Quote from WCETECH on August 29, 2020, 9:13 PM

You’re sound asleep, having a wonderful dream about that new recruit - you know the one, with a nice tight body and really nice, way up high b, then you wake up and realize something isn't right.

The power is off, so you put on a pair of pants and go outside and check the main breaker and it has not tripped. Hmm - very strange! No storms or such, but no power, ah ha! It's probably just a drunk who hit a power pole.

No big deal - the power company will have it back on in a few hours. As you walk to the door to go back in, you look at your watch and realize it's three in the morning and it's light out. Waking up a bit more, you look up and a shiver runs down your spine and you begin to feel a tad bit sick.

The sky is illuminated everywhere with what looks like bright curtains of colored light moving around. Something isn't right at all, but it's not registering as to what it is. Back inside, you grab your cell, but there are no bars and no connection. You go into the kitchen where you still have a landline, pick up the receiver - no dial-tone - just something that sounds like a old shortwave radio in a movie you once watched, just clicks and heterodyne sounds.

You switch on the TV. but again nothing. Well He** dummy, the power is out! Back in the kitchen you fill a pot with water and notice the pressure is getting low, put it on your gas fired range and heat it up to make some coffee.

You need to get your head clear and try to figure out what in the heck is going on. While having your second cup, you remember that old HF rig you have jammed back in the closet. You finish your second cup and dig it out.

In the box you find a vintage transceiver, a 12 volt power cable, a roll of 16 gauge insulated copper wire and a few long 16 Ga insulated copper jumper cables and, most important, the notes you took in class on how to hook it all up.

You go outside and take another look at the sky. It's beautiful, but ominous at the same time. The sun is rising in the East, but you need to get moving. You pop the hood on the wife's car and remove the battery and bring it into your home office. Your notes advise in your area to string an antenna with the feed to the N.E. and the tail to the S.W. So you remove the screen, open the window, tie the free end of the roll of copper wire to a chair and toss the roll out the window. Outside, you stretch out as much wire as possible and with a good toss, the roll is sent up and over a tree out in the S.W. corner of the yard. You pull up the wire, not too tight, but as high up as possible, cut it off the reel and tie it off to a wooden stake pounded into the ground. If this works, then you will work on a better antenna later.

Back inside, you hook the transceiver to the battery, the home brew antenna to the antenna connector with your pre-made adapter and hook one of the jumpers to the transceivers ground lug, then out the window to your ground system, which I know you installed a long time ago.

Looking at your watch, you realize it's getting near the top of the hour and your notes say to tune to WWV on 2.5 MHz, 5 MHz , 10 MHz, 15 MHz, or 20 MHz. Your notes also advise you that WWV should be transmitting emergency information on the 10th minute and the 50th minute of each hour. Taking a guess, you tune to 20 MHz and notice the background noise is higher than you remember it being in that E-Comm class you took a few years back, but then you hear a signal. It's readable and it's WWV. The announcer speaks and lets everyone know that Earth has been hit with a Solar Coronal Mass Ejection (1) and communications world wide have been adversely affected. Basic warnings are to stay calm, preserve power, store water and hopefully, you are prepared for a few weeks or more of a different way of living.

You panic, but your training sort of kicks in. The bath tubs get filled with water. The wife, who is now awake, has the children filling anything that will hold water with water and the worst part is the water pressure is rapidly dropping.

You look outside and people are walking around acting like they are lost and at a great level of fear. You decide it's time to go to level 4. You holster your carry gun and put it on your belt, your wife drops hers into the back pocket of her pants and you hand your oldest son and daughter your AK and AR. They don't need lectures about gun safety as you sent them for training years back and you, your wife and your children have been going to the range on a regular basis.

Now everyone in the family knows that water must be conserved. Don't bucket flush every time the toilet is used - wait until it is getting real nasty, then pour a bucket of water in the bowl to flush it. Washing up will be a communal thing with the girls all together, including Mom, washing up and the water is not drained. Then the guys will do the same thing. The water will be filtered through a fine cloth and bleach added to sanitize it and it will be reused until it gets to the point it becomes unsanitary. Hopefully by then you can find a nearby river or creek to refill from. You should have already done that, but seriously folks, how many people out there have actually done that in advance?

The kids are hungry. The wife knows to use up all of the perishables first, because if the generator fails so will the refrigeration. You need to keep everyone's life as close to normal as possible, but will soon find out that is going to be a tough row to hoe.

Everyone gets leftovers for breakfast. It's different, so the kids think it’s cool. You know it's going to become SOP.

Back to your transceiver. You turn it back on and begin tuning around and hear a signal calling out. You call back and wait. Seconds later, an excited voice comes back and ID's himself - it's literally the guy who sat in the row in front of you at the class on being prepared for once it hits the fan. He reports back his location as a couple hundred miles away and the power has come back on, but has been failing every so often. Suddenly, another person is calling in with similar findings. To conserve power, it is agreed to stop transmitting and to call into the net at 15 after the top of each even hour.

As you are getting your act together, your mind clicks back to power. You go outside, drag out the generator and get ready to hit the start button. But before you can, for some reason, you drop to your knees and while almost crying you begin to pray, thanking the Lord for watching over your family and yourself, and pray that your extended family and friends are ok as well. Getting your act back together, you press the start button, it cranks but doesn't start.

You’re not feeling too good about that. You try again - still nothing. Your heart is sinking. You put your head down with your hand over your eyes and press the starter one more time, it cranks, pops and starts running! You want to hug the generator, but instead you do something really out of character; you look up and shout, “Thank you Lord, thank you for watching out for us.” The kids look at you and think wow, what's happening to Dad.

You think about gas. You do have 10 or so gallons in the garage, but you need more than that, so you get out your Georgia Credit Card. You try to snake the hose of the siphon into the gas tank of the wife's car, but it will not make it down the filler tube as there's a screen in there and you cannot get around it. Your car has the same problem. Then you remember in the class it was recommended you have a drain plug installed in your gas tank and you had both cars equipped with them. Your mechanic thought you were nuts, but gladly took your money and installed them.

You stand up and begin to walk away to connect your cheater cord to the service panel and something really strange happens. You’re approached by a person you have never seen before and he asks if he can use your phone. Instead of saying no, you say it's dead and realize that was a dumb thing to admit. He gets mad and demands to use your phone. You again repeat that it doesn't work. Now the guy is pissed and is walking toward you and you panic.

Suddenly, you hear your wife screaming, “Get the eff off of our property, get the eff off our property, keep your effing hands up or I will kill you.” You look and notice she's pointing her gun at the guy’s chest. He begins to retreat and then you see your neighbor climb over the fence with a rifle and he joins your wife and is screaming, “Get the He** out of here, we don't want you around here, get out of here a**hole.” The guy takes off running.

You see your neighbor’s wife climbing over the fence with another rifle. She meets your wife and as they are walking back, you hear her say, “My husband says we need to fill our freezers with bottles of water. If you don't have any, I have some I can give you.” Their water, like yours, has failed to flow, but you both have stocked up and everyone knows not to use it unless seriously necessary.

Another thing sinks in, neighbors are going to have to pull together to get through this.

The neighbor walks over and asks, “Why didn't you pull your gun on him?” You realize you forgot you were carrying one and then realize you are really not prepared for this kind of life - you let a stranger walk up to you and forgot you were even carrying a gun, your wife had to come to your defense and your self confidence level is quickly dropping.

You realize you thought you were trained and prepared, but you didn't take it seriously enough and you need to get it in gear or bad things are going to happen. Awareness must increase or you will not survive.

The neighbor’s kids come over and your kids are playing with them. Your son and daughter are sitting nearby with their rifles in their laps. Life is getting really weird. You tell all of the kids to stay near the house and play, but keep away from the fence. Your son yells back, “It's ok, Dad, sis and I got the fence covered now.”

Wow!

You again realize life is not going to be normal for a while, if ever again. You are not a religious person but you pray again thanking the Lord for what strength you still have and promise that you will work hard increasing it as much as possible.

Later that evening, after dinner with your neighbors, your daughter says good night and heads to bed. Very strange! She normally stays up late watching programs on her pad, but she and her brother have decided to stand watch. He will stay up until midnight or so and she will get up around midnight and go on watch, letting him get some sleep on the couch. Among themselves, they have decided someone will always be awake to guard the home day or night. You realize your children are still very young, but are also very mature and involved.

And as they say for now, that's all folks. In closing, does anyone have any thoughts, comments or criticisms? If so, just fire back. I would love to hear it, be it good, bad or ugly.

1. A Solar Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is a significant release of plasma and accompanying magnetic field from the solar corona. They often follow solar flares and are normally present during a solar prominence eruption. The plasma is released into the solar wind, and can be observed in coronagraph imagery. If Earth happens to be in the path of a CME, the charged particles can slam into our atmosphere, disrupt satellites in orbit and even cause them to fail. They can also disrupt anything with long conductors, such as power lines and shielded twisted pair telephone cables. One major part of the power transmission system they can damage are stepdown transformers, which are not normally held in stock and have to be built to specs. If that part of the transmission system takes a lot of damage, it could be months or even years before all the power is restored nationwide.

The last CME to hit earth was in 1859 and it took out telegraph networks, which are crude and very robust all over North American and Europe.

Yes, ANTIFA and BLM are threats to be prepared for, but a CME happens without much of a warning and the damage one can cause opens a window of opportunity for the thugs to try to take control of an area. We must be prepared for that just as much, if not more than the ANTIFA or BLM thugs as one may induce people who would never think about looting or robbing do so just to survive.