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Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

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Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#81

Post by xucian »

ryandrake wrote: post #28
voisin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best way to prep is strong community connections around you. Community is resiliency.

LOL we saw how that played out with COVID. 1/2 your "community" is going to deny the disaster and deliberately worsen it. 1/2 (with some overlap) is going to go from grocery store to grocery store buying all the necessities to resell them later. EDIT: Wow, I know HN wears rose-colored glasses when looking at the past, but come on, people. We didn't hallucinate the antimaskers, antivaxxers, and thousands of protestors…

this

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#84

Post by sa46 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #20
bigDinosaur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring unrealistic preparations for most of us (such as bunkers and whatever else), an adequate supply of food and water to handle disruptions to logistics for a realistic amount of time must surely be the lowest hanging fruit (e.g. a month?). This is fairly trivial if you aim for things like rice and pasta, and if the grid goes down for longer than a month a lot of us are dying regardless of how we prepare.

The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? I guess we could just start building walls of unopened water bottles in our basement… (In my teens I saw a family friend had a bag full of food supplies. I asked someone if that was a prep bag, and they said yes. I thought they were a bit weird. Now I’ve come full circle browsing Amazon for cheap doomsday food.)

I used to be a logistics officer for an Infantry battalion.

Most of the comments down thread underestimate water consumption. Depending on the climate, you'll want the following daily quantities [1]:

- 2-3 gallons for drinking

- 1.5 gallons for hygiene (can skip for a while)

- 0.5 gallons for food prep

The planning factor for military operations was 8 gallons per person per day. Water is heavy—8 pounds per gallon—and acquiring, storing, and moving it is a large effort.

[1] https://cascom.army.mil/g_staff/g3/TTD/Products/QM-How-to-Ha...

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#85

Post by bee_rider »

anigbrowl wrote: post #45
digging wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was actually more of a demonstration of the utter lack of community in our society, among other things.

That's the point. In many respects, community life is just a polite facade.

I think both sides of this thread agree that most of us (in the US at least) don’t have a robust community in the “community resilience” sense.

The only disagreement I think is in the definition of community. We could either say that community is just, like, our extended circle of acquaintances; we’ve all got one and it isn’t very robust against disasters. Or we could say that a resilient community is some deeper thing on which people can lean in a disaster, but which needs to be carefully tended to, and most of us lack.

The latter is, I think, what the original poster meant.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#87

Post by jandrese »

Marsymars wrote: post #54
pennomi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backpacking water filters aren’t all that expensive and work fine with most water sources. Wouldn’t produce enough to shower in but certainly enough that you could survive in a disaster.

I've got an assortment of backpacking/camping water filters, but don't live especially near a water source, so my days would revolve around walks to the nearest creek. (2 km away) A cargo bike would help a lot there. If the municipal water is still functional but non-potable, a LifeStraw Max gets you effectively unlimited water on-demand for most sources of contamination.

You could collect rainwater, but realistically water outages are usually not "the taps are dry", but rather "the water treatment plant failed so we can't guarantee the water is safe to drink."

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#88

Post by sandworm101 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #3

Can you really call yourself a prepper if you don’t have a faraday cage with a spare laptop inside? (The intersection of doomerism and tech is amusingly cyberpunk sometimes.) Actually, what’s the most useful way you’d prepare for a worldwide grid outage? This isn’t that, but sometimes I wonder if a future CME might be as catastrophic as some say.

>> most useful way you’d prepare for a worldwide grid outage?

Put gas in your car. Impacts are likely to be regional, one town might loose power and another not. Be ready to move if needed.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#89

Post by Syzygies »

Marsymars wrote: post #58
wongarsu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a small camping stove with a couple of gas cartridges to ensure you can cook your rice and pasta.

Or with an adapter hose you can connect a standard propane tank. If you get the right connector bits, you can use propane with either a dual-burner Coleman-like stove, or with a minimal Jetboil-like backpacking stove.

With a different adapter one can refill camping canisters from a standard propane tank. One "usually" gets away with refilling empty canisters, but these aren't legal for transport in an automobile. Presumably with reason, as in the odds aren't as good as skydiving. I recommend the DOT approved:

Flame King Refillable 1LB Empty Propane Cylinder Tank

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MM3GCVO/

It offers some nuanced controls e.g. to avoid overfilling.

Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs

#90

Post by ajross »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #20
bigDinosaur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring unrealistic preparations for most of us (such as bunkers and whatever else), an adequate supply of food and water to handle disruptions to logistics for a realistic amount of time must surely be the lowest hanging fruit (e.g. a month?). This is fairly trivial if you aim for things like rice and pasta, and if the grid goes down for longer than a month a lot of us are dying regardless of how we prepare.

The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? I guess we could just start building walls of unopened water bottles in our basement… (In my teens I saw a family friend had a bag full of food supplies. I asked someone if that was a prep bag, and they said yes. I thought they were a bit weird. Now I’ve come full circle browsing Amazon for cheap doomsday food.)

> The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family?

You already have the equipment for that. Your existing hot water heater stores enough drinking water for a month at least, probably more if you ration carefully.

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