My post on Survivalist
started me thinking about the real dangers this nation faces.
We have the mightiest
military on earth (because our national budget allocates more money for
military ‘defense’ then the next ten militarized nations combined.) No foreign country or no terrorist group is
ever going to have boots on the ground in the United States
We are, however, vulnerable
to limited target attacks by fanatical fundamentalist similar to what we
experienced on 9-11. Populated areas in
a major city, government buildings in D.C. and even sports venues similar to
the Boston Marathon could be targeted and result in mass casualties; but this
would not put the Nation at risk.
There are two scenarios that
are real and dangerous, and these seem to be ignored by our government
representatives and the press:
First is the possibility of one
or more nuclear weapons exploding inside the continental United States
This would not be an attack from a foreign
nation, but from mismanagement of our own nuclear weapons program.
The men who guard our
intercontinental ballistic fleet have the most boring job in the world. It is like being dressed for a party but
never invited. Every day they lock
themselves in a bunker with antiquated electronic equipment and wait for the
word to launch warheads sitting atop missiles, some of which are fifty years
old.
Their computers are so old and outdated that
launch commands and system checks are downloaded from floppy disk. What could possibly go wrong?
The second, but no less a
threat, would be a terrorist attack on our aged and outdated electrical
grid. This would bring our Nation to a
halt. A nationwide blackout would be
disastrous.
Think of life without
electricity: no lights, no heat or air conditioning, food spoiling, stores
closed, banks closed - no electronic financial activities, no air travel, no
trains, no subways; no TV or radio and no cell phone communication – internet –
facebook – twitter…(hell, everyone under
thirty would probably commit suicide.)
All us old people – my
generation – would probably get along just fine during this second scenario,
but everyone else would be traumatized.
So, what can we do to
prepare? My plan for survival is to
take over and defend the local liquor store.
Red wine and whiskey are fine unrefrigerated and I could get use to warm
beer.
the Ol’Buzzard
It's nice to see a man with a plan! Warm beer indeed.
ReplyDeleteBacon will keep without refrigeration.
ReplyDeletesure got some good prices on firewater!
ReplyDeleteThe terrorist attacks are not limited to those from Islamic fundamentalists. Never discount your own right fringe who appear to operate under the radar which seems to be aimed VERY high in their case.
ReplyDeleteAlso the NSA is preparing for civil disobedience uprisings as things get further out of control in the economy.
Ever see the tv series "Jericho?" It had a doomsday scenario in which domestic terrorists planted nuclear bombs in about two dozen cities and detonated them more or less simultaneously. The S.O. and I have been watching it on Netflix. They present some real scenarios -- how do you cope with no electricity? -- but then everyone has their house lit up with a gazillion candles like the Yankee Candle store is always going to have fully stocked shelves. They also stress a lot about food, but the horses seem well-fed -- and no one ever suggests that Trigger would yield quite a few steaks.
ReplyDeleteMost people have no clue just how interconnected the country's power grid is or how ancient the infrastructure. Look at some the blackouts that have happened in our lifetime -- a circuit breaker gets overloaded somewhere in Ohio and the next thing you know a third of the country is in the dark.
I lived through a massive power outage here in 2000 after the huge storms that tore up Northern France. They had to rebuild the grid and it was early January. That made me realize that I needed my own generator. At the time, I really didn't have a big freezer, but my neighbors, who were obsessional food hoarders had 3 freezers full of Claudines frozen stuff dating back 6 years. It made me realize how dependent even out here in the country we are on the grid...soon the water stopped running and the gas couldn't be pumped because the pumps in the service stations are electric. I actually had flown into France over the storm from Germany and landed in Toulouse, where the weather was quite pleasant, but when I got to the train station, all hell had broken loose...I was stuck in Toulouse for 3 days and our phone magically worked off and on, so I could get in touch with my wife. I got a bus that took me to Carcassone where I waited on a road side for 3 hours for my wife to get there and pick me up! I appreciate the arts of medieval life...I know guys who distill their own alcohol and I'm pretty good at preserving duck in fat...the technique here is to slow cook it and seal it up in crocks in duck fat...they used to bury the crocks in the ground....preserved duck, confit de canard...that's soul food here!
ReplyDeletemicrodot, fat appears to be a good preservative for a lot of things. That old Native American standby, pemmican, was bear fat with shredded dried meat and berries mixed in with it. I'm reading Farley Mowat's No Man's River, which describes life in the Canadian backwoods (as in 200 miles from the closest outpost of "civilization") in 1947. Apparently one of the things that happens when you're cut off from modern refrigeration is your standards for what constitutes "too rank to eat" change rather quickly.
ReplyDeleteThe mistake most people make with freezers when the power goes out is to open the appliance and try to use everything up as quickly as possible. If you keep the freezer closed, unless you're in the middle of a heat wave, it's going to take several days for things to thaw out. Ice cream will melt fast, but everything else will stay solid for quite awhile.