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| [IOD]SnipsSuper Regular Spaz Sniper P: 02/18/2024 10:20 | Prepping Guide I wanted to write a collection of stuff about likely threats threatening your life beyond local events such as hurricanes or tornadoes in your state. With another global pandemic being #2, the highest threat is a nationwide power outage which I'll cover. By [IOD]Snips So I wanted to cover another passion of mine which is preparing for disasters. This can cover the highest likelihood for the nation (emp/flare or pandemic) or a local specific threat (living at the base of a volcano, or in the heart of Tornado territory). There is also reactionary prepping where you feel it's better to live in a heightened state temporarily due to unknowns such as potential wars or science based threats. I won't cover localized prepping as there are too many to cover & they don't apply to most such as flooding, fire, hurricane, hail, tornados, volcano's or earthquakes. #1 Power Grid Failure Large percentage of americans and/or humanity will simply die with a complete electricity failure lasting from months to years. Scarier yet, the most likely causes from war to science all result in this same outcome. When I put the information I've gathered together, I truly do believe a world war 3 would be primarily a cyber war not involving nuclear weapons. Beyond cryptography's complete failure due to quantum computers resulting in zero national security, financial collapse & digital records getting wiped without offline backups all pale in comparison to starving people if there is no electricity as goods cannot be delivered to stores. Causes of electrical grid failing in no particular order A. EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) In TFC the engineer class's secondary grenade wave upon explosion is precisely this, where the damage is derived from the rockets present within the players hit or green bags within the blast radius. With a real EMP, basically any electronics with wires become damaged regardless if they are turned on or off. So phones, smart cars, electronic gas pumps, atm machines, credit card machines all fail. With transformers exploding & essential hardware destroyed, America is forced to rely upon China to produce these super massive specific transformers that weigh many tons to get everything back up. Scarier yet, we've been using these made overseas already, relying on their firmware & hardware assuming everything is 100% safe. A nuclear bomb detonated 20 miles or higher above land high in the atmosphere wouldn't kill people from the blast, however the EMP that is generated would travel thousands of miles destroying the grid resulting in the slow deaths of countless individuals that are unable to hunt or fish to survive. Gas stations & grocery stores require fuel & electricity to deliver goods across the nation. You can protect literally anything from an EMP by placing it into a faraday bag. Larger items can be stored cheaply by buying a metal trash can, lining the inside with cardboard, and placing items inside & putting on the lid. It needs a tight seal however, so a liner around the rim is highly suggested. When the EMP travels at the speed of light, it goes around the faraday cage which is the metal trash can & contents within are safe. Again only electronics with wires are in danger in the first place, humans are mostly safe unless they have electrical implants such as a pacemaker. B. Solar Flare (from the sun, chance of hitting earth) There are solar storms that can erupt from the sun, often several times larger than earth & fly outward. Every 11 years the north & south poles flip on the sun, so it is predictable when the most violent surface tensions on the sun will occur, and when the most calm time on the sun will be. The peak of this current solar cycle 25 is expected to be in-between January through October of 2024 producing the most activity. So 2035 will be the next stressful time for the sun give or take a year. Likewise 2019 & 2029 should be the most calm time for the sun. Solar storms occur a huge number of times per year and are given five classifications from weakest to strongest. A G1 is very minor whereas a G5 is the most harsh on the scale. The solar flare from the strongest storms would be adding a terrifying amount of voltage on to long wires, thus being the national power lines. The idea is insane voltage spikes would occur damaging huge sections along the power lines & within the electrical infrastructure. It's likely & possible anything you have plugged into the wall (turned on or off doesn't matter) could get fried & destroyed beyond repair, regardless if you have a surge protector as it's switching mechanism is too slow & the voltage too great. Devices unplugged at that moment are unaffected during such an event I believe. The only real go to link if you're ever concerned or curious is the NOAA link below. The forecast on the top shows the current solar storms recorded today, and the forecast for the next 3 days. Sometimes the storms are slower, so you have 8 to 48 hours advanced notice. However sometimes a G2 is predicted and it's really a G3. I have yet to see a predicted G4 in quite some time but am prepared to assume the worst incase in reality it is a G5. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov There is a range for the worst possible G5 storm class if you look back at the scientific history logs. A very weaker G5 storm (super strong G4) might not be big event that takes out the grid. However you only have to look back 165 years to see a medium to higher strength G5's effect. The carrington event in 1859 is what many people refer to when thinking about nature's scariest threat. I've read many journals, news clippings from the time and have always found it fascinating. Most people used candlelight & electricity wasn't as widespread. However during that G5 solar storm the telegraph operators reported getting terrible shocks due to the lines with some telegraph lines catching on fire due to the high voltage the storm placed onto the wire. Some journals & clippings at the time report that individuals were able to read their newspapers without the assistance of candles at 1AM due to the incredible solar lights present as far south as mexico, saying that it's brightness was similar to a sunrise or sunset. It's thought solar storms such as this occur every 150-200 years, however there have been much bigger solar storms then even the carrington event in the past 1000 years. C. Cyber Attack - if this caused a total grid failure it would be considered World War 3. This type of attack is either a coordinated attack from one or more nations implementing a plan that took decades to layout. Sending signals to inflict permanent physical damage to our electrical infrastructure would produce results similar to a solar flare. A pre or post attack from a nuclear delivered EMP shockwave beforehand would result in even higher fatalities in the long term as this ensures power grid collapse. You really have to watch some documentaries & examine the widespread scope of losing the electrical grid to come to the realization of how most people simply would die without the ability to convert money into food & water. |
| [IOD]SnipsSuper Regular Spaz Sniper P: 02/18/2024 10:20 | #2 Pandemics (either airborne or non-airborne) People laugh & have a twisted view on Covid-19 because they're currently examining the events with the viewpoint of knowing the facts years later. The scary unknowns at the time in march 2020 & suggested dangers meant anyone foolish enough to not stock up on food & water were simply not intelligent. The wise people looked past the guesses of the doctors & wishful thinking hopefuls that want to fill in the void of unknown immediately with guesswork. Sadly most people have developed an internal framework how they will choose to approach future pandemics based on what happened with covid-19. If a human engineered virus gets released, many people will assume it's similar to covid & all the rules they were trained with will apply. And that the government shouldn't overreact this time regardless of what the scientists & doctors say, again this is sad. Creating a bioweapon that is contagious is very effective & will become cheaper and more accessible for nations, corporations and even dedicated individuals to pursue in the future. Likewise the threat of another pandemic will grow higher with every year that passes. You can take low, medium and high levels of precautions ahead of time. Having a few boxes of N95 or N100 masks to use incase a new pandemic is airborne. Buying a higher end full face gas mask can be smart, however the breathing cartridges all expire after a few years so it can be expensive to maintain such a prep. You can't live without breathing however, and if a temporary threat occurred then extraordinary precautions might just save your life. If you've learned anything from covid-19, is it should be that you cannot expect to run onto amazon & buy what's needed at the time to best protect yourself and loved ones such as N95 & N100 after the event has already began. |
| [IOD]SnipsSuper Regular Spaz Sniper P: 02/18/2024 10:21 | My rules for prepping items are: Doesn't expire Prefer small compact preps Prefer cheaper items & having backups of the same over a single item My priorities are food above security, however you are only as strong as your weakest link. The old term "Beans, Bullets and Bandaids" says a lot too. I live by the "Three is two, two is one, one is none" mindset. In other words, assume if you have two water filters, one will break or malfunction and you really only have one during a disaster. FOOD: Some people buy dozens of cans of tuna & eat the ones expiring the soonest rotating through their supply. So they always have a few months of extra food on hand of their favorite items. This is too much effort, complicated & ultimately resulting in myself throwing away food. The route I went with instead was buying empty food grade 5 gallon buckets that were very cheap (can get them free from your local grocery/bakery stores, just ask if they have extras as they're throwing them away often!). Buy one 5 gallon mylar bag per bucket off amazon, and also buy an "Oxygen absorber" from amazon for each bucket. Go to Costco & buy a 25 or 50 pound bag of WHITE rice for $10 or $15. Now open the mylar bag & place that inside the 5 gallon plastic bucket, and pour 33 pounds of white rice inside that. Get an iron ready & heated, and tear open an oxygen absorber and toss it into the bag, then quickly seal that mylar bag air tight. Over the next few hours all the oxygen will be eaten up further extending how long the food will remain safe to eat. Finally label the outside of the foodbucket what you placed inside and clearly mark the date & year it was sealed. Now as long as nobody tears open the mylar bag exposing the inside to oxygen (oxygen leaks back in slowly regardless over many years/decades) the rice is safe for long-term storage for 30 years. $1 bucket, $1 mylar bag, $10-12 of rice. Literally the only downside to this is storage, ten or twenty five gallon buckets take up quite a bit of room! There are hundreds of youtube videos online showing how easy & cost effective this is. Replace white rice with dirt cheap beans & refer to the charts online about how long certain foods when sealed with a mylar bag will last. Sadly the 5 gallon pre-sealed mylar bag emergency food kits at costco that last for 20+ years for like $99 come with like 10 pounds of delicious foods that will make enough food for a couple days only. Nothing beats doing this yourself like I explained for the price. Beyond having emergency food like this keeping only yourself alive for 1-12 months, consider if you have friends or family you would be sharing this with. Excess food would become as valuable as gold to trade for weapons or medicines as well during a complete collapse in society. Don't delude yourself into thinking you always have 30+ days worth of food on hand. Test yourself by seeing how many days you can completely eat every last possible thing in your house & if you had to repeat such an event what changes do you wish you would have made. Recognize that you can't beat bulk beans and rice that are as cheap as dirt. I'm against MRE's as used by the military & rich people, often seen on TV's during emergencies. Stands for "Meals are Ready" & I believe come with a heating packet, simply needs you to pour water into the packet & let the heating packet cook the food or something. Things I heavily dislike is the expensive price per meal & how they expire after 5 years. The idea of spending many hundreds if not several thousands of dollars every 5 years and then throwing them away because a disaster never occurred isn't worth the extra flavors. WATER: Water filters for having the long term ability to clean dirty water over the course of months or even years. The potential to purify tens of thousands of liters of water. Relying on a box of water purifying tablets, rain collection only, or simply buying ten giant cases of 40x bottled water is not seeing the larger picture. You want a reusable solution with the prepping expectation in mind that 1 gallon per person for consumption/cooking/cleaning is required per person per day. Emergency foods such as MRE's, dry foods, hell even rice & beans to cook, literally all of the foods require lots of water for cooking too. Understand where your local rivers & streams are locally on a map that you printed out incase the grid has failed. Depending on your location, the localized crime is likely to be the most concentrated around the more popular sources of water during the initial periods of an extended blackout. I like the LifeStraw products such as the personal water filter or better yet the larger family water purifier for $85. Purifies 18000 liters/4755 gallons of water without iodine, chlorine or other chemicals. Enough water for a family of four for 3 years. Again this is a very small non-expiring prep & very cheap considering its importance during a multi month or longer failure of the grid. One of my favorite products is called the WATERBOB for the cheapest smallest possible storage. When inside the tiny box, it is small enough to fit under your bathroom sink. It is a single use product that costs $35. You place the huge bag that is completely sealed like a balloon into your bathtub, and place the faucet into the opening. Taking 15-45 minutes to fill up, the bag can hold upto 100 gallons of water for use during an emergency! When its full, this would weigh 834 pounds making the bathtub the perfect location to store this water. Because it's inside the food grade bag, no water is touching your disgusting soap scummy bathtub itself. You use this incase a nuclear warning is immentent on the news, a full G5 solar storm is expected to arrive with a 12-36 hour warning or other cause for immediate alarm. If you were wrong and the threat is over, simply tear open the bag letting the 100 galleons go down the drain & throw away the bag as it's non-reusable. If the grid failed, I'd likely reuse this bag to make as few trips to obtain water as possible from my area. I would gather, filter, and finally boil my water. Take that purified clean clear water & store it in my 5 gallon water jugs I have. And attempt to refill my 100 Gallon waterbob with excess time I had in the moment. 100 Gallons alone is enough water for three people to live for a month roughly after you consider cooking/cleaning/drinking. |
| [IOD]SnipsSuper Regular Spaz Sniper P: 02/18/2024 10:21 | MAKING ELECTRICITY: Solar - a clear winner, it's reusable for 30 years and cheap considering how many watts it makes. $100 for a 100 watt panel is enough, but grabbing a couple is even smarter. Avoid gas generators entirely. Not only is fuel an unobtainable resource during a grid down scenario, the noise alone is advertising to the starving community that you have resources. When you have electricity from solar stored in your big 12v batteries, you are able to silently cook without fire as well greatly enhancing your security by a huge margin. Candles & the fire threats they present are no longer required either. But just for fun let's cover a few other options below. Electricity creating options not requiring gasoline: Solar - at $1 per watt or less, you can't beat this. For simplicity sake let's say $50 for a 50w solar panel available daily. Pedaling - K-tor bicycle pedal generator is $400 for a 50w, where it feels like you are trying to go up a steep hill nonstop. Wind - simply requires way too much wind to be effective. Even if you spent thousands on a larger model ready to put up during an emergency, if the sustained wind isn't above something like 15-30mph it's going to generate nothing. Water - If you have an active river or stream on your property, the device you place in the water current could generate some non-stop power but most people do not have running water like this. Wood - $100-$200 to buy a wood burning stove that can power a USB 10 watts of power. But now you need lots of wood & smoke is a signal to others to come to you. Deep cycle batteries are how you store your electricity you just gathered or created. A 100AH battery will weigh roughly 66 pounds & look similar to a car battery. Can deliver around 60 watts nonstop for 20 hours straight from 100% full to 0% dead, however you want to only let it go down to 50% typically before recharging, my set of GEL batteries are more flexible to go lower however. Finally you need an inverter (prefer Pure Sine Wave) so that you can connect this to your deep cycle battery and the purpose is to convert your stored electricity into an AC power outlet that you can run appliances on such as your TV, refrigerator/freezer or microwave. Being able to recharge LED flashlights, boil water with a microwave, cook food & countless other things means you won't have to leave the house unlike most other people. Forcing yourself to trade your food or water for quickly used up consumables such as candles, propane tanks, gasoline or store bought batteries for emergency radios means you went the popular route & prepped for the more typical 3-14 day hurricane only style event. Most people ignore the history books & science and prepare to deal with issues they've already experienced in their lifetime only. Throw a global pandemic or a freak tornado occurrence into the mix & they copy whatever others do in the moment, which collectively looks to the government or news. |
| [IOD]SnipsSuper Regular Spaz Sniper P: 02/18/2024 10:22 | When your area gets a blackout, sometimes power is rerouted from another city or state even. But assuming a larger area loses electricity, the idea is cell phone towers will begin to run on gasoline generators. However obviously the cell towers already struggling to meet the excessive demands of their customers will be overrun with people trying to make phone calls or go online all at once. Getting news of "why" your blackout took place will be key, especially if not resolved within the first day. It's when the phone tower gas generators stop is when your source of information ends which is the terrifying truth. People begin to rely on assumptions & personal fears in place of facts. YOUR PLAN: Make your own. The intelligent thing is to think ahead of time. Fear based decisions without access to the internet in the moment will guarantee failure. MY PLAN: If the power has been off for 4 to 24 hours then this would be exceptionally unusual for my area. I would listen to my car's radio & look at my phone for news info. However if they were overloaded & non-functional, I would turn on my cheap shortwave emergency windup radio. 1. CASH: Not sure if any banks have generators or not. ATM machines would be offline. Debit/Credit options are CLOSED in every store, with a hand written not on every store door "CASH ONLY" during a blackout. If you have lots of cash on hand ahead of time good for you. 2. GAS: If I'm low on cash, I'm filling up my car's gasoline tank. Having no cash means you have zero options or control how this unknown disaster or threat might play out. If radio or phones gave an indication that a nearby city or a neighboring state still has power I would book it over to there in my car immediately. If there was no information available to me, I'd take a gamble and pick a direction and start driving, making sure I have enough gas to get home. 3. FOOD: I'm buying canned foods & extra cheap cases of 40packs of bottled water. Grabbing some huge bulk bags of rice for $10-$15 at costco too. The amount I'm buying depends on if it's the first 4-8 hours & I'm buying this locally. If I had to drive for hours to find a state that still has power, I'm going to be more paranoid & stock up further. 4. INFO: Some cell towers have a gas generator allowing phone signals for that first day or less. Others have a battery backup only for 911 & emergency calls only. You need to know the who/what/where/when/why of the situation. Especially as the power outage does not get resolved after 48hours & phone signals and radio's begin to end. Most people will look at their gas tank, see it's half full and just go home from work. They'll throw their food away from their refrigerator, but have confidence that smart people & our government will fix whatever's causing this temporary issue. They're not reviewing their first aid kits, their fire extinguishers, making sure their gun & ammo is on hand, reviewing how many non-perishable canned foods they have or water. Ultimately they'll step outside their home and reflect upon how worried their neighbors look & act the same. It's not a fun exercise, but flipping the circuit breaker of your home to the OFF position for 24 hours can be a rewarding test to see if you can deal with such a situation. Only do this if you have deep cycle 12v batteries + inverter to keep your refrigerator/freezer operational & microwave functional without using your regular electric companies power. What is your plan for your pee & poop without running water? What about cleaning your dishes, or do you have paper plates & plastic spoons/forks on hand? Do you know where your nearest river or stream is located to your home incase there is no rainfall? |
| EmotionallyDisturbedParakeetSuper Regular FatGuy With A LittleGun P: 02/18/2024 10:48 | Solar - at $1 per watt or less, you can't beat this. For simplicity sake let's say $50 for a 50w solar panel available daily. Pedaling - K-tor bicycle pedal generator is $400 for a 50w, where it feels like you are trying to go up a steep hill nonstop. Wind - simply requires way too much wind to be effective. Even if you spent thousands on a larger model ready to put up during an emergency, if the sustained wind isn't above something like 15-30mph it's going to generate nothing. Water - If you have an active river or stream on your property, the device you place in the water current could generate some non-stop power but most people do not have running water like this. Wood - $100-$200 to buy a wood burning stove that can power a USB 10 watts of power. But now you need lots of wood & smoke is a signal to others to come to you. Stirling engine. https://warpfivefans.com/product/stirling-engine-generator/ |
| EmotionallyDisturbedParakeetSuper Regular FatGuy With A LittleGun P: 02/18/2024 10:57 | (stirling engine can use any of the heat sources above) |
| [IOD]SnipsSuper Regular Spaz Sniper P: 02/18/2024 12:17 | EmotionallyDisturbedParakeet wrote: Solar - at $1 per watt or less, you can't beat this. For simplicity sake let's say $50 for a 50w solar panel available daily. Pedaling - K-tor bicycle pedal generator is $400 for a 50w, where it feels like you are trying to go up a steep hill nonstop. Wind - simply requires way too much wind to be effective. Even if you spent thousands on a larger model ready to put up during an emergency, if the sustained wind isn't above something like 15-30mph it's going to generate nothing. Water - If you have an active river or stream on your property, the device you place in the water current could generate some non-stop power but most people do not have running water like this. Wood - $100-$200 to buy a wood burning stove that can power a USB 10 watts of power. But now you need lots of wood & smoke is a signal to others to come to you. Stirling engine. https://warpfivefans.com/product/stirling-engine-generator/ Wow that is such a bizarre product. So for $2,240 the Stirling Engine Generator runs on denatured alcohol, methylated spirits or bio ethanol fuel however they will NOT mention how much electricity it produces while running? The phrasing suggests it can only power an emergency radio with FM & AM reception which can't possibly be accurate. Since a $20 windup radio with included battery would function the same way. I did try the K-Tor hand crank generator that can do 10watts in real time, which was fun for 10 or 20 seconds, after which it fucking sucks due to the effort involved! |
| [IOD]SnipsSuper Regular Spaz Sniper P: 02/18/2024 12:19 | After a complete grid failure, Gaba would attempt to trade his large priceless honey supply for goods. Because his revenge bee's he sends out in the mail would be useless without the postal service operational. |
| EmotionallyDisturbedParakeetSuper Regular FatGuy With A LittleGun P: 02/18/2024 18:16 E: 02/18/2024 18:17 | Anything that gets hot can be used as a heat source. A stirling engine could be fired by wood, oil, candles, concentrated solar, nuclear. I had a professor in college who worked on stirling engines with concentrated solar as a heat source. As for how much power it produces, that of course depends on the amount of heat you can provide and the reciprocating pistons receive. Thermodynamically, stirling engines are high efficiency (workout / heat in). I think I read up to 50% (at the flywheel). They're not used in automobiles because its slow to get up to speed and respond. The Swedish navy has a submarine with a stirling engine. It is apparently the quietest in the world, being able to sneak up to a us aircraft carrier during a war game or something like that. |
| EmotionallyDisturbedParakeetSuper Regular FatGuy With A LittleGun P: 02/18/2024 18:19 | [IOD]Snips wrote: After a complete grid failure, Gaba would attempt to trade his large priceless honey supply for goods. Because his revenge bee's he sends out in the mail would be useless without the postal service operational. Learning bee keeping, gardening and how to smoke meat would be top skills to have. Raising farm animals. Although this depends on what kind of doomsday we are preparing for. If it's nuclear winter I do not believe there's anyway to survive. Maybe a very few people will survive a few years underground, but not sustainable. |
| Judge HoldenSuper Regular Scout Crowbar Master P: 02/18/2024 21:05 | gaba's an engineer, i'm just gonna go live with him |
| Ignorant_FloristDaycare Manager Pipebomb Monkey P: 02/19/2024 14:30 | You just want to polish his Sentry Gun.... |
| EmotionallyDisturbedParakeetSuper Regular FatGuy With A LittleGun P: 02/20/2024 20:13 | Judge Holden wrote: gaba's an engineer, i'm just gonna go live with him I have not worked in an engineering capacity for a few years. I recently made a cat toy which is string tied to a light with a mostly empty toilet paper tube tied around the bottom and a an oscillating fan making it move. Charlie Jr, my cat, loves it. |
| EmotionallyDisturbedParakeetSuper Regular FatGuy With A LittleGun P: 02/20/2024 20:14 | Otherwise you hole up with me you probably gonna die sooner rather than later lol. |