08:44 – Last night, I read the first two parts of Ted Koppel’s Lights Out. Part I, A Cyberattack, focuses on the threat, which Koppel makes clear is imminent and serious. Although he focuses on an attack on the computerized control systems of the electrical grid, he certainly doesn’t ignore the two other serious threats, EMP and CME. In Part II, A Nation Unprepared, Koppel makes it clear that the federal and state governments and the power companies are completely unprepared to deal with a long-term grid-down event and that almost nothing is being done to address the problem. If/when it happens, in other words, we are on our own. I’ll read Part III, Surviving the Aftermath, this evening, but it’s clear from just the chapter titles that this part will focus on efforts that can be and are being taken by individuals, including Koppel himself, to deal with a long-term power outage. In other words, it’s about preppers, among whom Koppel includes himself.
Nearly all prepping books, fiction and nonfiction, are by authors who are conservative/libertarian politically, so it’s interesting to read a pro-prepping nonfiction title by an author who is not just left/progressive, but an icon of the mainstream media. And Koppel doesn’t just talk the talk. He’s purchased long-term food supplies for himself, his children, and his grandchildren, and is actively taking other steps to prepare for the worst.
A lot of people from across the political spectrum are going to read this book. One might hope that might lead to useful steps being taken by the governments and power companies to address the problem, but I think that’s unlikely. The threat is so serious–potentially 90% of the population dead–that most people will simply give up, cross their fingers, and hope it doesn’t happen. That’s whistling past the graveyard, of course, but some percentage of readers will decide to take action themselves by making at least some preparations. And every little bit helps.
14:23 – I’ve gotten several emails from people who want to know what to do to prepare for what Koppel describes. My short answer is, “Beats the hell out of me.” Make no mistake. A long-term grid-down event is the absolute worst nightmare imaginable. My longer answer is that we should all do what we’re doing now–store food, water, and other supplies and gear, learn skills, and make what provision you can for solar power at least sufficient to recharge small batteries and, if necessary, to drive your well pump for at least a few minutes every day. We all hope this never happens, because if it does things will quickly become unimaginably bad. All we can do is hope that it never happens, but make provision as best we can to deal with it if it does.
“He’s purchased long-term food supplies for himself, his children, and his grandchildren, and is actively taking other steps to prepare for the worst.”
Oh, I bet he has. And has he also taken steps to defend all that stuff? I’m sure there are a bunch of rich liberals and media types who’ve seen the writing on the wall and have made plans to either get outta Dodge and/or stock up on all kinds of neat stuff. Good for them, I guess.
That kind of die-off figure leaves roughly between 30-60 million peeps still peeping in this country, what it was between the end of the War Between the States and 1890.
I don’t think Koppel is a lefty. I’d put him in the center to slightly right, based on a few interviews and things he has written after he left ABC. Similar in views to Bob Woodward.
Anyone to the left of Patrick Buchanan is a lefty IMHO, lol.
Pat Buchanan is a social conservative populist, like Huckabee. Not a conservative.
I’d maintain he’s a fah cry from such as Huckabee and a paleoconservative of what used to be called the “Old Right,” from whom some of his major role models came. Besides seeing him on the tee-vee over the decades and meeting him in person, I’ve also read all his books and pretty near most, if not all, of his syndicated columns.
Make no mistake. A long-term grid-down event is the absolute worst nightmare imaginable.
Motors, electrical or combustion engine propelled, are force multipliers. If we lose our motors then we go back to animal power and human power. Make no mistake, this is what Obola wants for the majority of us.
We no longer have draft animals.
/micro-aggression on/
How about hooking up all the illegals and the many many expected “refugees” (guests of Obola) to the plow and treadmill. Human power was used for centuries, time to put those folks to good use
/micro-aggression off/
“My short answer is, “Beats the hell out of me.””
I have another short answer: First, get a million dollars, like Koppel has for his small change. Then, move to a location that gets plenty of sunshine all year and learn solar power real good. Stock up on everything. Shoot to kill looters.
“We no longer have draft animals.”
We’ve got SOME, here in rural northern New England, and I suspect, in other farm country areas. But you also need people who know how to work with them and you gotta feed ’em and take care of ’em. The draft horses up here are gigantic. Google up English Shires, Belgians, and Percherons.
“Human power was used for centuries, time to put those folks to good use.”
i.e., slavery. Sure. Those buggers have practiced it themselves for centuries and STILL DO! But now you’re gonna really rile the SJWs….
But you also need people who know how to work with them
I tried plowing using an old horse drawn plow pulled behind a tractor. A miserable, strength draining failure. I cannot imagine controlling a 2K pound animal at the same time. When they break wind it must be a cheap thrill gasping for breath.
We no longer have draft animals.
Sure we do. Just some have two legs instead of four.
One of my great-grandfathers plowed his fields every year until 1945 with a pair of mules just 30 miles away from here in Wharton. In 1945, one of them kicked him in the stomach and he died in the field before anyone found him. He and my great-mother immigrated here in 1910? from Belgium. Legally.
Oh wait, is that a micro-aggression to say that my great-grandparents immigrated here legally?
/ begin blackadder
“I just finished dining off my servants.”
“You eat your servants???!!”
“My servants, I eat off them. Why go to the expense of having tables and chairs when I have men standing idle.”
/ end blackadder
Why indeed.
nick
@Ray,
that is one of the enlightening things about the BBC “farm” series. In every era, they have to learn how to plow, sow, and reap.
Sometimes it’s contraptions, sometimes animals, sometimes both combined.
In every case it is a learned skill.
nick
@ofd,
I just did a live install of Andy linux on my CF-30, core 2 duo, 1.6ghz, 4 gig ram, 120gig SSD.
As I poke around, there are a couple of things that don’t seem to work, but it could just be config issues. I’m also not online with that machine, so there could be a net dependency for some things. It seems to run fine, although it didn’t pick up all the hardware. The touch screen, and wifi, got missed. The SDR app works fine with my Realtek based dongle, once I bumped all the gains up to where I could hear it. Currently have the local repeater up on it. The waterfall display looks fine, and the processor isn’t even running hard.
I suppose if I installed it, I could get the other hardware running.
I thought I had another SSD laying around, but I can’t find it. My plan was to setup a second machine with andy linux on it. If I can find a cheap SSD or other sata drive I’ll do that, otherwise I’m stuck running the live distro on this one. Don’t want to dual boot.
It was very nice to just do the one setup. To get all the same radio packages (or equal) on the win7 side is gonna be a pain.
Early days, but the base ubuntu runs fine on the Toughbook, and at least Gqrx (SDR) runs without problems.
nick
“…is that a micro-aggression to say that my great-grandparents immigrated here legally?”
Yes. You’re catching on fast, kemosabe!
“In every case it is a learned skill.”
And once again, not something for us guys currently in our sixties and heading, maybe, into our seventies, eighties and beyond….
@Mr. nick:
“I suppose if I installed it, I could get the other hardware running.”
I’m guessing that’s probably right; I’ve run into this same issue with “live” versus “real install” on various hardware with some Linux distros.
“To get all the same radio packages (or equal) on the win7 side is gonna be a pain.”
Yeah. Fedora also has a ham radio site where you can download various radio apps, but you gotta unpack ’em all once you get them, also kind of a pain. Whereas Andy’s has ’em all pretty well already.
Good to know about the SDR; I haven’t got the Toughbook yet, probably off eBay, and will report on it here when I do.
I suspect that most of the readers here are in the target demographic: Why are middle-aged whites dying at such high rates?
Be sure to read the comments.
“Be sure to read the comments.”
Interesting stuff, kinda. Multiple possible causes if the stats are accurate. A bunch of us here are a bit older than that demographic, however, and we hang on, bitterly clinging to our guns and religion..oh wait…guns, anyway.
It does get depressing some days when I reflect on how effed the IT job market has become and that I’ve essentially been retired from it involuntarily about 10-15 years too early. I could still kick ass out there but can’t even get feedback from recruiters who contacted ME FIRST. But fuck all that; I’ll do something or other to generate revenue here and contribute to the Chez OFD bottom line and if for no other reason than to watch it all burn and piss off the bastards that hate our guts and wish us gone.
Guys younger than me are calling it quits and checking out? 22 veterans a day likewise? Screw that. I didn’t make it through three U.S. wars and years of street cop work and forty years of boozing to just give up now.
More “science” in the “no $hit, $herlock” category. How does one manage to get paid to do this kind of “research”, anyway?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11977121/Women-are-either-bisexual-or-gay-but-never-straight.html
I seem to recall our host making the same observation on several occasions.
OFD wrote:
“Anyone to the left of Patrick Buchanan is a lefty IMHO, lol.”
That yould make you a lefty, wouldn’t it Dave?
I’ve never claimed there were no straight women. What I’ve said is that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being 100% heterosexual and 10 being 100% homosexual, the vast majority of men cluster around the two extreme ends of the scale, while women make something that looks more like a bell curve. OTTOMH, I’d guess that 5% of women are 1’s or 2’s and another 5% are 9’s or 10’s, leaving 90% in the 3 through 8 range. For men, I’d guess maybe 90% are 1’s, 5% to 8% are 10’s, and the remaining 2% to 5% are in the 2 through 9 range. In other words, the overwhelming majority of men are straight or gay, with only a tiny percentage bisexual.
“That yould make you a lefty, wouldn’t it Dave?”
How so, kemosabe?
Patrick still believes in elections, parties and voting; I’m slightly to his right. (using the old Marxist term for it, of course).
I’ve often wondered if Dr. Bob was a lesbian.
I’ve gotten several emails from people who want to know what to do to prepare for what Koppel describes. My short answer is, “Beats the hell out of me.” Make no mistake. A long-term grid-down event is the absolute worst nightmare imaginable. My longer answer is that we should all do what we’re doing now–store food, water, and other supplies and gear, learn skills, and make what provision you can for solar power at least sufficient to recharge small batteries and, if necessary, to drive your well pump for at least a few minutes every day. We all hope this never happens, because if it does things will quickly become unimaginably bad. All we can do is hope that it never happens, but make provision as best we can to deal with it if it does.
Plant corn everywhere you can? I was always struck by the “Revolution” tv series in that they had corn growing on every square inch of the property behind their sheet metal walls protecting them from raiders.
http://www.rootsimple.com/2012/09/revolution-a-new-tv-series-about-extreme-suburban-homesteading/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_%28TV_series%29
Just another day here in the Land of Sugar, “Sugar Land residents run into toothy surprise at area strip mall”:
http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/fortbend/news/article/Sugarland-residents-run-into-toothy-surprise-at-6617281.php
12 ft long and 800 lb. He would take you down and keep you down.
@nick, 290 West really, really, really sucks. I like the way that they close all four east bound lanes in the middle of Sunday afternoon and divert all the traffic to the two lane feeder road with traffic lights every 1,000 ft. I went to the Sam’s Club at 290W and West road this afternoon to pick up a Persian rug. After I saw that nightmare, I went home on the Grand Parkway tollway (99). I had come across on the tollway (8).
I also like the way that they restriped two lanes into four lanes on 290W. Classy! No shoulders, no emergency lanes but we got four lanes heading west. Got kinda tough for a while when I was in the far right lane with the wall on the right side and an 18 wheeler on the left side with his wheels hanging over all the road stripes.
Note to self: never ever go on 290 east of 99 again.
It’ll be nice when they get done….
It’s funny, when they started all the work on I10 out to Katy, a LOT of the contractors, consultants, and engineers my wife works with moved out 290, to avoid the nonsense on the 10. They didn’t look at the plans I guess, so now they are hurting. How would you like to make that commute every day?
Not me!
When we moved into this house we looked at other areas. We could have gotten more house, or more land, just by being a little farther north, or south, or west, but it would have added to my wife’s commute. That time REALLY adds up over a working career.
There have been studies that show that when a company moves, it ALWAYS moves closer to the executives’ homes.
nick
Yep, I avoid 290 inside the beltway entirely, and outside as much as possible.
“There have been studies that show that when a company moves, it ALWAYS moves closer to the executives’ homes.”
That is correct; usually within a five-minute commute for them, either motor or on foot. And screw all the drones; was done to my wife with her state gummint job twice by asshole PHB mangler, who, after the office was moved thirty miles and everyone had to adjust their commutes (longer) accordingly, he left for a nice private job in MA.
Around the same time I was doing a temp IT gig for another agency of state gummint and they’d been using an open source email for many years, probably twenty or more, I think it was Pandora. Well, a new PHB mangler rolled in and wanted the agency email to sync with his Crackberry or whatever so everyone had to get with Microslop Outlook overnight, basically. After that was done, he left a few months later for another slick private-sector gig.
On the clogged highway systems, crumbling infrastructure and continuing Happy Motoring, that’s all gonna be a friggin’ slag heap wasteland eventually, one way or another. Grid down, can’t pump gas. Cue up the Mad Max franchise….