The Grand Solar Minimum - A Mini Ice Age 2020-2055

[roddas]

(23 November 2018, 21:30)Mortblanc Wrote: Well it is the day after Thanksgiving over here and I am not going out into that spending panic induced mania so I might as well respond since I have all day.

What do I prep for or how do I decide what to prep for, since many of the prep items and technologies overlap?

There are then two different things that influence what is round and about the place.

The first is that I am in a completely different environment, climate, economic situation than many folks that consider themselves "preppers". Several other folks here are in much the same situation and experience level.

First, I am old. I have been at this for a long time! I was born under the shadow of the atomic bomb so rumblings of war do not disturb me. I endured my first natural disaster discomfort at age 20. Fought my first war at age 22. Returned to a horrid full blown recession at 24 and worked up from there.

Second, I am a retired history professor. I spent my life studying these cycles you fear, their causes and effects. I also work with a memory longer than a gnats whisker.

I am at the point that if there is a 100 year cycle of an event, and I can remember it, there is no sense in prepping for that. It will not happen again in my lifetime.

I am old enough that if a once in 500 year event happened and my grand-dad remembered it I do not have to worry about prepping for that.

If there is a once every 1000 year event and it happened in the past 500 years that is also a waste of prepping time and effort! (BTW you guys are 500 years past due for a major military and cultural invasion and population replacement)

This solar minimum you are terrified about is not a big deal. The world survived the last one with 18th Century technology and we will survive the next one with 21st Century technology. No the technology is not a handicap, it is a tool to be used for recovery, and it is a good one.

Yes, some people will die. People are always dying, its what people do when stressed. Some die. Others live and prosper. They set up market fairs on the frozen Thames and hang out in the coffee houses and pubs, where it is warm, to make business deals and plan revolutions.

The financial crash you are predicting is the same language that has been slapped around for the past 60 years and society has not fallen, money is still money, we are not plowing the fields with oxen and paying taxes to the regional war lord.

The people screaming the loudest are the ones making the most money on predicting "the event". They sell books on line and get money from their "monetized" blog sites as well as their Patron funded you-tube channels.

Our economy, and it is now an "our economy" with the long ago arrival of global trade, operates on 9-11 year cycles and the geniuses that are now predicting the next "fall of the world economy" are simply adding 9 or 11 years to the end of this last recession, say 2016, and coming up with a date early in the next decade.

Each of these economic cycles is the "great crash" for some, a little difficulty for others and a mere bump in the road for most. Last week I was talking to a man that lost $42,000 in one day on the stock market. He called it a drop in the bucket compared to the $6,000,000 he had made in the previous month.

What then do I prep for?

Like I said, I am old so I prep in different ways than many. I am a prepper apart from the newbie of even the apocalyptic stereotype.

I prep for things that happen in my area on a regular basis; storms, power outages, floods, mild droughts, blizzards. I have seen all of these things happen time after time on an annual cycle, and have seen the results. I do not want to deal with the results!

Most of the disasters in my region have a "bounce back" time cycle of about 1 week. If there is heavy damage to power grid it will be 2 weeks. Damage is almost always localized and not covering a huge area unless it is a blizzard.

Around here blizzards are what we use to cull the stupid. It's not that we want them to freeze, they just do!

There are also economic factors to consider; loss of income is always the primary concern, followed by loss of home and all the other problems of being broke. The loss of income thing is the only real "long term" prep I maintain, and I even do that differently than most.

My primary prepping tool is the home I live in. I own it. The taxes are low enough that I can pay them with the change from under the sofa cushions.

I have storage area. I have sheds, storage rooms, under floor areas. I live in 700 SQ/ft and have over 1k sq/ft storage! I own stuff, good durable goods that I use.

I am in a rural area far enough from the main motorways to discourage walking in by lazy types. The population density in my area right now is what would be expected in GB after the great 90% "die off" expected after a major SHTF event.

I am on about an acre of ground that can be tilled and put under cultivation and I have the equipment to do so. Here we get about the same rainfall as the English Midlands, but our temps fluctuate wildly from 35c in the summer to -30c in the winter. Usually we have good, long growing seasons with adequate rainfall. Mostly I garden for pleasure and store the produce for taste not out of fear of want.

Flood preps are handled by being located on a ridge at 300 meters height and well above any water encroachment since Noah built his boat.

Drought preps are controlled by the 20,000 liter cistern hidden as a front porch. I am also 1/4 mile from a spring fed lake that supplies the water for the entire county, assisted by three other lakes. It has not run dry in the 250 years of records in the area. I can pump water into tanks and transport it home if necessary.

Blizzard, storm, power outage preps generally overlap so I am top heavy on the emergency power. Not on the sustainable green energy solar/wind/monkey on a bicycle type.

I have several generators and other power sources to use in the event of power outage. Also have the vehicles set up as generators. A week of propane, nearly 160 liters of fuel for the gen-sets bla..bla..bla..

I do not have solar because the utility company in their infinite wisdom got that for me. My power is supplied from a huge solar farm that generates all of the power needed for my entire county of about 1500 homes and businesses. If the end of the world comes I will go get one of their panels and slap it on the roof. I would not cross over the cost/savings margin to install a large solar system in my home during my lifetime.

My power bill is moderate enough that I do not need to gather twigs like a peasant and heat water in the Kelly Kettle and wrap it in a hay box for the day. I heat, cook, light the house with electricity and consider it money well spent. At $4 per day my power is cheaper than a pack of cigarettes or a 6 pack of beer. I live in the 21st Century not the 19th, the power is there, the grid is there, I am going to use it.

I also have alternative-alternative heat sources due to the presence of a cast iron wood stove which can be set up inside, and a cord of seasoned wood stacked at the end of the house. It is too much to deal with except as an absolute emergency and has only been fired up for parties and to see the flames on a crisp autumn evening. I have enough wood on my property to last more than a winter, close forest with hardwoods, chain saws for harvesting bla..bla..bla..

That is only in case a disaster of more than two weeks duration strikes during the deep of winter.

I also built the house with the ability to shut off sections in the event of a long power outage, retreating to half the house, then one room if necessary. When I built I insulated everything to the point that it is a thermos bottle. Interior temps are usually sustained at 10 degrees C above the outside temp with no heat turned on. Last week I experienced an all day power outage with temps at -5c and the heat from a singe Coleman lantern kept half my house at 20c.

Food preps, about a year. It is all shelf offered food since I decided to go with rotating out the better tasting stock after I outlived my first 30 year shelf life one year food stash back before the Y2K thing! Another batch of 30 year food stocks would outlive me by 10-20 years. The food stocks are actually part of the "loss of income" factor, not end of the world disaster.

Income loss. I am retired and live on a reasonable pension. It is government funded so not prone to market fluctuations of bankruptcy. Should that fail I have one year income on reserve, I could probably stretch that to 2 years if necessary. That is in addition to the durable goods present that can be sold and converted into cash rapidly.

Being on life sustaining meds I also keep a one year reserve on those also. That is why everything else is on one year cycle, no sense having two years food and one year of meds!

Defending all this from those that might decide to take it by force, security measures and protection?? You don't want to know, you would not believe me, and I do not have time. It's different here.

I will start worrying about the next ice age when I see the glaciers on the horizon. I hear they do not move that fast so even an old guy like me should be able to outrun them.

Firstly thank you for sharing MB, loads of respect for you and your preps.
i can relate to your reasons for prepping like the weather and power outages as i also live with these issues every day and even worse in the winter as i live on a small island in the Outer Hebrides and spend most of winter cut off from the main land altogether, sometimes weeks without grid power and in freezing conditions so living with this is sort of everyday life for us here on the island.
as for my preps i always think big and worry little, my plan is if i can deal with something huge like a GSM or other large event everything else passes without a issue