Prepper News

A tsunami on the west coast of Japan is a pretty rare thing. Silly thing is that Japan knows full well what areas are safe to live in and which ones are not. The low coastal areas have traditionally been for farms only, with towns inland or at elevation. But now everyone wants to live on the coast.

All it would take is a big quake west of NZ and it would be catastrophic for Australia. But NZ must be geologically dead, so I'm sure living right on the beach is just fine...

Interesting....

Went to Spotlight in town today with the misses to get some curtain 'stuffs'. Whilst waiting for her to get what she needed, I decided to look around at where the 'stuffs' were made.

Mind you, I only spent 20 odd minutes looking in various isles, but without exception, it was all made in........China. Why did that surprise me ? There were some labels that said imported by "Someone... Australia", but the item originated in China.

The whole shop has been uploaded from China and dumped here. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I know that the 'stuffs' the shop carries are useful to many people, but it was a wake up call.

And just in case you think I'm picking on Spotlight, we went up the road to Bunnings. Once again, I had a quick look around at where the 'stuffs' were made, and yes, China was the big one, with Taiwan and interestingly, Australia, especially for BBQ gear. In the tool section, where a lot of gear was manufactured in Japan years ago, even big brands like De-Walt etc, are all made in China.

However, there was some consumables, like disks and drill bits made in....USA !

They were the more expensive options, but probably better value than the Chinese 'stuff'.

Others experiences ?






When the truth comes out, don't as me how I knew, ask yourself why you didn't.

Yip was strange as the EQ was on land but very shallow 10km - devastation like never seen before in Japan.
My New Year predictions have started off with a bang.  Large EQ like that can sometimes cause other instability on other areas of the planet.  

I think there is a lot more to this story, worst terror attack in Iran - it is definitely escalation... They were all chanting death to America then two bombs go off..  

Bombing in Iran Kills Over 100, Sowing Confusion and Speculation
www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/world/middleeast/iran-explosion-qassim-suleimani-ceremony.html

A pair of explosions on Wednesday at a memorial for Iran’s former top general, Qassim Suleimani, killed at least 103 people and wounded an additional 211, according to Iranian officials, sowing fear in a country where domestic unrest and the prospect of a spiraling regional war have left many on edge.
Iranian officials told state media that a pair of bombs had been placed in bags along the road toward a cemetery in the city of Kerman, and exploded as a vast procession of people made their way there to commemorate the fourth anniversary of General Suleimani’s death. The architect of the axis of regional militias backed by Iran’s hard-line government, he was killed in an American drone strike.

Biden Admin Says US, Israel Not Behind Iran Blast As Death Toll Surpasses 100
www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/least-20-dead-after-twin-blasts-rip-through-memorial-irgcs-soleimani-southern-iran

Hezbollah Losses Grow To 9 In One Day After Israel Mounts Another Major Airstrike
www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-nasrallah-gives-speech-after-hamas-deputy-chiefs-assassination-beirut

Knowledge is power.....

I only worked there for 30 + years and still don't know what we actually did produce, apart from foul smells and lots of smoke !






The only way that we can continue to have cheap food is if we have cheap energy.

Australian Iron and Steel, as it was known then, produced raw iron from iron ore, limestone, coke from the Coke Ovens, etc in a blast furnace, poured into ingots, reheated and rolled into slabs at the Slab Mill (up to 12 inches thick), then reheated and rolled into plate, up to 1/2 inch thick, but 3/4 was possible.

The rolls of plate steel were sent to Lysaghts next door to be galvanized and rolled into corrugated iron etc.

Some heavy steel sections were produced at Whyalla Steelworks, like angle, I, and universal beams, rail etc.

At the time, AIS had some of the biggest electric motors in the world at Port Kembla. The Ilgner generating set, at the Slab mill, consisted of 6 DC generators rated at 4040 amps and 500 volts each, driven by a 6 phase induction motor and with a 150 ton flywheel in between. It powered the main mill motors that rolled the slabs to plate, all made by Toshiba I think. This was at a time when solid state electronics were just being developed, but this gear was all Ward-Leonard controlled via saturateable rectors, field control of DC motors etc.

I was on duty on night when a operator, who was a D...head, decided to line up 5 ingots in the inlet table and put them all through in one pass to the finished height. This usually results in broken rolls and a mill stoppage to change them out, but this night they held. The roof lights in the motor room, where the electrical cabin was located, started to dim and go out, accompanied by an increasing whine from the Ilgner set. Sparks, began being thrown out from the commutators of the set, hitting the roof some 60 foot above !. The red phone rings, its power control asking "what the hell are you doing, you are pulling the whole grid of NSW down, its already at 48.5 cycles and you are going to trip off the Electricity commission and blackout NSW", I replied that a rouge operator was causing some issues and I would have him removed. Anyway, it all held up and came back to normal shortly after.

At its height AIS employed over 20,000 people at Port Kembla.

Those days of operating equipment by the seat of your pants are long gone, thank goodness !





But no matter how hard they try, they will never be able to defeat us, because the truth always wins in the end.

BHP also started making tempcore, high tensile reinforcing rod, but with a ductile inner, so it could be bent and cut easily. A world first that you can't get now. Lysaghts at Port Kembla also rolled wire from bar, made at the Rod and Bar mill. All Australian made, using our own materials, energy and skills.

Haven't we lost a lot ? Not only skills, but knowledge and innovation. They were heady days to work there as management wanted to be the best and any idea that could expand the product range was seriously considered, and appropriately paid for. Now, its cheapest one wins.

The Engineering section, of which I was a part, also was at the cutting edge of technology, learning about semi-conductors, how to use them, and yes, spectacularly blowing up some in the process !

Australia had its own semi-conductor manufacturing facility in Melbourne at that time, designing and making world class devices even the Japanese wanted. How far we have fallen.





U gets what u pay for. If you want first quality oats, well, they cost, but oats that have already been through the horse, they are a bit cheaper.

More banking chaos and contagion from China property collapse.

China's Shadow-Banking Giant Files For Bankruptcy
www.zerohedge.com/markets/chinas-shadow-banking-giant-file-bankruptcy
One of China's "secretive" shadow-banking giants filed for bankruptcy on Friday due to its inability to repay tens of billions of dollars in debt, a warning sign contagion from the downturn in the real estate industry continues to spread and raises questions if the property crisis in the world's second-largest economy will accelerate into the new year.

2023 has seen China's Shadow Banking system mostly acting as a liquidity-suck (red bars) while corporate bond issuance has barely offset the withdrawals. 

Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co., also called "China's Blackstone," which once oversaw more than 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) before the property crisis, filed an application for bankruptcy in Beijing's First Intermediate People's Court, according to Bloomberg.
According to Bloomberg, the trust sector's exposure to real estate is about 2.2 trillion yuan, or 10% of total assets as of the end of 2022.

"The big danger is that a negative feedback loop kicks in, with property stress causing strains in the financial system, undermining credit expansion and depressing growth, which, in turn, exacerbates the slump in the property sector," Bloomberg Economics wrote in a recent note.

The latest developments at Zhongzhi stoke worries about contagion amid China's deflationary pressures and, of course, a struggling property market, which, as a reminder, is the largest asset class on earth...