10:03 – It was exactly freezing when I took Colin out this morning, with a slight blizzard: no wind and an occasional snowflake visible.
There’s been discussion in the comments lately about the suitability of various areas for preppers. Of course, for many preppers relocation isn’t really an option because of job and family responsibilities. For many others–those who are retired or wealthy or can earn a living anywhere–the question is where it is safest and best to relocate.
There are any number of sites on the Internet that purport to rank the states by suitability, and I looked at a lot of those before Barbara and I relocated back in late 2015. Michael Snyder has one of the better sites, where he ranks and grades the 50 states. He awards an A to only Idaho, a B+ to Montana, and a B to Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia.
I decided that none of these sites were useful, mainly because they broke everything down by state, which is a dumb way to go about it. For example, other than the fact that they’re both in Virginia, the far southwestern part of the state has nothing at all in common with the DC metro area. In terms of population density, the latter area earns an F in my book, while the former is very close to an A. Also, Snyder and many others consider the presence of nuclear power plants to be a downcheck, when in fact it’s a very good thing to have power plants nearby that are independent of fuel resupply. And so on.
I’m not as good at multivariate analysis as I used to be, but I gave it a shot. The first thing I did was draw a circle of 50 miles radius around any metro area of one million or more population. Anything inside that circle was out. The next thing I did was overlay that map on another map that showed annual rainfall, which I used to rule out arid areas unless there was reliable surface water readily available. I continued doing that with various key criteria–such as percentage of land devoted to agriculture, politics, gun laws, etc.–until I’d eliminated most of the US land area.
What was left was large areas of the midwest, basically most of Kansas and Nebraska, along with non-arid parts of Idaho, Montana and the Dakotas. That and the Blue Ridge/Appalachian mountains of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee.
Barbara and I actually seriously considered the Montana/Alberta border area, but neither of us had ever lived in the West and Barbara much preferred to move to somewhere closer to where she grew up and where her friends were. Thus we decided on the Blue Ridge mountains and eventually on Sparta.
Not that prepping was our only criterion. We both liked the idea of rural/small-town living, where people are friendlier and the customs are much more traditional. Basically, we now live surrounded by Deplorables, and that’s just the way we like it. The inconveniences are minor, and more than made up for by the general lifestyle. If shopping is limited, who cares? There’s always Amazon, Walmart, and Costco on-line, and there are plenty of big-box stores within a two- to three-hour round trip.
* * * * *
@RBT i concur with the assessment of the far southwest Virginia mountains. A couple of the comments dealt with the bad experiences suffered on the east coast and i’m guessimg northern Virginia. Where we live is like a night and day difference compared to the other end of the Commonwealth. The people and customs are similar to those of western North Carolina.
“If shopping is limited, who cares? There’s always Amazon, Walmart, and Costco on-line, and there are plenty of big-box stores within a two- to three-hour round trip.”
Just being devil’s advocate here, but that statement only makes sense until there is a disruption, or transport costs increase, or it becomes unwise to travel that much.
I know that at that point you can change to a ‘using preps’ mode, but it pretty much eliminates resupply and limits you to what you already have on hand. You guys personally don’t need much novelty for your day to day purchasing, but with kids there is a fair amount of one off, or time dependent purchases, and not having access to local supplies can be limiting under poor conditions.
People have traditionally left rural areas and moved to cities because that’s where the jobs, money, resources, and people are. Moving away from the city limits ones access to those things, (which can be overcome somewhat with tech, cheap transport, and lifestyle changes.)
Makes sense for you guys, at your stage in life, with your lifestyle. Doesn’t work for large portions of your audience.
n
Nick, you can’t have it both ways. If/when things get bad enough that traveling into the city becomes problematic, wouldn’t you much rather be living far away from the city? Basically, by choosing to live in an area with high population density, you’re betting your life and your family’s lives on the hope that things never go to shit. I hope you’ll win that bet. But if you do, that means we also win because things will continue here just as normal. Basically, we’re in a Win-Win situation, while those who choose to continue living in densely populated areas are are faced with Win versus Big Lose.
As to resupply, it’s a choice between living in an area that produces (much) more than it consumes versus living in an area that consumes much, much more than it produces. If/when competition for resources becomes intense, wouldn’t you rather be in the former type of area?
I see the points, but as discussed before, can’t move.
We’ve been thru several disasters already. The sort of ‘ordinary’ threats are well covered here. It’s the big catastrophe that isn’t.
Yeah, I’m betting on normal disasters, and not catastrophic disasters. Best I can do at them moment.
n
Speaking of NOT ordinary threats, here’s a doc for those interested.
Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation.pdf
Some very brief take away- you are officially on your own for at least 24 hrs, and likely many days. Assuming <10KT and ground based for terror attack.
https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/USDHSFACIR/2017/02/03/file_attachments/765901/Planning%2BGuidance%2Bfor%2BResponse%2Bto%2Ba%2BNuclear%2BDetonation.pdf
Well, all any of us can do is the best we can do.
Are you in a position to buy/lease a vacation/weekend home in a better area? Do you have family and/or good friends that live in a better area? In your situation, I’d try to get them to agree to offer your family refuge in a critical emergency. If they’re agreeable, you could even pay to build a small storage building on their property and shift the majority of you food and other supplies there. Even if that’s not possible, you could rent a storage building near them and stack your stuff there. That’s not an ideal situation, not least because if the SHTF you’d be splitting what you had with them, but it’s cheap and easy to expand your bulk food storage accordingly.
The immediate effects of a <10KT ground-burst detonation would be pretty much limited to the immediate local area. Some fallout, yes, and the follow-on effects from disruptions to transportation, medical, etc. would be pretty horrific, but again very limited geographically.
We aren’t exactly in a good spot, because we’re within 50 miles of a major metro area. But at least it isn’t one of the ten biggest metro areas. I don’t think we could improve much without moving 50 miles outside the major metro area, which isn’t practical at this time.
I think the best strategy for prepping is to do the best you can to hedge against all possible scenarios, and the slow slide toward dystopia is the most likely scenario. We’re probably in a relatively good position for that scenario, at least as can be found within 50 miles of our closest major metro area.
What was left was large areas of the midwest, basically most of Kansas
Yay! We still have our house in Kansas. It has a fully finished basement, too.
I’m skimming thru the doc I linked and I can say that everyone should at least skim it. It’s written to provide simplified, effective, immediate guidance. It has some very interesting stuff in it. Notable is that if you are more than a couple of miles from ground zero, and NOT in the fallout plume, you are likely fine (from primary effects.) The flash gives you time to save your life, if you recognize it and ACT.
EX:
“The most effective life-saving opportunities for response officials in the first 60 minutes following a nuclear explosion will be the decision to safely shelter people in possible fallout areas. Because of the unique nature of radiation dangers associated with a nuclear explosion, the most lives will be saved in the first 60 minutes through sheltering in place.”
“generally they believe that the most severe consequence of the pulse would not travel beyond about 2 miles (3.2 km) to 5 miles (8 km) from a ground level 10 KT explosion. ”
“EMP effects could result in extensive electronics disruptions complicating the function of communications, computers, and other essential electronic equipment. Equipment
brought in from unaffected areas should function normally if communications towers and repeaters remain functioning”
Worth the read.
nick
“Security of medical facilities and supplies should also be considered in planning. During the first hours and days after a nuclear attack, as many as one hundred thousand individuals may live or die depending on their ability to choose appropriate protective actions and on the ability of responders to treat injuries, fight fires, and protect people from lethal exposures to radiation.”
“close to ground zero the likelihood of survivable victims is very low and the total risk (radiation and physical hazards) to responders is very high. ” — they will not be coming for you if you are close to GZ.
“Responders should focus medical attention in the LD [light damage] zone only on severe injuries and should encourage and direct individuals to shelter in safe locations to expedite access to severely injured individuals” –they are going to bypass you if you are in the outer zone, even if you look like you took a shotgun blast from window glass. You are on your own. Interestingly the plan specifically suggests getting help from CERT teams.
“The MD [medium damage] zone presents significant hazards to response workers, [and survivors] including elevated radiation levels, unstable buildings and other structures, downed power lines, ruptured gas lines, hazardous chemicals, asbestos and other particulates released from damaged buildings, and sharp metal objects and broken glass, for which consideration and planning is needed. Fires fed by broken gas lines, ruptured fuel tanks, and other sources will be prevalent and may pose a significant danger to both survivors and responders. Visibility in much of the MD zone may be low for an hour or more after the explosion resulting from dust raised by the shock wave and from collapsed buildings. Low visibility may be exacerbated and extended in duration because of smoke from fires.”
“7 Survivable victims are those individuals who will survive the incident if a successful rescue operation is executed, and will not survive the incident if the rescue operation does not occur.47”
“Beginning about 15 minutes to 1 hour after a nuclear detonation, the IMAAC will be able to provide plume and fallout projections to State and local authorities through DHS. The initial plume models will be based on meteorological inputs from the local NOAA National Weather Forecast Office; and will include inputs such as temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction.
The initial plume models will be based primarily on predictions; the only incident-specific information likely to be available will be wind speed and direction.”
Interestingly, several regulating agencies recognize that a nuclear event calls for extraordinary response. They officially acknowledge that responders may take higher than normally allowed doses, and require only that the responders be made aware of and accept the risk of the higher doses. They don’t come right out and say it, but they provide cover for the idea that some hero might have to choose to die to save others.
“I think the best strategy for prepping is to do the best you can to hedge against all possible scenarios, and the slow slide toward dystopia is the most likely scenario.”
Yep. No one, even a billionaire, can prepare for all possible scenarios.
All anyone can do is prepare as best they can. About 90% to 95% of preparation prepares you for any scenario. Once you have that complete for whatever period you select, you can focus on either more specialized preparations for less likely scenarios and/or extending the time period for which you’re prepared.
That’s why I focus my efforts on preparing for a zombie apocalypse, because preparing for that prepares you for just about any real-life possibility. We’ve always been prepared for at least several months without outside resupply, which I gradually extended to one year and then 18 months. My next goal is two years.
I’m prepared to different levels for more specialized scenarios, and even at different levels for various aspects of each specialized scenario. For example, we don’t currently have a fallout shelter, although we’re well-equipped with radiation survey meters and dosimeters. That’s because the shelter aspect is relatively easy to prepare on-the-fly or by using local shelters, while it wouldn’t surprise me if I had the only radiation survey meters and dosimeters in the whole county.
“they will not be coming for you if you are close to GZ.”
Of course they won’t. What’s the point to risking more lives to recover bodies?
The secret to surviving a nuclear detonation is not to be anywhere close to it.
SOME people, probably not anyone that reads these comments, will insist that they should have every effort made to save them immediately, even if it would kill all the responders, even as they themselves are already doomed to death by Acute Radiation Sickness.
Gonna be a hard call for someone to not try rescuing the Governor, if he’s in the DF or SD zone… they’ll always find some justification.
The rest of us, not so much.
n
What is surprising to me (not having considered it much before) is what a HUGE difference staying put for the first couple of hours makes. My immediate reaction would be to go get the kids, but they’re safer (from rads) hiding at school. However I have no faith that the school would make correct choices.
That’s only an issue if the detonation is very local. If it’s a matter of being in the path of the fallout plume, get the kids ASAP, at gunpoint if necessary, which it may well be.
Ah, but that’s the point of the report. If they are in the path of the plume, and there is time, get them. If they are alreadyin the plume they have a much higher survivability if they shelter in place for a few hours.
n
I can't trust the school to not put them outside in the dust though.
Well, luckily we’re not in a nukular target zone and I doubt terrorists would find it useful to light one off in Franklin County, plus we’re outside that 50-mile limit (by 20) miles from a million-plus metro area. Growing season is kinda short, and mainly lends itself to northern climate crops, like root veggies, corn, apples, and maple syrup production. But tomatoes and peppers can grow up here, too; they just require more attention and care. Politics is libturd Dem and prog, in the state capital, and the college towns like Burlap, Middlebury, and Bennington. Outside of those places, it’s “Take Back Vermont” and pretty conservative. Gun laws? None. We’re tied with Arizona in that category.
My big take-aways for living where we do are Lake Champlain, a 130-mile long water transportation pathway between Moh-ree-all and NYC, and the dozens of square miles of fertile watershed farmland, from Quebec to Maffachufetts. And situated between two very large dark areas on the night sky maps: the Adirondacks and the western Maine mountains.
Overcast/partly sunny today, temps in the 20s, no wind, a few lazy snowflakes drifting down.
And yet another musloid attack in Paris, stopped cold this time; meanwhile we’ve chosen to poke Iran in the eye:
http://www.wnd.com/2017/02/the-coming-clash-with-iran/
To what purpose?
Howzabout we take care of chit HERE first. Lots and lots to do. Screw messing around with hornets’ nests overseas; I was hoping we were done with that.
I think it best to let Israel look after Iran. They have the means to make life very unpleasant for the mullahs.
Can you drink the lake water without treatment?
Oh man, the VP is going to the superbowl. And my son’s house is 3 miles away from the stadium.
Any lake water requires extensive treatment to make it potable. You can filter a little bit for drinking water using a Sawyer filter but it is tough to get very much without a treatment plant. Sugar Land just spent $130 million on a new plant so we could drink the pee water in the Brazos River.
Yeah, of course we’d have to treat the lake wotta or the wotta in several streams that run into the lake or the nearby Mississiqois River that runs into the lake. I would, in the meantime, have hopefully gotten a generator to run the well pump, and a non-electric alternative for it. Those are two of my priorities very near the top.
“Oh man, the VP is going to the superbowl.”
Wow. If I was your son, I’d hunker down at home with the tee-vee (assuming he’s gonna watch the game or whatever) and stay there throughout. Make sure there’s plenty of food and beverages, etc. Lady Gaga is doing the halftime thing, too. Plus it’s a hugely obvious target for bad actors.
A geology class I was in in 1998 did an all day hike in the Snowy Mountains in Oz (no snow as it was early autumn). I drank as much as I wanted before I left and took a two litre container of tap water. I needed every drop. When we got back to camp I drank three litres of water over half an hour. The students who didn’t take enough water drank from our destination: Blue Lake. The academics in charge didn’t think this was a good idea but didn’t try to stop anyone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Lake_(New_South_Wales)
Oh man, the VP is going to the superbowl. And my son’s house is 3 miles away from the stadium.
Obuttwad came to my area for a visit. What a mess for traffic. My normal commute of 45 minutes to get home now took an hour. Any road that Obuttwad traveled on was closed for about an hour before he traveled until about 30 minutes after he passed. Large stretches of the major roads all closed to traffic. Detours were a mess. Some people that lived on one of the local roads that he traversed were told to stay in the their homes for almost two hours. Anyone caught on the road would have probably been shot 20 times then questioned on their intentions.
Anytime the president or VP visit it is a mess for miles around. Local Fifes want show off their stuff, make themselves important, ride their motorcycles and feel important, let the people know they are in charge.
I’d be wary of Idaho close to the Boise metro, Moscow (big Boeing landing strip) rail lines to the coast, and the Interstate.
I’ve written before that, based on what I observed during our sentence -er- tenure outside Portland, Western WA/OR and the Columbia Gorge would be pacified pretty quickly in a SHTF situation. Once out of the Gorge, Baker City to Boise on I-84 is fairly smooth travel unless winter weather is ugly.
All the transportation infrastructure to ship Simplot french fries to West Coast McDonalds will work equally well in the opposite direction
I watched “The Sum of all Fears” recently. I would prefer my son come hang with us 20 miles away during the superbowl.
“I would prefer my son come hang with us 20 miles away during the superbowl.”
An even better option! He should head over to your place either tonight or early tomorrow morning.
“…let the people know they are in charge.”
No chit. We have a very small chance of either party visiting this state; we’re just not important enough. Moochelle came once a few years ago and whoever was running the show managed to find the one Afrikan-Murkan National Guard female to trot out for the big meeting. Naturally.
Big headline on the front page of the local rag today was for ten local tweakers arrested for meth production and distribution, and three more are at large with warrants out for them. Combined LE forces, i.e., all the Fifes that wanted a piece of the action. Another ten busts down in Rut-Vegas by the State Police. An SP honcho said that there is more heroin in the state now than last year, and there will be more next year than this year. So it’s heroin, meth and pills for the dopers nowadays, and booze for everyone else. Maybe a few aging hippie pot smokers and those on the medical marijuana. I showed that to wifey, and also mentioned the stories about more break-ins in the AO. I’ll let that seep in over the next few days and weeks, as I plot out the front and back door security enhancements.
She will also see me putting in the new doorknob and lockset on her studio, with more solar-powered motion-detector floods and finishing the back fence perimeter.
That’s why I focus my efforts on preparing for a zombie apocalypse, because preparing for that prepares you for just about any real-life possibility. We’ve always been prepared for at least several months without outside resupply, which I gradually extended to one year and then 18 months.
One of the takeaways I got from watching “The Walking Dead” is that residences need to be fairly well fortified against the zombies. And against the living, that may be even more important. Can your windows, doors, walls, etc stand 100 to 500 zombies pressing on them for the fresh brains inside ? Is your back entrance truly locked down ? Nothing like running into a zombie horde inside your domicile with small fighting areas and no retreat available.
Number one son just told me that he is going to a superbowl party on his own that he will not tell me where. Probably his business partner. He said it is further away from the stadium though.
“…is that residences need to be fairly well fortified against the zombies. And against the living, that may be even more important.”
Rather than hundreds of zombies making the trek out to RBT’s place or mine, we’re much more likely to confront local yokels looking for easy pickings, and then, if SHTF, semi-organized bands of looters. We should have security-reinforced doors and windows, at the least, plus other standoff spaces around our buildings. And chances are we can’t do it alone or as married couples; we’ll need to link up with our neighbors accordingly to lay down adequate defensive fire.
I’m pretty sure several of our closest neighbors have guns but I have no idea as to their familiarity and training and experience and we’ve been here four and a half years now. I’m going to the local range with our closest neighbor at some point and maybe then I’ll have a better idea about others, plus getting there more often anyway, going to club meetings every month, volunteering for stuff, etc.
My first priority is the doors here and I already know what I’ll do; after that, beefing up perimeter defenses.
Of course if a thousand zombies show up and surround us and start leaning on the doors and climbing up to smash windows, etc., it will be a tough row to hoe.
Also tough if a truly experienced and capable band hits us at O-Dark-Thirty by first setting fire to the place and then simply waiting to see if anyone runs out, at which point guys triangulating us can simply pick us off. But anything of value would of course go up in smoke with us.
Or somebody can simply pick one or both of us off from a hundred yards and pretty much any direction and then walk in and help themselves to our DVDs, computers, and my books on medieval epic poetry. I’d hope that if things were that bad by then we’d know to have outer defenses and guard patrols, etc., and be looking out for just that sort of thing.
Also tough if a truly experienced and capable band hits us at O-Dark-Thirty by first setting fire to the place and then simply waiting to see if anyone runs out, at which point guys triangulating us can simply pick us off. But anything of value would of course go up in smoke with us.
I’ve been telling the number one son that I want to convert the pantry into a safe room with concrete filled cinder block walls if the wife and I ever build a house. But now the son is telling me how bad hombres smoked people out of their homes in Iraq by setting the homes on fire. So having your domicile with the totally enclosed safe room set on fire is not good.
Exactly. Fire and smoke and gas can drive peeps out of their oh-so-safe blockhouses and bunkers and safe rooms. You may want the option for them against run-of-the-mill burglars and dopers and tweakers breaking in, but a determined bunch can smoke you out.
I figure that if enemies manage to get inside the house here and they keep coming after the first dozen or so get blown away, then we’re in deep chit.
We also have to figure on coming to the aid of our neighbors if it’s them under attack.
Now WD is selling 1 TB SSD drives for $260:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LXPENRR/
Good price, less than an Intel 1 TB SSD for $310:
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Hard-1-0TB-2-5in-SSDSC2KW010X6X1/dp/B01C786KH4/
Of course, those are probably TiB, not TB. And I think that the Wikipedia on TiB is backwards with TB:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tebibyte
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Consumer_confusion
Speaking of smoke, I’ve got two of my employees smoking e-cigarettes in the office. The smell is starting to bother me. Am I the only one here noticing these ? We do have a firm policy against smoking in the office.
“It was thought he would disengage us from these wars, not rattle a saber at an Iran that is three times the size of Iraq and has as its primary weapons supplier and partner Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”
http://buchanan.org/blog/coming-clash-iran-126494
Indeed. WTF is up with this nonsense, anyway? Haven’t we got enough on our plates at home, with jobs and the economy, commie rioting in the cities, illegal immigration, etc., etc.???
You’re not as safe as you think you are. You have several Wallyhogs living near you, and they have their own gravitational attraction. Won’t you feel chagrined if all the ICBMs headed toward the entire northeast last in the yard next to yours.
“Washington state pipeline disruption jury fails to reach verdict”
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2017/02/washington-state-pipeline-disruption-jury-fails-to-reach-verdict
“A jury weighing charges against an activist behind a coordinated protest that disrupted the flow of millions of barrels of crude oil into the United States failed to reach a verdict in a case in Washington state, prosecutors said on Wednesday.”
“Ken Ward did not dispute that he shut down a valve on Kinder Morgan Inc’s Trans Mountain Pipeline near Burlington, Washington, but a jury could not agree on a verdict for his charges of trespassing, burglary and sabotage.”
I am amazed. The amount of damage that could have been caused by this person and others would have been monumental had the safety systems failed. People could have been injured or killed.
Does this mean that we need to have armed guards on our infrastructure now ?
Well in that case our goose would be cooked, so to speak, and all our security gizmos, gimcracks and other gear, plus all the security we did to the doors and windows and perimeter rendered totally null and void, as if they’d never existed!
And the quiet little village of Saint Albans Bay would just be a gaping hole in the earth, filling up with radioactive lake water and steam.
That would give the lie to all the tee shirts the Bay Store and the Food City market sell, that say “Saint Albans Bay: Nothing Much Ever Happens Here.”
Having lived in an apartment in the town of Speedway, Indiana 25 years ago, I will share my advice on how to deal with events with high traffic. You can go wherever you want whenever you want as long as you follow two simple rules:
1. Do not under any circumstances leave home on the day of the event unless the event is happening.
2. If you are not home before the event ends, you will not be getting home until tomorrow.
Thanks, Mr. Dave. I will keep that in mind if and when the bozo developers up here go ahead with their plans for a new pier and marina about a hundred-fifty yards from our front door, and assuming they do a huge business in the summer. In which case, we’ll lock up the house and stay in northern New Brunswick from April until Columbus Day. Our next-door neighbor with the five dogs will have the keys and he knows how to shoot guns. I’d do the same for him, like if they go to Floriduh for the winta or something.
Good advice!
Good price, less than an Intel 1 TB SSD for $310
Do you have any experience with Intel SSDs?
Did you ever get your Subversion transition going?
Interesting story on Strategy Page. A British SAS sniper took out three ISIL scum in Iraq with one shot of 1800 meters. Used a 115A rifle and a 8.6mm (.338) Lapua Magnum round. Had a suppressor on it also. The round is made in Israel and is pretty popular with snipers, the record shots seem to alternate this round and the .50 cal. round. The L115A apparently weighs half that of a .50 rifle.
Lynn wrote:
“Speaking of smoke, I’ve got two of my employees smoking e-cigarettes in the office. The smell is starting to bother me. Am I the only one here noticing these ? We do have a firm policy against smoking in the office.”
Do these guys want to keep their jobs?
“…The round is made in Israel and is pretty popular with snipers…”
I think the story was that the rifle is made in Israel, the Dan. The .338 Lapua round is a Finnish design and was produced with the Brits and the SAS but is now all over the place. Savage has four or five rifle designs for decent prices in that round.
Anyway, good on ya, mates, a fine job!
“Do you have any experience with Intel SSDs?”
I’d also be interested; I’m gradually replacing all the spinning drives in the desktops/servers with SSDs, holding the operating systems (Linux or BSD) and applications. Data will reside on and be backed up to external RAID1 configs.
Our coming civil war redux?
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/bracken-on-the-upcoming-dirty-civil-war/
Like the “Dirty War” in 1970s Argentina?
If so, dahn good thing I never finished my PhD and got a professor job anywhere. Instead of running an M60 from a chopper doorway, I’d be getting flung out of a chopper doorway at altitude, lol.
I have several smallish intel SSDs. Work fine. I have two each in my system and my wife’s. C: drive in each with the OS and programs, and another drive with MMO files.
I’m a bit skeptical of SSDs. Two systems I had built in around 2010 had SSDs that failed. Supposedly because the mobos weren’t ready for them, and problems with TRIM. My latest system (built in 2014) has been fine, but I really don’t see the performance improvement everybody raves about.
I’ve gradually upgraded the main drives of my machines to SSD. Most are running Samsung 840/850 PRO. No problems so far. The oldest is 2.6 years and has written 14.5TB and runs 24/7.
When playing Fallout 4, (which is a real hard drive hog), there has been a definite boost to performance with the SSD.
As Mr.Miles has said, the age of your hardware and drivers are important.
Currently a pleasant 27C (81F) @ 2:38pm in the land of sand..
SSDs – I wouldn’t use anything else in future builds. At the moment, my primary machine has a 512GB SSD and a large spinning disk. My primary laptop has a 1TB SSD. The benefit in speed is noticable, and for the laptop an SSD is likely more robust.
As with spinning rust: it’s worth looking at reviews and avoiding brands with poor quality records.
In the old days (10-15 years ago) Seagate was the go to brand for mechanical drives and WD was to be avoided (a WD drive was the only one that had ever died on me) Nowadays Seagate is on the nose and WD the gold standard?
This weekend will see the biggest protests so far in Romania.
The protests, the marches are visibly transforming into a feast, a celebration. People feel their power, feel that they are on the right side, on the good side of the “conflict”. We are united and strong enough to be immune against the Evil. That’s a good feeling and a reason to celebrate.
I have met in the street, many people I know: friends, ex-collegues with their children, even my ex-girlfriend. We talk a lot with each other on our long marches.
People are very creative. Many funny and smart banners are made, likewise for slogans. Even songs are composed. Drums, vuvuzelas, whistles complet the acustic part of it.
People are very civilized and protest peacefully. Right now, a “Children’s protest” is going on in Bucharest, where parents brought their little kids. The kids are playing, drawing, and so on.. Last night, after the 150,000 demonstrators in the Victory Square in Bucharest, there were volunteers who picked up the garbage left, leaving the square very clean: https://www.facebook.com/VictorCozmeiReporter/photos/a.807946702650183.1073741828.789577924487061/1079963702115147/?type=3
All these gives me a good feeling. I like these people more.
Sibiu, last evening:
http://www.turnulsfatului.ro/2017/02/04/rezist-sibiu-fotoreportaj/
(the “banknote” in the first picture, has the face of Dragnea, the ruling party leader who is under trial for abuse of office, with a prejudice of 108,000 lei. The decree they want, dezincriminalize this if the prejudice is below 200,000 lei ($47,000). The “banknote” is of 199,990 lei)
(the picture with “Let’s make Jilava great again!”: Jilava is a prison 🙂 )
For SSDs, I’ve used nothing bus Intel for the past 5 or so years. Boot performance is noticeably better, but not screaming. I use it for the C: drive on my main system, and only drive in my laptops. I have no worries. The primary desktop was replaced after 3 years with a new SSD (via cloning) out of an abundance of caution, not because of any failure. I have had no failures with Intel SSDs (Sample size 5)
I think Intel does it right. I look upon them as Lincoln vs Ford, or Cadillac versus Chevy. They cost a little more, and provide the extra value to be worth the extra money.
Do you have any experience with Intel SSDs?
I have a couple of Intel SSDs that are approaching four years old. They are small in size because they were expensive at the time. Used them for three years without any issues. I had an HP laptop, a small system, that was low end. Installing an SSD made the system into an entirely different and acceptable machine. Those SSDs are now installed in external closures and are used as a giant thumb drive.
You can download software from all the major vendors that will tell you the health of the drive. My current SSD in my main system is two years old and still shows perfect health. When storage locations start failing SSD firmware will start using some spare locations to replace the failing location. As this use grows the health indicator drops. When the health drops below 90% time to ditch the drive. The good news is that it is not a sudden failure so you get some advance notice.
As time and budget allows all my spinning metal is being replaced with SSD.
Boot times are markedly better, as in significant. Once the OS is loaded things are about the same. Launch an application, such as MSWord, the application fully launches in less than two seconds. Once loaded not so much of a change. Dramatic increases in speed are realized by applications that depend on disk activity. My photo editing software (Photoshop and Lightroom) benefit significantly. Before there where always short delays. Not anymore that I can notice.
Life of SSDs is dependent on the number of writes. Reads are basically infinite, but not writes. A boot drive would last longer than a data drive that is used extensively. However my opinion is that most SSDs will outlast your system before it is time to upgrade. For normal users I would suspect 10 years is not that unreasonable.
Any of the major players, Intel, Samsung, Crucial will all be quite good. When purchasing look for drives with higher read and write speeds to get the best performance.
I have never had an SSD fail (Intel, Samsung and whatever MS uses in the Surface Pro). Sample size is eight.
@Eugen: The protests have made the news here a few times in the last couple of days. You’re fighting the good fight – best of luck to you.
Question: What is your definition of “success”? What specific actions are you looking for? Resignations? Repeal of the “corruption is ok” law? Someone specific being elected?
I’d be getting flung out of a chopper doorway at altitude, lol.
At which point, I’d swoop underneath you, do a barrel roll, and strap you in.
I saw big performance gains in boot time of Windows and in loading MMOs like World of Warcraft and EVE Online.
Some improvement in boot time and performance when this was still a Windows 8.1 machine, but since Mint has been on it, yuuuuuuuugggge and drastic gains; boot time in about 5 seconds and everything else lickety-split. Innernet speed depends, just like the old AO-Hell daze, on how many in this AO are on it at certain times of day, like, say, 3-7 PM weekdays.
And that’s with the VPN and firewall running.
Good price, less than an Intel 1 TB SSD for $310
Do you have any experience with Intel SSDs?
Did you ever get your Subversion transition going?
We’ve got about 7 or 8 Intel SSDs running. 120, 240, and 480 GB in size. No failures to date.
No transition to Subversion yet. We’ve got almost 100,000 files in CVSNT to transition and we are just too busy right now. Our sandbox is approaching 20 GB.
Data will reside on and be backed up to external RAID1 configs.
I hope that you are mirroring and not striping. My backup motto is “one backup, one device”. That way the failure point is limited to one particular backup session. We first started backing up our 300 MB refrigerator sized disk drive to a dozen 9-track tapes. We could never figure out which tape had the file that you were looking for. It got worse as our disks got bigger but the only backup device was still 9-track tapes which approached 100 for full backups in the late 80s. I threw away several thousand magtapes when we moved the office in 1998.
My current backup is three PCs on the LAN with large extra drives that have full LAN backups daily. I don’t believe in differential backups anymore, too hard to find the changed file. And, no deleting files off the backup drives unless they get full and then I reformat with a do-over. I also have seven external drives that I write a full backup to, one drive per week for some history. And then I archive one of the external drives every six months.
Backup drives need to be big, dumb, and very reliable. Speed is not of the essence here. If a full backup is takes 3 or 4 days, who cares ? Just as long as you don’t have to monitor the backup and it can run by itself.
Yeah, I won’t have the amount of data that you have to deal with, hermano. And I’d almost completely forgotten about those damn 9-track reels, too. Then they went to cartridges. Then it was disk-to-disk. And then they got rid of operators and put in pseudo-robots.
The operators then became sys admins. Who handled operator-type chit and more complex tasks and responsibilities.
Soon, the PHB manglers got tired of having to herd cats with all the dang programmers and developers so they wanted sys admins to also know shell scripting and programming.
Oh, and knowing the organization’s network went/goes without saying. Should have at least the CCNP, and be considered a junior network or systems administrator.
Now they want a sys admin to know Master’s degree-level computer science and engineering and have a hotline to either God or that guy in Rome wearing the white dress.
Incidentally, the pay in 1970s dollars would be about the same or less, even.
So my next-younger brother and I remember fondly our time as night-shift operators, making the same money then that we made later as junior gods but with far fewer headaches and stress and very rare contact with PHB manglers.
In the old days (10-15 years ago) Seagate was the go to brand for mechanical drives and WD was to be avoided (a WD drive was the only one that had ever died on me) Nowadays Seagate is on the nose and WD the gold standard?
I have lost many mechanical drives over the years. I trust none of them. But, I am sticking with WD for mechanical drives now. And Intel for SSD drives.
SSD drives are freaking amazing. My bootup on Windows 7 Pro is around 15 seconds. A full build of our Windows user interface is ten minutes via SSD or twenty+ minutes on an old WD velociraptor mechanical drive.
Life of SSDs is dependent on the number of writes. Reads are basically infinite, but not writes. A boot drive would last longer than a data drive that is used extensively. However my opinion is that most SSDs will outlast your system before it is time to upgrade. For normal users I would suspect 10 years is not that unreasonable.
I read an article many moons ago that Intel SSDs have an internal factor. Once that factor is reached, the drive turns to readonly for several (2 or 3 or 5, the gray matter is turning to mush) bootups. Then it frags itself. Kind of like a Mission Impossible tape player without the smoke and sparks.
Wow, I found the article on the first google. How unusual.
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead
“Speaking of smoke, I’ve got two of my employees smoking e-cigarettes in the office. The smell is starting to bother me. Am I the only one here noticing these ? We do have a firm policy against smoking in the office.”
Do these guys want to keep their jobs?
The millennials consider e-cigarettes to be vaping, not smoking. Many businesses and buildings have banned vaping now. We are going to join that list.
If I had employees, I’d require them to smoke. Smokers are more productive across-the-board than non-smokers.
“…I’d require them to smoke.”
Smoke what? Ciggies? Pipes? Bongs? Meat?
And I’ve felt singularly unproductive of late; perhaps I should take it up again.
Brad asked:
“Question: What is your definition of “success”? What specific actions are you looking for? Resignations? Repeal of the “corruption is ok” law? Someone specific being elected?”
We must consider that we are facing a hydra with multiple heads. You cut one head, the other remains, or get replaced.
So, “success”, in my opinion, will be achieved if Dragnea will spend at least one month in prison, following a fair trail. His trail has recently started, and most likely he will be found guilty (evidence exists). Because he already is serving a two-year suspended sentence for electoral fraud, another conviction means prison time. If that will happen, it means that Dragnea and his crooks in power were not able to interfere with the law – the hydra was neutralized.
The prim-minister, a puppet, announced today, that they will repeal that decree, tomorrow. That’s a significant battle we won, but the hydra has many heads left. Perhaps, the minister of Justice will resign tomorrow. He was just another puppet and surely he will be replaced by another one.
They will repeal the decree only to send something similar back to be discussed and approved by the Parliament this time, which will be a longer procedure, but still, they have the majority there.
The best will be to have here new parliamentary elections. I’m sure they won’t win this time. But elections won’t happen: the ruling party will have to voluntary give up power, and the people protesting are not strong enough and angry enough to make that happen.
Although the crooks intend to repleal the decree, we’ll still have big protests tomorrow. They must pay somehow for all this insult. I hope to scare them more and see more friction in their party – heads eating other hydra’s heads.
networking question for the group.
Anyone have any experience with or opinion about Disney’s Circle as a ‘firewall’/ policy enforcer/ net nanny?
https://meetcircle.com/
It’s hardware that they claim works this way:
“Circle uses a technique called, “ARP spoofing”, which sounds alarming, right? And it’s true, ARP spoofing can be used by “black hats” to compromise network security. But the technique can also be used for good, like with Circle. Circle uses ARP spoofing to automatically monitor all traffic on the home network, without the need for any special configuration. Pretty cool huh?!”
They admit it can slow down browsing. They claim it only affects the devices you’ve told it to monitor.
I’m wondering if it’s snake oil, if their technique is valid, effective, and safe, and if it looks like a good way to meet the goal- which is limiting and monitoring the kids device usage across devices.
appreciate it,
n
My own very quick and seat-of-the-pants opinion is that one should be very conversant with ARP tables on one’s machines. It might also be wise to know something about using WireShark.
But I defer to more experienced heads, esp. since I’ve been outta the field for several years now; maybe some new chit I am totally ignorant about.
“They must pay somehow for all this insult.”
So long as the VPN stays up here; I am currently “in” Bucharest.
So far as this website is concerned, I’m in Romania. (Didn’t spot Eugen anywhere, though.)
The other two tabs I have open think I’m in Russia and the Netherlands. Yes, I get around faster than the latest venereal disease at a Superbowl victory party.