I posted a live link a little while ago to show live coverage of the weather here on the east coast. He is now mostly covering New England. The Jersey coverage was earlier. There is a ton of snow here. In the more southern counties, i.e. Burlington they have a lot of power outages.
It has gotten to the point in Burlington that emergency vehicles can’t get to the people that are calling for them. I pray for those folks.
One observer had said that after hurricane Sandy, they really rebuilt almost all of New Jersey’s power grid. Let’s hope that is true.
That’s it for now. I hope the link works and I will keep you posted, plus do the usual content for the day as long as the power lasts.
Patty
“I hope the link works and I will keep you posted, plus do the usual content for the day as long as the power lasts.”
A few days ago, I watched a James Burke video, from 1978 (linked below) about our dependency upon technology. It was chilling, and that was 48 years ago. It culminated that if you had to rough it, you would need land, a source of water, a plow that could be pulled by animals and animals to pull that plow. Just getting to that state of affairs would require beating in calculable odds, and doesn’t speak at all to the question of defending your possession of that land, when The Law is no longer a simple phone call away.
These days, it’s much, much, much, much worse. Our cars are rolling computers, potentially vulnerable to the same sort of electromagnetic pulse that could disable the power grid, and our crowded urban areas would probably be gridlocked with people hoping to escape, assuming tjat their cars were operable.
Even is the power stays on, we are highly dependent upon communications networks which rely upon routers which keep the 1s and 0s moving in the right direction, and servers which contain, store and manage the information which is the lifeblood of our economy. I’ve spent 25 years, plus, managing such systems and while many days, it’s uneventful, some days it’s like herding cats, and some days it’s more like herding angry Bengal Tigers. 🙂 None of this works without electricity, from The Grid, battery backup systems, and diesel powered backup generators. None of which are any better than their upkeep. I once worked at a place with an amazing backup generator, but on the day we needed it, it didn’t come on because the facilities manager didn’t take seriously the maintenance schedule and the battery was dead. I wish I was kidding, but I’m not, a generator worth the better part of $100,000 rendered useless because of a battery which cost a few hundred dollars.
No matter what, the solution for any individual remains the same, be as prepared as possible, with some bottled water, food that doesn’t require cooking, extra blankets, etc. and wait it out. In most places, power is restored quickly. Where I live, electricity means water, and water is essential for survival, so it’s the same problem, just at a warmer temperature.
Yes I have read quite a few disastrous accounts of uninformed people trying to “live off the grid” who came to very bad ends.
It’s nearly impossible, these days. The more conservative/traditional Amish ordnungs are having to adapt and their way of life is somewhat threatened by developments. Newer order Amish ordnungs actually allow cellular telephones now, because it’s all but impossible to do business without a telephone. Even in more conservative ordnungs, many Amish covertly keep mobile phones.
That’s just one exception, but it’s part of a much bigger picture. As recently as my parent’s generation, there were people in my family who had an outhouse, for some years. Unthinkable these days, but this was reality, just 65 years ago.