What to do in an Extended Grid Down Scenario

Wars, Hackers, Solar Flares...It More Amazes Me that it Hasn't Happened Yet

My uncle Bruce, being a PTSD Vietnam veteran, wanted to be something of a prepper post 9/11. So he bought a deep freezer which he packed to the gills with hundreds of dollars worth of meat in his Oceanside home. Then he went onto one of those military survival websites which offered MREs and a 30 or 60 day food supply of rice, barley and some freeze dried stuff. Then he waited, leaving his preppers food supply in his garage for years. I’m sure he felt secure in the knowledge that it was there should the need arise for it.

This all got derailed by a simple rolling blackout which swept through California in the mid 2000’s. The freezer meat all went bad, or Uncle Bruce didn’t trust it to be edible at any rate, so beyond inviting me and my family to Oceanside for a cookout of his prime beef cuts one night later, the vast majority of his hundreds of dollars worth of meat from his deep freezer ended up in the trash. Everything in his main refrigerator and freezer also ended up in the trash 1-2 days later.

I decided to check on his survival kit at that point. Although the rice in the plastic covered bin had not been invaded by rats, ants or other creatures it smelled like plastic and was pretty close to inedible. Food items are not the equivalent of gold bars in that they can be stored somewhere for years or even decades without their value degrading (the exception being of course if the food item is fermented properly such as with a fine wine). I didn’t bother testing the MREs.

On the other side of the world in Thailand my mother in law Mar faced a similar situation. In 2014 her power source was shut down and it took a full week to reroute the electric line. Now Mar had grown up without electricity and it struck me how little changed at her house, which we were staying at as we waited for my first husband’s visa to come to America. She had been cooking on an electric hot plate before and was using a rice cooker while I plugged in a hot pot to make my morning coffee. But by the next morning she had made a small fire under the awning even though it was pouring down rain outside. The water was boiled for my coffee and the rice and meat was cooked. She proceeded to whittle through the modest amount of fish in the freezer and I ate through my cheese before it spoiled. The bread and some vegetables were kept in there not because they needed refrigeration but because it kept them closed off to the chickens. By that afternoon I had located a coffee shop nearby where for 60 baht I could enjoy good coffee while I plugged in my phone and laptop. Almost nothing changed.

The risks of an extended electric grid down scenario are rising all over the globe. In developed Western countries where the population (and the supply chain, monetary exchange and logistics) are most dependant on the lights turning on the results of an extended power outage over a widespread area could be catastrophic. In cold winter months large populations could freeze to death and water pipes would burst. Being that it is the first days of summer I wanted to focus more on food storage and survival in the warmer months.

1. Pretend you’re a prepper already. Think of the stocks of food that were common and available before the time of refrigeration which didn’t require cold storage at all. I like to keep large quantities of flour, sugar (cane, brown and white), baking soda, corn starch, salt (iodized, sea, pink, and rock salt), vinegar (1 gallon jugs of white and apple cider along with various glasses of rice, balsamic, and red wine), spices, tea, coffee, yeast, dried pasta of all sorts, dried beans/lentils (many types), rice (white, brown and sticky rice), barley, oats, potatoes, garlic, onions, butter, lard and edible cooking oils. Plastic is the worst possible solution for long term storage, however, especially of fats. I’ve had coconut oil turn rancid and inedible within a few months time when stored in plastic, so splurge for glass jars or simply transfer them to such yourself. Eggs, contrary to USDA guidelines, are not stored in refrigerators at all in many countries. If you are worried that your eggs are bad you can drop them in cool water first. If they sink to the bottom all is well.

2. Learn food preservation techniques which include salting/drying, brining, canning and fermenting. There’s an entire movement dedicated to curing nitrate free bacon at home alone. I thought this video gives a good overview of the process but I have found multiple others that don’t obsess over the type of salt used in the curing process: some use rock salt, some even iodized salt, and some don’t specify. I don’t think it will make or break your results and it’s better than leaving your spoiling meat in some slimy bacteria in the bottom of your deep freeze. In Thailand this process is often used for curing small fish:

   You could also try rebel canning, which is not USDA endorsed, but it basically involves adding meat, vegetables and vinegar along with salt and spices and water bath canning by boiling the jars for three hours.

   This is subtitled and the title is “Money Will be Worth Nothing! I Know, I Survived the War in My Country.” She gives a great overview of some recipes in water bath canning meats. Something about this reminds me of my grandfather from Czechoslavokia.

   Of course if your electric is out already you won’t have access to a hot electric burner and even gas might not work for long. You do know how to make a fire, right? Even in rainy conditions, one strong enough to boil a large stock of water for three hours straight? This goes a bit beyond charcoal and lighter fluid on a grill. Chuck Schumer has been getting a lot of flak for his whole cheese on raw meat grill, but my question in looking at the picture is is there even a fire?

   

   

   This small ceramic cooker in Thailand is nice because it concentrates heat in a small area while also being large enough to cook a large stock pot of water for hours as long as you keep adding wood to it.

   Starting a fire and keeping it going for cooking and warming is a fine skill to learn. I fully endorse keeping a large stockpile of both lighters and matches around even if you aren’t a smoker. Gum wrappers, flint and magnifying glasses are nice to have and all but if modern times give you a shortcut use it.

3. As far as canned goods and the like are concerned, we keep a healthy supply of them, including canned fish (tuna, mackeral, clams) and meat (spam, anyone?), pasta sauce and tomato paste, vegetables of all types, some fruits in syrup, peanut butter and all those things that don’t require refrigeration until they are opened (i.e. fruit juices and condiments) My mother likes to date the cans in the pantry from when they were purchased so that we rotate out old stock first. Trust your instinct on this. I’ve had things which were terrible despite being well before their use by date and other things which stayed shelf stable for years later.

4. I’d probably throw some yeast in and add an airlock to any spoiling fruit juices to make a probably not great but hopefully drinkable wine for next time. I’d rebel can any formerly frozen fruits and vegetables. I like to dry out mushrooms, certain fruits thinly sliced like apples and various spices grown in our garden (rosemary, mint, sage). I take advantage of the dry air in Las Vegas where I can.

5. Obviously long before starvation becomes a problem, in an extended Grid down situation, fresh water might not be coming out of your tap. This will be a far more pressing issue as most people need one gallon of water per person per day and that little case of 16 ounce plastic bottles from the grocery store will be gone in a day. Daisy Luther at the Organic Prepper covers this issue well:

   “You can’t always rely on the faucet in the kitchen. In the event of a disaster, the water may not run from the taps, and if it does, it might not be safe to drink, depending on the situation.  If there is a boil order in place, remember that if the power is out, boiling your water may not be as easy as turning on your stove. If you are on a well and don’t have a back-up in place, you won’t have running water.

   Each family should store a two week supply of water. The rule of thumb for drinking water is 1 gallon per day, per person.  Don’t forget to stock water for your pets, also.

   You can create your water supply very inexpensively.  Many people use clean 2 liter soda pop bottles to store tap water.  Others purchase the large 5-gallon jugs of filtered water from the grocery store and use them with a top-loading water dispenser.  Consider a gravity fed water filtration device and water purification tablets as well.” Water filtration, assuming that there is a natural source of water nearby, can be done in a pinch with charcoal from a fire layered with rocks, sand and grass in a water bottle cut open on the bottom with cheesecloth covering the drip filter. A man on the Gaza strip designed a basic water filter to desalinize water from the Mediterranian Sea using charcoal, rocks, cotton, sand, charcoal and rocks to run it through. Sadly the video of this is already buried and I cannot find the link. Obviously this will not take out bacteria or microbes as boiling or filtration is still needed. But necessity can be the mother of all invention. I’ve purchased some chlorine dioxide which when mixed with an acid base is a water purifier. I’ve also read that the Miracle Mineral Solution works for a broad spectrum of health ailments.

6. As far as drugs I'd keep on hand these would include any necessary prescriptions (the fewer of those you have, the better), broad spectrum antibiotics, painkillers, antiseptics, and activated charcoal for any digestive upsets. In reading a survivor’s account of the siege on Kosovo I noted that the man said he lost two family members who became ill after eating tainted food or drinking tainted water. Antibiotics can buy valuable time in those situations your body needs to flush these toxins out somehow. The goal however is to try to avoid things that make you sick in the first place.

   Do you think we could be headed into an extended Grid down situation? Considering the threat of nuclear war (and a radiation blast in the sky could take out a large area of power), electromagnetic disturbance and solar flares, the rising risk of hacking attacks, supply chain and infrastructure meltdowns, or even a stupidly imposed climate emergency by the puppets in charge, I’m more amazed that it hasn’t happened yet in any widespread life altering way.

   Perhaps that’s because they know that necessity is the mother of invention. The Internet would be the least thing to worry about in many developed areas methinks…

   Buy me a ko-fi