Into the Woods

I am 60 miles to the east of the epicenter of this earthquake.

What next? We are in the midst of a pandemic that is getting worse in many areas, including the state I live in. A severe tropical storm just moved up the Atlantic coast. That was only the first blow from what is likely to be a long, and severe, Atlantic hurricane season. The country is on edge, because of the American political situation, which, when it doesn’t create turmoil, creates paralysis and rewards incompetence. And this morning, to remind many of us on the East Coast that nature bats last, North Carolina, where earthquakes are pretty rare, had a 5.1 earthquake that was felt from Atlanta to Washington. It was the strongest earthquake in North Carolina since a 5.2 earthquake in 1916 — not very dangerous, but disturbing. Many times, having living in San Franciso for 18 years, I have felt buildings shake in moderate earthquakes. This was the first time I’ve felt this little house in the Appalachian foothills shake.

I was pretty well prepared for the lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic. But being prepared is an ongoing project. Being prepared costs money, so most people have to go about it incrementally. There are many guides on “prepping” to be found, so there is no need for me to reinvent that wheel here. But let’s think about what we have learned from the Covid-19 lockdown.

For one, there will be shortages as supply lines are disrupted and people begin to hoard things. Whatever was hard to find in your location should now be on your radar screen for future preparedness. Once the hoarding and panic buying begins, it’s too late. It’s necessary to think about these things in advance.

One of the things I’ve learned during the Covid-19 lockdown is how beneficial it can be to coordinate with your neighbors. Many things can be shared, which reduces the expense of being prepared and increases your security. We should all try to establish preparedness pods with our most trusted neighbors. It takes a village. If you have neighbors with lots of tools and know-how, as I do, then you are very lucky. And I can do things that they can’t do, such as handling communications, by Morse code if need be. I have things, and know-how, that they don’t have.

Everyone should be prepared to get by without outside help or outside supplies for at least three weeks or so. We should increase that time at an affordable rate. And we should look at ways of extending our independence for everything that is essential — food, water, and energy, to start.

For years, I’ve considered the greatest risks in the area where I live to be, first, pandemics; and second, widespread or grid-down power failures. Sooner or later, no matter where you live, you’re probably going to lose electricity. Candles, batteries, and flashlights will get you through short outages, such as the outages caused by thunderstorms. For longer outages, you’re going to need a generator, and some solar, if possible. (To be able to get by without electricity other than solar would be ideal, but that would involve some advanced prepping.)

When I built the abbey, I had a house-size, code-compliant transfer switch installed, waiting for the day I acquired a generator. Since then, though, I have soured on the idea of whole-house generators. This is because those generators — except for those that are extremely expensive — don’t put out clean power. Rather than a sine wave, the output will be a “modified” sine wave or even a square wave. There is no way I would expose my refrigerator, heat pump, well pump, etc., not to mention my electronics, to such dirty power. The risk of damage, as I see it, would be too high.

An affordable compromise is an “inverter” generator. These are smaller, but they’re adequate for refrigerators and most appliances. They’re safe for computers and electronics. They contain a small, gasoline-powered engine, an alternator with rectifiers (much like the 12-volt system in your car), an inverter to convert the direct current to 60Hz alternating current, and a capacitor circuit to smooth the wave form into a decent (if not perfect) sine wave. I bought the Westinghouse WH2200iXLT because its specifications are explicit about a promised THD value (total harmonic distortion) of less than 3 percent. As with many prepper items, once you need these things, it’s usually too late to buy them, because they sell out.

If you’re not yet a prepper, now is a good time to think about your situation, and then to get started. A three-week time line is a requirement. Six months is a good goal. I’m a liberal prepper. It’s not about guns. It’s about providing for yourself, and working with your community to be as locally self-sufficient as possible.