The Preppers Lament (13 page)

5

Solar Solitude

Now I have heard
some folks around here bragging for quite sometime that if we had a sizable disaster (natural or otherwise) that halted the worldwide production and distribution of food that us country people could survive because we have land and could grow our own gardens. But, in reality, now that the tractor trailers of Wal-Mart have stopped running altogether around here it will be getting even more real “interesting” you might say.

It wasn’t long ago when I was living here during the week long aftermath of a hurricane that many folks around here would’ve likely starved to death or killed one another off over the last carton of milk or loaf of bread ... they would have been feuding with each other in the trailer parks like the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s long before anyone that actually farms around here could have raised a herd of dairy cows or planted a field of wheat to provide our own milk and bread, not to mention other necessary sustenance. Even those of us who already garden would be hard-pressed to grow much more produce than for our own use let alone several more families and with the droughts or torrential rains going on there is no way.

Yes we can. But not without learning a few skills and employing a little well-thought-out preparation. Country folk are more likely to “figger’ out” a problem and create a makeshift solution given time, as opposed to their urban neighbors; however we’re still prone to being temporarily without resources.

When you wake up one morning in a world where everything that you took for granted suddenly ceased to exist or no longer worked at all, just realizing that one simple little fact could blow your mind and set it to reeling and worrying. People would be reacting to these morning thoughts in different and often times strange and bizarre ways as to how they were handling the losses they were experiencing.

David had not quite figured out what sort of reality he was experiencing and found himself in these days and that fact messed with his coping strategies somewhat. On the one hand he was in the enviable position of living on a few acres outside a small college town and had more than sufficient preps to carry him and Julie for 6 months or so in food and comfort. On the other hand it seemed impossible to gauge what, if any, relief and reconstruction efforts the government was going to be doing or might have any hopes of ever reaching him personally.

Theoretically speaking, the cities and states in the west that still had working power could send aid to stricken areas and the country could start rebuilding one day. To accomplish this, large numbers of people needed to be evacuated just like we do for hurricanes to neighboring states. The cities and towns that have infrastructure absorb as many evacuees as they can and disburse as many refugees as they can geographically to lessen the impact on resources. The storm passes, or in this case as soon as the homes the evacuees left get water and later lights and life resumes again in a disaster reconstruction phase.

There have been huge migrations from the hurricane prone gulf coast states over the years and FEMA and the State Emergency Management folk down south have many models to go by in order to try and make an exodus as smooth as possible. 

As far as David knew, pretty much everything on the eastern seaboard as far west as
Texas was dark and off the grid for one reason or another. Some of the Midwest and Northeast power was still connected to the grid and offered bastions of hope for America to regain her former glory. The big flaw in that hope was people, there were just too many people from the mega cities like New York etc. that clogged and snarled the highways heading to towns and cities that could just not absorb nor feed these millions of lost souls.

A swarm of locusts coming from every direction can be managed somewhat if Emergency Management has anticipated and begun some formal disaster plans to deal with these herds of humanity but that is an iffy proposition. Everyone knows, or thinks they know, that there is no formal plan for an EMP like event but that is not totally true.

There are rehearsed plans such as the “Great Shake Out Exercise” this was the plan for receiving huge numbers of evacuees when the New Madrid fault decides it’s time for the inevitable mega earthquake to occur and displace millions of people. The Center for Disease Control works on various policies to quarantine and control whole cities etc. so it’s not out of the realm of possibility to just stitch various agencies and policies together and use them for any large grid down situations.

The Army is the expert of operating in a grid down situation and has a long and glorious history of operating in and restoring war torn countries. Just look what we did in Iraq for example? You are naïve if you think the U.S. didn’t use some conventional EMP bombs over there, anyway, we came in and restored the infrastructure for the country while trying to keep peace so why not here?

This is where the lines get blurry, they most assuredly will use the Army post conflict reconstruction manual to guide America through this disaster, but that will be an evolving thing brought about most likely by the just plain ignorant, rude and criminally inclined fools in the poor inner cities at first.

Look at the LA riots and just imagine it’s been a month since the cyber-attack and the welfare checks and food stamps ain`t coming no more and that would be even if you could find a place to spend them at. Hell during the LA Riots people burned what few grocery stores dared open up in their neighborhoods then. Nowadays I bet you that the residents of those “Hoods or Ghettos” have set the whole damn place on fire again and are fleeing in front of the flames like animals from a forest fire heading where? The National Guard may as well be the Army anyway these days and there is not enough manpower stateside without the military getting involved to even consider trying to quell all the civil unrest and lawlessness that should be starting to be going on full tilt by now.

The bigger cities that have all those unemployed refugees in them will most likely try and resort to civilian labor gangs similar to ones we had as Conservation Corps under the “New Deal Policy” during the depression. Hopefully that will further geographically dissipate people and spread economic stability further.

Many FEMA trailer parks would get set up and Federal relocation camps would begin popping up in likely and unlikely places as a means to draw the evacuees closer to the city’s infrastructure and political and legal controls. When they evacuated New Orleans after hurricane Katrina folks were bused, flown, trained etc. all over the country and they got lodging, credit cards and cash to survive on for some time. The government most likely now after this latest disaster would begin issuing some kind of military script for goods and services as they reset the dollar and the rest of the world currencies followed suit.

“Money! Now that’s a screwed up situation David groused to himself.

David got paid from working off the internet. He had no internet to do his business on at the moment. He didn’t know why he didn’t have an internet signal even though he could power his computer with his SUNRNR Generator. His signal came from a satellite and had nothing to do with the grid as far as he was concerned. Not knowing the technology of it all made him wonder if somebody might of hacked communication or military satellites as a reason for his internet signals absence.

As far as having a job went David figured that was the end of his and wondered if he even had any funds left from his last paycheck which should have been deposited in his bank account. Not that it mattered at the moment; there wasn’t anything much for him to buy and that was even if he could access a working bank to get cash. No for him and Julie and for some time to come they would be operating and trying to live without any funds as their long term reality.

“This is going to suck
!” David muttered, and Julie agreed.

Oh David figured he could maybe find some kind of work in the city if reconstruction really did arrive someday in the distant bleak future. He had some marketable skills and academic degrees to compete with for employment, but mostly he figured it was a matter of outlasting and out surviving any of the other would be survivor applicants because at this time things were about to get pretty hairy around here.

The town had agriculture around it and a few factories that actually produced something so chances were good that it would rate highly in a reconstruction plan. David looked at his mental map of the United States as hot zones (those places that had power) and dead zones (those places without) and tried to imagine what areas the government might like to first jump start. Louisiana refineries most assuredly, perhaps insure traffic on the waterways like the great Mississippi River, do something with our outdated rail system and start reconnecting the dots to move goods and services cross country. An enormous undertaking to imagine, let alone one to accomplish hastily and that idea was unfortunately going to creak along slowly with bureaucracy and incompetence leading the way. Plenty of labor around let’s see how they use it.

“I might, just might see a light go on from the power company in about 6 months if I am damn lucky.” David optimistically estimated. But that was if they could get those pump stations for the water back on in the next few weeks. Folks are probably already dying from lack of clean water.” He mused.

” I can’t even imagine how it is in California right at the moment. They were undergoing the biggest drought they had had in a 100 years before the poo hit the fan and the farmers that produced half of the vegetable’s for the U.S. were struggling hard and causing the agriculture department concerns recently. David quickly reminded himself to keep one faucet turned on a little so he would know if or when they ever got the water turned back on.

David was watching how they country was slowly dying along with the normal behavior of people. The thoughts of the populace already held numerous opinions, and also numerous ideas about how it was going to look if some crap like what had happened impacted America. They also held opinions on when societal collapse was going to start getting totally out of hand and in what stages it would occur.

The big truth is that the sheeple or those masses of people who are non preppers, you know the non survivalist type folks prepping even a little bit. These people now had no other choices, no food and no means of getting any sustenance or fuel for their cars meant “get on the bus Gus” meant go to the FEMA camps.   Non Preppers or non alarmists were not apt to see this type of event coming so I guess you might have to say these days that it is understandable that they saw their only hope as trying to get to an evacuation center at this point.

The problem also being is that many real or practicing and storing stuff preppers are that they are blind to their actual long-term as well as situational short term needs. They also must get to the camps if they can, but they at least have some awareness and plans for this event. They have themselves personally thought about various expectations or warnings to heed or look out for and are thinking outside the box.

Many preppers become too deeply involved,” too fixated” horse blindered or buried in discussions about Bug Out Bags (BOB), Bug Out Locations (BOL) or when the mutant ninja bikers are going to come for their stash post shit hit the fan (SHTF). The countless hours spent in these prepper communities also gets sidetracked on any number of finer points once the basics of 72 hour preparedness are covered.

Certain preppers spend all their time in these forums and other discussions arguing about, what knife, what pack, 9mm versus 45 calibers etc. to have when SHTF comes around and gamut of other stuff. They spend their energy oftentimes talking about God knows what else other than concentrating on bugging in or becoming more self reliant. The subjects all have their finer points in addressing prepper related information, I am just saying it is too distracting to go down the wrong rabbit hole chasing obscure information you don’t need right now unless you have done a serious risk and preparedness survey of your “bug in” situation. A lot of survivalist types are planning for what they think one day will happen when the lights go out and they find themselves surrounded by darkness all around while waiting on all hell to break loose in the dawn. Doesn’t usually happen like this, a disaster unravels and gets compounded at different rates. Many disasters are precluded by a warning; you prepare for the disasters without warnings the same way. Many people haven’t thought about an on off switch situation.

They haven’t even considered or thought about this type of lights out scenario affecting them. This a rare occurrence, but one that has precedence and it only happens when governments make huge mistakes or nature finally gets back at us and shows her deadly fury and devastation. It can also happen as a political act of repression or warning. Think about Russia threatening to turn off gas and lines in the dead of winter to influence the politics in one of the spin off states obstructing its wishes. Russia also intentionally starved millions in the Ukraine and other areas to fulfill one of its pogroms.