All of this 2012 and predicting Armageddon stuff on television these days has gotten me to think about what I would do if I knew in advance of a SHTF scenario. Obviously a person's response depends on what the actual crisis is, but if you had 24 hours of advance notice of some disaster what would you do to prepare and brace yourself?

So this leads me to a fun exercise and learning experience for the forum. I'll periodically add different scenarios but the basic premise will be to detail what you would do in the event that you had knowledge of an impending crisis 24 hours before it happened.

The first scenario will be as follows:

The government has gone public and confirmed that a foreign country has hacked into the computerized infrastructure of the United States. While the government was able to secure the breach and protect the majority of networks, the country's electrical power grid remains under the control of this foreign terrorist group. This group has demanded insane amounts of money in addition to the release of high ranking terrorist individuals held in custody. Failure to meet these demands will result in a complete shutdown of country's electrical power grid. The POTUS, in an unusual demonstration of courage has indicated that they would not concede to the terrorists' demands and has instructed the public to brace for a widespread electrical power blackout. In this scenario assume that once the blackout begins it will take 2-4 weeks before the government can regain control of the grid and get the power back up and running. If you live in the East coast you are in luck because thanks to your location near Washington DC, your power will be back up in two weeks. If you live on the West coast your power will be back on in three weeks. If you live in middle, you are going to be out of power for a month.

In this particular situation, you and everyone else is privy to the same information and panic begins to set in. With 24 hours to go before the blackout, what steps do you take to prepare for this SHTF scenario?

I absolutely love the idea of this thread! Kudos to PFC for getting this (and hopefully other similar posts).

Btw, this has Keifer Sutherland and "24" written all over it. Assuming there is no last minute assassination of the entire terrorist group by Jack Bauer I would prepare for the black out by... Hmmmm... I'm gonna have to think this one through before I really write out my response.

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If it's in your pack, but you don't know how to use it...it's useless. So, always test your skills as a form of preparation...Don't wait until your life depends on it. That's a lesson you don't want to learn the hard way.

I actually would not do much more than I do now. I have my generator that is big enough to keep the heat on and the fridge running. Since I do not need the fridge running 100% of the time, I can also hook up the freezer a few times a day to keep my frozen goods frozen.

MY generator will run about 4 hours on half a gallon of gas. with down time also, don't need to keep everything running constantly, say I will use about 4 gallons a day. My vehicles are rarely allowed to go under 3/4th of a tank, and I have other fuel storage as well. Not a lot, but enough to get me going. Worse case scenario, I would have about 100 gallons of fuel available. This should last me 50 days. This is pushing it for this scenario, but depending on the weather and time of the year, I can stretch the fuel for a few extra days. I also know where I could get fuel in a SHTF scenario if I had to. This would probably be at least another 100 gallons.

Water for a bug in would be no issue. My sister lives very close and has a well. worse case, I would have to load up the generator and take with me to run the well pump. No big deal.

I have preps that are good for 3 to 4 weeks, not counting the extra beans and rice. Add that to the meat in the freezer, the food in the fridge, and our normal groceries in the pantry/cupboards. with proper meal planning, and maybe a little hunting/fishing, I could stretch this food pretty far. I would guess at least 6 weeks.

Cooking would be easy at first. I have 6 tanks for my grill, and when one goes empty, it gets filled. I can cook about 12 full meals on a tank. with reheating leftovers and such, I would guess 18 meals. That is 108 meals, or 36 days, or 5 weeks. A lot of meals like roasts, stews, etc. that we normally would cook in a crock pot, would be better done in a Dutch oven over the firepit in the back yard. I normally have about a chord of wood available at any one time, so we could cook a lot of meals here. Cooking fires don't need a lot of fuel at one time. The firepit isn't here for survival purposes, but there is no reason it couldn't be used in this manner.

If I had 24 hours notice, I would also use this time to acquire fuel, food, haul extra water and such to make sure I had enough to cover this emergency. even if I couldn't get more supplies, I am confident I could bug in and ride it out for 2 to 4 weeks. My biggest concern would be keeping my preps and my family secure when others began to get desperate.

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Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

NRA Certified Instructor for Basic Handgun and Personal protection in the Home.
V.F.W. Life Member
NRA Member
U.S. Army Veteran

Nice answer dclaarjr. Pretty much spot on in my opinion. How about another scenario PreppingForChaos?

_________________
If it's in your pack, but you don't know how to use it...it's useless. So, always test your skills as a form of preparation...Don't wait until your life depends on it. That's a lesson you don't want to learn the hard way.

top off the fuel tanks, buy perishables (like milk and bread) on the way home from work and tell teh boss that I'm on vacation for a week or so.

I guess I'll shamefully admit that I do not yet own a generator. So my first step would be to go and get one as well as plenty of gas to run it.

P.S. New scenario coming soon.