If the grid went down for a long period.

It may never happen, but if the grid went down for a long period...

How would it affect you and your family?

How would it affect your hobby?

What equipment do you have, and how would you use it to communicate, especially in an emergency?

Are you prepared? If so, what advice can you give to others who are not?

Deb

Hi Deb,

SHTF? 
There's a whole world of 'camo', little radios, etc. for apparently dealing with this and you don't have to look very hard to find it either. (Preppers.) If the 'grid' was down though there'd be no t'internet to be looking it up.

As a younger man and living in a couple of village locations power outages were the bane of many locals and we took it all a bit more seriously. Camping gas stoves, enough firewood/coal to keep warm, boxes of candles or oil lamps and a pantry full of food were the order of the day. (No point stocking a deep freezer either when you lost power for several days!) You also checked in with elderly villagers to ensure they were managing during such blackouts. You physically had to walk to their homes too, no mobile phones or email services back in those days.

Nowadays I think we've lost power for a couple of hours, ooh...at least once in the past few years. The only annoyance with that was hooking my radio up to a mobility scooter battery and being shocked at the distinct lack of QRM!!

(I remember a power outage when my daughters were younger and at home who seem befuddled that their mobile phones wouldn't connect despite being fully charged.....took a little while to explain the workings of the cellular phone network to them. )

Today I don't "prep" anything, not much point really. My medications arrive in a big box every month via a 'clever' little app or online renewal and I'd soon be stuffed without them. The main concern even then would be whether I had enough drinking water to take the damn things.

The "rule of three" comes to play with basic human requirements....three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food....we're pretty delicate when you think about it. (That's for a healthy human being too!) Despite millions of years of evolution humans today would be damned almost straight away not possessing the basic skills required for everyday survival without the massive support 'modernity' gives. 'Radio' would be the least of your worries.


But many people seem to have fun playing with the notion of 'prepping', solar panels, batteries, radios, etc. divulging much time/cash into those pursuits. Why not? You're free (mostly) to enjoy whatever interests take your fancy.  


All the best,
Victor

I think, if the grid went down for a long time, it would affect my other family members more than it would myself. Was brought up old school with not a lot of money. Spent play time camping with friends in woodlands catching, foraging, and cooking our own food. Weekends at grandparents rundown 800 year old house that had three fire places, but only one functional, and none on top floor where I slept which had ice inside windows in winter.. you get the idea, kinda a cross between a Charlie Bucket and wannabee Rambo. That said, I'm not so hardy now gotten used to modern luxuries, my sight is getting poorer and my fingers are freezing even in summer, so probably I won't fare so well.

Effecting the hobby? DXing would most definitely be on the back burner. Radios would just be on when needed for comms.

Don't have a lot of equipment. The old Realistic DX-300 SW receiver can run on batteries and doesn't take much juice, good for monitoring. Got a HT with various V/UHF ham frequencies programmed into it plus a couple of dedicated PMR HTs which I talk with my daughter and occasionally my wife when walking home from work, so at least they know how to use them. I have a small battery that will last at least couple of hours running a G90, the battery wouldn't run the FT-991A though, that Yeasu is a power-hungry monster even at its lowest TX power setting, would need the car to power it.

Am I prepared? Quoting Dr Dre and Borat "You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge..... Not".

Via my caving hobby I have plenty of torches and batteries. Our food prep is a box in the bottom of the cupboard which has just a couple of bags of cheap pasta and tinned food which would get us by a couple of days, ohhh and a toilet roll because Covid taught us that when the SHTF that is the most important item people need, geeze  The pasta would probably kill me off pretty quick as I have to closely watch carbs and sugar intake, so that's amazing planning by us there I know where my radio equipment is and how to use it, but I hope we are never in a situation where I have to use it for emergency comms.

I am definitely not a prepper, just mildly prepped.

Well done with the basic skills of an old fashioned childhood there Neal. 
Not many childhoods nowadays include things such as loop snares, spotting rabbit runs, let alone bleeding, skinning and gutting said bunny, how to start a fire to cook it or even dig a 'gypsy' well for some water. (Wild garlic, dandelion leaves etc. stave the 'rabbit starvation' syndrome too.)
Thank heavens really and I hope my grandchildren never have to rely on those sort of skill sets.

Same goes for experiencing 'Jack Frost' on the insides of windows, or worse still spikes of frost on your very self. (Brrrr!!) We were worse off as 'townies' in a two-up-two-down, outside privvy, tin bath and a lead pipe that snaked to a cold water tap over a Belfast sink. (Would explain a lot. ) Flipping luxury though, even electrickery so long as you put enough shillings in the 'savings box'.


I might not be very 'prepared' nowadays (apart from sorting my tablets for the day....oh, and are you Diabetic there Neal?) but I still love the basic skills involved with radio and fascination of what bits of wire and moving metal plates can do. My grandson and I are currently involved in a long term project for him to build a regenerative receiver as he definitely has the radio bug at an early age. (When you can get him off his X-box / i-pad that is. ) Always tunes my radios to 5.505 so that he can hear the Shannon Volmet lady whenever he has the chance.

Got to grips with some more modern technology recently such as fitting my mobility scooter with lithium batteries, (better range, faster charge, lot easier to carry than lead!), but caught out the first time I tried to use a 2m handy on it......surged forwards on first key-up then stopped with error codes beeping at me.
 
Thought I was going to be stranded so haven't repeated that little exercise!
(No one on the repeaters to hear my cries for help anyway. )


Yeah, if we went 'off-grid' I'd definitely be stuffed nowadays but hopefully I'd have enough left in me to pass on whatever skills are in my noggin to family that would be left behind.

But probably not involving trendy camouflage clothing or short range vhf/uhf little radios.

There are many ways this could potentially happen and it is very difficult to plan for all eventualities. Impossible.

Rather than hoard tonnes of stuff for yourself beyond some basic emergency items (torch, candles, a few water bottles, canned food) it would probably be better to check on your neighbours and coalesce and talk and see what you have between you, share resources rather than think you are going to "Rambo it out" in the woods on your own.

Maybe in the USA people will be blowing each others heads off with guns to steal their possessions but that is unlikely to happen in countries where gun prohibition laws exist. Unless water runs dry or is contaminated and undrinkable then those most capable/willing to use violence will try it on.

What you really need is water, food, warmth and shelter and others to keep your mental health in good shape.

Hobby's will be the last thing you will be worrying about. You will worry about not being dead in 3 days without clean water.

No one on the radio will be helping you that is pure fantasy.

In fact if you have a £1,200.00 radio you would be better off putting that £1,200.00 into 2 litre water bottles and beans and corned beef. A radio will be about as much use as a chocolate tea pot.

There is a good chance that if this kind of thing happens you would be called up to go and fight an enemy to replace already dead troops on the front lines.

There will no time for a bit of DXing if you are of fighting age.

Chances are it will mean World War 3 has arrived. That would mean cyber attacks on anything run by computers, jamming of important signals, infrastructure physical bombardment, underwater comms /gas cable cutting, TV and radio masts bombed, and probably already installed viral switches turning off the electric gas, electric and nuclear power stations and the hospital I.T. infrastructure. As we have seen in recent years there are countries that think nothing of being as ruthless as is humanly possible.

A nuclear attack would likely be on the cards shortly thereafter as we hear time and time again is already threatened by some. And if you think you are going to survive that, think again. I would prefer to be in the epicentre than die of radiation poisoning over the next 3 weeks.

Prepping is an activity which might seem like fun and exciting, each to their own I have nothing against it. The harsh reality is in such a dire situation you are going to be stressed, possibly ill, hungry, thirsty, very scared, having difficulty getting truthful and accurate information, maybe alone and awaiting being attacked with lethal force for your massive and valuable hoard at any moment by a group of people with superior firepower/weapons. Not very nice in reality.

Trouble with guns is someone always has a bigger one or more in the USA.

It is worth recalling that human beings became successful ultimately through cooperation with each other. In hunting tasks for example, building villages, farming, developing civilizations and community, not being lone wolf's.

Where are you going to go when the hoard runs out, who will welcome you when you have no food and bullets left ?

No one, that's who.

That is from just 10 mins thought of the obvious things I can think of.

Judging by past experiences, loo roll !!!!

Victor, my dad was butcher when I was young child and one of my friends was a farmer's son, so without going into gross details for younger people here you can see where I learned to catch and prep food sources from. No internet then. My mid-twenties son asks Alexa everything, and so it seems does my young neighbour who I over heard out in his garden the other day "Google, how do you dig a tree root out of flower bed?". I worry for some people how they would cope with just no internet let alone no electric or other facilities.

Don't want to turn the thread into a stereotypical 80m rag chew, but am only prediabetic, also prehypertension amongst other prees for over 10 years now. Diabetes in family so diet changed to hold back as long as possible. Eat anything with sugar or that will turn to sugar now, and I soon come down hard.. very hard. ...There's somethign for me to talk about if I ever get on the band properly lol

Wonder if there's any hardcore preppers here on the forum that can offer any good or interesting advice on what they have ready.

Deb, where do you stand on it and what do you have? I guess you some kit in your camper you can use and at least live away from your house for a bit if you need to.

Not really a prepper but have collected a small store of rice while it was cheap.
Plus keep a few extra tins of corrned beef and spam.
Five for us live here so impractical to keep to much.

As to radio, my station is solar powered, two Renogy 100AH 12volt LIFEPO4 batteries in parallel.
and 600watts of solar panels. Have not really drained them past 80% so no problem powering the station.

I'm building a solar setup to power some of the house.
Just put up ground mounted 1.6kw solar array of 4x410watt Canadian solar panels.
These feed into an Ecoworthy 5kw 48volt hybrid invertor which charges 4 Renogy 200AH
12 Volt LIFPO4 batteries in series, that is about 10kw of storage.

So power no problem.