08:21 – Barbara is going out to dinner with friends tonight, so Colin and I are on our own. I told him that if he’d catch something I’d cook it. I hope he comes back with a squirrel or a rabbit, but he’s just as likely to bring back a good stick.
It’s currently foggy with a cold drizzle, but we’re supposed to get up to 72F (22C) today. Depending on which forecast you believe, we may have freezing rain and sleet tomorrow, with a low of 23F (-5C).
I see that congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) has reintroduced a bill to address the vulnerability of this country’s infrastructure to EMP, both artificial and natural. My own take is that an EMP attack is extremely unlikely, but the threat of a natural “EMP” event resulting from a coronal mass ejection (CME) is very real and very likely. The planet came very close to being nailed by a massive CME in July 2012, and NASA estimated the likelihood of such an event hitting the planet as 12% between 2012 and 2022. Depending on the severity of the CME, such a strike could cause anything up to and including the electrical grid being down for months to years, which would wipe out not just electric power, but communications, transportation (including food), and even water purification.
It seems that such massive events occur on average about once per century. The last one was the 1859 Carrington Event, which was also the first one that humans really noticed. Before that, we had no electricity, no electronics, and nothing else that would be affected by a massive CME. Humans just took no notice of earlier events because the only evidence of them would have been magnificent aurorae. But one thing is for sure: we’ll notice the next one. One credible study suggested that a Carrington-class event occurring today would result in the die-off of 65% to 70% of the US population within 12 months, most by starvation.
Yikes.
“One credible study suggested that a Carrington-class event occurring today would result in the die-off of 65% to 70% of the US population within 12 months, most by starvation.”
And I would guess most of the rest in the months and years following. Over 200 million dead in that first year, in other words. 4,000 each in the town here and the “city” up the road.
For bugging out after such an event, I gather that the safe areas will be in those remaining primitive regions of the world with little or no grid infrastructure and inhabited by indigneous peoples. Amazon jungles and the Arctic tundra.
33 here right now and we never got that winter snow advisory dumping of up to five inches overnight.
So what happens on the household scale in an EMP / CME? Is it only long power lines that get energized or will current surge through the shorter wires in my home? Will the circuit breakers protect my stuff? This is not my area of specialty but I’m sure someone in the Brain Trust has the knowledge.
I’m guessing electronic gear rendered null and void would be a problem dwarfed by imminent starvation and rampaging hordes of desperate people.
The short answer is that no one really knows what would happen. We have almost no data to extrapolate from.
A nuclear EMP event would occur with zero warning and would likely cause tremendous damage to the electric power grid, fusing transformers connected to main distribution lines and so on. IIRC, there are no US manufacturers still making those. They are ordered from Germany and have lead times of months even during normal times. Local distribution is less likely to be affected. Nuclear, solar, and hydroelectric plants would continue to operate, as would fossil-fuel plants until they (soon) ran out of fuel. Fuel distribution would come to a halt as there wouldn’t be power available to run the pumps that push gas and liquid fuels through the pipelines. With power down, transportation would essentially cease. There’d be megatons of fruit and vegetables rotting in California and megatons of wheat and corn going unharvested in Kansas. If you can’t get the fuel to harvest crops and then transport them, there’s no point to even trying.
Those living in farm country far from population centers would be in the best shape after such an event. They could at least grow enough food to feed themselves. The populations of cities will die off quickly, but enough of them will survive to overrun farm country near the cities, even if they have to walk there. Communities in farm country near cities will attempt to defend themselves against refugees/looters, so it’s likely to be a real mess. I’ve back-of-the-envelope estimated that the tenth-value distance for refugees is likely to be about 10 to 20 miles. That is, one tenth of a city’s population will make it 10 to 20 miles out of the urbanized area. One tenth of that tenth, or one-hundredth, will make it 20 to 40 miles out. A thousandth 40 to 60 miles out, and so on.
CME is a similar but different problem. For one thing, we’d get several days’ notice of a CME strike. For another, CME energies are orders of magnitude higher. It’s not actually an EMP, but the effects would be similar. A Carrington-class event might involve terawatt-level EM energy. With CMP, the rise time of the voltage spike is so short that surge/spike protectors can’t clamp fast enough to make any difference. With CME, the rise time of the voltage spike is much, much slower, but it carries so many amps that it would simply fuse protectors.
Locally, you can protect against either type of event by storing sensitive electronics in Faraday cages (a steel garbage can insulated inside with cardboard or plastic works well). Electronics that are plugged in and running are much more likely to be damaged than those that are plugged in but turned off and much, much more likely to be damaged than those that are not connected to utility power or other outside wires. Vehicles, even those with modern electronics, may be damaged, but most will not be. The vehicle itself is a pretty good Faraday cage. Most vehicles stopped by a pulse could simply be restarted. Electric motors and lights are much less likely to affected than electronic devices. Stuff like cell phones, cardiac pacemakers, etc. are unlikely to be affected simply because they’re too small to absorb much energy from a pulse.
What OFD said: “Yikes!”
So to prepare I should have plenty of food and ammo, just like all the other scenarios.
So it would be a real huge mass experiment to see what works and what doesn’t, and those of us who live in or very near farm country at least those higher mileage figures away from cities could manage to defend ourselves, in organized teams, maybe.
The greater Montreal area would have, using your back-of-envelope figures, roughly 4,000 peeps making it past 60 miles out, in all directions, and as one of our Canadian correspondents suggested, mostly to the west, rather than south in our direction. So maybe a few hundred make it down this far, in rather poor shape, I would imagine. We’d still have several thousand locals in the immediate area, many of them long-time working stiffs, farmers, and hunters, and the majority armed.
From our south, we might also get a hundred or so folks from the greater Burlington area, but my guess is that most of those refugees would head south, rather than up this way.
So we could unplug all our electrical gear with enough warning, but so what? Our outside power sources would rather quickly run out of fuel anyway and the whole Grid would be effectively down and out for a while. Local techies and engineers may be able to get some stuff back up and running in the interim, but that will be tough while also facing food shortages and looters.
We had a dress rehearsal in March 1989 when an X15 class flare took HydroQuebec out. At the time, HydroQuebec was particularly susceptible on account of their very long, ultrahigh voltage power lines. A more powerful flare would affect distribution grids with shorter lengths.
HydroQuebec has said that they have made their system more resilient as a result of their experience but I wonder how many other utilities have been willing to spend the money to solve a problem that they haven’t had yet? I suspect that the answer is none.
From what I remember about CMEs, based on a solar physics class from long ago, they would have minimal effects on items not connected to the grid – it requires long conductors to induce the damaging currents. We might be able to mitigate the effects by shutting down the electrical grid for a while during the event.
@OFD
Yeah, the numbers will be a lot smaller, but don’t forget that you’ll have natural selection happening in spades. The ones who make it 60 miles out of town are going to be the worst of the worst.
@Rolf
Yes, and an X15 flare is really tiny compared to the Carrington Event, which has been estimated at somewhere between X40 and X50, where each additional number is a doubling. That is, an X16 flare is twice as powerful as an X15. And the one that just barely missed us in July 2012 was probably at least as powerful as the Carrington Event, and possibly more powerful. If that one had hit us, civilization would not have survived and it’s even possible that H. sapiens would have become extinct. And hardly anyone other than scientists noticed at the time.
@ech
Yes, we might be able to, although shutting down the grid even for a short time would be pretty bad news even if people knew that the power would come back on within the few weeks or months needed to repair the damage and restore service.
Decentralize the grid, increase the load-sharing capability, stock spares and rebuild the production capability as a critical service. Too bad none of these things were shovel ready
“The ones who make it 60 miles out of town are going to be the worst of the worst.”
Understood. I hope I’m still in good enough shape and wit to deal with it if and when it happens like that.
From what I can gather here, a major CME event will pretty much make most stuff moot. Stockpiles of food and ammo and silver coins will be sitting idle, while the forests and jungles return and we are back to zero homo sapiens sapiens.
For those of you who haven’t seen it yet — National Geographic did a dramatization of what would probably happen during a 10-day power outage caused by a cyber-attack.
You can watch it for free on YouTube.com here …
American Blackout – 2013 – NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNx8UHteFUU
2013 – WideScreen – 90 Minutes – Rated: PG
From the National Geographic Website …
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/american-blackout/
American Blackout imagines the story of a national power failure in the United States caused by a cyberattack — told in real time, over 10 days, by those who kept filming on cameras and phones. You’ll learn what it means to be absolutely powerless. Gritty, visceral and totally immersive, see what it might take to survive from day one, and who would be left standing when the lights come back on.
No phones. No lights. No running water. What would you do if the whole country went dark and you didn’t know if or when the power would be coming back?
Or, you can buy it on Amazon.com here …
http://www.amazon.com/American-Blackout-Nat-Geo/dp/B00GOYHRC0/
American Blackout
List Price: $19.97
Price: $13.68 & FREE Shipping on orders over $35.
You Save: $6.29 (31%)
National Geographic looks into what would happen if a cyber attack were to cripple America’s electronic infrastructure. Find out just how well the nation would hold up without lights and refrigeration, among other modern conveniences. 2013/color/90 min/NR/widescreen/4.1 out of 5 stars.
Well, humanity has survived at least one bottleneck in the fairly recent past, where the human population of the entire earth was down to probably 5,000 to 10,000.
@Sam Olson
Yeah, I have a copy of that on my hard drive but I haven’t bothered to watch it, figuring it’d probably be as horrible as Doomsday Preppers, which is so bad that it’s actually funny.
I just saw a good tagline the other day: “Survivalists store guns. Preppers store food.”
I guess that makes me a Preppalist because I store both.
“They could at least grow enough food to feed themselves. ”
This is a pretty common mis-conception (or maybe mis-apprehension). Farms are NOT where the food is. Most farmers nowadays might have a supplemental garden, for their own use, but are unlikely to produce much if any surplus (for those folks who have bugged out to avoid the ravening mobs). Their crops are in the ground most of the year, and are not edible until harvest time. Until then, they don’t have any more food than anyone else. Given the right timing, an eventual harvest might be able to save some of the crop for local use, and there might be SOME food crops sitting in silos and co-ops waiting for delivery, but most or all of any existing harvested grain will be elsewhere. There will be some ‘meat on the hoof’ available, if there is supplemental feed for the animals, otherwise, that will be gone pretty quickly too if the event happens out of season. There is also the issue of where the seed for the next year’s crop will come from. It’s growing and needs harvesting to be available for planting later. Never mind the question of ‘what do you eat while you are waiting for the garden to grow?”
John Ringo talks about this extensively in his novel “The Last Centurions” which is a quick fun read (and recommended.)
I’ve been watching Alaska:the Last Frontier as a window on a modern subsistence lifestyle, with a eye toward what a post-major event life might be like. (Ignoring the fact that they don’t actually live that far out from a city) they are barely able to fill their bellies and have adequate shelter even with easy access to modern conveniences. They have ATVs, fuel, power tools, internet access, and other modern amenities (gas filled double pane windows and insulation for example). Yet, if they don’t get a large animal when they have the chance, they will be without meat through the winter. They are slaves to the sun, the seasons, and the land. Even with decades of communal and ancestral knowledge of their surroundings, they have difficulty. Imagine displaced persons trying it without that knowledge.
As a thought experiment, where would I look for surviving food stocks afterwards? Well, since reading “The Girl Who Owned a City” as a kid, I’ve known about regional distribution warehouses, but so do lots of other people, so they will be raided early. (Unless the die-off is sudden.) So where? Trains! At any given time there are mega tons of bulk food in transit by train. Without fuel for trucks, this probably won’t get unloaded. So train yards, sidings, etc. Also, factories! Any food processing or packaging plant will have tanks full of bulk. They may be drawn down, or used up, but they might not, if there is no power to run the plant, and no workers coming in. You will still need to transport the material home, but at least you will have your wheat mush for dinner…..
(and it probably won’t be seasoned with squirrel, see some recent posts about how few calories, and how few squirrels there really are per acre…)
gotta run,
nick
In the worst-case scenario, the few surviving H. sapiens will be in the Amazonian rain forest, the Arctic, and a few other isolated rural pockets around the globe, basically native people who have already long been at the primitive subsistence level and will have had limited exposure to, and use of, modern Grid technologies. Think New Guinea headhunters, Inuit, and Mongolian herdsmen. The rest of us will be long gone.
But we here are hoping it will be just a long slow decline at worst, so we can make adjustments and minimize pain and suffering.
I reckon most of us will find out how it’s gonna go during our remaining lifetimes.
81 F here in the Land of Sugar and we are supposedly heading to 35 F tonight. Got all of the air conditioners spinning like crazy.
I did not like that estimate of a CME (otherwise known as a Solar EMP) of 12% in the next 10 years. Of course, this are the same folks, NASA, who are dead set that Global Warming is going to kill us all by 2050 or so.
@nick flandrey
No, farm areas aren’t overflowing with food other than at harvest time, but they are still in a much better position to feed their (small) local populations than non-farm areas, and not only with garden produce. There’s the livestock itself, of course, but also the food for them, much of which (oats, barley, turnips, etc.) can be eaten by people. There will also potentially be relatively large stocks of seed wheat, seed corn, etc.
I’m more aware than most of just how fragile and interdependent our food production and distribution systems are, which is why I plan to store large amounts of dry staples. As a start, I’ve ordered in 250 one-gallon foil-laminate 7 mil bags, each of which can store 5 to 7 pounds of wheat, flour, sugar, beans, etc., and 200 oxygen absorbers. I won’t start that project until we move, mainly because I don’t want to have to move 250 bags totaling probably 3/4 of a ton to our new home. That ~1500 pounds of dry staples totals roughly 2.5 million calories, which is a three-year supply of food for one person. That on top of what we have stored now, which is between two and three person-years worth. Eventually, I want to get up to three years for a dozen people.
@Lynn McGuire
81? We’re only at 74 here. But some forecasts are calling for freezing rain and sleet tomorrow.
37 here now! We all jus’ habbin’ us some summuh-time fun, ain’t we, y’all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeNAgBFmJpM
I guess that makes me a Preppalist because I store both.
Except the guns keep falling into the river.
Based on the above posts, how *do* farmers these days buy, store, etc their seeds? Do they harvest their own seeds or just buy? I imagine most of our crops come from large “factory” farms and when those people die no mass food will be grown. Should we be saving a pile of “heirloom seeds” in our prepping? I guess if you don’t practice with a small garden or find someone who can grow stuff, you are screwed during the “big one”. I hoping for that slow slide into the dystopian future. In the mean time, I’ll be munching on cacti.
Some food crops are GM hybrids. Others are still open-pollinated non-hybrids. Farmers tend to buy seed when it’s needed because germination rates fall as time passes. Those rates vary greatly from species to species, but for example if fresh seed for a particular species has a 90% germination rate, year-old seed might be 85% (or 65%), and older seed less. Germination rates tail off in a curve, but the steepness of that curve varies from species to species. Seed that is thousands of years old from Egyptian tombs has been germinated successfully.
You can repackage heirloom seeds for long-term storage by drying them to about 8% moisture, vacuum packing them in foil-laminate Mylar bags, and then freezing them. With nearly any species you’ll get decent germination rates even 10 or 20 years out. Probably even 100.
“Except the guns keep falling into the river.”
Yep, and the food, too.
This is a scary post day. I hope I don’t have nightmares tonight.
I’m going to take the happy positive view of the world after the first year. The weak will have died (and been eaten), the stupid will have mostly killed themselves through pointless struggles. The smart will then start rebuilding learning from all the past mistakes. Evolution will be in overdrive and a new subspecies will arise H. Sapiens Paratum.
Meanwhile the rulers continue to have some fun with us:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/03/uscis-officials-reveal-feds-processed-7-million-immigration-related-applications-in-one-year/
Sure, why not? Come one, come all! And if there any murderers, rapists, terrorist sleeper cells, perverts, etc., why, we don’t have the staff to check ’em all out so you people out there are on yer own, and fuck you!
And my man Taki on a tear:
“And another thing: Every smiling wallet lifter I know—and that includes all politicians, diplomats, government big shots, and so on—always makes the stipulation that not all Muslims are terrorists, but fails to clearly state that all terrorists are Muslims. Hence the exaggerated Jewish fear that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe. It no longer exists in Europe among Europeans. It exists only among Muslims living in Europe, a fact that anti-Christians like Deborah Lipstadt—who calls herself a Holocaust scholar—always fail to mention. Every crime recently committed against Jews in Europe, every Jewish school or cemetery that has been desecrated, has been the work of Muslims, yet the media always fail to mention this all-important fact.”
http://takimag.com/article/decapitation_and_capitulation_taki/print#axzz3TMIBego9
I’ve ordered in 250 one-gallon foil-laminate 7 mil bags
Those sound expensive, URL?
Bought a 550 pack of .22 LR JHP at Academy at lunchtime. $23.
Zero .223 in stock. Zero .44 special in stock.
My local Wal-Fart had 8 boxes of .223 when I checked yesterday. No .22LR, bas backwards of you Mr. Lynn.
This is a scary post day.
Yes it is Mr. JLP. Wouldn’t it be nice if the gummint was looking out for us in all these things? hahahahaha.
Meanwhile the rulers continue to have fun with us
I guess we could prep like Dr. Bob, Mr. OFD. Food and supplies for you and your family for a year, plus enough for a *few* of our new neighbors. Say, 1,000 extra neighbors per prepare household. Comprende Señor OFD?
The latest “The Walking Dead” episode had Daryl (the redneck) shooting a possum with his crossbow and eating it. Yum! Reminded me of Granny in “The Beverly Hillbillies” cooking possum stew.
http://mttg.indiegeniusprodu1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/darryl-dixon-possum-dinner-for-alexandria-walking-dead-2015-images.jpg
From:
http://movietvtechgeeks.com/the-walking-dead-season-5-ep-12-recap-fresh-faced-rick-grimes-in-alexandria/
In the Walking Dead graphic novels, Glenn was brutally murdered. I guess the character may survive do to popularity.
In the Walking Dead graphic novels, Glenn was brutally murdered. I guess the character may survive do to popularity.
I have yet to read TWG graphic novels. Yup, very few of the original TV version TWD characters still remain here in season 5. Rick, Carl, Maggie, Daryl, and Carol are just about it.
Was Glenn murdered by humans or zombies?
I have been trying to figure out the correlation between episodes and real time. Looks like around 18 months to me now.
The next * heavy* after the Governor makes an example of Glenn for the gang not obeying his rules. A baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. I’m glad the GNs are in b/w.
Possum is apparently edible but nasty. My ‘Joy of Cooking’ says you should feed it on milk and bread for a couple of days before killing and cooking it. If you have a couple of days worth of milk and bread, you probably don’t need to eat possum.
There was an episode of “The Woodwright’s Shop” where a guest was recounting the story of where he learned his craft (somewhere near RBTs location). He kept his aged female teacher out in the shed for too long and the possum in the pot burned. He said it was the worst thing he’d ever smelled.
Armadillo is supposedly tasty but since it is now a carrier of leprosy, I’m not gonna give it a try.
Gator tastes ok but is hard to catch, and even then, they’ll be gone quickly.
Finally, here’s the link to the squirrels per acre: http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/02/25/planning-eat-squirrel-tshtf-again/
“Another way to think of it is that in the city you’ve got 2,750 calories of squirrel per acre”
Looks like even here where I’ve got an oak, 2 pines, 2 pecans, and some cherry trees, I’ll run out of lawn rat pretty quickly. (I have one neighbor who “relocated” over 200 of the little thieves last year.) Pity, they’re tasty and can be cooked any way you’d cook chicken.
nick
Bleed it and soak it in water for a while before cooking. I don’t know if it was salt or fresh water, but it smelled of lemon. I didn’t think to ask what was in the soak. The meat tasted OK, I guess, but I didn’t have any plain meat to compare it to. Also, I’m a conspicuously unfussy eater.
I cooked kidney straight from the butcher for my cats when I was a teenager. I didn’t know that it was a good idea to soak it for a while to remove unwanted, um, byproducts. It stank up the house right proper… from a human point of view. The cats were driven so frantic by the smell that they repeatedly jumped up on the stove, which they never did.
It’s not bad enough that the illegals are flooding in and bringing contaminated drugs and leaving litter everywhere they go, they have to hump the wildlife and spread their diseases. I think it’s time to declare open hunting season…
…let’s start the hunting season on the bastards who keep letting them in, first…
And in the great Lone Star State:
““In a lot of the bigger cities, we’ll usually have at least one person who screams at you,” said CJ Grisham, president and founder of Open Carry Texas. “I didn’t hear a single person scream at us.””
That’s right, kidz; in the cities. Where all the smartypants lawyers, lobbyists, media rumpswabs, and other scum live and work and ply their shitty trades. They don’t need guns, they have private security, their paid cops, and some of them even have their own permits that were just handed to them while us Mundanes jump through hoops and get them at some bureaucrat’s or police chief’s whim.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/03/dean-weingarten/amarillo-open-carry-in-the-snow/#comments
some of them even have their own permits that were just handed to them while us Mundanes jump through hoops and get them at some bureaucrat’s or police chief’s whim.
The Great State of Texas is a “shall issue” state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States#Shall-Issue
Man, I have to admit, Wikipedia is a cool resource.
Yes, yes, I am familiar with the TX laws on this topic.
My point is that it is the cities and their stooges that seek to cramp our style out here; same as here in Vermont; bastards from Burlington, Montpeculiar (state capital) and the college towns. Not anyone from out here.
The open-carry marchers got screamed at in the cities. Just as they would here.
For those of you that are interested, or perhaps bored and just want to consume some bandwidth, here are some pictures of a recent basketball game that sent the team on to the state tournament, hence the celebration at the end. One of these weeks I will get this photography stuff figured out.
http://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/Hampton
They are for a local newspaper, editor gets to choose. No compensation as I do it for the publicity for the school. I do get a byline in the paper and they give me press credentials.
Wow, nice shots, Mr. Ray; you should come up here and enjoy the ice and snow and suchlike with us; high school sports are friggin’ HUGE up here; whole second section of the local paper almost every day. All year.
Use them press creds and get us some shots of whichever national candidates swan through your area over the next year or so.
high school sports are friggin’ HUGE up here
High school sports are HUGE everywhere. Have you not heard some of the local college athletes during interviews? They come across as frigging idiots. One interview, between the slurring and gangster talk, the athlete said “you know” 13 times in 30 seconds. Such wizardry with the English language.
By the time most of them (there are a few exceptions) graduate from college with a degree in pillow fluffing, they are too stupid to qualify for a GED class let alone pass any such class. Functional idiots that will eventually wind up on welfare as some shyster accountant takes and loses all their money leaving them unqualified to get a job anywhere.
Use them press creds and get us some shots of whichever national candidates swan through your area over the next year or so.
Nope. I have better things to do with my time then waste good digital electrons, shutter activations and sensor photons on those idiots.
I like to think I cost Al Bore the presidential office. Let me explain.
When I was working on a contract with DOE supporting the Navy Civilian Personnel system, the contract was awarded through corruption to an outfit in San Antonio. The guy that awarded the contract went to work for the company after the contract was moved. But I digress.
I wrote letters to all the congress critters and senate snobs for my area. All responded except Al Gore. None did anything but apply lip service leaving me to guess you need to donate heavily to their campaign to get anything out of them.
I wrote letters to the local papers after the contract was lost detailing the snub by Al Gore. Come election time ten years later I again wrote the paper and quoted Al Gore’s response to the original letter that indicated he would personally respond to us. He never did so I made certain to note within my letter his lack of response and his lack of caring for East TN. His office immediately responded but it was too late.
Al Gore did not carry East TN and I would like to think it was because of my letters. Thus Al Gore did not carry TN, his home state. Not carrying TN made the election close enough that we had to endure the “hanging chad” from old people in Florida without the strength to punch a voter card. Thus Al Gore lost the election.
Was it due to my letters? I don’t know but I really like to think my letters were a major factor. Up your’s Al Gore. Your lack of concern cost you a job. You can blame me.
RBT,
FerFal has some good posts up with actual lessons learned from people in Ukraine.
http://ferfal.blogspot.com/
If you aren’t familiar with him, he’s Internet famous for his book on surviving the Argentinian currency collapse. I’ve read it and it has some surprising “real life” stuff in it. English is not his first language, and his book was basically a compilation of his web posts, but a great resource to have in one place. Just one or 2 of his observations make the whole book worth the price. (he is the first guy I read that explained that in the real world, being at your remote bug out location just means that no one will hear you scream while they torture and rape you….and the idea of using gold chains as money “you don’t have to sell the whole thing, just cut off a half inch at a time…”) The gold chain thing was a simple but revolutionary idea for me.
TL:DR version,
most people won’t believe it is coming, even when signs are clear
LEAVE EARLY, while you still can, if not, central city has most stability
small quiet generator=good but only during daytime
cheap burner phone preferable to smartphone when out in conflict
smartphone vital for internet access from home
anything “tactical” or valuable will be confiscated (stuff, SUV, food, house)
stock up on antibiotics and OTC meds
camo only for those involved in fighting, even OD green is suspicious
submit to search or papers check quickly and completely and BE CERTAIN they won’t find anything questionable
movement very restricted by mines and checkpoints, trying back roads or avoidance will get you beaten, shot or killed by both sides
absolutely positively do not do or have anything that would suggest you are an artillery spotter-everyone will want you dead
radios are problematic- very suspicious, but official papers (ham license) can help
Go RTWT, along with Selco’s blog, it is very REAL WORLD.
nick
“Up your’s Al Gore. Your lack of concern cost you a job. You can blame me.”
Tip of my hat to you, Ray! Oh, and nice pix. I did some sports photography way back in the dark ages. No slight to your skill, but cameras sure have improved over the years.
we had to endure the “hanging chad” from old people in Florida without the strength to punch a voter card
That describes most of us here, Mr. Ray.
Fine job, Mr. Ray! But we got Shrub instead. Hmmmm…..
Them are pretty good tips, Mr. nick; let’s hope things don’t get that bad here. I’ve noticed the large numbers of peeps wearing cammies lately in the area but this is a big hunting state, too, so they would not seem out of place. In Manhattan or Los Angeles, though? Yeah, they would.
My SOP is to blend in as much as possible, given my size, so few give me a second look; ditto with the vehicle; no gun stickers or tactical gimmicks. And I plan to have all my papers in order and will forget entirely about doing artillery spotting or FAC stuff, always dangerous chit anyway.
Should I leave my flight helmet and Nomex at home?
But we got Shrub instead. Hmmmm…..
Indeed we did. Blame it on me. It is no longer “Bushes Fault” but “Ray’s Fault”. By the way, I will be trademarking “Ray’s Fault” so don’t go brandishing that around too much or you will hear from my lawyers Dewey, Cheatum and Howe.
I was so pissed at Al Gore that I really did not care who was in the oval throne, I just did not want Al Gore. My goal was to make as many people possible know that all he provided was lip service, and then only after the article made the front page of a couple of major papers in his district.
@OFD
“let’s hope things don’t get that bad here. ” Amen to that, but experience is the best teacher.
Some of the specifically military stuff might not apply right away, but from personal experience I can confirm that a lot of it applies to any local or regional disaster.
For example:
The decision to leave- during Katrina, Rita, Ike (big Gulf Coast hurricanes) if you didn’t leave early you were stuck. Many of the folks fleeing Rita north on I 45 ended up having the storm come right over their vehicles while stuck in non-moving traffic. During Ike, if you didn’t get off Galveston or the Bolivar peninsula before the storm surge, you were stuck. Many of the people who left had nothing to return to and didn’t return. During the Rodney King riots, I left work early and passed crowds milling in front of strip malls, when I got home and turned on the TV, those same strip malls were IN FLAMES. 20 minutes later, and I’d have been in the middle of that.
See my previous comments about the utility of a small quiet geni to run during the day. While not a war zone, the aftermath of a major storm can share many features, including roaming band of thieves and official enforcers who are not concerned with due process or constitutionality.
The hospitals in New Orleans after Katrina were reportedly in the same condition as the Ukrainian ones in the post. Flood waters are FOUL. They are filled with toxic chemicals, waste products, bio hazards, etc. as well as sharp floating debris. Many responders reported skin injuries just from exposure. REALLY hardcore antibiotics as prophylaxis were definitely desirable if you were exposed to the flood waters. They were likely not available locally. What are you gonna do if you get cut while cleaning up or moving around (bad enough for stitches, not immediately life threatening.) Remember that the water is unsafe, the general environment is dirty, and you will be doing uncharacteristic physical work in primitive conditions. Food safety is questionable during something like this too. Any medical care is going to be FILLED with others seeking treatment, or just a place to stay. As trained and acknowledged by CERT and FEMA, there will basically NOT be any real medical help following a disaster, for at least 72 hours. There will definitely not be any that will come to you.
We don’t think much about checkpoints and demands for “papers” in the US but legal or not, they were severely restricting movement during several recent events, eg. boston bombing, hurricanes, Sandy. People were denied access to their homes, and denied the right to leave them. US police confiscated guns unlawfully after Katrina. There were many reports of ‘unofficial’ barricades and checkpoints set up by various armed groups. People were murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Vehicles, fuel, and other supplies were “requisitioned” by whoever had the bolt cutters and desire.
Anyway, lots of the points raised have application here.
nick
The differentiator I see is that people who have read a lot of history know that it can happen here. Those who haven’t read history usually don’t believe it.
General human nature evolved very early in the history of the species, and hasn’t changed. Our nature is the same as that of people who lived 100 years ago, or 1,000, or 10,000, or 100,000. Our behavior under specific stimuli is predictable. When we’re threatened, the gloss of civilization quickly disappears and we revert to the most dangerous animals the world has ever seen.
The hospitals in New Orleans after Katrina were reportedly in the same condition as the Ukrainian ones in the post. Flood waters are FOUL.
One of my customers in the New Orleans area had their refinery levee breached and a 250,000 barrel crude oil tank collapsed by the waves. I had a picture of a bulldozer pushing a four ft wall of mud and oil mix down their road that one of the engineers sent me but I cannot find it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_Oil_USA_refinery_spill
Flood waters are extremely nasty and very dangerous. The number two killer of the people in the 1900 Galveston flood was people climbing in trees where the rattlesnakes were escaping the water also.
When we’re threatened, the gloss of civilization quickly disappears and we revert to the most dangerous animals the world has ever seen.
Especially in groups.