Chapter 1 – The Concept
I grew up towards the tail end of an era that had serious nuke threat. While I was too young to do anything about it, I did love to consider all the equipment I would like in a deluxe bomb shelter. I figured out various scenarios for the level of disaster, like a nuke going off 5 miles away or a nuke going off 100+ miles away, or no nukes within hundreds of miles but damage from fallout, etc. Preparedness concepts ranged from a fully sealed shelter with air filtration and recirculation to a wet hanky over the nose. The nukes never did drop in the late 70’s / early 80’s, and it was a good thing too because I was too young to own a bomb shelter. It would have been tricked out, though. Sweeeeet. ;)
As I have grown (and could afford such things) I have still had an eye drawn towards disaster gear. I knew I didn’t really need chlorine-based water purification tablets, but I always kinda looked, especially if it was much cheaper than I remembered. "Whoa, propane lamp tanks are available at Kroger, and they cost HOW much?" or "Hey, hazmat bunny suits are only $200 on sale!" or "You can make 40 gallons of biodiesel using two tubs in your basement in 3 days, just add used vegetable oil!". I have never bought into anything remotely survival oriented, but I sorta… well, keep meaning to. Not sure why, but as soon as I think of a reason I’ll do it!
Well, I got my reason. New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I have zero fucking faith that Nashville could easily survive such an asskicking.
Now, Nashville has pretty limited natural disaster options:
Tornado – The big winner around here. One came within two blocks of our house one year, but this house appears to be situated on some sort of pressure zone, and historically while houses a couple of blocks away get swept over and over through time, this house and surrounding houses do not. Regardless, if bad tornados rip up the city it could shut down power for weeks.
Floods – This area does get some flooding from what I understand, but again, not our neighborhood. I would expect citywide flooding damage to be minimal, and should cause no more than a week interruption in power. Flooding could cause water processing problems, which could severely curtail or even eliminate tap water, or it may not be safe to drink without additional processing like boiling. As I understand it, that has been known to happen here.
Extreme winter – Very unlikely. I have seen Great Falls, MT operate 100% normally at –35 degrees below zero. While I have no doubt the lazy southern pukes around here could not possibly operate at that low a temperature, they will never have to. Still, cold could disrupt power and in extreme cases break water or gas lines. It is just really unlikely around here. Of course, when the first flake of snow hits the ground all the stores will sell out of milk and bread, but that too is just a southern thing…
Extreme summer – More unlikely than extreme winter. Could affect power, but not likely.
Thunderstorms and Lightning – Quite possible. We had a dandy of a show tonight as I wrote this. I can see how strikes in the right places could disrupt any of the services, and tonight’s lightning storm could have scattered dozens of good hits around the city. Fortunately most services are well equipped to handle their own power outage or lack of piped water. Unfortunately some key strikes could destroy components of the power grid, and it could take days to get back together.
Everything else is ridiculously unlikely (earthquake, tsunami) or belongs in a different category (fire, environmental hazard). We are never going to see a 30 foot tall wave crash down, and if our house is burned down I don’t need to worry about putting up temporary solar panels, do I?
So, the thing that ties most of these scenarios together is that electricity can be interrupted the easiest. Now, I don’t care about telephone service or cable TV as they don’t matter in a "siege" crisis. You think the people in neighborhoods of Nawlins give a rats ass about having cell phone coverage when they can’t power a refrigerator to store their food? Power is arguably the most important too, since all our modern conveyances work on electricity. With power you can heat, cool, store food, illuminate, use tools, extract and purify water, cook and sterilize, and so on. Also, my life is built around electricity, pure and simple. My friends and I joked that if we got "Gilliganed" and dumped on a remote island that I would be the one making a battery charger out of coconut husks and some spoons. Indeed, I have contemplated the need for power generation as far back as I can think; I still have design plans from when I was 10 years old to add a hydroelectric power plant to my tree fort down by a little creek. It was just going to power some lights, so we could hang out in the treehouse at night, but looking back I realize it was quite ambitious and remarkably forward-thinking of me. Alas, I never did finish that treehouse so the power plant never went into operation, but a prototype was built and tested in my bathroom sink using parts scavanged from a battery-operated fan and a Radio Shack "65-in-1 kit". :)
So, I’ve decided. Power. If I had minimal power I could eek by. If I had modest power I could make life easier. If I had goodly power… hmm… but how to make power?
What do I know? What have I either done or studied? Solar; photovoltaic (PV), water heater and cookstoves. Wind; mechanical motion for machinery, electrical generation. Hydro; pretty damn similar to wind, really. Human power. I’ll save you the tedious bits, here is the breakdown I came up with:
Wind – Generates a lot of power, but has tight requirements. Certain types of windmill work best at certain ground heights and at certain breeze speeds, which I cannot optimally provide here. They are rather expensive up front, but are shockingly effective in areas with good wind. A good wind system with storage batteries and you are a serious power station.
Hydro – Can’t do it. I am too far from any water, and building a hydro system that worked off tap water is just stupid. Amusing, but stupid. Tempting even, but stupid. I mean, you could build a system with a nice high-speed turbine and… no, no, it’s stupid. Never mind. Great idea for those in tree forts next to creeks.
Solar, heating, water – Too long term. You don’t throw up a solar heating system of any kind because there was a natural disaster.
Solar, heating, cooking – Solar ovens are actually damn functional devices, capable of cooking a steak or welding a pipe. However, this does not provide electricity, and I can build a fire to cook food. Still, I love these things so I wanted to mention it.
Solar, photovoltaic – Actually there are several ways to make solar panels that create electricity, but PV is one of the most common. Little hobby panels, like 2" square, yield so little power they are not worth messing with unless you can get hundreds of them for free. Small panels designed to charge a cell phone also provide little power in most lighting conditions, often not even enough to do charge the cell phone! Medium panels, bigger than 8x10", can provide a useful amount of power in bright sunlight, and really big arrays of these panels can be used to charge a bank of storage batteries, making up for the fact that PV panels are very inconsistent in their real-world usage unless used in a cloudless desert (even slight brightness variation dramatically cuts the output of PV panels). They are also really damn costly for the nicer, bigger, useful ones. On days like today, with a great deal of cloud cover, power output would be for shit.
Human power – Seems if I can power my Cat bike light off a crappy generator that is driven by physical contact with my tire rim it should be possible to rig something that can charge a radio or power a light. Quick research shows that even commercial solutions for turning bicycles into stationary power generators is cheaper than any other solution. I also found that I should be able to generate around 100 watts continuously with relaxed cycling (you can bust ass and generate up to 300 watts for a few minutes).
I think we have a winner. One of my goals for this emergency power system is to be able to enjoy life as much as possible while the crisis state is in effect, and this amount of power would allow me to frivolously spend some power on portable entertainment electronics and laptop computers. I don’t think I can raise a windmill or afford solar PV panels, and there is no hydro for the hydro. Well, not NO hydro assuming tap water still works. Just silliness. I wish I hadn’t said there was no way to do hydro on tap water. Now I keep flashing on a jet engine turbine being driven by pressurized tap water at a speed of 20,000 RPM, creating just enough power to charge a cell phone and only wasting 7 gallons of water per minute! But it would sound BADASS as it charged your phone. :)
Some searching around reveals that several people have done just about exactly what I would envision. A normal bike, rear wheels bolted into a stand, driving a generator. There are even some commercial products out there that cost just under $700, bike stand and generator, and all you have to do is bolt your bike in and go. While I am sorely tempted to go that route, I have this nagging suspicion that it could be done for a shitload less. I found some guys who had taken exercise bikes and made them generators, and they seemed to have good power output despite what I perceive as the exercycle’s biggest flaw in power generation; lack of "shiftable gearing" like a bicycle. Still, using an exercycle does solve all stability issues with the bike frame, and that big wheel on the front will probably be usable for connecting to a generator via a belt drive. Some exercycles have rather heavy flywheels, and this would be damn useful for evening out the output. Best of all, exercycles breed like rats in urban and suburban areas. You couldn’t throw a rock in some cul-de-sacs without hitting an exercycle sitting out on the curb, waiting to be vandalized and hauled off as trash. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a nice one for cheap.
I gave the power plant some thought. I was obviously tortured by the fact that cheap motors and alternators are "low efficiency" compared to SOTA (State Of The Art) DC generators with super-rare and ultra-powerful permanent magnets, but those SOTA jobs cost 5-10 times as much. Well, the ghetto nature of my bike helped me get my head around that. I’ll go with this non-geared bike and use something cheap and readily available like an alternator to generate power. If the results demand getting a better generator, I can consider getting the expensive ones. If that demands a geared bike, I can switch to a training stand for my mountain bike. I can start cheap and simple, and see if it is worth dicking with.
So, I have to find a exercycle and a generator of some kind. Clearly a chapter break if I ever saw one.
On to Chapter 2: "It's never that easy"
