National Response Framework and US Army Terrorism Guide

The National Response Framework provides a comprehensive, national, all-hazards approach to domestic incident response. The Framework presents an overview of key response principles, roles and structures that guide the national response. It describes how communities, States, the Federal Government and private-sector and nongovernmental partners apply these principles for a coordinated, effective national response.

A poster over at Daily Kos has written an excellent two part summary of the framework: Part I and Part II. Any thing I would write would be duplicative and I recommend you read these posts over (Daily Kos is political site but some things go beyond politics and this topic is one).

Finally, another reference you may want to examine is the US Army Guide to Terrorism in the 21st Century.

Risk

Over the next few days there will be several posts regarding why suburban survival preparation is important. One of the keys to understanding what to prepare for is to assess the risks that various catastrophic events might have should they occur and what the potential effects could be to the suburban survivalist.

To that end, here's an interesting news story from today's newswire regarding the potential damage that could be done to the U.S. power grid via a cyber attack. According to the article, government researchers have produced a video to demonstrate the effects of a cyber attack to the electrical grid:

commands quietly triggered by simulated hackers having such a violent reaction that the enormous turbine shudders as pieces fly apart and it belches black-and-white smoke.
...
The electrical attack never actually happened. The recorded demonstration, called the "Aurora Generator Test," was conducted in March by government researchers investigating a dangerous vulnerability in computers at U.S. utility companies known as supervisory control and data acquisition systems. The programming flaw was quietly fixed, and equipment-makers urged utilities to take protective measures.
...
President Bush's top telecommunications advisers concluded years ago that an organization such as a foreign intelligence service or a well- funded terror group "could conduct a structured attack on the electric power grid electronically, with a high degree of anonymity, and without having to set foot in the target nation." Ominously, the Idaho National Laboratory—which produced the new video—has described the risk as "the invisible threat."

How likely is such an attack? The article goes on to state that while possible, probably not very likely. But if it should occur, one of the key questions is how much of the grid is affected and for how long? Its just a guess but this type of attack would most likely not be too severe - perhaps the equivalent of a major winter storm or hurricane that knocks out power for several days. Still, are you prepared for loss of all electrical power for 3 days? How about a week? Two weeks? Two Months?

The Suburban Survivalist should be sufficiently prepared to assess and handle exactly this type of situation. He or she should be able to handle the loss of refrigeration, lights, heat and communications (TV, Phone) for several months and, be able to obtain or engage an alternate source of power for electrical needs.

Jericho

If you don't know about the CBS show, Jericho, then let me recommend it to you highly.

Jericho is about the residents of Jericho, a small Kansas town, in the aftermath of mysterious nuclear attacks on several major cities in the United States. The residents of Jericho have to deal with several issues - survival, gathering of information, community identity, public order, limited resources, the value of family, and internal and external threats. The show falls into the "24" and "Lost" type mystery/drama, so if you like those shows, you'll like Jericho.

Jericho was initially canceled by CBS due to poor ratings but, thanks to the efforts of its fans (and a several thousand pounds of nuts), it was renewed for 7 episodes to be shown as a "mid-season replacement" (i.e. if one of CBS's new fall 2007 shows fails, Jericho gets the spot or, if not, then it will show sometime in January/Feburary). Wikipedia summarizes the details or check out many of the fan websites.

If you missed Jericho when it was shown last year, don't fret. You can watch all 22 of the first season's episodes for free at CBS's Jericho Video Site, although you will have to watch them on your computer and they do have commercial breaks.

If you like the show and want to support it, you can buy and download all 22 episodes at iTunes (there's a button at the bottom of this post to open the Jericho page directly in iTunes). The advantage of the iTunes downloads is that there are no commercials and you can watch on any video enabled ipod (such as the new Apple iPod Nano, the new iPod Classic or the new Apple iPod Touch and the iPhone) or, you can use Apple TV to watch iTunes videos on your TV (you can also connect video ipods to your TV).

Also, the entire first season DVD is due to be released October 2, 2007 - Jericho - The First Season.

If you like the show, then let me encourage you to buy it either from iTunes or on DVD. The show has not been guaranteed a third season and by purchasing the download or DVD, you can send CBS a message to continue the show. Also, be sure to be watching when season two airs to help boost the ratings.

Finally, as a further enticement to watch Jericho, let me say that if you want to know why suburban survival is important, then the Jericho can shed some light.

Off the Grid by Les Stroud

Well this site is slowly coming together.

I have lots of great content in the hopper that I will be rolling out over the next couple of days. Until then, I'd thought I'd share a great set of You Tube videos with you.

If you are a fan of Les Stroud of Survivorman, then check out this program he did on "Off the Grid" Living:



The video is in several parts, most under 10 minutes in length. I'll list them here for your convenience:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10

If you enjoy this program, then you may also enjoy Frontier House, which is a PBS show about three modern American families who spend five months in Montana living as though it were the 1800s.