The most striking lesson from the October 7th Hamas attack is that you are on your own; you can't expect anyone to save you.

One of the most striking aspects of the attack was how it completely disrupted local response mechanisms. Soldiers were either dead or unable to deploy effectively, police were outgunned, and emergency services were unavailable. This paralysis gave Hamas free rein for hours, leaving civilians defenseless. A future attack by terrorists in the west is theorized to look much the same. Hundreds or thousands of armed attackers seeking soft targets in locations where the police response is week. We've heard the rumors of potential attacks on rural hospitals.

How to do a Threat Assessment on Your Neighborhood

The goal of this exercise is to determine who, in a crisis (disaster, war, domestic conflict), in your neighborhood could be a potential threat or ally. The methods used will be ordinary observation, communication, and public-domain resources. While not foolproof, at least you will have basic friend/foe identification predictors, as well as a profile, of those who live around you.

(Note this is from an incomplete chapter/article) You don’t have to use expensive people search subscription services. A lot is available online for free if you know how to use your Google-fu. You can use open-source (or subscription-free) services. Services are myriad; but at the cheap end just search names and addresses. Cross-reference them with popular social media like Facebook. Much more information can be had easily for low fees, depending on the service.

Full article: donshift.com/blog/how-to-do…

SHTF Lessons from Rhodesia

The 70s Rhodesian Bush War was a revolution led by Black guerillas against the white minority gov & population. Their goal? Ruin the agriculture-based economy by driving white farmers off the land. How did the farmers survive the war?*

*Yes, we know RHODESIA didn't survive the war but quite frankly neither did Zimbabwe, which is a hellhole. It sucked to live on a rural farm. Many were far from settlements or cities and extremely isolated. This is important to note because living far away from everyone isn't always the solution. Isolated rural properties need large numbers of defenders.

Rhodesian farms might get 1-2 guards to supplement the family that lived there, but often it was up to basically the dad and maybe his eldest son. The wife was expected to pitch in and carry a gun.

How did average Rhodesians survive the Bush War under constant threat of ambush, sabotage, and assassination? What can Americans take from it if they fear SHTF? American preppers should stop romanticizing survival and start understanding it. Perimeter Awareness Is Everything
Bush war farmers patrolled their fence lines. Not just for property upkeep, but to look for cut wires, buried mines, or signs of human passage. You must do the same. Walk your land. Check for disturbed earth, fresh footprints, broken branches, or tripwires.

Let's talk lasers at protests and laser eye pro.

Basically protesters get illegal* Class 3B lasers cuz Ebay/Amazon & China don't care. They aim them at cops' or defenders eyes to distract, dazzle, or blind them.

For these high-power lasers direct or undiffused reflections may cause permanent eye damage in more than 1/100th of a second, faster than the blink reflex. Usually with visible light you look away before any blindness can occur. The real danger is from infrared lights. As IR light is not perceived by the human eye, a victim will not know they are being exposed nor will their protective reflexes kick in. With IR lasers, you might feel pain or go blind if they hit your eye long enough before you notice.

How to Spot IEDs, a guide. 🧵
With the recent news of an American rancher being blown up by a roadside bomb in Mexico, plus the talk of going after the cartels, & the potential for leftist violence in the Trump 2.0 era, let's learn about spotting and mitigating potential IEDs. Bombs may not be what you expect. For instance, take this photo. ⬇️The car below exploded shortly after this photo was taken; both father and child survived. (Omagh bombing)

A brief guide to surviving IEDs (bombs).

PRIMARY INDICATORS
The primary indication of an IED will be a change in the baseline (something new that was not there the previous day). · Unusual behavior patterns or changes in community patterns, such as noticeably fewer people or vehicles in a normally busy area, open windows, or the absence of women or children.
· People videotaping ordinary activities or military actions. Enemies using IEDs often document their activities for use as recruitment or training tools.
· Markers by the side of the road, such as tires, rock piles, ribbon, or tape that may identify an IED location to the local population or serve as an aiming reference for the enemy triggering the IED (such as light poles, fronts or ends of guardrails, and road intersections).
· New or out of place objects in an environment, such as dirt piles, construction, dead animals, or trash.

Neighbors are organizing their own anti-looting patrols. However, cell networks are down and/or coverage is very bad. That means that neighbors, who often don't know each other well these days, can't communicate. They can't reach police. Here's an easy no-license solution: 🧵 Handheld radios are the solution for neighbor coordination. GMRS & FRS radios are comparatively cheap and easy to use. They're essentially license-free and will cover most neighborhoods right out of the box. They don't need programming and many households already have them.

HOW TO SURVIVE DEATH STORM 2025 (and what to buy). 🧵

So it's gonna get COLD in places that don't get super cold. Like the 2021 Texas Freeze taught us, the grid can go down, in whole or in part. You might be stuck in a dark, chilly box that isn't prepared for freezing temps. So while we can't add insulation or protect pipes from freezing or breaking, you can shelter-in-place to overcome the worst of it. If you need to buy stuff, buy it now before shortages happen and shipping is impacted.

Here's the reality about shooting down drones with shotguns: You are probably gonna fail at it. Most people can't shoot well enough and it's easier for the drone to evade. But let's talk about shooting down drones anyway: 🧵 Hitting a flying or elevated target with a rifle requires more skill than busting clay pigeons. A direct hit is dependent on the skill of the shooter and requires a high volume of fire.

Shotgun drone shootdowns are not uncommon. Drones engaged in combat operations will try to remain as distant and undetected as possible and should evade upon initiation of a downing attempt, making a gun-based kill more difficult.

What is a “sad ham”? It’s the amateur radio operator you love to hate. Officious, condescending, and always ready to dominate the airwaves with tales of surgeries and bowel movements. These relics of ham radio's golden age monopolize the hobby, discourage newcomers, and sometimes, in rare cases, escalate things to violence. 🧵 @dolioj @TheNotARubicon @Brushbeater @BlackthornDF Meet Walter and Vivian Langley, a CB-radio-obsessed couple from Southern California whose overpowered transmitter and penchant for petty feuds turned their quiet hobby into a near-deadly confrontation. Their story begins in the early 1990s when CB radio still thrived as the no-license-required, Wild West of airwaves.

CB radio in its heyday was a free-for-all. No licenses, no rules, and plenty of colorful characters. Walter Langley was one of them. Known for his illegal high-powered transmitter, he caused chaos in his neighborhood, from scrambled TV signals to blasting over phones and radios.

The UHC CEO assassination got me thinking: what stops this from happening more often? Why don't enemies, rivals, or the vindictive do this to each other regularly here? Why don't the aggrieved take "justice" into their own hands? Will it become more common? 🧵 As we edge closer to a singularity of violence—rebellion, revolution, or the like—we see the cracks in societal order widening. Lawlessness begins to fester in places once governed by restraint, and the entropy of violence overpowers the forces holding it at bay. The wheels of justice, now warped, grind against the average man.

Advance Indicators of Nuclear War and the Attack Process 🧵

Advance indicators of nuclear war will be subtle and often non-official. While governments verify threats and alert systems activate, survival may hinge on close attention to geopolitics and unusual information sources. Awareness buys time, and time offers options. Gradual crises, like escalating wars, may provide the best chance for public awareness. During tense periods, stay attuned to the news.

(DEFCON is classified)
x.com/4nt1p4tt3rn/st… Part II in this thread of threads

https://x.com/DonShift3/status/1859617531578941943

🧵Over the last few years, nuclear war has crept back onto the horizon, reviving fears from the early ‘80s and the Cold War era. Civil defense has faded into quirky memories of "duck and cover" videos and old pamphlets, leaving a generation unprepared. A nuclear attack would combine the horror of 9/11, the chaos of the pandemic, and the breakdown of society after Hurricane Katrina—hitting every American all at once. Yet, survival is possible. You don’t have to face vaporization or fallout with fear. Preparation, not despair, is the key to overcoming the unthinkable. Major cities with over 1M people are prime targets for nuclear weapons under countervalue targeting, where civilian populations deter adversaries from striking. While U.S. strategy shifted to counterforce (military targets), nations like China and North Korea lack the arsenal for both strategies, forcing a grim choice: protect cities or continue the fight. Russia, with more warheads, can hit both cities and silos. IF YOU LIVE IN A MAJOR METRO AREA YOU ARE AT RISK.

Okay, nuclear sabre rattling and Putin could be a big blowhard, but let's talk about nuclear survival, just in case, shall we?

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1829460323809824995

Basically you don't need a fallout shelter because most people won't be exposed to fallout. Getting inside if there is fallout can do a lot of good.

10 Lessons on Radio Usage for SHTF from the Chechen Wars 🧵 1. “Chechens—shift frequencies during radio transmissions to avoid intercepts; Russians—continually scan all frequencies while retaining active ones already intercepted.”

"In addition to not using cryptography, they did not regularly change frequencies because of the logistics challenges of synchronizing the process among every unit. U.S. forces, by comparison, change their communications format every 24 hours."

Today is St. Crispin's Day! How the 1415 Battle of Agincourt may have shaped the right to bear arms that continues today. 🧵 The English were victorious today, due in large part to the prowess of the famed and feared English longbowmen. This historic win, famously memorialized by Shakespeare in Henry V, gave us the iconic “St. Crispin’s Day Speech” and the phrase “band of brothers.”

🧵 Trip alarms serve two purposes: an alert to you and a hindrance to your attacker; a good one can do both. Mechanical models are made that when tripped, spring a firing pin that detonates either a blank cartridge or primer. Electronic models can have motion detectors, actual trip wire pulls, and audio/visual alert modes. Low tech, you can get bells on a string/wire or put pebbles in a tin can. In Rhodesia, farmers used sections of coiled wire, not so much as a barrier or trip wire, but as an alarm system. The wire had cans with stones in them tied on so that when the wire was disturbed in the dark, the noise would alert the watchdogs who would then bark at the noise.

🧵You may need to face off with a riot or mob in a situation where lethal for is not permissible or advisable. Here are some considerations regarding riot/crowd control, some devices commercially available to the general public, and how they might be employed. "Just f---king shoot everybody," isn't a solution to every problem just because the police might not be a going concern any longer. Using force may not be the proper thing to do at that moment given the circumstances. One type of force may be better to use than another. This is not a decision to make reflexively or take lightly.

Why you should get a ham license
Short version: get the most basic license so you have a callsign to avoid problems with Sad Ham that don't want to help you. It will also annoy them if you get the basic "Technician" license and only care about the practical, not technical, aspects of their hobby.

Yes, I'm aware of the reservations people have about getting licensed and that's a personal decision. In an emergency, the last thing you need is an argument with some jerk who is all "OI, YOU GOTTA LOISENCE TO CALL FOR HELP?" Being able to go "KYJ3LLY needs assistance" beats an argument with someone who is angry that the disaster upset his weekly bowel movement discussion.

Some emerging lessons from Hurricane Helene 🧵, taken from various sources around the Internet. I'm taking notes because this very scenario could play out with an earthquake in SoCal.

1. Be disaster paranoid. The people who saw the weather reports, hit the ATM, gas station, and got groceries early fared the storm the easiest, assuming they didn't lose a house. He who panics early panics best. Radios are invaluable. Neighbors are talking on GMRS and FRS radios, but there aren't enough to go around. Consider stocking up on cheap bubble pack radios or Baofengs to give to neighbors. We get used to texting neighbors but that doesn't work if cells are down and sometimes you need to more than holler or walk down the street and knock. amzn.to/47TfzRH