Our End Of The Lake: Surviving After The 2012 Solar Storm (Prepper Trilogy) (23 page)

“If you showed them my license, Davie, wouldn’t they know I am too old to go myself?” Mom said still thinking that we were back in some forgone time when people were more civil and governments had some common sense.

“No, if I get a chance to pull a soldier off to the side and talk to them, maybe, but people lie about their needs all the time and what supplies that will be on the truck will be a first come first serve basis. The best way to get a double ration is to get there early when the trucks pull up and offer to help distribute the goods for the extras.” I said drawing off my Hurricane experience.

“So, you and David are going early, Jack.” Lois said addressing her husband who she didn’t like letting out of cell phone reach.

“Very early I expect. David wants to mingle with the early comers and try to get some news about the different neighborhoods, so we will probably be gone for awhile.” He said firmly, so that the objections wouldn’t be many.

I sort of felt sorry for the pair that now was put in a predicament where all rules and lifestyles were permanently changed. Jack always tolerated his wife’s keeping constant tabs on him and being forced to do extra things to please her; but now he was determined to be master of the ship and when he spoke in certain ways, she always somewhat biblically went along with him.

I remember every time Jack had to go somewhere for the day, she would indiscriminately grab a whole bunch of different can goods for him to take with him for snacks and or a meal. Wouldn’t be any rhyme or reason for the selections, I guess she figured he eats anything and was just looking out for him in her own loving way.

I would sometimes try to get in his passenger seat to ride with him, if we were not taking my vehicle on some road trip, and there was always these piles of cans of beans, corn, sardines, tomatoes you name it to move, so I could get in, I often wondered dubiously, if some of them were not left over from the last road trip.

What was even stranger about that mutual farewell habit they shared was that as soon as he got done eating or going to buy fast food, he would be checking in with her. Well, we been friends too long for me to expect otherwise and my days of chiding him about it were long over. They say you are a lucky man if you can count your friends on one hand and not have too many fingers left, and Jack and I had found out that besides each other we had lots of room on that hand.

Jack and I wandered back into the house and noticed that the ladies had put out several of those three for a price small LED lanterns that sportsmanguide.com put on special all the time. We had two main lanterns from them that had been sold under their brand name Guide Gear and they ran for weeks on 4 D cells.
I have a diehard jump starter power station that I could plug my recharger in for the batteries and I had a 15 watt solar panel that I could use to recharge the power station, so I would never be without lights. I was lucky none of this equipment was affected by the EMP in the closet I had it stored in.

One of my ETON crank radios was fried, but I had one I had put in a cardboard-lined ammo can and it was fine. I had my two way radios in there with it so I had communication capability for my friend Sherry who didn’t live far from me. I was going to carry one of the two way radios with me to give to her at the food distribution point tomorrow. Sherry and I were Prepper buddies and I probably had just as many preps stored at her house as I did at my Mom’s. Dang if Mom wasn’t so picky about things, I wouldn’t have to fill a unit at a mini warehouse full of stuff I needed to get to one day, because it wasn’t allowed in the house
...

Jack interrupted my musing by asking me what time I wanted leave for the distribution point tomorrow.

“There is a drop at 10.30 and I wanted to be there early possible, so I considered our walking time in and I figured we could leave at 9.00 to get there by 9.30.” I informed.

“I saw a lot of fires coming into Montgomery from Clanton, David, people were trying to fight them with garden hoses in the residential areas and from the highway the industrial complex by the river looked like it had burned down. I hope you and your mother will stay safe, but be vigilant over here.” Jack said, while nibbling on some pilot crackers I had given him.

“We been lucky so far, I have been going out and looking at the sky at night, sort of doing fire watch thing before we go to bed at night.” I responded, while turning the coffee water on.

“Hey, you still actually have natural gas for cooking?” he said, observing how easy it was for me to just hand light the burner on the stove with a match.

“Gas is a different setup, even than water, to get it to flow through pipes. It’s intermittent now for service and scares the hell out of me with these fires in the distance, but I haven’t shut it off yet.” I replied, hoping that would convince my mom to let me just shut it off for safety, but she was waiting for the utility company to make an announcement and so far nothing had been said.

“I don’t really understand what catches fire and what doesn’t from EMP.” Jack said questionably and wanting more answers.

“I don’t understand it either my friend, the only case study I ever have seen mentioning the fire risk aspects of EMP was in a Future Science article. I had it printed out for school awhile back, hang on a second and I will get it.” I said going back to my room and retrieving the article and handing it to Jack and telling him this was a nuclear event, not like the solar apocalypse we were experiencing.

“Here, read this part.” I said to Jack, pointing out the part I wanted him to study.

The Soviet Union got its surprise introduction to the severity of nuclear EMP effects over a much more heavily populated area than the Pacific Ocean. The most damaging nuclear EMP event in history (so far), much worse than the Starfish Prime test, occurred in October of 1962 over central Asia. Written documents give the time and date as 3:41 GMT/UTC on the morning of October 22, 1962. The warhead was launched from Kapustin Yar on a Soviet R-12 missile. Although the primary purpose of the test was to discover the effects of EMP on certain military systems, the large magnitude of some of the effects on the civilian infrastructure were quite unexpected.

A few hours after the sun rose in Kazakhstan on that cloudy October morning, the Soviet Union detonated a 300 kiloton thermonuclear warhead in space at an altitude of 290 kilometers (about 180 miles) over a point just west of the city of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan. The test was generally known only as Test 184 (although some Soviet documents refer to it as K-3). It knocked out a major 1000-kilometer (600-mile) underground power line running from Astana (then called Aqmola), the capital city of Kazakhstan, to the city of Almaty. Several fires were reported. In the city of Karagandy, the EMP started a fire in the city's electrical power plant, which was connected to the long underground power line.

The EMP also knocked out a major 570 kilometer long overhead telephone line by inducing currents of 1500 to 3400 amperes in the line. (The line was separated into several sub-lines connected by repeater stations.) There were numerous gas-filled over voltage protectors and fuses along the telephone line. The entire over voltage protectors fired, and all of the fuses on the line were blown. The EMP damaged radios at 600 kilometers (360 miles) from the test and knocked out a radar 1000 kilometers (600 miles) from the detonation. Some military diesel generators were also damaged. The repeated damage to diesel generators from the E1 component of the pulse after the series high-altitude tests was the most surprising aspect of the damage for the Soviet scientists.

Subsequent analysis has shown that the warhead used in the 1962 Soviet test was particularly ineffective at generating EMP. If the W49 warhead used in the U.S. Starfish Prime test had been used in the Soviet tests, the EMP damage over Kazakhstan would have been far greater. (Emanuelson, 2010)

Emanuelson, J. (2010).
Nuclear electromagnetic pulse
. Retrieved from
http://www.futurescience.com/emp.html

“It’s still pretty hard to figure things out with even that bit of information, David.” Jack said after reading the article and looking somewhat confused.

“Well, anything could have started that fire in Clanton; think about how many planes just fell out of the sky when their electronics completely failed them. At any given time there are well over 5,000 non-military airplanes over the air space of the U.S., so it must have been raining bombs for those that couldn’t glide in or crash land on the interstates or something. Even if you were lucky enough not to be in one, think about all the travelers stranded in the Atlanta Airport for example with no lights, no food, and no way to get out of town to their families, though most likely that whole airport went up in flames.” I said gloomily.

“David road a tractor back from Atlanta.” my mom interjected to reroute the conversation.

“Lawn tractor?” Jack asked skeptically. Thinking there was no way to keep the thing from overheating on the way back without a lot of careful planning.

“No an old crank start farmer’s hard row making and plowing affair. I will tell you that story later how I got that booger, Jack” I said dismissively, wanting to get to another point to consider.

“When you leave out, Jack; you probably want to maybe avoid that intersection by Baptist hospital. They are probably, or I say most likely, in a state of chaos; overflowing with panicked patients and medical personnel fighting losing battles. Their backup generators will be useless most likely, as they typically operate with some electronics to turn them on and off with a power shortage or need.” I advised Jack and in telling him this bit of info, adding a lot of miles to his pre-speculated trip by avoiding that likely bad intersection and remembering the other hospitals and clinics in the area he needed to get past.

Jack paused for a moment, and rubbed his balding pate, while mentally detouring his road trip and searching for an alternate route and replied,” I hadn’t thought of that. Can you imagine being in the middle of some kind of surgery and suddenly have the power go off without even so much as a warning beep?” he said bringing up scary thoughts for all to contemplate.

Mental Preparedness comes more readily when we allow ourselves to mentally picture scenarios and then allow our brain to strategically work on solving the anticipated problems, but this one I didn’t want to wrap my head around. Without refrigeration lots of drugs would quickly go bad. Anyone that required help breathing or anything else has already died and what could they do with the bodies? That hospital was only about a mile from me and it spelled trouble, no matter how I thought about it.

It won’t be long until people in the city are starting to die of dysentery from eating bad food, drinking bad water or having infected wounds from the car wrecks that occurred when the big switch cut off power steering and brakes while they were zipping along down the road. I need to start working on a plan to get out of here, NOW, I reminded myself.

Hells bells! How many Americans are simply living today, because they have access to all kinds of medical technology and treatments or those in hour glass mode, waiting on the sand of their lives called medication to run out? Type 2 diabetics are probably counting the hours, and going to be dying on the vine if they haven’t already expired. With death comes new diseases for the living, hurry up, find the way out David, I said to myself
.

“You know Jack, you might want to hang around a day or two, I might have just thought of something interesting.” I said looking his way and smiling a bit, as something dawned on me.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” he said looking quizzically my way.

“I am thinking, maybe some cars stored in underground parking garages would possibly work depending on that pulses proximity. I am not sure if some areas got different doses or not, but it sounds like a reasonable idea anyway.” I said thinking hopefully.

“Well, maybe. But there are not too many parking lots around like that. Downtown is the only place I can think of offhand and we don’t want to go there.” Jack said as we resumed our pondering of possibilities and problems...

“Let’s get your sleeping arrangements out of the way and we will go talk in my shop awhile.” I said standing and going towards the linen closet.

DISTRIBUTION DAY

Jack and I argued the finer points of getting the hell out Dodge, and how to be as far away from the masses as possible, until late in the night.

“You know, David, they started looting the local Walmart and grocery stores not too long after this shit hit; and people simply took what they needed or wanted, because nobody was around to stop them.” Jack said recalling the pandemonium.

“Well, Jack, that old communist Vladimir Lenin was often quoted as saying, ‘Where there is hunger, there is no law.’ I bet the grocery stores are already looted or have been stripped bare, as people flocked to them like locusts in the beginning of this realization of lost resources.” I said considering the possibilities of what might have occurred in other neighborhoods.

The world surely does end at a prepper’s door, when you get so little local news, even from a few miles away. What is happening is unknown without the technology we were used to having access to.

I would be very surprised if any local agencies or responders really had a clue at all what's going on, since there is no communication to speak of. No cell phones. Hardly any radio to even talk about. No phone land lines, Emergency management might have some commo on the restricted hard lines. The grid is gone; I had a sinking feeling what was next though in this circus of loss and smoke and mirrors. The second die off coming, would be due to disease and starvation.