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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91733092683400016512015-04-02T01:01:16.972-06:00FutureJackedKeeping Both Eyes Open As The West Stumbles Into A Chaotic Brave New WorldFlagg707http://email@example.com://feedburner.google.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-69897117675706267282015-03-30T12:43:00.000-06:002015-03-30T12:46:24.998-06:00Spain, Jews, and a Glimpse of the Future?

Return Home, Varmagari

We've discussed the expulsion of Jews from Spain on a couple of occasions. Once in the context of the Marranos and building up resilient communities within the nation-state, and more recently when briefly pondering the potential for mass transfers of ethnic and religious groups in the coming years, should we continue down this path of polarization and negative mood.

With that context I found the following headline very intriguing:

This Country is About to Offer Citizenship to 2.2 Million Jews
(TIME Alistair Dawber/Madrid)

Spain wants to make amends for expelling Jews from the country in 1492

Exactly 523 years ago on Tuesday, the Edict of Expulsion, which forced Spain's Jewish community to convert to Catholicism or leave the country, was issued by monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. It may have taken more than half a millennia, but Madrid is finally about to make amends for kicking out the Jews by offering citizenship to the estimated 2.2 million descendants of those expelled...
 The spin on the story is an attempt by Spain to "make amends" for "wrongs" committed over five centuries ago.

What if there is more to the story? Or what if a significant number of people of Jewish descent take Spain up on this offer and Spain decides they like this sort of targeted citizenship program?

What do I mean? Well Spain, like many European countries has a problem with a stagnant economy, high debt load, and shrinking demographic base. Let's say at a minimum they pull in 90,000 new citizens from this effort. What is the marginal cost of adding a new citizen in Spain? People taking advantage of this program would already hold a passport in another country, such as Israel. If they are forward-thinking enough to get this second passport and citizenship, this new influx of citizens might also be skewed towards high incomes. They probably would consider an apartment in Spain, doing some banking there, etc. In other words, what's not to like?

And to answer the question that probably jumped out at you upon reading the story, where a "number of Muslim groups and academics have pointed out, both the Jews and Muslims were victims of Isabella and Ferdinand's Spanish Inquisition, and so why are only the descendants of the Jewish victims now being offered reparation?"

Easy. The extremists in the Jewish population are focused on Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Creating a haven for Jewish communities in Spain would, at least for the foreseeable future, not pose the challenges faced by other European countries and their Muslim minorities. To hell with fair, this is geopolitics.

I find this fascinating. In the coming years I wonder if we'll see more of these kinds of programs where countries attempt to poach "good" citizens from other other countries the way football teams try and improve their team via free agency?
Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-34316684219880809192015-03-25T16:21:00.001-06:002015-03-25T16:21:06.396-06:00Nuclear FUD

Panic by Vin Zzep

I drop off the grid for a few days for some quality time and come back to find the crazy piling high and fast in the areas we here at FutureJacked like to comment upon.

Ukraine

I am cooking up a larger post regarding Ukraine, but for now I'll just provide you with the link to the U.S. House Resolution on arming Ukraine against Russian-backed militias and let you ponder for yourself the assumptions buried in each of those "Whereas" clauses - especially that first one. I just can't get past my mental block on this one - imagine if the Chinese helped orchestrate the overthrow of what they regarded as a corrupt regime in Ottawa and replaced it with a fervently anti-U.S. governing junta. Then follow that with the Chinese Politburo publicly debating supplying advanced arms to that government after some Canadians out in the Western Provinces rebelled against what they saw as an unlawful government. It really just seems like a tremendous amount of downside for the West for very little gain. But then again, I am not exactly a member of the Deep State nor one of their political minions and those types have motivating factors far different from us little people out in Flyover Country.

Miscellaneous

There is plenty else out there, from the Shi'a vs. Sunni tussling in Yemen, to the ongoing Zimbabwe-ization of Japan, to the still-there-and-still fighting Islamic State (wasn't Tikrit supposed to have fallen to the Iranians Iraqis by now?). But don't worry - stock prices are still high!

Political theater and the continuing unraveling of the Middle East aside, I want to take a page from Nuclear Emergencies and analyze a couple of stories which came my way via Zero Hedge, using the tools described in the chapters on how to evaluate media stories on nuclear events.

Zero Hedge Does Nuke, Consume Carefully

The first step is to know your source. I like Zero Hedge as a platform for stories that won't make the cut in more mainstream media outlets, but I also never forget they have their own set of blinders and biases. They loves playing the fear merchant. This is especially true in terms of nuclear power, nuclear accidents, and radiation effects. They know nuclear stories draw eyeballs and that when the facts are used selectively and without context, you can scare the living daylights out of readers and keep them hooked on coming back.

Normally I wouldn't pay them much mind - if you take stories found on ZH as the final word on nuclear topics, you deserve what you get (primarily FUD - fear, uncertainty, and doubt) - but they reach a wide audience and have a sizable influence on opinions, so let's take two recent nuke stories found there and step through them, using some of the principles found in Nuclear Emergencies.

Why take the time? I want FutureJacked readers to be able to better evaluate threats. Nuclear meltdowns and weapons have many deep and negative emotions tied to them. But just because something sounds scary, doesn't mean it necessarily is scary. Walking through a couple of write-ups will hopefully help you navigate future stories with more confidence.

Fukushima's Nuclear Reactor Fuel is "Missing"

This is a typical "Tyler Durden" post on nuclear topics. First the headline is excellent. Even for those weary of reading about Fukushima, missing fuel could mean various things. Was it stolen? Disappeared totally? Not where it is supposed to be? Other?

Then we get into the story itself:

In the same week as Japan unveils its Pacific-Rim-esque anti-tsunami wall public works project, and Japanese government auditors say the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has wasted more than a third of the 190 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in taxpayer money allocated for cleaning up the plant after it was destroyed by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami; Science Journal reports, Fukushima won't be truly safe until engineers can remove the reactors' nuclear fuel. But first, they have to find it... And so, in February of this year two muon detectors were installed outside the Fukushima Daiichi unit-1 ruins at reactor vessel height for the purpose of finding that 'missing' reactor fuel.
Okay, so what about this missing fuel? Oh, wait, first let's talk about a Japanese infrastructure boon-doggle, then let's talk about "wasting" 190 billion yen, then bounce over to how things won't be "truly safe" until the reactor fuel can be moved, but "...first they have to find it..." But it is in the "ruins" of Unit-1. Whew.

In NLP they might just call this a "confusion pattern," which is used to set you up to "reframe" how you see things (hypnotize you in the sense that advertisements use changes in consciousness to sell you something, that is) but we aren't supposed to talk about such things out loud, so moving, on:

First, as AP reports, Japanese government auditors say the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has wasted more than a third of the 190 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in taxpayer money allocated for cleaning up the plant after it was destroyed by a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

A Board of Audit report describes various expensive machines and untested measures that ended in failure. It also says the cleanup work has been dominated by one group of Japanese utility, construction and electronics giants despite repeated calls for more transparency and greater access for international bidders.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Teruaki Kobayashi said all of the equipment contributed to stabilizing the plant, even though some operated only briefly.
A reasonably straight-forward reporting of a recent audit, and it is followed by a list of items . The engineer in me cringes at the term "wasted" when I recall the chaos surrounding the situation in the days after the meltdown. They had a bad situation, they tried multiple techniques to address it. Many of those techniques failed. The engineers did their jobs. The auditors did their jobs.

And, as can often be the case in Japan, you'll notice no mention was made of the massive influence of the Yakuza (the 4th branch of the Japanese government) involvement in controlling jobs at Fukushima and siphoning off lot's of money and providing shoddy equipment in return.

No issues with the data, but what does it have to do with "missing" fuel? Oh wait, creating a negative setting, implying TEPCO is unreliable, tying negative traits to the story as a whole. Got it.

Then finally we get to the meat of the story:

So it is even more distressing that, as Science Journal reports, Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, destroyed 4 years ago in explosions and meltdowns triggered by an earthquake and tsunami, won't be truly safe until engineers can remove the reactors' nuclear fuel. But first, they have to find it...
 Okay. Cool. I love Science Journal. At least it is a credible source. Word choice is again loaded, but hey, it's Zero Hedge. This is followed by a quote describing how TEPCO is using a special detector to determine the location of the melted fuel (called "corium" in the trade). Is it all at the bottom of the pressure vessel? TEPCO and other analysts have been saying for some time that the fuel ate through the pressure vessel to some degree. How much melted through? If so, where is it?

These questions do begin to be answered. You can read it yourself, but the text isn't really inflammatory. Props to ZH for once.

Then of course, we get the patented ZH Zinger at the end:

But apart from that, it's totally safe for the looming Olympics... which will include the individual three-and-a-half-legged sprint...
 Sigh. Good old fashioned radiation humor. Never gets old.

Overall grade in terms of fear, uncertainty, and doubt - probably a B-. If "Tyler" hadn't tried the cute NLP trick at the beginning, I would have been impressed by the article as a whole (considering the source).

Then we have a guest post to look over:

The Best Place to Live in the United States? Here are Nine Maps to Consider.

This is a post from the End of the American Dream blog and leads off with:

If you could live anywhere in America during the tumultuous years ahead, where would it be? This is a topic that is hotly debated, and the truth is that there is not a single right answer. If you have a very strong family support system where you are, it might not be right to try to move 2000 miles away and start a new life from scratch. And for many Americans, moving is out of the question in the short-term because they are completely and totally dependent on employment in their local areas. But in recent years we have seen an increasing number of Americans strategically relocate to another region of the country. They can see our society breaking down and they can see the storm clouds on the horizon and they want to do what they can to prepare themselves and their families for what is ahead.  So is there a "best place to live" in the United States? Are there some areas that are preferable to others? The following are 9 maps to consider…
 Hey. Cool. I like this kind of article as it can often contain useful nuggets of actionable information. I like maps. It even has a refreshing honesty about it with the "...there is not a single right answer..." Fast forward down to #7 on the list:

We have all seen what a single nuclear power plant disaster can do in Japan. Well, in a future disaster scenario, we could potentially be facing multiple "Fukushimas" all at once here in the United States. The map below shows where nuclear reactors are located throughout America. You might want to think twice before moving in right next door to one.
It is short, sweet, and indicative of so much of the urban legends which pass for knowledge in the vast majority of the citizenry.

In what "future disaster scenario" would we be facing multiple Fukushimas? Let's see, at Fukushima, all off-site power was lost due to the earthquake and the entire diesel generator back up system was wiped out by the tsunami due to a really, really bad decision to put the generators in the basement of a plant that sits next to the ocean.

That said, let's pretend we do have multiple Fukushimas. What has actually happened in terms of the release of radioactivity? How many people are projected to die from the radiation vs. the number dead from the earthquake? I know we talked about it in the book but remember this - radiation isn't a magical killing spell from Voldemort or Sauron. Radiation is everywhere. Hell, if Grand Central Station at New York was a nuclear power plant, it would have to shut down due to the natural radiation release from the stones which were used to build it.

There is nothing specific here to criticize and that is the point. It is all vague and predicated on deep assumptions that radiation is always dangerous and that we should fear multiple Fukushima style accidents. This is where knowing the causes of the Fukushima meltdowns (along with the various other major nuclear accident's we've seen over the years) and understanding what gets released and what is dangerous threshold is so important.

If you do nothing else, in the future when you read articles on nuclear topics and radiation effects, always be asking questions. Think about the assumptions implicit in how the questions are written. Wonder about the sources used.

Don't let them blind you with FUD. You need to be one of the few with a clear head should the shit hit the fan in a nuclear way.
Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-91630373834393434502015-03-19T16:10:00.000-06:002015-03-19T16:11:31.390-06:00Fast Cars and Market Highs

Classic and Faster by CrazySnck

How about a short and more upbeat aspect of the current plateau of mood we find ourselves in:

The Dodge Hellcats are so hot, they got suspended

(Fox News, March 16, 2015) Apparently Hell has frozen over, because a car company has stopped selling its hottest cars.

Dodge is hitting the brakes on the "Hellcat" versions of the Challenger and Charger, suspending orders of the 707 hp muscle machines due to overwhelming demand. The two share the title of "most powerful American production car in history," and boast top speeds of 199 mph and 204 mph, respectively.

 The automaker was caught off guard by interest in the pair since they were released late last year, and has already received orders for twice as many as it planned to build for 2015. The shortage has led to 50 percent markups on the $60,000-plus by some dealers, while others have reportedly taken dozens of deposits on cars they could take years to deliver, leading Dodge to warn customers of what it called "unscrupulous" behavior.
Several years back, an analyst at the Socionomics Insitute, Mark Galasiewski, wrote a series of articles showing the tie-in between elevated social mood and fast cars.

Here at the summit of financial optimism, we have cars so fast and so popular the manufacturer is having to pull them from the market to get their manufacturing house in order. Hopefully for Chrysler, mood can hang on long enough to get another solid round of sales out of them before the inevitable occurs...

Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-9302413090686989112015-03-16T09:01:00.003-06:002015-03-17T05:53:32.590-06:00Banging on the War Drums All Day

War by Zulema Revilla, hosted at Society6.com

Not that we need yet another media or blogging outlet hell-bent on keeping your amygdalae locked into the "fear" setting day and night, but I do want to draw your attention to the ongoing school-yard shoving match in Ukraine between the U.S./NATO/EU coalition and Russia and the ethnic Russian militias in the Donbas. This is not meant to play into the Clown Show rhetoric being sprayed across every media platform each side's propaganda teams can access, but to ask you to parse through actions and words and see how close we might be to an actual clash between NATO forces and Russian troops, or whether this will remain a proxy war.

The Sounds of the Drums

Aside from the constant chatter about "Putin's Army" or "Putin's forces" and other simplistic narratives, let's see what we can find in the open media about what is happening on the ground over the last few weeks with both the forces aligned with the West (meaning here U.S./NATO/EU) and the forces aligned with Russia.

First, we have Sweden, which has a history of being "non-aligned" and doing a dance to keep both the Russians and NATO at bay, drawing closer to NATO, especially after recent incursions and near-incursions by Russian bombers and subs:

Swedish government says plans to boost defence spending
(Reuters) - The Swedish government will propose a 6.2 billion crown ($720 million) boost to defence spending over the next five years, its Defence Minister said on Thursday, citing increased instability in the region.

Peter Hultqvist said a worsening security situation, particularly Russian activity in and around the Baltic Sea, is forcing Sweden's armed forces to concentrate on the defence of its borders instead of international operations.

"We are making it very clear that we are shifting towards a focus of the national operations," he told a news conference.

The additional funds will be spent mainly on submarine operations and a permanent armed force on Gotland, a strategically important island in the Baltic, Hultqvist said.

Some take-aways: increase in war spending, re-establishing a military presence on a key Baltic Sea island, and in general, shifting more towards the NATO alliance.

As part of a trend by Russia to rattle the saber right under the noses of Western States, a month back we saw an incursion by Russian bombers near the UK.

RAF scrambles jets after Russian bombers spotted near Cornwall coast
(Guardian, Haroon Siddique, 19 February 2015) Anglo-Russian relations have taken another battering after the RAF escorted two Russian Bear bombers off the coast of Cornwall, as Moscow reacted angrily over a warning by Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, about the threat it may pose to Nato's Baltic states.

RAF Typhoons were scrambled from their base in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, on Wednesday in response to the latest in a series of incursions by Russian warplanes. On Thursday David Cameron accused Moscow of trying to make a point, while the Kremlin furiously denounced Fallon's warning that Vladimir Putin could repeat the tactics used to destabilise Ukraine in Baltic members of the Nato alliance.

During an event at Felixstowe, Suffolk, Cameron said: "I think what this demonstrates is that we do have the fast jets, the pilots, the systems in place to protect the United Kingdom. I suspect what's happening here is that the Russians are trying to make some sort of a point and I don't think we should dignify it with too much of a response."

Here is a more measured response by the Brits, past masters at Great Power saber-rattling, but another example of Russia not exactly going out of the way to de-escalate. As in the Cold War days, the big worry here is that one of these incursion missions will go too far and someone gets shot down, or a malfunction of some sort occurs, leading to a dogfight. What is more worrisome is that unlike the Cold War, there are no agreed-upon rules of behavior. A miscommunication could easily happen.

And then there has been yet another reference to the use of nuclear weapons by the Russians:

Putin says Russia was ready for nuclear confrontation over Crimea
(Reuters) - Moscow was ready to put its nuclear forces on alert to ensure Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last year, President Vladimir Putin said in a pre-recorded documentary aired on Sunday...

"...it wasn't immediately understandable (what the reaction would be to Crimea's annexation). Therefore, in the first stages, I had to orient our armed forces. Not just orient, but give direct orders," he said.

When asked if he had been ready to put Russia's nuclear forces on alert, he said: "We were ready to do it."
That last comment is telling, in my opinion (emphasis mine). One oddity about the article is the headline about the potential for Russia to put its nukes on alert, while the bulk of the story was about Russia helping get its guy out of Ukraine after the recent coup. It's like the editor knows nuclear war draws eyeballs and brings clicks to the story links, but thinks the important stuff is the Clown Show drama over the former Ukrainian president. Or maybe the author doesn't know, or isn't allowed to speculate about, what a nuclear forces alert means.

Back in January we looked at not just nuclear weapons and social mood, but also at how Russia has revised its stance on the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent and the concept of "tailored damage" - basically the use of nuclear weapons on a small scale to (hopefully) prevent a wider war.

I think part of this continuing reference to nuclear weapons and its nuclear arsenal is a reflection, in part, of Russia's limited ability to handle a major ground war right now. It is interesting how much of how Russia is sending messages on the use of nuclear force here is like the U.S. and then NATO back in the late 1940's and through the 1950's. Western forces were absolutely outmanned and outgunned by the Red Army in Europe. This was part of the reason for NATO to push for the development of tactical nukes and to never make a "No First Use" promise for nuclear weapons. They felt too weak to ever make such a statement.

Russia is probably feeling similar today. She has substantial forces, but her options to project that force into Ukraine, and certainly into Europe are limited.

What Kind of War Would We See?

No one can know for sure just how out of hand a war might get, should we actually NATO-on-Russian fighting in Ukraine. Knowing we can't have perfect knowledge, let's turn to the Socionomic Model and see what it tells us about past conflicts.

War and Socionomic Patterns, the Socionomist, February 2012

This graph from 2012 gives you the basic model on war and mood. This model would tell us that if you assume a top in mood in 2000, the leg down through 2008-2009 as the (a) wave, and call the run-up since then as the rally, a major collapse in mood and markets could mean we are facing the potential for a major conflict.

If instead we regard the recent highs as the top, any decline that might follow would hopefully lead us to either a negotiated armistice or at least a regional conflict. That doesn't mean we might not see a nuclear weapon detonated - but hopefully it would be more of a "signal" or detonated to create "tailored damage" (blow up a remote base or maybe detonate very high in the atmosphere over a target - blasting out windows and scaring a lot of people, but creating a low death toll and relatively low damage).

I don't bring you answers here, but I do want you to think about this model. One way or the other, we are likely facing a major conflict, whether in the immediate future or within a decade or so. All I can say is, don't dwell on the fear, but do plan accordingly...
Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-43567781362441524452015-03-13T08:24:00.000-06:002015-03-13T08:24:08.843-06:00Garden 2015

Victory Garden Poster courtesy wikimedia

Spring is coming here in the Northern Hemisphere, so here is my yearly reminder: if you do nothing else as part of your efforts to prepare for the big changes roiling the world, plant a garden. Whether it is a small container garden on an apartment balcony, a few herbs in a small box by a window, or a victory garden which can provide you with fresh produce much of the year, learning and practicing the art and science of growing a garden will be increasingly important in the years to come.

This isn't about seeking maximum efficiency or always defaulting to low price or any other of the concepts which most regard as natural economic laws. This is about doing something productive for yourself, something which produces tangible value for you and your family, and which allows you to practice a skill which has nothing but upside should the world experience oil price shocks, transportation interruptions, labor unrest, or rolling bankruptcies - any of which might make good food hard to get.

Remember, food is freedom. If you are looking for high-quality old school gardening and truck farm tools, I highly recommend you check out Easy Digging and then get to planning that garden.
Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-73295008916509352412015-03-09T08:28:00.002-06:002015-03-09T14:21:21.793-06:00EU Army Madness

Madness is the Emergency Exit, Vincent Vernacatola, hosted at Society6.com

UPDATE 1 below.

We all know the dangers of appeasement. It is almost always best to face down an aggressor before the peril become too great to handle. But I want to also remind you to be wary of self-interested elites stampeding the populations they lord over into wars of choice in which they think they can profit and expand the reach of their power - assuming success, of course. And when those short, victorious little wars go awry, the knock-on effects can spin out of control.

So when I read this weekend that the mandarins of the EU have decided now is the time to float the idea of building an EU army, it set off all sorts of alarm bells:

A European Union army should be created to help defend the continent from Russian aggression, the European Commission president has suggested.

 Jean-Claude Juncker said pooling the defence resources of the 28 EU nations could help send a message to Vladimir Putin that its borders would be protected.

In a strictly military sense, this proposal seems redundant, if not silly. NATO stands ready (hell, eager, if one were to take the statements of General Breedlove at face value) to throw troops and nuclear weapons at any major Russian incursion into the European heartland. Russia, while quite bellicose when it comes to dealing with the situation in Ukraine, hasn't exactly been a proponent of exporting revolution into Europe since the fall of the USSR. It makes one wonder what the real message is behind the Clown Show type rhetoric.

Then we get a glimmer of what may be the real reason behind the push from Herr Juncker, et al:

"Such an army would help us to build a common foreign and national security policy, and to collectively take on Europe's responsibilities in the world," Mr Junker said.
Ah so. Never let a crisis go to waste, eh? With the chronic economic problems of the EU periphery states not going away anytime soon, the rise of UKIP in the UK, and ongoing disenchantment with the EU project in France, perhaps the elites who pull the strings within the EU bureaucracy have decided now is the time to double-down and push forward with the next logical phase of the EU project - a common army.

Or maybe he thinks an EU-run army would be just as efficient at generating military successes as it has been at creating a economic success across the EU zone...

That said, never forget that Russia has formalized a much more itchy trigger finger than they've expressed in the past when it comes to nuclear weapons. This may matter because of the language used in a response to this EU Army idea by first deputy chairman of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, Frants Klintsevich:

"In the nuclear age extra armies do not provide any additional security. But they surely can play a provocative role," Klintsevich said, adding it was regrettable that such ideas had already met with some support.
For those of you scoring at home, it is my opinion that government officials do not just loosely throw out the word "nuclear" when discussing a contentious topic.

Keep both eyes open. Always be looking for the story behind the story. These EU jokers may think they have the "perfect" crisis with which to move their EU project forward. Let's hope they don't light off a general war in the process.

UPDATE 1 9 March 2015

Not that we need any more tension in Eurasia or anything that might increase the potential for a miscommunication in matters related to nuclear weapons, but FYI that in the past month, Russia has lost the last of its early-warning satellite coverage. While the Russians (and Soviets before them) never relied as heavily on satellite early warning as the U.S. and NATO, it is just one more brick in the wall of unintentional escalation or worse, launch.
Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-38852693442832000852015-03-06T16:04:00.001-06:002015-03-06T16:05:55.698-06:00A Chill Wind from the North, Redux

TAPS Low Flow Study, Slide 5

Back in 2011, I wrote a blog post entitled A Chill Wind from the North. It discussed the ability of the Alyeska Pipeline to continue to transport oil from the North Slope of Alaska to Prince William Sound as throughput dropped in the pipeline. This is occurring as the North Slope continues its inexorable decline down the depletion path. The post was based on a study which indicated the pipeline would need to keep the flow at 300,000 barrels of crude per day in order to maintain operation. In order to operate below that threshold, the study authors suggested that significant mitigation steps would need to be taken.

Last week on a flight to DFW, I sat next to a young Alaskan man who happens to be in Engineering Management. We got to talking and this topic came up in conversation. He indicated this continues to be a topic of study and attention up in Alaska. I decided to take that as a sign I should revisit the issue and see what things look like four years later.

In the original post, I ended with a rather dire assessment that output could make a step-change drop once the pipeline reached a failure point and that the assumption we'd continue to see a gradual decline in output might be flawed.

A more gradual decline was argued as more probable by various environmental groups interested in keeping ANWAR rig-free as well as evaluations commissioned by the Alaskan Department of Revenue. The scenarios are not mutually exclusive as the gradual decline scenario (where pipeline failure would occur closer to 100,000 bbl/day) assumes significant investment in the infrastructure.

The Story in 2015

Here is a snapshot of the average daily throughput for the Alyeska Pipeline through 2014.

Data from TAPS Pipeline Operations

The actual performance has been reasonably in line with the TAPS assumption of 6% depletion. The pigs have been modified to increase the efficiency of keeping the wax buildup down and heat is being added to the system after modifications to the active pump stations and the re-commissioning of a previously closed pump station.

Some of the investment in the infrastructure required to keep crude flowing in the pipeline below 300,000 barrels per day is being put in place. What remains to be seen is will there be enough money available to keep investing should oil prices stay low due to a prolonged downturn in the economy.

Thoughts

This brief note is meant to keep you thinking about infrastructure. There is so much infrastructure in the U.S. and the other Western nations which was built out in a heyday of cheap energy and booming economies. This infrastructure plays a huge role in how and/or if we can continue to power our financialized economy and continue our existing methods of resource extraction indefinitely and when societies will be forced to make very hard choices on how to deploy scarce resources.

Whether the Alyeska pipeline can continue to operate theoretically for decades to come, remember that this continued operation, like so much else in the modern energy extraction business, requires far more inputs in terms of money and equipment to maintain a declining and poorer quality flow of hydrocarbons.

Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-11407768230538012462015-03-06T13:26:00.000-06:002015-03-06T13:26:37.233-06:00Socionomics Podcasting

Heads up for those of you who enjoy playing with the Socionomics model. Robert Folsom with EWI has a new podcast series.

Pop Trends, Price Culture is the podcast about the intersection of psychology and markets. You can download or listen online (it's free). Robert Folsom presents real people and real stories as they meet in the crossroads of mood and markets. Caution: As Robert's disclaimer puts it, "This podcast contains strong opinions and strong language."

Check it out here.

Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-36886831949494154102015-03-01T21:47:00.000-06:002015-03-01T21:47:04.209-06:00Nuclear Strike of the Month (March 2015): Target Houston Ship Channel

NUKEMAP Simulation of 15kT Ground Burst in the Houston Ship Channel

Note on the Nuclear Strike of the Month Series: In this series I want to illustrate various ways attacks using nuclear weapons can play out. I will be using Dr. Alex Wellerstein's online NUKEMAP tool to generate the estimates of the blast and follow-on effects.

My rationale is to show a wide range of nuclear attack scenarios short of all-out thermonuclear war. The idea is to give readers a feel for the destructive power of nuclear weapons, provide scenarios as thought experiments for your own planning, and to discuss what nuclear weapons can and (sometimes more importantly) what nuclear weapons can't do.

For a variety of reasons, it is my opinion we will see nuclear weapons used in warfare sometime between now and 2030. We might as well brush up on the basics.

Nuclear Strike of the Month: Houston Ship Channel

The Nuclear Strike of the Month for March 2015 takes us to sunny Houston, Texas. We will red team a nuclear strike by a terrorist group (or by a nation-state wanting the U.S. to think it was attacked by a a terrorist group) using a weapon similar in yield to that which struck Hiroshima.

The Scenario
In the days and weeks preceding the attack on Houston the news was more of the "new normal" in the United States. Official unemployment remained close to 8%, but even the major media outlets were channeling their inner Zero Hedge and bringing on guests who openly mocked the figures as being extremely divorced from reality.

The Big Dip of 2015 seemed to have settled out. Markets appeared to have finally found a floor a bit south of Dow 10,000. The Congressional fight over TARP 2.0 continued to be in the headlines. It looked like the banks would get it passed, but with much tighter margins than Version 1.0 in 2008. If nothing else, watching Tea Party Republicans and far-left Democrats standing shoulder to shoulder in denouncing the bill provided fantastic political theater, even if in the end, their angry pronouncements against the bailout were in utter vain. The rolling bank failures which had kicked off with the Greek bond default and the failure of two mid-major trading houses seemed to be settling out as well.

The employed went about their business hoping they could ride things out as in 2008, but more and more families were being sheared off from the formal economy. In Houston, the whip-sawing of energy prices between $35 and $85 kept anyone from becoming too relaxed. With crude oil hovering at $60 a barrel for the last month or so, most could talk themselves into believing another run-up past $100 was in the cards. Especially with the gains the Islamic State was making in Saudi Arabia.

The fashionistas at the New York Fashion Week had made it clear hemlines were dropping. Death Metal was actively competing with the angry anti-cop themes of Heavy Hip-Hop and moody folk reboots for dollars and downloads.

In other words, as far as most of the residents of Houston, Texas were concerned, the world was ticking along more or less as it had been since 2003, just with worse music.

Radiation, Fireball, and Blast Effects Overlaid on a Satellite Map

The Attack
The container ship slowly making its way up the channel towards Buffalo Bayou looked like any of the thousands of other ships hauling intermodal containers which paid call in Houston every year. On that hot afternoon in Texas, not one of the drivers on I-10 or the workers at the big ExxonMobil Baytown facility or the tourists at the Battleship Texas knew what lurked in a slightly rusty standard container loaded in the heart of the ship.

Investigators later determined the nuclear warhead had an effective yield of 15 kilotons. Their reconstruction seemed to indicate the warhead had been encased in a large tank and surrounded by soft plastic forms. The assumption is the detonator was linked to a wireless repeater and probably linked to instructions sent by a basic web bot linked to either a time stamp or activated manually. The investigators suspected something had not gone as planned since the ship was far enough into the channel that direct blast damage to the ExxonMobil facility was minimal, but this was conjecture.

Looking out from the observation deck of the San Jacinto Monument, the last thing a construction worker from Killeen ever saw was what looked like lightning crackling up from a ship in the channel. Then his retinas burned out. Before he could register the pain, the blast sent him hurtling to the ground, his body bathed in gamma rays and fast neutrons.

It was a ground burst on a river. The mushroom cloud looked bottom-heavy as shown from the pictures and video shot from witnesses in the towers of downtown Houston. The mix of steam, vaporized metal, ejected riverbed, smoke, and ash rose and drifted northeast. The explosion rattled windows for miles and set off car alarms across the city, but direct damage from the blast was relatively limited.

Interstate 10 turned into a demolition derby as tractor trailer rigs and pickup trucks were blown from the road or their drivers left holding the wheel at over sixty miles per hour, flash-blinded.

The blast wiped out the Lynchburg Ferry, reduced the obelisk of the San Jacinto Monument to a cracked stub half its original size, and did what no Imperial German, Nazi, or, Japanese warship had ever managed to do, and sent the Battleship Texas to the bottom of the channel, leaving it keeled over, its mast and two of its big guns above the water, like a few fingers of drowned man, locked in rigor mortis.

The Aftermath
One of the reasons the death toll remained relatively low was the blast and path of the fallout left the major hospitals and fire stations mostly unscathed. The EMTs, firefighters, and emergency room doctors and nurses had thousands of hours of experience in handling refinery fires, explosions, and trauma response.

Close by at Texas A&M, Texas Task Force One was activated and on the scene within a few hours, bringing hundreds of trained Urban Search and Rescue personnel to the scene, plotting radiation fields, establishing decontamination areas, and coordinating with local firefighters and law enforcement to get as much understood and in-hand before every federal agency with an acronym descended upon Houston.

The fallout was intense and sickened thousands, killing hundreds. One of the worst parts though was the mix of vaporized salt water and radioactive particles. It stuck like glue to rooftops, roads, automobiles and any other exposed surface, leaving a residue of radioactivity which was incredibly difficult to clean. The Lynchburg canal became a key drainage point for the fallout, and eventually tanker ships, left idle by the recession which accompanied the Big Dip in stock prices around the world, served as floating wastewater repositories.

The nuclear forensics work conducted by experts from the U.S. Department of Energy was slow in getting off the ground. Whatever remnants of the warhead left behind after the blast were under the waters of the Houston Ship Channel, in a twisted mass of radioactive metal and river mud. But nuclear forensics doesn't require much material and the PhDs at DOE could be pretty clever when spurred to action by something more important than dodging budget cuts to their research projects. And when the results matched up extraordinarily well with samples of enriched uranium spirited out of Fordow, Iran a few years earlier, a series of hard choices filtered up to the Oval Office. Either Iran had been framed, or the Revolutionary Guards had overplayed their hand in dramatic fashion. Either option meant a drastic response was coming. Who would be on the receiving end remained to be seen...

Thoughts and Plans
This blast is on the high end of what is typically expected from a terrorist nuke. A few of the things I'd like you to take away from this nuclear blast include:

Ground bursts generate significant fallout. Look over the radiation fields generated by the fallout from this hypothetical attack and think over scenarios. In this case, you have a mall on the fringes of the fallout path (think of all those contaminated cars) and a high school under a 10 R/hour field. Would the administrators be able to keep everyone in doors, at least until first responders could arrange either an evacuation, or to keep them supplied in place for a day or two until the radiation levels were down enough to allow a quick evacuation?

Zoom out. This is a 15 kT explosion, on par with Hiroshima. Is the result as big as you expected?

What sort of knock-on effects from an attack like this could you expect? How much shipping traffic goes through the Houston Ship Channel each year? What sorts of petrochemicals leave the area? What would have to be abandoned temporarily? How do you evaluate and repair a shipping channel after a nuclear explosion?

How would you respond to such an event? Does your ready kit have the kinds of tools or equipment to monitor radiation fields?

Clown Show Disclaimer

Due to the subject matter of this post, it will be necessary to provide the following disclaimer. Blog posts like this tend to bring out comment trolls ready to gin up the Clown Show of name-calling, knee-jerk willful misinterpretation, and angry discourse generating much sound and fury, but which in the end, signifies nothing. Such comments will be deleted.

I am not promoting nuclear war. I am not attempting to wish such an attack upon any population anywhere. I am attempting to provide a plausible scenario which might lead to the use of nuclear weapons. My expectation is that you will use this scenario to war game whatever plans you may be putting into place to deal with this new era we find ourselves in and see if you are as ready as you hope.

Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-41412707575742663492015-02-25T15:27:00.001-06:002015-02-25T15:28:02.845-06:00EWI State of the Global Markets (Full 53 Page Report) for Free

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Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-25171057571181736942015-02-21T18:17:00.000-06:002015-02-21T20:03:34.577-06:00Nuclear Emergencies

Nuclear Emergencies

I am pleased to announce the publication of my newest work, Nuclear Emergencies.

In this Amazon Kindle e-book (hardcopy version to follow in a few months) you receive an overview of nuclear science and radiation safety, a discussion of nuclear weapons, nuclear reactor accidents, dirty bombs, and how disaster response to such accidents would be coordinated. This is followed by a review of how scientists estimate cancer risk after you've been exposed to excess radiation and a primer on how to better read articles and papers on nuclear subjects and see what they are telling you, what they are not, and how to figure it out.

A preview of the book is available, including a full table of contents for your study. This will allow you to see for yourself if you think this will prove a valuable addition to the resources you have gathered in preparation for dealing with what is facing us in the coming years.

The hope is that the wide range of topics (and the over 500 hyperlinks which take you to journal articles and scientific studies for your own further research) covered will allow you to be among the few who can realistically evaluate future nuclear emergencies. Let others deal with uncertainty and fear, reliant on mainstream media sources to inform them. You will be in a position to fact-check them and make up your own mind.
Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-70008948718464004662015-02-19T19:27:00.000-06:002015-02-20T15:52:09.294-06:00Extreme Outcomes (Part Two): The First Revolt Fails

A German revolutionary faces a firing squad after the failed Sparticist Uprising of 1919 (image from marxisttheory.org)

As the world, and more specifically, the West, stumbles forward to a far more violent future, filled with financial upheaval and political turmoil, let's take a brief moment to remember a Golden Rule that all wannabe Revolutionaries forget to their peril - the first revolt fails.

Violent revolutions against the established order, much more often than not, fail after the first revolt. As mood continues to darken, as factions polarize along the political spectrum, and as the breakdown of the existing financial order makes it more difficult for the Powers That Be to spread around the graft, jobs, and loot that keep them on top, the young and the desperate might decide at some point that a violent uprising against the Man is just what is needed. There will be no shortage of radicals (and government-paid agents provocateur) who will be able to convince a critical mass of men and women to arm themselves and overthrow the [insert name of currently-hyped Oppressor class].

Practically without exception, this will prove to be wrong and possibly fatal.

Some examples worth thinking about include:

The Revolutions of 1848
Reminiscent of the "Arab Spring," Europe experienced its own wave of idealistic uprisings against monarchies across Europe, mainly focused in the Central and Eastern part of the continent. While there was no coherent movement governing the uprisings, they were mostly focused on breaking down the last of the feudal structures which had held on, such as serfdom or in some cases absolute monarchy.

After some initial successes, the uprisings were crushed, one by one. Some of the political gains did manage to remain in place, but the "Revolutions of 1848" wound up being more inspirational mythology to later, more successful efforts at reform (most which occurred peacefully).

Philippine-American War
A fantastic example of a revolutionary movement allying itself with a larger power to overthrow the local bad guys, only to wind up under the heel of that larger power is the Philippine-American War. The Philippines in the late 1800's was a last outpost of the crumbling Spanish Empire. A revolution which had kicked off in 1892 had, after several twists and turns, and a bit of American help, landed the Philippine forces in a place where they had taken most of the island nation for their own and surrounded the remaining Spanish forces in Manila. A side agreement resulted in the Spanish surrendering Manila to American forces.

The lure of joining Europe in the race to carve up the world into colonial empires proved too great and the U.S. moved to crush the initial Philippine Republic which had been declared in the wake of the defeat of the Spanish.

Depending on who compiles the numbers, between 200,000 and over 1 million Filipinos died in this war. They had risen up and it looked like they had succeeded, but because of the presence of powerful outside forces, viewed as necessary to finish the job of the Revolution, the revolt wound up failing. The Philippines wouldn't see independence until after World War II and another round of agony during their occupation by the Empire of Japan.

Hama, 1982
Watching the Syrian civil war and the rise of the Islamic State and the bloodbath which has ensued, it is wise to remember a failed uprising in Syria from 1982, the infamous Hama Massacre.

In 1982, the Middle East was governed by entrenched secular military-socialist rulers in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. In Syria a variety of tensions led to an uprising organized primarily by the Muslim Brotherhood. In this unsuccessful prelude to what happened thirty years later, the Syrian government forces reacted swiftly and violently. Hama was surrounded and the killing began. It is estimated 20,000 - 40,000 died, with many tens of thousands more driven from the city.

Instead of leading to a larger uprising and civil war, as blossomed in recent years after another series of Islamist uprisings, the Hama Massacre broke the back of the Muslim Brotherhood and provided multiple lessons - some of which have borne fruit in the current war and some of which kept a lid on sectarian violence for three decades.

Things to Consider

You will have your own list of examples and possibly even some exceptions that prove the rule (Mussolini's March on Rome comes to mind).

What you should keep in mind is that in practically all cases, these first revolts were painful learning experiences. In the preceding centuries of positive mood the goals and ideals of the revolutions could be pursued by peaceful means eventually. That said, those that got dead during the first revolts were not around to take advantage of that progress.

In an era of net negative social mood, massive debt overhangs, fragile energy supplies, and a lot of grudges to get worked out on the battlefield, we could see a series of bad things metastasize from the revolts we are sure to see. Bad as in Thirty Years War bad. Bad as in the era of Chinese Warlords in the early 20th Century. Bad as in nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide bad.

For those of you scoring at home here in the U.S., I give you my Top 3 list of places to watch for flashpoints that could easily be swept up into a failed revolt. Or worse, a "success" that ends up with a new boss worse than the old boss.

Hawai'i (read up on the Philippine-American War and when that Chinese or Russian "secret" funding starts flowing, think about the long-term consequences...)

Texas (at a minimum read up on the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and ponder the long-lasting ramifications - not just the crushing defeat of the Confederacy, but the continuing effects of the Nullification Doctrine itself, especially as it has been revived by both groups as diverse as marijuana legalization activists and gun rights activists...)

Aztlan (when the uprisings begin, various City of Los Angeles offices and police stations get trashed, and the Aztlan flag gets raised over the L.A. Memorial Coliseum make sure you've read up on the Revolutions of 1848 or worse, the current conditions in Ukraine...)

Most of us don't want this coming era of violence and upheaval. Revolutions often eat their founders and leave the world worse-off than before. We'll see what awaits us all, but I might suggest, you sit the revolts out. Be a builder, not a breaker.
Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-78565271511544350572015-02-06T11:08:00.001-06:002015-02-06T11:08:34.598-06:00Odd and Ends
Here are a few items of note as we head into the weekend.

Ukraine

I continue to quietly freak out over the ongoing struggle in Ukraine. I regard the potential for NATO and Russia forces to end up in a direct shooting war as very real should the negative sentiment and lack of trust continue to build.

US risks 'colossal damage' to relations if it arms Ukraine, Moscow warns

Dan McLaughlin, The Irish Times

Russia has warned the United States that arming Ukraine in its fight with Moscow-backed separatists would do "colossal damage" to already fractious relations between Washington and the Kremlin.

As German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president François Hollande revealed that they were travelling to Kiev and Moscow to discuss new peace proposals, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said yesterday his country was "seriously concerned" by possible western weapons supplies to Ukraine.

"Without a doubt, if such a decision is realised, it will cause colossal damage to US-Russian relations, especially if the residents of Donbass [Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions] start to be killed by American weapons," Mr Lukashevich said. "This would not only threaten to escalate the situation in the southeast of Ukraine, but threaten the security of Russia, whose territory has been repeatedly shelled from Ukraine."

The combination of the building negative mood with Russia's perception of very real national security interests in Ukraine and the West's insistence on pulling Ukraine into the Western orbit is the kind of thing that can make for a lot of dead people and, more importantly (as we saw in the aftermath of World War I), big wars destroy assumptions and let loose all sorts of crazy ideas of governance, art, and acceptable behavior which prior to the war would have been dismissed as lunacy.

For those of us using the socionomics model to guesstimate what the future holds, the final call on whether the top in mood occurred in 2000 vs. 2015 matters quite a bit, as Alan Hall's research in the February 2012 issue of the Socionomist shows.

U.S. Jobs Figures and the Waning Credibility of the Elites

This short video from EWI gives you a nice snapshot of today's job figures announcement - and the continued disconnect between what is reported by the governing classes and what is directly experienced by the rest of us:

If you are reading this, the information is nothing new. I bring it to your attention only because, as the kleptocrats in Greece recently found out, when your credibility is gone, dramatic changes can occur at the ballot box. And if they are prevented from occurring at the ballot box...
Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-24292074802300072322015-02-02T18:31:00.003-06:002015-02-03T17:12:40.256-06:00Nuclear Strike of the Month (February 2015): Target Khersones Airbase

NUKEMAP Depiction of a W-76 Air Burst Over Khersones Airbase

Welcome to a new monthly feature here at FutureJacked - the Nuclear Strike of the Month.

In this series I want to illustrate various ways attacks using nuclear weapons can play out. I will be using Dr. Alex Wellerstein's online NUKEMAP tool to generate the estimates of the blast and follow-on effects.

My rationale is to show a wide range of nuclear attack scenarios short of all-out thermonuclear war. The idea is to give readers a feel for the destructive power of nuclear weapons, provide scenarios as thought experiments for your own planning, and to discuss what nuclear weapons can and (sometimes more importantly) what nuclear weapons can't do.

For a variety of reasons, it is my opinion we will see nuclear weapons used in warfare sometime between now and 2030. We might as well brush up on the basics.

Nuclear Strike of the Month: Khersones Airbase

This month we will review what a nuclear attack on Khersones Airbase in Crimea would look like.

The Scenario
Amidst a backdrop of collapsing oil prices, a series of currencies crises, and collapsing stock markets, tensions continue to rise in Ukraine. NATO sends in sufficient numbers of weapons, advisors, and military contractors which allow Ukrainian forces to begin marching eastwards once again, retaking areas lost to the rebels in late 2014 and early 2015. The rebel militias are routed at the Donetsk airport and a breakout occurs at Mariupol, creating huge encircled pockets of militia fighters which suffer at the hands of famine and Ukrainian Punitive Battalions.

NATO tanks are spotted on the M04 headed towards Luhansk and significant numbers of military contractors are spotted in Kharkiv. After an escalation in the war of words between Russian and Western leaders and a massacre of civilians outside of Luhansk (which each side blames on the other), President Putin appears on television to announce all measures will now be employed to ensure the safety of Russia and the Russian people.

Two days later, a nuclear warhead detonates over Diego Garcia. The Russian Foreign Minister then asks if the West is now ready to understand just how important Ukraine is to the Russian national interest.

There is a near total meltdown in the Western Press. The Chattering Classes erupt in incoherent rage, the political classes in the West are united in their desire to punish Russia, and military leaders sweat over just where this will lead. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff receive their orders to prepare a measured target for retaliation.

The Air Force is selected to deliver the blow, which will fall on a spit of land southwest of Sevastopol, Crimea, Russia. The airbase at Khersones can easily be spun as a significant military target, hitting Crimea in punishment for its defection from Ukraine scores some points, and this retaliation delivered near a major port for the Black Sea Fleet is viewed by Western leaders as sending the message that freedom and democracy won't be cowed.

Eastern edge of the W-76 Blast Effects

The Attack
The stealth drone arced across the Black Sea. Pulled from the bowels of advanced weapons laboratories and painstakingly reviewed in its final checkdown at Sandia National Lab, the drone and its 100 kT W-76 nuclear warhead were never spotted on radar.

The attack was timed with dawn and the citizens of Sevastopol were caught between the rising sun to the east and a blast announcing a man-made sun springing to life in the west. Homes, apartment buildings, and tidy little vacation cottages collapsed throughout the western Haharins'kyi District. Localized fires sprung up, but no firestorm was generated from the attack.

Detonating just shy of one mile over the earth, the blast caught most people in their homes. The deadliest portions blast radiation were limited to the airport. Ships and boats bobbing in Kozacha and Komyshova Bays were heaved onto land or shredded into floating debris.

As this was an air burst, fuzed to maximize the overpressure from the blast, the radioactive fallout was minimal and most of that carried out over the Black Sea.

The Aftermath

The initial hours were chaotic. Russian sailors and local firefighters dug through the rubble of homes and businesses. Tens of thousands of residents streamed away from the blast zone and several hundred thousand residents of Sevastopol began making their way to the north and east.

The final estimate of deaths came to 2,000, with those injured just over 30,000.

Russian sailors and officers looking south from their ships in Sevastopol Bay readied themselves for what the next ratchet up in the tit-for-tat game of geopolitics would bring. U.S. planners were grimly satisfied their soldiers, sailors, and airmen at Diego Garcia had been avenged.

Thoughts and Plans

It is important to review the blast intensity and the layout provided. You will see a lot of narrow streets and buildings which one can assume use a lot of unreinforced masonry in their construction - the kind of building a 5 psi blast wave would shred in seconds.

How would first responders get to the scene?

Would the shoreline be an option for evacuation or staging of relief forces?

How soon would enough people be confident of the lack of fallout to even proceed into the area?

What sort of plans would be necessary to mitigate the worst of the effects?

Many people carry around in their minds that nuclear bombs are world-ending type devices. The weapon in this scenario is roughly 10 time the power of the bomb which detonated over Hiroshima and optimized in its blast height for destruction, not fallout production. The W-76, warts and all, is a big part of the U.S. arsenal and would be probably play a big role in a future nuclear war. The vast majority of the city is unscathed. Much infrastructure would remain intact. The loss of life would be bad, but not catastrophic. In other words, what if we light off a few of these weapons in anger in the coming years, without it spiraling out of control into a total strategic thermonuclear holocaust, resulting in "acceptable" damage to both those dropping the nuke and those on the receiving end? What if military and political planners find ways to use nukes in warfare and we erode the stigma associated with their use? That is what worries me most about the potential for this new era we are stumbling towards. That worries me a lot.

Clown Show Disclaimer

Due to the subject matter of this post, it will be necessary to provide the following disclaimer. Blog posts like this tend to bring out battalions of comment trolls ready to gin up the Clown Show of name-calling, knee-jerk willful misinterpretation, and angry discourse generating much sound and fury, but which in the end, signifies nothing.

I am not promoting nuclear war, nor am I attempting to paint any potential Russia nuclear strikes in retaliation for war in Ukraine as justified, nor a counterstrike in Crimea as justified. I am attempting to provide a plausible scenario which might lead to the exchange of nuclear weapons and use that scenario to help you in whatever plans you may be putting into place to deal with this new era we find ourselves in.

While I do personally think the West is insane to disregard Russia's national security interest in having a Ukraine that is nominally friendly towards Russia, or at least not home to tanks and missiles of a potential enemy (NATO), I am not at the U.S. State Department, nor do I have any influence on my country's political leaders. Just as I would have agreed with President Kennedy's stance during the Cuban Missile Crisis that Russian missiles in Cuba were a no-go, I can intellectually understand why Russia would regard the current events in Ukraine as having far more importance to their long-term security than any interest the U.S. should have in Ukraine. Just as the U.S. would be upset with Russian arms in Mexico, I can see why Mr. Putin, et al, don't want NATO forces on their borders. That doesn't mean I like Putin.
Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-19871731354077732722015-01-28T08:13:00.000-06:002015-02-19T19:27:22.412-06:00Extreme Outcomes (Part One): Forced Migrations

Escape by Hopedso

Working from the assumption that a powerful wave of negative social mood is reasserting itself as the prime driver Western world, this is the first in a series of posts where we'll look at Extreme Outcomes. These posts will cover mass actions of a kind most believe have been relegated to the bad old days, or at least the kinds of things that "can't" happen in Europe or the Americas.

Here in the fading twilight of the greatest era of positive mood and delusional thinking ever seen, it is time to think about how past tidal waves of negative mood and mass action have blasted apart communities and sent individual lives careening down very unexpected paths.

Put on your nitrile gloves and we'll flip through the bloodstained pages of history to get a feel for what we may see unfold in the coming years of the Great Collapse.

Looking at the Rift

Much anguish and hand-wringing has followed in the wake of the killings in France. While I derided the response as being part of the Clown Show that seems to make up 90% of modern discourse on topics of governance and strategy, the rift it illustrates between a the dominant culture of France and an unreconstructed Islamist minority is worthy of the headlines and attention.

Looking at the situation in France, much of Europe, and the United States using the lens of socionomics, tensions between factions within a larger nation-state can play out in several ways:

In positive mood eras, federalism and a booming economy can smooth over tensions and at times lead to the assimilation of various cultures under the dominant culture represented by the ruling factions

Simmering violence and occasional pogroms can erupt, channeling the tensions into "retail" incidents of violence usually managed with ease by the dominant elites

Pogroms can at times escalate to wars of extermination as a dominant group attempts to destroy a smaller group or groups which have either resisted assimilation or which have been selected as targets for political purposes

Civil wars of various scales can erupt if negative mood becomes deep enough and pervasive enough and the population base is sufficient to support long-term conflict

Removal of the revolting faction if the disparity between the dominant governing culture or group is far superior in numbers and resources to the minority group, but the complete extermination of the minority group is not possible or desired

It is this last point I wish to consider today.

Forced Migrations

Whether it is the Trail of Tears, forced population transfers in the Soviet Union, or the expulsion of Jews from Spain and England, the decision to force the relocation of peoples at gunpoint has been part of strategic and political warfare for millennia.

Let's look at two types of forced migrations, one within the last century and one from just over 500 years ago.

Turkey and Greece Shift Populations after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922

In the wake of the catastrophe of the First World War, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Turkish state, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, and partially in response to Turkish efforts to crush minority populations which it viewed as a threat, Greece and Turkey agreed to forcibly exchange populations, mostly based upon religious affiliation.

This was a treaty between two functional nation-states. The effect on the populations was enormous and the consequences are felt even today.

Actions such as this are one reason nationalism has a far different connotation for many Europeans of a previous generation than it does for most Americans. The association of the nation-state with forced migrations, pogroms, and other mass actions against minority populations helped fuel the rise of the European Union during the post-World War II era of generally positive mood.

The Alhambra Decree and the Expulsion of Jews from Spain

In 1492, Spain decreed all Jews living in Spain must either convert or leave the kingdom. This was driven by political, economic, and religious reasons and culminated in the displacement of anywhere from 130,000 to 800,000 Jews.

Others chose to convert, some secretly keeping their faith and known as Marranos - a group we have discussed here at FutureJacked some years back.

Again, a strong central government pursuing a policy of creating a more homogenous society led to the death and disruption of huge numbers of lives.

Applicability for Today

So? Nationalism and authoritarianism are returning to the political scene. Many of us, especially in America and the Anglo world don't immediately equate strong nationalism with extremely negative actions such as forced migrations at gunpoint - but it has always been in the nationalist toolkit.

As we peer through the murky fog towards what comes next, do not be surprised if you see public discussion of forcible relocation of Muslim minorities in at least some European countries.

This short note is not written to support such actions but to warn you. If you are among a minority group which could become vulnerable, consider scenario-planning some worst-case developments and be thinking of a Plan B and a Plan C.

Most every group that has been forcibly moved has lost much, if not all, of its material wealth. What options would you have today to hedge against such a calamity?
Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-77313415702646206772015-01-27T09:55:00.001-06:002015-01-27T10:04:15.707-06:00Litvinenko Revisited

Litvinenko, before and after, Edward Latham

In January of 2007 I launched Futurejacked. The second post I ever wrote was entitled "A Curious Death" and had been written at the request of George Ure over at Urbansurvival. George had been advised that Livinenko's death might not have been the in-your-face mafia hit that was being postulated at the time, but as a result of Litvinenko himself dabbling in toxic material as part of his ties to Chechen groups.

Being a bit younger and bit more naive, I took up the challenge with some relish and constructed a narrative loudly hinting that Mr. Litvinenko and the Chechens were working with Polonium-210 in order to construct a trigger for a nuclear weapon, possibly for an old Soviet suitcase nuke that had somehow fallen into the hands of a rebel group.

I stand behind the science, but the scenario has pretty obviously turned out to be false. The Chechens never detonated a nuke and never lit off a Po-210 dirty bomb.

I am trotting out this mea culpa today only because the U.K. is finally releasing the results of its exhaustive inquiry into Mr. Litvinenko's poisoning. Tthe evidence overwhelmingly points to assassination by radiation poisoning.

I just wanted to formally set the record straight that while the narrative I investigated and proposed 8 years ago had some compelling aspects, it turned out to be wrong.
Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-91734136239223756062015-01-22T14:28:00.001-06:002015-01-22T14:30:10.518-06:00Book Review: Twilight's Last Gleaming

Twilight's Last Gleaming by John Michael Greer

Let's take a short detour today, pulling our attention away from the civil war in Ukraine, the disintegration of the fever-dream fictions of Sykes-Picot that are Syria and Iraq, and the colossal tower of fraud and bezzle the West calls a financial system these days.

I want to discuss a recent book by John Michael Greer, telling the tale of the disintegration of the United States in the wake of a military defeat in Africa. I have found over time that good fiction can give us a snapshot of a culture's mood as well as get us thinking about the consequences of our decisions as a people and a country. This is one of those novels.

The Book

Twilight's Last Gleaming is set in the mid-2020s. It opens to news of the discovery of a giant oil field off the coast of Tanzania. At the time of this very important find, Tanzania is aligned with China via trade agreements and as a recipient of Chinese investment in infrastructure.

The United States moves to shift Tanzania into its orbit and the result is a very unexpected military defeat orchestrated by China. The shock to the political culture, the economy, and the social structure of the U.S. results in the various states calling a Constitutional Convention. The Convention begins with intentions of solving the problem of overreach by the federal government, but leads to the dissolution of the Union.

The story is told through the eyes of various players in the events, from soldiers, to politicians, to journalists. We watch as they handle (and mishandle) a chaotic financial and political landscape far removed from the country and the lifestyle they had known before the crisis.

My Review

This isn't your standard doomer fiction, where the world immediately collapses into a scene straight out of Mad Max, but a fairly nuanced view of one way the combined pressures of poor fiscal choices and military setbacks could fracture the United States, and what that might look like.

This book is based on a series of five blog posts at Mr. Greer's Archdruid Report in October of 2012 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) in which he used fiction to outline a rather optimistic version of how the United States might stumble into devolution. I say optimistic in the sense that in this fictional scenario, the political process plays itself out with minimal internal violence. The fractured remains of the country work themselves into new political arrangements and find themselves on many different paths to the future.

If you only know the basics of Mr. Greer's background and have not read his weekly blog, you would expect this to be a heavy-handed diatribe, a combination of the angry but plodding prose of Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here mixed with tiresome Hippie rants and apocalyptic Gaia-hates-humans whinging. Happily for us, Mr. Greer is an excellent wordsmith, is well-read in history and politics, and apparently has had to make a living writing long enough to know the story must come first. The novel is long on story and action, leavened with just enough dash of Peak Oil and Global Warming to add a more sinister context to events without spoiling the book.

Twilight's Last Gleaming plays on several levels:

It is an above-average military thriller that will appeal to fans of Tom Clancy's early works. His focus on how a new era in air power and naval strategy might arise comes straight from current war games and military analyses on how the U.S. is handling the build-out of the next generation of fighter jets and carriers.

On another level, this is a political thriller, where the machinations of various politicians, foreign and domestic, play out across the globe.

It describes the financial crash in terms anyone who has read The Great Reckoning, Bankruptcy 1995, and various financial thrillers would find familiar. We walk the road from debt collapse, to hyperinflation and currency collapse, to political fragmentation with various characters, watching how they do their best to survive the circumstances.

The background is informed by the concept of Peak Oil and how a world system attuned to the constant supply of cheap petroleum is going to suffer problems when the supply is less reliable and harder to sustain.

I found it well worth the read. It is also the kind of book that is worth reading more than once. Mr. Greer is well-read and there are many little nuggets sprinkled throughout the novel that are worth pondering, not to mention the double-meanings in many of the names chosen for key political characters.

The novel tells a story of one way in which we in the U.S. might find ourselves navigating this swamp of negative mood, and what we might find when we finally stumble from that swamp into the new era which awaits us on the other side.

You can get a preview via Google Reader here.

Two thumbs up.

The Author

John Michael Greer maintains a blog called The Archdruid Report and has been a unique figure among key figures who have been discussing and describing Peak Oil over the years. His blog uses the concept of Peak Oil to discuss the rise and fall of civilizations (ours included), dissect the notion of Progress inherent in the Western mindset for several centuries now, and talks about practical ways of handling a more chaotic and energy-limited future.

Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-69261476065824332212015-01-16T11:31:00.001-06:002015-01-16T11:53:22.618-06:00The Clown Show

Clowns Play by Amanda Ryan, hosted at Society6.com

A quick post to draw your attention to an alarm bell being rung by John Robb over at Global Guerrillas. In a recent blog post, he notes two days before the Charlie Hedbo attacks, a Saudi General was killed in an attack on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's border with the convenient fiction known as Iraq.

As Mr. Robb puts it:

Here is why this attack is significant.

It tells us that ISIS is starting to focus on Saudi Arabia --> with good reason. The reason is that there's simply no other way to unite the various groups under the ISIS banner. ISIS, like all open source movements, needs to keep moving in order to stay alive (like a shark). Right now, ISIS has stalled. A jihad to retake the holy sites from the corrupt regime in Riyadh can serve as a simple plausible promise that can reignite the open source war ISIS started, on a global scale.

The Saudis are vulnerable. The attackers knew exactly when the general was going to be at the outpost. This tells us that the Saudi military is rife with ISIS sympathisers and/or active members. If so, the Saudi military may melt away when facing jihadis (or switch sides) in the same way 30,000 Iraqi troops did early last year a couple of hundred miles to the north.

It explains the timing of Charlie Hebdo. Not only was it an attack that has gained ISIS favor with millions of Saudis (given how racist and anti-islamic the magazine's cartoons were), it was also (and more importantly) a distraction. It has successfully distracted the collective west, by pulling them into another "war on terrorism." This attack is something I call a Red Queen's trap, since it results in damage to both the contestants in the struggle.

I want to harp on the third item Mr. Robb regards as significant - the relationship of the timing this attack and the attack in France. The Hedbo attack was perfectly designed to draw the attention of the chattering classes of the West away from the situation in the KSA.

The Clown Show

This is part of the Clown Show. Distract your opponents with bright shiny objects or actions guaranteed to push their buttons, while you execute your real strategy away from the lights and music of the circus tent.

Saudi Arabia is the key to the Middle East and the linchpin of the current way we've structured how petroleum supplies are managed on this planet. Much of the Western world is focused on the emotional satisfaction of feeling righteous in their anger over the killings of the Charlie Hedbo journalists and local authorities are garnering headlines in their attempts to root out "extremists" in their midst. All the while, the Islamic State continues to keep its foothold in Mesopotamia and the Levant, and is gearing up for a run at the great prize - the fight for control over Mecca and Medina.

The Socionomic Lens

Saudi Stock Exchange (Source:www.asmainfo.com)

Applying the socionomic model to the KSA, it looks like we will get to find out just how robust the Kingdom's governing structures are. I don't have EWI's formal wave structure available to share and have enough years of missing wave counts to hold off on providing you my amateur input, but if this is just the beginning of a much larger decline, look for some extreme outcomes on the Arabian peninsula.

No matter what follows, the decline from the September highs has been significant, and as Vadim Pokhlebkin puts it in this short video from EWI, a terrorist attack hitting right at, or near the bounce, of a significant low, fits right in with other high-profile terrorist attacks (note also the focus on the Charlie Hedbo attack and zero mention of the killing of the Saudi General):

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One reason socionomics is so powerful is it keeps us from getting caught up in the headlines of the moment. Keep that same distance when pondering world events and make sure you are not letting yourself be distracted with shiny emotionally charged events while they work to other purposes in the shadows.
Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-83756953293960092492015-01-14T08:48:00.001-06:002015-01-14T08:48:19.927-06:00Emotional Resilience

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The video above from Chris Martenson's Peak Prosperity site is a nice fit for many of the topics we cover here. This interview is with Dr. John Arden and provides a lot of good feedback on how you can improve your emotional resilience, a key skill in my opinion for those of us who attempt to be more aware of the emotional sea in which we swim. Enjoy.

Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-16915041358207504032015-01-05T18:00:00.000-06:002015-01-06T06:57:58.394-06:00Nuclear Weapons and Social Mood

Nuclear Family by Dayle Kornely hosted at society6.com

The lead article in the November 2014 Socionomist, "Putin's Dark Side" by Alan Hall, discusses the rising tensions between the U.S./NATO and Russia. It also contains a lengthy overview of how nuclear weapons may factor into the next round of negative mood on the world stage.

This caught my attention for a number of reasons. First, my day job is in the nuclear sector (reactors/isotope production, not weapons) and second, part of the reason FutureJacked has been on Pause for so long was I've been writing a book on Nuclear War and other Nuclear Emergencies (I'm a few weeks out from publication, more details to come). The article was serendipitous, to say the least.

Unfortunately, now seems as good a time as any to look at the potential for nuclear warfare in the coming years. I fully expect to see many of the structures put in place during this long era of Good Feelings to be trashed, such as free trade agreements, civil liberties, and most importantly peace between Great Powers. During the Cold War, which occurred in the context of a Supercycle upswing in mood, there was much talk of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. During this Supercycle downturn, we can expect to see talk turn to action.

Yes, I anticipate we will see the use of nuclear weapons in war before this era plays itself out. It won't come out of nowhere, though, so let's wargame some of the things we might expect to see.

The Complacency of Positive Mood

Alan Hall generated a very interesting graphic in Putin's Dark Side which I have recreated here (my graphics and a slightly different date range, full credit to Mr. Hall for the original as Figure 5 in the November 2014 edition of The Socionomist).

Google Ngram Viewer Results of "nuclear weapon" for 1940 - 2014

A second Ngram graphic, using the term "nuclear war" between 1940 and 2014 gives an even better view of the complacency which has set in over the past two decades (remember, this is a relative scale from the percentage of books published):

Google Ngram Viewer Results of "nuclear war" for 1940 - 2014

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the final ascent of U.S. hegemony, worries over nuclear war collapsed. Stockpiles of nuclear warheads decreased, though disarmament by no means was achieved. Other results of this reduction in tensions led to problems with the U.S. nuclear missile force, at least in the Air Force. Nuclear missile force readiness experienced a stagnation, leading to a deterioration in the culture and a perception that for officers, nuclear weapons work was a dead-end for their career. It reached the point where it was accepted as "the way we've always done it" to have only one of the toolkits necessary to install a nuclear warhead on a Minuteman Missile available between three bases and 450 missiles.

The Air Force is now revamping its nuclear missile force structure. When negative mood reasserts itself, it may do so quickly and violently. We shall see if the changes will have taken root when the prospect of nuclear war rears its head.

A war scenario is not the only thing impacted by U.S. nuclear force readiness. There have been multiple occasions in the past where nuclear weapons came close to detonating by accident. A socionomic link between markets, mood, and aircraft accidents is apparent. Were this same negative-mood dynamic to play out in a nuclear missile force with poor morale, we in the United States could be on the receiving end of a massively damaging self-inflicted wound. Were such an accident happen at the wrong place or the wrong time, it might even set off an accidental nuclear exchange.

This is another case where positive mood eras help create the dysfunctions which can make negative mood eras so damaging.

The Rehabilitation of Nuclear Weapons and De-escalation via Nuclear Strike

Nuclear weapons might one day soon return the arsenal of Great Power saber rattling and I believe one of those saber rattling events could turn hot, with nuclear weapons being used once again in anger. The interplay between Russia and the U.S. is a critical dynamic to watch as the bulk of nuclear weapons are held by these two states.

As the late, great positive mood era wheezed to a close 15 years ago, the U.S. stood as a lone "hyperpower." This continued in the post 9/11 world, which found the U.S. fighting wars in the Middle East, and continuing to project its forces and influence deeply into what had historically been Russian areas of influence (the Balkans, Georgia, the Baltic states, and most recently, Ukraine). Time after time, it appeared there was little Russia could do to restore her primacy in the region.

But this situation will not, and cannot last. Propelled by perceived national interest and impelled by increasingly negative social mood, Russia has revamped its nuclear forces and rethought the use of nuclear weapons. In 2000, at what could be considered the height of U.S. power, confidence, and social mood, Russia issued a new military doctrine which changed its stance on the use of nuclear weapons from "in case of a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation" to:

The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and (or) its allies, as well as in response to large-scale aggression utilizing conventional weapons in situations critical to the national security of the Russian Federation.
As analyst Nikolai Sokov wrote, this also introduced the idea of "de-escalation" via limited nuclear war:

The doctrine introduced the notion of de-escalation—a strategy envisioning the threat of a limited nuclear strike that would force an opponent to accept a return to the status quo ante. Such a threat is envisioned as deterring the United States and its allies from involvement in conflicts in which Russia has an important stake, and in this sense is essentially defensive. Yet, to be effective, such a threat also must be credible. To that end, all large-scale military exercises that Russia conducted beginning in 2000 featured simulations of limited nuclear strikes.

De-escalation rests on a revised notion of the scale of nuclear use. During the Cold War, deterrence involved the threat of inflicting unacceptable damage on an enemy. Russia's de-escalation strategy provides instead for infliction of "tailored damage," defined as "damage [that is] subjectively unacceptable to the opponent [and] exceeds the benefits the aggressor expects to gain as a result of the use of military force." The efficacy of threatening tailored damage assumes an asymmetry in a conflict's stakes. Moscow reasoned when it adopted the policy that, for the United States, intervening on behalf of Chechen rebels (for example) might seem a desirable course of action for a variety of reasons. But it would not be worth the risk of a nuclear exchange. Russia, however, would perceive the stakes as much higher and would find the risk of a nuclear exchange more acceptable. Indeed, in the early 2000s, Russian military experts wrote that US interference in the war in Chechnya could have resulted in a threat to use nuclear weapons.
Emphasis mine. That analysis, in my opinion, remains spot-on and could become very relevant if the conflict in Ukraine were to broaden into a more general U.S./NATO vs. Russia conflict. Whereas the U.S. might regard the ripping of Ukraine from Russia's orbit as a good thing for its geopolitical position, Russia might regard the idea of foreign troops in a former Soviet Republic a little over 450 miles from Moscow as an existential threat. Russia very well might be willing to turn to extreme measures in such a case.

If your conventional weapons do not get the attention or respect of your enemies, then you may decide the only way to deter them is to actually use a nuke. That makes a statement if nothing else.

What might "tailored damage" look like?

Here we enter into the world of speculation, but I do not like discussing macro-scale topics without finding a way of relating the concept to a scenario which could unfold in the world. We need guideposts in these soon-to-be-very-troubled times, not more fear porn.

Were Ukraine to move firmly into the Western orbit and the eastern provinces crushed (unlikely as of this writing, but were NATO to provide enough "advisors" and weaponry, you could see a shift in the balance), Russia would then be faced with a dramatically changed strategic position. One could see a grim meeting in the Kremlin where the Russian leadership decides the West must be made aware a "red line" has been crossed. A nuclear weapon, they might agree, is now the only thing NATO will respect.

But how to escalate without sending the globe up in the fires of a nuclear holocaust? What sort of "tailored damage" would send a strong message but hopefully not prompt an all-out nuclear response?

This would seem to rule out an attack in the heart of Europe or in North America. If the goal is to inflict severe damage, but without the horrors of a strategic nuclear strike on a major city, what targets might suffice?

Considering the U.S. military presence spans the globe, a number of options present themselves. These might include:

An airburst over a nuclear carrier group

A nuclear attack on Guam, a significant U.S. Navy base

An airburst over Diego Garcia, a U.K. territory hosting a major U.S. base

Of the choices, Diego Garcia would probably be the best bet. Guam is a U.S. territory and Russia might assume there also remains a strong emotional tie from the memories of its involvement in World War II. Attacking a full carrier group successfully might be "too successful" and be seen by the U.S. as a humiliation one of the key pillars of its global policing assets, a humiliation that could not remain unpunished.

It is my opinion an attack on Diego Garcia would inflict the kind of severe damage that would get the attention of the U.S., U.K., NATO, et al, but possibly not tip things over into a full nuclear exchange. At least you can see how the case could be made and how military planners in Russia (or elsewhere) could come to that conclusion.

A 300 kT airburst over Diego Garcia, courtesy of NUKEMAP:

Diego Garcia's remote location, combined with an airburst, would result in minimal radioactive fallout and far less harm to civilian populations than a strategic attack over a city. The mushroom cloud and severe damage to a critical base would certainly get the attention of the Western military leadership cadres, but without having that devastation wrought on one of the great cities of Europe or America.

Would such "tailored damage" stop there? Or would it lead to the escalation expected during the Cold War, with the U.S. hitting a remote Russian base or installation in Siberia?

What would the political ramifications in the U.S. be, suffering such a blow? Especially with a generation of U.S. leaders who have pushed U.S. hegemony successfully throughout the world, never experiencing a significant defeat. How would they react to a world player who was able to strike back? When all you have known is success, how will you react when your first failure is colossal, punctuated by a mushroom cloud?

The knock-on effects would depend on the time, place, and political realities of the day. This is provided only as an example of how you might see nuclear weapons used short of all-out nuclear war.

A Trend to Look For

It is probable you will have many signposts along the road to nuclear war. Besides the general geopolitical tensions and socionomic indicators to watch, one clear sign the taboo against nuclear weapons use is breaking down would be a resumption of underground nuclear testing.

EWI shows on occasion a striking graphic, showing the inverse relationship between nuclear tests and the DJIA.

Annual Nuclear Weapon Tests Worldwide (source: Elliott Wave Int'l)

When you read that Russia has conducted a new series of underground nuclear tests in order to "manage their stockpiles effectively" or the U.S. has resumed underground tests in Nevada in order to "confirm computer modeling of nuclear weapon designs" or "ensure effectiveness of aging fissile material stocks" and you see the numbers of those tests track the decline in the DJIA or S&P 500, then you may want to consider brushing up on your nuclear war survival skills...

Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-68800241921464387312015-01-01T11:28:00.003-06:002015-01-04T10:33:22.234-06:00Book Review: Broken Web

Broken Web, George Ure

Why would I trust my entire financial and social life to a system which is involved in several low-level wars in the world and is fraught with "malware" and viruses, not to mention it could be in danger of burning out at some point? - George Ure, Broken Web
Let's kick off 2015 with a look into the guts of the internet and the everyday realities of cybercrime and cyber warfare.

The Sony hack obviously springs to mind (though recent reports now point towards a disgruntled insider, rather than the North Koreans), as does the role internet communications played in the "Arab Spring," both during the uprisings as well as during the backlash by central governments.

Other famous (or infamous) hacks reveal just how lucrative and potentially devastating war and crime on the internet can be:

The Stuxnet worm, which came to public awareness in 2010, demonstrated the capability to hack industrial PLCs, creating conditions where physical infrastructure failed or destroyed itself (specifically uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran).

The data breach discovered at Target Stores in 2013 was not discovered until over 40 million credit cards had been compromised.

Over 83 million customers of JP Morgan had their accounts compromised and personal information stolen earlier in 2014.

Which leads us to revisit "the internet" - a mechanism of data transfer and commerce barely in its infancy 25 years ago and now as ubiquitous as water and power in most industrialized countries.

Unlike a water or power utility, however, the internet as we know it today has some significant vulnerabilities. Will this system, which was deployed during the greatest run-up in positive mood ever recorded, survive the coming downturn in mood in any form we currently recognize? Or is this massive, world-spanning system poised to fragment, disintegrate, and balkanize into "safer" corporate run "ecologies" such as we see Amazon and Apple attempting to construct?

I bring up the socionomic concept of mass mood for a reason. Think of the inherent assumptions built into the way we use the internet today - we place massive amounts of personal and financial information out on websites we have little to no control over and millions of times each day people around the globe plug in credit card numbers or check bank accounts using this platform, with little regard to the realities of just how vulnerable their information is. The unspoken trust built into this system could only have flourished during a period of almost delusional optimism.

Broken Web

A run-down of the vulnerabilities can be found in Broken Web: The Coming Collapse of the Internet. The author, George Ure, is the publisher of the Peoplenomics newsletter, and provides daily socioeconomic commentary at his Urbansurvival.com site.

The book reviews a variety of ways in which the internet as we currently use it could be compromised, rendered inefficient, or be forced to shut down temporarily or permanently.

The themes range from system complexity, to malware, to the growth in authoritarianism around the globe. While Mr. Ure regards mood as a secondary effect, instead of a primary driver as posited by socionomic theory, the end result is the same - the internet, over which many people around the world conduct critical financial transactions, communicate, and store important data - is far more vulnerable to disruption than most imagine.

Pros of the Book
Ure covers a lot of ground in this book and demonstrates a knowledge of the underlying systems and architecture that support internet communications. The various factors that might play into the "collapse of the internet" range from socioeconomic factors to market oversaturation and migration to new infrastructure to malware and viruses to EMP.

You are provided with a checklist of steps you can take to mitigate the damage a prolonged internet outage might have on you, your finances, and records.

There are a number of links to solid supporting documentation, so you can dig more deeply into some of the topics if you so choose.

Cons of the Book
The book was born of a series of articles Mr. Ure wrote for his subscriber site in 2012. Some of the information and concerns mention show a little age, though nothing that damages the overall thesis.

There is one gap in the thesis that caught my attention. One of the parallels he uses early in the work is studying the "S-curve" created by the build-out of earlier infrastructure like rail and roads. What is left unsaid, though, is this infrastructure still exists and contributes mightily to transportation and economic activity. One could see a scenario where the internet does not "collapse" but instead becomes a steady background utility - assuming the other challenges he identifies can be mitigated.

Evaluation
At $9.99, the price is a bit steep for an e-book. That said, that is what you might spend for a sandwich and drink in many restaurants at lunch. Instead of empty carbs and heartburn, however, Broken Web at least leaves you in more informed place when you finish.

NOTE: I have not received any compensation for this review, neither will I get any "kickback" from Amazon via the link (the Amazon Affiliate program doesn't cover Missouri due to the structure of our tax laws).
Flagg707http://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-46625307879254399772014-12-31T10:28:00.000-06:002014-12-31T10:28:23.092-06:00Catastrophic Abundance

Catastrophic Abundance, Kindle ebook

Let's end 2014 with a blast from the past. About seven years ago I wrote and published an ebook entitled "Catastrophic Abundance." I self-published it as a .pdf and sold a fair number of copies. I let the site go dormant several years back, but believe now is a good time to dust it off and return it to publication. You can check out old blog posts related to this theme here if you want a feel for the concept.

The book began as a way for me to flesh out the three key aspects of the model I use to make sense of the world and world events. Those three aspects are socionomics, megapolitics, and peak oil.

While I've come to rely a bit more heavily on socionomics these days, I continue to regard megapolitics as relevant (in short, it is a way of describing how violence and the ability to use violence shapes our world), and yes, in spite of the many claims that it has been "debunked" or disproven, I continue to believe peak oil (the engineering definition of peak oil, not the mass market version, which means the easy and cheap oil is dwindling) will remain relevant and the oil markets subject to wild swings (such as we are seeing today) as expensive oil is very vulnerable to the price crashes inherent in oversupply situations that develop during recessions and depressions (due to the capital costs associated with this kind of advanced extraction work).

The model is described in some detail and I've provided scenarios to help you war game how you might handle situations in the areas of Shelter, Energy, Transportation, and Community/Government.

I have made only a few edits to the text from the 2007 edition, updating the oil production graphic for the U.S. and cleaning up a few things, but otherwise I have left the description of the model and the scenarios intact, for better or worse.

If you are an Amazon Prime customer, I've made it available for free on Kindle Unlimited. For the rest of you, I do plan to run a promotion and offer it as a free book for a few days in the near future, so if you don't want to spend the $2.99 to purchase it, keep an eye on the blog, I'll keep you in the loop.

Here's wishing you a happy, successful, and lucky 2015. I think we are going to need our fair share of luck in the coming years.

Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-35119767004919484342014-12-29T09:43:00.001-06:002014-12-29T09:57:27.866-06:00FutureJacked Reboot

reboot by Art-joy-living via Society6.com

After a few years of dormancy, I have things in my professional and personal life squared away to the point where I can return to blogging. This comes at what I believe to be a key juncture in the markets, mood, and politics of the West.

While I had expected to abandon the FutureJacked platform for something new, upon review, I decided to keep it, warts and all. I may polish up the format a bit, but the content will remain.
The plan is to resume with the coming of the New Year. I expect to publish once or twice per week, looking to provide a deeper dive into events, using the lens of  socionomics as the primary model through which we'll view events.

I also plan to provide more book and ebook reviews going forward. There is quite a bit of solid thinking going on out there as we stumble forward into what waits for us. I hope to pick out various gems to polish up for your consideration.

We will continue to review the events of the day as well as conduct a little futurecasting.

Thanks to those of you who still check in on the blog. Interesting times await us.

Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-83851642262641952422013-12-01T13:23:00.000-06:002013-12-01T13:23:04.064-06:00Last Call

FutureJacked has been dormant for over a year. I've been occupied with life and work and frankly have had little to add than what you can find in the Socionomist, over on Mish's page, the Elliott Wave Theorist and other outstanding information sources. I have looked back over the 1137 posts, been amazed by the over 140,000 page views, and all in all am pleased with the effort. Though amateurish at times, this blog has helped me work through many aspects of the map I've been building to navigate increasingly treacherous terrain. I continue to believe that we in the West are facing a full spectrum crisis and that the demographic, political, social, political, religious, and socionomic trends we are facing are not our friends. I also continue to believe that those who are nimble, who can keep their heads while those about them are losing theirs, and who can keep lit the lamps of civility and reason during bouts of unreason and anger will sow the seeds for the next great wave upward in human achievement.

That said, I have been turning my energies to other projects. I will certainly return to writing in the future, but I believe it is time to pull down FutureJacked and regroup for the next effort. If there have been any articles you have found useful over the years, please do feel free to archive them in some fashion. I plan to delete the blog from Blogger before Christmas.

Many thanks to those of you who have followed this effort. I hope our paths can connect in the years to come.

Regards,

Mike

Flagg707http://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9173309268340001651.post-36424903594223198142012-08-03T07:59:00.001-06:002012-08-03T07:59:48.460-06:00Mad As Hell...

Crushed cruisers at the Orleans County Sheriff's Department

Those of us using Socionomics as a model to see what the future holds perked up a bit at this news story:
Vt. Man Accused of Crushing 7 Cop Cars With Tractor Due in Court

A Vermont man, who authorities say was angry over an arrest and used his tractor to drive over seven police vehicles, is expected in court.

State Police say 34-year-old Roger Pion (PEE'-on) was taken into custody in Newport on Thursday, shortly after he allegedly crushed the Orleans County sheriff's vehicles. Estimated damage was at least $250,000.

He was apparently mad over his recent arrest on resisting arrest and marijuana possession charges...

Anecdote or data point? I can't say for certain, but this is not just anger, but direct violence against the law enforcement organs of State control.

Until the markets "confirm" these types of outbursts with a significant drop, I won't buy in that the Bear is back, but if this is any indication of what is in store for the coming downtrend, well, it could get real ugly out there friends.

Have a good weekend.
Flagg707http://email@example.com