Calamity in America (10 page)

Even if people escaped the burning buildings where would they go for shelter?  Many very valuable resources would be lost in these fires.  Food and manufactured items that would be difficult or impossible to replace with the nation in this extended severe economic depression that we were in now would be lost in these fires.

All that doom was if the power was out in a wide area.  Hopefully this bad ice storm was just a local event only though even that would be bad enough.

We had already been using the wood stove to heat the house and even used it for most of the simple cooking chores so not much changed on that score for us even with the loss of the electric power.  We had been using an electric heater in the main bathroom for extra heat and now that would be lost.  We would also lose the running water in the house. 

In the spring I could likely rig up a very low pressure gravity water system for the house from the windmill so we would not have to carry water but for the remainder of the winter our water would have to be carried from the windmill up into the house.  We could still use the toilets of course but we would have to fill the toilet tanks using a bucket.  All water for drinking, cooking, washing, and flushing would have to be hand carried into the house. 

Even considering all the that extra work we were one of the very few lucky ones that still had a fresh clean water supply available to us.  Clean drinking water would be a very major issue for almost every single person in any area that had lost electric power.

Chapter 14

For the first couple weeks we both really missed the loss of electric power in many ways.  But like humans have always done we adapted and we gradually missed electricity less and less as we adapted to our new ‘normal’ situation.  Everything that seemed so slow and cumbersome at first became just the way it was done and we got used to it.

We got visits from a couple of the close neighbors and they lamented the loss of the electric power.  They all looked at our windmill with envy while they visited us.  Once very common, water windmills are now very seldom seen, at least in working condition.  Often those windmills you see spinning in the distance are no longer hooked up and functioning.  They are just spinning free doing absolutely nothing except providing everyone a glimpse of a past life. 

I was not very worried about our neighbors getting water because this area near here had a fair amount of surface water that could and would be used.  If the power remained off for a long time I suppose some would dig wells if a good location was found for one close to their houses.  The work of digging a well would likely be way easier than lugging all their water a distance every single day.

Now in winter the loss of refrigeration was not much of an issue but come summer it would certainly take some adjusting on our part.  As of now we were using up everything we had that required freezing or refrigeration.  We were doubly thankful that we had chosen to jerk all that deer meat we had.  I had previously stored some powdered milk that we would have to start using.  It is an acquired taste but I suppose we will get used to it until we get it used up.

The oil lamps we were now using worked fine and even produced a little heat besides just the light which was welcomed now in the cold winter months.  Unlike the newer gas kitchen stoves the oven on our older one worked fine without any electric power.

Some people might think that the loss of electric power is not that big of a deal.  After all our ancestors lived just fine without electric power their whole lives and humanity thrived and built up the world like it is today.  Even today we sometimes have short term power outages and people get by just fine. 

While that statement is obviously true; our ancestors did thrive without electric power.  But since electric power has taken over our world we have shunned the ‘old ways’ and built our whole world around that power source and we have become totally dependent on its use, now without that power most people will not survive.

The list of problems that the loss of electricity entails is almost endless and many of those problems are catastrophic.  Everyone in any city (and most rural homes) relies on the electric power grid to provide clean water, remove our sewage, cook our meals, provide heating and cooling, provide light, provide transportation (through subways and electric trains), pump the fuels for our cars and trucks, and the list goes on and on almost without end. 

The fact is we have ‘advanced’ until we are just totally dependant on that constant electric power grid for our very everyday survival.  So take that power away for any meaningful length of time and the people in this nation will start dying.  The longer the power remains off the more people will die.  It is sad but that is just the way it is in our country today.  It is not really anyone’s fault that we have come to rely on that electric power so much; it is just the way it is. 

Naturally there are exceptions.  Some very rural homes are ‘off-grid’ and make their own electric power or instead have adapted to not use electric power at all.  Here on our farm Beth and I have used electric power but enough of the ‘old’ infrastructure is still here so we can get by more comfortably than most other folks.  Access to clean water is essential to life.  We are lucky enough to have that functioning windmill to provide us with clean water but think of everyone else.  How will they get a constant supply of clean drinking water?  You need clean drinking water every single day.

Most large cities are built next to water.  A river or a lake or maybe the ocean.  A river or lake can be a source of clean drinking water but only if you have the means to purify that water.  Our lakes, rivers, and creeks are all contaminated with many things.  A person can boil the water found in these surface water sources and that will kill any living organisms in that water that would otherwise make you very sick if you drank it. 

Boiling all your water would require that you have a constant fuel source to produce the necessary heat to boil that water.  Also you would have to live very close to that supply of surface water.  Water is very heavy and carrying water very far would get old very fast.

Unfortunately much of our surface water is also contaminated with man-made pollutants that boiling the water only makes worse by making it more concentrated.  These pollutants will not usually cause instant health problems but instead only do so through a cumulative effect from ingestion over a certain period of time.

Ocean water can only be made potable through more complicated methods that most people just are not set up to do.  Distillation of this sea water works but requires quite an apparatus though it can be done very low-tech.  Or if you happen to have an ocean going vessel you might have a desalinator that you can use to make the sea water potable.  Not something you could likely build yourself though.

And that is just drinking water think of everything else you need to survive.  Most people never give a thought to how convenient it is to walk into the nice clean bathroom, use it, flush, and then use the readily available soap and water to wash up.  And take a shower or a bath whenever they desire.  Without electric power that convenience would be gone for almost all people. 

So if the bathroom no longer works, uh, where do you go?  In the country you could just go behind a nearby bush, dig a hole, do your business, and then shovel the removed dirt back over it.  Or build and use an outhouse. 

But what about in the cities?  No easy way to take care of that personal business in a city that has no electric power to run all the water and sewage pumps.  And all the toilets would soon be overflowing.  This would cause not only quite a stinking and gross mess but would be very unhealthy also.  And if it rained and that stinking mess was to get washed into the surface water source that people were using for washing and drinking water it would cause even more problems. 

There is no easy answer to this problem in a city or anywhere where there are a large number of people living in close proximity.  Sickness, disease, and deaths would be the result of this sewage issue.  Of course deaths would cause other health issues if the bodies were not handled properly.  Here on the farm I carry in water from the windmill and we still use the toilets and we do have the old outhouse for a back up even though I doubt we will ever use it.

Its winter now so how would you keep warm without electricity?  Even in many of the more southern states it gets cold enough during the winter months that heat is an important issue that must be addressed.  Houses across the nation commonly have electric heat, gas heat (boiler or forced air), fuel oil heat, a heat pump, or some form of wood/coal heat.  Almost all of these forms of heat still require electric to operate. 

Commonly now even those using wood heat have an outdoor wood boiler with an electric pump to force the hot water through the lines to radiators inside the house.  These are sold with the stated benefit of having all the mess from burning wood being kept outside but are worthless without electricity.

Natural gas appliances of any kind require electric pumps to move that natural gas through the pipelines to your house.  No electricity results in no natural gas.  Rural homes often have propane heat supplied by a tank on your property.  Some propane gas space heaters and kitchen stove tops do not require any electricity usually to operate.  These can still be used to heat your home but only until your propane tank runs empty.  Propane furnaces and boilers need electricity to function and are worthless when the electric grid is down.  Also most people using propane require several tank refills every year.

The loss of electric power results in the inability to pump gasoline and diesel fuel from underground fuel storage tanks into your vehicle at a gas station.  So any travel is problematic at best.  This would bring shipping to a halt.  Which means no goods arriving to your local stores.  Especially troubling would be the loss of food being shipped around the country and all the spoilage loss of refrigerated and frozen foods. 

Also fresh foods that do not require refrigeration would still need to be used up fairly quickly so they would not spoil.  Obviously we all depend on food from the local grocery stores for our survival.  No food being delivered to these grocery stores would soon result in people starving.

So the electric grid going down would result in people dying from thirst, dying from starvation, freezing to death, dying from diseases caused by poor hygiene, and other causes like lack of vital medicines being delivered.  If this electric power grid loss was widespread countless American citizens would surely die.  And happening during the winter months would only make the situation much worse.

Chapter 15

The big ice storm that took out the electric power was winter’s last note worthy storm.  The weather gradually eased from that point on.  We had a few very cold days and a few days of light snow but certainly nothing out of the ordinary and overall it was maybe a milder winter than normal.  March came and brought with it the beginnings of the spring rains.  The weather was still quite cool but there was no more snow and the rains seemed to clean the air and the land of winter’s hold.

April meant even more rain and of course warmer temps.  In April I tilled the garden again and we readied it for planting.  With the tilling I enlarged the garden a little bigger yet again.  We had purposely left un-eaten some potatoes in the root cellar to use as seed potatoes for this year.  We had plenty of regular garden seeds with some packaged ones and many I had saved from our plants last year (and years past also).

By this time we had we had also cleaned up most all the debris and damage caused by the big ice storm.  Many of the trees around the place had some broken limbs.  The larger limbs we cut up and stacked for firewood and the small stuff we threw into a pile that I burned later just to get rid of it.  Just about every tree suffered at least some damage.  Two trees had broken off and in each case the whole tree had to be cut up for firewood and the brushy parts burned.  

At the very end of April we planted some of the cold tolerant plants and later when we deemed it warm enough we planted the rest of the garden.  The warm weather and plentiful rain had everything in the surrounding area green.  With all the new growing plants we eagerly harvested some of the wild greens on our foraging walks. 

Fresh greens are always a treat after a long winter.  And the new young growth wild greens were as good as it gets.  The wild plants were always first to appear and be available to be harvested.  It wasn’t long and our planted lettuce was up and soon we could start gradually harvesting that also.

When we had the garden ship shape and spring chores caught up we decided to take the bikes and ride at least to the edge of the big city.  We were incredibly thirsty for news of any kind.  We were both armed as we always were with our handguns and I fastened leather scabbards to each bike so we each had access to a rifle also.

We took water and lunches with us and left on a nice sunny morning.  It had been a long time since we had seen anyone who was not a regular neighbor of ours and we hoped to at least find others to talk to.

The dirt road was starting to grow over already with plenty of weeds and grass thanks to no vehicle traffic to keep it in check.  By the end of summer this dirt road would look way different I was sure.

When we got to the first asphalt road things looked normal and we rode a little bit faster.  When we got to the edge of the city we still had not seen anyone during the trip so far.  We did ride past two houses that had burned down over the winter months.  When we entered the city we saw a few more houses that had burned down.  Farther on we found most of an entire block of houses all burned down.  And we still had found not a single person to talk to yet.