The Power Grid.

There is certainly an ambivalence to the risk to life in the UK. I sometimes wonder if it because the UK is a long standing, relatively stable country, with a tradition of monarchy and no serious internal strife since the civil war on the side 1600s. If one compares that, for example, to the US, which is only a few hundred years old, had a civil war only just over 150 years ago and emerged as a republic, it is quite easy to see the differences.

If we extrapolate those key differences and then add terrain into the mix, one can see that most people in the UK could quite easily see the country as stable and benign. The stark reality, of course, is that it is an illusion. The power grid could fail tomorrow, our water could stop tomorrow and we, in the UK, are at just as much risk of incidents and developments that require prepping to ensure safety. And yet, still many households in the UK do not even now a torch......

 

I agree, and casting my mind back to the power cuts of the early seventies, nobody panic bought then. We all had candles already.

There is certainly too much easy of availability of goods in today's world.

 

The survival muscles in people's brains haven't been exercised, therefore those muscles have atrophied.

In the West, things have gone relatively smooth for decades now. This is why most preppers are older folk (who remember bad times) or people who have been through hell in their lives.

Ask young people about how many people they've watched die. Have they ever been in a situation where they wondered where their next meal would come from? Have they ever experienced hunger? Have they ever gone camping for days on end with zero electrical devices? Here's a good one, have they ever killed and eaten an animal? A decent percentage may have gone fishing, cleaned the fish, and fried them up. However even the fishermen number out there has dropped. How many youth have ever fired a gun / been taught how to properly handle a weapon? How many have had to administer first aid / ever given another person an injection of medication? Most young folk have never started a real fire -- a cooking fire, a fire to heat a home. If they have started a fire, it was most likely a BBQ fire and they had charcoal lighter to get it going.

The above activities exercise the mind's survival muscles. Without this, even if they have considered how bad things would be when the power goes off (or worse), the muscles aren't in sufficient tone to handle the situation when it finally arrives. And OH, is it ever going to arrive one day!

Many people in the USA have gone out and purchased firearms now that rioting has taken-out sections of cities and now that crime is spinning out of control. The majority of those who are recent purchasers of guns and ammunition have NOT learned to use them, nor have they gone out to the range and sent at least a few hundred rounds down range. To become even semi-decent with any class of firearm (rifle, shotgun, or handgun) one has to have gone through thousands of rounds; else, the "muscle memory" has NOT been burned into the brain.

I can understand how this has occurred to today's young folk. I can even feel a tad sorry for those who've recently been pushed into having to cope with some survival situation. What I am utterly unable to tolerate are those people who act with arrogance when their marshmallow-soft tiny little world is questioned as to its continued safety. All preppers have heard the phrase, "Well, that sure isn't going to happen and even if it does, it will be short-lived and the government will take care of the situation." That bothers me bit when they say it with heat in their tone of voice. What really irks me is when they say that and look down on me as if I'm some sort of idiot or nut-case.

On business I've of course been forced to travel to the mega-cities. Some are worse than others in the Attitude department. I've found Boston to be unbearable (one day, decades back, a co-worker / friend of mine was about to render one of our MIT engineers unconscious for his dirty smart-aleck mouth; the little twerp backed down when my friend got in his face; I really thought that I was going to have to call 911 to scrape what was left of him off the carpet). The lack of the human heart therein creates in me a callousness towards them that is sinful. I don't hate that attitude; I loathe it ... and them. I'd not lift a finger to help them. "They've made their bed, let them lie in it." ... even if it is on fire. Me, I hope that these places do not do anything to correct their tangled technology time-bombs. There is no shortage of rats in major urban areas to take care of the bodies.

 

One of the MAJOR flaws in our American system is that it encourages and breeds stupidity. If you have a problem...let the government fix it for you or support you. This becomes MASSIVELY apparent when you have some sort of problem. Not a disaster, just a problem like the lights going out for more than a few hours.

I'm sorry (Not really) but if the utilities go down and you are IMMEDIATELY without food or water I don't have any sympathy for you. A hurricane a few years ago knocked us off line. The county offered a case of water for free to those that needed it. This was less than 24 hours after the power went down. The line for the water was MILES long. Understand I don't live in or near a big city!! I ALWAYS have at least a case of bottled water and if a storm is coming in That goes up MASSIVELY.

If you don't have at least enough water and food to carry you through at LEAST a few days on hand you are not going to last long in a long term collapse because you probably don't have anything much that you will need with FORESIGHT being the biggest need of all.

I have always had a “plan”. This includes needs for the short term, the mid-range, and the long term needs for survival. The MOST important prep need and most valuable need may well be KNOWLEDGE. If you wait until you NEED to know how to do something in a survival situation then you probably are not going to be able to learn it in time for it to do you much good. Making a fire on a cold wet night with one match jumps to mind as does how to actually find/catch food when/if you have none.

LOL, I am the original “boy scout” and have always tried to be prepared for almost anything. It is my favorite hobby I guess and all the rest of my favorite pastimes branch off of that to some extent.

The first thing that I tell people if they want to know what they need to do to be prepared is simple. “Sit down and THINK about all the things that you would want in any given situation and then go over that list and decide what of it you actually NEED and must have. Thinking and planning is the start for any plan and often seems to be the thing that many skip. When it comes to survival “winging it” is just not a good plan.

 

"One of the MAJOR flaws in our American system is that it encourages and breeds stupidity. If you have a problem...let the government fix it for you or support you. This becomes MASSIVELY apparent when you have some sort of problem. Not a disaster, just a problem like the lights going out for more than a few hours".

Wise words, and is this not the disease of the entire western world? Comparatively increased wealth breeds reliance. We can get most of what we want at the click of a mouse button. Most everything is available straight off the shelf. So why do things the old fashioned way? Why chop wood when you can get it ready chopped etc? My question is that is it part of a grand plan to make us all reliant? Reliant people are not rebellious peoples. Would the French Revolution have happened if Amazon could have delivered food in a click? Far fetched? Maybe, but look how the western world reacts to those who are self reliant. Bear Grylls is seen as an eccentric and, once beyond the "terror" aspect of the Unabomber, his self reliant and dropped out lifestyle attracted more attention than the mayhem his bombing campaign ever brought.

Food for thought.

 

Our generation, who were Boy Scouts, are disappearing fast and will be replaced with generations without the idea of being prepared. They younger generations are also less able to function alone, nowadays a loner might be confused with lonely, which is not actually the case.

 

And that is the generation that will loot and riot.

"loner does not mean lonely, far from it, the opposite in fact". To me it means self reliant and not in need of the company of others, but again, the younger generation will not be able to identify with that as they are too "connected".

 

Sadly, that is exactly it. It never ceases to amaze me when one sees a family out to dinner and they are all on their phones instead of talking.

 

Government officials routinely suppress information that might frighten the sheeple. In the California "The Big One" earthquake that is soon going to happen in the L.A. area, officials estimate that 1,800 people will die. Yeah sure, multiply that by 10 or more -- and that will only be the immediate death toll of the quake. All power grids will be destroyed for weeks. The following article shows how Texas government officials massively under-balled the death toll from a power outage that happened there during February 2021.

"Go read this investigation into the real death toll from the Texas freeze"

"State officials low-balled the number of deaths, according to the report"

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/27/22456856/deaths-undercount-texas-freeze-power-outage

"Hundreds more people died in Texas during the February deep freeze and blackouts than the state’s official count shows, according to an investigation by BuzzFeed News. The outages left millions of people without power as indoor temperatures dropped to deadly lows.

"Texas has so far acknowledged 151 winter storm-related deaths. BuzzFeed News, on the other hand, found that an estimated 700 people lost their lives from the combined catastrophes of the storm and power outages. The news outlet conducted a thorough analysis ofdata that showed how many more people died around that time than would normally be expected. It’s the most recent analysis to show that the way authorities typically count death tolls from disasters tends to drastically low-ball the actual losses.

"According to BuzzFeed News, the Texas Department of State Health Services counted mostly deaths from hypothermia, accidents involving ice, and carbon monoxide poisoning (people turned on cars and grills inside their homes in desperate attempts to stay warm). But hypothermia is “notoriously difficult to diagnose,” Hannah Jarvis, assistant medical examiner at the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, tells BuzzFeed News. And the deaths of people who were already vulnerable to extreme cold and stress because of underlying medical conditions flew under the radar of Texas officials, BuzzFeed News reports.

"Similar studies revealed how many people really died during Hurricane Maria and the blackouts that followed. Puerto Rico changed its official death count from 64 to 2,975 following public outrage over its initial underestimate and after a more in-depth report by George Washington University arrived at the higher number."
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Most preppers have already done so, but if any of our visitors wish to improvise generators, then there is plenty of information on the web. When you find good diagrams, print them out so that you will have hard copies. Put these in your "do it yourself" library.

Know that there are even instructions as to how to convert old clothes-dryers into electric generators. Many folk have gasoline-powered generators. OK, so what if you are unable to access gasoline?! Uh-oh!

If you have streams nearby then you have a source of energy. Our little town has a river running through it and many tributary streams. This area is mountainous and so too might your region. If the electric feeds go out, communities will build their own generators, so can you. This is just NOT high-technology. We're talking resources that were available in the 1880s.

https://generatingelectricity.weebly.com/history3.html



Here are some how-to videos on making a waterwheel generator:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+make+water+wheel+electric+generator

"detailed instructions for building waterwheel electric generator"
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=detailed+...or&atb=v140-1&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images




Here's a very visual step by step build of a very cheap generator. Want more, just scale it up. I will also provide a link to magnets that have VERY powerful magnetic fields. Oh by the way, do I have to say that electricity can stop your heart?! Your heart stopping is generally considered a bad thing. So when messing with these sorts of survival ideas, do be Very careful!








=====================



Neodymium Magnet sources:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Neodymium+Magnets&atb=v140-1&ia=web

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=very+powerful+magnets+for+sale&atb=v140-1&iax=shopping&ia=shopping

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More wiring = more electricity

More powerful magnets = more electricity

-----------------------------------

How to make wind turbine copper coils yourself stator do it yourself cheap DIY



https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wiring+for+stator+coils&atb=v140-1&ia=web

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Enamel coated copper wire sources:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=enamal+coated+copper+wire&atb=v140-1&iax=shopping&ia=shopping

 

A couple of years ago , I helped my son install a water wheel in our creek that was energizing a electrical generator . I warned him before hand the floods would wreck havoc on it , but he put it on floats and proceeded anyway . That thing produced beyond my expectations in terms of the amount of electricity it produced . However as I predicted the floods defeated our efforts and the project was abandoned .

 

This is why I posted water-wheel generator-manufacturing techniques. Online, I found one home-made generator that had an output of 7,000 Watts.

People are smart. Hard copies of our engineering techniques are stored in 10,000 libraries. I have a small library here a home.

It's true that the marshmallow urbanites are gonners. Rural folk with many skills will ban together. Most gangs will get wiped out. We will have to be extra vigilant for the extra savage monsters -- thus, the need for firearms and plenty of ammunition.

Town I know wasn't supporting the 2nd amendment. Town council had a meeting in a local high school. In unity, 200-300 (?; they were backed out into the school's parking lot) pro-Constitution folk came in and MADE THEIR POINT. Town council got very afraid. Good old boys and gals ban together.
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Even as moonshiners dam and divert a fixed amount of creek water flow to supply them with a subset of that flow, so too must users of water wheels. When floods come, the excess water goes over the top of the dam; however, the attenuated water flow in the diversion pipeline stays somewhat constant. The diversion pipeline can also be rigged to have flow control.

Hillbillies can take three scrap crap cars of the same model and build one functioning auto. Junkyards around here know locals on a first-name basis. Show me a feller who can disassemble, fix, and reassemble automatic transmissions of every ilk and I'll show you a person who can jerry-rig anything. Moonshiners take copper sheets (old or new), cut them, and silver-solder them into distilleries. When pressed, people do what they have to do.
.

 

Makin' eeeeeeelectreeecitee ain't high tech. If'n mah great, great grandpaw kin doit, Ah kin too, yessir. It's dang convenient havin' eeeeeeelectreeecitee 'round yer still site.

 

Once Russia decides to quite trying to be diplomatic and start using up some of those old nukes whether for ground detonation or atmospheric for a created Electrical Magnetic Pulse we may all get to experience some of that quite and tranquility . At least that may possibly hold true for those that choose to reside outside of a nuke strike target . -- If it unfolds , those people looking at preppers as a bunch of mentally unstable kooks , will have a new perspective on the mentality of a prepper .

 

You guys got your bunkers stocked and ready ?

 

At my last place of residence , I did have a underground bunker , that I dug by hand with a shovel and bucket . I simply was practically born a prepper and have always taken it extremely serious . At my new and improved survival retreat , I do not have a underground bunker . However my location leads me to believe the only concern I might have is if a radioactive cloud should dump its radioactive contents back down to ground level as it enters my area .

 

Those areas spared fallout would be the prime areas to invade.

Lock'n'load!

 

Making a hydro-electric genny isn't hard, plenty of youtube videos to show you how. I'll be installing a moderate size solar system hopefully in 2023 and it ain't cheap to do. I want power for a fridge, chest freezer, computer/TV, LED lights and a low power ham radio rig which doesn't sound a lot but when you start adding up the watts the cost shoots up. Can't use standard panels here in Spain either they have to be anti-glare which ups the price some.

All the electrics here now laid, plenty of power sockets all with USB ports built in and CAT 7 cable with outlets throughout the house. I should be able to start plastering wall sometime next week.

Its all going very well here so I'm waiting for something to mess up, usually does when your remodeling a house

 

Spaniards are such a wonderful people.

What grand tragedy it is that they are bound by their emotions.

 

I thought I would give you guys a heads up , that I may be missing from the forum for a few weeks . A winter storm is moving into the Ozarks . The last time something of this " possibly " magnitude happened I was without electricity and running water for over 5 weeks . A report I received was , the gas has been drained from the gas stations leaving them empty . The grocery store shelves have been left bare . Likely I will be intombed in ice with no travel other than by foot for awhile . My limited solar power that I may have will likely not be used on this forum .

 

Five weeks! Ouchy.

Knew a guy whose father worked the mines up in Idaho. Same was true there. Roads traveling through Rocky Mountain passes would be closed during winter due to having more than 20ft. of snow.

We were just a couple of weeks ago without our home furnace for 5 days. Not fun. It was wool socks and long-johns. Put on your insulated boots. I've thrown my giant tool box into my commuter car. Found some more water-proof / strike anywhere matches in a tin, bought'em.

Y'all dig-out your winter-wear and heavy blankets. Since you'll not getting much sun, take your Vitamin D tabs. Vitamin C if you run out of fruit juices. I drink a gallon or more of orange juice per week -- helps me stay as healthy as this body will permit. I may have covid now, but it's so mild, I really can't tell; will have to get a test to find out. Hope no bad bugs or viruses find your crew!

You're a prepper, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I'm given to giving sermons -- do forgive.

We all want you and yours to stay safe, so make sure you do!
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Keep safe TMT.

 

So for our power grid has remained up and operational and as a result still have water flowing from the pipes . . We have a coating of ice making travel a no go but the ice didn't stick to the trees and powerlines , weighting and breaking them down . All we have in the immediate forecast is now snow . The snow we are not worried about and may actually make walking around outside easier than walking on slicky ice . Later I will be trying to tend to our outside survival critters , milk goats , pigeons and chickens . Thanks for the above comments . ---- Update , Thankfully we now have a coating of snow over the ice . This will make outdoor work much safer .

 

Ice breaking tree limbs is a BIG issue here. I have to drive through a mountainous area to get to work. Pass through a deep gap at approx 2000 ft; mountain tops are above 3000 ft. Do I see a bunch of broken trees? Understatement of the century! It is unimaginable to flatland folk. I'd say that over 30% of trees have breakages. Back 3 years (?) ago, there was a BAD ice storm. Driving up in there was visiting some other planet -- crystal trees / STRANGE. But then the trees just snapped; the weight was too great. This year, we've had some snow and the temperatures have dropped down into the teens (15 F; -10 C). During one event, the trees just tipped over blocking roadways. Were one to drive 30 miles, one will count 20 trees that had to be chainsawed back to allow traffic to pass. Still there is debris / limbs right up to the roadway. Tens of thousands lost their electric power during one storm.



Here's my concern. We also get droughts. All that dead wood up in the mountains IS going to turn into kindling. This is especially true of pine limbs. How will there NOT be massive fires?! Gonna happen. There is no way on Earth to get all of that deadwood out'a the mountains. Humanly impossible to the max. When a boy, I worked a summer with the forestry service. This was a real education for me. Too, being a teenager, this had a wiring effect in my brain. In the news around here, nothing is being said about the coming fire hazards that will appear during our hot/dry end-of-summer weeks. I sure think about it! When back in my home state I lived at the foot of a mountain range, even as I do now. One year, the side of that mountain had a fire and it denuded hundreds upon hundreds of acres. Looked horrible. It got down to where some houses are. These are hell-events for the Forestry Service. Men die. It's war.

Poltiregist, hope your area is spared forest fires! Prayers and all.

Some rich people build near the top of mountains. Idiots! When I see those houses, I say to myself, "When a fire comes up your way, I don't see anyway for you to make it out of there." One road to get you to safety = bad gamble. The Lord permitting, they might be able to hike the opposite direction of the fire line. However, the shape/perimeter of a fire can be anything it wants to be. Your home could be in the middle of a horseshoe = you are trapped, end of discussion. Bye-bye. Hopefully you'll die of smoke inhalation and not fried to death.

Hiking in steep areas means that you had better be in great physical shape. You'll have no trail and all the trees that have fallen during winters past will perpetually be obstacles for you and your family. You'll not be able to leap over them as if they were hurdles in a track & field event. Do these rich idiots imagine themselves just running away from a HOT raging fire?! Tom Cruise may be able to get away from the shock-wave of a bomb-blast in some movie, but in the real world, hell catches up with people. And don't you just know that none of these high altitude mansion-owners ever run practice escape drills. They haven't a clue as to what is out there in the woods past their plot of land. All I can say is, "Too bad, so sad."

 

Some more images for the above post

 

Fascinating were Putin to shut down the power-grids of major American urban areas. No different than dropping bombs, what with urban sheeple being totally dependent on electricity. Shutting down gas pipelines would deprive cities of the ability to heat homes and run factories.

"Russia-Ukraine war: NYC on 'ultra-high alert' amid increased risk of Russian retaliatory cyberattack"

https://www.foxnews.com/us/russia-ukraine-war-nyc-risk-russian-cyber-attack

"Russian hacking threat hovers over U.S. gas pipelines"

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/02/gas-pipelines-cyber-risk-00011898
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"Texas Power Grid Operator Urges Customers To Conserve Electricity After Six Plants Go Offline"

https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/t...d-demand-amid-back-back-triple-digit-heatwave

"Update (Saturday 0833ET): Texas' electricity grid operator asked customers Friday evening to conserve power this weekend after half a dozen generation plants were knocked offline amid another round of unseasonably hot weather.

"'On Friday afternoon, six power generation facilities tripped offline, resulting in the loss of approximately 2,900 MW of electricity,' The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) wrote."
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"The nation’s transmission network, plagued by outages and increasingly severe weather, needs a trillion-dollar overhaul to handle the Biden administration’s promised clean-energy revolution. No one is taking charge of that problem."

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-renewables-electric-grid/

"After decades of struggle, the U.S. clean-energy business is booming, with soaring electric-car sales and fast growth in wind and solar power. That’s raising hopes for the fight against climate change.

"All this progress, however, could be derailed without a massive overhaul of America’s antiquated electric infrastructure – a task some industry experts say requires more than $2 trillion. The current network of transmission wires, substations and transformers is decaying with age and underinvestment, a condition highlighted by catastrophic failures during increasingly frequent and severe weather events.

"Power outages over the last six years have more than doubled in number compared to the previous six years, according to a Reuters examination of federal data. In the past two years, power systems have collapsed in Gulf Coast hurricanes, West Coast wildfires, Midwest heat waves and a Texas deep freeze, causing long and sometimes deadly outages."
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"Electrical homes are the future. The grid isn’t ready."

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/05/11/electrical-homes-are-the-future-the-grid-isnt-ready/

"PALO ALTO – One out of every six homes in this leafy birthplace of Silicon Valley has a plug-in car, with more to come. Other homes have heat pumps, induction cook tops and arrays of glistening solar panels that help reduce climate change.

"Yet yesterday’s electrical grid can’t keep up with tomorrow’s carbon-free ambitions.

“'We’re in a ‘ramp up’ mode. We won’t hit our goals unless we accelerate,' said Mayor Pat Burt, who drives a plug-in hybrid Mitsubishi Outlander. 'But we really don’t have the capacity to do it faster than we’ve been doing it. That’s the crunch.'”

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The power grid is something that has also been effected by the Democrats idiotic rulers . A guy in the know within the power industry told me about a week ago they can not get the needed supplies to work on the power lines . My informer is contemplating quitting his present power line job because of the supply shortage and taking another power line job that has more supplies to work with .

 

"'Build Blackouts Better': Half Of America Faces Power Blackouts This Summer, Regulator Warns"

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/us-west-risk-power-blackouts-summer-regulator-warns

"Tens of millions of Americans could be thrown into a summer of hell as a megadrought, heatwaves, and reduced power generation could trigger widespread rolling electricity blackouts from the Great Lakes to the West Coast, according to Bloomberg, citing a new report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a regulatory body that manages grid stability.

"NERC warned power supplies in the Western US could be strained this summer as a historic drought reduces hydroelectric power generation due to falling reservoir levels and what's expected to be an unseasonably hot summer. Compound the hellacious weather backdrop with grids decommissioning fossil fuel power plants to fight climate change and their inability to bring on new green power generation, such as solar, wind, and batteries, in time, is a perfect storm waiting to happen that will produce electricity deficits that may force power companies into rolling blackouts for stability purposes.

"NERC's report is an eye-opener for those living in the Western US. Many households face out-of-control inflation, soaring fuel prices, and food shortages ahead of what could be a summer of unrest as the Biden administration is bracing for a wave of violence upon the Supreme Court's overturn of Roe V. Wade.

"America is slipping into the abyss as households get a taste of what it's like to live in Venezuela. It's not that far off from what people are experiencing today: soaring inflation, shortages, a ruling regime which so many claim was not elected by the majority and soon, rolling blackouts."

 

Over the next months , under the illegitimate Democrat rule , preppers in the United States can sit back and watch the sheeple in all of their folly , panic . The areas of the United States where the majority of their people actually did vote for Democrat overlords will reap the results of their vote .