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Post by castanea on Nov 2, 2012 9:48:50 GMT -5
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Post by oxbowfarm on Nov 2, 2012 13:10:53 GMT -5
The run-up to Sandy definitely exposed some holes in our personal disaster preparations. One glaring concern was our chest freezer which is currently very full of half of a steer. Losing all that meat to a power outage and/or cellar flooding would be extremely painful. We also do not have any way to use our well absent electricity. While Sandy was providing plenty of water in the rain barrels and we have a creek less than 50 feet away, neither of these water sources is as clean as I'd prefer. We are hoping to acquire a well-top hand pump to give us a reliable, non-electric drinking water supply.
The other item I'd like to have would be a small electric generator to keep the freezer running. Generators are not something you can just run out and purchase when a big storm is coming, they will be out of stock. I've heard anecdotally that there were generator waiting lists of hundreds at the local box hardware stores. My solution was to buy a bunch of salt and spices. I figured I could make a couple hundred pounds of corned beef if I absolutely had too.
We have a good 3-4 month supply of food, I'd like to increase that to a year or so. We heat with wood.
Another major issue is that I'm heavily reliant on electricity to contain my cows. I really need to invest in a solar fencer with a battery to get through a long power outage without a cattle breakout. I also really need to finish the long overdue perimeter fencing project.
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Post by steev on Nov 3, 2012 1:33:16 GMT -5
Yes; the perimeter fencing project is prioritized right after a dwelling more palatial than the pump-house. At this time, the deer and elk are more pressing hassles than ravening hordes from the cities.
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Post by MikeH on Nov 3, 2012 3:19:18 GMT -5
Living in the country where we are, power outages are automatic if the wind is over 40mph for a few hours. We have a couple of large bottles of water for drinking and a half dozen former kitty litter jugs for flushing. Early last summer, we had a very bad windstorm(for us) that left us without power for 3 days. On the second day, we rented a generator to get the temperature on the freezer and the refrigerator back down. You don't need continuous running. A couple hours each worked fine. And you don't need a big generator. We powered them in sequence not simultaneously. We also make sure that when the freezers are less than 3/4 full that we add jugs of water to keep them at capacity. A couple of hundred pounds of corned beef?  ?? What's for breakfast, Dad? Well, there's egg and bacon, egg sausage and bacon Egg and spamcorned beef Egg, bacon and spamcorned beef Egg, bacon, sausage and spamcorned beef SpamCorned beef, bacon, sausage and spamcorned beef SpamCorned beef, egg, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, bacon and spamcorned beef SpamCorned beef, sausage, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, bacon, spamCorned beef tomato and spamcorned beef SpamCorned beef, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, egg and spamcorned beef SpamCorned beef, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, baked beans, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef, spamcorned beef and spamcorned beef. |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Nov 3, 2012 21:12:30 GMT -5
Lol, I hope you copied and pasted that Mike.  |
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Post by synergy on Nov 4, 2012 19:09:16 GMT -5
I think it is becoming apparent the time for resiliency is upon us, but this is now looking in hindsight and those looking forward should see extreme weather , disasters, economic collapse as symptoms and the urgency of a new way of looking at regenerating the earths' systems with biodiversity and biomass and changes in how we live is now the coming imperative .
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Post by circumspice on Nov 4, 2012 19:46:35 GMT -5
I 'should' prepare for each hurricane season because even though I live 250-300 miles from the nearest coast, I have lots of family that live in the coastal areas of Texas. I have hosted evacuees in my various homes before.  |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2012 16:54:28 GMT -5
Toilets didn't work, and buildings were surrounded on all sides by asphalt.
This reminds of when they discussed how the Black Death was spread.
I'm not saying it out of schadenfreude, but assume it doesn't happen when there is hygiene and people are in overall good health. I believe that day-to-day cleanliness is a legitimate survival concern.
So far as I know, the useful idiocy stage of the welfare state always leads to fascistic austerity.
One ex-Bircher told me of the Albert Pike, three world wars prediction. People would ostensibly be fed up with the church's inability to tackle basic issues. Pike said there would be a general, reactionary movement, but it would not be a Christian one.
My acquaintance would not hear this part, refused to return my phonecalls.
For me, this begs the question of how basic loyalties would affect us for the better or worse.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2012 17:01:44 GMT -5
We talked about how we would like to live on an isolated island. I read a lot of shared values, and appreciated your moral support of my small contribution in linking the story. Just the same, this is the stuff of reality television.
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Post by steev on Nov 6, 2012 0:17:07 GMT -5
Isolated islands, whatever; we live in the same world as the Birchers and Communists, and the glaciers are melting, the sea is growing more acidic, and weather is getting more violent. We either get our shit together or we go with the flow, quite possibly over the falls. I will stick my neck out here and say I think we are in an age where we need to use our brains, rather than our faith, to save our very asses, if not our kind. Please understand that, if we blow it altogether, I do not in any degree resent whoever picks up the pieces, be they rats, bats, or roaches; bless them and may they prosper and grow wiser than we seem to have become. Life is a miraculous thing; it will go on, despite our ridiculous egotism and self-centered bullshit.
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Post by castanea on Nov 6, 2012 1:24:50 GMT -5
Paciifc Northwest Doom Porn, but still interesting- "Hurricane Sandy Will Be Dwarfed by an Earthquake Nov 5, 2012 4:45 AM EST The Pacific Northwest is at risk for an earthquake that could kill hundreds of thousands�but East Coast officials aren�t paying attention. Winston Ross on the coming catastrophe. Hurricane Sandy was indeed a Frankenstorm, a monster that lived up to its hyperbolic nickname. Millions lost power. Dozens lost their lives. It will take weeks to get the region fully up and running again. Entire swaths of the Eastern Seaboard are forever changed. But Sandy is a lightweight compared with the natural disaster that has been brewing for the past 300 years on the other side of the country. Here, at the joinder of two massive tectonic plates some 50 to 70 miles from the Pacific shoreline, lies a fleet of Frankenstorms, an army of monsters. This disaster will strike without the days of warning East Coast residents had, without breathless weather forecasters and Doppler radar, without all that time to stock up on candles and bottled water, without functioning roads to drive from homes perched precariously on oceanfront cliffs to some safe inland respite. This disaster will come in a flash, and geologists say it will be nothing like the United States has ever seen. "It'll be like having three or four Katrinas, at once, spread up and down the coast," says Chris Goldfinger, director of the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Lab at Oregon State University. Adds Robert Yeats, author of the book Living With Earthquakes in California and a professor emeritus of geoscience at OSU: "We could see hundreds of thousands of people killed." " www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/05/hurricane-sandy-will-be-dwarfed-by-an-earthquake.html |
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Post by MikeH on Nov 6, 2012 2:23:04 GMT -5
whoever picks up the pieces, be they rats, bats, or roaches; bless them and may they prosper and grow wiser than we seem to have become. Matthew 5:5 |
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Post by steev on Nov 6, 2012 2:26:16 GMT -5
Indeed so; "no way to delay that trouble comin' every day".
Kiss your ass goodbye every morning that you have the good fortune to wake up on the green side of the grass and the energy to plant a seed; say "I love you" to all of yours, and accept that what you want is nothing to the Universe, and go to your work because it is meaningful to yourself, regardless.
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Post by steev on Nov 6, 2012 2:36:48 GMT -5
OK. I had to look that up, being of the unBibled. Not off the point at all.
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Post by MikeH on Nov 6, 2012 3:29:23 GMT -5
Being of the anthropocentric persuasion though semi-reformed aka a-work-in-progress, it never occurred to me that there might be (an) alternative view(s) until I saw the bit of your post that I quoted. But then again, it's not a book that I read. Probably should though since there's a lot of smart thinkin' there especially if you can get past the heaven & hell bit.
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