Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => OT Knowledge => Topic started by: andyoxon on 06 December, 2023, 09:52:14 am
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People should stock up on battery-powered radios and torches, as well as candles and first aid kits in order to prepare for power cuts or digital communications going down, the deputy prime minister reportedly said.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/05/britons-should-stock-up-on-torches-and-candles-in-case-of-power-cuts-says-oliver-dowden
Bunker
We have:
large packet of tealights.
wind-up radio
loads of battery powered lights
analogue phone
camping gas burners with small can gas cyclinders
loads of charcoal/ BBQ kit (for outdoors)
Not much of a food store.
edit.
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I think my grate frend Al already does this, but that’s because he lives in an earthquake zone.
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In terms of food, I probably don't need to leave the house for about a month.
Maybe more.
I have loads of battery/powerpack powered lights.
The means to light the (gas) stove without relying on its 240v igniter.
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In the midst of a cost of living crisis never discount the nutritional value of a candle.
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Just you wait until 2038 and we have everything dependent on all those cheap n' nasty IOT devices . . .
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It would be more useful if he campaigned for folks to keep their old style landline telephones.
When the electric goes down, the mobile masts stop working, even if you are in an area that normally gets reception.
It's perfectly normal where we live for folks to have extra food in stock in the winter.
In the old days, in heavy snow, a crate of Co-op milk would arrive in the village in the front bucket of the digger from the mine....
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Are awe actually talking about doomsday? It sounds more like apocalypse.
Doomsday is judgment day, when God comes back to Earth to sort out who's been naughty or nice. Surprised at andyoxon, of all people, making this mistake! Of course he might not appear in person – he'll probably send the boy (who still hasn't had his hair cut) along with Gabe, Mike and some more of the feathered posse. All you need to prepare for this is a clean soul. Bear in mind that the soul is delicate organic material, so wash it on a wool programme with non-biological detergent or preferably pure soap flakes; Ariel and Fairy work well.
Apocalypse, on the other hand, is a massive disaster coupled with a huge fuck-up. The sort of thing that happens when Trump faces Farage in a presidential run-off; or when it's four in the morning, you've got your third puncture, it's raining stair rods with are no bus shelters in sight, and you have a nagging suspicion you've mistaken SO@X for R@T. In this situation all you can day is hope for a passing rider with a spare tube, but you're already tail end charlie...
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Just you wait until 2038 and we have everything dependent on all those cheap n' nasty IOT devices . . .
I reckon this will mostly resolve itself as they get bricked on a 5-year cycle by the manufacturers' cloud services disappearing.
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Are awe actually talking about doomsday? It sounds more like apocalypse.
Doomsday is judgment day, when God comes back to Earth to sort out who's been naughty or nice. Surprised at andyoxon, of all people, making this mistake! Of course he might not appear in person – he'll probably send the boy (who still hasn't had his hair cut) along with Gabe, Mike and some more of the feathered posse. All you need to prepare for this is a clean soul. Bear in mind that the soul is delicate organic material, so wash it on a wool programme with non-biological detergent or preferably pure soap flakes; Ariel and Fairy work well.
Apocalypse, on the other hand, is a massive disaster coupled with a huge fuck-up. The sort of thing that happens when Trump faces Farage in a presidential run-off; or when it's four in the morning, you've got your third puncture, it's raining stair rods with are no bus shelters in sight, and you have a nagging suspicion you've mistaken SO@X for R@T. In this situation all you can day is hope for a passing rider with a spare tube, but you're already tail end charlie...
Semantically... or a time when something very bad will happen, according to Cambridge Dictionary ;)
However, I will for the sake of realism iniate national grid/ digi-comms issue appropriate header phraseology...
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Just you wait until 2038 and we have everything dependent on all those cheap n' nasty IOT devices . . .
I reckon this will mostly resolve itself as they get bricked on a 5-year cycle by the manufacturers' cloud services disappearing.
True - but the bricked devices will be replaced by other devices using the cheapest possible microprocessors, still running on 32-bit architecture.
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Just you wait until 2038 and we have everything dependent on all those cheap n' nasty IOT devices . . .
I reckon this will mostly resolve itself as they get bricked on a 5-year cycle by the manufacturers' cloud services disappearing.
True - but the bricked devices will be replaced by other devices using the cheapest possible microprocessors, still running on 32-bit architecture.
No 4 bit RISC chips is the future, I tell thee
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Just you wait until 2038 and we have everything dependent on all those cheap n' nasty IOT devices . . .
I reckon this will mostly resolve itself as they get bricked on a 5-year cycle by the manufacturers' cloud services disappearing.
True - but the bricked devices will be replaced by other devices using the cheapest possible microprocessors, still running on 32-bit architecture.
With some horrendous bodge in the timekeeping code, no doubt.
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I have a couple of Anker powerhouse devices, a gas cooker and two gas fires that can be lit with matches as well as a couple of trangias converted to gas and a large supply of Coleman 500 cylinders.
My biggest concern is the not FiL whose flat is all electric.
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I have a couple of Anker powerhouse devices, a gas cooker and two gas fires that can be lit with matches as well as a couple of trangias converted to gas and a large supply of Coleman 500 cylinders.
My biggest concern is the not FiL whose flat is all electric.
Even devices such as your Anker battery packs are at risk.
Networking is seriously at risk, since some, if not a lot, of MAC hardware uses a 32 bit clock.
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Even devices such as your Anker battery packs are at risk.
Really? It's just a battery and a couple of switching regulators, with a bitty little micro turning them on and off and driving the how-much-charge display. No networking, no RTC. I'd expect something like that has 8/16bit clock rollovers on a regular basis, and is programmed to handle them without issue.
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Really? It's just a battery and a couple of switching regulators, with a bitty little micro turning them on and off and driving the how-much-charge display. No networking, no RTC. I'd expect something like that has 8/16bit clock rollovers on a regular basis, and is programmed to handle them without issue.
The bigger camping/household ones inevitably have Fucking Apps.
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Really? It's just a battery and a couple of switching regulators, with a bitty little micro turning them on and off and driving the how-much-charge display. No networking, no RTC. I'd expect something like that has 8/16bit clock rollovers on a regular basis, and is programmed to handle them without issue.
The bigger camping/household ones inevitably have Fucking Apps.
Ugh.
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Even devices such as your Anker battery packs are at risk.
Really? It's just a battery and a couple of switching regulators, with a bitty little micro turning them on and off and driving the how-much-charge display. No networking, no RTC. I'd expect something like that has 8/16bit clock rollovers on a regular basis, and is programmed to handle them without issue.
I don't know for certain, but would place some money on the usb connection using a standard (cheap) bit of hardware and controller; which means default firmware and *that* somewhere having a clock.
Whether it actually uses the clock or not is another matter.
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I have a couple of Anker powerhouse devices, a gas cooker and two gas fires that can be lit with matches as well as a couple of trangias converted to gas and a large supply of Coleman 500 cylinders.
My biggest concern is the not FiL whose flat is all electric.
Even devices such as your Anker battery packs are at risk.
Networking is seriously at risk, since some, if not a lot, of MAC hardware uses a 32 bit clock.
As far as I know there is no networking or connectivity in the packs. The spec sheets don't seem to indicate any either.
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In the midst of a cost of living crisis never discount the nutritional value of a candle.
And best if it’s a tallow one, for emergency use as cooking fat over the campfire.
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I don't know for certain, but would place some money on the usb connection using a standard (cheap) bit of hardware and controller; which means default firmware and *that* somewhere having a clock.
Whether it actually uses the clock or not is another matter.
Power banks (of the pocket-sized kind) have their own universe of dedicated custom chips that cover all of the required functionality, usually all in one chip. None of those things require more than rudimentary data communication (for PD / QC negotiation, if they're advanced enough to have it) or a real-time clock.
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The powerhouse packs are much bigger and even have two 240v sockets on the front as well as an array of usb ports and a 12v "car" socket. I can charge them from the mains or from a solar panel depending upon the time of year.
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This is mostly standard procedure for us living in the wilds of mid-Wales!
We always keep loads of foodstuffs in, toilet rolls are a years supply anyway, we always have charged power packs, and a tonne or so of logs for the stove. We have no electricity on Friday due to a transformer change, so we will adopt full measures for the day, including being careful with water (which is electrically pumped from the borehole to the storage tank) but will cheat and go out for lunch at a pub about 20 miles away. Annoyingly there's an online lecture that Mrs W wants to see/hear, and of course its on friday, and there won't be a download available later. This means I'll have to sit in the pub and twiddle my thumbs while she watches it on her phone with headphones (and I'll have to remind her to shut up and not comment on it!). Mid-day on a friday is a very odd time to be doing an online lecture!
Hopefully the transformer change will put a stop to the 2 second power cuts we keep getting. Oh, and a pox on the electricity regulatory folk for making it so difficult to have one's home solar PV and battery system act as a backup.
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It’ll be like the 70s when we had regular power cuts. It never did us any harm, but this time it’ll be like the Kraken wakes:
In the final phase, the aliens begin melting the polar ice caps, causing the sea level to rise. London and other ports are flooded, causing widespread social and political collapse. The government moves to Harrogate.
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We ensure the domestic staff are kept well-fed in case there's not enough food to go around after The Event.
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Power cuts are a feature of winter here, and always happen during extreme storms.
So, we have heating (solid fuel stove in living room).
Cooking (gas hob)
Water is gravity fed from a loch via a treatment centre. The treatment centre has its own wind turbines.
Torches and candles, natch.
Stock of food, erm there are shelves and shelves of stuff.
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Oh, and a pox on the electricity regulatory folk for making it so difficult to have one's home solar PV and battery system act as a backup.
It's not that hard islanding your supply, with separate earth bonding, probably already TT where you are.
If I was changing your transformer tails I'd want to be damm sure there was not some dodgy changeover arrangements back feeding up my arm and through my heart.
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Torches, candles, wood fires, portable gas ring with lots of cartridges, lots of tagliatelle. When the power went down for several days after our 1999 hurricane we barbecued steak on the kitchen fire. We also have an Idar-Obersteiner grill (https://www.food.com/recipe/spiessbraten-idar-oberstein-style-156305) down in the cellar.
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I'm planning to be food for the neighbours.
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I'm planning to be food for the neighbours.
Given that a good percentage of the people in country villages have guns it'd probably happen here sooner than there.
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I started looking into the world of Prepping after doing an online course run by The Red Cross ( https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/natural-disaster-safety ) which encouraged me to put together a 'grab bag' of things needed in case of having to leave the house in a hurry (below).
I've gone beyond that and now have a limited supply of tinned food, a small Camping Gaz cooker (and cartridges) and some bottled water in storage.
The problem with looking at this is - 'where do you stop?'. If you look at the various prepping forums they are heavily influenced by American mindsets of bugging out into the wilderness and living on stewed raccoon. Even without this there's a mindset among British preppers that you need survival skills (and the tools that go with it) - which is fine as a hobby-mindset but fails the reality that most of us live in a relatively densely packed country with excellent infrastructure and pretty good back-up services for when things do go pear-shaped. (Of course if you do live out in the wilds YMMV).
The plague times taught us some valuable lessons about what to stock-pile (in moderation) and the dangers of panic buying - we weren't overrun by Bad People breaking our doors down and we didn't need to arm ourselves to the teeth.
The Preppers also get heavily into Communications - whcih assumes that the mobile phone network fails completely. I'm in the lucky / unusual position of having a Ham radio licence (Amateur Radio) and have a range of HF, VHF & UHF radios in the house, including PMR (& potentially CB) - I really, really can't see the scenario where I'd need to resort to any of it.
For reference my Grab Bag currently contains:
Copy of relevant pages from passports; Home Insurance details (renewed every spring when the clocks change); Contact list (renewed every autumn when the clocks change)
Note paper & pencil; Two foil blankets; Two Buffs
One small bottle of hand sanitiser; One small cake of soap & Washcloth
Batteries - 5 xAA 10 x AAA (renewed every time the clocks change); Torch & Battery light
Five small chemiluminescent lights; Set of folding eating utensils; Two different small multitools,
Cash - £10 note, 2 x £5 notes, 30 x £1 coins (Total £50)
20 water purifying tablets; Wind-up Radio (MW, SW, VHF) includes USB charger, light & siren
Headphones (Earphone type); USB cables - both mini & C type
Painkillers - Paracetamol, Tramadol, Co-codamol & Ibuprofen
Simple mobile phone & Multiple new SIM cards; Velcro cable-ties
Spare glasses; Toothbrush + small tube of toothpaste; Tooth repair stuff
Roll of loo paper + pack of moist wipes; Minimal First Aid kit; 1 litre empty drinking bottle
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The freezer's fairly full and we have some tinned stuff. We have, obviously, bike lights, and also headtorches. We don't have containers that could be filled with water. And we won't have any of that, ever, because we live in a small flat. That's the factor that all this 'advice' ignores.
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Dehydrated water , ask at your local camping shop.....
My flats water is via a pipe that runs up the outside of the building :facepalm: It's been known to freeze & sometimes burst in cold weather so I always have a few 5L bottles stashed away , just in case. Storage in flats is always a problem. I'm fortunate in that being on the top floor I've got a loft.
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The freezer's fairly full and we have some tinned stuff. We have, obviously, bike lights, and also headtorches. We don't have containers that could be filled with water. And we won't have any of that, ever, because we live in a small flat. That's the factor that all this 'advice' ignores.
Same here, and also in a flat with limited storage.
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Dehydrated water , ask at your local camping shop.....
My flats water is via a pipe that runs up the outside of the building :facepalm: It's been known to freeze & sometimes burst in cold weather so I always have a few 5L bottles stashed away , just in case. Storage in flats is always a problem. I'm fortunate in that being on the top floor I've got a loft.
The problem with the freezing pipe could be solved by connecting to a reservoir of said dehydrated water.
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The problem with looking at this is - 'where do you stop?'.
Quite. I'd say it's entirely reasonable to have a few days worth of essentials in case of boring things like illness or injury that prevents you leaving the house, a prolonged localised power cut or a burst pipe. Beyond that, storing enough water becomes a challenge (unless it's dehydrated, but dehydrating water is prohibitively energy-intensive and therefore expensive).
As for proper collapse-of-civilisation stuff, the best approach is to be as disengaged from civilisation as possible. But really, that's just prolonging the inevitable. And civilisation isn't going to go with a bang, but with a whimper. And the best way to prepare for that is not to be a member of a marginalised group, or failing that, try to run away from the fascism in a timely manner. Alternatively, work to stop civilisation collapsing in the first place.
For many of us it's much simpler: Until the medication runs out. (I consider stockpiling medication to be prudent, as insurance against boring everyday prescription fuckups.)
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The difficulty is to disengage from civilization without disengaging from society, and therefore also from the people whose help you're going to need (and that's mutual, of course).
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The irony of the breakdown of civilization is that in practice it doesn't happen, under adversity on the most part, people start to cooperate and work together, look after one another. We've been inculcated by a bazillion movies that we'll go Mad Max overnight, but that really makes no sense, if we were like that we'd never have got together and built a civilization in the first place.
Though I'd get some canned goods, just in case.
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I
For reference my Grab Bag currently contains:
Batteries - 5 xAA 10 x AAA (renewed every time the clocks change); Torch & Battery light
Just to pick up on this point.
If you use energizer lithium batteries, they have a 10+ year shelf life, as well as generally lasting longer. As such, you can keep a pack of them in your go bag without having to worry about needing to rotate out new stock regularly.
I have 3 of them in a camping lantern that works when you pull the lid up. In fact I gave some friends one of these lights each last Christmas, along with the lithium batteries so theu would habe something in event of a power cut. I was concerned that their approach had been largely candle based and fear them setting their homes on fire.
As well as this lantern, I have a Makita camping light that includes a FM and dab radio (and works as Bluetooth speaker), as well as a usb power output. The 96wh battery that lives in it is regularly rotated with one from my drills. This givese radio, light, and phone power in one unit. I can also recharge the battery from solar, of which I have a 150w setup that doesn't connect to the grid.
I have 12 1.5l bottles of water, plus about a week or so worth of long shelf life food. Plus camping stoves etc...
My main scenario for planning is being ill for a prolonged period whereby I can't goto a shop, floods disrupting the power and water, and Belgium invading (tho apparently I should perhaps more fear the UK invading based on recent news...).
Btw, you mention washcloth. I can highly recommend coin towels. They take up next to no space, and expand when you add water to them. I carry them on bike tours/races and they are often very useful. Drop a handful into the top of a bike bag and they just fill in spaces around other stuff. They are intended as single use, but they can be refused if dried etc...
Something you should all consider also is a fire safe. Make sure it's data rated, and keep your important documents in there, along your backup discs. Mine was about €100 delivered. Highly recommend.
J
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Another one to add for the things in the go bag.
Sea to summit pocket soap. It comes in a pack with 50 dry sheets that you get wet and they turn into soap. I've used them for years to wash my cycle kit when doing long trips. They are really compact, light, and don't leak. I keep them in a zip lock bag in my bike frame bag, and some in my hiking pack. And have some for my go bag.
J
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Oh, and a pox on the electricity regulatory folk for making it so difficult to have one's home solar PV and battery system act as a backup.
It's not that hard islanding your supply, with separate earth bonding, probably already TT where you are.
If I was changing your transformer tails I'd want to be damm sure there was not some dodgy changeover arrangements back feeding up my arm and through my heart.
I must further investigate this. I did ask my battery installer (Princes LHS, of Ellesmere) to make it capable of acting as backup in a power cut, but they were a bunch of muppets and didn't listen. They were such arseholes I'm not letting them in the house again, so I'll have to get someone else to do it.
I thoroughly agree that bulletproof arrangements have to be made for disconnecting from the grid to avoid electrifying the poor folk fixing it. Mine can also be manually disconnected, as we have a generator input point, and a manual "grid-off-generator" switch.
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Oh, and a pox on the electricity regulatory folk for making it so difficult to have one's home solar PV and battery system act as a backup.
It's not that hard islanding your supply, with separate earth bonding, probably already TT where you are.
If I was changing your transformer tails I'd want to be damm sure there was not some dodgy changeover arrangements back feeding up my arm and through my heart.
I must further investigate this. I did ask my battery installer (Princes LHS, of Ellesmere) to make it capable of acting as backup in a power cut, but they were a bunch of muppets and didn't listen. They were such arseholes I'm not letting them in the house again, so I'll have to get someone else to do it.
I thoroughly agree that bulletproof arrangements have to be made for disconnecting from the grid to avoid electrifying the poor folk fixing it. Mine can also be manually disconnected, as we have a generator input point, and a manual "grid-off-generator" switch.
It should not be beyond any compotent electrician to provide you with a maintained supply providing your inverter supports it.
Description of options for GivEnergy inverters but generally applicable. https://kb.givenergy.cloud/assets/EPS%20Configuration%20v2.pdf (https://kb.givenergy.cloud/assets/EPS%20Configuration%20v2.pdf)
This will give you an informed idea of what you want, from the simple 'double socket that you plug summat into, to a full automagical house change-over. Bear in mind that even a 3 KW inverter won't support more than a few essential circuits, if you wire the whole house to it it will either shutdown or fail when someone inadvertantly plugs in a heater and kettle...
Having a generator support socket and if the genny is handy plus living where you do a long term power cut support plan where you charge batteries for a few hours a day and may seem a good idea..
Be aware there is a significant 'gotcha' that has caught out more than one main rescue control centre. Generator voltage and frequency can be variable and the inverter/battery may just say 'NO SUPPLY HERE'
Also it is probable that your battery system is 'managed from the cloud' and as t'interwebs willl be the first failure you will be stuck with monitoring charging a dumb battery, unless you have applied KimzSkilzTM for local control.
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If having a generator support socket you have genny handy and living where you do a long term power cut support plan where you charge batteries for a few hours a day and may seem a good idea..
That V2L capability is becoming increasingly common in electric vehicles makes this even more of a good idea. A car can silently power your household essentials for days and still have enough charge to make driving to a working charger a possibility if the outage is localised.
Be aware there is a significant 'gotcha' that has caught out more than one main rescue control centre. Generator voltage and frequency can be variable and the inverter/battery may just say 'NO SUPPLY HERE'
UPSes can also be frustratingly fussy in this regard, and it's a strong argument for dual-conversion (which will actively convert moderately-out-of-spec power to DC and back in order to maintain a sensible voltage/frequency) over the cheaper line-interactive type (which will just nope out beyond some threshold and deplete its battery[1]).
[1] Which is how I ended up building my own redundant power supply for the BHPC's Box Of Winky Lights™
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UPSes can also be frustratingly fussy in this regard, and it's a strong argument for dual-conversion (which will actively convert moderately-out-of-spec power to DC and back in order to maintain a sensible voltage/frequency) over the cheaper line-interactive type (which will just nope out beyond some threshold and deplete its battery[1]).
Inverter generators are a 'thing' these days, but of course cost £££'s rather than ££'s and if you already have one why would you buy another?
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The irony of the breakdown of civilization is that in practice it doesn't happen, under adversity on the most part, people start to cooperate and work together, look after one another. We've been inculcated by a bazillion movies that we'll go Mad Max overnight, but that really makes no sense, if we were like that we'd never have got together and built a civilization in the first place.
Though I'd get some canned goods, just in case.
It depends what you call the breakdown of civilization. On a large scale, yes it is like a disaster movie. Within an apparently civilised society there can be a thousand cases where civilisation fails people on an individual scale. The USA is prime example.
(https://i.ibb.co/TKjMzdt/IMG-4303.jpg)
One of the reasons many Russians survived communism under Stalin is that they became very good countering state persecution by covert cooperation. Ironically.
Mainland Europe has experienced a lot of civilization breakdowns that we in the UK only endured in isolated areas if we were unlucky enough to be born in deprived times in the wrong place.
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This unit commends Leave the World Behind as an accurate reflection of how the average wealthy person would deal with breakdown.
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Don't look up.
J
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Oh, and a pox on the electricity regulatory folk for making it so difficult to have one's home solar PV and battery system act as a backup.
It's not that hard islanding your supply, with separate earth bonding, probably already TT where you are.
If I was changing your transformer tails I'd want to be damm sure there was not some dodgy changeover arrangements back feeding up my arm and through my heart.
I must further investigate this. I did ask my battery installer (Princes LHS, of Ellesmere) to make it capable of acting as backup in a power cut, but they were a bunch of muppets and didn't listen. They were such arseholes I'm not letting them in the house again, so I'll have to get someone else to do it.
I thoroughly agree that bulletproof arrangements have to be made for disconnecting from the grid to avoid electrifying the poor folk fixing it. Mine can also be manually disconnected, as we have a generator input point, and a manual "grid-off-generator" switch.
It should not be beyond any compotent electrician to provide you with a maintained supply providing your inverter supports it.
Description of options for GivEnergy inverters but generally applicable. https://kb.givenergy.cloud/assets/EPS%20Configuration%20v2.pdf (https://kb.givenergy.cloud/assets/EPS%20Configuration%20v2.pdf)
This will give you an informed idea of what you want, from the simple 'double socket that you plug summat into, to a full automagical house change-over. Bear in mind that even a 3 KW inverter won't support more than a few essential circuits, if you wire the whole house to it it will either shutdown or fail when someone inadvertantly plugs in a heater and kettle...
Having a generator support socket and if the genny is handy plus living where you do a long term power cut support plan where you charge batteries for a few hours a day and may seem a good idea..
Be aware there is a significant 'gotcha' that has caught out more than one main rescue control centre. Generator voltage and frequency can be variable and the inverter/battery may just say 'NO SUPPLY HERE'
Also it is probable that your battery system is 'managed from the cloud' and as t'interwebs willl be the first failure you will be stuck with monitoring charging a dumb battery, unless you have applied KimzSkilzTM for local control.
Our (Givenergy) battery/inverter is indeed managed from the cloud, but will also speak directly to the phone, but obviously still needs the router to be alive (I think). I'll read your link and consider how to proceed, many thanks!
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A GivEnergy battery is wot we also 'av and you are indeed correct the phone app 'finds' the inverter on your LAN. If you arrange a battery maintained supply for your home router you should not have a problem.
AFAIU you do need a GE approved contractor as the island power is not enabled by default.
BTW my contractor was also very poor.
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you can keep a pack of them in your go bag
You can keep a lot of things in your go bag – and you evidently do – but you're missing a point.
Where you gonna go?
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Where you gonna go?
Ob-Marcie: Ipswich?
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Where you gonna go?
Ob-Marcie: Ipswich?
Marcie? (https://www.peanuts.com/about/marcie)
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Where you gonna go?
Ob-Marcie: Ipswich?
Marcie? (https://www.peanuts.com/about/marcie)
Marcie Hatter, from the Russell T Davies documentary Dark Season (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/DarkSeason). A subject about which surprisingly little has survived onto the post-2000s internet. Just imagine The Doctor as a snarky 14 year old with bad hair. My user icon refers.
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you can keep a pack of them in your go bag
You can keep a lot of things in your go bag – and you evidently do – but you're missing a point.
Where you gonna go?
That very much depends on the event for which I need the go bag.
- gas leak requiring building evacuation for a couple of days - I'll go crash on a friend sofa.
- floods in the are - rest centre, or friend in an unaffected area.
- fire - outside the building in the first instance
- epic disaster - by bike, east probably.
It very much depends on what happens. But doesn't stop it being useful to have a go bag ready.
When I was a volunteer with a large emergency aid charity in the UK I was trained to operate rest centres, and although I only had to put that training into action once during floods, it has given me a good idea what to expect.
J
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West might be better be better if flooding is the problem Kim. Hills tend not to flood ;)
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But only half of the West is hills. The other half is valleys. Could get crowded.
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you can keep a pack of them in your go bag
You can keep a lot of things in your go bag – and you evidently do – but you're missing a point.
Where you gonna go?
That very much depends on the event for which I need the go bag.
- gas leak requiring building evacuation for a couple of days - I'll go crash on a friend sofa.
- floods in the are - rest centre, or friend in an unaffected area.
- fire - outside the building in the first instance
- epic disaster - by bike, east probably.
It very much depends on what happens. But doesn't stop it being useful to have a go bag ready.
When I was a volunteer with a large emergency aid charity in the UK I was trained to operate rest centres, and although I only had to put that training into action once during floods, it has given me a good idea what to expect.
J
Exactly the scenarios I expect.
The bag is for the unlikely event of having to leave the house for several hours / a few days and to make that experience slightly more bearable than relying purely on local authority / emergency service provision.
Someone up-thread mentioned being unwell and unable to leave the house for a while - that's in the general plan as well (along with grocery delivery services).
If any or all of the four horsemen of the apocalypse arrive in Leicester, I'm probably going to be trampled anyway.
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We used to live on a barge, on a river that flooded. So, needing a grab bag was not only something we had, it was something we used.
Bare essentials kept in vehicle, important docs kept in bag that could be grabbed if something like barge started to sink.
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you can keep a pack of them in your go bag
You can keep a lot of things in your go bag – and you evidently do – but you're missing a point.
Where you gonna go?
That very much depends on the event for which I need the go bag.
- gas leak requiring building evacuation for a couple of days - I'll go crash on a friend sofa.
- floods in the are - rest centre, or friend in an unaffected area.
- fire - outside the building in the first instance
- epic disaster - by bike, east probably.
It very much depends on what happens. But doesn't stop it being useful to have a go bag ready.
When I was a volunteer with a large emergency aid charity in the UK I was trained to operate rest centres, and although I only had to put that training into action once during floods, it has given me a good idea what to expect.
J
Exactly the scenarios I expect.
The bag is for the unlikely event of having to leave the house for several hours / a few days and to make that experience slightly more bearable than relying purely on local authority / emergency service provision.
Someone up-thread mentioned being unwell and unable to leave the house for a while - that's in the general plan as well (along with grocery delivery services).
If any or all of the four horsemen of the apocalypse arrive in Leicester, I'm probably going to be trampled anyway.
Living in a tower block raises you above the floods, but exposes you to gas leaks, fire, and the (apparently, at least) sudden discovery of major construction faults made 60 years ago: https://news.bristol.gov.uk/press-releases/4cc66c75-2d5c-4307-b08a-873a67c80bfc/evacuation-of-barton-house-bristol/
Heading east? That's into the perennial battleground, especially if you're starting in the Netherlands.
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Living in a tower block raises you above the floods, but exposes you to gas leaks, fire, and the (apparently, at least) sudden discovery of major construction faults made 60 years ago: https://news.bristol.gov.uk/press-releases/4cc66c75-2d5c-4307-b08a-873a67c80bfc/evacuation-of-barton-house-bristol/
Heading east? That's into the perennial battleground, especially if you're starting in the Netherlands.
West would result in wet feet very quickly. As does north. South gets me Belgium. German I have some familiarity with the language and I have friends there.
Last week a friend of mine had to evacuate his apartment by climbing over the balcony to a neighbour. Why? Someone set off a bomb in the door way of a down stairs neighbour. There was fire in the stair well, he lost all his windows. He was allowed back in about 12 hours later. But now has the fun of sorting repairs.
Alas this is become more common. The number of small bombs that have gone off in Dutch cities this year is now in the hundreds. Cos organised crime.
J
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I've got a grab bag prepared (that goes back to my days of working in conflict zones). We also have a number torches/lamps and a good supply of batteries. We've also got a couple of oil lamps in the shed.
We probably have several weeks worth of food in cupboards/freezers and about 20lts of bottled water - but I also have two filtration systems that we can use to clean water if needed. We have two large first aid kits and a couple of smaller packs. We also have quite a large selections of various medications.
We have copies of key documents kept off site (including one of my passports).
And we have access to three guns, with quite a few pheasant and rabbits around...
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you can keep a pack of them in your go bag
You can keep a lot of things in your go bag – and you evidently do – but you're missing a point.
Where you gonna go?
I was far too tempted by this bunker (https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/property/incredible-secret-nuclear-bunker-aberdeenshire-6830845) when it was on the market last year (it's a bit far from Edinburgh without a car, and I expect the buses won't run in the event of apocalypse). I didn't bid in the end, and I hope I don't regret that decision in the future.
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you can keep a pack of them in your go bag
You can keep a lot of things in your go bag – and you evidently do – but you're missing a point.
Where you gonna go?
I was far too tempted by this bunker (https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/property/incredible-secret-nuclear-bunker-aberdeenshire-6830845) when it was on the market last year (it's a bit far from Edinburgh without a car, and I expect the buses won't run in the event of apocalypse). I didn't bid in the end, and I hope I don't regret that decision in the future.
The listing states: "The bunker was not required to fulfil its nuclear war role.
Just in case anyone hadn't noticed!
The mecca of nuclear shelters must be the one under Box tunnel on the GWR – with rumoured SEKRIT RESERVE STEAM TRAINS which might or might not be as old as the shelter, if they exist, which of course they don't because if they did, they would have to be denied. What with that and the supposed alignment of the tunnel such that the sunrise shines through it on Brunel's birthday (or maybe his sister's) it's got to be the Stonehenge of shelters.
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Objection - the Stonehenge of shelters is shirley the one under Stonehenge that the Illuminati control the weather from?
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Yebbut they don't have steam trains, only a fusion-powered maglev monorail.
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Objection - the Stonehenge of shelters is shirley the one under Stonehenge that the Illuminati control the weather from?
Now you know why some of TPTB are angry with other parts of TPTB about the plan for the road tunnel under the henge...
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It’ll be like the 70s when we had regular power cuts. It never did us any harm, but this time it’ll be like the Kraken wakes:
In the final phase, the aliens begin melting the polar ice caps, causing the sea level to rise. London and other ports are flooded, causing widespread social and political collapse. The government moves to Harrogate.
I do sometimes wonder how much more wailing there would be if we had 70s style powercuts nowadays. I think for a generation raised on Hive-Mind levels of instant communications it could be very disturbing.
Anyway, this thread reminds me I need to dig out the dipole antenna from the garage so I can stick it on the side of the house and get some 11m freebanding going :D
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If we had regular power cuts we'd just be better prepared for power cuts. Cellular networks would be able to attract customers by having 1990s levels of backup power, for example, rather than just seeing it as a wasted cost.
Rich people with houses would have island-capable solar systems, generators and transfer switches. Perhaps auto-transformers if brown-outs were a regular occurance.
That sort of thing.
It's only the poor people who'd freezing their arses off in analogue hell.
The future is not evenly distributed. You can look to the global south to see how regular power cuts work in the modern world.
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Kim has spake my mind or pretty close to. It'd be very noisy and smelly.
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If we had regular power cuts we'd just be better prepared for power cuts. Cellular networks would be able to attract customers by having 1990s levels of backup power, for example, rather than just seeing it as a wasted cost.
Rich people with houses would have island-capable solar systems, generators and transfer switches. Perhaps auto-transformers if brown-outs were a regular occurance.
That sort of thing.
It's only the poor people who'd freezing their arses off in analogue hell.
The future is not evenly distributed. You can look to the global south to see how regular power cuts work in the modern world.
You are, as ever, correct. My previous employer owned a large rural house that was open to the public. I installed UPS on every desktop, till,
rack and bit of network gear. I was on first name terms with the UPS dealer. By the end of my time there, we had auto-switching standby generators. No Solar though, just diesel.
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I wonder if we're gonna start seeing things like ADSL routers, cable modems, and fibre CPE coming with usb-C rather than DC barrel jacks. When we had work done on our mains power. It would have been very useful to just plug the router or modem into a usb power bank and keep it working. It's not like they are hugely power hungry...
On a semi related note, anyone else noticed lots of gootubers videos are sponsored by companies making big battery packs with integrated inverters of late? The units they are plugging often can do a kilowatt or 3 of output power, and store typically >1kwh of energy. One channel had about 4 of them plugged together to driver a welder...
I'm not sure how great they would be for emergency backup. Keeping it plugged in all the time is gonna knacker it. But at 2-3% self discharge per month. You'd lose a quarter of your charge per year. Assuming LiFePo4 chemistry. Beats lugging extension cables out into the garden tho...
J
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Keeping it plugged in all the time is gonna knacker it.
J
Not at all, the BMS in the kit is controlling the state of tharge, ratjer tjan the act of plugging it in. My LiFePO4 batteries' loss is very, very, low when stored with the BMS turned off.
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I wonder if we're gonna start seeing things like ADSL routers, cable modems, and fibre CPE coming with usb-C rather than DC barrel jacks. When we had work done on our mains power. It would have been very useful to just plug the router or modem into a usb power bank and keep it working. It's not like they are hugely power hungry...
On a semi related note, anyone else noticed lots of gootubers videos are sponsored by companies making big battery packs with integrated inverters of late? The units they are plugging often can do a kilowatt or 3 of output power, and store typically >1kwh of energy. One channel had about 4 of them plugged together to driver a welder...
I'm not sure how great they would be for emergency backup. Keeping it plugged in all the time is gonna knacker it. But at 2-3% self discharge per month. You'd lose a quarter of your charge per year. Assuming LiFePo4 chemistry. Beats lugging extension cables out into the garden tho...
J
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On a semi related note, anyone else noticed lots of gootubers videos are sponsored by companies making big battery packs with integrated inverters of late? The units they are plugging often can do a kilowatt or 3 of output power, and store typically >1kwh of energy. One channel had about 4 of them plugged together to driver a welder...
I'm not sure how great they would be for emergency backup. Keeping it plugged in all the time is gonna knacker it. But at 2-3% self discharge per month. You'd lose a quarter of your charge per year. Assuming LiFePo4 chemistry. Beats lugging extension cables out into the garden tho...
I reckon they'd be excellent if you were regularly using them for something. Much less so if you aren't.
I bought a cheap 48V -> 220VAC inverter so we can power things from barakta's trike battery (~800Wh of LiFePO4). It's been useful in a couple of actual power cuts, and has allowed us not to use a infernal combustion generator for a few BHPC events[1] where there isn't mains power at the track. One of those large power bank things would be ideal for this sort of use case.
[1] Our timing setup needs something of the order of 70-150VA, depending on whether there's a race in progress and how many digits are lit up on the LAZER DISPLAY BOARD™, so it can reasonably power the lot for over 6 hours.
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We don't have 'go bags' but we have lots of tourches; lots of rechargeable batteries charged. Camping stove and gas. Dry foods. Lots of blankets. 20 litres of water.
It seems we just experience a significant plumbing or utility failure in the run up to Christmas each year. Currently without heating until a new condensate hose (the one that runs between the actual boiler and condensate trap) is delivered.
I think we'd be able to grab the essentials pretty quickly. I've got quite one HF and several VHF/UHF radios that will run on batteries. Haven't gone so far as to store one in a faraday container yet.
I also have all the bits together to build a portable solar power generator that will run a radio, charge a mobile and/or laptop. Primary purpose of this, when I find time to put it together, is radio operating out in the field (camping trips) but it is nice that it potentially does double duty during zombocalypse.
The thing that will knacker us though, is that if societal breakdown does occur, someone will just bludgeon us both to death with a blunt instrument in order to take our provisions.
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Primary purpose of this, when I find time to put it together, is radio operating out in the field (camping trips) but it is nice that it potentially does double duty during zombocalypse.
The thing that will knacker us though, is that if societal breakdown does occur, someone will just bludgeon us both to death with a blunt instrument in order to take our provisions.
But with the radio comms who are you going to call, and what do you want of them?
If you can't get a local contact on 2m or 70cm, do you then hope that your NVIS antenna for 60m brings some joy? Then what? Do you just narrate the zombie attack while listening to the same story from the rest of the net?
Without a trusted network of self-supporting people that you are in regular contact - I really don't know what use any radio will be when things go wrong.
If society breaks down, sadly it'll be survival of the fittest, and that ain't me.
Once we start considering protecting ourselves from the zombies then we're heading into the mad bad world of the USAnian preppers and their stockpiled weapons hidden in caches underneath a dead cat in a car park in Wigan.
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So this is the classic known unknown.
What will happen when society collapsed? Will it descend into individualism and everyone for themselves? Or will groups self organise to make things better for everyone?
I'd really like to hope more for the later than the former.
J
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Primary purpose of this, when I find time to put it together, is radio operating out in the field (camping trips) but it is nice that it potentially does double duty during zombocalypse.
The thing that will knacker us though, is that if societal breakdown does occur, someone will just bludgeon us both to death with a blunt instrument in order to take our provisions.
But with the radio comms who are you going to call..?
Ghostbusters. :D
But if they can't help, and if you can find them, maybe... The A-Team ;D
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Primary purpose of this, when I find time to put it together, is radio operating out in the field (camping trips) but it is nice that it potentially does double duty during zombocalypse.
The thing that will knacker us though, is that if societal breakdown does occur, someone will just bludgeon us both to death with a blunt instrument in order to take our provisions.
But with the radio comms who are you going to call, and what do you want of them?
There's still some semblence of local RAYNET left. Optimistically I think in the event that all other comms are out then it may be away of coordinating local disaster mitigation efforts. Pessimistically, it will be a way of finding out whom among the regulars I speak to still have comms and waiting around to see whom amongst them is the last to go off air.
That said, I've not been on air much at all for months outside of a couple of regular weekly nets but by all accounts U/VHF locally are all but dead. (Too busy with work and outside of that trying to get myself ready for the full license exam).
So this is the classic known unknown.
What will happen when society collapsed? Will it descend into individualism and everyone for themselves? Or will groups self organise to make things better for everyone?
I'd really like to hope more for the later than the former.
J
In most areas of the UK, the former is most likely given the panic buying that ensues with fuel protests and pandemia :'(
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I remember watching a French mini-series called "the collapse" it aired on Dutch TV about 2 years ago.
L' Effondrement for the Francophiles. I think it was 5 or 6 short 20min stories.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11248266/ (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11248266/)
None of the dramatic Hollywood happy-ending garbage, real people in realistic situations.
It zooms in on what would happen to various small communities, it was very good.
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I'm in the local County Raynet group and we've just been handed a sack of cash to build a resilient communications and data network for emergencies.
We have pretty good coverage of all the district council offices, and rest centres, especially now we've moved out of the old bunkers and into the new planning rooms they've set up with generator power and nice lighting and such. It takes a lot of effort though to maintain the relationships with the civil protection officers, fire service and all the other bodies.
D.
Primary purpose of this, when I find time to put it together, is radio operating out in the field (camping trips) but it is nice that it potentially does double duty during zombocalypse.
The thing that will knacker us though, is that if societal breakdown does occur, someone will just bludgeon us both to death with a blunt instrument in order to take our provisions.
But with the radio comms who are you going to call, and what do you want of them?
There's still some semblence of local RAYNET left. Optimistically I think in the event that all other comms are out then it may be away of coordinating local disaster mitigation efforts. Pessimistically, it will be a way of finding out whom among the regulars I speak to still have comms and waiting around to see whom amongst them is the last to go off air.
That said, I've not been on air much at all for months outside of a couple of regular weekly nets but by all accounts U/VHF locally are all but dead. (Too busy with work and outside of that trying to get myself ready for the full license exam).
So this is the classic known unknown.
What will happen when society collapsed? Will it descend into individualism and everyone for themselves? Or will groups self organise to make things better for everyone?
I'd really like to hope more for the later than the former.
J
In most areas of the UK, the former is most likely given the panic buying that ensues with fuel protests and pandemia :'(
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A current risk is of institutions' and government IT systems being hacked, perhaps with user data being held to ransom, or perhaps with Bad Actors taking control of internet-connected physical systems, (such as water treatment plant, or electricity grid - hence a risk of blackout.)
The report in the original post references the annual risk and resilience statement, which lists cyber incidents and the misuse of AI. It mentions state supported hacking groups.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/13/uk-at-high-risk-of-catastrophic-ransomware-attack-report-says (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/13/uk-at-high-risk-of-catastrophic-ransomware-attack-report-says)
Reducing vulnerability to that would involve what you might call 'good data hygiene' in organisations, which in turn requires workplaces to keep their computer networks secure, not using end of life unsupported systems, good password policies, not using email for sending/storing restricted info, using 2FA, and their staff not falling for phishing attacks and similar (and having been trained to recognise such things). In short, this is mostly about boring old information security practice - the stuff that organisations (and their staff) kinda know they should be doing anyway, but they're not very good at, because they haven't really thought about it; it is not sexy.
Yet I expect every employee, even those of us who are aware of this stuff, could raise their game. So the project facing gov.uk and our institutions is a communication challenge, or rather an education challenge: workplaces are going to need to teach their staff the right way to handle restricted information, etc.
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An interesting side effect of the move towards renewables is the idea of power station now covers everything from a grid connected 1kw solar panel on someone's roof, upto a multi gigawatt nuke plant.
I saw a talk two days ago at CCC in Germany by someone who had done a security assessment on a popular inverter used with small scale solar systems. The security on it was laughable (remember kids, the S in IoT stands for security).
So what? who cares if you can hack into someone's roof solar... Well there are 2.6 million properties with small scale solar in Germany alone. If you can hack into a few thousand of them, have they turn off, and off again synchronised, the grid will shut down in self defence. We're familiar with the movie plot of hackers hacking into nuclear power plants and the like. They generally have great security, they are a really hard target. But that IoT internet connected inverter in the cupboard connected to the solar on your roof? That's candy from a baby in comparison.
In many ways renewables being a distributed architecture is a more resilient one. Driving a truck bomb through the gate at a nuke or gas plant takes a lot more power off line than setting fire to a wind turbine does. But That distributed nature also works the other way in providing a larger number of attack surfaces for other types of attack.
J
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A current risk is of institutions' and government IT systems being hacked, perhaps with user data being held to ransom, or perhaps with Bad Actors taking control of internet-connected physical systems, (such as water treatment plant, or electricity grid - hence a risk of blackout.)
The report in the original post references the annual risk and resilience statement, which lists cyber incidents and the misuse of AI. It mentions state supported hacking groups.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/13/uk-at-high-risk-of-catastrophic-ransomware-attack-report-says (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/13/uk-at-high-risk-of-catastrophic-ransomware-attack-report-says)
Reducing vulnerability to that would involve what you might call 'good data hygiene' in organisations, which in turn requires workplaces to keep their computer networks secure, not using end of life unsupported systems, good password policies, not using email for sending/storing restricted info, using 2FA, and their staff not falling for phishing attacks and similar (and having been trained to recognise such things). In short, this is mostly about boring old information security practice - the stuff that organisations (and their staff) kinda know they should be doing anyway, but they're not very good at, because they don't think it very much; it is not sexy.
Yet I expect every employee, even those of us who are aware of this stuff, could raise their game. So the project facing gov.uk and our institutions is a communication challenge, or rather an education challenge: workplaces are going to need to teach their staff the right way to handle restricted information, etc.
It's the same old story, with the huge technical debt companies tend to carry around. They won't make the investment to address it. Many systems still in use today pre-date the Internet and have security models ranging from non-existent to easily defeatable.
All the training in the world is not going to help unless board members take the security threat seriously and front the capital to actually re-implement these systems using secure-by-design principals.
I saw a talk two days ago at CCC in Germany by someone who had done a security assessment on a popular inverter used with small scale solar systems. The security on it was laughable (remember kids, the S in IoT stands for security).
I like the phrase Immensely Ovious Threat, coined by one of the famous (in technology circles) security bloggers, whose name escapes me at the minute.
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Employers could do well to stop behaving like scammers themselves, especially HR departments. We got a random email from RandomCompany telling us our employer (not named) wanted us to register with them. I sent it straight to IT as 'scam' and deleted it.
Turns out it was legit. HR had been using a third party to check DBSes or something, which unsurprisingly most of us ignored, so HR-junior had to email everyone instead. But being a poorly trained numpty, HR-JuniorBCCed everyone using her boss's name - a boss we'd never heard of, so most of us refused to follow instructions in that too. HR numpty didn't know how to use Mail Merge or that her "you rush rush do thing" tone was also very scammy looking.
I didn't get a bollocking from my boss cos I explained these are all scammy behaviours and they cannot have it both ways. I'd rather get a personalised bollocking for refusing to comply with crappy HR crap than fall for a phish and be shamed by the employer for it. I give no fucks about HR and their lack of staffing or planning is an employer problem not a me problem.
I can imagine a lot of organisations with sensitive data also don't staff their IT/HR properly so they do dodgy shit like this.
Our IT is taking cybersecurity really seriously, to the point where they just locked loads of people out of their long-term systems including building-management with no warning to "meet their certification", so IT are understandably unpopular as they didn't give anyone time to rejig systems appropriately, or create siloed systems to enable building management to keep managing their buildings. Apparently it's cost the employer over a million more in wasted energy cos they can't turn stuff on/off properly months down the line.
It all ends up turning into top trumps, cybersecurity, eco-management, disability-accessibility, wanky-manager's-flagshit-project...
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HR probably knows they should not be asking your managers to request email photos of your passport. But do they know what transmission method should be used? And when will they start asking for that?...
That middle manager probably knows he shouldn't be emailing himself with his password and username for any given system. But does he know what password storage method he should be using: has anyone sat down with him and explained that, and then watched him do it?
That junior administrator knows she just entered her credentials into a phishing site... but it didn't occur to her before she followed the link in the email. That email seemed official, and urgent; it's been a busy week. And yet it's obviously from a dodgy domain.
A little bit of education would go a long way.
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Many systems still in use today pre-date the Internet
Amazing the systems still around from the 1960s eh?
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Many systems still in use today pre-date the Internet
Amazing the systems still around from the 1960s eh?
Predate the internet being more than just a military and academic curiosity at least...
J
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Many systems still in use today pre-date the Internet
Amazing the systems still around from the 1960s eh?
I thought, as I wrote that, I should qualify it becase someone might make a pedantic remark.
Note, I said "Internet" rather than "internet". The Internet Protocol Suite was standardised in 1982 and it was a few years after that the various militiary and academic 'internets' really started coming together trans-continentally.
Private/Commercial access to the Internet didn't really take off until the very late 1980s.
HR probably knows they should not be asking your managers to request email photos of your passport. But do they know what transmission method should be used? And when will they start asking for that?...
That middle manager probably knows he shouldn't be emailing himself with his password and username for any given system. But does he know what password storage method he should be using: has anyone sat down with him and explained that, and then watched him do it?
That junior administrator knows she just entered her credentials into a phishing site... but it didn't occur to her before she followed the link in the email. That email seemed official, and urgent; it's been a busy week. And yet it's obviously from a dodgy domain.
A little bit of education would go a long way.
It is often the case that people do know what they are doing is bad. Some describe that as the difference between a technology lead business and a business that uses technology. AGain, the time/money/capital needs to be expanded so that there are secure ways for staff to collect, process and share data. The training side is well catered too, at least in terms of information security and data protection. It's the tooling that is often lacking. That often leaves staff, with a choice of doing the job and keeping their immediate managers happy, or adhering to their training and making their managers unhappy.
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I had this in my last job (I retired about 15 years ago) in The Great Fax Wars.
Everyone seemed to accept that using fax in healthcare was a Bad Thing, and everyone seemed to have a jolly anecdote of Mrs Gubbins test results being sent to a garage, but no one would do anything about it.
Why? Because every other bloody department was using Fax and why should they be first, and anyway it's only every couple of months that a fax ends up where it shouldn't.
The technology to use (relatively) secure email was there at the time. The training telling staff and managers about data security was certainly in place. But no one would do anything about the use of insecure fax.
It was largely about the comfort blanket of an existing system, the lack of trust in the alternative, and management inertia to force change.
I think it took government edict to force the issue, but I lost the plot long before then.
I'm not sure how this scales to current data security issues, but it is a worthwhile study - for someone - in how embedded methods are hard to change
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Use our new password manager. It'll make secure password management simple! Learn how to use it in this 20-minute video...
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Our IT dept sent out a couple of test phishing emails. Apparently ~5% of staff clicked on the embedded links and gave away personal details. We have regular warnings, annual mandatory training and we're still recovering from the cyber attack a couple of years ago... ::-)
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Use our new password manager. It'll make secure password management simple! Learn how to use it in this 20-minute video...
This is the challenge though: find better software; invest time learning to use it. Stop using email for absolutely bloody everything. (And think before you click links.)
For large organisations, for government departments, it's learn more secure methods or risk being hacked. And, honestly, recovering from a cyber incident takes months. Months of publishing updates to your customers and your staff about the data that's been stolen and which of your systems are still down; months of being unable to provide your services in the normal way; hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on IT support, data governance reviews, legal advice, and credit checks for the staff and customers your organisation's negligence has put at risk. And the reputation of the organisation, in the eyes of your staff and customers, goes down the toilet. All because some staff were storing passwords unencrypted (and were probably adding customer data to random spreadsheets in unsecured buckets, and were replying to emails with login credentials).
A little training...
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I got an email from an outside organisation I wasn't expecting. It just had a short one sentence, and a link. I reported it as phishing and ignored it.
It was a real email, from an org we deal with, it was not actually phishing. My not clicking the link cost the company a few hundred euros.
When I told my boss what happened, I got congratulated for doing the right thing. Even tho it cost the company money.
This is the correct attitude to have. In the line of work we are in, we also get targeted a lot with spear phishing. New person starts, within a few hours of updating linked in, they will get a spear phishing email. We now brief staff on this.
I'm of the view that phishing awareness email campaigns don't work, they just make staff feel shit. I'm just not 100% sure what does work...
J
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What does work, is finding and sharing examples of successful phishing attacks and their consequences. Especially when they affect similar organisations.
Also why I think it's important organisations do share post-mortems when they fall victim it a phishing/ransomware campaign.
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What does work, is finding and sharing examples of successful phishing attacks and their consequences. Especially when they affect similar organisations.
Also why I think it's important organisations do share post-mortems when they fall victim it a phishing/ransomware campaign.
Agreed. The boss got caught with that booking.com scam. He was very very open about it and explained how it had worked. We all learned a lot about it.
A few weeks later I get an email from booking.com my first thought is it's phishing. Nope, turns out my credit card had expired and I had to put a new one in. All done within the app, no links clicked.
J
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In the line of work we are in, we also get targeted a lot with spear phishing. New person starts, within a few hours of updating linked in, they will get a spear phishing email. We now brief staff on this...
That briefing of staff is effective training, because it's relevant and memorable - clearly!
What does work, is finding and sharing examples of successful phishing attacks and their consequences. Especially when they affect similar organisations.
That's effective training because it's interesting, and relevant, and real. We're all interested in hearing about other people's mistakes.
The ten-minute animated video on GDPR you watched on your first day - when you'd just been made to watch the fire safety video, and the export controls video, and the DSE ergonomics video - not so much.
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I had this in my last job (I retired about 15 years ago) in The Great Fax Wars.
Everyone seemed to accept that using fax in healthcare was a Bad Thing, and everyone seemed to have a jolly anecdote of Mrs Gubbins test results being sent to a garage, but no one would do anything about it.
Why? Because every other bloody department was using Fax and why should they be first, and anyway it's only every couple of months that a fax ends up where it shouldn't.
The technology to use (relatively) secure email was there at the time. The training telling staff and managers about data security was certainly in place. But no one would do anything about the use of insecure fax.
It was largely about the comfort blanket of an existing system, the lack of trust in the alternative, and management inertia to force change.
I think it took government edict to force the issue, but I lost the plot long before then.
I'm not sure how this scales to current data security issues, but it is a worthwhile study - for someone - in how embedded methods are hard to change
What makes fax less secure than email?
All I can think of is that you get a physical print out, which might then be seen the wrong person. But then if you send an email to the wrong address, it's likely to be read by the wrong person, whereas if you send a fax to the wrong address it's likely to get connected to not a fax machine and not be read by anyone.
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I had this in my last job (I retired about 15 years ago) in The Great Fax Wars.
Everyone seemed to accept that using fax in healthcare was a Bad Thing, and everyone seemed to have a jolly anecdote of Mrs Gubbins test results being sent to a garage, but no one would do anything about it.
Why? Because every other bloody department was using Fax and why should they be first, and anyway it's only every couple of months that a fax ends up where it shouldn't.
The technology to use (relatively) secure email was there at the time. The training telling staff and managers about data security was certainly in place. But no one would do anything about the use of insecure fax.
It was largely about the comfort blanket of an existing system, the lack of trust in the alternative, and management inertia to force change.
I think it took government edict to force the issue, but I lost the plot long before then.
I'm not sure how this scales to current data security issues, but it is a worthwhile study - for someone - in how embedded methods are hard to change
What makes fax less secure than email?
All I can think of is that you get a physical print out, which might then be seen the wrong person. But then if you send an email to the wrong address, it's likely to be read by the wrong person, whereas if you send a fax to the wrong address it's likely to get connected to not a fax machine and not be read by anyone.
Email isn't necessarily any more secure than using a fax machine ........ but it can be. Email should at least use opportunistic encryption on transmission. And security-conscious organisations can configure their email servers (or email services) to force encryption. The only problem with that, is that some third party email will not be delivered.
Fax machines, AFAIK, transmit information without any type of encryption so a tap anywhere along the line could be used by a third party to obtain a copy of a fax.
Additionally, fax machines tend to be shared amongst teams/offices.
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if you send a fax to the wrong address it's likely to get connected to not a fax machine and not be read by anyone.
I can't be the only one to have suffered from my phone number ending up in someone's outgoing fax queue, and have their fax server retry repeatedly at random hours. Last time it happened the only way I could get it to stop was to dust off a POTS modem and receive the fax. Which, unsurprisingly, came from a mistake agent.
Makes xkcd://1279 (https://xkcd.com/1279/) emails seem positively un-annoying.
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if you send a fax to the wrong address it's likely to get connected to not a fax machine and not be read by anyone.
I can't be the only one to have suffered from my phone number ending up in someone's outgoing fax queue, and have their fax server retry repeatedly at random hours. Last time it happened the only way I could get it to stop was to dust off a POTS modem and receive the fax. Which, unsurprisingly, came from a mistake agent.
Makes xkcd://1279 (https://xkcd.com/1279/) emails seem positively un-annoying.
Did you get a pint of milk?
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I can't be the only one to have suffered from my phone number ending up in someone's outgoing fax queue, and have their fax server retry repeatedly at random hours. Last time it happened the only way I could get it to stop was to dust off a POTS modem and receive the fax. Which, unsurprisingly, came from a mistake agent.
Makes xkcd://1279 (https://xkcd.com/1279/) emails seem positively un-annoying.
I used to have a landline number that is 1 digit different to the fax number at the County court in Canterbury...
I kept meaning to put a modem on it and see what people were faxing...
J
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From Robert Twigger's Walking the Great North Line, a book recommended in a different context by Andrew C:
It is half cave, half prepper's hideout, entrance concealed by the fir. Preppers are preparing for the end of the world. I know a couple. And one of my friends sells gear to them on the internet. 'You'd be surprised,' he tells me. 'My best customers are single women with good jobs – doctors and lawyers stocking up on food and fuel for a year in advance... ' Preppers sometimes put their faith in bunkers they build at home, and sometimes in 'bug-out' shelters like this one. The well prepared have both. It's an all-consuming and fascinating lifestyle predicated on doom and gloom.
He then goes on to describe the bug-out shelter, if that's what it really is, that he's stumbled across: tarp roof, branches for camouflage, oil drum stove, bag of firewood, box of supplies... Obviously it's second-hand anecdote but it is slightly surprising about the female customers, because the typical image of a prepper is a man with pseudo-military inclinations. But in fact it tends to align with what we've seen on this forum, members both past and present, so maybe it's representative.
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In terms of food, I probably don't need to leave the house for about a month.
Maybe more.
I have loads of battery/powerpack powered lights.
The means to light the (gas) stove without relying on its 240v igniter.
I've been plagued by mice in my kitchen since before Xmas.
I contacted a pest control company but they said they couldn't come out to me until the new year.
So I took matters into my own hands.
I've been putting down poison, but to no avail.
All my Brexit Emergency Rations live in four plastic crates under my kitchen table.
Turns out that the mice have discovered all of the packet foods amongst the tins, and have been gorging themselves on it, except for the dried pasta. They haven't touched that. Then again why would they, if the choice was dried pasta or Ainsley Harriot's spicy Caribbean rice.
So, the other day I chucked out what was left of all of the packet stuff, and this afternoon I chucked out all of the out of data Pesto sauce, and then gave all of the remaining tins and the plastic crates a wash in properly hot water to get rid of the mouse poo/piss.
Then I put out some more poison.
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Try chocolate. :thumbsup:
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Mix it with peanut butter. That is what I baited the traps with.
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Think like a mouse, Grasshopper.
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No traps here.
Just poison.