judiciary and Government Reform committees. If the bill also passes the House, the order of those in line to assume the presidency if President Bush is unable to serve would be: _Vice President Dick Cheney _House...

Probably more vigilance and money are being devoted to protecting Thursday's inauguration of President Bush from terrorists than have been dedicated to any public event on U.S. soil in history. But what if it isn't enough? Suppose — G-d forbid — an Islamic terror cell buried deep within this country for years has been given the code it has been waiting for to conduct the most public assassination of American public officials...

WASHINGTON - On this snow-draped Inauguration Day in Washington, a few people on Capitol Hill were thinking about the worst: a catastrophic attack that could kill or incapacitate most members of Congress, the president, the vice president and the cabinet. advertisement The unseen presence at this first inauguration since Sept. 11, 2001, is al-Qaida, whose terrorists showed three years ago how capable they were of killing thousands of Americans in one place at one time. At 9:30 on inauguration morning, in his office in the Longworth Building, a short walk from where the president would soon take his oath, Rep....

WASHINGTON - With no fanfare, the U.S. House has passed a controversial doomsday provision that would allow a handful of lawmakers to run Congress if a terrorist attack or major disaster killed or incapacitated large numbers of congressmen.      ``I think (the new rule) is terrible in a whole host of ways - first, I think it's unconstitutional,'' said Norm Ornstein, a counselor to the independent Continuity of Government Commission, a bipartisan panel created to study the issue. ``It's a very foolish thing to do, I believe, and the way in which it was done was more foolish.'' But supporters say...

WHY INAUGURATION DAY IS DANGEROUS. Unprepared by Norman Ornstein Traveling around Boston, Massachusetts, during the Democratic convention last summer wasn't easy. Fearing a terrorist attack, the Secret Service had ordered the closure of 40 miles of roads around the FleetCenter, where the convention was held, and 3,000 police were on duty to guard the site. The security measures taken during the Republican convention in New York City were even more extreme, with 10,000 police--many clad in riot gear--patrolling the streets immediately surrounding Madison Square Garden, seven police helicopters hovering overhead, and 26 police launches patrolling the Hudson and East rivers....

Washington (Apocryphal Press) September 11, 2005 – Meeting deep below a still radioactive Capitol in a special bunker, the Joint Senate-House Armed Services and Nuclear Emergency committee began grilling leaders of the CIA, FBI, and Justice and Defense departments today about how a radiological dispersal device, or "dirty bomb," could have been detonated near the nation’s capital. In their prepared statements, Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) told the top-ranking generals and Pentagon officials before them that they were determined to find out who was to blame for allowing the bomber or bombers to set off the device....

5/24/04 Washington Whispers From the White House, a nightmare scenario White House officials say they've got a "working premise" about terrorism and the presidential election: It's going to happen. "We assume," says a top administration official, "an attack will happen leading up to the election." And, he added, "it will happen here." There are two worst-case scenarios, the official says. The first posits an attack on Washington, possibly the Capitol, which was believed to be the target of the 9/11 jet that crashed in Pennsylvania. Theory 2: smaller but more frequent attacks in Washington and other major cities leading up...

Were terrorists to wipe out most of the Congress, how would republican government survive? Some fear the current plan to elect new congressmen won't work. The ensuing elections might be . . . uncompetitive! This week in The Washington Post, Norman Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, complained, "These elections, in other words, would be a sham: no chance for a range of candidates to emerge and test their appeal to the electorate; no chance for alternative voices; no real opportunity for debate and give-and-take." No doubt. Still, I can't help but notice that what he says also...

A terrorist attack on presidential candidates could throw the US into unprecedented political turmoil. So why do so few people want to talk about it? WORST-CASE SCENARIO number one: It's the night before Election Day. Across America, voters turn on their televisions hoping to catch the final hours of the presidential campaign and instead hear the awful news. In coordinated attacks, terrorists have killed their favored candidates for both president and vice president. Now what?The answer in both cases -- and several equally unpleasant variants: Nobody knows.

A nationwide network of activists that uses the Internet to defend constitutional government and individual liberty saw its efforts pay off when the House by a 306-97 vote approved legislation for expedited elections to assure its continued functioning in case large numbers of its members are killed in a terrorist attack or other catastrophe, at the same time preserving the electoral system established by the founders. "We had a great victory today," said Kent Snyder, executive director of the Liberty Committee, shortly after the April 22 passage of the Continuity in Representation Act, H.R. 2844. "It's great that an overwhelming...

House to vote on 'Continuity in Representation Act' to assure survival.The House of Representatives is expected to vote today on a bill assuring its continued functioning in case large numbers of its members are killed or incapacitated in a terrorist attack or other catastrophe, at the same time preserving the electoral system established by the Founders. Sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the "Continuity in Representation Act," H.R. 2844, would require states to hold special elections to fill wide-scale vacancies within 45 days after the speaker of the House announces that "extraordinary circumstances" – defined as...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fearing that terrorists might target Congress, the House on Thursday approved a bill to set up speedy special elections if 100 or more of its members are killed. The House, in a 306-97 vote, put aside for now the larger issue of whether the Constitution should be amended to allow for temporary appointments in the event that an attack caused mass fatalities among lawmakers. The House, said Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., sponsor of the elections bill and a foe of appointments, "is rooted in democratic principles and those principles must be preserved at all costs."...

The U.S. House will vote on the Continuity in Representation Act of 2004 (H.R. 2844) this Thursday. We strongly support passage of H.R. 2844 and ask you to urge your representative to vote "yes." Congressmen Sensenbrenner, Dreier, Miller, Cole, Chabot and Paul introduced H.R. 2844 to "preserve an elected House in the event of a tragic terrorist attack on the Congress." H.R. 2844 is the practical and proper solution and is in sharp contrast to the desire by political elites to have "appointed" members of the U.S. House. In a letter dated April 19, 2004, Congressmen Sensenbrenner, Dreier and Ney...

In the summer of 2002, Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, issued a stern warning to the BBC: a US invasion of Iraq would "threaten the whole stability of the Middle East." As I wrote at the time, "He's missing the point: that's the reason it's such a great idea." I thought about Mr. Moussa a lot this past week. I was invited to speak at the United States Naval Academy's foreign affairs conference, a great honor for a foreigner. I wasn't the star attraction — that was Condoleezza Rice; I was merely a warm-up act. Anyway, I was...

Elect, Never Appoint U.S. Representatives On June 20, 2003, we issued the following alert: "The clock is ticking. A well-orchestrated, well-financed campaign to quickly amend the Constitution is underway. A proposed constitutional amendment would take away your right to vote for your U.S. representative. We can't and won't stand by and let our republic be gutted by this amendment." This alert was in response to the "Continuity of Government" (COG) report made public on June 4, 2003. The report calls for a constitutional amendment that would allow for the appointment of members of the U.S. House of Representatives under vaguely...

In the midst of an increasingly heated debate over government continuity in the event of a catastrophic attack, experts told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday that a constitutional amendment is necessary to ensure that Congress could still function. “There is simply no effective way, short of a constitutional amendment, to replace members of the House who die, or to temporarily replace members of Congress who are incapacitated,” former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), co-chairman of the Continuity of Government Commission, testified. The issue of continuity came to the fore after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is widely believed...