Nothing quite like throwing a match in a can of gasoline.
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Evidently it went viral on Reddit before most of us heard about it. The Redditors pushed him into quitting… and his wife into getting fired after she stuck her opinion into it too.
Yeah, just saw it listed on r/byebyejob
Mayor wasn’t all wrong. We have become a society that doesn’t think about anything beyond today. Just 2 generations ago this would have been rare. It’s not hard to keep some things in your pantry, some firewood or other alternative heat source. Hell even renting one is quite the option these days.
As it was said to me, charity begins at home with taking care of you and yours.
With a small amount of study one can easily see the progression from that to what we have today. Just in time may be cheaper but when systems breakdown failure is immediate rather than delayed. That delay many times makes the difference between total system breakdown and quick recovery.
I think overall this event can have positive outcomes for many. It helps highlight preparation for the short and long terms.
I sincerely doubt it will happen but these are the life skills that we should mandate starting in middle school until graduation. Time well spent making up for skills that have been lost by to the ravages of time and changing family values.
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“Be Prepared” is a good motto to live by, for sure.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask our critical infrastructure to follow that philosophy as well.
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Food in the pantry and stores of water sure, but firewood or substantial alt heat sources (or backup power) not an option for a number of renters in multifamily housing who seem to be suffering the most.
JIT is a deeply entrenched concept in industry that’s been behind all kinds of cost reductions, but as @jswilson64 has mentioned, such cost-savings when it comes to the operations of critical infrastructure should be eschewed for margins and resiliency.
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Have we already forgotten the pains from JIT last year? Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, masks, and many more?
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What’s going on now should be a lesson to everyone. We don’t need a war or massive riots in the streets to bring disaster, just a few days of cold weather, a tornado or other common weather event can bring our supply system to it’s knees. Grocery stores can be cleaned out in hours and take weeks to replenish. Utilities can end in the blink of an eye and stay that way for days. You can put the blame for it where ever you like but the one simple fact remains, You’re on your own!!! Do you have enough food in your home to last for two weeks? Do you have the means to boil a pan of water if the power goes? Don’t rely on your gas stove, it’s another utility that can be cut off… Camping supplies aren’t just for campers…
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I do not know about new ones, but some apartments had a fireplace.
You could always put a generator on a balcony if you had one…
Just a reminder to let your politicians know about the need to harden the power grid against an EMP event.
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And that’s part of the lesson that people are missing, Politicians will never fill our needs, reelection is their only goal. No matter how well the government has prepared, your reliance on them to take care of you will lead to doom… How prepared are you to take care of yourself?
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There are reasonable levels of preparedness that many in society flunk. At least 3 days’ readiness to sit in place without services is pretty reasonable for almost anyone regardless of living circumstances. Two weeks is doable for many, but not all.
Lived in one place with a fireplace, one that had a gas fireplace incapable of burning solid fuel. Based on my experience with other apartments in the region, they’re a tad uncommon.
Decidedly hazardous because of CO emissions so close to a door or window that has to be open to some degree for cordage. And even inverter generators are a skosh noisy.
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No as hard as you think. Just your normal daily needs can be stretched in to several days. Caned meats meats last for a very long time, instead of buy one can of tuna for your next meal buy twelve and restock it as you use it. 5 pounds each of beans and rice will last many days and is easy to store for a year or more. You’ll not eat lavish meals every night but you’ll have food. Cans of Sterno will keep for years and is a good source of heat to cook on. Water is a little harder but boiling and filter straws can help.
Electricity is produced by for-profit businesses, transmitted to customers by for-profit businesses, and brokered/sold to customers by for-profit businesses. Some of us pay a city utility, but most (all?) of the city utilities don’t generate their power they buy it from a producer. “The government” didn’t put profit ahead of preparedness in the electrical grid - companies did, to make more of a buck. “The government’s” failure here was to require the for-profit power producers prepare for winter weather. For some reason, Texans seem to favor that lack of oversight, so we get things like this ice storm, or the town of West destroyed in an explosion, or a tollway that hasn’t been properly prepared for an ice storm by the for-profit toll operator.
How prepared are you to take care of yourself - because the people the government allowed to take over and profit from the infrastructure haven’t prepared to deliver the services you have paid them for?
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Good ol’ standbys w/ looong shelf life - peanut butter, nutela, honey, dried fruit.
Mix peanut butter, nutela, honey in ~equal parts. Option - add cinnamon.
For dried fruit - raisins, craisins, cherries.
Ingredients don’t need refrigeration / ice chest. Also gluten free.
Ingredients can be mixed and stored in a container for days - many days.
Works equally well at home or out on the trails.
Proteins, carbs, sugars - what else you want?
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Noise ordinance prohibits generator (or any other noise) that measures more than 50 dba at (the neighbors). Can’t imagine a generator that could pass that requirement if on your apartment balcony.
Don’t think there’s a cost effective way to do this - if at all.
Interesting fact from the cold war era - emp enhanced nuke.
There was a theory that 3 atmospheric emp blasts across the continental US would shut down the grid, disable most communications, damage a lot of electronics. Fun times.
IEEE Spectrum article some long while back.
EMP proof your solar panels and their cntrl circuits? Good luck w/ that.
Interestingly, in our neighborhood we have a noise ordinance, as I suppose most do, and neighbors were asking each other via social media if running generators would be a problem. There wasn’t a single person who voiced issue with the noise from generators the last couple nights. It was nice to see some actual neighborly empathy.
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About your fridge. I keep ice substitute blocks in the freezer for use in an ice chest. Pwr goes off, move blocks from freezer to top shelves in fridge. Buys you some extra time.
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I personally could sit out two weeks without services. But I’ve got a single-family detached house on ~⅛ acre which means considerable storage volume, open area for cooking, exposed soil for a latrine and waste disposal, room for a garden, and the ability to modify the structure/property for security/self-sustenance/etc. Because I don’t have children and have had good fortune in my career I have the financial margins to afford some of these things that many do not.
However, I do wonder what sort of situation I might find myself in where I’m going to be sitting in my house without services for two weeks. I suspect that things will have gotten exciting/dangerous/untenable enough that I’m not going to want to be around if so.
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