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We have been under quarantine in Spain for several days now. All is calm. No shortages of anything yet. Police are out checking to see if you are doing things like having 2 people in a car, walking in pairs, walking your dog too far from your house, etc., and handing out big fines if you break the rules. People queue up outside stores but it ins't the madhouse like I've been seeing online. They control access to the stores so they don't get overcrowded. You get a squirt of hand sanitizer, rub your hands together then put on disposable...

Across the U.S., "preppers" have been planning for an event like the coronavirus for years. Now, as a run-on toilet paper and necessary supplies have created vast lines and panic in our nation's supermarkets and stores, some are able to sit back and relax -- while being humble enough to avoid "I told you so." “We're not laughing. We're not saying, ‘I told you so,' when people are out there fighting over toilet paper and hand sanitizers,” said Ohio resident Paul Buescher.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Tuesday that the state is prepared for the possibility of declaring martial law in an effort to combat the spread of the Chinese coronavirus. “[W]e have the ability to do martial law … if we feel the necessity,” Newsom said during a press conference on California’s ongoing response to the deadly illness. In what would be an extraordinary measure, martial law is the suspension of ordinary law and the imposition of direct military control of a population. The governor has already placed the California National Guard on alert for humanitarian duties, including food distribution...

Do you have your "bug-out bag" (BOB) ready for when the "s*** hits the fan" (SHTF), or will you "bug in" for "the end of the world as we know it" (TEOTWAWKI)? This jargon is well understood within niche "prepper" communities, whose members spend their lives preparing for impending Armageddon -- natural disasters, pandemics or financial collapse. And the ideas that drive this culture are becoming increasingly mainstream as coronavirus panic sees people across the world stockpiling rations, sourcing gas masks and self-isolating at home. Now, "civilians" are turning to expert preppers in droves for help in getting ready for...

In December 2019, the first cases of coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, were reported in the Wuhan province of mainland China. Despite the efforts of the Chinese government and other agencies, the disease spread around the world. Public health officials reported cases on every continent. Coronavirus has become a global pandemic, and it has already impacted on the global economy. This, in turn, can radically affect our lives here in the United States. Gun owners remember how guns and ammo were hard to find because of the political climate at the time. What will happen if it’s a pandemic that affects our...

North Korea has ordered major provincial organizations, military-run factories and other facilities to prepare a months’ worth of food, signalling that the state is unable to provide rations anymore, Daily NK has learned. “The order was handed down by provincial party committees to local people’s committees, Ministry of State Security offices, police stations, military-run factories run by the Second Economic Committee [of the Workers’ Party of Korea], and even orphanages,” a North Hamgyong Province-based source told Daily NK on Feb. 26.

It’s time for another new year, and many people have set their sights on resolutions—things to do differently and, presumably, better during the next trip around the sun. For a good many people, this means learning new homesteading skills to become more self-sufficient. That may lead to leaving the grid for some, but lots of folks these days are just looking to do more for themselves—whether by becoming full-on, self-sufficient homesteaders or simply gaining a little more control over their lives and finances by picking up some new skills. Are you among those people looking to gain some self-reliance this...

I’m phlegmatic by nature. It gives me an edge up when mass hysteria seems to take up so much space in the news and the pronouncements of Democratic leaders. Looking at the best information available to me, I find it beyond question that the President has taken the right steps to deal with this variant flu; that few people in this country will perish from it; that while there may be some economic consequences of the supply disruption from China, the fact that we’ve been decoupling ourselves from China under this administration means they are likely to be smaller and...

I have been working on a knowledge base of topics related to prepping and SHTF situations. It is geared towards making people more self sufficient with topics ranging from unarmed self defense to small space gardening to how to sew your own clothes. I'm one of those types of people who believe that we are going to go out with a whimper, not a bang, so there is a lot of content on how to do your own repairs, build your own stuff and live a more frugal lifestyle. In order to get access you need to send me a...

As the new human coronavirus spreads around the world, individuals and families should prepare — but are we? The Centers for Disease Control has already said that it expects community transmission in the United States, and asked families to be ready for the possibility of a "significant disruption to our lives." Be ready? But how? It seems to me that some people may be holding back from preparing because of their understandable dislike of associating such preparation with doomsday or "prepper" subcultures. Another possibility is that people may have learned that for many people the disease is mild, which is...

One week ago, ahead of today’s Chinese data release which would for the first time capture the devastation from the coronavirus pandemic, we wrote that “to those who have been following our series of high-frequency, daily indicators of China’s economy, it will probably not come as a surprise that the world’s second biggest economy has ground to a halt, its GDP set to post the first negative print in modern history. To everyone else who is just now catching up, we have some news: it’s going to be bad.” Specifically, we said that ahead of official Chinese economic data which...

CORONAVIRUS patients in Britain could be turned away from hospitals if medics cannot cope with the amount of cases they have on their hands, a doctor has warned The NHS woud adopt a so-called “three wise men” system if the number of infected Britons reached catastrophic levels. Three senior consultants in each hospital would be forced to ration care such as beds and ventilators if hospitals were unable to cope with the sheer scale of the crisis. The protocol would mean weaker patients who stand less of a chance of fighting off the sickness would be pushed down the pecking...

This study examined homemade masks as an alternative to commercial face masks. Several household materials were evaluated for the capacity to block bacterial and viral aerosols. Twenty-one healthy volunteers made their own face masks from cotton t-shirts; the masks were then tested for fit. The number of microorganisms isolated from coughs of healthy volunteers wearing their homemade mask, a surgical mask, or no mask was compared using several air-sampling techniques. The median-fit factor of the homemade masks was one-half that of the surgical masks. Both masks significantly reduced the number of microorganisms expelled by volunteers, although the surgical mask was...

It's not a matter of if the novel coronavirus will spread throughout the United States, but when, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine expert Nancy Messonnier. "Disruption to everyday life might be severe," Messonnier, who is the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters Tuesday. Messonnier said she told her children over breakfast that they will need to begin preparing for an escalated outbreak. Parents and caregivers, she said, should ask officials at their children's schools about plans for school dismissals, closures, and teleschool in case the virus spreads in their school districts....

The U.S. does not have enough facemasks or ventilators stockpiled to deal with threats of coronavirus spreading, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., asked Azar if the U.S. had enough facemasks stockpiled after he said the administration was seeking additional coronavirus funding "to support the acquisition of personal protective equipment, especially masks, into the strategic national stockpile." CORONAVIRUS PROMPTS FDA TO DETAIL SCREENING OF CHINESE-MADE PRODUCTS "Well, of course not, or we wouldn't be asking for a supplemental to seek more money," Azar said.

Your own best judgment determines what you do, if anything, to prepare for an epidemic of the Wuhan coronavirus. For myself, each round of information, as unreliable as it may be in its specifics, suggests an notable epidemic is more likely than not. There are a few things known with certainty. Pneumonia is, as with all flu, the common mode of fatality. 61.5% of patients requiring hospitalization and intense monitoring ended up becoming "non-survivors". Wuhan coronavirus has an incubation period of three to twenty-seven days, i.e., infected but without symptoms. Fourteen days is typical. Fever and cough are common, diarrhea...

During the last two months, as the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak has spiraled into a global threat, countries around the world have scrambled to impose travel bans, quarantine millions, and isolate sick people in an attempt to stop the spread of the new virus. Yet, as of Sunday, there were 78,000 cases of Covid-19 in at least 29 countries, including surging case tolls in Italy, Iran, and South Korea, as well as an ongoing outbreak on a cruise ship off Japan. The likelihood that we’re hurtling into a pandemic — a new disease that spreads around the world — or that...

Trump Trade Adviser Navarro: China Put Export Restrictions on N95 Face Masks – Then Nationalized a US Factory that Produces Them There On Sunday Peter Navarro dropped this bomb. Peter Navarro: Maria my job at the White House during this crisis is to review the supply chains we need to treat corona. There’s over 30 different elements just for that alone. And what I’ve learned so far and not surprisingly is that we’ve offshored far too much of our supply chain not just for corona but also for the essential medicines we need… In terms of the immediate issue face...

I would like to hear some opinions on survival food suppliers from the crew here on Free Republic, including "Do not buy from". I don't need the best, but I don't want too be disappointed.

This summer's bushfires were not just devastating events in themselves. More broadly, they highlighted the immense vulnerability of the systems which make our contemporary lives possible. The fires cut road access, which meant towns ran out of fuel and fell low on food. Power to towns was cut and mobile phone services stopped working. So too did the ATMs and EFTPOS services the economy needs to keep running. In a modern, wealthy nation such as Australia, how could this happen? In a human sense, social systems range from the small, such as a family, to large organizations or the national...