If you have Verizon as your network carrier, or if you tried to reach someone who did, then you may already know they suffered “a significant network outage” on Wednesday. It lasted more than 10 hours.
I was in a meeting that afternoon with five people, three of whom were on Verizon. Most of us didn’t notice, but one woman’s iPhone apparently connected to the satellite instead of the local cellular network and was showing SOS where you usually see the bars. Perhaps the other phones were not new enough to use the iPhone satellite communications option.
There was Wi-Fi at the meeting site, so the rest of us didn’t notice anything wrong. But lots of people did.
People Who Can’t Live Without Modern Conveniences Are in Trouble
One was Wall Street Journal columnist Joanna Stern, who complained “I was in my car. In the dark. An hour and a half drive away from my house. Staring at an ominous “SOS” icon instead of the usual 5G service bars on my iPhone. I couldn’t get directions since Google Maps wouldn’t load—and I didn’t have my MapQuest printout because it wasn’t 2002. I couldn’t call my family to tell them I was getting on the road.”
Upon reading this, my immediate thought was, “You mean you can’t get home without GPS? What’s wrong with you?” I haven’t been to Brooklyn for at least a decade, but I guarantee you I could get home from there, even though it’s several hundred miles. I mean, Brooklyn is an island with a few big roads. Pick one and aim for a bridge or tunnel. Sure, I might not know the secret “Waze” and be able to beat traffic, but I could get out of Brooklyn any of three or four different ways.
Surviving Grid Failure
I hesitate to ask what this woman and people like her will do when the power goes out. We’re looking at five polar vortexes that will swoop down into the United States in the next two weeks. (Judging from our thermometer, currently reading 12°F and forecast to reach 6°F, we are in one of them now with another expected this weekend.) When it gets cold, people turn on the heat, which drives up electric utilization. That puts stress on the power generation and distribution system. If one thing goes wrong, like it did in Texas in 2021, cities, states or even entire regions can lose power.
It’s not a matter of if, but of when. As power demand rises, there will be problems. The PJM Interconnection, serving Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and a few other states, is a likely candidate.
Read this post for more on power outages:
You Need Backups and Redundancy
If you can’t pay to fill your tank or your tummy because your phone is out or the store’s credit card reader is down, then use cash. Consider carrying it as a backup plan. My EDC pack and my vehicle both have food in them.
And unlike the WSJ lady, I still have maps in my glove box. I haven’t needed them, but they are there, and I even know how to use them. Knowing someone who once tried to follow “the blue road” to her destination (hint: it was a river), I can assure you that not everyone does.
When our power goes out, our solar power system kicks in. Before we had that, we relied on generators and rechargeable lanterns, headlamps, flashlights, and other devices. We still have them as backups to our backups. Many people have “solar generators.” These are great to provide a few hours of backup, and better than nothing, but will be of little use in a power outage that lasts days, especially if your polar vortex is accompanied by snow or heavy clouds that impede the use of solar panels. So even your solar generator needs a gas generator to back it up.
As a prepper, you should already have backup food and water. That “shelter” component means having an alternate or backup heat source. If it doesn’t heat your entire house, you also need to know how to turn off your water so your pipes don’t freeze.
Less likely are disruptions to your water system, unless you are on a well during a power outage, but plenty of municipalities issue occasional “boil water” warnings when something goes wrong. You need to have a backup plan, even if it is just a few cases of bottled water.
Be Prepared for the Unprepared
If you are prepared, watch out for those that aren’t because they may covet what you have.
You may be able to help them, but only willing to do so to a point. We fed people, offered hot showers, and did laundry for our friends and neighbors in the aftermath of Helene. I’ve given strangers a ride when their car was stuck in the snow and my 4WD truck was not. This works fine when it’s a temporary disaster. It would be like someone on Verizon borrowing a phone from someone on AT&T so they could call home during the outage. But if you have the only working car or phone, someone might want it for themselves. And that’s when you need a different kind of backup.
