So, it's the middle of the day, on a workday, and the SHTF....what steps do you take?

I am old I stay home until there is an operating control element.

I'll go to the store and buy some cokes and lots of candy. All the comforts I will miss.

Then I will go sit on the roof somewhere and crack open a cold one and laugh as I watch the dumb ass who just now thinks its a good idea to stock up on firearms and ammunition.


The shelves are already empty. You can get a nice 9mm at a really good price, but you won't be able to find any ammo to load it.

since am retired .. and far from so-called civilisation ..
most likely pour a drink and carry on as usual ..

if was downriver .. would help those that could ...

reply to post by Gazrok


Oh crap. Ya you got a good point. I'd be SOL. My car doesn't have enough gas to get anywhere far. But assuming I could somehow get gas, I'd grab what i could and head to the coast. Maybe find a small island somewhere. But ya I'd be screwed basically, you do raise a good point.

reply to post by jadedANDcynical


The US has two warning zones, the 10 mile radius, and the 50 mile radius. 100 miles seems a bit much.
This map shows the 50 mile zones. Luckily, the plant near me has been closed a while (and I was just outside the 50 mile zone anyhow). So, that's something to consider, you should check to see if the one near you is still even in operation.



It's a valid concern, to be sure. (Wow, the northeast, Chicago, and the Carolinas are SCREWED).....

Few people live around here and I couldnt imagine any situation that would crowd the streets so much as to make them impassible. Even if everyone in town got in their car and went the same direction there wouldnt be any congestion.

I'd get in my truck and head home then sit in my hammock and hang out with the dogs until whatever it was passes and I had to go back to work.

Always a months or more food and water on hand.

If the roads were impassible it's about an 8 hour walk home. Shorter if I mix in jogging and make cuts off road.

There's a bag in my truck all the time with a weeks worth of food and some simple camping stuff like a water filter and fire starting tools if I really couldnt get back right away.

Started doing this stuff years ago when a blizzard kept me from getting home then a year or two later a hurricane flooded some roads and the "authorities" wouldnt let me go home.

Since then I always keep a camping bag in my truck.

reply to post by Gazrok


Looks like the populace will migrate west again if a SHTF happens. I wonder how all those missile silos up in Montana/Dakotas and Wyoming would be. They are at least underground.

Thoughts on that?

reply to post by Skorpy


They should be fine. They are kind of designed for a doomsday scenario, unlike the power plants.

After the last SHTF event I lived through when at work ( 1st was 9/11) and being in London, we panicked about being slap bang in the centre of the city.
2nd event was the 7/7 bombings, and my wife would have had to travel from London Victoria ( then a prime target and one that is central London and therefore mucho primo in the terrorists eyes( luckily they didn't get there)) I begged my boss to let me pick my wife up and get her home, THEN I would come back for as long as needed.
But work made me bus people to any open stations before worrying about my wife ( she had to make her own way home, and should I be in that position again in the future I know exactly what I'm telling my boss.

After all work is replaceable, people aren't and I told my boss that if it ever happens again I WILL be taking my wife home first, and NOT coming back till the danger is past.,
Luckily I no longer work for that crudhole of an office anymore, but the rule still applies, I'll be looking after family first.

reply to post by Gazrok


I doubled the government's max of 50 miles (and really, I don't think anywhere on the surface would be safe) because of this:



When taken into consideration with this:

Radioactive emissions into the atmosphere from the damaged reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant (NPP) started on March 12th, 2011. Among the various radionuclides released, iodine-131 (131I) and cesium isotopes (137Cs and 134Cs) were transported across the Pacific toward the North American continent and reached Europe despite dispersion and washout along the route of the contaminated air masses. In Europe, the first signs of the releases were detected 7 days later while the first peak of activity level was observed between March 28th and March 30th. Time variations over a 20-day period and spatial variations across more than 150 sampling locations in Europe made it possible to characterize the contaminated air masses.

Tracking of Airborne Radionuclides from the Damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Reactors by European Networks

In a week, aerosols (think particles the size of smoke) from the explosion were detected in Europe after travelling around the world on prevailing winds.

And that is just from one reactor explosion.

Reactor 1 did indeed experience a hydrogen explosion, but reactor 3 was much more. No one has ever seen a video of the explosion that took place at reactor 4, but judging from the damage to the building, it would seem to be on par with what occurred at reactor 3 so there may have been more aerosolized fuel components jettisoned into the atmosphere.

Now, think about every operating reactor experiencing the same type of failure (Loss Of Offsite Power, or LOOP) and then going in to an uncontrollable meltdown resulting in a similar explosion.

Then you also have to consider the decades of spent fuel that is being stored in various places, many times at the power plants themselves. All of that spent fuel is even more hazardous to human health than what is in the reactors, by a couple of orders of magnitude.

No, if the primary emergency is an extended national, or global, power outage , I think we are toast along with many other species on the planet that are unable to successfully adapt to a MUCH higher level of background radiation. And that does not take in to account all of the free aerosols that would envelope the globe just waiting to be inhaled or ingested.

Addenda:

To be clear, I understand that the Fukushima incident was due to a cascade of failures, not the last of which was the 9.1 earthquake that did considerable damage on it's own, even without the tsunami damage, that was enough to have cause the failure.

I crawled WAY down this one and as a result now know about nuclear physics, NPP construction, operations, safety, and failure, single primary loop plants, nuclear waste handling from spent fuel, and a lot more than I ever wanted to.

It would greatly depend on the type of situation that eventuated in the power outage.

If it were, say a Carrington Event - direct pdf link to .mil domain.

And if the infrastructure for the grid was damaged to the point where repairs could take months to years, due to many key components having 18+ month lead times, this (release of nuclear material)would be one of the most dangerous outcomes to widespread loss of electricity.

Yea, they would be able to SCRAM the reactors (even if the pumps burnt out, they've got manual systems in place for the control rods) and continue circulating coolant until they run out of fuel for their generators, then the batteries would buy them a few more hours. But all back up systems are finite, and without outside power the inability to circulate coolant equates to 100% certainty of uncontrollable melt down.

The laws of physics are quite clear on what would happen.

reply to post by jadedANDcynical


Wouldn't they just cap the whole deal? (if the infrastructure was beyond short term repair)

That is of course, assuming there is a "they" left around to do so.

It is indeed a terrifying aspect of it. If you're right, then no real point in it anyhow, but still, will be hoping this isn't as bad as you are thinking....

And if the infrastructure for the grid was damaged to the point where repairs could take months to years, due to many key components having 18+ month lead times, this (release of nuclear material)would be one of the most dangerous outcomes to widespread loss of electricity.

That's something most people aren't aware of (kudos to you). Even with our current, functional, non-SHTF world, it can take a year or more to get vital grid components. In a SHTF environment? Forget it. If the grid goes down in a major way, it will take YEARS to get it back.

With the closure of the Crystal River plant, at least I'm now more than 100 miles away from one (and in the opposite wind direction of the next closest).

reply to post by Gazrok


"Capping the whole deal"

As in something like the new sarcophagus at Chernoby because the old one deteriorated beyond usefulness?

Spent fuel has to be cooled in pools for decades before it can be laced in to "safe" dry casks for "long term" storage; which is still only a fraction of the amount of time that these substances remain hazardous to human health.

Communicating the dangers of nuclear waste to unfathomably remote descendents may seem like a topic best left to third-drink philosophers in dorm rooms. It's actually been left to the most humdrum of all Cabinet-level departments after commerce, agriculture, and the interior: the Department of Energy, which oversees the disposal of radioactive trash at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. According to government guidelines, DoE must plan for the continuing safety of the site over the next 10 millenniums.

Atomic Priesthoods, Thorn Landscapes, and Munchian Pictograms

They have to figure out how to tell people that this stuff is dangerous even if civilization completely collapses and then rebuilds tens of thousands of years from now and would not even recognize our writings or imagery. Try and wrap your head around that.

How much spent fuel is out there?

U.S. reactors have generated about 65,000 metric tons of spent fuel, of which 75 percent is stored in pools, according to Nuclear Energy Institute data. Spent fuel rods give off about 1 million rems (10,00Sv) of radiation per hour at a distance of one foot — enough radiation to kill people in a matter of seconds. There are more than 30 million such rods in U.S. spent fuel pools. No other nation has generated this much radioactivity from either nuclear power or nuclear weapons production.

Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the U.S.: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage

As to the potential damage to infrastructure, it wouldn't take very many people coordinating an attack on a relatively small number of key components to cause enough damage that the entire system would shut itself down.

Some of the transformers at substations have lead times of 18-36 months, they don't just keep them on a shelf or in a warehouse somewhere. Natural disaster (Carrington Event in scope), heck a properly placed EMP above the atmosphere could cause an induced current in the grid with similar results to a Carrington Event, or physical attack of key components and the electric grid is done for.

I really think that this is one of the most dangerous and most under-considered aspect of any SHTF scenario involving long term loss of electricity.

I would head home and only stop for basics...if the stores and gas station was not packed with people...grab a few extra basic for the house. I do not need to stop, would only do it if everything was still normal ...other than that... just get home. Watch the news... listen to the radio...then decide if I should do anything else with the information that I am provided.

reply to post by Gazrok


What is the nature of the event though? Do you know? Or have any idea as to what? To just say that the SHTF, that really doesn't say much. What exactly are you talking about?

reply to post by Gazrok


I think i' d go to the public library, and get a hard copy of a device that was used to power trucks in Britain during the war. Its a tub that's strapped onto the bumper of a car. It has a small hole in it where you light a coal fire. Above the fire there is a grill where fern and grass is packed to act as a coal gas filter. Above that is a tube that goes into the inlet manifold of the engine. When the fire is going the grate is closed so it just produces smoke, and chokes the fire.. Two thirds of the energy is in the smoke as gas. Then you start the engine and drive off. It was so simple, and would power any internal combustion engine without petrol. Plus you could cook on it as a bonus. If you couldn't get coal you could use wood gas the same way.

Originally posted by thefifthcat
Go to the Winchester and wait for it all to blow over!

reply to post by spartacus699


Well, in general, no matter what the event, certain things are going to happen, so it's kind of a generic scenario.

Whether an impending natural disaster, terrorist attack, nuclear war, financial meltdown, or martial law, etc., certain things are going to happen.

1) If at work, you're probably wanting to get home, so how do you do it?
2) You're probably going to want to gather loved ones.
3) You're going to want to hole up somewhere.
4) Concerns will be water, food, medicine, other supplies.
5) No matter what, eventually there will be some rioting, competition for supplies.
6) Inevitably, we'll lose power and communications (these things require people going to work to maintain, so in a crisis, nobody at work).
7) Likewise, we'll either lose police or have the military trying to enforce urban areas (not enough manpower to be everywhere).

reply to post by Vasa Croe


Just multiply that by a FEW THOUSAND people Plus the EMP took out all the autos that have computer chips in there.and They are all stuck out on your freeway with all the people still milling around them. . SO NOW.. how you gona get to your ship? HIKE or Bike.. and fight threw all the others that are there and HOPE someone ELSE is not already OUT ON YOUR SHIP.. Fully supplied...

reply to post by hollwd


EMP is a lot easier to shield against, than people might think. If I was at home, and KNEW an EMP pulse was coming, my trucks and my tractor would be ok, as would my lawnmower, and most other devices.

I'd have to run around some, but driving the trucks into the stable alley (has a large metal roof), putting the garage door up over the tractor, and throwing devices into Faraday cages (such as the microwave, oven, dishwasher, washer, dryer, etc.) should suffice from an airburst EMP.

For the surprise scenario, I'm working towards having spare electrical parts for these, always kept in a shielded place.

Gas up car, go to super market, go to target get sleeping bags, tent machete pots and pans, go home, grab what i can, leave.