Dark Days Ahead

How are you preparing
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nickdutch
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Joined: Sat Sep 10, 2011 6:53 am

Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by nickdutch »

How could we be prepared for that? Short answer, we probably wont be. And on top of the natural disaster you will have all the looting and fires and general mayhem from all the people who are fed up of being constrained by sanity and socially well adjusted behaviour and want to let the wombles loose in their brain.

Do the best you can and hope for the best. Sometimes it seems hard enough to prepare for a bad dose of autumnal feverish cold in which your mind goes and you cant think rationally.

LOL I think in preparing for the next winter cold I will probably have some stupidly obvious "to do" list things on the wall containing information about living a structured life (because I couldn't think for squat in the last cold) and probably a fair few "keep calm and carry on" signs too :lol:
reperio a solutio
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Stasher
Posts: 568
Joined: Thu Jun 19, 2014 5:03 pm
Location: Area 1

Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by Stasher »

ForgeCorvus wrote:Well, thats todays new thing learnt.
It#'s fascinating, try this

http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/hertzexperiment.html
Knowledge is power
ojiu0u4
Posts: 69
Joined: Sun Nov 16, 2014 4:19 am
Location: Area 9

Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by ojiu0u4 »

Hi,

Are the holes in the mesh grid of a micowave oven tuned in some way to a multiple of the wavelength of the radiation they are grounding out.. from wiki page:

"Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF (millimeter waves), and various sources use different boundaries."

"Because the size of the perforations in the mesh is much less than the microwaves' wavelength (12.2 cm for the usual 2.45 GHz), most of the microwave radiation cannot pass through the door, while visible light (with its much shorter wavelength) can."

So any higher frequency EM radiation will go straight through: infra red, light, x ray soft and hard, gamma.... from another wiki page:

"An EMP typically contains energy at many frequencies from DC (zero Hz) to some upper limit depending on the source. The whole range of concern is sometimes referred to as "DC to daylight", with optical (infrared, visible, ultraviolet) and ionizing (X and gamma rays) ranges usually being excluded. The highest frequencies are present in Nuclear EMP (NEMP) bursts. These continue up into the optical and ionizing ranges."

So a Nuclear EMP would be expected to go through the door mesh as frequencies will be >300Ghz in optical and above, doesn't explain why lower frequency / longer wave length RF below 300Mhz, such a radio FM at 96MHz would go through the door to that radio.... idk hmm, wonder what we are missing here...
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Wulfshead
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Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by Wulfshead »

Ojiu0u4,
From what I can make out from the Wiki quote below, if a Gamma burst smaller than the mesh in the microwave hits the microwave then radio wave ingress will happen.

[quote from wiki, Gamma rays typically have frequencies above 10 exahertz (or >1019 Hz), and therefore have energies above 100 keV and wavelengths less than 10 picometers (10-12 meter), which is less than the diameter of an atom. However, this is not a hard and fast definition, but rather only a rule-of-thumb description for natural processes. Gamma rays from radioactive decay are defined as gamma rays no matter what their energy, so that there is no lower limit to gamma energy derived from radioactive decay. Gamma decay commonly produces energies of a few hundred keV, and almost always less than 10 MeV.]

I'd put my money on a lead lined steel box with earth strap being the best mode of gamma radiation protection for radios.
Not being an RF genius by any degree I stand to be corrected by anyone with a better understanding and without prejudice :)

Wulfshead
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For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack
jonnyy40
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Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:32 am
Location: SW England

Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by jonnyy40 »

If we're to have a war then it wouldn't surprise me if the opposition used an EMP.I've literally just ordered some 'faraday bags' from amazon.I actually do have a an old paint can that I could use if it would work? I bought the bags as it's convenient. I said I wasn't going to prepare for an Electro Magnetic Pulse attack but when you start thinking about these things and it's not too much of a pfaaf,maybe I will in a basic sort of way.I have an old phone that I could buy a sim for.I think we will be at war or this will have resolved itself within 6? months so £30 might be worth it.I think you have to activate the sim within a month or I'd wait until SHTF and if the system no longer works then too bad.I'm expecting more of an oil shock really as I think if one country sent an EMP we would retaliate but who knows.
jennyjj01
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Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by jennyjj01 »

jonnyy40 wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2024 1:52 pm I have an old phone that I could buy a sim for.I think we will be at war or this will have resolved itself within 6? months so £30 might be worth it.I think you have to activate the sim within a month or I'd wait until SHTF and if the system no longer works then too bad.I'm expecting more of an oil shock really as I think if one country sent an EMP we would retaliate but who knows.
It's my understanding that such an EMP would be far more likely to damage infrastructure than our portable devices. So we need to pop those masts and pylons into faraday bags. :geek:

Oil Shock! Nothing more certain. Russia has a lot of sway within OPEC. Iran's proxies have a lot of potential control of shipping routes for oil. One way or another, WW3 would see oil prices rocket.

Sims.... I've discovered that Tesco PAYG sims can be activated and topped up and then left unused for way over six months, probably a year, without getting deactivated. I have a sim that has not been topped up since April 2023. It still works. If you wanted to be super confident, just send an sms every couple of months.
Lebara sims also seem to be allowed to stay live and in credit for at least two months. PAYG top-up for £5 and do NOT buy a package.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
grenfell
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Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by grenfell »

Djorn wrote: Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:15 pm So instead of 6 days of actual darkness it is a period of time when everything fails.....forever !!!

How ready are you?

Dj :)
Well even if we assume we can protect our devices in faraday cages I reckon a lot of the external hardware they rely on could be fried so your precious phone , for example, might not be of any use if there’s no way to transmit the calls. I doubt a lot of vehicles would be operative either .
All that aside if we had six or more days of total grid down and fleets of immobile vans and lorries people with walking distance would probably clear supermarkets. There might be a problem with payments but I reckon managers would find a way around it with cash in preference to seeing their shop lotted. Cooking and lighting would be a problem and it wouldn’t surprise me to see almost every stick of wood being burnt. Thankfully I don’t see such a scenario as anywhere near likely.
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diamond lil
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Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by diamond lil »

Good post grenfell, I agree.
jonnyy40
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Re: Dark Days Ahead

Post by jonnyy40 »

I don't have a television so I missed this https://news.sky.com/story/how-will-the ... o-12951213 I have sent my important online contacts my physical address and landline number.