Solar Flare Knocks out Power Worldwide - How would you organize a Community?

Suppose you reside in a residential area on the outskirts of a town or city. The area consists of 100 homes and 250 people living therein. The power has gone out following a massive solar flare and word has it, it will be years before the government can hook the power grid back up. On one side of your community you have a lake and small river. On another side there is a small farm. The other sides are other residential areas similar in size to your own. After a few days without power your neighbors decide to meet in a common area to discuss how to survive what is sure to be a long rough road. You are aware other neighboring communities are having the same type of meeting.

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What would you suggest your community does?
How would you organize it?
What would you consider in designing your community?
Would you go to war with your neighbors or work together for the good of each other?
Would you assign people jobs, appoint a leader, or make decisions collectively?

great question, i would love to know the answers to this worst case scenario as well

First thing I would mention at this meeting is forming assignments for everyone and instituting a temporary 'council' of 4 or 5 to collectively make leadership choices/decisions.
If I am part of said counsel, which is determined by votes cast by every member of the community (stranded tourists included) over 14, I would advise the immediate restructuring of the town, centralizing all essential goods/materials in a defensible area (with room to temporarily shelter everyone for protection if the need arises).
Next the allotment of jobs, with the obvious necessary ones taking priority.

Farming, Irrigation, Shelter and Defense are the only priorities.

To consider hostilities towards other communities is just stupid. What if the power comes on way sooner than expected? What if they have more guns and numbers?
I would worry more about small raiding parties than war with another town.

(Also, I would put this on the Survival forum; and great topic!)

reply to post by StripedBandit


I am looking at this from the social aspect personally, although it does fall within survival as well. However, the topic is centered around organizing a community and the social implications it may have.

I had a very similar plan as your own when I first considered this. I had not considered centralizing goods in one area though. Smart idea.

I am interested in your assignment of people to jobs. Maybe someone else could elaborate on how to organize jobs, what type of duties may be required, and how to work with neighboring communities together.

guard all resources to maintain area with in .... prepare to establish a trading system maintain education of the young.... train in survival.... protect the children life or death ...... reach out to your neighbors to maintain peace...

contact other residential sections and develop relations with other areas to create trade and prevent fighting and a larger group to protect from roaming takers/thiefs ... basic law if there is no law..... stealing,murder ,the basics

What would you suggest your community does?

I'm not quite certain how you meant this question. The first order of business would be to establish known threats and defeses against them. If you live next to an area known to contain drug dealers, sex offenders and murderers, then I would organize a community militia. If the area is relatively safe, I would establish who is on the upper end of that water flow and wether or not it is a danger. Once any immediate danger is processed and countered, I would establish the three primaries. Shelter would be covered. The water that comes to your home is purified using electric power and probably would be undeliverable if the plant upstream were suddenly without power. Establishing a water purification facility would be my next endeavour. Then, bring in the farmer to ask what would be required of the group to accomodate 250 people for a year and how many workers would be required to establish the food supply. Then, gather a small milita. Trained military or police officers would be the first choice for this milita... It would then have two duties: Foraging and hunting for food.

How would you organize it?

Depending on the situation, I would bring the older families into the center of the town, move the younger heartier man-only family to the outsides, sort of like a make-shift barracks. Single moms and children would be in the inner ring as well. Fortifications might not be a bad idea, depending on the demographics of the area or the weather patterns. Water purification would be center of town, one primary path leading to the lake. Minimize access points to the town with barricades or watches. Find a leader, select a council. Have the group vote on their leadership. Establish your assets. Obviously everyone will have some use. Give everyone a function. If they wanna leave, let em go... if they wanna join from other neighborhoods, bring em in. If they have a function, they have a place. If law enforcement is spread too thin or martial law is declared, construct a hasty form of justice until a good solid plan can be put into place.

What would you consider in designing your community?

I would consider the assets of the community. If we have people intelligent and educated enough to pull together supplies and build their own power generation facility, then we'd have a strong hold in the area and be capable of pulling other neighborhoods through. If we're a bunch of fishers and hunters, then we can trade foodstuffs for other necessities. If we're a bunch of telephone sanitizers and hairdressers, pack em on a ship and send em to space.

Would you go to war with your neighbors or work together for the good of each other?

Depends on the neighbors. If my neighbors were the black-clad bad guys from Mad Max, weilding axes made of fan blades, probably wouldn't try working things out with them. If they were, however, Ellis Air Force Base, I'd consider the team-effort kinda thing. In a SHTF scenario, you have to be fluid. Your environment will be factor one, your personal assets factor two. If we have the only freshwater supply around, others are gonna want it. If we've the only farm in the area, protecting it would be a primary goal, even from the neighbors.

Would you assign people jobs, appoint a leader, or make decisions collectively?

If it's a psychotic turmoil, one person will rise to lead, perhaps a few. Work to bring them under a collective flag adn utilize their leadership abilities to best effect. If it's a retirement community, draw on the wisdom of your elders. Utilize your resources effectively. Democratic government is not usually the best form of small-body government in a fast-paced live or die situation, so consider a leader and small council that represents the majority of the community.


Fun exercise! But honestly, depends on your area, assets, and ability.

ya know, it's ironic that you mention this
cuz about a yr ago I was thinking of drawing
up a manifesto of a related nature.
Of how to bring a small community
as a one regional entity. I didn't write
it at the time as I thought folks would think
I was some sort of terrorists for writing it.
I may have to revisit that train of thought
once more. Thanks for the reminder

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Well...my first thought is...if I live in a community of only 250 people in 100 houses, then I probably already know them well, what their skills are, what their assets are, and what their needs are and who the real leaders are. But I don't know. Maybe small communities don't really work that way. I don't live in one. I wish I did, though.

What would you suggest your community does?
A: determine any urgent needs (medical conditions, etc.)
evaluate our assets (skills, supplies, self sufficient households vs. non self sufficient)
evaluate our surroundings and security
make a plan
assign tasks

How would you organize it?
A: assess the needs and then find the right people to perform each of the actions according to their skill set and knowledge

What would you consider in designing your community?
A: communication, security, shelter, food, water, collective and individual assets and skills, threats, weaknesses (immediate and long term)

Would you go to war with your neighbors or work together for the good of each other?
A: I guess it depends upon what comes out of meetings with their people. The better thing would be to be able to work together in order to secure a larger patch of land, in the event of wandering bad people. If the next community over, gets breached, then it weakens us, also. We may also each have things that the other needs in order to function at 100%.

Would you assign people jobs, appoint a leader, or make decisions collectively?
A1) Yes, i would assign specific tasks with a specific desired result
A2) Leaders are defined during the crisis when people decide to and agree to follow them and when they show that they know what they are doing. Sometimes it is the one you choose to be leader initially and sometimes it becomes apparent only later. If you appoint the wrong leader, it will lead to the decay of the community strength. You will suddenly have multiple leaders who all know what's best, pulling the community to choose sides. If you appoint NO leader then the same thing will happen. So, I don't really know. I am going to think about that one.

I am interested to see what others have to share. Great thread, OP.

reply to post by Arrowmancer


You sound very militaristic! Remember this community could be the one you currently live in. The militia you mention, are you going to arm people and have them walk around constantly?

reply to post by ExPostFacto


The assignment of jobs would be fairly easy in my opinion.
The cops and volunteers can provide security/perimeter, the doctors, nurses and medical professionals run a clinic.
After the obvious necessary services, anyone without a 'necessary' talent (involving Food, Farming, Defense and Administration) would assist the farmers, act as additional 'reserve' security/defesnse, hunt, fish, cut wood etc.
If viable, I would attempt the construction of a way to power a small number of essential buildings. I would also have to worry about heat, living in Canada and all.

To your question of neighbouring communities, I recommend a no cash/no credit barter system.

Remember, we survived for a long time without electricity. There are a lot of technologies and tools that do not require power that we would still have.

You need to set up a government, but you don't have the option to wait years if they are ineffective, so you might want to hold a election and everyone vote of priorities, if they preform or make progress towards your goals there is no need to have new elections.....

1 You must secure fresh water, preferably running water. At first you might have to organize bucket brigades, but this is labor intensive. The water needs to be filtered, any barrel with a layer of sand, and charcoal and possibly some scrap ceramic material will do. This filter will need to be raised and would need to be collected underneath. You would need to do a survey to see if any hand pump wells were still operation. The longer solution would be to build aqueducts to water the many gardens you would need. The aqueducts could also be fed by windmill powered wells, you would be better off having many different techniques for supplying water to your aqueduct irrigation system. There will be plenty of engineers or people good with mechanics to make this possible. You would want to centralize your water gathering efforts and guard them.

2. You need to gather all food in the community and do communal meals again in a centralized area, and you need to guard these supplies. You should set up primitive food production facilities, earthen ovens, smoke houses, and mills

3 You need to gather seeds, and start planting gardens immediately, fruits and veggie seeds can be harvested from trash and dumps.

4. You would want to control who enters your community, in any situation like this there will be migration of people, only accept people that will help your community, doctors, dentists, scientists, engineers, people that can make a impact.

You need, water bearers, gardeners, construction teams, and security.

this is just a start

Remember people Food, Water, Shelter

You need to do surveys on livestock and basically everything in the community.

You might want to send groups out to scavege supplies from truck stops and warehouse complexes

Every project would need input from construction, medical, and security teams. If you build a smoke house or any building you need it to be sanitary and efficient. Think star trek and the different uniforms all having different tasks on all projects.

reply to post by boondock-saint


boondock I think you should write it. I have thought of the same thing. If small communities start off organizing themselves peacefully, they could very well integrate into a larger network of small communities.

Originally posted by ExPostFacto
reply to post by Arrowmancer

 

You sound very militaristic! Remember this community could be the one you currently live in. The militia you mention, are you going to arm people and have them walk around constantly?

Apologies, Ex! good thread and I'm loving the responses, didn't mean to come off militaristic... As for the milita adn arming them to the teeth in my community? I live in Texas. In this kind of scenario, the militia is already in place My thought going through that was my community. I live in an area with a lot of young folk that would simply fall over if their iPods couldn't be charged or their magic cooking boxes ceased to function. Step one is always to evaluate threats, step two is to establish assets in either manpower or physical assets, step three is to formulate a survivability plan. As long as people have something to do, they'll stay calm. Simply sitting around waiting for someone else to kick them into gear will only cause them to panic. And, I'm a Marine.

reply to post by LDragonFire


Thank you. There is a ton of stuff you mentioned that I had not considered. I think communal meals is important that should be considered. I thought that if everyone brought a cup of rice, a can of food, or something small like that stew or soups could be made enough to feed everyone.

lol, wait. Backup.

It would seem to me that long before any of you got to prove your great organizational skills and community management prowess, you're going to have to contend with the National Guard and FEMA already doing it for you. Under martial law and curfews for starters.

The other problem is that if the power goes down, what assets you THOUGHT you had will immediately fall under the control of FEMA. They have the power in national emergencies to confiscate and control any and ALL resources, including people.

But hey, don't mind them at all. If the few cops, ex-military and the like can muster the firepower to kill untold waves of guardsmen and mercenaries, and escape C130's, then by all means...go ahead and plan it all out. A fun exercise, but fantasy- under a grid failure scenario.

Refrigerated food fails after what? 3 days? Frozen after 5? If you're careful. But being hungry is still not going to matter to powermongers in Washington hellbent on retaining control and quelling mass scale rioting. You'll be lucky to be ordered to carry away the bodies, instead of being shot. They train for this remember. And sorry, but Oathkeepers are not enough.

Originally posted by TrueAmerican
lol, wait. Backup.

It would seem to me that long before any of you got to prove your great organizational skills and community management prowess, you're going to have to contend with the National Guard and FEMA already doing it for you. Under martial law and curfews for starters.

The other problem is that if the power goes down, what assets you THOUGHT you had will immediately fall under the control of FEMA. They have the power in national emergencies to confiscate and control any and ALL resources, including people.

You bring up a good point and it creates a question for me that I want to find the answer to.
1) Does anyone know what the ratio of citizens to FEMA, National Guard, Military is?
2) What is their proximity to every single community in the event of a power grid failure?

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Excellent post True! And so very true.

However, in the scenario, I can assume that instantaneous communication will be out the window for them as well as us. Short wave radios might do the trick, but a satellite feed is only as good as it's receiver... which... unpowered... is pretty much useless. Despite the massive reach of FEMA, they really don't have enough manpower to cover everything.

So the answer is simple. If FEMA has the intention of helping, let them do so... if their intentions are not benevolent, simply make their job more difficult than it's worth.

Originally posted by ExPostFacto
reply to post by LDragonFire

 

Thank you. There is a ton of stuff you mentioned that I had not considered. I think communal meals is important that should be considered. I thought that if everyone brought a cup of rice, a can of food, or something small like that stew or soups could be made enough to feed everyone.

Everything that consumers use will be used up in no time, these things must be replenished everything from food and water to medicines, if you are lucky enough to have chemist and lab workers it would be worth the time and effort to set up a lab to produce drugs and other products. Remember gas appliances should still work but you need to get fuel, like dragging some propane trucks back to your town.

Building materials Bricks] can be produced from 1 part mud and 2 parts sand with hay or straw and water, but it's labor intensive if you can acquire horses and wagons you might be able to scavenge building materials, but it will be dangerous....

If we are wiped out by a solar storm you might want to wait a few year before attempting to reintroduce electronic devises into your community. It would suck to scavenge materials and build devices only to have another storm wipe them out, use water, and wind energy to your advantage.

The hardest part is going to bring the people together, if the community works in almost military like efficiency you will have the opportunity to survive and thrive.....I would suggest many communal meeting so everyone has a sense of direction and purpose.... You will have to deal with those who will not work of help, possibly using peer pressure and a you work you eat mentality, others will not help no matter what, and might need to be sent on there way.

If you can produce penicillin, your community will be very wealthy with trade in time.

reply to post by ExPostFacto


Torches

Pitchforks

Cycles

Lots of village idiots..........You know how we work it?

Originally posted by TrueAmerican
lol, wait. Backup.

It would seem to me that long before any of you got to prove your great organizational skills and community management prowess, you're going to have to contend with the National Guard and FEMA already doing it for you. Under martial law and curfews for starters.

Your assuming people will still show up for work, I bet most will stay with there families. There hummers and tanks and helicopters will not work, but most importantly there communications will not work, they will fall apart without orders.

The other problem is that if the power goes down, what assets you THOUGHT you had will immediately fall under the control of FEMA. They have the power in national emergencies to confiscate and control any and ALL resources, including people.

Communities will have plenty of weapons both private and from the police to offer defenses against units of guard or military troops, however more than likely the local police will Take over in such events, if there smart this could be good if they are not, they will most likely be removed.

But hey, don't mind them at all. If the few cops, ex-military and the like can muster the firepower to kill untold waves of guardsmen and mercenaries, and escape C130's, then by all means...go ahead and plan it all out. A fun exercise, but fantasy- under a grid failure scenario.

Again your assuming the military equipment will work, its doubtful it will.

Refrigerated food fails after what? 3 days? Frozen after 5? If you're careful. But being hungry is still not going to matter to powermongers in Washington hellbent on retaining control and quelling mass scale rioting. You'll be lucky to be ordered to carry away the bodies, instead of being shot. They train for this remember. And sorry, but Oathkeepers are not enough.

If the power fails they will not be able to muster enough people with the know how to fix everything once the storms ends probability years later.

We could just sit in our homes till we rot, or not