Long-term power grid failures coming to America... do you have the tools to survive?

Friday, June 24, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: power grid failure, prepping, survival skills

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(NaturalNews) As part of its national Space Weather Strategy [PDF] released last fall, the White House has finally acknowledged what one expert has called a dramatic shift in emergency preparedness – namely, that three days' worth of food and supplies is far from enough for your family's survival.

As reported by Off The Grid News, the plan – which was reviewed during a workshop in April hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and attended by
White House officials – acknowledges that predicting space weather, like a solar flare, is difficult at best. What's more, despite all of our technology, there would be almost no warning if such an event were to occur.

As others have noted, a massive solar flare would be the naturally occurring equivalent of an electromagnetic pulse attack via nuclear-tipped ICBM – and would devastate the electric power grids of even the most modern nations. What would ensue afterward is pure chaos.

Grid expert Chuck Manto attended the April workshop and detailed the new plan in a mid-June article for DomesticPreparedness.com, a web site for emergency planners and first responders such as police, fire and EMS personnel. The new plan acknowledges that such an event would lead to a "long-term loss of electric power."

'40 days or even 400 days'

"For the first time since the demise of the civil defense program of the Cold War, the federal government has made one of the most significant modifications to its emergency preparedness message," wrote Manto, CEO of Instant Access Networks LLC, a company that makes solutions for EMP-protected microgrids. "A three-day emergency kit is no longer sufficient to prepare for emerging threats, whether coming from Earth or from space."

Continuing, Manto added, "Instead of implying that U.S. communities can always count on being rescued from any disaster in four days – requiring three days of food and water to stay comfortable – the implication now is that local communities might not always receive assistance for a much longer period of time."

In fact, as noted by Bugout.news, there is only about three days' worth of food in our very fragile "farm-to-fork" food chain, something the federal government is also aware of, as noted in the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Protection Plan.

Manto said the federal government's new strategy makes several adjustments that are major:

-- "Complete an all-hazards power outage response and recovery plan: for extreme space weather events and the long-term loss of electric power and cascading effects on other critical infrastructure sectors;"

-- "Other low-frequency, high-impact events are also capable of?causing long-term power outages on a regional or national scale;"

--"The plan must?include the Whole Community and enable the prioritization of core capabilities."

-- "Develop and conduct exercises to improve and test Federal, State, regional, local and industry-related space weather response and recovery plans: Exercising plans and capturing lessons learned enables ongoing improvement in event response and recovery capabilities."

1859 Carrington event getting more likely

Manto writes that the government's new adjusted strategy notes that unlike hurricanes or major storms, where help arrives within a week or so tops, following a space weather event "help might not arrive in 40 days, or even 400 days."

"Long-term national outages of power and other infrastructures that depend on them – including water, sewer, communications, and healthcare institutions – could mean that the entire country might undergo a catastrophe and might not be able to quickly mobilize resources to help many communities," Manto said.

What's more, a long-term disaster isn't just some theoretical exercise, he noted. Every passing decade contains anywhere from a 6-12 percent chance of a Carrington event like that which occurred in 1859, scientists say. That year the sun experienced a major solar storm of such force and size it would have killed the power grid if it had existed at the time.

"That is a significant likelihood for such a calamitous occurrence," Manto writes. "Including high-impact threats in overall disaster planning scenarios provides a sense of importance and immediacy that should compel the whole community to get involved, rather than simply hoping for someone to rescue them."

Food certainly is a major concern, but fortunately long-term food storage is certainly accessible – right now. Later? Not so much. Click here to check out the Ranger Bucket – Emergency Storable Food Supply.

Sources:

http://www.offthegridnews.com

http://www.whitehouse.gov

http://www.bugout.news