Scenario discussion: Extended power outage

[pacelli]

Scenario: You wake up tomorrow morning, curiously your alarm clock doesn't go off. It turns out that you have no power, and you have paid your bills. You hop in your car and turn on the radio. The emergency broadcast system (EBS) explains that there is a massive power outage across your entire region's electricity grid (similar to the rolling blackout of 2003).

The EBS does not reveal a cause for the blackout, and there are no other immediate stories that could be linked to the blackout. However, the EBS does say that some major infrastructure has been disabled, requiring them to be remanufactured, reshipped, and replaced. They expect that the region's power will be restored in 2 months.

Questions: How prepared are you for such a scenario, or, how should you realistically prepare for this scenario?

What realistic consequences would you expect to see in your local area?


Keep in mind that we are talking about a 60-day power blackout. Please stay on topic.

[Kludge]

Supplies - weak generator, candles, firewood, dutch oven, cupboard full of food, three cases of water.

Living -

1. Light candles, dump everything in the fridge/freezer.

2. Start a bonfire every night - use dutch oven or other metal devices to cook food (Start the day with a can of fruit?)

3. "Do my business" outside.

4. Enjoy not having to work/catch up on reading.

5. Walk to the grocery store if ever needed.


Local effects -

1. State of emergency declared, necessary supplies sent to hospitals, shelters. Makeshift shelters created for those who need it (FEMA?).

2. People would likely stay with out-of-town relatives until the power is restored...

3. Possible shortages of diesel and other generator fuels.

4. Inability for some to be late on payments, which would probably be understood by those providing services. That said, gas stations and grocery stores would likely experience a bit of a boom.

5. Increased community bonding?

[Dr.3D]

I would think many grocery stores would have a rough time doing business if they can't get their cash registers and credit card readers to run.

It wouldn't bother me all that much. I would switch over to my generator. The generator runs from a 1000 gallon propane tank and would run for a long time should the need arise. I'll just have to remember to buy another case of engine oil and put it away before such a thing may happen.

[amy31416]

I have quite a stockpile of batteries and a few radios.
Water shouldn't be an issue, right? Unless it couldn't be treated at the plant.
Have a fireplace for heat, gas stove for cooking.
Plenty of food stored for 60 days.
Big box of candles.
Lots of books.
Paper/pens/stamps--I don't think I know anybody's addresses anymore though!
Have a car-charger for cell.
Treat every intersection with a traffic light as a 4-way stop.
Have a reasonable amount of cash on hand.

The worst part might be if the electricity goes out, it gets really cold and the pipes are in danger of bursting. Other than that, I'm reasonably well-prepared, I think.

[angelatc]

I would think many grocery stores would have a rough time doing business if they can't get their cash registers and credit card readers to run.
.

But the first person to remember how to actually count change will become a millionaire.

[Acala]

Water will be an issue. Water is pumped by electric power. There will be back-up generators, but only about 48 hours worth of fuel. If the supply of diesel is uninterrupted, might not be a problem. But without electric from somewhere, no water at the tap.

No need to "do you business outside". Toilets don't use electricity. They operate siphonically. Even if you don't have tap water, if you have ANY water you can pour it in the toilet and it will flush. Use a bucket full of your used bath water. Eventually the sewer will back up if everyone keeps using it because the treatment plant will not be operating. Then you can go outside.

But if you don't have ANY water, good luck amigo.

Kerosene lamps for light. Wood for cooking fire. Blankets for warmth. Sweat for cooling. Stashed food and foraging for eats. Two months would be easy! And that is without rewiring the 2kw solar system to operate independent of the grid.

[noxagol]

Take out the alternator from my car and hook it up to my elliptical machine and get a great work out to keep the fridge going every few hours. Then I will walk to work, which will probably need defending since it is a Walmart. I can go to a near by stream for water and use my toaster to boil it powered by the alternator so I can drink it.

[FindLiberty]

Yipes,

Don't waste that "clean" water held in the toilet tank with the first flush... you just may need it! Save it and use rain or "grey" water to flush it.

I don't like the thought of this scenario discussion: Power outage in a small area, or out for a short time is no big deal. But we can't live like we do now without electricity.

It gets real ugly if it's out for thousands of square miles in densely populated areas.

The only good thing would be sunlight and rain, otherwise it would be a nightmare after only a few weeks... Food and water would be a huge problem. City water and sewer, grocery stores, gas stations and communications would be unreliable or unavailable within 60 days... especially if the area is so large that it requires re-fueling to travel into and out of it!

Best bet would be to just re-locate well beyond the power outage area if you had gas and the "one tank" range to get all the way out. How would anyone know for sure how widespread and for how long the outage would last? Unlikely you would still have enough gas if you waited for 30 days to roll out as the announcements turn negative and extend the predictions for power to resume. Gas would be wasted driving around looking for food, water, and gas!

Happy scenarios are out the window 'cause it would turn into urban Hell within 60 days if ALL the power stayed out the whole time over a widespread area unless people somehow change and started looking out for each other. i.e., Think about most of the food in your fridge/freezer spoiling after only a week or so. People eat like pigs out of their fridge at first and eventually they begin to think about getting real sick as the fridge food spoils..., then they nibble the pantry dry over a few weeks. A few days later the family is getting real hungry! Now taking the free-market profit motives into account, would a 40' delivery truck be able (or its caring driver motivated enough) to find fuel to travel in and out of the outage area where limited or no fuel is available inside, and somehow travel safely all the way to the local grocery store without being "intercepted" by other people desperate for food (on day 45)? Optimists might say fine, all will remain well.

I tend to think and plan for the worst, and then settle for the best!

Panic and riots are quite likely after ~30 days - except for the people few who planned ahead (food, water, shelter from weather, protection via guns AND MORE IMPORTANTLY distance isolation from cities and urban centers).

Let's hope the Russians don't get pissed at us and attack all our power generation and distribution targets because of some politician says the wrong thing. Nuke'n 'em won't solve the water and food issues presented above.

[Sally08]

No ability to find out what is going on.

No Internet
- No communication with friends/relatives/employers.

No TV.

No ability for those at work at time of outage to get home.

No ability to contact family on where to meet "someday" (might be wise to have such a plan in place - mine specified a relative's home in Laramie, WY for Y2K)

No gas from gas stations.

No cash from ATMs.

No ability to use debit or credit cards for purchases.

No cell phone towers active.

Landlines may work or not/constantly busy if working.

Longer term:

Still no banking.

No receipt of online only bills.

No ability to make online payments or charges.

[tmosley]

Fortunately, short of a systemic breakdown, such a scenario is impossible, since most areas generate AT LEAST some of their own electricity by whatever means, and there is no single (or even a dozen) components that could go out leading to a long term power outage. The grid might go down for a couple of days, but no longer than that.

In any event, I'm in pretty good shape, since I now live smack dab in the middle of the "Saudi Arabia of Wind Power". Even if the grid went down, there is a nearby museum that is powered by it's own wind turbine. I could barter with the operators to live there, as I have a lot of supplies (much of it frozen, unfortunately).

[Sally08]

Fortunately, short of a systemic breakdown, such a scenario is impossible, since most areas generate AT LEAST some of their own electricity by whatever means, and there is no single (or even a dozen) components that could go out leading to a long term power outage. The grid might go down for a couple of days, but no longer than that.

How long was the entire NE part of the U.S. blacked out in the past due to "rolling outages"? Wasn't that a systemic breakdown?

How many days after Katrina did New Orleans become violent?

My personal SHTF scenario is that the Internet is attacked/brought down. Think of all of the Y2K concerns/scenarios, if even just a few individual companies had problems vs. the entire world at the same time.

The world would screech to a halt. Way more impact than 9/11. Whoever succeeded would have the world as hostage-

Earlier this year before the opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse, Iran was taken totally offline, except for Internet access via the U.S. Its banks could not wire/transfer funds.

I've had engineers tell me that electricity leveling across the entire US uses/requires the Internet.

Imagine if the Fed had no access to member bank reserve figures:eek:

FYI - 7 of the 13 Internet backbone servers were brought down in 2003 "but only for an hour or two, now let's talk about the weather" per the TV news that night.

I believe there has been at least one more current attempted attack on the Internet backbone servers that I am aware of (could be many more that haven't been publicized for obvious reasons).

If Chinese hackers have been able to hack into Department of Defense computers and Internet DNS servers have already been hacked recently, are these "trial runs" to do the same things *at the same time* in future?:eek:

[tmosley]

How long was the entire NE part of the U.S. blacked out in the past due to "rolling outages"? Wasn't that a systemic breakdown?

How many days after Katrina did New Orleans become violent?


Service was restored after that blackout within two days. As I said, regional power can't really stay out that long, not without some sort of other severe disruption.

New Orleans became violent because people weren't allowed to leave, and there were multiple feet of water in the street, and general conditions were causing people to die. A mere power outage would take far longer to produce those kinds of effects, and power outages of such length and over such a broad area are next to impossible to have happen accidently.

[Cowlesy]

Well on the top of Drudgereport right now, it says the power could be out in Houston for 4 million people for "weeks", though I'd guess "day-days" is more appropriate.

EDIT: Link
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/09/13/hurricane.ike.texas/index.html

[pacelli]

Well on the top of Drudgereport right now, it says the power could be out in Houston for 4 million people for "weeks", though I'd guess "day-days" is more appropriate.

EDIT: Link
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/09/13/hurricane.ike.texas/index.html

Let's hope it is only day-days, rather than weeks. I hope those folks down there have places to go or have made preparations ahead of time for this scenario. The mindset "it can never happen" is becoming more and more difficult to adopt with these massive weather events.

[JRegs85]

I would think many grocery stores would have a rough time doing business if they can't get their cash registers and credit card readers to run.


During HS, I was a cashier at a grocery store when the blackout of 2003 occurred. We were still able to do most credit card transactions if I recall - but only on some type of manual machine. The problem was we sold out of water and most of our food within an hour or two.

Fortunately, we employees stashed a bitchload of water for ourselves in the back.

[Uriel999]

When I was a kid me and my family had to deal with Hurricane opal. Didn't have power for about 2 or 3 weeks. Thats right, not days but weeks. We evacuated before the storm hit and had a giant cooler we filled with food. We ate just like normal by cooking on our 30 foot cabin cruiser. The folks don't have that sweet boat anymore (sigh that was a great boat), but they got a generator and a big container for fuel. So for me, I would just drive 2 hours to my parents house with perhaps a detour for food and supplies my parents may not have. Or just a lot of beer or liquor (gotta keep entertained somehow). Now if it is a shtf scenario, well I'm fubar prolly. But their aint much you can do when your a broke college student.

More or less anybody with half a brain in areas where hurricanes hit all the time already knows the drill as far as power outages. It really isn't that big of a deal.

[s35wf]

[QUOTE=Cowlesy;1676738]Well on the top of Drudgereport right now, it says the power could be out in Houston for 4 million people for "weeks", though I'd guess "day-days" is more appropriate.


Just talked to my aunt in houston yesterday. She just got elec back. Was out for almost 15 days! She was lucky though, some of her neighbors had generators, gas stoves, etc.... They've kindof been helping each other out. She did say she would rather go without elec than water though. A lady across the street from her has Not had running water for 2 weeks! This is in a area of Houston that had NO flood or major structural damage other than a few tree limbs down!

I know what its like to live without elec for 1 week cuz im in FL. I have a xantrex power/jump box for emergencies, have a old gas stove so can still cook w/o elec!
Been thinking about a solar setup for emergencies like one from kensolar.com

[Sandra]

Here in Louisiana, I have noticed a change in how stores are stocked. The freezer sections are greatly decreased, ready made canned meals goods are increased. I wish someone would invent great tasting MRE's for store sales.

[Mini-Me]

Here in Cincinnati, I found out exactly how prepared I am:
NOT AT ALL. Sure, I have a flashlight, a few batteries, and a few candles...and I have some dry and canned goods, etc., but they don't really last all that long, and canned goods aren't the tastiest eaten cold. After all, we have an electric stove and no charcoal grill. Of course, we could have made a fire pit if worse came to worse, I guess. I was lucky because our power was out for less than two days (as opposed to others in the area, who were out of power for a week or more - short by the standards of this thread, even), and we were able to pick up a bit of extra food at the grocery, which miraculously remained somewhat open.

When the power goes out, the average person is pretty much helpless, and that includes me...but it did give me some time out to reflect on just how unprepared I was. I guess I should consider our outage a wake-up call practice drill.

[V3n]

Here in Cincinnati, I found out exactly how prepared I am:
NOT AT ALL. Sure, I have a flashlight, a few batteries, and a few candles...and I have some dry and canned goods, etc., but they don't really last all that long, and canned goods aren't the tastiest eaten cold. After all, we have an electric stove and no charcoal grill. Of course, we could have made a fire pit if worse came to worse, I guess. I was lucky because our power was out for less than two days (as opposed to others in the area, who were out of power for a week or more - short by the standards of this thread, even), and we were able to pick up a bit of extra food at the grocery, which miraculously remained somewhat open.

When the power goes out, the average person is pretty much helpless, and that includes me...but it did give me some time out to reflect on just how unprepared I was. I guess I should consider our outage a wake-up call practice drill.

Ditto! I was out from Sunday afternoon until late evening on Friday - completely unprepared! (My entire Christmas list this year will consist of "power-outage supplies"!) I bought a charcoal grille and cooked-off everything that was in the freezer... the worst parts were running out of juice for the cell phones, running out of gas in the car (gas stations need power too!), no internet, basically no entertainment whatsoever.

Some of my neighbors had portable tv's, but when the broadcast band goes all digital next year, those will be completely obsolete.

My contribution to this thread, if you've got a cell - buy these:
http://www.energizer.com/products/energi-to-go/cell-phone-charger/Pages/cell-battery-charger.aspx

(I'm cell only, so this puppy was a lifesaver!)

[Mini-Me]

Ditto! I was out from Sunday afternoon until late evening on Friday - completely unprepared! (My entire Christmas list this year will consist of "power-outage supplies"!) I bought a charcoal grille and cooked-off everything that was in the freezer... the worst parts were running out of juice for the cell phones, running out of gas in the car (gas stations need power too!), no internet, basically no entertainment whatsoever.

Some of my neighbors had portable tv's, but when the broadcast band goes all digital next year, those will be completely obsolete.

My contribution to this thread, if you've got a cell - buy these:
http://www.energizer.com/products/energi-to-go/cell-phone-charger/Pages/cell-battery-charger.aspx

(I'm cell only, so this puppy was a lifesaver!)

When the power was out, I heard that the cell phone towers themselves were running on batteries. In the case of a longer-term power outage, it seems that they won't even be able to route your calls, no matter how charged your phone is. :o Land lines worked, though (but they wouldn't if the phone lines were to go down simultaneously...).

[V3n]

When the power was out, I heard that the cell phone towers themselves were running on batteries. In the case of a longer-term power outage, it seems that they won't even be able to route your calls, no matter how charged your phone is. :o Land lines worked, though (but they wouldn't if the phone lines were to go down simultaneously...).

I wasn't sure how the towers were working, so that makes sense. I always had a good signal, but the neighborhoods around mine were up and running Monday night, my street took a direct hit to a power-line, so we were out longer than the surrounding area.

Still, I don't think anything could convince me to ever return to a land line.

[Mini-Me]

I wasn't sure how the towers were working, so that makes sense. I always had a good signal, but the neighborhoods around mine were up and running Monday night, my street took a direct hit to a power-line, so we were out longer than the surrounding area.

Still, I don't think anything could convince me to ever return to a land line.

Nah, not for ordinary usage...but if you can afford it, it's a good fallback for emergencies.