Grid Down

I thought I was ready when the time to be ready arrived. I wasn't. I was more ready than most people, but still not ready for what happened.

To this day, I don't know why it happened and apparently there's nobody left to explain it. It doesn't matter anymore anyway. What was is probably gone for a long, long time, and people like us have to pick up the pieces and get on with trying to live. I'm writing all this down in hopes that if and when things do get back to normal a lot of people will read it and do what all people should have done before.

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I started getting ready as more of a hobby than actually preparing for when "the shit hits the fan", or "SHTF" as the survivalists called it. There were many scenarios that would cause SHTF, none of which I thought would ever happen. The leading scenarios were about the world, or at least the US, going from normal to crisis to lawlessness in a matter of weeks or even days in some cases. You had your "the world economy is going to collapse" people, your "there will be another civil war" people, and your "another country will bomb and then invade the US" people.

I tended to discount these for what, to me at least, were logical reasons.

While the economy had gone belly up at least a couple times, the world didn't descend into chaos. Even though in at least some cases it took years to do so, governments managed to work through the depression and come out healthy.

Another American civil war would just be stupid. Civil wars have never worked out well. The group with the most resources always wins, and they usually aren't very nice to the losers. After most modern civil wars, the leaders on the losing side end up being executed for treason or some other offense. Why would any sane person even think about starting a civil war unless they were absolutely confident they could win?

While I supposed it was possible that some other country could launch nukes at the US, the result would be their own destruction as well. It was also possible some country could load up a million or so soldiers and ship them across the Pacific or the Atlantic with the intention of attacking the big cities on the East or West coast, but it's very probable they wouldn't make it. That many ships or planes would be spotted long before they posed any real danger and the US Air Force and Navy would end the threat before it got started.

Right behind these were "artificial intelligence will take over and eliminate the human race" and a global pandemic that kills most of the human population of the world.

While these made some decent novels and movies, they weren't all that realistic. I mean, artificial intelligence isn't really all that smart. AI can rapidly review data from a multitude of sources, develop conclusions from that data based upon its programmed algorithms, and then take or recommend actions based upon those conclusions and again, its programmed algorithms. It can further examine those actions and determine if they were correct and modify its logical process as needed.

At the time it happened, I was a civilian electro-mechanical engineer working on B1B flight simulators at Ellsworth AFB and my job required a thorough and current knowledge of that sort of thing because I was writing it into my machine control programs. Everything I'd read told me even the best artificial intelligence is really good at adapting its programming to different conditions and reporting any conclusions in appropriate language, but in reality is maybe actually as smart as a five-year old. Though the data set used can be enormous, any autonomous decisions are made just as a five-year old would make them -- by trial and error.

A self-driving car can learn where it is and where it needs to go, but it you want to transfer its "brain" to an aircraft or a robot, that requires a software change and a human has to do that. Artificial Intelligence can read most current languages spoken in the world and can be taught the phonetics to speak them correctly. It can also be taught to generate art, prose and poetry when given appropriate parameters. It can't just one day decide to become a best selling author or poet and start writing, or begin painting scenes that it visualizes on its own. It needs a human to ask it to do something or to tell it what to do. Yes, there can be some unforeseen consequences, but when all else fails, a human can always "pull the plug" and stop the computer.

A global pandemic was possible, but even in the worst pandemics like the plague and Spanish Flu, enough people survived to keep society going. Yes, the disease slowed civilization down, but civilization didn't die.

There were several other causes like natural disasters such as tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards and forest fires that could likely happen and cause significant stress on society. The more I thought about those causes, the more sense it made to do some preparation. It wouldn't hurt and if something did happen, I'd be prepared.

It was also a way to get back to quasi-reality from my job. Back then, I spent all my work days immersed in tuning the interactions between computer code and hydraulic servo valves and the response time of hydraulic systems, and I needed something a lot less complex to decompress on the weekends.

I started reading about what I would need and decided my best bet was to have a month's supply of food in my apartment and a shotgun for self-defense. The extra food was easily affordable since I wasn't married, lived in a two-room apartment, and worked too many hours to actually spend much of my income on anything else. I still had the single-shot shotgun I got as a kid so I could hunt rabbits, squirrels and pheasants on my dad's farm. I still did that when I had the time.

I stored a month's supply of canned and dried food in my bedroom and bought three boxes of buckshot to go with the box of bird shot I already had. I was all set... until I read some more and watched some videos.

One article I read asked the question, "What will you do if you're away from home when the shit hits the fan?" The answer was something called a "get-home bag" and was a small backpack filled with enough to get me from my office to home if there was trouble in the city or on the road.

I bought a small backpack and stuffed it with protein bars, six bottles of water, and a first-aid kit. Also in that backpack was a coffee can with a candle and a disposable lighter, but I'd always had those in my car. If you're stuck alongside the road in a heavy snow like we sometimes get during the South Dakota winters, it's nice to have a heat source so you don't freeze to death before the wrecker gets there. I was all set...until I read some more and watched more videos.

The opinion of all the experts on the internet was you should prepare to weather a crisis at home. That's where your food supply would be and you'd be familiar with the area, but the next question was, "What if you can't get to your home or if your home isn't there or if it isn't safe to go to your home?" The answer, actually three answers, were a "bug-out bag", a place to "bug-out" to, and to never let my gas tank get lower than three-quarters of a tank so I'd have the gas to "bug-out". I think that was when my hobby became sort of an obsession. Looking back now, I wish it had become an obsession a lot sooner.

Keeping my gas tank filled was something I already did during the winter. It's not unusual in my area of South Dakota to have a heavy snow that will cause traffic to back up for hours. Having a candle in a coffee can will keep you from freezing to death, but a full tank of gas and a car heater will keep you comfortable.

The bug-out bag was easy. It was just a scaled up version of my get-home bag. It was a bigger backpack filled with food for three days and water for a week. Since I might need to make a fire to cook and keep warm, I included a hunting knife, a hatchet, two disposable lighters, and a ferrocerium rod and striker in a metal box full of charred cotton cloth in case the lighters died. If I got wet or just needed some more layers, I had an extra set of clothing, and in case something happened to the clothing, a sewing kit.

According to everything I read, it might be that I'd have to fight my way out of something, and to do that, I bought a bigger first-aid kit in case I got hurt and had to fix myself up. Stuck in a pocket in the flap was an unloaded Sig P365 nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol with a hundred rounds of ammo to keep me from getting hurt. Carrying the pistol required me to get a state carry permit, but that was easy. After three visits to a gun range to practice, I spent one Saturday taking a class and then took my application and check for the fee to the local sheriff's office. A month later, I had my South Dakota carry permit in my wallet.

The place to bug-out to was harder. The articles I read said the place should be pretty isolated because looters would be roaming the countryside looking to take what they didn't have from people like me who did. Since I lived in an apartment, I'd probably at least have my neighbors begging from me. Montana seemed to be the favored location, but Montana was a five-hour drive from Box Elder, South Dakota where I had my apartment. Besides, I didn't have enough money to buy even a small place in Montana.

Dad's farm was closer. The six hundred acres where he'd run some cattle and raised hay wasn't exactly out in the middle of nowhere, but it was a little over twenty miles from the nearest city, that being Rapid City. I figured I'd just build a hideaway cabin to use for hunting and fishing the small river that ran through it. I did both there every year anyway, and with a small cabin, I could stay over a weekend instead of driving back and forth. If I needed it to bug-out, it would be there.

I still call the place Dad's farm, but it's essentially mine. He willed it to my mother when he passed and her will states that it will go to me when she passes. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it when that happened because the inheritance taxes would be huge, but I liked hunting and fishing there, so I was playing "wait and see". The land would never drop in value.

I was paying the taxes on the place because Mom couldn't afford to. I didn't want to continue to pay property taxes on the old house and outbuildings, so I had them torn down. Then I rented the place to a local cattle breeder. His cattle and the small herd of horses he ran there kept the old pastures and fields cropped down and the rent paid the remaining property taxes every year with a little left over to go toward the taxes I'd eventually pay.

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Once I'd decided to build a bug-out place, I started reading and watching videos about what I needed to build. I found people who recommended just a small log cabin, people who built what would have been called a "fall-out shelter" in the 1950's, people who built basically a full sized and equipped house, and everything in between.

I wasn't all that thrilled about a log cabin after I read more about the ones you can buy. They would be hard to heat in our frigid South Dakota winters and were pretty expensive since they were intended to be full-time residences. I thought about cutting some of the pine trees on the place and building a cabin myself, but that seemed like a ton of work that would take me a year of weekends to finish. I decided a log cabin was a bad idea.

I saw some ads about pre-manufactured shelters that could be installed in a week or so by the manufacturer. I thought that would work out pretty well. I could buy just the steel box and then fit it out however I wanted. They were all underground, so I'd have the benefit of some natural insulation when it was time to heat it. There was only one hitch. I could have bought a three bedroom house in Box Elder for what one would have cost me to buy and install. I decided that was a bad idea too.

As I kept reading and watching videos, I discovered there were some ideas about building a bug-out place that seemed to conflict. The main one had to do with the need to keep your bug-out place a secret. If you didn't and some emergency happened, everybody who hadn't prepped would come knocking on your door for food, shelter and safety.

For this reason, I figured running electricity to whatever I built, like a lot of people did, was stupid. I could live without electricity, and overhead power lines running out through the middle of a farm field would be like a road sign saying, "This way for free food." The other problem with electricity is electricity has a tendency to stop if there are high winds or sleet. It wouldn't do any good to have the wiring if there was nothing in the wires.

Another thing I thought was pretty short-sighted were the people who said they were prepared to live off the land. I'd hunted and fished for most of my life, and my experience had taught me two things. If you depend upon hunting, fishing, and foraging for food, you'll probably starve to death. I'd spent a lot of long days in the woods without ever seeing so much as a rabbit let alone a deer. It's the same with fishing. Some days, you catch several fish. Other days, all you get is a sunburn and some mosquito bites.

Foraging for plants is interesting and fun and I'd done it as a Boy Scout, but if that's your only food source, it won't take long to pick all the edible plants in your immediate area. Then you'll have to move to find more and that means giving up the security you spent all that money to build.

I figured I needed a place big enough to store a lot of non-perishable food and enough other stuff so I could fend for myself for at least a year. That didn't mean I wouldn't hunt and fish. It just meant I wouldn't go hungry when the deer, rabbits, or fish didn't cooperate.

I liked the idea of an underground bunker for several reasons. If it was underground, I'd get the benefit of the natural insulation of the soil, and at least from a distance, nobody could tell there was a bunker there. Concrete seemed a better alternative than steel. All the ammo bunkers on the base were poured concrete and they'd been there since WWII.

I thought I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know how to get it built. I figured the cost wouldn't be a problem because it would be just a concrete box with a concrete lid. The problem was who could I trust to build it and not tell anybody else where it was?

That Christmas, I went to the assisted living home in Rapid City where my mother was living to take her a Christmas gift. I told her I was going to build some sort of cabin on the farm so I'd have a place to stay when I went hunting or fishing. Bless her heart, she gave me the answer I'd been looking for.

"Remember Jeff Hayes from high school? His mother lives here and we talk all the time. He owns a construction company now, and she said he did the same thing except he built his under the ground. I don't think I'd like living underground, but she saw it and said it's really nice, considering. You ought to go talk to him and find out how he did it."

I did remember Jeff. He and I had hunted and fished together a lot when we were in high school. We sort of drifted apart when I went to college and he enlisted in the Army. When he got out of the Army, he went to a trade school. We were just different that way. He was very practical and I tended more toward the theoretical.

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Jeff grinned when I walked into the building where his office was located.

"Well I'll be damned. Ted Jackson. Figured you'd forgotten all about Lakeview High and everybody you went to school with."

I smiled.

"No, I've just been really busy. I was visiting my mother and she said I should come talk to you about a project I have in mind."

I told Jeff what I'd been thinking about and asked what he would recommend and why that would be better than what I'd already read and seen in videos. He smiled.

"When I was in Iraq, I talked to a guy from Montana whose dad had been getting ready for the big one for years. He didn't know what the big one was gonna be, so he tried to cover all the bases. I learned a lot from listening to what his dad built.

"When I came back, I took a look at how politics and the economy were going and decided maybe he was right. Like you, I read a lot of books and watched a lot of videos, but I had my military training and combat experience too. A lot of those books and videos didn't make any sense.

"I thought about it for a year before I built what I built. I ain't saying it's perfect, but it's good enough. I'm not sure I want to be around if something happens that it isn't good enough for anyway."

My question was what did Jeff build and how did he build it without a bunch of people knowing. He just smiled again.

"I own a construction company, so I have the equipment and skills to build about anything. I also have two guys on my crew who think like I do, and the local ready-mix plant owner and a couple of his crew do too. We got together and each of us built basically the same thing on weekends. The six of us are the only ones who know where and what we have, and we aren't going to tell anybody else. Since we go way back, I'll make an exception in your case. You got any idea about what you want?"

When I said other than what I'd already told him I wasn't sure, Jeff opened a drawer in his desk and took out a set of plans. The first page said "Plans for a 1,200 sq. foot Ranch With Partial Basement". Jeff flipped past the first two pages and then pushed the plans toward me.

"The rest of this is just so anybody finding our plans will think they're just for a house I built. The basement plan will show you what I built. Since I know you pretty good, if you'll swear to keep your mouth shut, I'll talk to the other guys about helping you build one. It would be good to know there's another of us in the area in case we somehow have to leave our own place.

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We couldn't start construction until May because the nighttime temperatures were still dropping below freezing and the ground hadn't yet thawed out. Once we started, it surprised me how quickly things went and how little it cost. In a month and a half of weekend work, I had my bunker. It was out in the middle of a pasture about a mile from the road and was invisible unless you got close enough to see the hatch sitting in the ground. I traded my car for a four-wheel drive pickup so I could get to it in about any kind of weather.

It's an underground bunker twelve feet wide and thirty feet long. It's all concrete with leak stoppers between the floor and walls and between the walls and ceiling, the same kind they use in chemical containment tanks, so it should never leak water. The ceiling is three feet below the surface and the bunker has three rooms -- a bedroom, a living area with a small kitchen with a sink, and a storage area for food and everything else. Just outside the bedroom is a tiny bathroom with a composting toilet, a sink and a shower. In one corner of the storage area is a smaller room with gravity ventilation to the outside air. That was going to be my freezer in winter. When the air temperature dropped below freezing, that room would stay below freezing all through the winter.

There is one way in and two ways out. A three-quarter inch thick steel door is the only way in, and has four one inch deadbolts that lock into the steel door frame cast into the concrete wall. It locks on the outside with a heavy padlock. That door weighed almost seven hundred pounds, but Jeff said it was AR500 steel and could take anything up to a.50 Cal. It takes a good pull to open, but the hinges have ball bearings so it's not too bad.

The other is an escape hatch that comes up inside some trees a hundred feet from the bunker. It's connected to the bunker by a four-foot diameter concrete pipe. The vertical part of the escape hatch is filled with sand, so if anybody ever finds the cover, all they'll see is a three-foot concrete pipe full of sand. In the event I have to use it, there's a gate at the bottom that will let the sand run out and into anther pipe below the emergency exit. I'll just let the sand out and then climb the ladder inside the pipe. As Jeff said, it never hurts to have a way out if somebody manages to beat in the front door. The connecting pipe is also more cool, dry storage.