Quick note on power

[Minarchist]

What should one do when one notices that the power has gone out/the grid is down? While entire books could be written about that I am only going to focus on one quick thing to do here that arguably should be done as soon as you realize there is a problem.

Go to the main circuit breaker for your house and open it (in other words turn it “off” disconnecting the house from the grid). Then go to your various electrical panels inside the house and open all the circuit breakers (turning them off) and/or remove all the fuses. Ditto for any other buildings that you might have on your property that are connected to the electrical power grid. Do not reconnect to the grid until you know that power has been restored and is stable.

There are two reasons for that. The first is you will probably not know initially why the grid has gone down. If it has gone down as the result of a CME or some sort of Carrington Event solar eruption then there could be more significant problems to come. During the Carrington Event there were a lot of telegraph offices that caught fire because the amount of current that was induced into the telegraph wires was enough to cause the wires to heat to the point they could combust flammable materials. There were also reports of electrical currents moving through railroad rails that were strong enough they caused the wooden railroad cross ties to catch fire.

Fast forward to today where just about any and all structures worth inhabiting are connected to the electrical grid and the only conclusion one can come to is that a significant percentage of them may catch fire. The quickest and most obvious way to deal with that is to disconnect them from the grid, and the easiest way to do that is to open all the circuit breakers that supply your house with electricity. It should also be noted that we are in a time right now when earth’s magnetic field is weakening at a rapid rate as part of a magnetic pole shift. It would arguably not take something as severe as a Carrington Event to produce the same level of effect that occurred then.

The second reason is that even if the grid has gone down for other reasons, when it comes back on again it might not be that stable for a while. Thus by having your house electrically disconnected from the grid you will be protecting your stuff from power fluctuations as electricity is being restored. Once you know that power is back on and stable then you can reconnect to the grid and not have to worry so much that some of your sensitive electronic items might be damaged.

[Hank4]

Good thinking! Thanks

[Liljohn1998]

Excellent practice, even with the events that happen and I know what the cause is/was I do this. The surge even from normal grid powering off and on can have some nasty surges. With all sensitive electronics nowadays, better safe than sorry!

[JMED308]

Thank you; not sure how to disconnect. My wife hates most of this prepping stuff. She did re organize the pantry and some dried food.
Trying to make Cache locations for supplies has been rough. Leaving at night with shovels, plastic bins of cans,is not easy.
But needed.

[Minarchist]

Disconnecting from the electrical power grid should be relatively easy. Look around outside your house/apartment. Note where the electric meter for your dwelling is. The main circuit breaker should be located relatively close to the electric meter. Simply throw the switch so that it is in the other position than the one you found it in and that should do it. Then go inside your house/apartment and find the various circuit breaker/electrical distribution boxes. There may or may not be more than one. Again, throw all the switches so they are in the “off” position. Or remove the fuses as the case may be. If you find that some moron had replaced a fuse with a copper penny or some such thing then it will have to be replaced with the appropriate type of fuse. In which case it is vital that you make sure that you have disconnected the power to your house before you try to remove the offending object from the fuse box.

Where it might get potentially tricky is trying to disconnect phone lines/cable. It is likely that you might have to physically cut the cables with a wire cutter/axe/machete or some such thing. So I do not recommend doing that unless you are sure that you are having problems with excessive current through those cables actually endangering your house.

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