«-- Letter Re: Keeping a Low Profile is Crucial for Preparedness | Main | Notes from JWR: --»
The Big Picture -- Grid Up Versus Grid Down--Oil, Soil, and Water
Before selecting retreat locale, It is crucial that you decide on your own
worst case scenario. A location that is well-suited to surviving a "slow-slide" grid
up scenario (a la the deflationary depression of the 1930s) might not necessarily
be well suited to a grid down situations.
As stated in my post on August 15, 2005, a grid down situation will likely
cause a sudden onset variation of TEOTWAWKI with
a concomitant mass exodus from the big cities resulting in chaos on a scale
heretofore never seen in modern memory.
My own personal "best case" scenario is an economic depression, with
the grid still up, and still some semblance of law and order. Things would
be bad, but the vast majority of the population would live through it. Living
in a rural agricultural area won't ensure that you'll always have a job, but
probably will ensure that you won't starve.
My personal "worst case" scenario takes a lot more description:
A rogue nation state launches three or four MIRVed ICBMs
with high yield warheads simultaneously detonating at 100,000 feet over America's
population center, preferably in October or November, to maximize the extent
of electromagnetic pulse (EMP)
effects. With only six warheads arriving "time
on target" (synchronized for simultaneous detonation) over, for example,
Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, and Los Angeles, more
than 90% of the U.S. population would fall within the footprint of EMP. With
such an attack there would be hardly any initial casualties aside for those
people unlucky enough to be traveling on that day. (Since EMP would disable
electric
flight controls, causing any modern aircraft to go out of
control and crash, and the sudden loss of engine power in automobiles at the
same time as a blinding flash would likely cause thousands of high speed car
crashes.) A high altitude air burst would impart no blast or radiation effects
on the ground. Nothing other than just EMP. But what an effect! Think of the
full implications.
As previously stated, the higher an nuclear air burst is detonated, the wider
the line of sight (LOS), and hence the larger the footprint of EMP effects.
With an EMP-optimized attack, as I just posited, EMP would be coupled
to nearly all of the installed microcircuit chips in the U.S., southern Canada,
and northern Mexico. In a enormous cascade this would take down all
of the north American power grids, and cripple virtually every vital
industry and utility: Natural gas production and piping, municipal
water systems, telephone systems (hardwire and cellular), refining, trucking,
banking, Internet services, agricultural machinery, electrically-pumped irrigation
systems, you name it! 95% of cars and trucks would be inoperative. With the
dependence of the power utilities on computers, I have my doubts that they
would be able to restore the power grid for weeks, or months, or perhaps years.
And with the chaos of society disintegrating around them, they might not have
the time or opportunity to restore the grid, even if they would otherwise have
the means to do so. This would mean TEOTWAWKI on a grand scale. The words "dog
eat dog" do not even begin to describe how things would become in the
cities and suburbs. Soon after, as the cities became unlivable (without power,
heat, water, sanitation, or transportation of foodstuffs) this would cause
a massive, involuntary exodus from the cities and suburbs, almost entirely
on foot, comprised of countless millions of starving people. With winter
coming on, this would result in a massive die-off, perhaps as much as 70% of
the American population. It would not be until after that die-off
that some semblance of order could be restored.
This crush of humanity will of course head for any agricultural regions that
are within 50 to 75 miles of the major cities. Hence, I would not want to be
a farmer living in Pennsylvania's farmlands, California's central or Imperial
valleys or Oregon's Willamette valley. They will simply get swarmed and overwhelmed.
Surviving a Long Term a Grid Down WTSHTF Situation
Even in the absence of EMP, any set of circumstances that would bring down
the power grids (for example a major war, a fuel embargo, a cyber attack on
power utility Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software, etc.)
would be devastating, and have a similar result. The biggest difference would
be that the Golden Horde would have functional cars available--at least as
long as their gas lasted. This would and Lets say that you've already moved
to a lightly populated agricultural region that is more than 150 miles from
any major city.
Assuming that you can avoid the ravages of the Golden Horde by virtue of geographic
isolation, you will then have to contend with producing food. If the region
that you selected is dependent on electrically-pumped irrigation water, then
you'll be out of luck. That is why I emphasize the importance "dry land
farming" regions. (Regions where consistent seasonal rains are sufficient
to produce crops.) A small scale "truck" farmer in such as region,
producing a wide variety of vegetables will be sitting pretty. Even with horse
drawn or hand cultivation, he will have large quantities of excess crops available
for barter and charity. By teaming up with neighbors and hired hands (paid
in barter) for "strength in numbers" he will be able to defend what
he owns. With copious produce available, he will be able to barter for harvesting
manpower, horses, tools, and so forth. IMO, a man in this position and locale
is the most likely survivor of TEOTWAWKI.
With the aforementioned in mind, you can see than importance of finding the
right retreat locale. Ideally, it will be far removed from metropolitan regions,
have a fairly long growing season, plentiful rainfall, rich topsoil, a reliable
domestic water supply that us not dependent on grid power
(preferably spring-fed), nearby sources of firewood or coal, and a light ambient
population density. If you combine all of these factors--visualize them as
map overlays--you will end up with only a few regions in north America that
are wholly suitable for "worst case" retreats. Start with a photocopy
of a climate book with maps of America's farming regions. Mask out any farming
regions that are depending on grid-power pumped irrigation water. Then take
a compass and start drawing radiuses around all of the cities with a population
greater than 200,000 and shade them in. Depending on your level of pessimism
about the scenario and/or your estimation of the depravity of human nature,
you may be drawing some pretty large circles!
Hurricane Katrina was a wake up call. I cannot imagine how anyone could watch
the television coverage of the aftermath of Katrina and not come to the conclusion
that we live in a highly interdependent technological society with enormously
long lines of supply and just
a thin veneer of civilization, as documented in countless newspaper stories.
It doesn't take much to disrupt those interdependencies, nor to expose what
lies just beneath that thin veneer. Like an onion, what lies beneath is not
very pretty smelling.
Get to Know the NRCS Man!
You will note that I specifically mentioned topsoil in the preceding discussion.
The importance of soil quality in the event of a true "worst case" must
be emphasized. As S.M.
Stirling so aptly described it in his science fiction novel "Dies
The Fire", soil quality is not crucial in modern mechanized agriculture.
If an acre of ground produces 5 bushels of wheat versus 12 bushels of wheat
it is not of great consequence when you are cultivating hundreds or even
thousands of acres from inside the cab of an air conditioned $40,000 tractor,
or a $70,000 combine. However, if someday you are reduced to traditional
pre-industrial manpower or horsepower, where cultivating just a few acres
will require monumental exertion, then the soil quality will make a tremendous
difference between feeding a community, and starvation. Therefore, have
the soil analyzed before you buy a retreat property! Determining
the soil types within a region should be your first step--in fact even before
you talk to the first real estate agent. Buying lunch for the soils specialist
at the local Agricultural Extension office might be a valuable investment. On
your first scouting trip to your proposed retreat region, call
the USDA Agricultural
Extension Office, and ask to talk to a soils specialist at the National Resources
Conservation Service (NRCS)
desk. (The NRCS was formerly called the Soil Conservation Service or SCS.)
