What if the greatest threat to American life as we know it is not terror, but sabotage? What if a massive invasion of America is being planned for the year 2015? Will America have effective counter measures in place to prevent the destruction of our communication systems, including the internet, or our computer controlled electric power grid? Last I heard, attacks on the internet are a regular occurrence and staying just one step ahead of them is taxing anti sabotage capabilities, like a well designed electronic game. Can we imagine what life in America would be like without electric power or telecommunication? In such a condition, how would we possibly repel an armed invasion? What will happen to transportation if only one out of ten fueling stations could pump fuel with back up power? Or one in a hundred? Where would we work? Who would be able to pay us? Where would we get food and water? It is highly likely we will all be on a camping vacation or fighting invaders day and night. In light of 9/11 are you confident our public guardians will prevent such sabotage by enemies, foreign or domestic? We are so focused on the explosive attack, we give little thought to the many ways we are vulnerable and no one is able to cover all the bases required for high security. For at least thirty five years, environmentalists and conservationists have been urging us to become less dependent on corporate agriculture, corporate electrical power, corporate fuel, corporate work and corporate government. We left it all to corporate leadership to reduce these dependencies and we have increased them to the point our survival and that of our children cannot be insured by personal effort. Many of us are comfortable enough in our faith to say, no matter what, God will provide. Then comes the pertinent question. What will be provided and for whom? What will we do with those for whom no provision has been made - write them off? Think first in terms of providing yourself with the very basics required for survival when energy is unavailable in the marketplace. How much clean water do you have stored or readily available when it no longer flows from the tap or is unfit for consumption? How much food do you have on hand if local markets go bare? How would you heat your home or your food if governments required all available energy? Do you have a fuel supply handy? Lanterns, candles, rechargeable batteries and battery chargers? It is one thing to plan for a six week or six month disruption in supply chains. What happens if the disruption continues for six years? Few people would need to sacrifice that new car, college education, or vacation trip to create a simple plan that allows greater self sufficiency in home and garden. Few if any special skills are required and the technologies that assist in independent and comfortable living are constantly improving. A six year campout could be a hoot and a growth experience for anyone willing to prepare and preparations can be made on a very tight budget. Few people can last much more than three days without potable water. Bad water might buy you a few weeks before illness takes you. If you have dirty water readily available, purification equipment can be had for less than one hundred dollars and deluxe, high volume purification can be had for less than six hundred. The handiest and least expensive water supply available to most of us is a guttered roof with large containers at the downspouts. Containers can range from forty five gallon plastic trash cans to fifteen hundred gallon above ground swimming pools. Total typical annual rainfall, frequency and total roof area will help one choose the most appropriate containers. Indoor storage can be done with gallon jugs and shelves or whatever is clean and convenient. When we have insured a water supply, the next thing would be food. Stock up on things you would want to eat on a restricted diet and stock up on non hybrid garden seed for foods you are willing to grow. Seed loses viability over time, so a small garden started now can guarantee fresh seed when it is needed. Special refrigerated seed storage can generally assure viability for five years and more. If I was not growing a small garden for fresh seed, I would add fresh seed to my storage from the marketplace every three years or so. The big question for all of us concerned with comfort and convenience, the great commodity of the West, is electricity. On the camping level, rechargeable flashlight batteries and a couple of solar chargers can do the job for a few hundred dollars. You will have portable light after sunset. If you want to operate appliances, heat a waterbed, use a desktop computer, watch TV or video, light a house or yard, a much larger storage system is required, along with some generation capability. The greater the investment in storage, the less critical power generation becomes. A five hundred watt photovoltaic array would not power the typical American home all day, yet, with ten kilowatts of storage, there would be full power available every other day, provided there was ten hours of average daily sunlight. Photovoltaics are far more cost effective for small back-up systems with alternative charging options, than for whole house power. Small charging alternatives, include automobile alternators, small commercial gasoline powered generators, do - it - yourself wind generators and even converted bicycle exercise generators. As long as the grid system is functioning, one can use commercial energy to keep the storage system topped off. I believe that is the very best place to begin building a home system. The uninterruptable power supply created to provide emergency power for desktop computers is a logical first step in a home power system. For less than one hundred dollars one gets a twelve volt battery, a regulated AC battery charger, a DC to AC power inverter, an automatic switch and an annoying alarm that lets you know when AC power is off. To increase the utility of this system it is only necessary to connect additional twelve volt batteries in parallel with the battery in the UPS. To get greater total capacity, buy additional UPS units and plug-in connectors for extra batteries. When your storage system has grown to a satisfactory capacity, it is time to acquire some generator capacity. Photovoltaic generators are constantly improving and the cost comes down as they do, like consumer electronics. The more people we have investing in this form of solar power, the more affordable it will become. As people begin using such power, the grid requires less capacity and peak use generation which reduces generation costs for the electric utility. We have become conservationists in our quest for energy independence and contributors to the global welfare. It is a good feeling. As new technologies, such as fast burn combustion and water power come along, it will be possible to generate surplus home power at less than half the average cost of utility power. You save money, the world around you saves energy and you live well when the lights go out in the West. All one needs to become energy independent in five years or less is a plan and a budget. It could be the best investment we will ever make. |
