Thursday, April 21, 2011

Hard Things: You Are Already Dead

(click to enlarge; image courtesy of Alvie, based on snark in this post)

Caveat #1: This post is advanced ugliness; you will be well-served by having read in advance and thought through the implications of these previous posts, along with their associated comments:

20 Questions

20 More Questions

Feedback On 20 More Questions

Let's Win

Counterforce vs. Countervalue

If You Read One Article This Month

Caveat #2: I fully understand what Suarez means by being "the first man" in this essay, but what if the first man actually sets out to build a perpetual motion machine, or to breed unicorns?

Do you really want to be him?

Some observations for your thoughtful analysis:

1) You Are Already Dead: Face it - you are mortal. We don't have any viewer data here at WRSA on the average age of our readers, but anybody want to bet those regulars aren't closer to 50 than 30?

If, by that age, you haven't reconciled to your pending demise, stop reading now and get help with that simple issue.

Seriously.

Even for those who have accepted their biological short-fuse, consider what the Bad People and their allies such as Google are doing with the IP address information for visitors to sites such as WRSA, Sipsey Street, and other "irreconcilables".

If you were the Bad People, would you sort that IP info (along with its correlates from the hordes of other government and commercial databases) and classify each visitor into one of three buckets - high risk, medium risk, and low risk?

Wouldn't you then have contingency plans for each category, including special action for those deemed unacceptable risks?

Wouldn't that special action work something along the lines Sam outlines here?

Sorry, grey men amongst our visitors.

Maybe you'll be in the "low risk" category.

Maybe.

If I'm wrong on this or any other observation, please explain in detail why in the comments.

2) In Many Cases, Your Spouse, Family, Friends, and Neighbors Will Be Your Most Dangerous Enemies

The people closest to you know you the best.

Is their knowledge and exercise of OPSEC and COMSEC equal to their knowledge of your supplies, political ideation, associates, and other information?

Are all of them always happy with you and thus not susceptible to the always-human "I'll show him" blab-attack?

What about financial pressure from their primary income source?

Are you sure?

How?

3) There May Be No Shortage Of Leaders, But There Will Be A Profound Shortage of Good Leaders

Suffice it to say, how many people have you met along the trail who you would trust enough to follow in a kinetic environment?

How do you know?

Do you think you have time to improve that situation?

And if so, how?

4) If You Have One Friend You'd Call To Help You Feed The Pigs, You Are Lucky

How do you know?

Do you think you have time to improve that situation?

And if so, how?

5) Do You Think The Authorities In Your Area Have Any Objective Reason To Restrain Themselves When The Centre Does Not Hold?

Or is it more likely that they will go NOLA on you and yours?

Your mileage will vary.

Got a plan for both scenarios?

6) The Point Is Not The Spear, And The Spear Is Not The Point

This koan speaks to the interrelationship between combat arms, their supporting mechanisms, and the myriad of political controls and influences that impact the use of force in the modern battlespace.

If you have not yet meditated deeply on the concept, you should.

7) The Harder I Work, The Luckier I Get

How's that PT going?

And I don't care how crippled you are; you can feel better and be more capable if you begin to eat less and move more, even at this late date.

No slack.

The good news?

Eating less is coming soon, regardless of your plans or desires.

8) Failing To Plan Is Planning To Fail

Got range cards?

How about a checklist?

How about a list of lists?

How about a ten-week "worst case" plan?

9) You Are Not An Army Of One

You are a lonely, scared American deep within enemy lines with little to rely upon except your own wits and whatever you have manage to secrete at whichever of your alternate caches that didn't get snagged on the initial roll-up.

Think American remnant in the Philippines of 1942 and you'll be better oriented than those infected with much of the attrition warfare bunk that has been drilled via repetition into people's minds.

You are in the mess until you die, or you win.

There is no chain of command.

There are no rescue convoys.

There is no CSAR.

There ain't even any Dugout Doug and his photog crew.

Suck it up and deal.

You're still alive, right?

10) Come As You Are

All of the gear, skills, and reliable people you are likely to have comes down to what you have now.

Plan and execute to those capabilities, even as "now" changes and your fortunes increase or subside.

There are no reinforcements coming.

And even if they do arrive, how do you handle recognition codes?

Be a pity to get whacked with Blue-on-Blue fire, wouldn't it?

You do remember that you are a domestic terrorist, right?

11) Three Men Can Keep A Secret If Two Of Them Are Dead

If you want to better your odds, study successful criminal organizations - outlaw biker gangs, major cocaine and heroin organizations, ethnic smuggling tribes, bootleggers, and the like.

You'll find a number of common themes.

You'll want most of those themes as your own, odds are.

Conclusion: Better get used to thinking through issues on your own, because that's the situation you are in.

And it ain't gonna get better anytime soon.

But be of good cheer.

At least you're here, amongst friends.

How'd you like to be one of the "whah hoppened?" crowd as the Collapse accelerates?

Besides, those folks will be out of your way within the first six months.

Forward.

25 comments:

  1. As to IP addrs and correlation - most (not all) residential ISPs above mom-and-pop size rotate IPs in a pool across a geographic area that may extend across multiple states.

    Correlation is more difficult than you'd think. Beyond that, common carrier law should scare anyone of any size into purging logs.

    This speaks to middlemen - ISPs - not content providers.

    Just food for thought. Keeping legitimate logs of our users for troubleshooting - I can't keep more than 3 or so days of -detailed- records. And we're not big.

    It's also not rocket surgery to defeat direct correlation and use someone else's open wireless (or leave your own unsecured, for plausible deniability).

    Wholesale IP to identity -residential- correlation attacks will be hard to pull off.

    Moral: patronize coffee shops, don't surf @ work.

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  2. Memento Mori: Remember you must die.

    It works if one embraces the reality.

    You are alone.

    You will die.

    How we die, matters.

    Embrace the concept of by any means necessary and you may have a chance.

    It can't happen here...

    Yes, it can. It will. Look at the evidence around us. The only variables will be magnitude and swiftness, and the moment It begins.

    Lead is more valuable than gold. Food, meds & vices will be the new currency, at least for a while.

    If you intend to live, indeed to prevail, harden your mind. The most horrible enemy you will likely face will be your own conscience, your hesitance to get ugly.

    See you on the other side. Or not.

    First Class work, CA. As usual.

    Kerodin
    III

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  3. Hard truths, but the truth sets you free.

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  4. Concise and too the point, and full of helpful links.

    Thanks for this dose of reality.

    AP

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  5. The Bad People won't go door-to-door to confiscate weapons or independent thinkers. They won't do it because it's so blatant it seals the case against them. Imagine if 800,000 lightly committed put the backs of 100,000 highly committed and prepared against the wall, and tell them their ordinary lives are now over. Will the 100,000 peacefully get on the buses to the prisons? Or will the 100,000 instantly become 20,000 small units of 5, and gain the 3X modifier for defending their own lives on their own home ground? Without a Confederate government, who can be bought off to get the 20,000 independent units to surrender?

    Instead, they will continue to regulate and ban and tax and spend, because most people still aren't willing to admit that government doesn't work. Voters will stay in denial until gas is pushed up to $6, $7 or $8, and the food on the table of the working poor starts getting dodgy. Then the voters will start evading regulation, just like evading the 55 mph speed limit was the national pastime in the 1970's.

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  6. Even when IPs rotate they are still within a set range, but that is less relevant to the concern of sorting than various fixed numbers sent out through those.

    Think of IP addresses as meter-marked mail, but the letters inside still contain plenty of identifying information such as handwritten signatures.

    Brush up on:

    http://gardenserf.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/shaving-off-communication-like-a-razor/

    and:

    http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/34/3458.asp

    And in the world of wireless, a wired connection isn't always necessary due to backdoors.

    We're all familiar with Google and its snooping vans aren't we? How about Facebooks's online tracking?

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  7. I would caution against leaving your wireless unsecured. Excellent opportunity for a drug dealer to cruise around, find, and place an order for 10 kilos of cocaine. Or a pedophile to download a bunch of kiddie porn. Your local "Law Enforcement" will get YOUR IP address as the source.

    By the way, each network card has a unique MAC address. Not sure if that is reported in the logs or not, but that is unique to the individual machine. Yeah, it can surely be hacked, but don't count on "rotating IP address pool" to protect you.

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  8. Regardless of Kerodin's fun with numbers, we out number them. It is very unlikely that they would come as described. It is far more likely that they will come for your money in the form of a heavily armed IRS. If you think taxes are bad now, just wait until the gov is really bankrupt; can't borrow, can't print fast enough. Of course they will step up their demonization of us in the media, as they do anyone they have designated for death.

    Millions of middle class Americans have been hit with the AMT and had to take out loans to pay their taxes. Next year no one will be able to get a loan or only at fantastically high interest rates as the dollar plummets in value. And that's just the Fed; state & local govs are out of money & credit too. It's amazing that there wasn't a tax revolt this year, but no doubt there will be next year if not sooner.

    Most of us probably have kids in High School and College, so it seemed to make sense to pay the bastards off and buy some time. Eventually, it will be more cost effective to just shoot the bastards. The political efforts have failed and their is now only one solution.

    And we all know what that is.

    WarriorClass
    III

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  9. And if? Folks, you're already on lists like you wouldn't believe. Buy a hunting permit ever? Buy ammo at wal mart on your debit/credit card? Buy a big Berkey water filter online? It's more work than it's worth to stay off these lists. Give it some thought though... if you're really free and clear then that's a bonus for you that might keep you off the round up tier one list. If you're reading this, guess what, you're on a list already. NSA, et al has more resources than you can imagine, they'll store everything for later dissemenation and data crunching.
    If they try and round us up, all that will serve is to alert the remainder. That's where your social networks come into play, so get them set up. Provided this medium still works... so figure out some ways to pass the word to your network w/o phone and internet. The day the internet stops working, it's time to start stuffing all your magazines to full and get your canteens topped off.
    I hope it's near, I'm sick of waiting, it's bad for us all, sitting on the cusp. Best of luck to you all.

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  10. I guess when there is no place left to run, it's time to stand.

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  11. Even for those who have accepted their biological short-fuse, consider what the Bad People and their allies such as Google are doing with the IP address information for visitors to sites such as WRSA, Sipsey Street, and other "irreconcilables".

    First: Use TOR. Whenever possible. Put it on a thumb drive. It doesn't provide absolute security (such a thing isn't possible) but it does help to "confound these bungers."

    Second: Use alternate commo when practical. A thumb drive can be easily passed around in your networked tribe, yet hold a library of useful information and missives. If you boot your machine using T(A)ILS or other live CDs you can further reduce the possibility of data leakage.

    Never use a computer when you can write it down and never write it down when you can memorize it:
    http://folk.ntnu.no/krill/home.htm

    Last: Make peace with your mortality. I deal with death on a routine basis in my profession. When I was in training, I memorized entire chapters worth of Things That Can Kill You and I'd sometimes grow frightened over which one would ultimately take me.

    No matter, anymore. For years I've realized that one day I'm going to say to myself: There You are. I was wondering when You'd show up. It's almost a comforting thought, at times.

    Of course, that's if things go according to plan.

    They never do.

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  12. Someone cue The Doors:

    This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.
    This is the end, my only friend, the end.

    Of our elaborate plans, the end.
    Of everything that stands, the end.

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  13. Initial perusal indicates this post to be of incalculable value.

    It will however take a while to study and absorb it.

    Peter, certainly one of your best.

    I earnestly hope that sometime in the future I will be able to shake your hand.

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  14. Regarding age, I'm a few years past 30.

    The majority of the 20-35 age group are not very wise, for sure. However there is a distinct subgroup, particularly of young men, who are (at least mentally) in full revolt against liberal society as it exists today, and all its attendant premises. Often these are of the type of Roissy's betas (I count myself as one) who, having discovered they were systematically lied to about one thing, are pausing to investigate how many other commonly accepted facts actually aren't. That mental act - of stopping to simply accept things as given, and inquiring as to the evidence for it, and being prepared to revise one's opinion totally if the evidence so indicates - is fundamental to reasoning. There is also the fact that accepting a Roissy-style view of human nature - which is pretty strongly supported by experiment - is basically a vindication of conservatism; it is utterly incompatible with the liberal view. Abandoning "correct thinking" is hard and it requires a strong impulse to do it; the sexual one seems to work, as does close experience of modern divorce.

    I have long held that the current crisis will not take a turn to the good until the young men start taking action on their own. Like so:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/18/andres-serrano-piss-christ-destroyed-christian-protesters

    When the perception is that there is little to lose by doing something, and more to lose by NOT doing anything, that is when things move. This is, fundamentally, the advantage that Muslim and Mexican gangs have over the natives of the countries they are invading: they are a bunch of young men with nothing to lose, and the natives can always just avoid the bad areas.

    But the bad areas grow, and you can't run forever.

    Anyway, good post.

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  15. Even for those who have accepted their biological short-fuse, consider what the Bad People and their allies such as Google are doing with the IP address information for visitors to sites such as WRSA, Sipsey Street, and other "irreconcilables".

    If you were the Bad People, would you sort that IP info (along with its correlates from the hordes of other government and commercial databases) and classify each visitor into one of three buckets - high risk, medium risk, and low risk?
    ==============================
    There may be something real about this. My FFL was up for renewal & to make a long story short it has been very difficult this time. There were no e traces or any other problems. My FFL has expired & I am operating from an extension. I renewed promptly & by the book so there should have been no problems. I visit & post on the "irreconcilables". I just nearly know there has to be a list of names & addresses being kept somewhere.

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  16. In order:

    1) I'm 52. A trauma surgeon has already given me many years I wouldn't have have had at any other time or in any other country. Every day is a treat, but I'm not counting them. They end when they end.

    I know all about IP tracking. So what? Anyone who's filled out a 4473 is on a list. They're coming for us. Get used to it.

    2) We should all expect to be sold out by Quislings we love. Deal with it.

    3) I suspect I've met two trustworthy people. (That can only be confirmed when the flag drops and the race starts. You can cower in fear or take your chances...) I'm always checking out people I meet with an eye to adding to this list. It isn't difficult to create such opportunities - just takes a bunch of your time and hard work.

    4) Don't know. Methinks feeding pigs should be a solitary activity, particularly early in the curve.

    5) I would be astounded if authorities ANYWHERE in America were able to restrain themselves. By and large, they already can't and they are deliberately staffing and training to make this problem worse.

    6) Truth.

    7) More truth. The Founders were hard men. Train to measure up, and train a lot on your own. That's how you'll likely operate.

    8) Done.

    9) I wonder how anyone under 30 will make it. If you start to feel lonely 5 minutes after your last text, you're screwed. Most will find that when left to their own devices, they have none.

    10) Understood.

    11) Good study idea. I'd add in histories of resistance groups.

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  17. The 'you are on your own' comment is very important. Years ago, when I was stationed in Guam I read of a Japanese soldier that finally surrendered there in 1978. I have often wondered "what" he thought seeing U.S. trucks, Marines, Airmen and Navy personnel driving around without a care in the world every single day....

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  18. You want to avoid tracking, don't use your own computer.

    You want to be mobile, get rid of your extraneous shit, and cache your goods.

    Have at least one place you can go to that you are anon.

    The best camoflage duplicates the environment you're in. In urban areas what's that? Look around you, you cannot look like a wall, looking like a shrub might get you attention you don't want. Looking like you belong in an acceptable manner does.

    Master yourself now to the best of your ability, master your weapons.

    Likely the most successful strikes might be those that don't look like strikes, like say if we get a huge uptick in crime... whose to say who robbed that DMV bureaurcrat or attorney?

    Most of all... can you strike first?

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  19. Important nonsequeteur: July4Patriot video log part one:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulcMDwRMIb4&feature=channel_video_title

    He has his trial in 4 days.

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  20. Well, for those who are expecting the midnight visit, may I suggest slugs in your semi auto shotgun for the initial door kick and a couple of dogs with perky ears and bark when people are in the vicinity of your home?

    Can anyone (Anon?) think of any benevolent reason why the government would GPS almost every home in America last census?

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  21. Oh this is all too hard.
    I just want to answer blogs from my mother's basement, live off uncle sugar, defend fort sphincter and hold the moral high ground.
    You are harshing my mellow :)

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  22. As far as the number of gun owners goes, I keep thinking back to Mike Vanderboegh's story on the Reichbanner. Thousands of German WW1 vets trained w/ uniforms, arms and leadership,all poised to stop the Nazis or Bolsheviks and they didn't have a chance. On the other end of the spectrum is thousands of individuals running around like Eric Rudolph hiding in the hills.If anyone sees a better way I'd love to know what it is.

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  23. Sometimes the people on WRSA really crack me up.
    I hope I never see another picture of what happened in Waco in relation to current issue. The paranoid agenda crap has gotta go. We "collectively" know when and what to oppose with our lives. Who cares who has an ip etc.
    If SHTF in the future as I believe it will the GOV aint got a chance much like Katrina X20. Get a whiff if it does get really bad we will fight off zombies before the ATF will brake in your door.
    All this political bs is mute in regards Gog Magog. The war Is on, be AWARE ! Watch your step and blend for a while, flex your muscles in the gym and wait and watch for the first sign to get involved. There is absolutely no way we are capable until the first fall.

    JUST STOP the crap until then.
    We cant survive until we need to.

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