Conflicted... New Deck Card #24

[clock152]

You are at a business convention 1200 miles away from your family when an EMP goes off and stops the entire civilization in it's tracks. None of the means of communication or transportation work, the banking system and all the comforts of modern civilization are broken, setting the entire country back hundreds of years. Infrastructure won't be fixed anytime soon and you aren't ready for this. You have $300 in your pocket and a few hours before all shelves are empty. Would you stay local or head home? Whatever your decision is what would you buy with the money and why?

 

[rlongnt]

I actually did get stuck in LA on 9-11 and it sucked! Got a rental car and was back in Tulsa by Friday morning. I'd head home, not even an all out nuclear exchange would make me not at least try. What I "would" buy would largely be dictated by what I "could" buy.

 

[ratski]

Right off the top of my head:

Assuming that Credit cards are out of the question everywhere (who knows, someone might think writing down the numbers for "later is OK"
And Assuming no one is taking a check.....

Bicycle
Shoes
Socks
Backpack
Knife
Hatchet
Anything left would go to food stuffed into the backpack.

Dave

 

[Coded-Dude]

go to a camping store and buy a water filtration kit, some dehydrated food, and as much ammo as possible(although I likely already have most of that stuff with me since i take such things when I travel further than 50 miles from home). then barter/steal a horse and make my way home.....

 

[Yourshoesareuntied]

we don't have a plan for every event, we do know that step one is to meet up at home if home is available. So my wife would be waiting if possible for my return. I would buy, plunder, or steel, a hand pump or short length of water hose, and find vehicle with a 4 cycle engine... a scooter a zero turn mower what ever I could get... I would already be armed with a 40 S&W pistol and would likely have one of my suppressed .22's with me. average healthy person can walk 3 miles and hour on flat paved surface.. a decent zero turn mower will go 10 to 15 pretty easy...

 

[streak]

grab a cases of water and some food. I will already have a knife and probably a sidearm. find an axe or hatchet. steal a older car, truck, motorcycle or tractor if necessary

 

[1krr]

Understanding that while an EMP will affect circuits plugged into a long conductors like building plugged into the grid, cars will likely be running better than the movies would have you believe since they don't have those thousands of miles of wire set out to collect the high amplitude pulses. So if I'm right about having plenty of functional transportation available, I would first buy a map, hand pump, gas cans, and tubing to supply fuel for the drive home. If I'm 1200 miles from home, I've probably flown out thus no firearms and am likely in a place isn't super 2a friendly and even those that are won't going to be selling guns with all the background check systems down. Probably wouldn't put too much time into finding a gun so I would set myself up with a knife/bow/whatever else I could come up with. If it's just an EMP with no follow on nuclear attack, then the roads will be intact. I would get whatever supplies I could with whatever money I had and get on the road away from the cities. I would plan the most direct course I could find while still avoiding cities/large towns to the greatest extent possible.

If I'm out that far, there is a good chance I've got a rental and it's likely a mid sized car or SUV. I'm going to need somewhere between 45 and 60 gallons of gas to make the drive with some more for unintended detours. If I've got 15 in the tank, I'm looking at 6-9 5 gallon jugs of gas I need to acquire between now and home. I would make it a priority to get those filled asap because the first hours will have everyone in disarray/disbelief/hiding. Might try to barter a gas station owner the hand pump for 10-12 5 gallon jugs to meet my driving needs. Everything will be played by ear at this time but priority one is get fueled up and away from the cities within 24 hours.

 

[briarcreekguy]

Good luck finding gas. If you aren't right by a station, and have some method of hand pumping it from the underground tanks, you are going to have to siphon it from abandoned/disabled cars. When 9/11 happened I was running a station and we had lines several blocks long to get fuel and had to order in another tanker of gas (no we didn't raise the price of fuel, like several other stations did). I can't imagine trying to hand pump fuel in a situation like that, unless you could recruit a crew to watch your back while you fill you jugs. That being said I would try to grab a mountain bike and what supplies I could and try to obtain a running vehicle and take it as far as it would go before I had to rely on my own horse power. P.S. I read an article several years ago where they tested the effects of EMP on modern cars, and as I recall the majority of them still functioned after the EMP blast.

 

[TedKennedy]

Headed home. Food, backpack, probably already have gun and knife with me.

 

[1krr]

Good luck finding gas. If you aren't right by a station, and have some method of hand pumping it from the underground tanks, you are going to have to siphon it from abandoned/disabled cars. When 9/11 happened I was running a station and we had lines several blocks long to get fuel and had to order in another tanker of gas (no we didn't raise the price of fuel, like several other stations did). I can't imagine trying to hand pump fuel in a situation like that, unless you could recruit a crew to watch your back while you fill you jugs. That being said I would try to grab a mountain bike and what supplies I could and try to obtain a running vehicle and take it as far as it would go before I had to rely on my own horse power. P.S. I read an article several years ago where they tested the effects of EMP on modern cars, and as I recall the majority of them still functioned after the EMP blast.

I had the same issue when 9/11 happened. We just drove out of town and found that once clear of the chaos in the cities, it wasn't hard to find a gas station. Plus I'm assuming that the power will be out so no ability to pump for long lines anyway. Wouldn't try to hand pump in front of a crowd. And I would siphon from found cars if need be. But you are right. Most stand alone electrical devices will survive an EMP. While nuclear weapons are hugely powerful, just remember that energy is reduced by 1/d^2 (inverse square law) which means that the amount of energy applied to a system is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. So the high altitude required to create an EMP effect also limits the amount of energy a given area will "see". Things with long conductors especially spread over large areas are particularly vulnerable. In the case of powerlines, they will carry that spike in electricity (which will be a low amperage but very high voltage) through out the grid and into people's homes. What kills things is that electronics in the densities of modern devices are made to operate in the 3-5v range. Spikes in power into the hundreds or thousands of volts, even at very low amperage break the "insulation" inside the silicon between the discreet devices (gates, registers, and so on) making them useless.

If you knew an EMP was coming, such as in a nuclear attack, and you wanted to preserve your electronics, unplug everything, and shut off your main breaker. Disconnect antennas. Connect an earth ground to your car's frame (bare metal) and let the body act as a faraday cage, etc. If you know what you are doing, shut off your main breaker and bond both sides of the phase on the HOUSE SIDE of the buss in your panel to your ground which will carry the currents setup in your house's wiring to ground. Obviously this is massively dangerous and should never be done even if you know what you are doing but the info is there. If you don't know what a split phase is and why it works, you don't know enough to mess with your panel even in event of war. All of these things will help. No one is going to have time to do all that when faced with a nuclear strike but just as something to keep in mind in your planning.

Other options are if you have a storm shelter, especially a metal one like in the garage, put whatever sensitive stuff you want to survive down there and take a moment to bond the door/cover to the walls of the shelter which will also function well as a faraday cage. In short, an EMP isn't going to set us back into the stone ages. It will however take down large portions of the electrical grid and fry sensitive electronics to it. So definable won't be unicorns and rainbows if one ever goes off.