Wide area grid down or local problem?
Instant black
Instant quiet.
One second I was writing a description for an upcoming 3BY Podcast, the next second I was sitting in my recliner, keyboard in hand, staring out into absolute blackness.
I grabbed my phone and clicked the screen on. It came up immediately. OK, so no EMP, that’s good to know.
I got up out of my chair and walked outside. Pitch black, the town was bathed in starlight. I could hear cars driving around, further evidence that it was a grid-down only scenario.
As a journalist associated with a local newspaper, I decided to do a bit of investigating. I hopped into my car to see how much of the town was blacked out… the sky was really dark, so I was pretty sure all the streetlights were off, but I was curious… I was also curious to see people’s reaction.
Night sky above a cedar tree at The Place
Towns look odd with no lights, don’t they?
I drove uptown (downtown to you city slickers) and found several cars stopped in the middle of the street, the people leaning out their windows, chatting. This may seem strange to those not accustomed to it, but around here it’s a time honored tradition to park in the middle of the street and talk.
Even the police do it, and everybody knows if two people are talking just pull around them to the outside. No big deal. I drove on past one bank, then the other… yep, both of their lights were on, both generators were working. I drove past three different convenience stores and I was absolutely baffled to see what I did.
All the lights were off except the “lotto numbers” signs, which were all on. Apparently, those things have battery backups. Who knew?
I pulled into the newspaper where pretty much “all hands” had gathered and we got on social media. The power was dead but Facebook was hopping, literally hundreds of residents were on their phone sharing information about the lights being out, as well as where the lights were on.
You can read the rest of the story by clicking on the link if you like.
It may be different in the city… not nearly as safe as my friendly little town
Around here, everybody knows everybody else. We know that these streets are safe to walk at night without worrying about anybody attacking us.
Normally.
To be fair, right now our streets are rather full of potholes after a brutal winter for them, so you stand a vastly bigger chance of spraining an ankle than you do of being attacked by anything other than the neighbor’s yappy little ankle-biter dog that was let out for it’s nightly bathroom break.
When the lights go out here, the sky goes absolutely dark in town, but if you go to the edge of town during most power outages you can see the rural lights. We are on a different power substation than the surrounding area north and east of town, so it’s common for one to be down and the other to be up.
In the city, or the burbs, you may be in the dark but if a significant portion of the city within 50 miles of you still has power, you should still see the orange glow. We can’t.
Setting aside the obvious first
If there’s a big weather event… if it’s storming, if there’s a huge amount of wind, if there’s been ice, then you know it’s most likely a local and regional event. We are going to set those situations aside, because they don’t really affect figuring out the extent of the outages.
Grid Down? How long? How big?
As Michael stated in his question/information, we live in a connected world. Many of our communications methods are entirely independent of each other, unless there’s been an EMP some pathways of communications should be working.
The more that is working, the more we can start feeling assured that the scope of the event isn’t the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI). There’s no guarantees, of course, but if cell phones, automobiles and radios are working, then we have communications and can find out the extent of whatever problem it is.
Cell towers and automobiles each have their own power sources, as do cell phones. If they are all dead, the we are grid down and in the hurt locker. If they are working, then we still may be in a bad situation, but finding out what’s going on will happen sooner or later.
Prep for the worst-case scenario
Even though I know it is vastly more likely that the power will go out because a squirrel shorted out a transformer and caused a cascading failure than we have an EMP, I don’t prep for the squirrel… I prep for the EMP.
Why?
Because the preps that work for EMP’s also work when Rocky crawls across a live wire and a ground and takes down half the county doing his “inmate in an electric chair” impersonation.
EMP’s spook the living tar out of me, and the thought of a man made or natural nation-wide long-term grid-down situation is something that I fear, and that fear is some of what motivates me to keep prepping.
Hopefully this article will give some food for thought.
I have UPS units on all of our TVs, DVRs and the answering machine so when the power goes out it gets noisy in our house. 😛 But usually within a minute the generator will spin up and stabilize and we’ll be back to normal with the sound of a lawnmower outside. If everything shuts down with no beeping and no attempted generator startup I’ll know immediately that excrement has hit the fan and can start my immediate EMP plans – fill the WaterBob and any other containers I have on hand, start blocking off the basement windows in case the nuclear plants upwind of us can’t put the reactors in safe mode, etc.
If things start beeping and the generator comes up I’d check how widespread things are via TV or radio if I’m up, otherwise I’d just roll over and go back to sleep and deal with it in the morning. 😉
Of course, that assumes I’m home…if I’m at work it gets more complicated since while I’m an IT worker, I work at a high school. And while I have the same UPS on some gear and a generator for my server room so I’ll know immediately that we’re in an EMP event, if it happens while students are here then my life gets a lot more complicated. If things happen outside normal school hours, then I just grab my emergency pack, go to the car and get the GHB and (assuming the car won’t start post EMP) start walking home so I can get my EMP to-do list completed ASAP.
If kids are here at school when the event happens then I feel obligated to make sure the other adults here have a clue whats happening and hopefully have an idea of how to deal with the students. When the power goes out for more than a few minutes the admins reach out to first responders and decide whether to send everyone home, but if it’s an EMP event then those communication channels probably won’t work, so I have to wonder what the plan is for that scenario….I suspect they haven’t considered that communications could break down like that, but I’m not part of the safety committee that does the all hazards planning.
I don’t think I’d be able to just walk away without first knowing that the other adults are able to make rational decisions about keeping the kids as safe as they can be in the short term.
You know how, when there’s a power outage & it’s been going on awhile but still, everytime you walk in another room you absent-mindedly flip the light switch? That’s how I picture an EMP but on a much longer time line. How long will it be before we stop flipping switches? My dad always joked, “Great! the power’s out. Now we”ll have to watch TV by candlelight.”
The two Biggie things I prepare for is an EMP and Retirement.
Everything else will fall under those two things.
Something I do suggest for those that “prepare” is doing “Lights Out” weekends, weeks or whatever time you can.
Practice all those skills you have acquired, try hauling that water to flush the toilet, bath out of a bucket, and so-on. I’m betting it’s no where as easy as one may think.
What is interesting is when the power does go out for a short time, is how quiet it gets. How peaceful it seems without all the “noise”.
I had to chuckle a little, someone said if it happens at night….. I’m just going to roll over and go back to sleep, nada going to get done at 3:00AM anyways… 🙂
Chuckle I agree NRP nothing much is getting done at 0300 anyways. Friends as NRP says DO a power out weekend. See just how much extra work is needed to do say “Laundry”? Friends a small solar array and a faraday cage can make your life SO much better. Even a little 12 volt Shurflo RV water pump direct wired into a solar panel can really be a blessing after you’ve tried hauling a few buckets for that toilet flush.
Once you’ve done a weekend with the power off, try a few extra days. Eye opening and far better that waiting until the power is gone for who knows how long….
Staying at The Place is a lights-out weekend. Even there where we’re set for it, everything takes longer to do and is less convenient. I don’t mind; I happily trade the convenience for the peace and stars; but it proves your premise.