Wisdom from The Action Wisdom In Action

The Ultimate Emergency: The EMP Pulse (L-O-N-G and Updated)

Just a few years ago, we were told that the sudden end of oil would be our new and enduring emergency. Currently, we’re in the middle of an oil glut—over-production, combined with greatly-diminished demand, have rendered that particular voice mute, and it is expected to be silent for at least the next decade. So much for prognostication!

Electricity, notably the generation of electricity, is our actual bogeyman in the wings. Obama is doing his part by over-regulating and cap-and-trading coal-fired utility companies into buying their power from “clean energy” sources, and directing funding toward new sources of “clean energy”, even though they aren’t as cheap and plentiful, or as efficient, as traditional sources.

It’s bad enough that energy-time-of-use rationing has occurred with peak- and off-peak hours, but now we have overall rationing with the sourcing of energy from so-called “clean” but inefficient and unreliable sources, which don’t exist in sufficient quantity to supply all of America at peak productive output—even in GOOD weather! Never mind when clouds or rain occur, or when the wind stops.

Eventually, we’re going to become like Iraq, with electricity only available for limited times during the day, from whatever source we have at the time. If you are fortunate enough to be able to afford your own power generation, you won’t be subject to the limits of government-sponsored and utility company-provided power, however limited.

Even worse is the eventual threat of an EMP pulse—the weapon of all weapons, creating ultimate destruction without harming a living soul, unless that living soul is hooked up to some sort of medical device dependent on electricity. Even solar-powered homes would be vulnerable—the panels themselves would be alright, but the wiring leading from the panels into your home would not. DC power from total-solar-powered homes would be as susceptible as AC-powered homes. All electricity and all devices requiring electricity would cease to work. Your car would be stuck in the garage because the door wouldn’t open unless you had a manual override, but never mind that. Your car would have become a useless heap of metal, plastic, and dead electronics—everything from the onboard computer, to the electronic ignition, to the power windows and seats would be toast. The guy down the street with the ’59 Rambler would probably be the only one with a working car, but only as long as his gas held out.
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UPDATE: Engineer Hubby tells me that our EMP wouldn't take out the entire country's grid, and it wouldn't be a permanent end to power--it would knock out power for a short time, but it could be reset, and life as we know it would continue. Sorry to scare the hell out of you--nothing to see here. It does give you something to think about when preparing for emergencies, though.
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Side note: electromagnetics would also render any credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, or ATM cards void. Not only could you NOT use them when there isn’t any electricity to run the swipe machine, but even IF there was electricity, the magnetic strip on the backs would be wiped clean, and all your information on them lost.

Unless you have an alternative source of power for refrigeration, you’ll soon run into the immediate #2 great emergency of humankind: keeping medicine fresh. Insulin comes to mind—insulin can be used unrefrigerated, but it is only good for 30 days regardless of the expiration date. After your bottle of insulin is gone, or your 30 days are up, THEN what do you do? Assuming the insulin factories are rendered useless, and the drug stores are inoperable and looted, what does one do if insulin-dependent? Such is the dilemma of modern science—plenty of people that shouldn’t be alive are alive and kicking today because of modern medicine.

Speaking of modern medicine, EMPs, and electricity, people with pacemakers would probably be wiped out immediately. If not done in immediately, they would certainly die off when their battery goes up. In fact, anyone with a battery-powered implant of any kind (brain implants, heart implants, you name it) would probably be among the first to go. Watches and battery-powered clocks would probably stop.

The next to go would almost certainly be people dependent on life-saving medications, since the medicine factories and medicine access points (drug stores and pharmacies) would be inoperable. It doesn’t help that insurance companies limit medicines to a 90-day supply, and our laws state that someone coming into the country with MORE than a 90-day supply of medicines can be arrested for drug trafficking, so stocking up is virtually impossible.

Next, there’s the implication of a dentist-free world: without electricity, a dentist couldn’t properly care for your teeth, besides manual cleanings and pulling teeth. Dentistry would revert back to the Wild West days, and toothpaste, toothbrushes, and floss would become worth gold one day because the supply would eventually run out.

Then we also would have a hospital-free world, and many women and babies would die for lack of once-simple Caesarian-sections. People would die from a ruptured appendix, gall stones, cancer, and all those things we used to take care of with surgery.

Let’s move onto the world of food. So many of us microwave our food, and wouldn’t know how to live without electricity, refrigeration and freezers, and the microwave. Just like that, our push-button, high-tech world would cease to exist, not to mention the source of push-button food: the grocery stores. Cooking it would be a trick, unless you have a gas stove (which may or may not work, depending on whether or not electricity is needed for natural gas delivery to your home—then, there’s the electronic stove ignition), or a charcoal or gas/propane BBQ, as long as the supply of charcoal, gas, or propane held out. Perhaps a solar cooker would come in handy here, or an open campfire…but then again, what if your fuel source ran out?

How on earth would you stock up and keep food under these circumstances, let alone cook it and keep any leftovers?

How would you heat and cool yourself and what’s left of your home? What would you do for transportation? What about medical care? How would you get your news? Where would your clothes come from?

You begin to see how very easy it would be to set one of these EMP puppies off and throw us into Third World status overnight. Never mind government shenanigans with manipulating money supplies and installing Socialist economic policies, never mind terrorist activities or Iran’s nuke plants, never mind illegal alien infestations, because there’s something far worse that could happen, and God knows if anybody will ever be able to get the power back on.

For all of us, no power means no pay, because banks and ATMs would be useless. Jobs would cease to exist in today’s world, because we can’t operate without electric power. No pay means no purchases, but there wouldn’t be any place TO purchase in these conditions. Those of us who didn’t get the chance to stock up while we had power and money to do so are going to be the ones hurt most (again, as in all dire emergencies). Those of us who DID stock up merely bought ourselves time before we, too, would run out of supplies and would have to form or join roving bands of smash-and-grab thieves.

I don’t know for sure, but I have the feeling the pulse would kill of all electronics world-wide, and not just in one country or one region. There would be no escape from our new powerlessness, except to drag out or recreate 18th and 19th century technology that was all mechanical and much was water-driven, if not horse-driven. One again, farmers would probably come out ahead, as well as the Amish…too bad we don’t have enough of them around. Big Farm would be out of business without fuel and supplies to run the machinery for agribusiness, so whatever food was produced would be about quadruple the price it is now. Goodbye cheap Chinese goods and goodbye manufactured anything for a while. Junkyards will become the new treasure troves.

What can we do toward preparing ourselves for this remote-but-devastating possibility? For starters, understand that there’s no way to stock up enough stuff and keep it secure to ride this out. Know that some of us are going to die off for sure. Know that there’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent it, and know that the current world supply of emergency goods will run out, leaving us much like the cast of Lost (or even Gilligan’s Island). We will eventually be reduced to tracking time and days with our versions of Mayan calendars scratched into surfaces, until we realize the futility of our efforts--no reason to keep time when there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Now for some action: we can pre-prepare for this remote possible emergency by pulling the plug NOW and learning to live with minimal power usage—that way, if and when the power cessation comes, we’ll already be used to living without a certain amount of power in our lives. We’ll just have to make adjustments to accommodate the rest of the power loss. In the event that someone figured out how to get the power back on, anything already unplugged won’t be damaged by the EMP, and will be usable again, provided you have a place to plug it in—the electronics won’t be fried, but your house’s wiring might be.

We go through very mini-versions of this with storms, power surges, and lightning—we either unplug our computers completely, or use surge protectors to keep the electronics from being fried. There is no surge protector big enough to ward off an EMP attack.

When the lights go out temporarily, and we lose power, we bring out our emergency gear and compensate. The emergency doesn’t last long, though. An EMP attack’s results would last forever until someone got the power back on, and that could take years, decades, or even centuries. It may never happen, and it would spell the eventual doom of our civilization and planet. At the very least, we would be blown all the way back to Roman times.

In the event of an ongoing emergency with possibly no end, how would you survive? What would you do for food and food storage? What about fuel sources? What about medicines and hygiene supplies, clothing, shelter, communication, education, and community leadership or local authority? What about our kids and pets? What about personal protection? What about all the important documents you scanned into your computer and stored on the web, that are now lost for who knows how long?

Who would bury us? Worse, who would bury the last living person?

Bartering would become the currency of trade, and having a barterable skill will be useful. Current-day computer techies and others who make their living from electricity-driven objects might want to learn a more useful non-powered skill just in case. We can’t all be prostitutes, and not enough of us went through the Boy Scouts.

Can you start a fire from scratch, make a shelter from what’s around you, or hunt/forage your next meal and know consuming it won’t kill you? Can you do it for someone else?

Running out of oil, and electricity rationing through some cockamamie cap-and-trade scheme would be the least of your worries—in fact, you’d be wishing for them. Power would eventually make a comeback, but only if the engineers with the know-how survived long enough to make it happen. We could start all over again as a society, but will the necessary people needed to make it happen still be with us, or will they already be dead?

Will it be too late for us? It’s not like there’s a Time-Life book sitting in the library on how to rebuild a power grid, or how to convert things to run on oil! And speaking of libraries…I won’t go there. You already know how under-funded they are, and can guess how little current useful information there’d be in the case of a dire emergency like this one. We won’t be able to just go online like we used to, abandoning our library system for Google, or even Kindle.

Our own military already has an EMP device, and does its damndest to make sure nobody else does, but it may be too late for that, too.

Remember back when we freaked out over the A-bomb and the nuke? Compared to an EMP, those are child’s play, so why are we so worried about running out of oil one day?

Just be glad you aren’t on the space station with no way to communicate or return home. :)

Posted by Cute at 7:48 PM

Labels: economy, food preparation and use, health