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A Collapse 73 Years Ago, and Another One Coming
The Backwoods Engineer Blog ^ | 7 November 2013 | The Backwoods Engineer

Posted on 11/07/2013 1:08:51 PM PST by backwoods-engineer

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Full text as always for my FRiends, from a humblegunner-approved blogger. Many links embedded in the text at the source, and pictures.

1 posted on 11/07/2013 1:08:51 PM PST by backwoods-engineer
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To: backwoods-engineer

You would have isolated areas with power. Some power plants have black start capability. In other words, they don’t need grid power to start up.


2 posted on 11/07/2013 1:14:36 PM PST by meatloaf
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To: Kartographer; Kaslin

Ping everyone


3 posted on 11/07/2013 1:19:21 PM PST by Lazamataz (Early 2009 to 7/21/2013 - RIP my little girl Cathy. You were the best cat ever. You will be missed.)
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To: Travis McGee

You are mentioned.


4 posted on 11/07/2013 1:20:04 PM PST by Lazamataz (Early 2009 to 7/21/2013 - RIP my little girl Cathy. You were the best cat ever. You will be missed.)
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To: meatloaf

Yeah, I noted that. Hydropower, in particular, has black-start capability. But do you agree that re-constituting a full-black grid would take years? And that in that time, millions would die?


5 posted on 11/07/2013 1:21:38 PM PST by backwoods-engineer (Blog: www.BackwoodsEngineer.com)
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To: backwoods-engineer

“When the power goes out nationwide, there is not a systemic way to get it back. Ever.”

That’s really an absolutely inane statement. it is fully equivalent to “the oceans are rising and will be 35 feet higher in 11 years”.

Yes, we are highly dependent upon an aging grid. But the same author who decries all this pathetic dependency (and don’t get me wrong, I agree with the general theme) must thus be advocating for all manner of INdependence and completely discounts the notion that out of the 50% of people who are NOT leeches, there are probably 5,000 NON-SYSTEMATIC ways to restore the power grid and/or parts of it.


6 posted on 11/07/2013 1:21:39 PM PST by Attention Surplus Disorder (At no time was the Obama administration aware of what the Obama administration was doing)
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To: backwoods-engineer

Global politics have ALWAYS worked on a pendulous continuum. As long as the politics remain moderate, the pendulum swings slowly to the left and right, keep a moderate pace and time. As soon as the pendulum swings far to the right or far to the left, the resulting “equal and opposite reaction” means a shift in geopolitical winds in the opposite extreme.

The problem with this is that as things become harder to control, people believe those peddling promises of stability, and the end result is anything but. Obama is a PERFECT example of this. 8 years of Bush and Republican rule sent people in droves to the polls to vote out who they saw as a threat: Republicans. In reality, the idiocy of the American populace saw the policies of Congress and the Senate, both in the hands on leftists, causing headaches for a Republican president, whom they blamed for the problems.

Americans only see party affiliation. They don’t care who’s in Congress or the Senate, because the President is an “everyone” representative, even though he’s anything but that. If the President is Republican and the country is reeling, they’ll vote in a Democrat. The opposite is true. The true issue, as I see it, is that with the Democrats stuffing the ballot boxes, illegals becoming a voting force for Democrats, and blacks consistently voting for Democrats, at some point it will be impossible to combat their agenda, and Republicanism, the actual idea that we are a Constitutional Republic, dies. Regardless of the pendulum effect, we either become a communist dictatorship or a right-wing fascist police state. Neither is desirable, but one or the other is on our eventual path.


7 posted on 11/07/2013 1:22:15 PM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: Lazamataz

Thanks, Laz. I was going to ping the illustrious Mr. Bracken.


8 posted on 11/07/2013 1:22:17 PM PST by backwoods-engineer (Blog: www.BackwoodsEngineer.com)
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To: backwoods-engineer

Love the guy.


9 posted on 11/07/2013 1:24:06 PM PST by Lazamataz (Early 2009 to 7/21/2013 - RIP my little girl Cathy. You were the best cat ever. You will be missed.)
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To: Attention Surplus Disorder
Show me the systematic plan to re-constitute a full-black grid. It doesn't exist. I spent 9 years in the electric industry, from the controls and meter reading side. I know.

Besides, that isn't the point of the article. The point is, there is more than one destructive force acting on American civil society. I contend that a collapse is inevitable.

10 posted on 11/07/2013 1:24:10 PM PST by backwoods-engineer (Blog: www.BackwoodsEngineer.com)
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To: rarestia
Regardless of the pendulum effect, we either become a communist dictatorship or a right-wing fascist police state. Neither is desirable, but one or the other is on our eventual path.

Yes. I hope to God only as an intermediate step. But history is unkind in that regard.

11 posted on 11/07/2013 1:25:47 PM PST by backwoods-engineer (Blog: www.BackwoodsEngineer.com)
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To: backwoods-engineer; appalachian_dweller; OldPossum; DuncanWaring; VirginiaMom; CodeToad; goosie; ...

Preppers’ PING!!


12 posted on 11/07/2013 1:26:00 PM PST by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")
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To: Kartographer

Thanks for the preppers ping.


13 posted on 11/07/2013 1:26:42 PM PST by backwoods-engineer (Blog: www.BackwoodsEngineer.com)
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To: backwoods-engineer
Bttt.

5.56mm

14 posted on 11/07/2013 1:32:45 PM PST by M Kehoe
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To: backwoods-engineer
Tacoma Narrows Bridge also known as "Gallopin' Gertie"
15 posted on 11/07/2013 1:34:36 PM PST by Iron Munro (When a killer screams 'Allahu Akbar' you don't need to be mystified about a motive.)
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To: Kartographer
No THANKS for bringing it to your attention?

I am so screwed.

16 posted on 11/07/2013 1:36:11 PM PST by Lazamataz (Early 2009 to 7/21/2013 - RIP my little girl Cathy. You were the best cat ever. You will be missed.)
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To: Kartographer

There’s a Great Storm coming everyone is feeling it and its one of the reason everyone is on edge. Deep down the alarm bells are ring the nerves on on edge and the mind is unsettled.

Its your choice you can prep or you can stand around on a bridge waiting for FEMA to bring you a bottle of water, a MRE, a warm blanket and a kiss for your boo-boo and maybe you can even get your picture as you stand there on the national news.

Any one with half a brain can look around and see for themselves what is happening right before their eyes.

So listen to what the bible says: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. NIV Proverbs 22:3

One of the things Selco covers in this article is the fact that many will not accept that a breakdown is occurring even as they watch it happening before their eyes. Why don’t they realize it? It’s caused by a condition called ‘Normalcy Bias’ a mental state people enter when facing a disaster.

It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.

A good article on ‘Normalcy Bias’ is on our own ChocChipCookies Blog The Survival Mom:

http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/12/29/normalcy-bias/

You either prepare and stand on your own beholden to no one or you become dependent on others to provide your basic needs and become their ‘serf’. Me I don’t want to be beholden to anyone for providing what is needed for me and mine. I certainly don’t want to have to kiss some ‘gubberment’ third class bureaucratic to try and coax some help from them, I don’t want some ‘jack booted’ thug herding me in line and telling me where to stand, sit, eat or sleep. And last but not least I don’t want to be shut up in with a bunch of ‘zombies’ and have to worry about not only trying to get basic necessities but having to fight to keep what I manage to get.

http://tomeaker.com/kart/Preparedness1j.pdf NOTE! THIS IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. I DO NOT MAKE ONE CENT OFF MY PREPAREDNESS MANUAL!

For those of you who haven’t started already it’s time to prepare almost past time maybe. You needed to be stocking up on food guns, ammo, basic household supplies like soap, papergoods, cleaning supplies, good sturdy clothes including extra socks, underwear and extra shoes and boots, cash (I myself have been putting up change for the past few years both for the metal content and the fact that using change to make what purchases you can will move you down the the list of possible marks during shtf), tools, things you buy everyday start buying two and put one up.

As the LDS say “When the emergency is upon us the time for preparedness has past.”

Again I like to recomend FReeper’s ChocoChipCookie Blog The Survival Mom (Please Blog Police let this one slide!) Where you can get lots of useful information like:

http://thesurvivalmom.com/2011/11/20/8-morale-boosters-for-any-worst-case-scenario/

http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/02/02/survival-priorities-the-rule-of-three/

And More

Also there is Ferfal’s Blog a survivor of Argentina’s first collapse:

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/

And there is Selco’s Blog a Bosnian War survivor at:

http://shtfschool.com/

There is also this documentry:

Sarajevo: A Street Under Siege

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kuCAOlQSEA

“There is no greater disaster than to underestimate danger. Underestimation can be fatal.”


17 posted on 11/07/2013 1:37:33 PM PST by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")
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To: backwoods-engineer

Mark


18 posted on 11/07/2013 1:37:48 PM PST by sport
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To: rarestia
we either become a communist dictatorship or a right-wing fascist police state.

I'm thinking THIS one will devolve into a right wing communist fascist police-state dictatorship.

With drones.

19 posted on 11/07/2013 1:39:15 PM PST by Lazamataz (Early 2009 to 7/21/2013 - RIP my little girl Cathy. You were the best cat ever. You will be missed.)
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To: Lazamataz

Laz,

You would have a better chance if you updated your BOB, but you insist on keeping that old Air Force issue one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPwW7RaPO_g


20 posted on 11/07/2013 1:42:45 PM PST by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")
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