When The Grid Goes Down..

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When it all goes down. Call me Max

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Soon after we bought this house my neighbor told me that his wife never shops for groceries and that he was hungry. (she’s gone a lot, almost all day, everyday)
I made a pot roast and veggies and such one day and took some to him, along with a big ole jar of ice tea. About a week later I walked over and asked if I could get my dishes back and he said his wife threw them away. She apparently didn’t like the fact that I took him food while she was gone.

So no, I don’t think I’ll be sharing.

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Wow… threw the dishes out. In my old neighborhood, we had about 5 pie dishes… 2 were pyrex… we would bake a pie and hand it off to a neighbor… at some point, they would do the same. About 10 houses did this.
Anyway… yes. Very small bubble. Thus my move to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington

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My next door neighbor and I just helped each other mow our lawns and shared gas for the lawn mowers. He gave me one of his beers and I gave him a couple of mine. Turns out his Grandfather passed 16 years ago to the day (yesterday)so we each had a shot of tequila in honor of his grandfather. All this using google translate on our phones. My Spanish is limited and his English is even more limited. So I’ll help a few that I feel would reciprocate.

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Lived in Gore Ok during the BIG ice storm that effectively shut down everything for two full weeks. Promised myself that I would at least have the means to generate emergency power. And I do. I also have the arms to protect my wife and myself, if that becomes necessary.

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The whole neighbor thing is underrated. I’ve been through a few hurricanes in my lifetime and neighbors make all the difference. I was in Puerto Rico in the late 80’s or early 90’s visiting my two elderly aunts when a hurricane hit. Now, Puerto Rico is a place where most folks are super friendly, welcoming and helpful. But sadly, it can also be pretty dangerous and crime ridden, and my aunts lived in a relatively poor neighborhood. Even so, there was no neighborhood looting. And all the neighbors pitched in and shared everything they had. They all went the extra mile to help my aunts knowing they were elderly.

My Dad lives in Biloxi, and when Katrina hit, all I saw on the news was death, looting, mayhem and destruction. Since the cell towers and landlines were down, I couldn’t call and check in on my Dad. So after a couple days of gathering supplies, water and gas, my cousin and I headed down to look for him expecting the worst. Back then, I didn’t have my license to carry, much less a handgun. But I did take my cheapo Mossberg Maverick 88 just in case.

While driving down from Dallas to Biloxi, we saw all kinds of National Guard trucks and law enforcement vehicles from all different kinds of out-of-state jurisdictions heading down as well, presumably to keep law and order. So that made us even more apprehensive about what to expect, and the closer we got to the coast, the worse the storm’s devastation hit.

Luckily, we arrived with no problem, but unlike the chaos and looting we saw on TV, we saw the complete opposite - local folks helping each other out, handing out water and food wherever we went. My Dad was doing fine and even had a generator rigged up for his house and his neighbor’s house. Folks who saw our Texas plates mistook us for stranded tourists and offered us whatever they had. We of course declined when we told them we just came down to look for my Dad and help him clean up and fix the storm’s mess.

A few years ago a freak snowstorm hit Dallas. We Texans are used to dealing with oppressive killer heat, tornadoes, hailstorms, West Nile virus biting mosquitoes, gators, rattlers, water moccasins, scorpions, chiggers, painful mesquite thorns and other stinging, biting ailments. But a rare little snowstorm knocks us flat on our backs, and we become paralyzed - lol. So although we took advantage of the ice and snow so as not to have to go into work, our little middle-class neighborhood got together and helped each other shovel the snow from our driveways. Mind you, many of these were neighbors who didn’t know each other or rarely acknowledged each other. But the snow event shocked us enough to come together, albeit briefly, to help each other out.

So my point of all this is the “neighborly phenomena” I’ve witnessed when certain weather events bigger than ourselves temporarily upend our lives and cause us to help each other out. I think one important factor in this, though, is the temporary effect these events cause. I don’t know how long neighborly help will last if the effect lasts much longer than anticipated or is more permanent in nature.

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@ RedAngel

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^ That is brilliant.

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Blah blah blah generator this power that
All you need is shelter fire water and food
If you need power or general services to achieve this your sorely lacking in skills
You know what works when general services don’t
My Kalashnikov works
My flint and steel work

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I will be saying hi to my new neighbors. See if they are a asset or food… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::skull_and_crossbones::pirate_flag::pirate_flag::pirate_flag::person_fencing:

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Best to figure that out early :rofl::joy:

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Some people don’t have fireplaces. Many city people don’t have options to light a fire in their shelter without electricity.

I have a four season wall tent with a stove so I’m good in that arena. But hell man, a lot of people don’t even store water. It will be riots if it ever gets down to that

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IF there ever is a major grid down you will need a backhoe or a dozer to bury all the bodies to stop the Plague, have plenty of face masks, rubber gloves, bleach and Tyvek painter coveralls…

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Can’t you just burn them?

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My point when making this post was to state the fact
That in this thread a lot of folks were talking about modern convenience
For example loading maps in your phone instead of learning to read a real map
Having generators to power said phone and devices
Not to mention the fact that a generator is extremely loud and draws attention to you
Imagine a while block at night without general services in a situation and your house is the only one lit up and has the soft blue glow of the tv shining out the window
Guess witch house the bad guys or the hungry or the pillagers are going to first

My point was people need to learn and train with out those things
Fire is fire no convenience needed

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you could if you had the trucks and equipment to move them someplace where you would not have to smell it…and not start a big forest fire…lol

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I can see where that might go bad.

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I think some medications need to be refrigerated. When my Mom was fighting cancer our old refrigerator broke, and we stored some of her meds in an ice chest until the fridge got fixed.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, my Dad fired up his little generator to keep his and his neighbor’s fridge going. Pretty much the whole neighborhood also had their little generators running. They were out of power for about a month. No one rioted, went on a rampage or died because of it.

From what I read in news articles, similar thing happened in the US Territory of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated it. Much of that little island of about 3.5 million folks went without power for about a year. Many folks had little generators, mostly for refrigeration purposes. Again, no one rioted or went on a rampage, but there were reports of increasing theft and crimes towards the end of that period, probably because of criminals figuring out they could take advantage of the situation. As an aside, Puerto Rico subsequently passed legislation at the end of last year reforming its once overly restrictive gun laws to come in line with the 2nd Amendment. Some argue it was because its legislators finally saw the failure of such gun control laws to keep its residents safe, especially in light of what happened after a lengthy period without power:

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Takes a lot of fuel.

2,000,000 BTU’s per body.

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