Build & Defend Newsletter #6

One email a week - something from which I hope you'll get real value. We talk about things we can build, and how to defend them. That can apply to cybersecurity, physical buildings, digital products, and .... just about anything. It gives me a lot of latitude in what I can write about, but the two concepts are important for progress - as individuals, and as society.

Today's topic is: your WIFE.

You won't need to punch me - I promise - just read on.

So.... this newsletter has been going out a day late every week. It's supposed to be Wednesday at 1000 GST but this week and last if has been Thursday at 1000 GST. I've had a lot to do, but also, there have been .... missiles. And drones. And anti-missiles, and anti-drones. Thankfully the latter two are mostly winning here in the UAE. However, we do keep getting woken up by Emergency Alerts, and the last two nights (0500 and 0200) by loud explosions with the windows rattling. (It happened once this afternoon too.) The United States attacked Iran, so Iran attacked .... all its Gulf neighbours.

Even when I lived in the United States, I was interested in preparedness, or as the term is more commonly used, "prepping" or "being a prepper". (One always has to make sure that first "r" is there.) (Cue Johnny Five: "Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?)

Anyway, getting back to what I was saying.... it goes back to when I was young - my Dad would regale us of stories of the Blitz, and what he had to go through as a child. It also was a natural fit with me being a Cub Scout, a Webelos Scout, and a Boy Scout, where I became an Eagle Scout. The Scouting motto is literally "Be Prepared" and, well, I've always had that to heart.

I was thinking about this today as I watched the window across the street bow and flex after the explosion noise.

Everyone knows about the basics - water, food, and shelter. It occurred to me today that shelter is kind of a given - we have houses and in many places basements, but also in places like Israel, bunkers. We kind of already have that part of things squared away.

So that leaves water and food. Then i was thinking of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and how "Wifi" is now (humourously) often underpinning everything else, but it got me thinking that we do essentially need internet. There are tons of examples of countries where the internet goes away at the drop of a hat, and the valiant citizenry do what they can to make sure they can still communicate. Of course, you need a way to power that. And more, as we'll see in a bit.

Water, Internet, Food, and Energy: WIFE

See? We're going to talk about your WIFE and you don't need to punch me. That was a lot of explanation but we got there in the end. 😉

🔨 BUILD: Your WIFE

So, how do we go about doing that?

The thing is we have to prioritise, and there's an old adage for that. 3-3-3. Humans can go for about three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Give or take. (Also, and old trick is that if you're ever in danger, you can put out three of the same object, and clued in people will understand.)(You're one of them now.)(It's also why "SOS" is what it is - it doesn't mean "Save Our Ship" (that's a retronym) but it's three dots, three dashes, and three dots in Morse code.)

So, assuming we're not on the moon or Mars, we don't really need to prioritise air. (That could be an interesting newsletter topic in the future, but I'll have to think of a cool/edgy acronym for that too.)

Prioritising water then is the most important thing. Most people solve this by stocking up. That works to an extent, but there are better ways. Assuming you don't have land or an aquifer to tap (I did once live in a place that had a well, which was cool) you can get machines today that literally pull water out of the air. I'm an investor in one of them - Kara Water - and they have some amazing products. I use their original device in the UAE and their coffee machine in the US (though I use it for tea as I don't drink coffee) and assuming you have power you can essentially have at least drinking water for long periods of time. (There's that power thing I mentioned, and which I'll come back to shortly.)

Food is straightforward - unless you have land and animals you have to stock up. Concentrate on protein sources more than anything - you don't actually need carbs as your body will make ketones for energy without carbs - but you do then have to concentrate on salts / electrolytes. That's easy by adding a pinch of salt to water or stocking up on electrolytes.

Then there's the internet. You likely want a satellite-based internet service. As of the time of this writing, there's really only one and that's Starlink. It's now available in the UAE.

That leaves.... energy.

There are going to be two primary ways to really do that for the average prepper - solar and wind. It's beyond the scope of this newsletter to go into specifics about exactly how to do that, but there's plenty of information about how to get solar panels for your house, yard, etc., and I'm trying to avoid turning Tesla fan-boying by just suggesting that you get everything Telsa, but hey, they make good stuff that fits into this niche and that's probably not a coincidence. However, don't overlook wind (I really did a lot of research on this living in London) as there are lot more well-designed wind turbines that can be used for residential use. (I'm an investor in Flower Turbines that looks like they're doing good stuff here.)

🛡️ DEFEND: Your WIFE

Defending your WIFE kinda depends on how much control you have over things with respect to your physical location. In the event where you're going to need to defend these things, you're going to need to have some kind of ability to defend yourself. That will depend on where you live and the various laws. You should research what you can and can't legally have, and then invest in a 3D printer to print things (slingshots maybe?) that you can have. Always test them every so often as well - the last thing you want is to be in a situation where you are pointing a slingshot at someone and it snaps in half.

Armaments aside, take a look at your ingress and egress points and make plans accordingly. Understand why / if you're a target, and if you have food and water you will be - and plan accordingly. Build that basement you've always wanted and make sure there's a bathroom, air (ideally separated from the bathroom), some physical comfort, the electricity goes there and can't easily be tampered with, and that's where you also keep the water. If the situation REALLY goes sideways, you only have to make it a month or so (and we all stayed inside that long for Covid) before you can think about venturing back outside. People you meet at that point will either also be preppers or your new local warlord, and you'll want to make friends with both kind of people anyway.

💰 STACK: Your WIFE

Don't wait to think about this, and don't wait to act, either. It's better to have something and not need it than to need something and not have it. Especially if we're talking about survival.

Many of you will be WAY too young to get the above reference.... but seriously, you can buy some extra tuna, get a few extra bottles of water while you wait for your Kara order, grab your Starlink setup, and start thinking about your power requirements. You're going to want more of everything eventually anyway, so you might as well get started now. Also, if you have kids, you can do fun projects with them without necessarily telling them the gloom-and-doom part of why you're taking precautions.