2. 1st Day
I was sitting at my computer, surfing the net as I like
to do. My butt was getting sore, right up at the top of the crack. The lights
and ceiling fan stopped working, my computer is connected to solar so it stayed
on, so I got up to check and saw the rest of the house electric was down, except
for the solar part. Great, I thought. Looks like another squirrel got fried on
the transformer.
So, went outside to check, but our neighbors to the south
of us across the street were out of electric also. So it wasn't fried
transformer squirrel this time. Last time it was about a 5 pounder. Well, at
least 1 pound.
Well shit I thought, must be a rolling blackout.
So, went back inside and dug out the Baofeng UV5R radio
and turned it on, and noticed it had a low charge. I will plug it into the
solar later I thought, and went to the local NOAA channel to check in, to see
if we had high winds or something. Nothing was coming thru on NOAA so I checked
my printout of frequencies and went to the local sheriff frequency and listened
for a half hour or so. Nothing came thru there either.
So I goes outside to see if any of our neighbors are out
and about. Because it is cold outside nobody was outside. Can't say as I blame
em thought Fred. I'm gonna go back in myself.
Then I noticed a huge cloud of smoke coming from the
east. I hopped into one of my many broken down vehicles that still ran, then
got back out to go tell my wife where I was going. As I went inside I pulled my
cellphone out to call our daughters to say hi! in my high pitched falsetto
voice I always use when I try to be funny. Dialed our oldest daughter, nothing,
no ring nothing. Dialed our youngest daughter, nothing, no ring nothing. Dialed
our grandson, no ring nothing.
Well shit, now what? Is my phone broke? I know I'm broke.
Found Wilma sitting at the small kitchen table, told her
about it, and she decided to go with me. Nothing she can do here anyway. So out
we go to the car, get in and turn on the heater full blast and head east to see
whats going on. Turn the radio on, but no signal anywhere, am or fm. At least
we were getting out of the house, Wilma told me. While we are out let's stop at the high dollar store and
pick up some lunchmeat for supper sandwiches tonight, and maybe some macaroni
salad. That sounded good to me, too tired to cook anyhow.
Going east down the main road, not too much traffic in
the little suburb. No lights on in any of the stores. Blackout comes all the
way down here. Get outside of the little burb and see flashing lights off in the
distance, and a huge column of smoke. As
we get closer we see the electric substation is fully ablaze, causing all the
smoke we see. And firetrucks are across the street at the new development, I
guess to keep the fire from spreading to those houses.
Well shit, I didn't think this substation was for us.
Maybe they just got power off everywhere just to keep this under control. All
traffic was stopped, nothing getting thru. I noticed the chp had 4 or 5 officers
there so I left the truck running for the heater, and walked down to see if I
could get some info. The officers were just standing there, and as I got close
I could hear them saying something like, all the way to Frisco, and down in LA
and all the way past Reno.
I got their attention and they all started yelling at me
to get back in my car and get out of here. For your safety. Assholes. All I
wanted was some info.
So I goes back to my wife, and we managed to head the
other direction. Back in the small burb we stop in at the highdollar store. No
lights on inside and the clerks at the door says all the registers are down. I
ask if we pay with cash can we come in, and she says ok. So my wife agrees with
me and we head in. We didn't have any headlamps, but I have my 400 lumen
energizer flashlight with me, it's part of my everyday carry. So I ask Wilma
how much cash she has, and she has about $140 bucks, I still got $500 on me. So
I ask her why don't we just load up everything we can till we figure out what
the heck is going on? She looked at me kind of strange, but says OK. I didn't
think anything of her look, because most of the looks she gives me are her
wondering what the hell is he thinking now kind of thing.
We ask one of the clerks to go with us and add everything
up as we go, using their phone calculators. Huh, Fred thought, before I retired
I would have had my office depot pocket calculator out doing that.
There were no other customers in the store, so the clerk
said ok. We got several cases of water then hit the canned goods, and the fresh
meat bin. We filled up 2.5 carts and the clerk said we are at $458.00 plus any
taxes now, so about $500. I asked Wilma if we should stop, we did. Gave the
girl ten fifty dollar bills, cavalierly said "Keep the Change!" She
snarled at me to have a good day. Barely got stuff loaded in the car without
running out of room.
Get home and get unloaded without incident. Several of my
neighbors are out in the street talking so I head over.
Everybody is just kind of shooting the shit, nobody is
talking about the power outage, so I bring it up. The others didn't know
anything about it, just a rolling blackout they thought. At least it wasn't a
transformer fire like the one on Thanksgiving eve 2 years ago. (My little solar
system really saved our bacon on that one, as we were able to run both fridges
and the freezer and didn't lose any food. Unlike a lot of my neighbors who had
to scramble to take their turkeys elsewhere to cook.)
About that time a county sheriff's deputy is driving by,
sees us standing around, and says have somebody at the local State Food market
at 4 pm for an announcement and to tell other neighbors. That gives me 30 minutes to notify a couple of
my neighbors, grab Wilma and head out. When we get there parking is nonexistent
the sheriffs have the driveways roped off and are directing people to leave
their cars and congregate in the parking lot.
At 4 pm a deputy starts talking into the PA system of his
truck. Gets everyones attention finally.
The gist of what he said is there has apparently been an
extremely overwhelming cyber attack on the nations electrical grid, and on
radio communications, and other forms of electronic communication. EVERYTHING
IS DOWN. No police radio,all cell towers are down, all landline is down, no
internet, he didn't know about ham radio repeaters, no 911 calls, no way to
notify anyone of anything except by direct messenger. Whats that I thought? Text, cell, email?
Instagram? Oh shit. There go the millenials.
And that is all the announcement they had. No mention of
who did it, how far along the repair(if any) was or how long it might take. OR
how they got their information. That was a question I had. But I bet it was the
damn russians, there were rumors they were going to cyber attack us. Wonder if
we retaliated.
So now here we all sit. No phones, no pool, no internet,
I aint got no cigarettes. Talk about going back to the dark ages. At least we
have the pandemic to see us thru.
Crap, crap, and double crap. I grab Wilma and we hobble
back to the car as fast as our little footsies will take us. I notice others
doing the same, but most people are just milling around. I see a couple of guys
I know that work at the NAPA store and stop to say hi. They are just as
confused and concerned as us, so I make a suggestion.
"Fellas, when everyone clears out of here and you
have a little quiet, you might want to take your vehicles around back and
quietly start taking as much stuff out of your store as you can load and get
the hell home. Don't let anyone see you. Concentrate on batteries, flashlights,
oil, gas cans, consumable items. Never know when you might need them. And I
think sooner rather than later, the socalled authorities are going to seize the
property of all commercial business. Such as the State Food market. So if you
got cash, you better stop in there too."
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