Category Archives: politics

What the …?

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Just in case, I looked at the official Los Angeles plan in case of nuclear war:

IMMEDIATE ACTION FOR NUCLEAR EVENTS

If a nuclear event is occurring or about to occur:

GET INSIDE a sturdy building as quickly as you can, even if you are far from the blast site. Go to a room without windows on the lowest floor that’s close to the center/core of the building. If you are unable to get inside, take cover behind a sturdy object and stay low to the ground.

STAY INSIDE the building. Shelter-in-place. Do not go outside or look out windows to observe the blast and fallout, as this can expose you to radiation and cause serious damage to your eyes.

STAY TUNED to updates from public safety and government authorities or trusted media sources. Some communications systems may be down. During emergencies, simple text messages often work best. You may also want to have a battery powered or hand-crank radio.

My immediate thought was that this doesn’t make any sense, since the houses in the LA area are made of super-combustible material, as evidenced in the recent fires where the houses burned down faster than trees. The main hazards in a nuclear blast are overpressure and thermal radiation, which means fires and 3rd degree burns. The entire LA building code is a terrible match for sheltering in situ in case of a nuclear blast. Then I thought I already saw identical instructions a while ago, and indeed, it’s the city of New York. It looks like someone in FEMA figured out they don’t have any realistic plan in case of a nuclear war, so they made a plan-like list that is now mindlessly copied everywhere, including places where such “plan” would amount to suicide.

This is so stupid I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, because I know how those morons are thinking: they need to “have a plan”, because someone could ask them what’s their plan for x, and now they can say “we have a plan for x, go to our web site, it’s a great plan”. However, let’s see what it all means.

Back in the 1950s, people in America were taking nuclear war very seriously, and the plans were made by the people who actually made the atomic weapons in Los Alamos, and who had first-hand experience with nuclear blasts, having observed the tests from the closest possible proximity. What they recommended was widely ridiculed later, but as I learned more about the nuclear weapons, I got to understand their thinking.

Their plan was to evacuate the political and military leadership into nuclear bunkers or high in the air, in order to preserve the chain of command and have control over the situation. The next idea was to evacuate the major populated centres, but they soon realised that this can’t be done. Basically, you’d have to do it in a timely and orderly manner, have enough shelter space, with food, water and fuel, for population of every major city. They ran simulations and figured out that an order to evacuate would cause instant widespread panic which would block the roads and make evacuation impossible. Even if they managed to evacuate, they couldn’t possibly care for hundreds of millions of people. Also, an order to evacuate would necessarily be given too late, because they would avoid giving it until the rockets were already flying, and then it would be too late for anything other than sheltering in-situ. If you gave the order early enough, the enemy would take it as a sure sign that you are preparing for a first strike, which would increase the probability of pre-emption, and it would make the political solution less likely. Also, when you give the order to evacuate everything, your society essentially ceases to exist. Your economy is no longer there. You started spending the supplies of last resort. No, that’s not something you want to do unless the nukes are already in the air, and then you have 20 minutes max, which is not enough to evacuate anything. It is, however, enough to move into your own basement, essentially to shelter in-situ.

So, let’s make a list of the dangers of a nuclear strike, and see what kind of measures would make sense.

If you are close enough to the blast, nothing can help you. You are dead. In some rare cases, being in a very deep bunker would help, but that calculation doesn’t matter for the urban centres, only for the military command bunkers. Basically, the urban centres are impossible to evacuate in time because of the traffic, there aren’t enough shelters for the population, and for them, the only advice you can give them is to shelter in situ, avoid the windows and all kinds of objects that could become airborne in conditions of overpressure, hide from the debris and cover yourself with a white reflective cloth to reflect as much infrared as possible; that was actually tested and it helps a lot. Similarly, paint your house white, because it reflects most of the radiation. Dark stuff burns much more quickly. Also, yes, duck and cover. Hide under a desk, a chair, and cover your head and face with clothes in order to protect yourself from heat and debris. Depending on the strength of the blast, you will either die or not, but if you take those measures you will reduce probability of all kinds of injuries that would get you killed in the aftermath even if they are not that serious normally, because forget medical care, that’s not happening. Also, the area where the nuclear blast is absolutely deadly is quite small compared to the area that is quite survivable if simple protective measures are taken, and you can’t do anything for those in the ground zero of the blast anyway. Imagine concentric circles of the target – those in the black centre are dead anyway, and no measures could save them. Those on the periphery of the target might survive with the simplest of measures, such as avoiding the windows, hiding under a desk and covering themselves with a white sheet. Between those two, there’s a gradient of probabilities, circumstances and luck.

So, their thinking was that the most likely targets are going to be military sites and urban centres (black on the target). For those, nothing could be done. Those close to the blast (grey on the target) are mostly fucked; probability of serious burns, lacerations, radiation injuries, being buried alive in the ruins etc. are very high, but some general precautionary and protective measures could still help them. However, the largest percentage of people are going to be more lightly impacted (the white on the target), and very simple measures such as “duck and cover” could drastically improve their outcomes.

There’s a very good reason why those protective measures were introduced in the 1950, only to be completely abandoned by the 1980s. You see, in the 1950s there was a very limited number of nuclear weapons, and delivery vehicles were very primitive. The calculation was that America had to deal with a dozen or so hits in the urban centres, at worst. However, by the 1980s, as the number, yield and sophistication of the nuclear weapons grew exponentially, it meant counting on thousands of hits in the urban centres, with hydrogen bomb MIRVs. The calculation then became obvious – nothing can be done to save the population once the nukes are in the air, so all efforts must be directed at avoiding the nuclear outcome.

However, we are no longer in the 1980s. Neither America nor Russia have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons armed for the first strike. Sure, the number is still high, but have in mind that those are mostly battlefield weapons, not the intercontinental ones. The expected number of intercontinental warheads expected to actually strike is numbered in the hundreds, and since those are precious, they will aim mostly at the military installations. Striking at the cities is useless for the first strike, and exists only in the plans for a retaliatory strike. As the number of deployed nuclear weapons grows, it becomes tempting to wipe out the urban centres as well, but as things are right now, very few if any urban centres would be targeted. This brings us back to the 1950s and the “duck and cover” exercises, because they become very relevant if we assume that civilian targets will be at the periphery of any nuclear strike, unless they are considered of military importance.

So, what would be the reasonable advice in case of a nuclear exchange? First, don’t be on the X. This means evacuating early and being nowhere near the expected target zones, or the zombie apocalypse zones of the aftermath, which for the most part means the urban centres. Second, expect to shelter in situ and have at least two weeks of supplies that would guarantee that you don’t have to exit your shelter early. Third, adhere to the “duck and cover” principles as laid out in the 1950s; those guys built and tested the nukes themselves and had hands-on experience with that stuff, and knew what they were talking about. Fourth, have a radiation sensor so that you can know what is safe and what is deadly, and fifth, yes, have a radio or some other means of getting the public broadcasts, especially the ones of local importance.

 

Consequences

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I’m watching the news on the LA fire. The wind over night made everything worse. The fire is spreading and the firemen are having very little control over the situation, regardless of the fact that they brought in all kinds of ground and air assets. Simply put, they allowed the thing to grow too big and now it’s beyond control. They can try and clear the fuel from the fire path, but it’s questionable at this point. The aerial assets are the only ones doing anything, but it’s too little and too late. So, it’s time to consider the consequences.

The economy is going to react to this, but it’s unclear how, because the stock market in America is deeply into the red zone of complete insanity. The first-order analysis would be that the impacted businesses from the area will suffer, the real estate prices will drop like a rock since this will be the final incentive for the rich people to leave, since there’s nothing binding them to the place anymore. Sure, they saw it all go to hell for years but it’s a big thing to sell your house and leave everything you worked most of your life for and rebuild everything in Texas. Also, if your job is there you may not be able to leave at all. But still, one would expect most to leave, and few to rebuild. One would expect the shares of the construction companies to go up, and the insurance companies to go down, but since this is America, it might actually be the other way around. Normally, I would expect gold to go up, since rich people everywhere will understand the need for highly mobile capital; however, since gold is hard to get across the border, crypto assets might be preferred, at least until people realise those are worthless in a real disaster.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory is currently in the fire zone. It’s evacuated, but it is still unclear how affected it will be by the fires. This is a major strategic asset that controls all kinds of automated probes across the Solar System. All of this will be affected and control might be relocated to the Space Command bunker in the Cheyenne mountains or something.

All kinds of woke bullshit will be downgraded after this, and this will ripple out throughout both culture, politics and the economy.

However, this is all assuming that the fire is contained where it is now, and this is unlikely. Most likely, it will spread throughout the more populated LA areas, and the amount of chaos that would produce is hard to imagine – it would be almost on par with a nuclear strike. Around 18M people live in the wider area, and most of them are nowhere near as rich as those impacted so far. If they all have to relocate, and they will if the complex structures are disrupted enough, this will be a zombie apocalypse across America. I’m continuing to watch this closely, but I’m also being careful not to remove my eyes from other points of interest, because this fire increasingly looks like a man-made thing, and it might all be a distraction from something else. Possibly, a way to remove important assets from the X in time, in a more-less controlled manner. You see, I’ve been reading the cold war texts about the plans for the evacuation of the LA metropolitan area, and I know they decided it’s impossible and nothing there can be saved. Maybe someone decided to be proactive. So, the second-order analysis is that this might be a way to evacuate the most important people and assets from the area that is expected to be hit by nuclear weapons and impossible to evacuate at that point.

Fire in LA

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I normally wouldn’t comment on something as arbitrary and random as a natural disaster, but this is different, because what’s happening there is a result of idiotic politics:

Basically, California is leading the rest of America in gender politics, virtue signalling and other leftist bullshit, and this was, similar to the recent fires in Australia, caused by the leftists prohibiting fire fighters from performing controlled burns of the underbrush in order to reduce the amount of flammable material for fires. Also, they are unable to organise transport of water into California, which is naturally a desert, from other places where water is plentiful, because of trivial political reasons such as saving some stupid fish species. However, this is worse than Australia, because in America they fired a huge number of people who resisted the covid vaccine mandates, and are hiring only the politically desirable combinations of black, brown, female and gay, regardless of any kind of merit. Also, their choice of equipment is much worse than what we have in Croatia, which is remarkable considering how much money there is in California. As a result, they have no water, no competent people, and they created the conditions for the perfect firestorm by intentionally failing to do any kind of preventative groundwork. When, inevitably, fire struck, as it normally does in an arid environment such as California, all the political idiots everywhere started babbling nonsense about climate change, which is probably the only factor that demonstrably had nothing to do with the situation.

To me, this kind of insanity and ignoring the physical realities is expected for a civilisation on its way down, but I don’t really pity them, since they are the most arrogant idiots that forcefully spread their idiocy to the rest of us, and the sooner it becomes obvious that they are simply wrong and their path is not to be followed, the better.

Syria as a liberal Utopia

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I was thinking about what happened in Syria, and what lessons can be taken from this.

Basically, what’s happening is jihadists killing, looting and pillaging, the Western propagandists lying and whitewashing their crimes and producing fake material in order to blame the Assad regime, and the neighbouring states capturing territory unopposed. Essentially, it looks similar to the collapse of a bee hive or an ant colony, and the first lesson, I think, is about the purpose of the state. Unlike what the liberal idealists imagine, if you remove the state you don’t get a Utopia. You get post-collapse Syria and Libya, or, in other words, you get hell on Earth. You get criminals in power instead of in prison, you get rule of the strongest, you get murder as a possible answer to absolutely every question, you get a division of society into warlords and slaves, you get unlimited slave trade and you get neighbouring states taking over the territory. Nobody gives a damn about “human rights” or similar nonexistent bullshit. You get violence, misery and suffering, and the only thing that limits human depravity is religious fanaticism, which in case of Islam is hardly a limitation.

You get a zombie horde with automatic weapons, pickups and motorcycles, and you get victims. Soon thereafter, you get starvation, sickness and everything else that leads to a dramatic population drop. Then the dust settles and the survivors make rules that are meant to avoid the depravities that led to this outcome, and the cycle of civilisation slowly repeats. Alternatively, the aggressive neighbours who split the territory between themselves and introduce the rule of law limit the bad outcomes before it comes to that point. Unfortunately, history shows that this is actually not a likely outcome; the territory formerly known as Libya, for instance, was left to the warring fractions of fanatics there, and slave markets are a normal thing for years already. Early years of the Soviet reign after the fall of the Russian Empire saw widespread famine and cannibalism, murder, persecution and all kinds of depravity. After the fall of Rome, during plagues and wars of the early dark ages, Europe was a hell on Earth.

So, this is what the state is for. The purpose of the state is not to distribute wealth to the poor, indoctrinate people or legislate “carbon credits”. The purpose of the state is to keep the savages in prison and afraid. The purpose of the state is to keep the borders controlled so that the people inside can be protected in their culture, beliefs and customs. The purpose of the state is to keep the normal people safe, and enemies afraid. What happens when the state collapses is unlimited human freedom, which translates as unlimited human depravity, and lack of civilised options that would create the playing field for freedom to practice non-depraved things in safety. The only thing that stops unlimited depravity is the controlled savagery of religious zealotry.

Heaven isn’t good because people there are free. It’s good because people there are good. The concept of freedom defined as the ability to do whatever you want is inherently flawed, because if evil people can do whatever they want, you get the hell that is Libya and Syria, where their freedom negates all options for others; basically, you no longer have the option to do normal civilised things because you’ll be killed. On the other hand, in heaven everything is limited by not wanting to do anything depraved, and by the fact that those who would want to automatically teleport into hell. As a result, not having certain “freedoms” creates all kinds of beauty and possibility – you can create art without jihadists raping and murdering you, for instance, because they are not allowed to. You can have things without being robbed and murdered. You can study science without being recruited into some army’s cannon fodder. You can live a long time because nobody’s trying to murder you, which in itself opens up all kinds of options. It’s interesting how Satanists keep harping about freedom from authority. Please, do everyone a favour and go live in Syria. See how you like freedom from all authority. Yeah, it’s hell, in ways I cannot even begin to describe, because freedom from authority doesn’t mean that you are free to do whatever you want. It means that both you and the most savage criminal who rapes, pillages and murders for fun can do whatever you both feel like doing. So, you like to listen to music, and he likes to flay people alive and listen to them scream. In a place with freedom from all authority, that guy forms an armed gang, and you get to be a victim. You don’t get to live in an autistic Utopia where you get to do your thing unopposed. You get to be a slave and a victim, or you learn to be so savage and murderous that even the warlords fear you. Freedom from authority causes reduction of the pool of available options to almost nothing, and freedom thus cancels itself. If everything is allowed, almost nothing is possible. Where evil is not allowed, almost everything becomes possible.