The Winter EMP Theory

Well, win­ter is com­ing to the north­east­ern US.  It’s get­ting cold­er here in NJ and any day the tem­per­a­ture could go down to below freez­ing, stay there for the next few months and pile us up with snow and ice.  I’m think­ing about this because I was just on Face­book in a pre­pared­ness group, and some­one post­ed the typ­i­cal arti­cle about how an EMP will kill 90% of the east coast.  I sighed and thought about it for a moment, and then what hit me was that win­ter is here, and what could be pos­si­bly worse than an EMP and liv­ing in the Unit­ed Sovi­et Social­ist Repub­lic of New Jer­sey?  Well, a win­ter exe­cut­ed EMP could be worse.  This would be much worse than an EMP in the spring, sum­mer or fall sea­sons.  99% of the peo­ple I know and don’t know for that mat­ter in NJ are com­plete­ly unpre­pared for anoth­er Hur­ri­cane Sandy.  Hell, after the pow­er came back on, you could have bought six used gen­er­a­tors for the price of three.  Peo­ple are so short-sight­ed.  They just think it could nev­er hap­pen again.

That said, I did­n’t even read the arti­cle about the EMP, I sim­ply looked over the com­ments.  It felt a lot like those that were com­ment­ing had not thought much about EMPs or the poten­tial after­math that threat­ens such a man-made dis­as­ter.

I’m mid­dle class.  I pay a mort­gage.  Two cars, blah, blah, blah.  I have a beau­ti­ful wife and an amaz­ing 20-month-old daugh­ter.  Both of whom are the cen­ter of my uni­verse.  Noth­ing has been more amaz­ing than spend­ing time with my lit­tle fam­i­ly over the last cou­ple of years.   How­ev­er, read­ing the arti­cle head­line, and the ques­tions and com­ments about this arti­cle got me think­ing.  What if, North Korea, Chi­na, or any oth­er Ene­my of the State decid­ed that Win­ter would be the opti­mal time to launch an EMP attack?  Being a prep­per for years, I nev­er real­ly gave that much thought.  Shame on me.  It dawned on me I don’t have a few things that real­ly make sense for a win­ter EMP, such as a fire­place, wood stove, enough Kerosene for the kerosene heater or propane for the propane heater to last an entire win­ter.  This is just think­ing about heat and shel­ter only.  It dawned on me this morn­ing that if any­thing were to hap­pen I am woe­ful­ly unpre­pared to keep my wife and daugh­ter warm enough dur­ing the frigid win­ter in the event we had to shel­ter in place for a long peri­od of time. i.e. until spring or longer.  That said, liv­ing in NJ, I am not sure you would be able to shel­ter in place for a long peri­od of time dur­ing an EMP event. With the lack of pre­pared­ness and short-term mind­set of those think­ing every­thing will be okay, I say that gro­cery stores would be emp­ty with­in two days of an event.

OPSEC is anoth­er issue alto­geth­er.  One of the neigh­bor­ing towns is his­tor­i­cal­ly low­er income (not point­ing fin­gers), but this presents a secu­ri­ty issue for those that will be on the hunt for food and resources almost imme­di­ate­ly. The mind­set of, “take that from oth­ers that I did not pre­vi­ous­ly have or pre­pare for,” is not lost on me.  And, I believe it is a healthy fear.  I’ll admit since the wife and I moved into a new home a few years ago, my OPSEC guard has been down a lit­tle and I have been a bit lax in this side of my pre­pared­ness.   This needs to be addressed almost imme­di­ate­ly, next to the short term or long term heat­ing issue.

Anoth­er thought regard­ing a win­ter EMP event would be to get out of dodge as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.  But where?  Fall back loca­tion.  Yeah, we have one or two of those.  BOL?  Yeah, I have a loca­tion (sort of).  It is not mine, how­ev­er, it is a fam­i­ly loca­tion, but it too is woe­ful­ly unpre­pared for an EMP. This needs to be reme­died pret­ty quick­ly as I see it., which, brings me to anoth­er thought.  The BOV with a trail­er, to throw all the preps in, and gear we may need, assum­ing it still runs (which is anoth­er issue that must be looked at)…

You also may be ask­ing, a trail­er in the mid­dle of win­ter?  Yeah, I am think­ing about that too.  Thoughts are; what if there is snow on the roads, and they are unplowed?  What if there are numer­ous cars on the road because it was rush hour when the EMP blast took place, (if you have ever been in rush hour in north­ern NJ on inter­state 78, 278, or route 80 you know what I mean) it could be stopped bumper to bumper traf­fic with zom­bies wan­der­ing around try­ing to fig­ure out how to get home…  Hell, our Gov­er­nor just screwed up a minor snow storm and the entire state was par­a­lyzed.

All these ques­tions from a sin­gle head­line… So much to do.  The check­list is going to look some­thing like this:

• Pro­cure more kerosene and wicks
• Look into a propane heater that can be used in an area of the home where we may have to live & how to have it hooked up to a propane tank out­side the home.
• Look into propane tank that can be put in the back­yard (cost, position/area)
• What does it look like to live on the sec­ond floor of our home for an extend­ed peri­od of time?
• How to increase OPSEC of the first floor & sec­ond floor of the home
• How to have extend­ed pow­er on the sec­ond floor of the home?
• Water? (so many ques­tions here)
• San­i­ta­tion & Hygiene (more ques­tions)
• Block­ing light in the evening from being seen from the out­doors
• What do we do with our knuck­le­head (our four-year-old dog)
• Time to look at an old­er BOV than the 1990 Jeep Wran­gler (old sub­ur­ban, K5, etc)?  How to afford?
• Time to look at a short term/long term fall back loca­tion BOL
• Time to fig­ure out how to afford a real BOL

A lot to con­sid­er, and much of which will be goal dri­ven and relat­ed.  If any­one has ever had these ques­tions and more, let me know what you think.  The respon­si­bil­i­ty is great, the effort is huge.