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It must have happened while I was glued to my monitor. The lights flickered, my UPS beeped, and now I can hear the steady drone of my emergency backup generator. A glance out my window reveals that the whole world has gone dark. Good thing I wrapped the house in aluminum foil just last week.
Strange that I'm somehow still connected to the Internet. Is anybody out there?
*digs out his copy of Bruce Spence's How to Become an Auto-Gyro Pilot in 21 Days*
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"The Eagle has landed in the Silver Tree. Repeat, the Eagle has landed in the Silver Tree. Be sure and bring the wood home. And be sure he has matching suit and tie!"
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Breaker breaker Brian1, I copy and I reply, and make sure you reupholster, make sure you reupholster.
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I've lost power at least 4 times in the past (well now) 36 hours. Kids came home Monday from school to find the clocks flashing, indicating that the last power drop at that point was about 9:30 am. Went down again on me at 7:45 pm while I was online - which meant that I had to sit through Scandisk on reboot. Tuesday morning woke up and the clocks were flashing again, it went down about 5:15 am. Thank goodness for battery-powered alarm clocks! Then it downed AGAIN while I was in the shower. Called the electric company on my way to work. So far we're still up <knocks on wood> but the UPS is now moved to the top of the list of things to buy when the tax refund check finally arrives!
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Well, that didn't last long. There were so many overturned semis littering the interstate that it just wasn't any fun trying to get the 308 GTB up to speed. Nearly got stuck a couple of times, trying to get around pileups.
The Ferrari was a gas hog too.
Found a nice farm truck pulled off to the side of the road with the engine still running. It's a two-ton Ford Super Duty duallie with a 150-gallon diesel tank in the bed. Lucky me.
It was a bit messy getting the driver out. Leaned him against a fence post and tilted his hat down to keep the sun out of his eyes.
List of favorite things:
1. All night truck stops with backup generators that keep the pumps running.
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Took a detour at Vegas and headed over to see how Hoover Dam was doing. Always wondered what would happen to a hydroelectric dam if left unattended. Am stopped at the overlook now, and it appears to be holding up just fine.
Guess there's all kinds of automation in there to open gates during Spring runnoff...
Eventually the berrings on the turbines will wear out and something will jam, plugging up the plumbing and sending water over the top. Give this canyon back to Mother Nature...
Does anybody here know how to operate a hydroelectric dam?
Could make a career out of maintaining this thing. There would always be plenty of electricity to keep my food cold...
Food...that'll take some doing. Where did those oil refinery people in the Road Warrior movie get their food? Spam. Blech.
Sister's family in Barstow is gonna need burying. Better get to it.
Add to list of favorite things:
4. Bluetooth cell phone
5. Cellular stations with backup generators (for a few more hours anyway)
6. Cellular stations with a direct power feed from a hydroelectric dam
7. Fresh bread from Subway's
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Was thinking last night about what to do with the rest of my life.
Could go looking for other people.
Could settle down in one place and try to make a comfortable life.
Could run around, playing with other people's toys.
Will have to avoid getting hurt, at least until a doctor is found. It seems that there are some medical-type Hatrackers still posting, but they're all back East, aren't they?
Would like to find a wind turbine to supply my electricity needs.
Don't know how long the Internet is going to hold up. It seems that backup generators and power plants are going offline one at a time.
Now the question is whether to continue on to the West Coast or to head back home. Afraid of what I might find.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Got low on potable water so I had to get out of San Jose.
Decided that coast side was the place to be so I drove up the penninsula. Something is on fire up ahead.. I think it's San Francisco.
Hwy 84 was pretty clear except for the bicylcist that was sprawled out in the middle of the street... I think (hope) he was dead already.
Found a nice farm house between San Gregorio and Half Moon Bay. The owners aren't using it anymore so we just moved in.
There's a creek beside it so we took apart a portable generator and are using a water wheel to turn turbine. I had to use the gears from 3 ten speed bikes to get it to turn fast enough to produce electricity. I hope this doesn't break.
I shocked myself pretty good hooking it up to the house. one minute I was on a ladder, the next minute I was waking up on the ground. That could have been bad. We don't have a doctor either.
Trying to decide what to grow here. Fortunately they already have an orange tree so we'll have some fruit. Need tomatoes, grains and some cows. I guess I'll have to russel some of that up in the next week.
I also need to make a wall. I don't know if anyone else has survived (didn't pass anyone on the way up) but if someone has, who knows if they're safe or hostile... I got some fire arms and amunition at the same place I got the generator so I'm covered there.
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There ought to be enough canned goods on grocery store shelves to feed us for several years. There's plenty at home in my pantry, so I haven't tried "shopping" for groceries yet. Don't know if the stuff in stores is contaminated. I did buy some bottled water out of a truck stop vending machine. Silly me...can't get out of the habit of using money.
The planting season here in Utah is still a couple of months away. I figure on having fresh vegetables to supplement the canned stuff.
Glad you're making a go of it T.P. I'll remember to be careful with the electricity.
Ya know, I always figured when the end came, I'd be one of the first to go. Never really thought of myself as a survivor.
Hey, if the web doesn't hold up, and you happen to head out this way, I'll leave a note as to my whereabouts in a coffee can alongside Interstate 80 at the Utah/Nevada border.
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Yeah, I got some stuff off the grocery shelves.. I think they're safe. Not to mention we found a bunch of mason jars FULL of food in the basement. The people who used to live here must have LOVED to can their own food. And there must be a peach tree somewhere around here. (I'm.. umm.. "saving" the pickled beets for last. eww.)
Speaking of the people who used to live here... I found them. At least they were together when they died... You'd be surprised how badly someone can smell after they've only been dead a few days. I made my husband carry them outside. We buried them under a tree overlooking the ocean. I hope they would have liked that. Must remember not to plow there
Coffee.. that's something I HAVE to grow. What I got off the grocery shelves will only last so long.
Anyway, I'm thinking long term. I want to get good at planting and raising crops BEFORE I run out of store food. If I mess up the first or second year, so be it, but if I can't raise a good field of crops by the third year, where am I going to find food? I don't THINK canned stuff goes bad but do you want to take a chance on food poisoning with no doctors? And what if other survivors have scavved the canned food out of the nearby grocery stores... if there ARE other survivors.
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"Not to mention we found a bunch of mason jars FULL of food in the basement"--the Pixiest. I thought you were in California, when did you go to Utah?
Pickled beets--blecch. As if beets weren't blah enough before pickling.
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The previous occupants were really old. Prolly Okies that come out in the depression. Seemed to be in good health though. (aside from being, you know.. dead...) There were no walkers or canes or even false teeth in the house.
There WAS vicoden and percocet in the medicine cabinet so one of them was in a lot of pain. I'm going to hold on to those. I hope I don't need them for a long time.
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My wife (may God rest her soul) and I spent a week last summer going through the old canned stuff in the pantry. Some of the stuff was over ten years old! It was pretty funky. We dug a pit in the back yard and buried the contents of the cans. My wife insisted on recycling the cans. That's one thing we won't have to worry about anymore...recycling.
We've got seven-year old canned corn that is still edible...just barely.
Tomorrow I plan to go shopping for a windmill. There's a fellow down at the Point of the Mountain who's got two. He was on TV a couple of months ago whining about the power company only paying him half price for his surplus electricity.
Point of the Mountain is a good place to set up a packet radio repeater too. Don't know what the packet radio bandwidth is like, but that's one of the things they used for computer communications before the Internet came along.
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Packet Radio! Good idea. One of the reasons I picked this place was because I used to work near here.. at a...
Coastal Radio station!
I wonder if the packet radio software I wrote for them 10 years ago still works... (bet we can go faster than 50 baud these days!)
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Just googled "packet radio" and found that it is alive and well, and more integrated with the Internet than I thought. Also there's long-range 802.11, which runs line-of-sight up to 20 miles.
So it won't be a matter of replacing the Internet when it finally goes down; it will just be a problem of locating existing wireless hubs and getting power to them.
Don't know how much of a priority communicating online will be for most folks, but it's getting pretty lonely here.
Just got an e-mail from a fellow who happens to be an airplane pilot. He wanted a weather report, and he wanted me to check out the condition of the runway at Salt Lake's airport number two and to see if he can get fuel when he gets here. So it looks like I'll be having a visitor soon. He didn't say why he wanted to come to Salt Lake. Didn't say where he was flying from either. Wish I was a pilot.
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Will have to figure out how to care for farm animals, or at least one farm animal.
While scouting out the windmill situation at Point of the Mountain, I thought I'd check out the polygamist compound down there. Heard a cow, bawling its lungs out, tied up in a tin shed. Turns out its a milk cow.
How do you milk these things?
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I won't be milking any more cows. What a hassle!
I don't have time to take care of animals, but live critters are a rarity right now, so I don't want to let them die either. I turned the milk cow into the pasture. Hopefully it can take care of itself until I have a chance to look in on it.
The runway at Airport Number Two is clear, and the lights are on. I topped off the backup generator. I don't know anything about aviation fuel. There were a couple of tanks, and the gauges didn't read zero, if that's any help.
Somebody has already taken over the place with the windmills. I steered clear, not knowing whether they're friendly or not. I figure they've got to be pretty aggressive to jump on that property that quickly. I'll give them awhile to settle in before I approach them. I know if I were in their position, sitting on a sweet setup, that I'd be pretty defensive.
The polygamist compound has solar panels and a wind-driven pump on the well. I think that'll do me.
I've got to figure out some way of marking the place so that drifters don't think they can just move in. On the other hand, I don't want to advertise my presence to any predatory types. I guess if somebody really wants to move in, I'll just have to move on. There's enough room in this world now without having to start a land war.
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Thinking of these polygamist solar panels, I just remembered that I had an ICPSolar panel on order from Amazon.com. I just checked the FedEx tracking status online, and the status shows "on truck for delivery." Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I'm going to head up to Walton Feed in Montpelier, Idaho tomorrow. I've seen their stuff in the local supermarket. They've got all kinds of whole grains packed in 6-gallon, nitrogen-filled buckets. Supposedly that stuff lasts forever. I'll try to borrow a tractor/trailor rig. One load should last me a lifetime.
I plan to hang onto this polygamist compound, but the minute I leave for any length of time, somebody is going to step in and take it from me. It makes sense to me to get any long trips like this one to Montpelier taken care of before I settle down and start putting effort into the place.
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I gave up on the tractor/trailer idea, figuring that I would waste more time than I had, learning to drive the thing. Found a nice 22-foot, covered trailer and towed it behind the duallie.
Had a tough time up Logan Canyon. I barely managed to squeeze through where an avalanche had covered all but a narrow section of road. Why did this all have to happen in the winter? I can imagine what that road will look like after a couple of winters without maintenance.
Anyway, as I passed through Paris, Idaho, this skinny dog runs out into the highway, and I had to swerve to keep from hitting it. I watched it chase after me in my side-view mirror, and I swear I saw two kids, chasing after the dog. Two boys...one looked to be about nine years old, the other a bit younger.
I don't know much about kids, never having had any of my own. I had a den of Cub Scouts once. They wore me out. You've got to keep 'em busy or they get into trouble. I probably know more about milk cows than I do about kids. Anyway, I've got no need for kids, so I kept on driving. Kids take care of themselves pretty well.
I found the Walton Feed place okay, and there was a partially loaded trailer at one of the loading docks that made for easy pickings. The shipping manifest in the guy's hand said it was going to Smith's. I just unloaded the stuff from the Smith's truck onto my trailer, one bucket at a time. The whole time I was loading my trailer the image of those kids kept popping into my head. It seemed that the older boy was waving his hands over his head.
Most of what was on the Smith's truck was buckets of wheat, so I walked the aisles of the Walton warehouse to see what else they had. Found some dried peas, some beans, and something called "lentils." I don't know what lentils are, but I put two buckets in my trailer anyway. Found some powdered eggs, some powdered milk, and some powdered butter. Now how the heck do they get powdered butter? I grabbed a couple of wheat grinders too. One is a hand grinder, and the other is electric.
I had to hurry loading my trailer because I didn't want to go down Logan Canyon in the dark, and I didn't want to spend the night in Montpelier. I think I hurt my back. I've never hauled so much stuff.
I drove slowly through Paris on the way home. I even got off the highway and drove around the town. I think I drove down every street in the town. It got too dark to see much, so I headed home.
It was pretty tricky coming down Logan Canyon. There were a few slick spots where the melted snow had re-frozen.
I got back to the compound about an hour ago. I'm dead tired, but I can't sleep. I wonder if those kids had Cub Scouts and Pinewood Derbies up there in Paris.
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I'm making another run to Walton Feed today. I'm afraid that I'll eventually lose the compound and everything in it. I figure it would be wise to have a backup stash at another location.
I think I've found the ideal backup location in a suburban neighborhood in the middle of the Salt Lake valley. There's a low hill there, on which the city has built a number of water tanks. There's a well and pump and generator that goes with those tanks.
Also, a ham radio operator had quite a setup, with high speed packet radio, and DX (distance transmission) at his house in that neighborhood. His next-door neighbor had a nice vegetable garden and a huge garage.
I think the suburban setup is actually more secure than the compound. A major highway passes by the compound, and the compound is out in the open for all to see. From the suburban site on the hill there's a nice view of the valley in all directions, yet the site is hidden among a bunch of cookie-cutter houses. And there are no major roads passing by.
I wonder if I'll see those Paris kids today.
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The kid would not get down off the tractor. His two younger brothers seemed willing enough to come along with me, but I could not understand this kid’s attachment to farm equipment. He said his father had taken out a bank loan to buy the tractor, and it had become his job to take care of it. He said there would be a lot of work for the tractor come Spring, and he kept telling me what his father had always told him: “as long as we’ve got land to work and a tractor to work it, we’ll never go hungry.”
So I spent the night in Paris, Idaho. We had potatoes for supper…and breakfast.
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So my little generator kicked out. That's why I haven't been here. I finally fixed it this morning.
I got some cattle from a farm near San Gregorio. Jerseys.. don't have any holstiens yet. There's gotta be a dairy around here somewhere. I walked the fence and it seems fine. had to patch it here and there.
We took a pickup and loaded it full of seeds from a co-op, also in SG. We'll have wheat, tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, broccli.. even Okra. I'm not sure it's ok to plant yet. But then, that's why I'm doing this while we still have canned food. My hubby spent the week plowing and planting. Hope this works.
We stashed the extra seeds in the basement. We should have enough to plant for 3 or 4 years.
We also found the peach tree and an apple tree. We should be doing well on fruit.
I still need chickens. Both the laying kind and the eating kind.
We also found some more survivors. A pair of teenagers. We were looting the Longs in Half Moon Bay... Trying to secure all the drugs we'd need for the rest of our lives. Painkillers, Antibiotics... Stuff the doctor usually gives you when you need them and there's a doctor around...
They were in there getting make up for the girl. Now tell me, the world has ended. Who is she trying to look good for? The last boy on earth? She pretty much has a monopoly on the teen age boy population!
Anyway, we took them back to the farm house. They weren't going to survive like that. We gave them one of the rooms upstairs. Yes, just one room for the two of them. Gotta get busy with the repopulating thing.
The boy should be good for heavy lifting/farm work and as much as I like being alone with the hubby, this no people thing was getting really lonely.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I may need some advice on how to care for this cow. Sounds like you know what you're doing when it comes to farming and animals.
Paris is still under two feet of snow. So there won't be any plowing for another month or two.
Are you sure about this "repopulating" thing? I was hoping a doctor or two would have popped up by now to help with that sort of thing. I've been wondering what it was that did everybody in and why it didn't do me in. Am I immune? Can the immunity be passed on?
I helped the boys dress up their parents' graves this morning. They had buried them right smack in the middle of the front yard. We built a circle of big rocks around each grave and filled in over the grave with white quartzite that sparkles in the sun. Maybe we'll do engraved headstones later.
There was a baby sister, but she died too. They buried her along with the mom so she wouldn't be alone.
I told the boys about the cow back in Salt Lake, and how she needed milking, and they agreed to go along with me. We're going to take her back to Paris this evening.
There was another landslide, coming down Logan Canyon. I got out and guided and cleared a path, while Charles, he's thirteen and an excellent driver, steered the truck. He insisted on driving the rest of the way back to Salt Lake.
I asked the boys where they were when this all happened, and they said they were sitting in the potato shed, eating raw potatoes.
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Pfft. I know next to nothing about farming. All I know comes from what my father tried to teach me when I was very little and wasn't listening. Eventually he realized I thought farming was boring and stopped trying.
Funny thing about the shed those boys were in... I assume it was an aluminum shed... But if mearly being surrounded by aluminum was enough to keep you alive I would have expected a lot more survivors. I mean, how many people have aluminum siding? There's got to be something else to it.
However, what caused it isn't as important as what we are doing to survive now...
Yes, but when you talk about repopulating, and I know being a newlywed that you've probably got big plans for a family, but I would have thought that before having children you'd want to know what killed everybody off. You'd want to know that IT wasn't still around.
By the way, I was only kidding about wrapping my house in aluminum foil. That was something my brother in-law used to tease me about when we got into discussions about the potential for a nuclear holocaust. He'd say: "if you're that worried about it, why don't you just wrap your house in foil."
You're right it's got to be something else. My house was only half covered in aluminum siding; the other half was brick.
Oh, and that potato shed wasn't aluminum at all. It was a regular wood frame building with shingles on the roof.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:at least 24" of dirt over the body and 150' from a water supply seems to be a standard
I'll have to check on the kids' parents when we get back to Paris. I didn't think to see if they had a well.
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I guess either we find a scientific-type to do some experiments to see if IT is still around, or we find potential parents who can deal emotionally with the possibility that their offspring may not survive.
And then there is the possibility of complications during childbirth putting the mother’s and child’s life at risk.
Being a guy, and never having had any children of my own, I’m probably not very qualified to express an opinion about whether we should re-populate the world. If it were me, I’d wait awhile to see if there is a doctor in the house.
On the other hand, historically, the urge to have children has always outweighed most other considerations. Heck, people have born children into slavery and while in prison.
We saw a big fire yesterday as we drove past Salt Lake on the way back to Paris. The flames had engulfed an entire neighborhood. With nobody to put it out, I suspect the fire will continue to grow. I wonder if the fire was deliberately set or if it started as a result of nobody being around to tend things. I didn’t think we could afford to get involved in what might have been a deliberate action. Maybe I’m glad to be getting out of the city.
I’m writing this from a ham radio shack in Preston, Idaho. I remembered that my dad would sometimes order ham equipment from an outfit in Preston, but we had to drive around a bit to find it. The antenna farm on the roof gave it away. We’ll have to see if we can move all this equipment to the boys’ house. They don’t seem to want to live anywhere else.
One cool thing about the boys’ house is the radiant heated floor. No forced air or reliance on electricity when it comes to heating the place. We’ll have to find a propane truck soon to refill the big tank behind the house though.
Once we get this radio equipment set up at the house, I’ll be able to try some DX. We’ve been staying up late, monitoring some short wave frequencies on a portable receiver, and it sounds like this disaster wasn’t limited to the U.S. At least that’s what we gathered from an English-language transmission that we picked up from Turkey.
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We're getting ready to take this packet radio setup in Preston offline, and we hope to be back online sometime tomorrow evening.
Before we take it down, I thought I'd mention something that we saw today that made me think about the power outage that happened earlier. As we were driving around Preston this morning, Clayton, he's the 9 year-old, spotted a burned out house that was still sending up a puff of smoke. We've been watching for fires since we saw that big one in Salt Lake yesterday. Anyway, it appeared that what caused this particular fire was a downed power line laying across what used to be the roof of the house.
We found that a nearby power pole had been clipped off at the base by a pickup truck. We've seen a lot of such single-driver accidents as we've been driving around. It looks like whatever killed these people, did it quickly, even as they were driving, not even giving them a chance to slow down and pull over.
Anyway, about that power outage, I had assumed that it was caused by an electromagnetic pulse from some sort of weapon or by an enemy attack on a power plant, but seeing that downed power line has me thinking that with people dying suddenly as they did, maybe other accidents involving power lines happened as well. One thing is for sure, the power line still had to be live to start that fire.
I wonder if a single power line accident could have taken out the power from Paris, Idaho to Barstow, California. Not everybody here at Hatrack reported a power outage at the same time, and as far as I know some Hatrackers back East may still have power.
So maybe it wasn't an enemy attack. I would have expected military planes flying over, either the enemy's or ours, by now.
Now I'm wondering what happened to people who were up in airplanes when this happened.
Hope to talk to y'all tomorrow.
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