War Drums

What the heck people? There's been a lot of chatter on the Internet about rising US/Russia tensions. Russia just did a public defense test involving 40 million people. They've instructed their citizens to come home immediately.

We are dangerously close to having US and Russian forces come into direct conflict in Syria. There's threats of cyber war. I'm just skimming the surface here. A little research will reveal some serious crap going down.

It's easy to ignore the threats as posturing and saber rattling. That would be a mistake. Normal rational people would not even think of starting WWIII. Unfortunately, there are people in positions of power who think such a war is winnable.

. . . and all the troops will be home by Christmas. That was the promise of WWI. It had been a long time since there had been a serious conflict. Politicians had ambitions. Generals had outdated ideas about what it would take to win a war. Instead of a short war it dragged on and on destroying some of the best and brightest of that generation. It ended badly enough that it set up the conditions that lead to WWII.

Now we come to a time when the remaining WWII vets are quite ancient. Few are in positions of influence. We have a generation of leaders with no personal memory of world wide hot conflict. It's said that generals always prepare to fight the last war. That kind of thinking isn't good enough.

We think cyber war involves the hacking of e-mails. That's trivial. Now imagine all the computers in the world's banking systems going down. GPS satellites turning off. Power and water plants shutting down. All communications going down. The military losing control of its assets like drones.

That's only the stuff I can imagine happening. History has shown that in war time weapons are used that no one has ever seen before.

It used to be that our fear of nuclear weapons kept all sides from using them. There are people in power who fully believe a nuclear war is winnable. Are they crazy? Delusional? Is their hubris so great they cannot see how dangerous that is? Could they be so evil they don't even care?

Even something like a cyber war, where no shots are fired, could kill millions. If a country is in complete upheaval from all their electronics shutting down, going nuclear might seem like the only way to go. Scary stuff.

Whatever the happens, it won't hurt to able to take care of your basic needs on your own. Theres not much of a downside being prepared and huge upside if things go sideways. If things really get crazy we end up with the whole northern hemisphere as a radioactive wasteland. Know anyone in Patagonia? I don't, so I'm stuck riding out this mess. Crazy times.

-Sixbears

Prepper Hubris

I was feeling pretty good about my preps. We weathered the storm in good shape. My solar electric system worked just fine. There was plenty of food in the house. Our water system worked. We didn’t have anything float or blow away.

Today, just for the heck of it, I decided to start up my generator. Now I’m not a big fan of the gasoline internal combustion engine, but I do own a couple. I even keep a little stabilized fuel around. It’s for my sailboat’s outboard, but would work fine in the generator too. Only problem, the generator would not start.

It ran just fine the last time I tried it, but apparently I should have checked it more often. There are really only about three things to worry about with small gas engines: fuel, spark, and air. It had fuel in the tank and the fuel was getting to the spark plug. The carburetor looked fine. The air filter wasn’t plugged. However, when I checked the spark plug, there wasn’t any sparking going on. The plug is checked by unscrewing it, reconnecting the wire, resting the plug against the engine to make an electrical connection, and carefully pulling the starter cord. If the electrical system is working right, you’ll see a spark at the tip of the spark plug. No spark, so the problem is electrical.

I’m going to get a new spark plug and try that. It’s often as simple as bad plug. If that’s not the problem I’ll work my way deeper into the electrical system. Small gas engines are pretty simple. There’s only so many things to go wrong.

Now as it turned out, I didn’t need my backup to my backup. We’ve had some nice sunny days since the storm passed. The solar panels have been charging up the house batteries just fine. I might never have felt the need to charge them from the generator. However, I might have offered to lend my generator to someone with no power at all. I certainly would have felt silly if I’d offered a nonworking generator.

Back in my Firefighter days, one of my duties was to keep a number of small generators in working order. They were run and inspected at least once a week. Even so, occasionally a generator would fail when you needed it most. With my background, you’d think I’d know better that to neglect my own generator.

In my defense, my solar electric systems works so trouble free that I’ve taken it for granted. Unlike a generator, it runs quietly and with little effort. Upkeep is pretty easy. However, if I am going to own a generator, I’d better get used to testing and inspecting it on a regular schedule.

-Sixbears

Water Test

One of my daughters nagged me to get my well water tested. It was tested years ago, was fine, so I forgot about it. She kept on my case about it and even dropped off a testing kit from the state lab. Finally, to shut her up, I sent samples to be tested.

The state sent me a quick reply that there was bacteria in the water and the well should be sterilized. I felt pretty silly about that. Went right out and bought a jug of bleach to do the job. Pumped out the well this morning and bleached the heck out of it. Ran bleach water through all the plumbing and let it set for the day. Added a filter for drinking water. It'll be days before all the bleach is flushed out of the system.

There's a lesson for me here. I shouldn't take something like that for granted. Doesn't matter that year after year the well tested fine. Sometimes things change. I used to sterilize the well every spring. Since the well always tested fine before, I got out of the habit. Also never liked the bleach smell that took a few days to clear.

Now it wasn't a serious problem. No one's been getting sick from it. However, it wasn't going to get better on it's own. What contaminated the well? I don't really know. It could be surface water from a heavy rain. That would be my guess.

From now on, I'm not going to take my well for granted. Spring bleaching and regular water testing is back on the schedule.

-Sixbears