While I spent a couple days of last week talking about getting a commuter truck, things happened, which were poorly explained yesterday. I got emails from folks wanting to see a build up of a 22R who were a bit disappointed in my vehicular purchase over the weekend.
So let me fill you in on what the deal is with me buying Grimm.
In late 2004 / early 2005 I started up a series called ‘By Ourselves, For Ourselves’. If you scroll down the sidebar to the ‘Categories’ section, you’ll see that particular category about halfway down the list. In that series, I posted about things you may want to think about having should the ‘S’ hit the ‘H’.
I am, by no means, an expert in this type of thing. I hold no degrees in whatever you want to call SHTF-ness, I’m just a practical pessimist; I hope for the best and plan for the worst and overplan like a mo-fo.
I don’t remember what natural disater started me on that series, but I made the case that no matter what happens, I’m not going to be waiting around for the government to cover mine and my household’s collective asses.
Then, about six months after my last post in the series, we all watched Katrina hit. Geez, ya think that maybe those of us taking part in the discussion were right to not trust the local, state and fed gov’ts? While my focus in the series started out as an ode to hunkering down, mostly because that is something you can easily set your domicile up for, I did get into ‘What if you HAVE to leave’ ideas.
And that leads me to this weekend’s vehicle purchase. In this post, I lay out my personal specs for a SHTF vehicle: Four wheel drive, Reliability, Cargo capacity, Parts commonality, etc. Grimm fits all of those specs. In fact, the only one that I mentioned in the posts that he doesn’t fit is miserly fuel usage. He gets around 12mpg, but I’m getting that covered and I’ll post on that in the near future.
When I first started looking for a commuter truck a few weeks back, one of the items I would buy was the local ‘Truck Trader’ magazine and look to see what the prices were for the truck I was looking for. Afterwards, I still had this magazine full of used trucks for sale lying around the house. You could say that it ended up in ‘The Throne Room’ as reading material, and that is when I started to look at full sized trucks, figuring out what I would like to pick up as a SHTF vehicle in the future. When I saw the prices for what I’d need, the words “Near” and “Future” weren’t good friends. I was looking at late 2007 as a purchase date.
Around this time, Rivrdog and I got into an email discussion on the subject of SHTF vehicles. We were talking about ‘quick-go’ vehicles, so that if you have to go, you can be on the roads before they get too atrocious. While everyone is running around trying to get their stuff together and packed, you could have a cargo box with all your stuff pre-packed in it ready to load and go.
Since I work in the construction debris hauling business, I’ve seen items like this hook lift set-up, except built for 1-Ton medium duty trucks and I showed it to Rivrdog. He mentioned that the same thing could be done with a standard 8ft camper. While it may not be as fast as the hook lifts (under 5 minutes to off-load the standard bed/load the cargo box), it will be under 20 minutes, if you know what you’re doing.
My initial plan for a SHTF vehcile was to gather two or three 4WD Toyotas, either SR5 trucks or 4-Runners. OffRoad capability, miserly fuel usage and parts commonality were my main reasons for that, but the problem was: What would happen if someone couldn’t make it?
I’ve got friends that know my place is the meeting point in most situations, but what if they couldn’t get to my place? I’m not going to leave an entire vehicle, gassed up and ready to go, but I don’t want to wait for a couple hours for a third driver. Also, keeping a vehicle, or small fleet of them, as in my case, ready to go like that takes away some of it’s day to day functionality.
So I went looking for a full size vehicle, with 4WD, heavy cargo capacity and large fuel tanks. Enter, Grimm.
Actually, his fuel capacity currently extends to about 250 miles right now, which is pitiful. Even my F150 will get me from Seattle to Missoula, MT on one tank of gas. But I have a plan to fix that. More tomorrow.
But other than that, well, and a camper, Grimm fits the bill. While he could use a few things (mostly psuedo luxury items, like an intermittent setting on the wiper switch, because I’ve been spoiled for too long) he needs nothing. And for the price, which I will be letting go of next Monday, it was just too good of a deal to pass up
I will be getting my Toyota commuter truck in the future, it’ll just be late summer instead of early summer. Big whup.
And it’ll make a damn nice scout vehicle that could be towed behind Grimm to ‘The Spot’.
Hey great website! This is a fantastic Blog. I look forward to stopping by often!
Take care,
Mark
http://www.americanlegends.blogspot.com
On the subject of SHTF, I just learned that I’ll be attending an exercise called ‘Pacific Peril’ at Camp Rilea, OR next month.
It’s a disaster exercise, predicated around a 9.0 quake (with resulting tsunamis) on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Devastation from Mendocino, CA to Vancouver, BC. Interested in what kind of stuff comes of it?
You bet, HL. Pics, if you can. I’ve done the Seattle version that the City/County held a while back, but I think your ‘exercise’ would be even more interesting.
“Pacific Peril”, eh? There have been a number of TV programs on the Discovery Channel on this subject lately, and ALL of them stressed the ultra short reaction time to a Pacific Subduction Zone major quake and tsunami. From the quake to the wave hitting will be but a few minutes.
I presume “Pacific Peril” will deal with such items as fractured bridges, total loss of comm (except radio) and the general idea that masses of people will be stranded in groups, cut off from any land-borne help.
For the S.H.T.F. planner, these are the elements we deal with every day.
I will be very interested in the results and conclusions of “Pacific Peril”, but I’ll throw a couple of educated guesses out here right now:
The exercise set will refuse to consider any sort of militia formation to control unruly behavior within the stranded groups. That refusal will be in spite of the fact that the coastal communities from N. CA up to Vancouver BC are not heavily populated, and have few policing resources on a good day. Policing after a major quake and tsunami will be almost non-existant, but elements within these coastal population groups can be counted on to violate all the rules of human dignity and all forms of law. The only way to deal with them will be with a militia, and personally-owned firearms.
The exercise probably WILL consider how the trapped community groups can survive while waiting for FEMA, but I’m here to bet that ALL of FEMA’s demonstrated shortcomings will be glossed over, and the exercise will consider a FEMA that works like it is supposed to on paper, but in fact, never has during any actual disaster.
Finally, the exercise WILL take into account the following of all sorts of bonehead regulations, while ignoring the fact that they are not important, impossible to enforce and absurd on their face. An example would be advising communities to continue handling their trash and garbage in the usual manner, with commercial handling and regional landfill disposal, or above ground storage of refuse until regional disposal can be restored. With almost every bridge either down completely or restricted to pedestrian/light vehicle use only, garbage trucks won’t be moving regionally, and alternative handling (burning) of refuse and garbage will have to be done to keep proper sanitation within the isolated communities.
Other meaningless regulations would be attempts to enforce hunting and fishing regulations. The coastal communities have a rich local supply of protein sources, from large herds of deer and elk in the surrounding hills, to runs and schools of fish in the oceans. A few fish boats will survive, and one modern fishing troller can feed a thousand people if it is allowed to catch anything it can. Hunters among the coastal residents can take tons of deer and elk, if turned loose from the hunting regulations. I’ll bet that suggesting subsistence hunting and fishing to the isolated communities doesn’t get to first base with these planners, though.
The focus of coastal survival has to be on the PRACTICAL and IMMEDIATE, not on what regulations we have saddled ourselves with in the pre-disaster times.
I’m not holding my breath that “Pacific Peril” will remember this important concept.
BTW, FEMA has a blurb site up about Pacific Peril.
http://www.nw.faa.gov/peril/
As an idle bit of speculation-I wonder if any geologists/vulcanologists have anything more informed than a wild-assed guess as to how a major Cascadia quake would effect the regions volcanos.
I’m not really sure how much I’m really going to see-our normal function is liason between civilian authorities and the military.
One thing that would help out the greater Seattle area in the event of a major disaster-the Army at Ft Lewis. One of the units stationed there is a signal brigade, which means a huge amount of commo equipment, to include satellite comms. The Stryker units also have significant commo assets. And all of this stuff is robust, mobile, even on bad roads, and has it’s own power generating capability.
Ummm…H/L, I think most of the Stryker Brigade’s equipment, and most of the Commo Brigades’ as well, is over in the sandbox. The men rotate in and out, but the gear stays there. Too spendy to rotate the gear.
Yeah, I suspect that the military would be involved in this scenario, and probably even useful, for such things as re-bridging, plus general guard duty all around Puget Sound. The little communities will have to fend for themselves though, and with a need for maybe 500 Bailey Bridges in the region and probably no more than 25 in inventory, there will be big struggles behind the scenes to see who gets reconnected to the outside world first.
I think that the vulcanologists have considered the effects. I believe that it’s less than you think. Volcanoes don’t erupt because they get shaken from the outside, they erupt due to the build-up of internal pressures. Unless one of them is already ready to pop (as in within months), I doubt if there’s much danger from that. What’s there is HUGE danger from a “lahar”, or debris flow off of one of the volcanoes. Those are external events, and can and mostly do happen without relationship to a major eruption.
I saw a program on the Discovery Channel last night about what would happen if a lahar came down off Mt. Rainier. Mt. Rainier has the most entrapped glacial ice of any mountain in our country, and is highly susceptible to lahars. It’s happened several time in the recent geological past, the last time just a few centuries ago. Basically, it could result in a loss of life in the tens of thousands, and destruction in the many billions. Every bridge on the 3-5 rivers that drain Mt. Rainier would go away, and all the houses along those rivers up to at least a 20 foot level. Depending on the formation of debris dams, the flooding generated could result in hundreds of thousands homeless.
The main problem for the Puget Sound region will be that it will be divided up into isolated communities.
The government is NOT preparing to function under a patchwork system, but that is what they’ll have following a 9.0 quake and/or tsunami.
The Army currently has 4 Stryker brigades-3 at Ft Lewis, and one based in Alaska. The Alaska-based brigade (172d BCT) is currently deployed in Iraq. Of the 3 at Lewis (3/2 ID, 1/25 ID, 2CR), 3/2 will be replaced the 172d this summer, and 1/25 will move to Vilseck, Germany, although a completely new Stryker Bde will be created to replace it (4/2 ID, IIRC). I also forgot that Lewis also has an Engineer brigade (555th EN), although one of their two battalions is in Iraq right now. Not sure what kind of bridging capabilities they may have.
I looked at some lahar projections last night (must have been watching the same TV show) and I think the bridges on the lower Nisqually-the I-5 bridges and the Mounts Rd bridge-would be OK, but everything further up the river would be toast, as well as the Puyallup River bridges. How they’d hold up in a massive quake, I don’t know.
I’m pretty sure you’re right about areas having to function while mostly or completely cut off for a while. Another reason why the most important disaster planning has to be done at the local level, not federal.