How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [40]
If in doubt, throw it out. Ideally, you should continuously rotate your storage food to avoid such waste.
One tidbit of trivia: Some wheat was found in an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. A small fraction of it still sprouted after 2,600 years. If you have any older canned gardening seeds, try them out. The sprouting yields will be low, but there could be some marginal utility there. Just don’t expend too much effort tilling and tending those rows in your garden!
6
FUEL AND HOME POWER
The Coming Energy Crisis: Hubbert Peak or Not—Be Prepared!
There has been a lot of ink spilled in recent years debating the Hubbert Peak (“Peak Oil”) theory. I am a believer in global oil depletion, but I think those in the Peak Oil crowd are about twenty to twenty-five years too early in their predictions.
We cannot depend on the slow-moving bureaucracies of national governments to rescue us from the coming energy crisis. Even if we in the First World overcome the problem, the Second World and the Third World—with less money available for massive crash programs and probably with a more short-term perspective—will likely be plunged into a second Dark Ages. At the minimum that means famines, monumental migrations, huge economic dislocations, and world wars, all likely sometime later in this century. And even if our generation muddles through, we should make preparations on behalf of our children and grandchildren.
The Fragility of the U.S. Power Grid
The depletion of oil reserves will be a long-term problem, but we may also find ourselves facing a more immediate concern in the dissolution of the U.S. power grid.
I often refer to the national power grids (there are actually three: eastern and western, and Texas) as the linchpins of our modern societal infrastructure. Any interruption for more than a few weeks could precipitate a societal collapse. So much of what we rely on for our modern way of life depends on grid power. The telephone networks have backup generators, but those have only a limited fuel supply. Even the supply of piped natural gas is dependent on the grid, since grid electricity powers the compressor stations that pressurize the natural-gas pipelines. I am of the firm opinion that existing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software implementations represent a great vulnerability. The new-generation Web-enabled SCADA systems only compound the problem. (Terrorists don’t even need to go on-site to inject a computer virus and foul up the power and water utilities’ switching and valve hardware. They can do it remotely.)
In a grid-down world, you’ll need fuel to heat your home. Depending on the norm for where you live, this could be stacks of cordwood, coal, or an extra-large propane tank. You’ll also need electricity. You can use liquid fuels for lighting, but you’ll need some way to charge batteries for your crucial electronics, such as communications equipment and night-vision gear. This chapter will describe your options for all of these, starting with batteries and battery charging.
The Importance of Stocking Up on Batteries
I have been corresponding with an infantry soldier (E-6) in Iraq named Ray whom I met through AnySoldier.com. In our e-mails, one of the things Ray mentioned that stuck with me is that one of the crucial logistics for modern armies is spare batteries. He described how they go through hundreds of them, for radios, tactical flashlights, sensors, laser target illuminators and designators, and night-vision gear/thermal sights. As I look ahead to potential hard times in this country, I think that we should learn a lesson from the Iraq experience: Never run out of batteries.
Without batteries, we would soon be back to nineteenth-century