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What Austin, Texas, Demonstrates About Prepping
[Captain's Journal] I have a family member who lives in Austin, Texas. This is a video he sent me (he didn’t take it, but is near where this video was taken). This video is a couple of days old. This line was about a mile long as guessed by the videographer. There are no more lines like that because the grocery stores are out of food.The trucks haven’t been able to run, so the shelves are bare. Worse, the water system is torn apart by freezing temperatures, and water is off to most of the city. There is no potable water, there is no more food. There is now a run on gasoline, and the stations are quickly running out their tanks. Power is off throughout vast portions of Austin and in fact throughout much of Texas. It would be easy to write an essay about the power situation, but denials that the rush to natural gas and windmills is at least partially responsible are wrong. The windmills are frozen, and the CTs (Combustion Turbines) sit above ground. They are frozen solid and cannot operate. Solar panels are covered with snow and ice, and besides, wouldn’t be capable of supplying the industrial base with enough power even if they could operate. While there is a lot of research in next generation nuclear (like Molten Salt reactors) occurring at ORNL and ANL, and that’s nice, it wouldn’t have been necessary to wait on that. PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) and BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) technology is mature and safe. The problem is that no CEO wants to invest money in nuclear power because the tax incentives are so significant for solar panels. But the only source of cheap, clean, mature energy that can supply an industrial base with power is nuclear. Unless, of course, they intend to move the industrial base to China (which is in fact investing huge sums of money in nuclear) and then beg for scraps that fall from the master’s table. My family member is safe and sound with copious supplies for everything, and I told him that the only people who would have been prepared for something like this is preppers. He responded that people do in fact listen to the government and that had a warning come out in time to concern yourself with potable water, run water into bathtubs, get freeze dried foods, visit the grocery stores, get batteries, get medical kits, stock up on ammunition, get charcoal and be prepared to grill, have enough water to flush toilets, and so on and so forth, the people would have responded. I told him that he had misunderstood what I said. I meant that the only people who worry about preparations like this without being told to by the government is preppers, and that he was prepared because we talked about this sort of thing before. He agreed. Most of America is 24-48 hours from starvation and dehydration. If the water system and/or electric grid goes down, people must be prepared for that. Preparation isn’t just for the Northwestern redoubt, with all due respect to the folks at the Survival Blog. In fact, it may be more difficult in an urban area like Austin than it would be in Idaho, weather notwithstanding. Posted by: Besoeker 2021-02-18 |
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