What happens in America When the Lights Go Out

I love technology. I love the conveniences of modern life. But, stop and think a minute. we are now almost entirely dependent on a web of electrical connections. This morning I was in a Walmart and the registers went off line. You might have thought that the Apocalypse had just been announced, and that was just a temporary glitch.

Webs, by their very nature, are delicate things. Well, you might say, there are always backups to everything on the Internet and many ways to rout power around the electrical grids. True enough, but not foolproof.

Recently, Russian subs were seen hovering in the Atlantic near the undersea cables that link the Internet. Now, Putin is a trickster and seems to greatly enjoy tormenting us, but what if, in some kind of snit, he ordered those cables destroyed. Or worse, what if one of the many terrorist groups got hold of a sub and started hacking at those cables. How would businesses and cities cope?

Worse yet, suppose a terrorist group finally gets its hands on a nuclear device, a big one. Then suppose that they found a plane big enough to deliver it or a missile that can carry it (and that they can control). Or suppose China, which has such capabilities, decides they are just fed up with the way the World is going. The sensible thing to do with such a weapon, if you only have one, is not to hit a land target, but to detonate it in the upper atmosphere. The electromagnetic pulse would fry every circuit on Earth. No Internet, no communications, no electricity.

Or Nature may get testy. We are protected from solar flares by our electromagnetic field. From time to time, that field shifts and weakens. If our Sun releases a flare at one of those times, again, all circuits are gone (not too mention a whole lot of other problems. for now, let's stick to electrical woes).

Of course there are generators, but those will not do a lot of good if all the circuits are fried and rewiring complex systems is a lengthy process.

None of these scenarios are all that far fetched. So again I ask you, what would you do? I can guarantee that very few would be ready for that. Heck, I am not sure most people can even make change in a store without the register telling them what to do. But, there are a few basic skills that anyone can and should learn. I am not talking about becoming a hard-core survivalist, just becoming marginally competent in working without power, skills that most people had not all that long ago. In future bogs, I am going to give a few tips.