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Tuesday,
December 19, 2006,
Good morning chickies! It's cold. I ran the heat all last
night for the first time in years. Christmas storms threaten
my brother and sister-in-laws trip to see me the day after
Christmas so it might be just the bunnies and me. Well, not,
as there are a lot of people in Q how are staying. Why I love
Q, unlike Lake Woebegone, not all the kids are above average
here. In fact the adults that are the mainstream are the fringe
everywhere else and they are outside the box and definitely
not average. Take heart, outside of the retirement community,
your cubicle at work, your church, fraternal order of the
raging conservative, there are people who are living lives
way outside the statistical norm. They may be there because
they cannot help it, cannot fit, but they are the technologists
of an uncertain future and your guide to having some kinda
fun after the crash.
This morning reader R wrote this and I am working on a reply
with the total wattage our emergency system provides in sunlight.
I can see that I will spec 3 systems. One super cheap, one
for most of the things on our lists, and one that does everything
we want including the washer drier combination mentioned by
one reader. That is the best way to understand the actual
cost of our piggish party-on power consumption. I'll have
that chart up tonight. At that time I will move all this off
the blog to the Preparation section. Don't forget to look
at the links I added in the Aftershock
section last night.
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You know I'm interested. I'm very interested in how to how
you hook up solar panel to battery and battery to inverter
to whatever you want to power. I think if you can create that
blueprint and any of us actually
make it work without the experience you have, that would be
incredibly useful and such a confidence builder. We'd be ready
to tackle other things.
I liked your article it's a good start. Still it's soooo much.
I think I may try and break it down into really small bites.
Stuff you can get now that should last, like cb radio, certain
tools maybe, certain raw materials - plastic, metal, aluminum,
how to books, how things work books? You may not want to buy
things like rechargeable batteries now, they may be used up
by the time you really need them or if you don't use them
for years and then try to that might also do it. Anything
that is both manual and battery powered would be first choice.
If you can't battery it you can crank it. Food, water, shelter,
heat. Starting with enough for a few weeks instead of days,
what use is a few days? If you have enough for a few weeks
and you only need 3 days great. But if you only have 3 days
and it turns into weeks, you're so consumed with existing
you can't improve your chances of surviving. . .
The huge unknown at this time I think is still "how bad
will it be?" Will it simply be expensive for things?
Will there be civil unrest? Will driving a car become like
owning your own jet? If you're relatively self sufficient
does that make you a target? Do you also try and form a community
to share and protect each other? How would that work? And
if you have to leave your home, it's a whole different game.(EDITOR:
similar to the comments below by of the people who turned
in a list - the bigger the disruption - at a certain point
you start bringing your real community of like minded people
around you or you to them - this may not necessarily be your
neighbors.)
Tell me this, how many watts do you use if you wanted
to run everything you had; lights, heat, water, tv, pc etc.
R 1-20-09 End of an error
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Working on a back of the napkin answer to R's questions -how
much to run all the things on the list in our project? It
will be a three cupa joe answer.
For you none reader readers who only come to look at the pictures,
I'll be out taking more today - promise. Today's website additions,
changes and email are all brought to you exclusively by the
free energy falling on my solar panels - as always- mcnalan.
Evening
same day. I have pictures from today and I've got two very
nice designs for simple and medium level solar systems worked
out. However tonight has been busy with getting my satellite
tested for a change to another transponder or another satellite
completely tomorrow or soon. Scott from Dustyfoot was appalled
that I would accept the lousy download speeds I'm getting.
So I had much other webwork waiting for tonight and tomorrow
morning - many of you know about the other websites I maintain
- so I didn't get to be here tonight to talk to you. I'll
have the pictures up first this tomorrow morning. I did a
couple interesting things. Then I need to move all of this
to a permanent home in the preparation section.
Sleep tight
chickies!
December 18, 2006
It's late now - last post of this day. I just put up great
links and a book in Word doc format that is a very good
place to start understanding what I'm doing here. I was asked
by a friend two days ago, what is your website about - what
is it? So here it is simply. There are four parts to this
website that when mature will hopefully do the following.
Aftershock will scare you and wake you up if you're not to
far gone.
Commonsense will hopefully amuse me and occasionally you and
be a daily blog.
Preparation is all about, OK I get that we're screwed but
what is there to do.
Future is about a whole new humanity that grows out of all
of this - it is what comes of our creation now.
December 17, 2006
Well the wind came up very strong at 2 am and the wailing
of the wind in the pipes and tarps of La Casa Blanca woke
me. I'll have pictures of the sand and dust and interior of
the canopy later today. This morning I've written a start,
but not the biographical information on the incredible work
of Phil Churchill. He is one of the top flint knappers in
the world, doing work that cannot be done by others. Take
a look at the beginning of my page on Philip Churchil by clicking
here!.
Philip represents a primitive skill that has become an art.
There is a large repository of people who are not mainstream
that maintain the skills, indeed, are developing art in those
skills that come from preparation for an uncertain future.
I read two days ago about Opec raising prices. I keep 20 gallons
of fuel stored where ever I go, but when I make the run down
to Q, I empty those into the tank to reduce the weight the
truck has to pull. So I think this is a good day to go get
gas. Also there are rumors from not very believable sources(see
Newsvine) about the Chinese dumping one trillion dollars
of our debt that hold and converting their assets to Euros.
If true this will have a remarkable effect on the markets
tomorrow. I hope it is not true, but as a comment that follows
the article on Newvine says, it is scary that it could happen,
that the Chinese hold our economy in their hands by the amount
of your debt that they hold. Debt is
poison!
I received more electrical top five returns from chickies
and hope to have that a little chart tomorrow in the aftershock
section. More later!
Later
in the afternoon. I just got some great material regarding
the electrical questions from a chicklet and I'll get everything
up tomorrow morning on that. Meanwhile TJ wrote me that the
big picture of Phil's work was not coming up - I fixed that
- sorry - check again to
see his work. Nothing to do with preparedness but Ed, who's
been pictured on the blog at coffee is an artist who attends
juried shows showing his dog jewelry, take
a look at his work! How do they get the earrings to stay
in the dogs ears? I thought that was funny the first time
I mentioned it to Ed last year. He must have heard it before;
not amused.
The 2am wind - I was greeted with this mess this morning.
Notice the sand on everything. The front tarp had blown
in enough to let the dust and sand just hose everything.
However the poles and tarps did fine and were just as
tight as when I guyed them.
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Even the pots that were on the card table had sand in
every depression. It took about 15 minutes to put everything
to right. |
Pumping
poop through the macerator pump up into the blue boy in
the back of the truck allows me not to have to pick the
blue boy up or to tow the trailer to the dump which is
right where the water is located. |
Since
I was moving the truck I got 55 gallons of water and went
to town and filled one of the propane bottles. I also
stopped and filled 3 five gallon gas cans. |
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Since
I was in town, I stopped by to see if Scott wanted to
eat a piece of Otis's pizza while I was there. He commented
on the oddness of reading about my plans to fill my
gas cans and get water, he read that just before he
was driving through town, and he ended up behind me
on the road, thinking "oh, yea, I read that Alan
was going to get his gas cans filled."
So after we ate, he took me out to a piece of desert
close to his place in the Yamaha Rhino. I had been thinking
it didn't go very fast, because when we ride in his
lot, its at about 5 mph. Well out in the desert at 30
or 40mph over whoop dee doos etc it was FUN! But without
a coat I was cold. Also my eyes were tearing up and
I couldn't see shit. Scott however had the right goggles
and coat and loves his toy.
Tomorrow
I'll have the input from everyone's comments on 5 electrical
items. Some of the items on the lists are interesting,
and some of the comments even better. I'll be sharing
both.
Sleep tight free chickens where ever you live.
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