(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . I AM SPEAKING TO YOU THROUGH THE INTERNET [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2026-02-22 A Units of Survival Joint We’re converging on The Farm again soon. That’s the farmhouse and modest scrap of land in Iowa that I am always banging on about. R and I will be arriving in mid-May. Aunt S will enter the picture on April 1st, bearing with her several packets of seeds, including Good King Henry and Turkish Rocket, both ancient perennial vegetables not sold in the Burpee catalog or on the seed rack at the hardware store. She’ll plant these up along the fenceline (the rocket) and behind the old day lily bed (the Good King Henry, which likes full sun) long after R and I have fucked off back to London. In our zone, there can still be a hard frost at the very end of April. She ordered the seeds online. Good King Henry She did the research about how and where to plant them… online. She’s decided NOT to have chickens this year, and reached this conclusion because of the research she did… online. I initially learned about Good King Henry… online, on YouTube. I’ve been researching all of my climate change palaver for my Substack… online. I still use Skeptical Science when conversing with climate change deniers: an online resource for discussions being held… online. There are myriad excellent websites and videos about gardening, raising chickens, growing zones, crop hardiness, how to plant, where to plant, how to cultivate and tend, when to harvest, and how to store and preserve what you’ve grown… online. Resources for EVERYTHING we need to handle the changing climate around us - local weather conditions, wildfire forecasts, storm tracking updates, emergency planning, community organizing, lists of cooling centers, evacuation routes - all of that… online. None of this will be available if and when the grid goes down. In the event of a power outage, even if your phone and laptop are charged at the outset, your battery will be flat in no time, so it won’t matter if there’s internet. The sensible thing to do, it seems, is to start planning now for when the lights are out and you can’t get online. Right now, almost no one is expecting to be in such a situation for more than a few hours - or days. Certainly not a week or more. And definitely not longer! Here’s the Washington Post : After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico was in the dark for 181 days, 6 hours and 45 minutes (The graphics at that link are amazing, BTW.) If you don’t live in Puerto Rico, you might be tempted to shrug and think, “grid’s solid where I am in affluent Miami Beach - so I’m not worried.” And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Storm Uri crashed into Texas in 2021 with Arctic conditions that took down the grid. Millions of folks were affect. All of Texas’s 254 counties suffered some effects of the monster storm. But the power was only out for 3 days. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 took out power for some customers for up to a week. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was worse than that, with some people spending up to 45 days without power. But if you assume that most US municipalities will be able to repair the grid and power back up within a reasonable amount of time, that’s probably a safe bet - for now. Puerto Rico’s experience with Hurricane Maria was certainly an outlier (and the island’s experience was exacerbated by a concatenation of circumstances not all of which were directly related to the hurricane). Like those pernicious investment firm ads say, however, “past performance is not a guarantee of future results.” Disasters are going to pile up. There won’t always be time to fully snap back and completely recover between one cataclysm and the next. Money will run out. I prefer to be on the safe side. What I can prepare for, I will prepare for. One of my projects this year is to PRINT THINGS OUT. The public library has a printer and it’s dirt cheap to use, so I’ll be compiling instructions for lots of things that I won’t remember how to do without looking them up online. I’ll be printing out planting and harvesting instructions for Good King Henry and Turkish Rocket, for example - plus recipes! There’s already a county flood evacuation route guide posted on the fridge with an ear of corn magnet. I plan to head to the county seat and City Hall and see if there’s similar information in hard copy, then print out anything else I can find on the web that pertains to tornadoes, flooding, drought, and prairie wildfires. I’m also buying books. I’ll get a copy of the Farmer’s Almanac and a beekeeping book from Thiessen’s. Aunt S has a marvellous and comprehensive guidebook for raising chickens. We have books about food preservation: drying beans, preserving meat, and how to harvest root veg deep into the winter - deep sources of information that we haven’t yet managed to stuff into our heads. We need the written word. My list isn't triaged yet, and it isn’t complete. As the years flow by without a major disaster (god willing and the creek don’t rise, as my Grandpa Scott would have said), I’ll have to update my library. Print out updated information. Post new flyers on the fridge. As the years flow by I will also have a better handle on what I will need, allowing me to curate and refine my library. And the information will be available to me not at my virtual fingertips, but in hard copy, in real life. So when the lights go out, and the internet is down, I won’t be flying entirely blind. Will I need this library soon? I hope not. But I want to start before I need it, just like the growing stockpile of canned tuna and beans in the basement. Emptying shelves in NYC This week, New York City is expecting another Arctic blast, expected to dump between a foot and 24 inches of snow. Store shelves are empty , or close to it. Anyone who did not have a full pantry is now out there panic buying, jostling elbows with other frantic people trying to lay in food before they can’t get out of the house. Having the money to lay in supplies speaks to privilege. Having the leisure time to plan ahead speaks to privilege. My privilege is obvious in this piece - the farmhouse, the ability to buy books and tinned food and spend time faffing about on DailyKos rather than working a couple of jobs to make ends meet. But if you do have the time, energy, and bit of spare cash to do a little prep for the next disaster that might roll in, I strongly encourage you to start now, and to help your friends, relatives, and neighbors, if you can. 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