A number of you are posting messages insisting that the electric companies tell you if they are going to be down and if so, how long the outage will be so that you can prepare for that length of time. You are never going to get that information. Why? Because there are too many dots that have to connect correctly before the system works. 1. Fuel Importation of oil from middle east and South America. It is pretty much determined that this sector won't work. The foreign field's pipelines aren't ready, tankers aren't ready, ports aren't ready. US refineries are not ready. 2. Trains are the largest user of diesel oil in the country. See No. 1. Factor the above core fuel problems into the non-assurances of information coming and not coming from utility companies. What have you got? You will never know FOR SURE what is going to happen. You will never know. You will never know. I believe you must accept this and get your contingency plans under way rapidly. If you over prepare that is wonderful. If you under prepare you will forever regret it. Absolutely no one can tell you now or later what is going to happen. Do you really want to base your preparation on what a utility company says? The company telling you now to worry can later say, "We were wrong." It will be you and your family without the basics to sustain life. I can't afford to give others the responsibility for making my decisions when it comes to my family's welfare. You will never know what is going to happen. Marcella

-- Anonymous, February 13, 1999

Answers

Someone just e-mailed me telling me I had left out pipelines and the desalination plant(s) in Saudi Arabia. This helps prove my point. I could receive e-mails from now to 2000 telling me what I left out. This problem is totally circular - a vicious circle. One system can't work without another whether we are talking about one electric plant, one railroad, one bank, one water company, one state government, the federal government, the entire US, and every segment of every country on earth; therefore we cannot know what will happen between now and into 2000. That knowledge does not exist. My tiny part of the world will be run by me, that is all I have control over. Marcella

-- Anonymous, February 14, 1999

From Marcella: desalinization, desalinization, desalinization, desalinization.

-- Anonymous, February 14, 1999

Marcella, I think you've pretty well nailed it. The electric utilities (On topic, Rick :-) depends on a supply chain that is extremely fragile. It illustrates the interconnectedness of this whole problem.

BTW, the link to the desal plants (I quit while I was ahead) is: Westergaard's Site

The thought of a bunch of contract workers from all parts of the world running around trying to find water in the desert is kind of scary.

And, for those of you who are waiting for your electric power utility to tell you whether or not to prepare for power outages, good luck. Generators are in short supply, lamps are in short supply, wood stoves are in short supply. When the lights go out it will be freezing in half of our country and all of Canada.........regardless of whether the outage is caused by a tree across a line, a Y2K failure, an act of terrorism, or because the utility ran out of fuel. Great point, Marcella.

-- Anonymous, February 14, 1999