Cold Times — How to Prepare for the Mini Ice Age Read online

  There is some indication that the intensity of some lightning strikes are occurring because it isn’t “true” lightning as we have known all our lives. It may actually be a previously unrecognized type of electrical plasma discharge. As such, it carries a destructive potential that is much worse than a typical lightning strike. It literally blasts whatever it hits and spreads out arcing from object to object until it has fully grounded. Some reports suggest that on different occasions entire herds of cattle and reindeer and groups of people have been killed by such plasma-like lightning.

  The ancient legend of the power of Thor’s hammer – a huge destructive flash of ‘lightning’ -- may be stories of actual plasma effects passed along within mythology. Unfortunately, these discharges don’t always accompany a rainstorm. They may come from a clear sky, or behave strangely. There is one recent stunning YouTube video of a lightning flash followed by an intense blue static-y but slow moving surge of what appears as a sharp light moving across a nearby field, finally winking out and disappearing. You wouldn’t want to be anywhere it was going.

  We just don’t know how these things will be generated or act. There may be some advance indicators, such as a tingly static charge felt on the skin, or unusual activity among birds or insects such as sudden quiet or mass movement from an area. At this time, we know so little about these discharges that we may have to resort to our own version of dolmens until we have better information and methods to avoid the effects.

  Earthquakes. John Casey’s research has shown that large quakes increase during solar minima. Most parts of the country are susceptible, and some areas are positively poised to undergo a deadly shaker, followed by equally deadly aftershocks for years.

  The safest place to be during a quake is anywhere that something can’t fall on you. Outdoors is ideal. If you are in an open area, squat or sit down so hard shocks don’t knock you off your feet. If you are indoors, squat or crawl beside a heavy piece of furniture. After quakes, people have been found safe buried under rubble in “voids” created beside strong supports.

  Once the quake has stopped, find family and get outside, away from walls and anything that may fall. Big quakes are followed, sometimes within minutes, by “aftershocks” – more quakes that are slightly smaller but still potentially deadly. Structures damaged by a first quake may fall during the second or third shocks that follow. Make sure your BOB (Bug Out Bag) is handy and easy to grab and go at all times, just for occasions like this one. More on BOBs later in the book.

  Build so that your structures can tolerate movement while under a snow load, so shaking doesn’t bring it down. Be aware that quakes can also trigger the kind of underground collapse that causes spontaneous sinkholes big enough to swallow your car. Avoid any new dips in the ground until they have settled and no longer move, which may take weeks to months.

  Volcanos somewhere upstream from you may send sky-darkening ash overhead…but the primary effect over time will be to deepen the cold by blocking sunlight. Ash will be good for your hay and garden soil, as long as it isn’t more than an inch or so deep. Deeper ash can harden and create issues later. Avoid breathing ashy air; cover nose and mouth with a water-saturated cloth (vinegar or even urine is better to counteract the ash’s alkaline lye-like effects); avoid getting ash in your eyes and if you do, don’t rub, rinse thoroughly with clean water. Remember that the particulate matter that volcanos heft into the atmosphere can worsen the cooling by blocking sunlight for years. Clearly, you don’t want to live within the blast zone of any potentially active volcano. They can erupt with little warning and level a city overnight.

  Wind. Damaging winds are nothing new, but high wind is new in some of the areas that are currently being hit. Hurricane zones have building codes that help structures resist high winds, but most of the rest of the country doesn’t – and as the jet stream undulates and dips into unfamiliar zones, excess wind is the result. While Kansas is known for its tornado hazards, Germany and New York have not been….until recently.

  Expect that tornados and intense straight-line winds will also be a part of the new normal that the Cold Times represent. That’s why your residence should be sheltered from potential sources of high wind. If you are building something new, keep hurricane-force winds in mind, and add the kinds of hurricane truss supports that will keep your roof on and walls together. It doesn’t add that much additional cost to make structures extra-sturdy. Reinforced concrete block buildings have survived fierce hurricanes and cyclones in the tropics for years, and underground homes are highly resilient to wind.

  Hail. Intense, damaging hail is an additional hazard, even occurring in places where it has been rare to virtually unknown. Hail the size of a dime can injure people, crops, and livestock. Larger hail stones are being reported, too, the size of golf balls, baseballs, softballs, grapefruit and larger. Clearly, such hail could easily pummel someone to death in a few minutes, strip branches from trees, and destroy your entire garden, greenhouse and solar panels.

  If you are caught out of doors or in a vehicle when hail starts, try to get under a heavy structure like a bridge or rocky overhang but not a tree unless there is nothing else (trees may break and fall on you), or even crawl underneath your stopped and parked car. Don’t stay in a vehicle because the glass may shatter and cause further injury.

  Windows can be broken out, and roofs and ordinary siding can be severely damaged. When you’re designing your residence with the Cold in mind, consider adding closeable shutters to each window. These can be made from heavy plywood, attached with hinges on the sides of windows and hooked open. Then, if hail is coming in, the screens can be pushed out and shutters closed quickly and latched from the inside. Very simple design that you can paint and add crosspieces to make it look attractive, and extremely handy if you need it. That way, you don’t have to replace glass. Park vehicles under a structural overhang or garage them. Make sure livestock have a covered shed to escape into.

  Heat is something we don’t think of as a problem during Cold Times, but history teaches that it is. During the summer of 1708, within the Maunder Minimum, farmers died from heat stroke in their fields across France. Then just a few months later during the winter of 1708-09, another 800,000 people died from early crop-destroying cold, disease, and starvation. Although the weather will turn colder overall, there will still be extreme heat. Some of it will be unexpected and out-of-season. The “January thaw” may end up being the “January heat wave” instead. One of the important features of surviving the coming Cold Times is adaptability.

  Critical Need: The Storm Shelter

  During the transition into Cold Times, we don’t merely find weather becoming cooler. Weather becomes extremely erratic – scalding hot one day then freezing cold the next. Gentle rain storms turn into howling gales that continue for hours, with pounding hail and near-continuous lightning. Since we have been living in an era of fair and moderate weather, we almost cannot comprehend how intense, destructive, and deadly weather can actually be. We are about to find out, though.

  I mentioned the ancient dolmens a page or two back. There is no reason why we can’t recreate this concept today. Many people in tornado-prone regions already have a backyard version, their storm shelter. Effectively, this is a concrete walled, vented, hole-in-the-ground that has a door which can be closed and secured from the inside.

  Because everything does double-duty in a cold world, a storm shelter can also be a food-and-supply storage area. Since it is mostly buried underground, the temperature stays cooler during summer and generally remains above freezing during the winter. In this way, it can perform as a “root cellar” during pleasant weather, and still be immediately ready if you need to run for shelter during a bad storm.

  Pre-fabricated concrete units that can be dug into a hillside and have dirt mounded around them are routinely available online. These typically run around $3000 installed. Sizes vary but they are small inside, really just suited for a handful of people to hunker down in for
a short period of time. If you are having one installed, remember to site it above any possibility of flood. Keep in mind, too, that if a storm is bad enough, it can hurl debris deep enough to cover your shelter entrance. The door should open inward and be easily and securely blocked from the inside, so that debris won’t prevent you from opening the door and digging out.

  If you are having a shelter built, make the walls doubly thick, from fiber-infused concrete or fully rebar reinforced blocks. Build French drains around the exterior so that water won’t infiltrate during heavy rains. Build the top so that it can support extra weight, and cover with 3 or 4 feet of earth. Include an air vent from the top, with good airflow coming in from another vent through the entry or at other low ports. It will get stifling inside during storms anyway.

  A well-made storm shelter can double as a nuclear fallout shelter, as well. The surrounding concrete and earth provides shielding from fallout particulates. If you go this route, you’ll need to provide air-filtration that is more robust to keep out radiated dust particles, though. The best reference for this type of shelter is Cresson Kearney’s Nuclear War Survival Skills, available as an online document and in book format from Amazon and other sellers. It is over a half-century old, but full of very useful information for do-it-yourselfers.

  Stock your storm shelter for comfort during an event. You’ll need seating in the form of plastic chairs or wooden benches. Avoid metal chairs, in case the storm brings highly charged currents. We don’t know how plasma discharges will act yet, and we surely do not want to be zapped inside a small space by attracting lightning with metal rod furniture. If you have enough room, make wood benches long enough that people can lay down on them in case they need to rest.

  Use a sturdy, plastic, sealable, tub to store storm-supplies. Include several towels to dry off with, if you come in from the storm wet. Also inside your tub, store some bottled water, snack foods like granola bars, or MREs, battery-powered lights with the batteries out and stored in an attached baggie, a few books, a wire-bound writing tablet or two with pencils, a board game if children will be along, and a first aid kit with a day or two’s worth of any routine medications. Throw in socks for several people, and a change of clothing suitable for cool weather. If you have young women in your group, include several menstrual pads as well. Seal all small items inside their own baggie if you can, because underground sites can get damp over time. You want to maintain each item so that it is safe and dry when you need it. Clean and refresh the tub once or twice a year.

  If you have extra space, add a heavy plastic bag inside a 5-gallon bucket and some toilet paper to use as an emergency potty. If you’re in the shelter for several hours, someone will have to relieve themselves. Include some toilet paper. Get a small quart container of RV toilet deodorizer, and store with the toilet bucket, too. A cheap plastic shower curtain and 6 feet of twine or paracord can be included in your porta-potty, to be used to set up a “privacy curtain” around the toilet. It’s the little things, like visual privacy, that make incidents such as this tolerable.

  Earning An Income

  As long as we have access to the existing system, make use of it to help you earn income – a routine job, working online, selling on ebay.com – whatever works for you. However, the historical method for maintaining financial security over time is NOT to hold “one great job”; it is to have multiple income streams. Income streams, especially when they arise from different venues, helps stabilize your financial security over time, As one wanes, another picks up. If one is knocked out by weather or events, you still have income.

  Rural living provides different opportunities for income than urban or suburban life. There’s still a need for skilled independent workers that you might find in urban or suburban areas:

  Electricians

  Plumbers

  Auto repair

  Tractor repair

  Computer repair

  Carpenters

  Heavy equipment operators with their own dozers and backhoes

  Security system installation and repair

  Specialty Bakers (wedding cakes, catering)

  Shoe repair

  Gunsmiths

  Locksmiths

  Well drilling and water pump repair

  HVAC installation and repair

  Furniture movers

  Gravel and compost hauling

  Masonry builders and repair

  Accountants

  Attorneys

  Physicians and nurses

  Chiropractors

  Naturopaths

  Acupuncturists

  Beauty salons

  Retail sales

  Pharmacists

  Veterinarians

  Dance, gymnastics, and martial arts instruction

  The list could cover an entire phone directory. As long as a person comes into a rural area with an entrepreneurial spirit, doesn’t step on too many toes, understands that it won’t be a miracle overnight success, and has a respectful attitude, any of these businesses could “go” right now. It might not be “full time” in the same way city jobs typically are, but it would be an income stream. So, the accountant who teaches martial arts and does plumbing on the side would have three income streams that would have independent customer bases and resilience against changing times.

  Living on a good sized piece of property also has the potential of utilizing the land itself as a source of income. Good woodland may have trees of a size that makes them saleable to timber buyers – black walnut, oak, maple, hickory, and other hardwoods can sell for up to hundreds of dollars per tree, if they are of a specific structure (straight, tall, no bark damage, and no limbs lower than 6-8 feet). Or, with some skill and time, a small lumber mill could be developed on your land to harvest and sell cut pieces, and chopped mulch from the small pieces.

  There’s a market for black walnuts and pecans, too. If your land has good trees, you may be able to secure seasonal income just by picking up the nuts they produce. In my area, black walnut buyers paid around $12 per hundred pounds in 2016 for whole nuts. One person can easily make over $100 per day for a few hours of work, and a whole family working at it consistently could bring in thousands of dollars for a few weeks a year. Assuming you have many productive trees (one tree can give several hundred pounds annually). How about setting up your own nut-processing facility which can be done for less than $1000, and selling nutmeats around your area? And, of course, you can save your own nuts and enjoy delicious nutritious foods throughout the rest of the year, as well.

  Pasture land that produces more hay than you need can provide hay for sale. You’ll need a tractor, mower, tedder, rake, baler, and repair skills, for this. Large round bales weighing about a half-ton and comprising good grass hay typically sell for $30 or so in an average year, and more if the weather is bad. It’ll cost about half of that in fuel and repair to make each bale, so you’ve got a $15+ profit for each bale you sell.

  The livestock you raise may produce more than you use. Chickens are good at swamping a household with eggs, so selling fresh eggs for a few dollars a dozen can buy their feed and give you some pocket money, as well as all the eggs you can eat. Rabbits can be offered for sale as pets and as food. In many jurisdictions, there are restrictions on selling uninspected butchered livestock. Some folks have found that they can sell live animals, and then process the rabbit for the new owner gratis. Be alert to legal issues in your area, and don’t do what will get you into trouble.

  How about selling some of those extra goat kids your milking does produce? Or calves right out of the field? Or trading a 900-pound calf for something else you need? Or raising a couple dozen turkeys on grass and non-GMO grains, and offering them as Thanksgiving Specials?

  When the garden overflows, the extras can be sold off your property, or at the nearby farmer’s market. Herbs, medicinal plants, and early spring plant starts could be part of that income stream, too. Be alert to opportunities and changing trends.

  Dog, cat, and hors
e boarding can provide another income stream, if you’re set up to hold pets in kennels and horses in pastures and barns. You’ll need insurance and a good relationship with a veterinarian, too. If you have good water, streams, or ponds, consider if raising catfish or other fish might earn some extra income; or set up a fishing area where people can catch their own, and charge a fee per fish or by weight.

  Should you have sheep with clean wool, there’s a market for that. Online sellers can earn $10 or more per pound of good wool. One sheep can produce 10-15 pounds, so the wool alone is worth as much as a weaned lamb. However, selling wool to local folk is more challenging since rural folk don’t spin and knit or weave as they did a century ago, so right now this outlet is best if you have an online website and access. In a generation, it will probably be local again.

  There’s many more options, if you’re inclined to develop income streams. There are potentials that most people don’t even try to tap, and could provide you and yours with remarkable security in the years to come. The method is surprisingly simple: find out what people want, and then produce and sell it to them. Make it as easy and pleasant as possible for people to give you their business.