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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

#111

Post by fl0ki »

sa46 wrote: post #84
sillysaurusx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 8 pounds per gallon

It never occurred to me that people needed this spelled out, but I guess it's simpler in most of the world where 1L = 1kg.

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

#112

Post by lxgr »

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.

What use is a spare laptop in a faraday cage if I can't brag about having one on this site?

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

#114

Post by lxgr »

javajosh wrote: post #80
gosub100 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what makes me take prepping seriously is that the majority of payments are electronic now and there is no failover as far as I'm aware. In ~2015 I saw a power outage briefly take down the payment processsor at a grocery store. despite having cash I could not check out. If something like that happens but sustained long enough to cause a mob to loot the store (which the media would of course amplify), it wouldn…

It's really too bad we didn't have a major CME in the 90's. That was the perfect time for a good lesson in redundancy and why you can't and shouldn't jettison "the old ways" so quickly. Perhaps its not too late now, but the pain will be considerably higher. Earth lucked out in so many ways, but a CME spanking in the 1990's is asking for too much I guess.

That's just the anthropic principle for you: If we'd have been any less lucky, we wouldn't be here to write about it :)

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

#116

Post by ryandrake »

bee_rider wrote: post #85
anigbrowl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

Yes, that was what I was going for. If you consider your community to be only the likeminded, cooperative people you know and associate with and rely on for help, then of course "your community" is great. I was talking about the greater community: the full population of your town, neighborhood and/or surrounding neighborhoods, and I'd estimate (depending on where in the country) a good 50% showed their counterproductive, selfish, belligerent side during COVID. Since we collectively haven't learned anything from our mistakes, I would expect the same behavior during the next disaster.

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

#117

Post by withinboredom »

briffle wrote: post #26
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.

In Oregon, after some severe forest fires, ice storms that shut down whole towns, and the possibility of a Cascadia Subduction Zone event (ie, ~9.0 earthquake) They recommend keeping supplies for 2 weeks to allow time for local areas to get regular supplies of food, water, etc. https://www.oregon.gov/oem/hazardsprep/pages/2-weeks-ready.a...

The problem with that advice is that anyone who could bring you supplies is also suffering from the same problems you are.

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

#118

Post by fl0ki »

colechristensen wrote: post #17
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.

* Have a well stocked pantry. Costco business centers sell large bags of rice, beans, etc. very cheap. It just doesn't hurt to have some of these things on hand and use them. * Have solar installed on your home. Have some spare disconnected inverters, maybe even a couple of uninstalled panels. * Grow some of your own food in a garden. * Have good relationships with some of your neighbors. * Know how to do stuff yours…

> * Grow some of your own food in a garden.

This will get you a handful extra meals, assuming the ideal case where everything was fully grown, harvested, and preserved before the incident. It's one thing to have a village harvest & jam cycle for the seasons, it's another to need to be prepared for the situation to change overnight, all alone and with only a home garden to work with.

You're better off using the money, time, energy, etc. to buy provisions that are immediately and near-permanently useful without the variability, climate sensitivity, and labor intensity of gardening.

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

#119

Post by holoduke »

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.

Clothing, weapons, some tools, some survivial books. And muscles and brains. And last but not least. Gold and silver. Because that will become the only money.

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

#120

Post by danw1979 »

b112 wrote: post #110
briffle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart sells 5 gallon water totes for $15. that is essentially 5 days for one person. We have a few on hand (family of 4 plus dog) and every six months or so, I empty them, clean them, and re-fill them. Also, there are gravity filters that work great if you have things like creeks near you.. Berkey Filters are pretty good for filtering out contaminants, as well as 2-bag gravity filters that are really popular with b…

If there is no AC, and you are exerting yourself a lot (no car or transportation is down, more work to prepare food, even having to take a dump outside), 5 gallons is barely enough for one person to drink per day. You'll be sweating a lot more in those conditions. Another example is food in winter months. During a disaster, even with winter gear, your houee may not be heated. If it is -20C inside, your body will need…

If you drink ~19 litres (5 US gallons?) of water every day you will not survive long. That’s about an order of magnitude more than is recommended under normal non-strenuous conditions.
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