Winners And Losers: Predicting Business Disaster Recovery: Fill & Download for Free

Remember when your High School Teacher told you. “You have 2 hours on this test, if you don’t know the answer, go on to the next question”Most people do not look at life “has a test”, but the clock is still ticking. Maybe your life is not the way you want it, but you can go onto the next question. This article is about —— the next question. The good thing about life, “ YOU ARE IN CONTROL”, you can choose with question you want to answer or not.Oooh…. life is not multiple questions, you are required include all the details on how you arrived at each answer and the question may be repeated several times during the exam (Life is like that - tends to repeat the same question)December 22, 2019I wanted to up date this answer. Over 52,000 people have read this, it deserves my attention. I made a comment below that the education system has failed us. Here’s the reason why - I have several motivations on my wall that I read periodically. This was given to me in an email many years ago - author unknown. It really sums up things quite well.An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.The second test average was a D! No one was happy.When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on) These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.————————————————————————————ORIGINAL ANSWER GIVEN DECEMBER 2018 - SEE BELOWThe reality is that we have all been lied to. It's the same situation being repeated today with all the Millennial's of this Century...a simple but very effective lie... " Get a good education, live the good life", when the reality is the majority of students are coming out of University with no job prospect, low wages, a huge student loan of $50,000 - $100,000 and no means to paying it back. Many are returning to the same job that put them through University. Many will not be able to repay their student loan till they are 40 or older, which will delay having a family or own a house. In other words, they are working for the gov't till the age of 40.65% of Canadians have not saved enough for retirement. A similar percentage exist in the US. Most, assuming they are still mobile with a strong back, will be working well into their 70’s, or till they pass away. With Municipal and Federal taxes ever on the increase, gov’t spending out of control, if you think there are lots of folks that have not saved for retirement now, give it another 20 years!The same lie was told to the 60+ old folks, as you call them. When I started out, a house mortgage was 12% and I remember paying as high as 16%. 40 years later interest on my saving account is less than 1%. Talk about getting screwed. The idea was to save and live off the interest when you retire. Something very difficult to do when interest is less than 1%, considering taxes have gone up 1,000 fold, folks in the stock market continuously lose more than what they earn (a lot of this has to do with salaries, fees and of course the market crash of 2008 and the upcoming market crash of 2019). In response to this, Baby Boomers are now working till the age of 70 and older.Medicare is getting more costly and gov'ts are ever spending more and more. Who ever heard of a country going bankrupt? Greece did and what about Spain! Italy is living way beyond it's means.... etc, etc, etc, In the US and Canada, Financing is how you make ends meet with the household debt growing higher and higher each year. No one gives a second thought to having a loan of $100,000 or more or owing $10,000 on credit cards.What is ironical is that those who have not saved, did not plan for retirement are actually better off. They don't have credit or loans and owe very little. Those with good jobs have tremendous liabilities, including student loan, taxes, mortgages, car payment, medicare, etc. The poorer folks usually drive a well used car, but it's paid for. Whereas the well to do owe everything to the bank. And since we live in a Socialist society, gov't will provide assistance for the poor when they need to go to the old folks home. Those with wealth are asked to liquidate or pay exorbitant amounts for care in their old age.Why does this situation exist in our old age? 2 reasons - first we all believed the lie “Invest, money doubles, live of the interest when you retire”. Secondly, we were all feed very specific information through mass media that only benefits Gov'ts or Banks. We never truly got all the facts? What would you have done differently had you known that you would get next to nothing on your savings account 40 years down the road? Simple - you would of found another vehicle to invest, instead of believing the banks or the stock market was your only answer to saving money. You may of purchased realty, maybe a business or inventory. Personally, I went the inventory route..... here's how it works.In 2007 I purchased a container of Aluminum*(see below) for $56,000. It took me 1.5 years to sell the contents, for which I received $105,000. In 2009 I took the original $56,000 and purchased another container but this time it took 8 months to sell the content, for which I got $98,000. At the beginning of 2010, I took the original $56,000 + $4,000 (price had gone up) and purchased another container. Except this time I sold it in 5 months and had to order another container. From that point forward I averaged 2-3 containers per year. As you can see, the original investment of $56,000 has returned well beyond 200% per year and continues to do so. The point I’m trying to make, 10 years later, I am still working with the original $56,000…. this was a one time investment. Let see how this works with a store like Walmart.It's the same story…. Yep, it cost 11-13 million to set up a Walmart.... but you never ever have to put in another penny into it ever again. You take the original investment, sell the inventory, buy more inventory and repeat, and repeat and repeat. You are always working with the original investment. A the end of the year you re-invest the profit into another Walmart Store. It takes three Walmarts to make enough profit to build one more. 40 years later there's over 11,600 locations around the world with annual sales of $500 billion. See Map. When will that ball stop rolling? It's the same with inventory, one day, I'll quit buying containers and my original investment will return back to me. But my investment will have earned 100 fold, compared to 4.5% interest which takes 15.5 years for money to double…… not counting income tax paid.Now that you know the story about inventory..... is there a different choices you would have made at a young age when you started to save money, instead of using a bank. Would you of invested in a bank at 4-5%, or invested in inventory at 200%. But no one ever told you the entire story....and now you suffer while banks keep lending money to Gov'ts that can't control spending. If your finances where out of control in a similar fashion as our current gov't, what do you think the bank would tell you when asking for a loan? Be honest would you lend money to a family member if he/she spent it fool hardy…. you get my point.I'm going to add one more thing to this answer - seeing you read this far. Let's talk about realty. The rule with real state is simple, if you can afford to sign a 5 year lease, then you should be buying it. Rent goes up at end of a lease - mortgages go down at the end of the term. Simple math. The second rule.... buy one house to live in and another for retirement. Start with simple first house, when you renegotiate on the first 5 year term, don't ask for a mortgage!!!! Change your mortgage to a HELOC (Home Equity line of Credit). This will give access to most of your equity in the house at very low interest. Go and find a much nicer home and use the that equity as the down payment. Generally speaking, we all have friends in need of a rental home - let them pay off the mortgage on the first house while you continue with the mortgage payments on the new house. 15-20 years later you will have one house for retirement income and one house to live in.Ofcourse there is no reason why you couldn't do the same scenario over and over again.It is my philosophy, that if all the information and I mean all the information is put forward, most of human beings will come to the same conclusion. But as soon as information is held back... there is always a winner or a loser. This why Canada has no Pipelines, Medicare is horrible in the USA and students will keep borrowing billions of dollars for student loans, when in fact they could get a better education on You Tube.But here's something interesting...... we all sit at round table and in the course of a lifetime, tables will turn. FaceBook will soon be issuing a cryptocurrency.... more of a token that can be traded for services. It is possible these token will have more value and easier to trade than the American dollar.... after all, who wants to hold US cash when a country runs such high deficits. Would you invest in a company that loses money every year? I really like these FaceBook Token, plus I can trade with 2 billion users world wide.... That's 7 times the size of the US,... oh, I forgot, I'm in the inventory business, I can accept Facebook Tokens and I don't have to worry about deficit financing, devalued money, or banks seizing funds.... not a bad deal. Is Facebook going to be the next world bank?With FaceBook tokens I could live in lots of places where I don’t need to worry about gov’t sanctions and my money is safe…. I now have a ton of choices. So what happens to Old People… we move. Most move to small town where housing is more affordable. Myself, humm…….., I don’t like Florida - too many tornadoes, alligators and I don’t speak french well enough……, Los Angeles —- droughts, fires and they say it’s about to fall into the Ocean, What about Newfoundland?????, cheap housing, the ocean is cold, but who goes sun tanning at 65?I hope you enjoyed this little rant....RichardNote - * This could of been any product other than Aluminum. The trick is simple… Don’t try to sell something you can find in Walmart or Canadian Tire. Those folks have figured out how to buy and sell that product a lot better than you. You need a product that is unique, like Aluminum…. something you will not find at Walmart or Amazon. I call them “NICHE Products”. If you spend more than 8 hours looking for something, you’ve found a niche product.Additional Notes DEC 20- Many are asking how it's possible to make 200% return, it seems impossible at first. To be honest - that's not really a high return. Most stores like to turn things over 4-5 times in a year. So..... imagine if you are making only 35 points on an item (food), but you sell it 5 times in a year, that's a return of 175%. But very few stores have a 35 point margin. 200 percent is more common so when there is a 50% off sale, the store is selling at cost. In that scenario, the return is 500%. In food stores the turnover can be as high 24 times (Tomato Soup). The number of times you turn over the item is actually more important than the percent profit. So what is the limit? Jewelry can have 1000% return and if you turn it over 2 times per years... well you can do the math. I've seen Kiosk in malls do $35,000 per day around Christmas..... and turn over the items 6 times in between Dec 1 and Dec 25.As you can see, 1% at the bank is a really poor return.So HOW do you start?Here's some suggestions and they work whether you are 24 or 64.1 List on paper what you love to do.2 List on paper what you know better than anyone else.....Hopefully what you love is also what you know best. It will be very difficult to cheat if you are the best at what you do.3 On your next vacation attend a trade show in your area of interest - ask lots of questions. Don't be afraid to attend other shows even if they are not related.... this is usually where you'll find applicable ideas no one else has thought off.4 THE BIG MOVE - find a trade show in CHINA in your area of interest. If this is your first trip to China, plan your arrival with the start of the Trade Show..... - this will get you pass the language barriers. The big trade show in China is Canton Fair - look it up. Plane fair is cheap, about $700 return trip.5 Don't buy electronics unless the have all the proper certifications (UL, CE, EAC, IC, ETC). You wont be able to re-sell them.6 After the show go to YIWU City. It's called the International Trade Market. 75,000 exhibitors.7 When you get back home learn all about "Distribution". It don't matter what you are going to sell, without distribution it all becomes "Dead Inventory". A great place to start learning about Distribution is Udemy University, Skill Share, Instructables8 Look at ways on how to distribute you product - Amazon, Banggood, Made-in-China, Shopify, or learn the Web, etc9 Distribution is the key - you need to figure that out before investing any money. A distribution of 10,000 is a very, very successful business. Many business can exist quite well with a 500 customer base. It's easier than you think.... if you find 2 new customers per month, that's 24 new customers per year or 50 in 2 years plus another 20 more for referrals. Depending on the service, many business can exist quite well with 70-100 steady customers.10 Enjoy the ride.I would like to say, when we reach a few hundred followers, I'll do a very detail plan how this all works.HERE’S A SMALL UP DATE FOR THOSE THAT LIKE STATS…..Most investors still think the USA is O.K. and everything is fine, when the US debt is 22 trillion. Go to this site to see how bad it really is..... U.S. National Debt Clock : Real TimeMost every country on earth is running a deficit. That does not make it right. It's like having a family member, brother or sister that you know are really poor money managers, always broke, but drive new cars, always eating at restaurants, coming to you for 5th time asking for another loan, considering they have not paid back the first 4 loans. When the gov't owes 22 trillion dollars, isn't it time to say "get your house in orders". Gov't deficit financing is not getting your house in order.Retail is in a “Debt Spiral” .... Go to this Web Site to see the list of 6400 stores that closed More than 6,400 stores are shutting down — here's the full list Yes, people have debt.It's gotten so bad that 73% of Americans now die in debt... leaving behind an average total of more than $60,000. According to a report from the Federal Reserve Board, four in 10 adults can't come up with $400 in an emergency.As for the future markets.... I'm moving all my investments to cash. 2019 will be quite a ride. Expect a huge recession… political scandals in Canada and USA, Trade War escalating with China, a new stock exchange in China, I don't see anything good on the horizon. Park your money in a save investments vehicle and limit your exposure to the stock market. House prices in Canada have started to drop, inventories are at there highest level…. You have two choices, hope things will get better in the long run, do nothing and take the hit, or park your money, wait for the recession and buy the bargains later this year or early 2020. Enjoy the ride, it’s going to be a wild one!(UP DATE - MARCH 2020 - MY PREDICTION WAS “A RECESSION IN THE 4TH QUARTER OF 2019 - I MISSED IT BY 4 MONTHS. UNFORTUNATELY, THIS WILL BE A BAD ONE… THE MARKETS HAS DROPPED IN OVER 30 YEARS. IN OTHER WORDS, A PERSONS FULL LIFE - WAGES AND INVESTMENTS - GONE.IT’S LIKE THE MOVIES - THE FIRST SCENE IS A BLOCK BUSTER - THEN WE LEARN THE STORY. SO FIND A COMFORTABLE A PLACE- THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG MOVIE. THOSE OF YOU THAT PUT THE MONEY IN CASH - YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THIS MOVIE. IF YOU LIVE FROM PAY CHECK TO CHECK… YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LIKE THE MOVIE AND IT DOES NOT END IN “DISNEY” STYLE. IT’S A GOOD TIME TO LEARN MORE SKILLS - YOU MIGHT DO OK.) (I’M STARTING TO SCOUTS A FEW INVESTMENTS, THEY WILL BE PRIME IN 6–8 MONTH)Side NoteA few years back, someone decided it would be a great idea "If we could train dolphins to help clean our ocean"The experiment worked well... for each piece of trash the Dolphin brought in, he'd get a small fish. After a while, the trainers noticed that one dolphin came in more often than the others but with smaller pieces of trash. After a few weeks of this, the trainers sent down a scuba diver. What he found was .......The Dolphin had taken a large piece of trash and pushed it under a rock. When ever he wanted food, he's go and rip off a piece and bring to trainer. Hence the very beginning of the world first "Dolphin Bank"This begs the question "If a dolphin can learn to save, why can't 65% of the human population"JUNE 30, 2020HERE’S HOW TO MAKE MONEY DURING RECESSION 2020Short Answer… Keep your money accessible. Folks ask how I make money. At first opportunity, I set up a HELOC in 1985. Then I used the equity in house to purchase new opportunities one year after each recession including 1990, 2001, 2008 and 2020.Below is how I figured this out. Yes, it’s a very long detailed article. There are 3 parts, I will add the 3rd part in a week. I do appreciate “UpVotes”… it does take many and many hours to write the details… “UpVotes” do provide me great incentive to write more. Enjoy.Depression or a recession 2020? Will there be a FOOD SHORTAGE? More unemployment? More unrest? When will get pass COvid-19?Here are some of the answersCovid-19 - When the human population reaches "Herd immunity", either within the 3rd or 4th wave or a Vaccine... the disease will remain. "Herd Immunity" occurs when most of a population is immune to an infectious disease, this provides indirect protection—or herd immunity (also called herd protection).Check it out at Herd immunity and COVID-19 (coronavirus): What you need to knowUNREST - Unemployment and Racism.... this will continue in to 2021 and 2022. Things will worsen until the economy start to get better.Covid-19, unemployment and racism will the the normal for a while.ECONOMIC DEPRESSION - A depression is a severe and prolonged downturn in economic activity. Hundreds of millions of newly unemployed people are spending less. The hospitality industry - hotels, restaurants, Tradeshows, campgrounds, airlines, etc are all closed or reduced 50% or more. Around 30% of food in the world is consumed in Shuttered restaurants, cafés, and cafeterias .... not mentioned the packaging, sundry items and all the employed people. The export demand from those items vanished. Farmers were throwing away milk and eggs... Baby pigs were euthanized... Cabbage and tomato crops were plowed over... and potatoes were very, very cheap. It got so bad that in Belgium – the world's largest exporter of frozen potato products, where they take their frites with mayonnaise very seriously – you could buy around 500 pounds of potatoes for the price of a gallon of gas.Prices for Food has been going down. Social-distancing requirements have hit margins... as people eat at home instead. But falling prices for the economy as a whole spells trouble... when farmers are plowing there crops, a major shortage of labor, Gov't will not allow migrate workers into the country due to Covid-19, who will pick the crops. Farmers without income down buy new trucks The first thing the factory does is reduce incentive or reduce the price. Customers see reduced price, good in the short run… but what if you knew a new fridge or car now, would be reduced in 6 months, what is the thinking of the consumer. We wait…. most of us want the savings. There’s lots of example of this… that’s why consumers buy car in December - we know the old years model will be heavily discounted. Unfortunately, when factories can't sell their cars, they reduces inventory which coincides with lower unemployment. A farmer that can’t sell potatoes, won’t produce that crop next year which created no work for farm hand labour…maybe the farmer will now grow barley which is much more mechanized. Less employment... and the economy gets worse.If the farmers plows it crops this year, It’s a safe bet he’s not buying a new trucks! If the Hospitality industry is not buying cars, if the Airlines are not buying buses, then there's massive unemployment. This is why Hertz is in bankruptcy.Gov't got into the equation with offering subsidy wages. But now this created an new problem… “why would people pick grapes or oranges or bagging potatoes when you can stay home and get a subsidy from the gov't. The food rots in the fields while labor lays unemployed waiting for the check in the mail.ECONOMIC RECESSION - Trumps answers to solving the recession --- Protectionism. I don't agree with Protectionism. It's a very short term solutions to maintain employments. It didn’t worked in the Aluminum industry (talk to Ford and GM about this), It did not function in the pulp industry or the Oil sector where we we have 27 oil supertankers on the ocean full of oil where they have no place to go and no one wants cheap oil. It's another fiasco similar to Farmers dumping crops they can't find labor. To much supply, to low demand, and too low.. low... prices.Protectionism will become a real issue when Countries like China decides it's will no longer sell Rice or accept pork product. Protectionism and Covid-19 will cause devastation in the supply management. We will see the full affects of a recession when your grocery store will be short of many products because some Country refused to ship product and want to use it only only for their only consumption. You’ll see this in this coming in winter of 2020! Expect a much higher price in beginning in 2021.... you've already seen this with beef - covid-19 closed those plants in High River and Brooks in Alberta.TECHNOLOGY -We know many of those jobs are not coming back quickly, especially for the low level jobs. I want to talk about technology and how it can affect low level jobs. We have all heard of 5G Spectrum. 4G can’t keep up with the 50 billion devices. But 5g is so much faster , it can download a movie in 6 seconds compared to 4g, which will take 7 minutes.This new technology allows for self-driving, doctors doing operations in real times, etc. There are 3.5 million truck drives in America. Now, why pay a human driver a wage… when a self-driving a truck 24/7, with less cost, with less delivery time.How soon with this be implemented?. Look at “Presidential Memorandum 0 2518” Here’s a section of the Memorandum states…… Sec. 3. Within 180 days of the date of this memorandum, and annually thereafter, the Secretary,… on the status of existing efforts and planned near- to mid-term spectrum re-purposing initiatives.Bottom line… Trump wants to be the first country with 5G. Now this is a report… and it will take the country some time to set up a 5G network…. but it will happen.In 10 years most truck will be 5g driverless…. Is it possible in 5 years, absolutely, what about 2–3 years, absolutely,… There are currently be lots of pockets within the USA with driverless truck, yes they need improvements…. but they are functional - real today.No one wants to be unemployed… but the world will change to 5G…. Even today, I’m seeing our Internet provider building the 5G infrastructure in my area . The technology, 5G Spectrum, will not wait for anyone . You’ll need to prepare for the change. If you want to be employed… you’ll need to have the skills required for the next century. There will be less and less back-breaking jobs, replaced with AI or technology, for example driverless trucks, but there will be lots of jobs to maintain the AI equipment. If you are at home, self isolating due to the Covid-19…. put a plan together, develop some skills… learn. Even a hobby teaches skills…. those skill maybe valuable in you new employment review. Enjoy the remainder of the post…. I suggested a few ideas.. hope that helps!IT’S A NEW WORLD - It will be a very different world after Covid-19, Racism, Socialism, Riots, 5G technology. They say in 50 years human being with never have a job… it will be done by Robots. Our Grand, Grand kids will be asking “Grandpa, what’s a job”. I can’t imagine that reality - if we have no jobs then will we all be wards of the Gov’t. Well the gov’t control our lives or will we aspire to our life goals. Maybe, we will become very lazy with no ambitions and just watch a screen for entertainment all day. I’ve been in a driverless car… you either watch out the the window or a screen, is this what life will become?????MAYBE I WANT MORE OF THE WORLD - or than politicians that tell me what to do and how I should live my life. Maybe the world is a mess right now… Just like the Farmer that has plow his crop today, knowing someone in Africa is starving.. but we have been there here before. The Good in Humanity can turn Kaos into a brave new world.Maybe…. this movie does not end in Armageddon. The Mayan Calendar, predicted the end of the world for June 21, 2020. In one way, they are correct, I wrote the story back on Sunday and it’s a very bleak tale. But we are still here. Yes, there’s a lot of Kaos…. but there’s a lot of great people within humanity. We’ve seen 2 World Wars, Several Pandemics, Several Recessions and Trump. Humanity has done lot and lots of great things.I believe the day is filled with extraordinary . With a little perseverance, we can turn that 5G technology into a much better world. With technology, we can stay on top of pandemics, feed a lot more of the world, maybe become less polluters and maybe care our environment better. We can do a lot better… maybe this pandemic is an opportunity to reset the Red Button.Maybe Calvin had the right idea, we need a Swift Kick in the Butt…. it may hurt a little, but if it’s pushes us forward, it may be the tuff love we all need! Hugs….Remember , 60 days after your vacation you got your Visa or Master Card. Then you saw the interest charge - 24%, The Gov't bill is coming at the end of the years. Most Gov'ts have been down-graded, we know the interest will be higher and we also know we can make the payment. Businesses will not be fully functional till end 2021 or later. Ofcourse, the Gov't will not see Income tax returns till mid 2022.That's the assumption we have dealt with 2nd wave of Covid-19 and we have achieved "heard Immunity". Farmers have come back from recovery from possibly economic disaster. Then there's..... November 3, 2020. ... Election with Trump. This will be very divisive for the USA. Add to this all the social issues from "Distance", "racism" and "political unrest". We will still be dealing with unemployment and more protectionism and the debt issue. And finally, the wild card will be Hauwei - Trump - China and USA. Will there be more sanctions, protectionism, ... all we know there will be another storm ... and it will create more economic disturbances.I'm thinking of all those Colleges and University students - will there be jobs. More and more business are closing down... not just from Covid-19 but also by Amazon and Walmart. And of the business returning from Covid-19, many of the jobs are not coming back. Those students will be competing for existing jobs... and when there is to many workers and not enough job, than salary reduces. None of those jobs are coming back with similar benefit they use to have. Pensions will be limited to 10 years, $30 hours job will be $22.00/hour, etc. They may be reduce to 30 hours per week. Our standard of living will change.It's fair to expect a Nuclear Economic Winter.If we know what is coming - like any good Captain of his ship, you start preparing much before the storm.Here's some suggest. There are two safe havens - Gold and AssetsYou could buy Gold - but that's for people with lots of money, where you have excess money or you want to park it until the deals start to show up later in the Recession. Kind of being locked down in the harbor - you weather must storm. But Gold is not without risk.On April 5, 1933, Roosevelt ordered all gold coins and gold certificates in denominations of more than $100 turned in for other money. It required all persons to deliver all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve by May 1 for the set price of $20.67 per ounce. Look at the Fine!!!USA and Canada now have a huge debt and there is no guarantee the USA will stay the World Currency. China has been saving gold for a long long time. With Hauwei, protectionism, Covid-19, and a huge deficit close to 27 Trillion. No one knows what the Gov't will do... but we do know, they can recall the gold.Must of us can't afford gold... must of us are just floating in the ocean, with some of us quite a way from shore. , so gold is out. The good news... Cash is KING - assuming money is not devalued. There is a risk, the gov't does not disclosure the true ridiculous debt that it has funded (pensions, etc) , and the USA can start printing more and more money, but it takes years before we would see a major devaluation... This is not the situation in Germany during the war with hyperinflation first half of 1921. So cash is this KING.But you can still lose Cash just like the gov't recall Gold. We need to turn that real investments ... real assets. You can lose you money in a bank... especially with the USA, many banks can fail.... and your money is gone. Banks love to turn your cash into mortgages... in fact banks love mortgages. The The average U.S. mortgage debt per borrower for Q1 2019 was $202,284, a 2.4% . So if the bank is giving you less than 1/2 a 1% on your investment and they pocket 2%... life is good for the bank. Bottom line Banks love mortgage. But...., banks DO NOT LOVE THINGS LIKE HOUSES, BUSINESS, OIL TANKERS, ETC... those items require maintenance, property tax,subject of insurance (Theft and environment like tornado and floods), appraisals, etc .OUR PROBLEM IS .... currently all those items are sky high right now, it’s all priced it at the top of the curve. We need to buy them are liquidation value, auction value or bankruptcy.So here's what we can do to start preparations ...........We need do build a reserve now. We now the deals will be coming in about 1 year from now. Remember the 2008 recession... Oct 2008 that was the month... every one thought it would be all done by December. All the deals happened in 2009 and 2010. I remember houses in Las Vegas we looked .. there where 100's between $100,000 to $120,000. Many home less than3 years old. The same things will happen with 2020 recession, the deal will start to show up in 2021 and 2022. There is a couple of deals now like - Hertz is filing bankruptcy.... it will take 6 months before all those cars to come to either auction or on sale liquidation. Why by a new Buick when there will be 100's of bargains 6 months from now.But you need perseverance. It takes time for the banks to foreclose and decided to list those assets. Even business, can take 6 month through bankruptcy before those items go Auction.But we can use that time for do our diligence... check out prices in different neighborhood, which business are failing and what is the equipment worth. Learn what things are worth.... this is your job now.SO WHERE DO WE GET MONEY- BUILD THAT RESERVE NOWIf you don't have a job.... Right now there's 2.7 million jobs available for picking produce for Farmers. Yep, it's not glamorous, but you got other plans and a little pain now there will be later deal in 2021 for a a good living.With a job... now start applying with has many credit card you can get. Try if possible to get a higher limit. Some deals will be quick term and some deals will take months. If you have available cash, you can grab the opportunity.Get RID of High Cost ticket items... like car loans, travel trailers, etc. Get rid of it on Lease Buster, etc. The idea is to build a cash reserve - not making payment of depreciate toys. There will lots of deal in 2021.What one person is not able to accomplish - a group can create extraordinarily. Talk to your family about your ideas... maybe you want to buy a Duplex and rent it out. If you have only $5,000, with just 3 more members of you family, together you raise $20,000. Remember this is not the time to buy.... there are not deals in 2020.... when unemployment climbs in 2021, when the banks are holding 1000's of mortgages, that's when it's time to go shopping.Again, if you don't have all the cash... form a partnership, or setup an Investment club. The advantage of a group is the reduction of exposure to the risk. In a group if the property does not rent, then the mortgage is split between every one. But, with a large group there are more opportunities to find a renters.HOME EQUITY LINE OF CREDIT. (HELOC)If you have equity in you House, depending on you bank, you can get a HELOC from 65% to 80% of the value of the property. For example - you house is worth $400,000..... you still have a $100,000 on the house. Most banks will allow to set up a HELOC @ 65% of value. In this case... $260,000. You pay off the original mortgage and that leave you $160,000 to buy when those bargain show up in 2021. Most use HELOC for Home Improvement, we want to use it to make Income.The advantages of a HELOC are simple…. you can easy access to all that equity just writing a check. This can used as a deposit on another rental house, a business, flipping cars, etc. You get the drift! Spend it on something that will bring in more income.Part #3... Choosing the right InvestmentsInvestments - there’s a number of rule of thumbWhen buying a machine the rules are...a If a machine pays for itself in 6 month- you of bought it 6 month agob if a machine pays for itself in 1 year - buy itc if a machine pays for itself in 2 years - make sure your customers are locked ind if a machine pays for itself in 5 years - you need a business plan and lots of researche if a machine pays for itself in 10 years - Stay AwayWhen buying real-state1 You buy realty what its worth in the future. What ever few extra thousands you pay today, this will be fraction of the value 20 years down the road. You buy property what it's worth 20 years down the road, not what it worth today2 If you can sign a 5 years rental lease - you should be buying the building. In 5 years the rent will go up, the mortgage will be smaller and the payment still the same.3 Buy the best location you can buy.... I suggest if possible, buy near a traffic light or something that slows the traffic. No one will see your business at 80 km. Location is important when recession occur. Bad locations will move to a better location when the economy stagnatesWhen finding investments.x It's not that the right time to buy property..... the gov't is still paying checks for unemployment, covid-19 and business. The recession has not run it's course. In 2008, it took a full year before we saw good deals. Be patience.xx Arrange all your financing..... the better prepared you - the better chance to close a good dealxxx DON'T ASSUME!!!. We all assume a deal is at arm length.... but we never really know why a seller is listing his property. Is it a divorce, unemployment, a bank foreclosure in 30 days, new job out of town, parent died and the kid are 1000 miles away.... Don't be afraid to make a lower offers. I have made several offers so low, the realtor refused to present the offer. A few hours later I found another realtor and within a few hours later he had a signed offer $2,000 higher than what I offered. Later we found out.... the owner was holding a new house and the current house and he was 4 month late on the mortgage. Like I've said, don't assume.... you really don't know the situation.iv Be willing to walk away from the deal - how many items I’ve seen at auctions sell items for more than similar prices at discounters. Only, to find the same item at another auction 30 days later. v Houses that show terribly, that are fine structurally can be money makers . Ugly, can easily shine up. It’s an easy great way to find fantastic value.vi Sellers that live lived out of state and didn't have a strong emotional attachment tend to be very motivated.There are plenty of properties to choose from. Don't fall in love with any of them. If you do, your emotions could take over and cause you to make a foolish mistake.We currently live in a world covid-19, unemployment, protectionism, racism, business closure.... Money will be very stressful for many families.... expect more divorces and mortgage closure.... so don't assume

A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could, according to researchers in the US, kill 50-125 million people in less than a week - more than the death toll during all six years of World War II and lead to global climate disasters.A study by researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder and Rutgers University, investigated how such a hypothetical future conflict could have consequences that could wrinkle around the world.Today, India and Pakistan each have about 150 warheads at their disposal, and that number is expected to rise to more than 200 in 2025, the researchers said amidst recent tensions between nuclear-armed neighbors over Kashmir after India's special status of J&K had withdrawn."A war between India and Pakistan could double the normal death rate in the world," said Brian Toon, professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder."This is a war that would have no precedent in human experience," said Toon."Such a war would threaten not only the locations where bombs could be targeted but the entire world," said co-author Alan Robock of Rutgers University-New Brunswick.The study, published in the journal Science Advances, looked at a war scenario that could occur between Pakistan and Pakistan between 2025 and India.While both neighboring countries have waged different wars over Kashmir, they could have a combined count of 400 to 500 nuclear weapons by 2025, the study noted."They build their arsenals quickly. They have huge populations, so many people are threatened by these arsenals, and then there's the unresolved conflict over Kashmir," Toon said.The researchers discovered that the exploding nuclear weapons could release 16 to 36 million tons of soot - small black carbon particles in smoke - that could spread to the upper atmosphere within a few weeks.The soot, the researchers said, would absorb solar radiation and heat the air, causing the smoke to rise rapidly.During the trial, the study noted that the sunlight reaching the earth would decrease by 20 to 35 percent, which would cool the surface of our planet by 2 to 5 degrees Celsius.Rainfall around the world can also decrease by 15 to 30 percent, both of which can have greater regional effects, the study noted.The researchers added that worldwide vegetation growth would decrease by 15 to 30 percent on land and that the oceans would see a productivity loss of 5 to 15 percent.In general, the study noted that recovery from all of these effects would take more than 10 years because the smoke would linger in the upper atmosphere."Nine countries have nuclear weapons, but Pakistan and India are the only ones to raise their arsenals quickly," Robock said.He added that the continuing unrest between the two nuclear-armed countries, in particular, Kashmir, made it important to understand the consequences of a nuclear war.According to the researchers, the nuclear weapons in the year 2025 can range from 15 kilotons of explosive power - the size of the bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 - to a few hundred kilotons.In the scenario, the researchers estimate that 50 to 125 million people could die from the direct effects, with additional deaths from mass hunger also possible worldwide."Nuclear weapons cannot be used in any rational scenario, but can be used accidentally or as a result of hacking, panic or disturbed world leaders," Robock said.According to Robock, the only way to prevent unintended use of nuclear weapons was to eliminate them.This story has been published from a news agency with no changes to the text. Only the heading has been changed.The weapons are now easier and cheaper to buildOne of the most striking facts about the world today is that young people don't seem to worry about nuclear war. Climate change is by far the biggest concern, while nuclear war is seen as a threat to the past. As Chapin Boyer, who is in his late twenties, wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists a few years ago: “I can't remember a time when the threat of nuclear weapons seemed real. My generation grew up with the conviction that the problem of nuclear weapons had been solved. "On the other hand, I tend to think that the risk of nuclear war remains the world's biggest problem, even though that risk does not seem so urgent on a particular day.Nuclear weapons have not been used against people since 1945, and we now assume that they will be dormant for the rest of history.Each generation has its own form of recency bias, as it is called in behavioral economics. Just after September 11, for example, there was great concern about follow-up attacks. (Fortunately, nothing similar followed.) Now we worry too much about insolvent banks, insufficiently high inflation and the Chinese shock to the American industry.So what about nuclear war? Looking ahead, the reality is that the risks of such a war in a given year are quite small. But let the clock run and enough years pass, and a nuclear exchange of some kind becomes pretty likely.I have discovered that people with a background in trading on the financial markets are best equipped to understand the risks of a nuclear war. An analogy can be useful: suppose you write a pit out of money without a compensating hedge. This is actually a very risky promotion, although you almost always get away with it. If you don't do that, however, if market prices move against you, you can lose all your wealth quite suddenly.In other words: sooner or later the unexpected will happen. The right intuitions about these types of risks are not always easy for the inexperienced investor. Likewise, short-sighted voters do not appreciate the continuing risk of a nuclear war.So, by combining that understanding of risk with the phenomenon of recency bias, I return to my original thought: we must indeed be very concerned about nuclear weapons. They are all still there, and most probably still work. We can never be completely sure of the accuracy of the early detection systems of incoming missiles, and whether there may be false signals of launch, such as in 1983.There are also specific reasons for the current moment to worry about nuclear weapons. They are becoming easier and cheaper to build, and it is not unlikely that countries like Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia could get them in the coming 20 years, to the detriment of regional stability. North Korea continues to expand its stock of nuclear weapons and improve the quality of its delivery systems.Meanwhile, a generation of hypersonic delivery systems developed by China, Russia, and the US will shorten the available response time for political and military leaders to minutes. That increases the risk that a false signal turns into a decision to take revenge, or it can lead a nation to think that a successful first attack is possible. Remember that it is not sufficient that the principle of mutual insured destruction is generally true; it must always be true.The risk of a nuclear war is very real.Most important point: this is the hotspot that the world should pay attention to.Pakistan, sandwiched between Iran, China, India, and Afghanistan, lives in a complicated neighborhood with a variety of security issues. One of the nine known states known to have nuclear weapons, Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and doctrine are constantly evolving to match the perceived threats. Pakistan has been nuclear energy for decades and is now trying to build its own nuclear triad, making its nuclear arsenal resilient and capable of destroying retaliation attacks.Pakistan's nuclear program dates back to the 1950s, during the early days of its rivalry with India. President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said famously in 1965: "If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one ourselves."The program was given a higher priority after the country's defeat in 1971 by India, causing East Pakistan to become detached and to become Bangladesh. Experts believe that the humiliating loss of territory, much more than reports that India was pursuing nuclear weapons, accelerated the Pakistani nuclear program. India tested its first bomb, code-named "Smiling Buddha," in May 1974, with which the subcontinent was on its way to nuclear development.Pakistan started collecting the necessary fuel for nuclear weapons, enriched uranium, and plutonium. The country was particularly helped by an A. Q. Khan, a metallurgist who worked in the West and returned to his home country in 1975 with centrifuge designs and business contacts needed to start the enrichment process. The Pakistan program was assisted by European countries and a clandestine program for the purchase of equipment designed to put an end to non-proliferation efforts. Abroad eventually fell out when the true purpose of the program became clear, but the clandestine effort continued.Exactly when Pakistan completes its first nuclear device, it is cloudy. Former President Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfikar Bhutto, claimed that her father told her that the first device was ready in 1977. A member of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission said the design of the bomb was completed in 1978 and the bomb "cold" tested "was - quit without a real explosion - in 1983.Benazir Bhutto later claimed that the bombs from Pakistan were dismantled and stored until 1998 when India tested six bombs in a three-day period. Almost three weeks later, Pakistan carried out a similar rapid-fire test program, with five bombs fired in one day and a sixth bomb three days later. The first device, estimated at twenty-five to thirty kilotons, may have been a boosted uranium device. The second was estimated at twelve kilotons and the following three as sub-kiloton devices.The sixth and final device also seems to have been a twelve kiloton bomb that has exploded in a different test range; a nuclear detection plane from the US Air Force "Constant Phoenix" is said to have discovered plutonium. As Pakistan had been working on a uranium bomb and North Korea - which had shared or purchased research with Pakistan through the AQ Khan network - had been working on a uranium bomb, some outside observers concluded that the sixth test was actually a North Korean test, that was detonated to hide the involvement of North Korea. There is no consensus on this conclusion.Experts believe that Pakistan's nuclear supply is growing steadily. In 1998 the stock was estimated at five to twenty-five devices, depending on how much-enriched uranium each bomb needed. Today Pakistan has an estimated arsenal of 110 to 130 nuclear bombs. In 2015, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Center estimate Pakistan's ability to make bombs on twenty devices per year, meaning that Pakistan could quickly become the third-largest nuclear energy in the world on top of existing supplies. However, other observers believe that Pakistan can only develop forty to fifty warheads in the near future.Pakistani nuclear weapons are under the control of the Army Strategic Plan Division and are mainly stored in the Punjab province, far from the northwestern border and the Taliban. Ten thousand Pakistani troops and SPD intelligence personnel guard the weapons. Pakistan claims that the weapons are only armed with the correct code at the last minute, thus preventing a "rogue nuke" scenario.Pakistani nuclear doctrine seems to deter what it regards as an economically, politically and militarily stronger India. The nuclear impasse is exacerbated by the traditional hostility between the two countries, the various wars that the two countries fought and events such as the terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008, which was directed by Pakistan. Unlike neighboring India and China, Pakistan has no "no first use" doctrine and reserves the right to use nuclear weapons, especially low-yield tactical nuclear weapons, to compensate India's advantage with conventional armed forces.Pakistan currently has a nuclear "triad" of land-based, air and sea-based nuclear delivery systems. It is believed that Islamabad modified the F-16A hunters built in America and possibly Mirage hunters made in France to deliver nuclear bombs by 1995. Because the hunters would have to invade the Indian air defense network to deliver their cargo against cities and other targets, Pakistani planes would probably provide tactical nuclear weapons against battlefield targets.Land-based delivery systems are in the form of rockets, with many designs based on or influenced by Chinese and North Korean designs. The Hatf-series mobile rockets include the solid-fuel Hatf-III (180 miles), solid-fuel Hatf-IV (466 miles) and liquid fuel Hatf V, (766 miles). The CSIS Missile Threat Initiative believes that Hatf VI (1242 miles) is likely to be employed from 2014. Pakistan is also developing a medium-range Shaheen III rocket capable of hitting targets up to 1708 miles to hit the Nicobar and Andaman Islands.The naval component of Pakistan's nuclear power consists of the Babur class of cruise missiles. The latest version, Babur-2, looks like most modern cruise missiles, with a bullet-like shape, a cluster of four small tail wings and two blunt main wings, all powered by a turbofan or turbojet engine. The cruise missile has a range of 434 miles. Instead of GPS guidance, which could be regionally disabled by the US government, Babur-2 uses older Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) and Digital Scene Matching and Area Co-relation (DSMAC) navigation technology. Babur-2 is used on ships both on land and at sea, where they would be harder to neutralize. A submarine-launched version, Babur-3, was tested in January and would be the most surviving of all Pakistani nuclear delivery systems.Pakistan is clearly developing a robust nuclear capacity that can not only deter but fight a nuclear war. It also has to do with internal security issues that could threaten the integrity of its nuclear arsenal. Pakistan and India are clearly in the midst of a nuclear arms race that, in relative terms, can lead to absurdly high nuclear supplies reminiscent of the Cold War. It is clear that an arms control agreement is desperately needed for the subcontinent.The Top expert just told us 5 ways a nuclear war could startThe most important point: a small regional war, however bad, would not destroy the United States or threaten the end of humanity. However, a nuclear conflict of all sizes in the northern hemisphere would mean the end of modern times.Nuclear war, the exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more states in open conflict. It is unthinkable. It can't happen.Turn right?Wrong.Of course, nuclear war is extremely unlikely. Although the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists placed the hands of his famous clock five minutes before midnight, that does not mean much and never. The fact is that nuclear supplies, led by reductions in the United States and Russia, have never been lower, and none of the major powers expects a nuclear conflict the way they did during the Cold War. To make a line from Captain Jack Sparrow, however, nuclear war is not impossible, it is unlikely, and nuclear war can take place in more ways than you might think, fueled by a number of events from a pure accident to an intentional one attack.I am going to concentrate here on a war that could involve the United States and its allies on the one hand, and Russia or China on the other. The nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, or between a future nuclear-armed Iran and Israel, is unlikely but much easier to imagine than a global nuclear conflict. Indeed, this is one reason why Americans no longer think much of nuclear war: they think it will happen somewhere else. (However, if there is a regional limited war, you know: even a small exchange of nuclear weapons will cause a global environmental disaster that will reduce Chernobyl or Fukushima.)A small regional war, however terrible, would not destroy the United States or threaten the end of humanity. However, a nuclear conflict of all sizes in the northern hemisphere would mean the end of modern times. Further human progress would be secondary to the basic needs for survival in the coming years, if not decades. A war between India and Pakistan would kill millions and pollute the earth forever. But it would not threaten to bring the entire global system to a halt, or possibly lead to the release of thousands of warheads against hundreds of cities around the world, the "unthinkable" war for which Americans have prepared decades and for which we still have an arsenal maintain strategic weapons that can be supplied by air, land, and sea.So how do we start with each of the nightmare scenarios?1. Mechanical Accident:The classic war by accident novel is Fail-Safe, in which a computer blows a wick and the Moscow Air Force melts. Most people no longer read Fail-Safe (that's why I let my students read it now), but almost everyone has seen WarGames and The Terminator, both of which are part of a whole genre of science fiction in which military computers decide not to give orders. taking annoying people about who can fire nuclear missiles. That naturally makes them fiction. Nuclear weapons are not conscious beings; Skynet is not self-aware and never will be. They are just machines, and machines themselves can fail, with little human involvement.No matter how frightening it may be to think of a war generated by any mechanical hiccup, it is important to note that this is the least likely trigger for a nuclear war. During the Cold War, the superpowers spent so much time securing their arsenal against unintended use that both the Americans and the Soviets began to wonder if they had too many barriers to prevent the deliberate launch of the weapons. stand wartime. Although the danger of an accidental launch of a strategic nuclear weapon is not zero, it is small.That is unless someone builds a "Doomsday Machine" that takes people out of the loop. And who would be crazy enough to do that?It appears that the Soviet supreme command, in its pathetic and paranoid final years, was just as crazy. The USSR built a system called Perimeter, colloquially known in Russia as 'the Dead Hand'. The perimeter was essentially a computer system that would watch for signs of a nuclear attack and take revenge if Soviet leadership was first beaten and wiped out. (I explained that this is more detailed for National Geographic, which you can see here.) We have since asked the Russians if it is still on, and they have reassured us, with complete confidence, that we should interfere with our own affairs. Let's hope they are just rude.2. Human error:As long as there are machines that are controlled by people, there will be accidents. However, the war will not start because a bomber crashes or a silo catches fire; rather, the mistake will lie in the misinterpretation of an accident by fallible people.History is full of such incidents. In 1995 the Russians forgot that the Norwegians had informed them about a rocket launch to place a weather satellite in space. The Russian supreme command told President Boris Yeltsin that they had a confirmed NATO missile launch over Russia. Fortunately, no one in the Kremlin assumed that Bill Clinton was trying to start the third world war with a single warhead from Norway. Moreover, the warm relationship between Clinton and Yeltsin caused the Russian president to be skeptical that Russia was under the Cold War strategies to call a "BOOB" or "Bolt Out of the Blue" attack.Similar errors have been triggered by flocks of birds, random computer failures and the sun glistening from cloud formations (which Soviet computers interpreted as the fiery tails of multiple American rocket amplifiers). In any case, it was up to a person to call: does someone really attack us? Smart people in both Russia and the United States have prevented these mechanical errors from becoming Armageddon.Nevertheless, the files released from these incidents do not really help you sleep better. In 1979, for example, NORAD, the joint American, and Canadian North American air defense command, the White House adviser put Zbigniew Brzezinski out of bed and told him that a massive Soviet nuclear attack struck. Or at least they thought so: they gave him a warning while they checked it out. Brzezinski was minutes away from waking President Jimmy Carter and handing the codes to hell when NORAD called back and said, Oops, never mind. The computers have gone crazy. Our bad one. We will solve it.And then it happened again in 1980.The Soviets, who got wind of all this activity, politely sent a letter to Carter and in fact asked him: what is going on there? It was a good question, and we had asked the same thing.However, the key here is not the technology that makes a Fail-Safe type of unintended launch almost (but not entirely) impossible. Rather, the danger lies with people who can give orders to take revenge at times of coercion that cannot be undone. Although this is less a risk when the tensions are lower, it is always a possibility. The combination of mechanical errors with the natural errors of human judgment multiplies the risk of accidental warfare from an extremely small risk to a very real possibility.3. A show of strength:As we move from mechanical errors to human freedom of choice, things are getting scary. Machines can make mistakes, but in the absence of an international crisis and additional confirmatory evidence, no one wages war against the claim of a faulty HAL 9000. While journalists and nuclear safety experts have written some excellent books about accidental detonations and other risks, I have you much more worried about a conscious decision to use nuclear weapons.The worst mistake you can make with nuclear weapons is to believe that they are common weapons available for military use like any other. (This is also referred to as the 'conventional' of nuclear weapons.) However, the second-worst mistake is to believe that nuclear weapons are magical and that they use solves problems that would otherwise be politically or strategically unmanageable. This second error is what causes people to think about things like "demonstration shots" or nuclear violence shows, where a nuclear weapon explodes near a conflict, but not in conflict.Apparently, such a dramatic demonstration will make all fighters sense and call out what the whole ruckus started in the first place. (Nuclear game players almost never tell us why we are on the eve. Politics is a messy business that makes clean, beautiful models and comparisons even more complicated.) This idea is both tempting and dangerous: as our enemy sees our determination, says the logic, he will abandon his predictions. It is, of course, possible that a nuclear explosion could very well draw the attention of Russian, Chinese or American leaders and evoke a "moment of clarity" where everyone thinks very hard about what is at stake and how much they want to talk about it. risk it.But counting on such clarity is a huge and potentially disastrous bet. What happens if a statement of determination provokes only a corresponding act from the other side? One flexing of nuclear muscles (perhaps at sea, or far from population centers on land) then leads to another. Nobody is going backward, so the next shot is a bit closer to something that matters. Or perhaps a person - again, always the weakest link in the nuclear chain - interprets a "demonstration" as the prelude to a full attack and decides that safe is better than cure. When it comes to strategic nuclear exchanges, there is no prize for second place. The temptation to act, barely withheld during a crisis, can become overwhelming.The misconception at the center of this concept is the classic strategic error of assuming the predictability and controllability of inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable events. A nuclear power show rests entirely on the hope that enemy leaders will clearly see a demonstration recording for what it is and not react excessively. But misperception is an important part of international relations, and it is pure foolishness to assume that a nuclear explosion will have an enlightening rather than a panic effect on the enemy.4. We are being dragged by someone else:South Africa once had a nuclear arsenal. That is not a generally known fact; the United States had been suspicious for years and tried to put an end to both the Democratic and Republican governments, but to no avail. It is probably not a reality that anyone wants to think too deeply about today, especially after the white apartheid government gave it up before it gave power to the black majority in the late 1980s. It has never been clear what the South African whites thought they would do with it, but a theory is that the weapons were intended as an insurance policy against being overwhelmed by an alleged alliance of Soviet-armed Africans in nearby states.The aim, however, was not to kill the invading armies. Instead, it was to reveal the arsenal during the conflict - perhaps even to take part in one of those "demonstration shots" - and thus cause a superpower crisis that would drag the United States into the mess and (I think) Pretoria on it save the last moment.Even if the United States does not intend to interfere in a nuclear conflict, American allies or other powers can have their own ideas. South Korea, for example, pushed up the idea a few years ago that the United States would consider bringing tactical nuclear weapons back to the Korean peninsula, an idea that the Americans quickly took away. (We removed them all from South Korea in 1991 and they are not going back.) If Iran gets a bomb, Turkey or Saudi Arabia may follow. In any case, the presence of a nuclear weapon may be part of the national defenses of a smaller nation, but it is more likely that the US will intervene before things become nuclear.The step on this road to war involves the intervention of another power such as Russia or China. In 1973, the Soviet Union threatened to intervene militarily in the Yom Kippur war, a gamble that provoked an American movement to a heightened state of nuclear readiness. What happens if there is fighting in Russia or China in the Middle East or Asia, and a smaller one decides that a South African strategy to be the nuclear conflict is the only hope to get the Americans into battle?Small states don't have to develop their own arsenal to make things go wrong. The road to nuclear war can always be accompanied by the traditional problem of alliances and the constant danger, when nuclear-armed forces are near each other, that one or the other party will see nuclear weapons as their asset in a confrontation.5. The "painful loser scenario":Finally, there are ways to a nuclear war that depend on the most sustainable source of war there is: human stupidity. If the major powers do not stumble into a nuclear war or are pulled in by their friends, they can always choose to launch themselves.During the Cold War, NATO's strategy was actually fairly simple. We cannot beat you, we told the Soviets, and so if you invade Western Europe, you will put us in a position where we have no choice but to fend off you with battlefield nuclear weapons. Your Soviets, after being beaten, will have no choice but to respond, at which point the US, Great Britain (and perhaps even France) will turn the USSR into the glass, just as you will do the same to us. So let's not take that fateful step, because the first rifle fired at Würzburg will inexorably lead to the last rocket that falls on Vladivostok.This chain of dissuasive logic no longer applies to potential conflicts with Russia or China, partly because there is no longer a big battlefield between the US and its nuclear opponents. If war breaks out over a smaller problem, there is no way to withdraw or even stabilize a military stalemate, and a military loss by China or Russia is very likely against a much better (yes, even today) US force.For example, if China decides to file a claim in the Pacific and provokes an open conflict with the United States at sea, it will almost certainly lose. At that point, China will have to make a choice: give up everything that was at stake, or remove the US fleet from the conflict by nuclear forces. Likewise, if Russia and NATO end up in Europe in one fell swoop - a scenario that I found ridiculous in the 1990s and must now reconsider - Russia will lose too, and like China, there are no buffer states to prevent the fight from flowing back to Russian territory.I call this the "painful loser scenario" because the use of nuclear weapons will only serve to make the victor pay a prize that is equal to a prize the loser has already suffered. Theoretically, the loser who blows against the winner could cause a kind of nuclear reset, but only the most optimistic Chinese strategist can hope that an act of the magnitude of a nuclear attack on a US airline could result in a military draw. (In other words, it is not a demonstration or a show of violence when it comes to immediately burning 5,000 US soldiers.) The United States will have to respond and then we go to the races.It is unclear whether the Chinese really believe that they can get away with this. But the Russians do that, at least to judge by their own writings. The concept of "painful loser" is even embedded in Russian military doctrine. Russia is keenly aware of its conventional weakness; even while they are tormenting Ukraine right under the nose of NATO, the Russians know they have no chance against NATO without nuclear weapons, a reversal of roles between NATO and Russia, the irony of which has not gone unnoticed in the Kremlin. And so the strategy of Moscow, as analyst Nikolai Sokov and others have noted, is to use nuclear weapons in a "de-escalating" capacity: that is, if they lose a war, they will carry out a limited nuclear attack to bring the enemy back down.Unfortunately, this is not the product of a half-baked recent order from current Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 1999, when Yeltsin was still in charge and Putin had just arrived on the political scene in Moscow, the Russian army was playing a big war game, Zapad-99 (or "West-99" in case someone missed the point). In this scenario, NATO, for a totally inexplicable reason, intervened in the Russian city of Kaliningrad, an enclave on the Baltic coast. This idea is so crazy that I don't like to believe that a Russian planner really believed in it, but at least NATO had a bad way with poor Kaliningrad, despite heroic Russian measures. And so the last act of the game was a set of four nuclear attacks on NATO, two on Western Europe and two in North America. This ended the war and forced NATO to return the Russian enclave.As in the Chinese scenario, it is hard to imagine that any Russian planner who is worthy of his salt really thinks that even the most indecent American president would relapse after Russian nuclear attacks wound millions and European and American deaths. It is more likely, as even Russian commentators have suggested, that this might be bravery for internal political consumption. It may also be what nuclear mavens call "declaratory policy," or the things that nuclear powers say they would do in the hope of never having to do it, and that may not be very close to what they really train and prepare to actually do. in a nuclear war. That would be my guess, but at least Zapad-99 and the subsequent Russia that thinks about nuclear war is worrying.Unfortunately, American exercises are not much better. For example, in 2006 the United States carried out an exercise called "Vigilant Shield" in which we were at war with a diverse group of generic bad guys, including "Ruebek," "Nemazee," and "Churya." Don't recognize North Korea and China, don't use your imagination, I suppose it was easier than calling them "Ussia-Ray" and "Orth-Nay Orea-Kay." In the end, America arranged everyone's hash by a few strategic nuclear launch weapons in "Ruebek", which ended the whole mess, whatever it was.One or two nuclear bombs are apparently not that destructive. In fact, "Watchful Shield" included a hypothetical enemy nuclear attack on the Pentagon (which is within sight of the Mall and only a short distance from the White House) in which only 6,000 people were killed. This remarkably low figure led journalist and critic William Arkin to note that two of the key assumptions in the game were clear that "nuclear warfare can break out at any given moment for no specific reason" and that "small nuclear weapons, while bad, die not so many people. "Military locations are supposed to be full of pessimists. Nuclear warfare ideas, however, are based on incredibly optimistic assumptions about universal rationality, near-perfect information, accurate perception, the absence of panic and an orderly ability to control escalation amidst the chaos. Someone who makes these assumptions are not the people you want in the Oval Office when "Ruebek" and "Churya" are uncomfortable.Before I decide, I want to assure you that while driving you run a much greater risk of texting - or maybe reading something similar on your phone. The chance of a nuclear war is small, but they exist, and if we ever draw that black lottery ticket, the consequences will destroy our imagination. That doesn't mean we don't have to think about them, just as we think about how we can prevent other types of improbable disasters, including man-made war disasters. Much has been achieved, but much more can be done, especially if even a little bit of two-party cooperation remains for an issue like this, where the fate of the country and of the world is constantly at stake. Such cooperation is unlikely in the coming years, and it is also unlikely that further treaties will appear on the frozen ground between Russia and America. But the weapons will wait. And they will still be there when the next president takes office and swears, as he or she will almost certainly do, to get rid of them again.