Mike,
This is the second (Giant2.doc) of my document packages to you. The third will be Giant3.doc for sure and, maybe, a #4 &5.
These and the following ones were drafts for posts to a forum and a few were just mental exercises. You’ll find bits and pieces of text at the end of some of these that I thought I might include but didn’t or simply some initial ideas I had.
You’ll also see that some themes occur again and again. My focus is to prepare for a worst-case and that such planning should be in written form. I am totally uninterested in planning for a “not too bad” case. And, it drives me crazy when all people want to do is discuss what the hope to do some day.
So, with those caveats, here goes.
Todd
Contingency Planning for Real Survival
There are many bad things lurking on the horizon and contingency planning is crucial to survival. What may happen may be the “perfect storm”, Infomagic’s spiraling collapse of cascading destruction or Duncan’s Olduvai Theory. But regardless of what it is called or how it arrives, the future is bleak.
Common sense would seem to dictate that people look rationally at the future and take steps to ameliorate these potentials for disaster. However, few people really make the effort to develop a series of fallback plans in the event that Plan A doesn’t work or is inadequate in some way.
Prepping is certainly a beginning for a contingency plan but it is one-dimensional without comprehensive consideration of what might happen and, regardless of how many preps are stored, prepping is time limited.
In the case of food, one contingency plan might be to forage at some point. But this raises three questions: First, do you know how to forage? Second, do you know what is available season by season in your area? And, third, when will you begin foraging? By this I mean, do you start to forage the first day you begin to eat your preps so as to extend their lifetime and not over tax your natural resources; do you begin to forage when you have a week’s worth of food left; or do you wait until you are down to your last mouthful before foraging?
These are the kinds of questions that are the basis of a contingency plan.
Another example might be PM’s. The assumption is that, having supposed intrinsic value, they can be used to purchase or be traded for things. But what happens if there is no market in which to sell them to convert them into some kind of accepted currency or if they can’t be traded for some physical asset (and don’t argue that people will always accept gold because, at least in my case, I wouldn’t)?
In reality, there are dozens of issues that need to be addressed in a contingency plan. But any plan has to have depth - a Plan B, C and through Z if necessary. These multiple layers/fallback positions are the absolute keys to contingency planning.
Consider the following list of categories (which are hardly comprehensive and similar to the forecast Y2K problems):
Utilities – power, telephone (land line and cell), water, sewers, natural gas/propane
Financial – check paying/check cashing, debit cards, credit cards, ATM’s, cash availability/change of currency
Economy – deflation/depression, inflation/hyperinflation, stock market collapse, no jobs, collapse of the housing bubble, an oil embargo, loss of retirement income, cancellation of Medicare/MediCal programs
Services – fire, police, ambulance, road repair/snow removal, schools, buses/trolleys
Information – radio, TV, Internet/computers, newspapers, magazines, telephone
Necessities - food, water, repair supplies, shelter, clothing, personal care products
Food production – reduced petroleum inputs, inadequate water for irrigation, no imported food, new diseases/pests
Home food production/preservation – food for animals, seeds, fruit trees/bushes/vines, water, fertilizer, pesticides, hot water/steam canners, pressure canners, dehydrators, smokers, canning spices, fishing/hunting equipment
Medical – doctors, nurses, hospitals, prescription drugs, EMT’s, vitamins
Transportation – cars, bikes, boats, planes, four wheelers, foot travel
Timeframe/length of occurrence – radiation, disease, restoration of services/supplies/food/ fuel, economic collapse
Civil unrest – gangs, people leaving cities, neighbors, military
Fuel – gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, wood (for heating or wood gas fuel), anaerobic methane, oil embargo, solar/wind/water, coal
Government – military dictatorship, fascist dictatorship, detention camps, public executions of dissenters on TV, quarantines, anarchy, forced medications, travel by permit only, road blocks/checkpoints, mandatory identity cards/chip implants, transactions only possible using a government issued income card (cashless society with government access to all your spending habits)
Potential defensive weapons – hand guns, rifles, bows and arrows/crossbows, pit traps/snares/deadfalls, observation points, closing roads, incendiary devices, cutting down road signs, local militia, chemicals, disease
Also consider potential offensive weapons that might be used against you – conventional explosives, dirty nukes, nukes, disease, chemical contaminants, EMP bombs, invasion by a foreign country, invasion of your area by U S troops/LEO’s
A comprehensive plan would consider the ramifications if any of these things occurred and a plan to overcome, circumvent or use them. Now, clearly, there are so many possible permutations that it is impossible to cover each and every one. However, it is possible to have plans for various general categories. Lack of a plan assures disaster.
Here’s a personal example of what can happen during a disaster: I managed a research facility that was located on the grounds of a chemical plant. The plant experienced a massive dust explosion just as lunch was starting. The roof was blown off the three-story, 100x300 foot plant and, in the end, 14 were killed.
Many employees ate off-site and were punching out when the explosion occurred. When they realized what had happened, some went up to the neighborhood bar and got drunk. Some went home and some hung around watching the fire and the additional explosions when drums of flammable liquids ruptured and skyrocketed into the air.
Although the plant had an emergency evacuation plan, no one had considered a real disaster much less one occurring when employees were leaving the plant. The result was that it took over a day to account for everyone thus hindering the search for bodies or survivors. Should there have been a disaster plan? Sure – in retrospect.
My point is that you cannot automatically discount a worst-case scenario simply because it seems improbable. And, I personally believe that it is easier to prepare a contingency plan by starting with the absolutely worst case and then to work backward toward the simpler scenarios.
Contingency planning will also reveal that some problems have no solutions. And, it is these kinds of problems that can waste extraordinary amounts of time and resources while trying to find alternatives that don’t exist. They will also reveal that there are a ton of minutiae that make your life either possible or easier. Take lighting for example. Even with a PV system you have to be concerned about how you would provide replacement bulbs. This might not be possible. One alternative to electric lights would be to grow grain, ferment it and distill off the alcohol and use it in lamps. But again, this raises questions such as how to grow grain, ferment and distill the alcohol. And, further, what kind of lamp you would use it in.
I would suggest that you rent the movie Testament before you begin your plan. The story is about the impact of a nuke dropped on San Francisco on a town in Marin County on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. There is no gore, gutted buildings or special effects – just fallout/radiation. There is unrelenting sadness and depression. Ask yourself what kinds of contingency plans or timely actions could have saved at least some of the people (and there were many things that could have been done). Also ask yourself how you would cope with your own depression and, perhaps, the guilt of surviving in a situation like that.
I want to close with a comment that was made at a retirement conference I attended several years ago. The speaker was asked what was the best time to retire. The speaker said, “Today is the best time to retire because you may die before tomorrow.” The same thing is true of contingency planning.
Let me give two personal examples; hot water and motive power.
In the case of hot water we have a 40 gallon electric heater. If the grid goes down permanently, we’ll switch to our PV system for electricity. If there is insufficient sun to provide juice to heat the 40 gallon, we’ll switch to a 6 gallon heater and by-pass the 40. If there is no electricity from any source we’ll by-pass both heaters and use the hot water the solar collectors make or the heat exchanger in the wood heater. If that fails we’ll switch to simply heating the water on the wood cook stove or wood heater in a container.
Now let’s assume there is no fuel and won’t be any for months or a year or more. We can produce food in greater quantities and easier if we can use the tiller. Therefore, the first priority would be to not use fuel for our cars or truck and save it for the tiller. No problem. I’ll just weld up wood gas generators for the vehicles from the parts I have using the arc welder. If I can’t use the arc welder I’ll use the gas welder. And, as a last resort, I’d try welding like the blacksmiths do but I don’t hold out much hope for that approach.
I have long criticized prepping as a survival philosophy for a number of specific reasons such as their being time-limited. In this post I want to review why contingency planning is necessary even before prepping starts.
Let’s start with the ultimate truism – no one can foresee the future even a day in advance. I’d be a millionaire if I could foresee the stock market just one day in advance. However, I can use a number of techniques to limit negative impacts upon my investment such as stop loss orders, delta spreads and other hedging techniques and, thereby, maximize the possibility of success or at least minimize my loss.
But it is another story when it comes to survival. There appears to be no contingency planning that the assumption that led to the prepping strategy chosen in the first place might be wrong. Let’s face it; if you run out of water four weeks into a six week emergency, you’re dead.
Even super doomers like myself recognize that no amount of ordinary preparation guarantees survival. Let me offer a simple example. Take hot water. All of our hot water is pre-heated using either solar collectors or a heat exchanger in the wood heater. Either of these usually heat the water to a usable temperature but, if necessary, the electric hot water heater is turned on. But, suppose, the grid I down. No problem, simply switch to the PV system. But if there is little sun? Switch to a back-up 6 gallon electric hot water heater that uses very little juice and by-pass the 40 gallon tank. No electricity at all? Simply heat the water in a container on either the wood cook stove or wood heater. We’ve been there and done that. I have an old picture of me in the bathtub with the hot water canner bottom and a kerosene lantern taking a “bath”. In the summer, a shower bag outside is great. Been there and done that too.
Electricity? Same deal. PV, gas generator, diesel generator, wood gas fuel if necessary.
Entertainment? Well, we have lots of audio and video tapes. But what happens if we can’t play them? What do we do? Aside from the fact that we have thousands of books to read, we can switch to musical instruments. We have a couple of six string acoustic guitars, one 12 string guitar, two five string banjos (one well over 100 years old), a banjo mandolin, a banjo uke, a zither, a melodeon and, of all things, my old clarinet from elementary school and lots of music books.
The same thing is true of food and water – multiple layers of back-up.
This idea of multiple layers is the absolute key to contingency planning. You have to look potential problems straight in the eye regardless of how remote they might be and develop a plan to circumvent them before they occur. Why? Because most people do not make rational decisions during a crisis. However, they will follow a plan that they have laid out ahead of time because it can be done without thinking.
Let me put the idea of contingency planning in another context. A number of years ago I had a research facility that was located on the same site as a production plant. I was at a meeting in another state three hours away. About noon a secretary came in to say that my facility had had a devastating explosion and that it might have killed 20 people. There were continuing news reports of the disaster on the radio as my boss and I drove up the Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Thruway. We could see the plume of smoke 20 miles away. It was like being in hell for me for three hours believing I had missed some safety action I could have taken. How could I have killed helpless people because I was too stupid to see a safety hazard?
We used lots of nasty crap; know carcinogens, highly flammable and explosive liquids and gasses …you name it so none of this was out of question. To make a long story shorter, my facility didn’t explode and kill people but rather a dust explosion in the main plant and the heat from the plant’s fire burned down my building. But I have never forgotten those hours.
But almost worse was when I was working with riggers to pull out equipment while the body dogs were trying to find the last bodies outside my building since all they had of the last two people two people were part of a rib cage and a skull. I didn’t want them to find the last body parts while I watched. Fourteen were killed.
Now, fast forward to today. You’re sitting in a chair while your kid is in your arms because and you explain how you stayed where you were because of the money.
Risk Management and Survival: Plan B
We all have heard about risk management and some of us have had jobs where risk management was a significant concern. In my case, it was the chemical industry. However, there are common elements in all forms of risk management. First, risk management is active, that is, you do not manage risk by sitting back and waiting for things to happen and then trying to do something. Second, analysis is always an ongoing activity since conditions change over time. It is not something you do once. Third, educated guesses often have to substitute for hard information. Lastly, the risk actually has to be mitigated or, at the very least, recognized. This is a pretty simplified version of the risk management process but it is sufficiently robust for my purpose.
One mistake that even experts make is to discount worst-case scenarios because “No one is stupid enough to do that” or “Mitigation would cost too much” to “Too many things would have to happen at the same time. It couldn’t happen in a thousand years”. Having been through one plant disaster where 15 men were killed and being part of a corporate team that investigated individual fatalities at our plants, I assure you that trying to sidestep or ignore a worst-case scenario is foolhardy.
If we look at the world around us, we can see many real risks. Among them are:
Peak oil/gas
Resource depletion
Pandemics
Insufficient water
A dollar bust
A stock market collapse
Hyper inflation/stagflation/deflation or depression
A real estate bust
Warfare
Food shortages
Terrorism
Many of these are clearly interrelated but the end result will be the same – life as it is known today has a very high probability of changing for the worst if even one or two of these things come to pass. But now we have to enter the active phase of risk management. It is at this point that decisions have to be made.
If we consider posts/replies on TB2K as indicative of the public at large, we see views of the future falling into three categories:
Society will never collapse. No preparation is necessary.
Society will experience very serious, but temporary, crises but will survive. Some preparation is necessary to tide you over.
The sky is falling. Run for the hills and start a homestead.
Each category cites it’s own articles and experts to support its position. Yet, someone is clearly wrong. They can’t all be right. And, here we get into the conundrum of risk management. If you run for the hills, you’ll probably survive regardless of the future. You might feel stupid that you listened to all the collapse crap if nothing happens but you’ll be alive in any case. If you do nothing and society does collapse, you may die. You might watch your kids starve to death. Or, maybe, you’ll die as a family from nuclear fallout because you refused to move to a safer area. For a good example of how that might play out, watch the movie Testament. - the most depressing film ever made in my view.
My point is that there really isn’t any middle ground: either life is going to remain pretty much the same or it isn’t. Those who believe they sky is soon to fall often argue that those who believe otherwise are in denial. I personally believe this is disingenuous since this insinuates that the people who disagree are stupid and can’t interpret the facts or would change their minds immediately if only the “right” facts were presented. It is equally likely that those who believe the sky won’t fall feel the same way about those who think the sky will fall.
Clearly, knowledge of a risk in and of itself does not motivate most people. People still drive too fast for road conditions, overeat and get fat, smoke, drink in excess and do a thousand other things where the risk is known to cause harm. But, they do them anyway. If knowing that thousands die in car crashes each year hasn’t led to universal safe driving habits, why would some nebulous projections about peak oil, for example, lead anyone to be concerned, much less result in a change in lifestyle? The answer is that it won’t. However, it is amazing how many people become reformed drunks after they are arrested for drunk driving and how many smokers quit after their first heart attack.
The trouble in the case of the future is that there can be no retroactive risk mitigation. Either risk is managed prior to an event or it isn’t. It is this black and whiteness that many people don’t understand. In addition, people become paralyzed because they insist upon knowing exactly how and when something might occur. When this isn’t possible, and that is usually the case, they do nothing and pretend the risk doesn’t exist. Lastly, even those people who think about risk management/survival don’t base their plans on a worst-case scenario. Instead, they diddle around the edges.
I believe that probably 99+% of the U.S. population will do nothing to mitigate potential future risks regardless of available information. There is a naïve belief that there will be ample forewarning of a crisis but experience has shown that this is almost never the case. They also tend to believe that “someone” will take care of the problem for them. When a worst-case scenario actually occurs, I believe that it will be impossible to take action to mitigate it because resources will be overwhelmed and, further, there will not be enough time.
It is one thing to talk about a worst-case future in an abstract way but another to deal with it in reality. My rural area could be considered a microcosm for what may happen because it is small enough to react quickly and manifest the good, the bad and the ugly within a short period. Compared to urban areas, one might believe that it would be more immune, that is, resilient, from coming events but I believe this will not be the case. Instead, I believe events will be quickly amplified.
The community is in the Coast Range Mountains of northern California. I have lived here for over thirty years. It is about 20 miles from the ocean. It is in an area that is unlikely to be impacted by continental nuclear strikes on the U.S. from either direct blasts or fallout. There are no terrorist targets. It is mountainous cattle and timber country. There is no commercial agriculture with the exception of, perhaps, 500 acres of hay and cattle on range on thousands of acres. Only a few people have home gardens. Most buy all their food at stores. Everything is trucked in from distant cities. Even those who heat with wood typically buy it. In reality, the area is only self-sufficient in cows and trees.
Rural areas like mine always have borderline economies even in good times and it will take little to nudge it over the edge. I simply see no way that my community, as a unit, could adapt, whatever that may mean, to the loss of its already limited economy.
Note that I have not defined how collapse might occur or how rapid a collapse might be. I am uninterested in these issues from a risk management point of view. I am only concerned with the probability of collapse occurring at some point – and it is very high in my estimation.
Here is what I see for my area:
Depopulation – The first to go will be the dope growers who will have no market and, therefore, no money. The second to go will be older people who depend upon local businesses and services. I don’t see any of these surviving. The third to go will be people who cannot produce their own food. The last to go will be people in the hills who rely upon diesel, propane or gasoline for water pumps, generators, refrigerators, hot water and stoves. Yes, they could build wood gas generators but they won’t have the parts or know how to do it. My area covers about 600 square miles and currently has, as a guess, around 2,500 people. I expect the final population to be 500-700, certainly less then 1,000.
Energy – Wood gas will initially be substituted for gasoline and diesel fuel by a few people. However, the ultimate limiting factor will be lubricating oil. Although there is likely to be engine oil some place at a price, I believe that the remaining people will eventually revert to oxen (actually cows) for tillage and horses for travel. There are lots of riding horses around since this is cattle country but no draft horses.
Food Production – Water will be the initial limiting factor. Even many people with wells or springs will not have sufficient water to grow crops to the extent necessary to avoid starvation. To put this into perspective, our area’s ETO (evapotranspiration) is about 6” or half an acre-foot per month during the summer. This is well over 100,000 gallons per month per acre or more than 5,000 gallons per day per acre.
It would be theoretically possible to impound a large stream that runs through the valley and use the surrounding flat land for a community garden. However, this is unlikely.
In the longer run, nutrients such as phosphate and calcium will become added limiting factors.
Schools – The school district will shut down because parents are not going to drive down to the school bus stops assuming the buses are still running. Fifty years ago (which doesn’t seem so long ago to me since I graduated from high school in 1956), there were one-room schoolhouses scattered throughout the area. They were so far out that the teachers lived at the school. It’s hard to believe these days but it was accepted back then. One of the teachers is a very good friend of mine who is full of stories about 20 foot snow drifts and working in the woods as a choker setter during the summer because the pay was so low for teachers.
Parents will home-school, develop their own local, one-room schools or simply let the kids run wild.
City People - The argument is always thrown up that city people will invade the boondocks. A few might show up or get by the roadblocks but I believe the vast majority will stay in the cities or be prevented from leaving. Further, those who do get here will not have the skills to survive.
Community – There won’t be much community. In the beginning people might trek to town to trade and barter once a week, then it will probably go to once a month and then, finally, stop altogether. The problem is the majority of people live 10-20 miles (and some much farther) from town and that would put extra miles on the engine oil assuming wood gas is used as fuel. And, who wants spend two days riding their horse to town and back when there will be little there? As an aside, we have friends who live southwest of us. It is close to a 40 mile drive to get to their house.
Nor will there be any community workshops to make things or tool sharing or small businesses for the same reason; people are too dispersed. However, I do see some sort of community trips to the ocean for rock and surf fish, kelp gathering (for iodine) and salt and as an excuse to see how others are doing and keep up friendships. This could be seen as a replacement for the community picnics we used to have before all the new people moved in and the population got too large.
Communications – Assuming the phones have stopped working, communication will probably go back to the old CB days before the phone company extended the lines. Anyone else remember linear amplifiers for CBs? A few people might have FRS/GMRS units.
So, what does society look like in my area in the long run in a worst-case scenario? It will probably be small groups of people centered upon the roads where they live. They will be herder (cows-goats-sheep-pigs)>hunter-gather (ducks-deer-bear-fish-grouse-quail-and, possibly, elk/acorns-berries-wild greens/seeds)>farmers (vegetable crops and chickens and turkeys).
In my specific case, there are 8-10 adults (four families) and no young children on our mile long private road. Together we own almost 100 acres (57Ac, 34Ac and 6Ac) and would have access to another 200 acres of adjoining range for animals. A friend has pointed out that there are some endemic diseases such as liver flukes that require the cows to be shot-up so there are some potential problems with stock.
What follows is far from a complete description of our plans. Rather, I hope to give the “flavor”. Many of the specifics come from me and would probably be modified to some degree in actual practice.
There will be several small gardens of an eighth (one exists) to quarter acre by people’s homes, one of 2 acres (mine) which could be expanded by another half acre or so and one large, shared one of about 4 acres that would be developed in a bowl-shaped meadow that can be irrigated from a pond.
For the better or worse, I’d be the agricultural consultant since I have grown here the longest, have trialed more varieties and species and have lots of open pollinated seeds. However, I do not maintain sufficient stocks of seed to provide a balanced diet for 8-10 adults. This is a very serious failing that has to be mitigated.
As stupid as it sounds, the first action would probably be to drive to town and buy a bunch of extra seeds at the nursery. In an emergency, it is unlikely that many people will consider seeds important, so there should be a good selection. The alternative is to supplement our diets with native plants. This isn’t far fetched. We have some knowledge of plants that the Indians ate before the white man came. Although the number of species is less then at that time, there is still a wide variety to choose from.
The individual families will likely grow low yield specialty crops they especially like such as melons, hot peppers, greens, garlic/onions, squash or berries on their home plots while the common area would be reserved for crops with high yields such as potatoes, dried beans, corn, soybeans (for soy milk and tofu), hemp, tomatoes, wheat and, maybe, sugar beets for sugar and animal feed. My garden will be the locus of fruit production for everyone since I have the only orchard and vineyard.
I might also grow some things hydroponicly, under lights run off the PV system if a collapse happens during the winter. The lights were formerly used in our greenhouse.
Does this mean we’ve got sustainable agriculture licked and that generations of happy, well-fed people can live off these gardens? No. Sure, we can add nitrogen and organic matter with cover crops and potash from wood ashes. However, we have no realistic way of replacing the phosphorous that is taken off in the crops. Some might argue that there are Permaculture and Biodynamic methods that will keep the soil fertile forever. Only someone who knows nothing about agriculture would believe this.
My guess is that we will end up with high protein diets, a la Akins albeit with as many fruits and veggies as we can reasonably produce, based on chickens and turkeys since they can forage over a wide area most of the year and fish from the pond rather then high carbohydrate diets based upon plants that have to be farmed.
I raised the issue of water as a limiting factor above. We have three water sources: a spring, a well and a pond. The spring belongs to a family that lives on a side road off of the main road but is part of the group. It is really only useful for their domestic needs plus their small, existing garden and their horses but nothing beyond that. The well belongs to me. It supplies the domestic water for us and the other two families. It is also used to irrigate our garden and orchard. The pond is owned by one of the other families and is currently used by my tenants to irrigate their landscaping but it will be used for the joint garden.
The question of pumping water has to be raised: “Ok, you have water, how are you going to pump it?” The spring is currently pumped with a generator and an electric pump but they also have a gas pump they used to use. Both of these could be run on wood gas. My well can run off the grid, my PV system or one of my generators that would be converted to wood gas. The pump and downpipe were just replaced on the well and should last for 10-15 years without attention.
The pond water can be pumped using a gas pump (converted to wood gas) our tenants now use to pump irrigation water from the pond; with a spare 1/3hp jet pump I have, run off of my small 8kW generator; by connecting a PTO roller pump I used to use on my tractor to a car or truck axel; with the old well pump I just replaced. It’s worn but still works; with a milk pump I’ve had stored for years.
Food preservation for my wife and I and the two closest families will take place at our house since we have the necessary equipment and a wood cookstove. The other family will probably do it at their place with, perhaps, the exception of pressure canning. We have the only pressure canner and we wouldn’t loan it out. We also have a meat grinder, a juice press and a large electric dehydrator. Each section of the dehydrator will hold a bushel.
Our main energy source will be wood for heat (we all heat with wood anyway) and cooking. We’ll probably make some ethanol (and, maybe, methanol from wood) for lamp/refrigerator fuel if we can’t figure out how to use wood gas for lighting and for the two families who have propane refrigerators. This should be an ongoing project but I’m the only one fascinated by wood gas. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to pressurize wood gas for lighting and refrigerators. It might be possible to use a blower from a car connected to a PV panel since these appliances require only a few inches of water pressure to work. I have some old, low wattage panels I’m not using that could be used.
We will also have my 3.6kW PV system for some electrical needs like refrigeration/freezing and my shop for repair or construction work. I can run all my power tools on the PV including the arc welder. However, I also have a huge assortment of hand tools ranging from one-point beam saws to my funky blacksmith stuff to planes with flexible sole plates for planning curved surfaces.
I recognize that the PV system isn’t a long-term solution. It offers a window of opportunity to ameliorate current needs but as portions (read batteries) of the system fail over time, it will eventually have to be shut down except during daytime. I would then work through other options when that happened such as using my 8kW gas generator and then my 23kW diesel generator run on wood gas.
One issue that isn’t resolved is clothing. There aren’t enough deer around to provide everyone with buckskins so we’ll have to grow some kind of fiber. This will probably be hemp. Hemp offers many advantages since it produces prodigious amounts of nutritious seeds if pollinated and oil can be extracted from the seeds. But, we’d have a huge learning curve to turn stiff stems into usable cloth. If we were smart we’d all buy 20 year’s worth of clothes and boots and avoid the clothing issue. It’s unlikely that any of the families will, including my wife and I.
Personal Hygiene – The two closest families will have no power if the grid goes down. The other family is off the grid already. Therefore, clothes washing will take place at our home since we will have power from the PV system and we can heat water with the PV system. We also have a solar hot water pre-heating system that will reduce the amount of power needed to heat the water in the summer and a heat exchanger in our wood heater that will reduce the power in winter. And, if there isn’t enough sun to run our 40 gallon tank, I have a 7 gallon tank that doesn’t draw much juice that I bought several years ago specifically to by-pass the big one if necessary.
Showers will also be at our place for the same reasons unless I can figure out how to use wood gas in place of propane since two families have a propane water heaters and the other family could go there. Yes, they could take sponge baths but that will probably take more energy to heat the water in the long run then coming to my house.
One other alternative for hot water is to build a thermo-siphon water heater fueled by wood at the other houses. When I was a kid we had such a system that was fueled by coal. I have spare tanks that could be used. Or, we could build “Blazing Showers” units. These were units that were sold 25-30 years ago. They were a section of flue pipe with a coil inside that replaced a section of flue in wood heaters.
Communications are up in the air since we’ve never talked about it. I have a CB with SSB and a scanner in my truck, a pair of FRS units and a hand-held scanner in the house along with a couple of radios that can pick up SW and other bands. I’d give one of the FRS units to one of the families down the mountain from us so they could let us know if there were problems or for us to tell them when they should come up to can or shower or something. The family on the side road might have an old CB kicking around. Everybody used to have a CB. I’m less worried about this then the other things we would have to deal with. If push came to shove, someone could always use the usual three shots as an alarm.
It is clear that I have anticipated starting out with some significant technology. However, it would be naïve to believe we’ll have it forever. Things will wear out and ancillary materials such as lubricating oil may simply not be available. That will, in turn, make some of our technology useless. Therefore, it is going to be necessary to start looking for alternatives right from the beginning so that we won’t be left in the lurch when the time comes.
I’m guessing we’ll start with scavenging expeditions and try to amass stuff including appliances that might be useful – even if we don’t know what it will be used for. But, we really do need to come up with alternatives that are technologically simple such as replacing my well pump with a windmill (I already have plans for this from VISTA.). It is possible things will not get as bad as I anticipate and that this forethought is a waste of time. However, from a risk management point of view it is the only logical thing to do.
I feel I have to make some closing comments about defense since city people seem fixated about hordes and looters overrunning everything. Any problems in my area are likely to be caused by local people not gang-bangers or starving families from the city. I don’t really want to go into any detail other then to say that trespassing has been considered and will be dealt with appropriately.
Now, do our overall plans mean things will be all peace and light albeit with some rough edges? The answer is no. There are a lot of holes that haven’t been filled or can’t be filled. For example, I’m very seriously concerned about the other families having sufficient food until there are significant harvests. However, it is far better to know these risks even if they can’t be mitigated at the present time then to be surprised by them later.
That’s about it. I think we’ll do all right but life will be really, really hard. For what it is worth, these plans were kicked around by the people involved before Y2K to the extent that we were all pretty much on the same wavelength. That doesn’t mean there will be no conflicts but it does mean we will all work together.
We have never met as a group to discuss when a new crisis might occur or how it might be precipitated. However, we’ve kicked it around individually and we all share the same concerns. We have tried to establish a realistic framework as to what we will have to do and how we are going to do it.
I don’t want to extend this much more but I do want to comment about the difference between my road and Bill P’s ideas of sustainable community. We aren’t a community in the usual sense but rather practical, hard-minded country people who share a road. We do have the advantage of having known one another for many, many years - and we still all get along really well. We will likely do things as individual families that a formal group might object to but will share those things like volume food production, procuring firewood and building wood gas generators that are necessary for survival. However, there is no underlying philosophy that might cause a split. And, this may be the key to our long-term survival.
So, I’ve more or less reached the end…you might say I’ve run out of gas. I spent a number of days drafting endings for this. They all came off pontifical; like I know it all when I don’t. So here is my suggestion: People who are on the borderline between prepping and doomerism need to have a mentor who is actually doing it: A place they can visit, to see how it has been done and sit around discussing the pros and cons of the future. Perhaps, spend part of a vacation there helping out and learning some new skills. Time is of the essence but it hasn’t run out yet.
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