07 October 2022
We are overdue for a Carrington Event. Of all the solar catastrophes coming at us, this is the one most likely to come right away. Thinking about preparedness for this is complicated by lack of precedent. The primary symptom will be loss of electrical power over huge areas, perhaps a total grid collapse. This is not your normal storm power outage scenario, where there is always a refuge somewhere within driving distance. With a major CME, there's nowhere to go.
All you have to do is look at how people acted with the recent hurricane that hit Florida. There are differences and similarities. Keep this in mind: When the first major CME hits us, one initial reaction will be looting. Aside from any medical emergencies that might arise, your first problem will be looting. Looting is the standard response when property must be abandoned for any reason.
But it's not like storms that force people to evacuate. They usually have some advanced warning and thieves can plan their raids. With a CME, it will be much shorter notice, if any, and the looting will be far more opportunistic. It's a different kind of looting. When a CME shuts down the power grid, businesses are closed. That means a lot of valuable property will be unattended while emergency response will be muted by the lack of power for government services, for which no one was properly prepared. Only a well-organized law enforcement agency will be ready to close off business districts. But once that kind of closed business looting gets started, it can cascade into more private property, especially agricultural property.
Think about how it affects everyone. All refrigerated food supplies will spoil within a day. The convenient supply of eatery food will be gone. People who don't cook at home, with little or no stored food, will get desperate. But once they begin looting and raiding for food, the other kind of organized property looting will come with it.
Most normal people will be in shock and not thinking clearly about what they should do. But the criminal element in every place is always looking for any opportunity. You need to plan ahead now, so that you can respond appropriately when the inevitable disaster comes.
Rising up against the criminals is the one thing common people will do. You won't see too much armed force against our evil government during a political crisis, but shooting looters during disasters is easy. The good guys will outnumber the crooks in most places, so the looting will end pretty quickly once the good guys get used to the new situation. Of course, in places where the crooks are condensed and packed in, those places will come apart. I think you can figure out where those bad places are; don't live there.
Indeed, neighbors organizing for common defense is quite likely to happen quickly. There are way too many people who spent time in the military to imagine this would fail. It's just about the first thing rural and small town people think about when disaster strikes. Urbanized folks will struggle with the shock.
Unlike tornadoes and hurricanes, a CME is just going to shut down the power. It causes serious heating in copper and some other metals, so there could be fires. If it includes a major solar flare, it could also fry certain sensitive electronic devices. Indeed, the flare will be a warning that the CME is coming. Flares are energy, traveling at the speed of light -- eight minutes from the sun to earth. A CME is charged particles moving a lot slower. We would have at least eight hours notice if a flare bursts big enough to create electronic noise, or worse. Most weaker CMEs take at least a day, maybe two, to reach earth.
A lot depends on shielding and the size and intensity of the CME. There are too many factors to discuss here.
Long term, you really need to collect stuff you can use without electricity, the stuff that will allow you to keep living when the world around you is without power. The other thing you really need is the thinking and planning that takes into account the changes that come with a long-term loss of the power grid. It's like that community defense thing. If you aren't much for firearms, consider things like hand-powered weapons. The cheapest projectile weapon is a slingshot, either the modern kind with rubber straps connected to a y-shaped frame, or the ancient style with long strings and a pouch. The former can work well with cheap glass marbles; the latter needs more like rounded rocks as heavy as you can launch. Practice with whatever you get.
Archery if fine, but only slightly less expensive than firearms these days. It takes a lot more expertise to do any good with that stuff. But honestly, folks, a lot of crooks will have guns. You'll need to be ready to compete with that. The other thing is to think about what you can defend, and how to do it. Your neighbors may not want to talk about it now, but they'll sure be eager when the day comes, so have something in your mind on the subject.
Much depends on how your community decides to proceed as a community. Will they pull together and seek to survive tight-knit, or will it be every man for himself? Most of the time, it will be somewhere in between. You'll have to decide what you can defend with what you have on hand. You'll need to assess personnel and equipment, not just facilities. Your biggest adjustment is knowing that you'll need to have a rotating night shift, because that's when most criminals will strike, and the police will be busier than ever. Anyone who is competent already knows they won't get much sleep during the first week or two.
Since nothing at all will be working right at first, you need to have some kind of stored food supplies. Get the kind of stuff you know you'll eat; if you don't actually like rice and beans, don't buy them. Just eat from your stock from time to time and replace it as you go until that day comes. Make it a habit now. Know how to heat stuff that requires cooking; camping gear comes in real handy for this. I carry a Sterno-based kit on my camping trips. It takes a little longer, but it's about as cheap as you can get. Sterno cans last for years unopened, and a very long time after opening.
So, unless you live in places where there are lots of criminals who can organize for looting -- in places where they already organize for other criminal activity -- this won't be like what movies teach you to expect. You already know where those places are, but the majority of the American landscape will see residents defending themselves adequately. It won't be a dystopia for the most part.
The bonus is that this is very similar to the preparations we need to make for political and economic disasters.
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