All of a sudden BAM! Power goes off.
After all this stuff I’ve been reading, I started thinking about my BOB.
Then I heard my UPS beeping and saw that my phone is still functional. Thus, not the EMP. Today is probably not SHTF day.
I figure that liberals are attacking in a new way.
At least I can keep my eye on the blog!
Perhaps I’ll go the range… or a movie.
Do you have a UPS backing up your important gear?
Use the link and shop around.
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Disasters always happen to someone else…. until they happen to you.
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I need to get me one of those. Especially because we moved into a home where the circuits are wired poorly and thus power surges happen all of the time. Thank you for the reminder.
Of course I don’t mean to confuse power surges and power loss/data protection. But then that is what I did.
I used to live in a redwood forest, where flickers are frequent, and outages are measured in hours (4-12, typically). In those days, I not only had UPSes, but a generator. Now, in the Atlanta suburbs, I do without the generator, but it is not uncommon to hear the signal from one of the UPSes.
Also note, a good UPS may go on for many years, but it will need a new battery now and again.
Go out on the street and evangelize. Take a stole and hear confessions of random people. The “power can go back on” in souls.
How can we evangelize outside the walls of churches and outside the circle of the already-converted that come to Catholic blogs and events? How do we enable more people to come into contact with friendly Catholics who are able to answer questions from a faithfully Catholic perspective, who are inviting and direct people toward prayer and relationship with God? How do we invite people to our parishes to come and see? I feel like we are stuck about this.
It sure is important, isn’t it, to protect life and limb and treasure. Even sometimes if from those who intend harm and invade what is sacrosanct in an attempt to destroy and then induce others to target in parallel manner, no matter what is said to induce or its appearances (perhaps through defamation and other manipulation under disguise of “political action”?), at the core it is terror and those instrumentalized to carry out various things are in fact accessories. Recent experiences I have had, as well as other past ones, have underscored this for me.
Nolite thesaurizare vobis thesauros in terra: ubi ærugo, et tinea demolitur: et ubi fures effodiunt, et furantur.
Amen on the Latin phrase, Benedetta.
Right now it’s a struggle to just keep the utilities on, let alone buy stuff to help back up my electronics. If it’s God’s will that my iphone and computer go (I don’t have a tv) in some sort of electrical loss, surge, solar storm, etc etc, so that I may become detached from them then let it be.
I’m reminded of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN2WzQzxuoA&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I’ve been thinking lately about buying a generator or two to place in storage inside a faraday cage in the event of an EMP. Not sure if it would work, but it’s worth a try.
I hate to sound naive, but what is BOB?
The Masked Chicken
Chicken,
I think it means bug out bag
Family definition of “adventure” is a disaster experienced by someone else, usually far away from home. I’d go to the range Father.
I’m always surprised when I find out that people who work from home don’t use UPS (Universal Power Supply) more often. They’re not that expensive. And they have the bonus of also regulating power distribution within the system and conditioning the power against surges (ie from lightening or human induced power surges).
I remember the last time this UPS topic came up. I actually went on Amazon and bought the UPS FrZ linked to. I’ve had no problems with it and it gives me peace of mind.
Another item to have in an EMP situation: a pistol. There’s no microcircuitry to fail and it can mean the difference in a survival situation.
A great fiction book on how an EMP would affect our country is a novel called “One Second After.” I highly recommend it. The foreword was written by Newt Gingrich.
Father Z,
When I move out into the sticks, I’m going to off-grid solar and wind generation. I figure it will be pretty tough to find a Mass, let alone and EF Mass for about 75 miles in any direction. Maybe we can cut a TEOTWAWKI SHTF deal. I need the Mass, you need the place, and with enough ammo, we can hunt and keep everyone fed. Do we have a deal?
So, Father, a set of questions:
If it’s not TEOTWAWKI for all of us, and something happens to you or your blog, how many commandoes should we send to your last known location? And how long would an unannounced absence from the blog have to be before we presume something has happened and start breaking out the valid laser beams for this operation? Or in such an event should we assume it’s more of a Dead Hobo Nick Fury situation and expect you to make contact with us when the time is right?
Theodore, if I may quote G.K. Chesteron: “An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.” Or, if I may quote the internet at large, “When something bad happens in your life, yell ‘Plot twist!’ and keep going.”
And, to anyone who knows: Would I be correct in presuming that a UPS has to basically stand between the power grid and your entire house/electrical system? I tend to rely on surge protectors… (I’m more concerned with things getting fried than with mere loss of power. I don’t think I’m running anything in this apartment that would suffer any permanent damage from pulling the plug unexpectedly, and in any case for computers I consider regular backups the only real defense against things going wrong anyway — but not having to replace the computer because it’s physically fried is important when you only have an apartment budget.)
I just installed a UPS/Surge protector this week. The basic ones are under $100 now. My brother-in-law works for a major company that produces them, so I was able to help his family as well. Don’t forget to connect the battery inside to power before turning it on.
@cobbler. The UPS is just to protect the stuff that is plugged into it, so it doesn’t need to be at the main power source. If one wants to get into protecting the whole dwelling, look into those Generac natural gas powered generators – not for the apartment budget.
14 Kw Generac on NG here. Got it about one year ago. 4K to purchase it and the transfer boxes, and traded a nice M1 Garand for the associated hookup and wiring. It’ll run the whole place. I may never need it; but then I may. I figure it’ll help sell the place a little easier some day, and I should be able to recoup the investment and then some.
As they said in the old Toyota ads: “Oh, what a feeling.”
A thing to keep in mind with generators. More and more appliances now have fancy electronics which can burn out from the power surges from a generator, especially if is poorly regulated as many of the lower priced ones are. I know this from experience, having had a refrigerator receive several hundred dollars in damages after my generator decided to put out 220V on the 110V output during a Hurricane Sandy outage. The appliance repair people said they don’t recommend running a fridge on a generator which of course removes one of the main purposes of having one, to preserve your food during an outage. Maybe if you have one of the older fridges without electronics you might get away with it.
eiggam — Good to know, thanks!
I went through all this with a fridge whose starter capacitor blew out while I was away, and I came home to a lot of melted food and a big puddle on the floor. I don’t know what caused mine to blow out, maybe a surge, but it was 12 years old. I managed to replace the faulty part, but it’s not child’s play.
Then I read about all the new fridges, especially GE ones, and discovered that their circuit boards with their digital controls are especially susceptible to surges. The rule is now with anyone’s fridge: Put it on a surge protector. Seriously. Do it. Even if it’s an actual $30 single-gang duplex surge-protecting outlet you install so the fridge goes right up against the wall where it otherwise would.
This includes generator use for fridges. Put the fridge on a decent surge protector, plugged into the generator, and you should be good to go.