Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I would probably want a Gravi-stil as relying on filter mediums has a built-in expiration date (or # of gallons).
Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
161–170 of 418 posts
Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#162Earlier 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.
Also a small camping stove with a couple of gas cartridges to ensure you can cook your rice and pasta.
Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#163Can 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.
Simply surviving something like this, provided you can rely on the grid coming back eventually, is mostly just hunkering down. The water requirements here are referring to what is needed to sustain activity. I was also a logistics officer for a combined arms battalion and the water needs of an infantryman fighting a war are quite a bit greater than a family hunkering down in their house. Drink whatever non-perishable liquid you have, slowly, and it will take at least a week before you dehydrate. If you're not already anorexic or some kind of extreme endurance athlete, it's going to take most people at least a month to starve. You won't have a pleasant existence, but as long as you stay in place and don't try to do anything, you can easily stay alive without much.
If you're talking true Walking Dead level post-apocalypse LARPing civilization is gone and not coming back, stored supplies do nothing but delay the inevitable. You need to learn how to live off the land and probably fight for it. Look at people taking shits in the street that Hacker News hates so much and see what they do to survive without working utilities and access to grocery stores. Eat trash. Drink rainwater. Stay out of sight as much as possible and look insane and dangerous when you're not out of sight.
Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#164Earlier 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.)
The genius move I heard of was to throw a few 5-gal jugs of water up in your attic (!!!). It's relatively shelf-stable, standardized size, and "in case of emergency" you can even use it as a gravity-flowed spout to fill smaller containers below. I've taken to trying to have a minimal set of 4 one liter steel water bottles hung in the closet (grab + go) all the time. So convenient to be able to "just grab some water"…
Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#165Earlier 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.)
We do get power failures, so it's mostly been for some garden watering, and being able to flush our toilets during an outage. We're on a well, and the pump needs 220v. I suppose I could get a better generator too, ours only does 120v.
Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#166Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#167Can 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.
Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#168https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/what-a-major-s...
Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The genius move I heard of was to throw a few 5-gal jugs of water up in your attic (!!!). It's relatively shelf-stable, standardized size, and "in case of emergency" you can even use it as a gravity-flowed spout to fill smaller containers below. I've taken to trying to have a minimal set of 4 one liter steel water bottles hung in the closet (grab + go) all the time. So convenient to be able to "just grab some water"…
If it's kept in plastic containers, it's probably only good for a year or so before enough stuff leaches into the water that it'll last off and funky. The time period decreases significantly if your attic gets hot (like a lot of them do).
Re: Coronal mass ejection impact imminent, two more earth-directed CMEs
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Actually, what’s the most useful way you’d prepare for a worldwide grid outage? Be on a government payroll and have the skills necessary to repair the damage.
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…