Posted on 03/14/2019 8:42:28 AM PDT by Sean_Anthony
The U.S. does not have to be Venezuela, either socialist or grid down
As if the complete — and inevitable — collapse of Venezuela’s disastrous socialist experiment were not bad enough, the long-suffering population there is now five days into a near-total collapse of its electric grid.
People are increasingly desperate for the most basic necessities of life, most especially water.
Several years ago we decided to prepare for the worst collapse of society. Losing the grid is a really bad problem. Most people have a few days of food in their freezer but that will go quickly when there is no electricity. We have three freezers not counting the frig in the kitchen, it is a lot to lose. First I bought a generator. Several years ago we had an ice storm which kept us down for a week or so. I was out of town and had some of my kids hook up the gen. After a day and a half the generator died. I was in Chicago so I went to the Home Depot and bought one and flew it home to the kids. I think I paid $500 for it, they were selling for over $1200 at home.
That experience really got our attention. We bought solar. It was a huge expense and will take about 10 years to pay for itself but because we also got a huge battery backup we can go easily for weeks without grid or sun. While we have a NG generator that will power all our loads and charge the battery we also still have the gasoline 5.5KW little generator that will keep emergency loads running. We got a lot of solar so we wouldn’t be inconvenienced if the shtf. Yes it cost a lot but as electricity prices go up it will be better and better. We have a spring on the property and we store tons of water in the basement. Unlikely we’ll ever have to use any of that stuff but you hope you don’t have to use your car or house insurance too.
We are getting a little old. We really like air conditioning and we surely don’t want to do without heat. While we have a NG boiler we also have a heat pump that will run off the solar. Using the battery for A/C and Heat Pump will shorten the life of the battery charge to only a couple weeks, but you expect to not go for weeks at a time with no sun. In a SHTF situation you won’t have natural gas very long. The battery consists of 4 36V Tow motor batteries that I reconfigured in to 3 48V batteries, about 3500AH. Allowing 40KW per day I can go 24 days down to half charge. The NG genset can run for 4 hours and give me 2 days of charge, on a sunny day I can get about 1-1/2 days worth of charge. but when the sun is shining is when you have your heaviest loads so you aren’t taking out of the battery so it is really better than the numbers would make you think at first glance.
Having secure electric is a really good feeling. We have 9 kids. They, their spouses and their kids could live with us if it gets bad and never have to leave the property for a year or so.
Perhaps we’ll miss a few cruises but we at least feel secure.
Sounds like you have a very robust system. Well done!
I always tell folks in cold climates not to feel bad because when it becomes a lot of work to keep warm, the entitlement army will head south.
It's part of the government program called 'Help A Terrorist' it was set up to improve the self esteem of criminals, thugs and terrorists...
I did not say “not much of a life.” I said “Correct, but not as much life” referring to the disastrous population decline brought on by a sudden loss of the grid.
People will certainly interact face to face - over the sights of their weapon as they use their creative mind to feed their own kids their neighbor’s last can of expired Campbells soup.
Learning from others experience is the least painful way:
https://www.theprepperjournal.com/2015/02/18/shtf-lessons-from-one-year-in-hell/
https://adventure.howstuffworks.com/survival/wilderness/10-true-stories-survival-cannibalism7.htm
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