Hurricanes and tornadoes routinely damage roofs, rip off screens, break windows, knock down trees and cause power blackouts. In 1996, Hurricane Fran came through our area, doing all of those things. We had no electricity for a week. Some areas had no electricity for six weeks, in 90-degree, high humidity weather.
I went with a group of men in a church group to go help people after the hurricane. All of us had power tools, some had hand tools, and we quickly found it was very inconvenient to drive ten miles to find an outlet that had power, so we could charge our power tools. (Remembering this was 1996, batteries didn’t last as long then.)
This month’s hurricane here on the East coast, got me thinking about those tools.
I’m writing a climate fiction novel set in 2099, so I’ve been thinking a lot about how people might deal with a power blackout that lasted not days, but months, or longer.
Among the speculative books I read was ‘Lights Out’ by Ted Koppel. He reminds us the energy grids in most ‘first world’ countries are vulnerable to EMP attack, which could cause blackouts of a year or more. An EMP attack could also take out most motor vehicles and appliances with transistors.
More likely, we might lose power for long periods because of hackers attacking vulnerable spots in the grid, and there are lots of them. We know foreign governments have already checked out our grid, and we have, no doubt, done the same to theirs. Then there are the criminal gangs and terrorists who might try it as well.
Last week the battery on my ancient electric drill died. So I went looking for a simple brace-and-bit drill to replace it. Most stores don’t carry them.
So I wondered how many in this group have thought about such things… what you might do, and how you might fare if the lights went out for a year. I’m not a survivalist but it’s good to think about such practical things now and then. I should have fine-tuned the questions in the poll a bit more, and I thought it would let us answer more than one question, which it didn’t. Anyway here are the results. Comments?
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