Submitted with no comment other than, "Why are they doing this now?"
Why Is The US Treasury Quietly Ordering "Survival Kits" For US Bankers?

This looked like a potential Urban survival topic to me, maybe not but the kit contents looked fairly generic. Still wondering why...

A very generic kit indeed. If I were issued one, the first thing I would do is augment the contents with a multitool and/or prybar at a bare minimum. I might even hazard a Mk5......

This seems quite reasonable for any employee who is on the road while doing his job. Certainly won't hurt even for office bound types who deal with tornadoes, hurricanes, and all the other standard potential problems.

You don't get much survival kit for $400 a piece. Must be that those tax dollars don't go very far today.

200,000 for 3814 employees comes to 52.44 per kit -not a bargain, but not outrageous, either. The actual bid could easily be lower

Do find it odd there's 50 water tablets... but no container

It's not out of line for cost or distribution.

When things go catawampus, essential personnel are required to go in while everybody else is told to stay home. During the '03 fires, I was told to stay home from work, but my boss was required to come in. The heads of banks and other financial institutions qualify as "essential personnel". Getting home afterwards may be a problem, and it's not inconcievable that they may have to wait out the crisis at the office.

If the "Dynamo rechargable lantern with AM/FM radio" and the "Reusable solar blanket" are COTS (Civilian Off The Shelf) items, that's $35-$40 right there. And, we're talking Dorcy and Coast level quality, not Eton and Midland level quality.

EDIT: If somebody is not used to carrying a pocket knife or multi-tool, including one may cause more problems then it solves. The last thing anybody needs is a NKP who needs to be stitched up because they haven't learned out to keep their appendages away from the edge.

Even for COTS, there should be a significant price break at these quantities.

Maybe they have been reading ETS and listening to us? I mean, we all advocate being prepared at home, at work, and in the car. If the government provides their employees with survival kits, why not conclude they've finally pulled their head out from where the sun don't shine -- at least in this matter?

An ounce of prevention is cheaper then a pound of cure?

I just checked one of the items from the list, the Air-Aid emergency mask. Upon checking, I discovered this:



http://www.emergencymasks.com/category_s/40.htm

This seems very broad. Does anyone know more about this mask?

For one, it seems like you need goggles for effective protection against OC/CN/CS.

When manufactures don't have any standards or certifications named in there advertisement, they probably don't have them. Looking at the pictures, it looks too thin and the seal looks pretty bad.

Looks like a welding fume mask inspired mask to me. Welding fume mask does give some protection due to it's N95 protection combined with the carbon absorbsion layers.

Actually, the "government" has had its head in the sunshine for some time. Working for the National Park Service in a job that involved regular flights, I got regular training in aircraft crash survival - one involved a helicopter mockup in a swimming pool and some really good information, quite consistent with that presented here on ETS....

Rangers still go missing from time to time.....

I've also had the helo dunker training; at the facility where I did my latest certification it's been replaced with an Osprey mock-up. Never got to see the new dunker in action, but I had the impression it could be fairly violent, whereas the helo had a relatively gentle water entry and roll.

As for the masks, I picked up a full face respirator from Home Depot that can take either particulate or hazardous fumes. The respirator can be used with

Just reading the copy, it seems like this is a p95 or r95 mask with an extra layer (maybe). I'd be very curious to how they are filtering out bacteria given the micron sized pores needed.

Update: Why Is The Fed Hiring An "Emergency Preparedness Specialist Familiar With DHS Directives" Apparently the banker survival kits was just part of the requirement. Anybody here looking for a job in Washington DC?

I think this is a classic case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't." After all, banks are subject to fires and earthquakes, among other emergencies, and even get robbed from time to time.

Living in EQ central here in southern California, I have seen stashes of emergency supplies in building, both guvment and private-just seems prudent.

Anchorage is, of course, earthquake country. In the building where I work, my employer has put a stash of first aid supplies and rescue tools on every floor.

Also on-site outside the building is a big connex locker with emergency food and other supplies. This would be helpful for those employees who have long commutes and might not be able to easily get home if roads and bridges were damaged in a quake. In my case, I live close enough that I could easily walk home if I needed too, even if the area were heavily damaged.

I would expect any bank to invest highly in emergency management and disaster recovery. With banking being done electronically, having a failing computer system would mean massive problems for the banks and its customers. This could be natural disasters, fire, water leaks, intruders, hardware failure, etc. Some employees will have a vital part in emergency management and disaster recovery. Supplying these employees with everything they need to do their job and life where ever they are need is a part of that. You can’t fix everything remotely and having backup remotely does not solve every problem.

So the fed looking for an Emergency Preparedness Specialist does not surprise me. Although a temporary job status does.

It used to be real common for banks and other public and semi-public buildings to have survival stashes in their fallout shelters.

It went out of favor somewhere along the way.

"When things go catawampus, essential personnel are required to go in"

SO MAYBE ... things are going to go catawampus.
Just sayin' !!!

I feel SO MUCH SAFER
knowing that bankers are still in charge!!
:-)

Pete

By the way - I was just thinking about this, after the remark by Marc about losing a wallet being a "single point of failure".

The same thing is true on a larger scale. IF you have ALL of your finances in the Western financial system - then you are staking ALL of your assets on a "single point of failure".

I'm not preaching any kind of political view here. I am just noting that if Homeland Security feels that it is NECESSARY for bank officials to have survival kits - then clearly someone is considering the idea that the banking system MIGHT experience a problem at some time.

Therefore, maybe it's NOT wise to have all you financial assets tied up in that system. How you choose to diversify is entirely up to you.

BUT here's a good example of what I am talking about. Recently there was a major robbery of safe deposit boxes at a secure location in London (UK). Some people had their ENTIRE life savings in those boxes ... cash, jewelry, bonds, EVERYTHING. So when the thieves broke in and stole the contents - it was game over for those people. THAT is a huge loss.

It pays to spread your "nest egg" across several "nests".

Pete

If the U.S. banking system completely fails, I expect other banking systems to fail at the same time. My survival preparedness for that situation includes things that have intrinsic value, like toilet paper, cars, shelter, water, intelligence, family, community, etc.

iReckon ... exactly. We ALWAYS have all those IMPORTANT things in life. And that's a super important thing to remember.

I'm not an alarmist and I'm also not a financial advisor. I have NO IDEA what the true state of the Western Banking system is. I doubt that more than half a dozen people in the world know the answer to that question - and they certainly won't give us any "heads up"!! HAHA!!

But one thing that I learned from the Fukushima disaster is that we simply cannot trust any authority "in power" to day ... to tell us the whole truth. We now know that three reactors at Fukushima have melted down completely, the radioactive cores have dumped into the Earth, nobody knows how deep they are, and highly radioactive water is still leaking into the N. Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, Japanese engineers are now saying that there is NO technology today that can solve this problem, and any real solution could be 200-300 years into the future. It's likely that the Japanese Government has known some of these details for quite a while, but it was never revealed.

So back to financial assets ... ... don't put all your eggs into one basket. And assume that nothing is SAFE. There is no perfect "SAFETY DEPOSIT BOX" in the world.

cheers,
Pete

This is very good advice.

My estimate (based on once having met someone who claimed to be an economist) is that if the US financial system goes down, for whatever reason, banks everywhere would suffer severe effects. I don't worry about it very much other than having cash on hand for short-term use.

OK folks - it LOOKS LIKE we have a possible answer.
I stress the word "possible" here. But this makes sense.

Those of you who follow finance and economics will know that a strange circumstance has happened with the bond markets IN EUROPE. Fully one third of all the major European bonds are now trading with a NEGATIVE INTEREST RATE. Yes, this situation is bizarre. It means that if you are holding assets in European bonds ... you will actually be PAYING FOR THE PRIVILEGE of owning the bonds. Instead of collecting money from a bond, you will need to PAY MONEY to own it!

The logical question is ... WHY DO THIS? The answer of course, is that you don't have to! Literally, the best place for people to store money these days appears to be in their mattress. The equity markets are trading flat, interest rates on bank accounts are almost zero, and now European bonds have negative rates. So literally there in an incentive for individuals and companies to hold their cash in private strong boxes.

APPRENTLY one pension fund in Switzerland decided to do exactly that. You can read what happened when they decided to go down to a SWISS BANK and ask for their cash ...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-25/war-cash-migrates-switzerland

Obviously, the concern is that if banks REFUSE to pay out cash ... then many citizens will become nervous and there will be a RUN ON THE BANKS.

Personally, I am not in the least bit stressed by these events - although I agree that negative rates on bonds is bizarre. But you can never tell what the public will do next. And this may explain why bank managers are being issued survival kits.

Pete

We're all here because we know that sooner or later, things will go catawampus. It's just a matter of when, how, severity, and countermeasures.

Also, not to start a flame war, but I would advise exercise a little more vigilance in selecting your references. Zero Hedge falls under the same "tin foil hat" catagory as Infowars. Not to mention, who in their right mind publishes under the name of a fictitious, insomnia induced, anarchistic, alter ego (Tyler Durden) and expects to be taken seriously.

"Tyler Durden" may come across as "tin foil hat", but he's tremendously energetic and he does have good insights into what is happening. I NEVER expect any one source to be fully accurate Mark. So I never take the info on these sites as being the "gospel truth". I look on it as another source of info - but you have to apply judgment to what you are seeing.

That being said - ZeroHedge has come up with some truly amazing sources of info and commentary over the years. Some of it has been "spot on". A good example is the commentaries on the Fukushima disaster. Some of their earlier commentaries appeared to be "alarmist", but as time went by ... all the worst suspicions have been confirmed. So that is one example where the blog has been doing a great job.

None of these blogs will get it "all correct". It's definitely a buyer-beware situation with information out there. But sometimes they get sources of information - that the general media does not latch onto. And sometimes those sources are correct :-)

Pete

"Tyler Durden" isn't one guy, there are a number of staff writers/editors at ZH that post under that handle.

YES - if Tyler Durden is one guy, then he must be permanently addicted to methamphetamines. HAHAHA!! There is a tremendous amount of energy being put into the articles at ZeroHedge. They may not always be perfect, but somebody is trying hard to express an alternate viewpoint.

I have given up on all forms of alarmism. WHAT WILL BE - WILL BE. If you look at the stock market objectively (who is still objective these days?), then the market is seriously over-valued. If you look at bonds, they are also in an enormous Bubble. And everyone knows it. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that sovereign bonds, issued by entire countries, are themselves worth only a FRACTION of their current price. Greece is the best example, but there are plenty of others. And finally Real Estate is also highly dependent on what people are willing to pay, so that market can tank as well. THIS MEANS that if and when the system goes catawampus - the financial losses for average Americans will be huge. Most people depend upon some combination of stocks, bonds or real estate to try to preserve their wealth. It cannot be.

I am reminded of the sage advice from a friend ...

Try to always have the skills for one white-collar job, and one blue-collar job. THAT WAY, if one set of skills becomes worthless, then you still have the other set of skills. You can get by!

Pete

Really? No-one died from Fukushima, nor is anyone ever likely to. It's small beer compared to the tens of thousands killed by the tsunami.

I said NOT TO START A FLAME WAR. This is ETS, not AR15.com...

"According to a 2012 Yomiuri Shimbun survey, 573 deaths have been certified as "disaster-related" by 13 municipalities affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. These municipalities are in the no-entry, emergency evacuation preparation or expanded evacuation zones around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. A disaster-related death certificate is issued when a death is not directly caused by a tragedy, but by "fatigue or the aggravation of a chronic disease due to the disaster".[67]"
"According to a June 2012 Stanford University study ... An additional approximately 600 deaths have been reported due to non-radiological causes such as mandatory evacuations.Wikipedia: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster casualties..."

Wikipedia: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster casualties

I'm not worried about what people think about Fukushima, or my comments about it. That PLACE is still leaking highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. I doubt if anyone knows how much. But some of that water HIGHLY radioactive, at levels thousands of times ABOVE safety standards.

I was going to say this.
As far as bank catastrophes go ... Ground Zero is probably the country of Greece. We should probably be taking threads like this one and translating them into Greek. I'd like to see what the citizens of Greece have to say. What a complete disaster for an economy. Those people are LIVING every day - what we talk about here :-)

Pete