Surviving power outages and the World Economic Forums cyber attacks

RedFox

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
Following this thread Power outages and black-outs and the World Economic Forums discussions for 'preparing for cyber attacks' :rolleyes: I thought I'd pick up a few things that don't appear to have been discussed elsewhere.
That of surviving a power outage of several days/a week - which is what I'm guessing they have in mind soon.
Given the Great Reset seems to be about herding the population into finer and finer control, and removing personal autonomy through laws and man made disasters I think we can make a few predictions.

What would a power outage look like? Presumably they couldn't go too long without having people plugged into the TV to get their regular dose of propaganda - unless they feel we've reached the point where it's no longer needed. So as long as we haven't passed that point short duration blackouts of a week may be on the cards.
Things that can/will stop in a power outage. Water, fuel pumps (no refilling cars), shopping tills (no food purchasing), heating, lighting, fridges/freezers, communication/telephones/internet, natural gas supplies.

1) Water.
This is the one most people should be concerned about. In some areas the water may fail either instantly or after a few days, so having a gravity fed water filter (Berkey) or Life Straw would be useful - if you have a water source within walking distance.

2) Frozen food.
This has been my main focus, as I assume most people hear have a freezer full of meat (as well as tins) they would prefer didn't spoil. Supermarket/farm shop freezers may fail too, so the knock on effect would be a shortage of fresh meat, followed by a shortage of all food after shops opened again.
So I've been attempting to find something that would work and not be too expansive. The simplest/cheapest solution appears to be using your car (if you have one) as a power generator.
You may decide the solution below is not worth the effort.

Here's a short overview video:

Specifics:
According to the internet, most car alternators put out about 200amps max. This means that theoretically you could provide up to 2400watts of power from a small/average sized car.
An inverter is a device that typically converts a 12v DC power supply (usually a battery) to 110v/240v A/C for mains appliances (fridges/freezers etc). As the car continually charges the battery, connecting an inverter to the car batter whilst its running turns the car into a power generator!

How to Run a Refrigerator on an Inverter​

An inverter is an electrical device that converts DC battery power into 120-volt AC household power to run appliances such as a refrigerator. Inverters are available in different power capacities and some are powerful enough to operate refrigerators. But before you run out to buy an inverter, you need to figure out how big an inverter you need and how much battery capacity it will require.

Power Draw​


Before shopping for an inverter, you need to know the power draw of your refrigerator in watts. This information is found on the manufacturer nameplate, expressed as amps or watts. If the plate gives the watts, you are home free. If amps are given, convert amps to watts by multiplying the amps times the voltage. For instance, if your typical 16 cu. ft. fridge draws 6 amps, you multiply 6 by 120 volts to get 600 watts. That is your running wattage. A fridge motor also needs a jolt of about three times its running wattage to start up, but this surge is needed for only a fraction of a second. To run this refrigerator, you will need an inverter that can handle 600 watts for long periods and a surge of 1,800 watts for a split second.

Inverter Ratings​


The manufacturer’s label on most inverters gives two capacity values. The “continuous wattage” is the AC power output the inverter can supply 24/7 for as long as the DC input lasts. The “peak surge wattage” is the AC power output the inverter can supply for a split second. A typical inverter offered at discount stores or home centers provides 1,500 watts continuous AC power and 3,000 watts of surge power. This unit should run a typical 16 cu. ft. refrigerator with no problem.

Fuel consumption is estimated as follows https://ecomobile.gouv.qc.ca/en/ecomobilite/tips/idling_engine.php
The estimated fuel consumption of an idling engine is 0.6 litres / hr per litre of engine displacement. This means that an idling 3.5 litre engine consumes more than 2 litres of gas per hour.
So a 1.4 liter car engine would would use about 0.84 liters per hour, or run on a 40 liter tank of fuel for 33 hours.
Do not let your car run out of fuel! It can damage the fuel pump and clog the pipes.
How long does a freezer stay frozen? Food and Water Safety During Power Outages and Floods

When the Power Goes Out . . .​


Here are basic tips for keeping food safe:


  1. Keep the refrigerator and freezer doors closedas much as possible to maintain the cold temperature.
    • The refrigerator will keep food cold for about 4 hours if it is unopened.
    • A full freezer will keep the temperature for approximately 48 hours (24 hours if it is half full) if the door remains closed.
  2. Buy dry or block ice to keep the refrigerator as cold as possible if the power is going to be out for a prolonged period of time. Fifty pounds of dry ice should keep an 18 cubic foot, fully stocked freezer cold for two days.
  3. If you plan to eat refrigerated or frozen meat, poultry, fish, or eggs while they are still at safe temperatures, it is important that each item is thoroughly cooked to a safe minimum internal temperature to ensure that any foodborne bacteria that may be present are destroyed. However, if at any point the food was above 40º F for 2 hours or more (or 1 hour if temperatures are above 90 º F) — discard it.
So if you need to keep the fridge cold, you'll need to run the car ever 4 hours for 1 hour or until the fridge turns off by itself. An external temperature gauge would help here, so you can see the temperature of the inside of the fridge without opening the door. You should only ever open the door when it's being powered by the car, and probably only once very quickly at the beginning.
If you ran the car an hour, that would mean needing to run it 6 times a day. With the example car above, that would give you 5 days of power to your fridge.
You may be able to extend the gaps between powering it on to once a day if you are only concerned about the frozen food, but this would be an experiment. It's likely you'd need to run the car for at least an hour (turn the fridges thermostat to low/off if its a combined fridge/freezer), maybe several hours.
Best guess is that running the car twice a day for 2 hours could mean the food is kept fresh (although perhaps not fully frozen) for 8 days.
Having an external (so you don't have to open the doors) battery powered thermometer will be rather important here.

As the car will need to be running with an inverter attached to the battery, some things to consider here are:
a) don't run the car inside a garage due to carbon monoxide buildup. Also consider where the fumes may be drifting (see strategic enclosure below).
b) as the car needs to be running you'll need to consider security, weather, positioning of the inverter in the engine bay and strategic enclosure.
i) the car should either be attended (which may not put off a robber, so lock the doors anyway), or locked with a second key AND a steering lock to prevent a smash and grab.
ii) the inverter, battery and mains electrical connectors need to stay dry! So rain could be an issue. The extension cable can get wet, as long as the ends of it are raised up and kept dry.
iii) parts of the engine (turbo, exhaust manifold, exhaust pipe etc) get super hot. The inverter and all cables should avoid these areas.
iv) if running your car with wires going into your house might get neighbors talking negatively, do consider strategic enclosure. Angering neighbors is not a good idea, so be prepared to help them out with power too if necessary. Setting up a 'mobile phone charging station' being run by the car could also be decent cover for strategic enclosure in busy urban areas, as well as just sitting in the car using your phone as it's plugged in and charging.

Not all inverters will run a fridge, so do check that they will in any product listings. If it can run an electric drill, it should be able to handle a fridge/freezer.
Makes that seem to be recommended - Cobra, Whistler, maybe Bestek (their are a lot of Chinese brands, so be cautious here) or anything that says Pure Sine-wave.
1500w is probably going to be ok for most cases. 1000w for smaller fridge freezers/just fridges.
It will be a good idea to test all this whilst you still have power.
Additionally, as a small car can provide 200amps/2400watts in theory, and fridge/freezers only draw 600watts (probably closer to 300watts), you could probably run 2 to 3 off of one car safely for a short period of time if you have more than one inverter (keeping an eye on temperatures of cables connected to the battery). You would have to make sure you only turned each inverter on one at a time with a few seconds gap, as it's the sudden/startup power spike that's the issue.

I'll post more later, but hopefully that's some food for thought and not too much speculation.

A VERY expensive version of the inverter is available here (not recommended when you can do it cheaper) - but it does have some rather interesting information on the topic CarGenerator

Further references Emergency Power & Light after a major earthquake
 
I think this is all good stuff - thanks for sharing it Redfox. Some other things I would add re: cyber pandemic. Possibly to specifically attack people who have stockpiled food in freezers we should expect something to go at least 3 days to "reset" people's frozen food stores. In addition to acquiring an inverter or generator, canning meat and reducing dependency on electricity is also a good strategy.

Second thing has to do with currency or other assets. If banks do not work it may be important to have cash and other means of barter on-hand at all times. If you have cryptocurrency investments, similar: take them off the online exchanges (where they could be compromised) and store them in private hot or cold storage - either a hardware wallet such as Ledger (I hear Ellipal is more secure) or paper wallets. More long-term, gold chains that can have the links broken off and exchanged at a gold merchant is also a good way to do things, or so I heard from the book "Surviving the Economic Collapse."
 
I went with a solar generator, battery, and a small little ice maker for keeping things cold in the aforementioned scenario - this gets the power draw down tremendously and doesn't burn fuel. Might also add in a small freezer and extra solar, depending on finances / better uses for money.
 
After today's NewsReal podcast, I thought I'd bump this thread up again.
Specifically for those that either can't afford a generator, don't want the maintenance or reliability issues associated with a portable generator, have no outside space to run a generator, or for those that risk it being stolen whilst it is left running outside (if you are in the middle of a power outage, running a generator in the middle of a town or city will bring attention to it/you).

From my experiments the cost of running a chest freezer or fridge freezer from a car/car battery are very low, by comparison to buying a generator (if you already have a car).

As an experiment I went with a modified sinewave inverter, and found one of these 500watt inverters RINVU500 on eBay for £10. They sell European versions too.
My chest freezer is rated at about 280watts, I already have a power extension cable rated at 1000watts, and my chest freezer is rated at about 280watts. As such I can now run it from my car/car battery, and it only cost me £10 (plus whatever fuel I use).
The inverter is rated at 1000watts for 1 second, which is enough to handle the startup current of the freezer (in theory 3 times 280watts = 840watts).

Trial Run
Rather than testing directly from the car to start with I took the battery and made sure it was fully charged.
First I tried running with the charger still powering the battery (simulating the car engine idling to charge the battery). This worked fine.

I then left the battery charger connected but not running so I could see the volt/charge meter - to see how much charge remained in the battery.
I was able to run the chest freezer for about two hours before the battery got to about 50%. This was with the freezer turning on/off by itself every 20-30 minutes or so, and running for 10-15 minutes.

IMG_0137(1).JPG

This opens up the possibility of charging a car battery in the car, and then bringing it into the house to run the freezer. Transferring the battery back again to charge afterwards. This might be a useful option for people in flats, where running a generator indoors would be impossible.
Keep in mind that the battery needs to hold enough charge to be able to start the car! Alternatively keep a jump starter on hand/charged up.
Idling for 45 minutes to 1 hour should be enough to charge the battery back up, or going for a 20-30 minute drive.

I also got a solar trickle charger for my car, it takes about 24 hours to charge the battery from 50% - and is of course reliant on the sun being out.

Issues
I noticed that once connected the freezer didn't fully start (this also happens when first plugging it back into the wall power socket too). The motor in the freezer has a capacitor that helps it start spinning - this is not charged up if it has been disconnected from power for a while, and subsequently means it won't fire up properly first time.
Setting the freezers temperature to 'Off' should allow you to plug in/turn on the freezer and charge the capacitor, once turned on you can then set the desired temperature of the freezer and the motor will kick in.
You should listen to make sure the motor is actually running - it may not do so the first time you plug it in, so you will have to wait for it to cycle and turn on properly.

Beyond those minor issues, this proves you can keep your freezer/fridge powered for next to no cost if you have a car, compared to a generator. If it's a good/full chest freezer you will only need to power it once a day for an hour or two to keep things frozen.
 
You can also look into Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) heaters. For that you‘d need to build a fuel tank and also change the central heating in your house and you become thermic energy independent.
Regarding the water, to have running water during very cold winters, you need to build a water tank at a depth below the freezing line. The geothermal gradient will take care of the rest.
Actually you can design a heat pump system that would also cool the house in summer.
 
Have you looked for a gas refrigerator or freezer? I am sure you can find on Amazon.
I did look at them originally, however they have drawbacks.
1) Initial cost tends to be much higher than a standard freezer (at least in the UK). This one for example is half the size and 5 times the cost of my chest freezer. Smad 3 Way Fridge Freezer, Camping LPG Freezer for Garage, Caravan, RV, Single Door Top Open Chest Freezer, 12V/220V/Gas, 70L, Black : Amazon.co.uk: Large Appliances
2) They require ventilation (just like a generator).

They'd be ok if you can get one cheap, and work out a ventilation system (or can put them in a garage).
If you have a house with it's own gas storage tank, they'd probably be a really good option.

Given most people have a car, I figured my proposed solution would be ideal for most people/those on a budget/those in flats/cities etc.
 
There is also Hysense and Samsung. These brands are available on the African digital market. Certainly ventilation is required, but I believe these inconveniences come with benefits. Besides, the gas would be at most a medium to a large cylinder that for a fridge/freezer combo should last a month.
 
I have a question regarding power generators; there are a lot of them on the market:
- that charge on electricity
- mix solar and electricity
- gas

I live in an apartment and I don´t have a fireplace. So I´m looking for some time in this power generators....

I´m not sure how smart it is to have a gas generator in house; I´ve read that people suffocated by having gas generator even outside, but left open window and the gas entered the room and people suffocated.

To have electricity charged generator is basically one big battery that still needs recharging - and in case of general power cut - you can´t do that.

Then there are solar generators that you can charge as well on solar and electricity.
So you just might to catch some light to charge the thing, but it would probably take a long time to collect enough power for even boil 1l of water....

IDK... What do you think?

Also, what capacity should it have?

Tnx...
 
I have a question regarding power generators; there are a lot of them on the market:
- that charge on electricity
- mix solar and electricity
- gas

I live in an apartment and I don´t have a fireplace. So I´m looking for some time in this power generators....

I´m not sure how smart it is to have a gas generator in house; I´ve read that people suffocated by having gas generator even outside, but left open window and the gas entered the room and people suffocated.

To have electricity charged generator is basically one big battery that still needs recharging - and in case of general power cut - you can´t do that.

Then there are solar generators that you can charge as well on solar and electricity.
So you just might to catch some light to charge the thing, but it would probably take a long time to collect enough power for even boil 1l of water....

IDK... What do you think?

Also, what capacity should it have?

Tnx...

We have a bioethanol (liquid) heater. see picture below. In summer I keep candles for when the electricity goes off. The burner, a small metal case, is behind the glass under the candle trays. We chose the wall mounted version, but there are many designs that are free standing. The fluid is very affordable and does not produce fumes or leave residues.
During the winter we put it on once a day in the evening. It burns with a nice flame like a fireplace and it lasts for 2-3 hours.

3FE08128-AE82-4E45-9D70-80E19EFB7189.jpeg
 
Yamaha PAS can easily be used as a generator. Because it is 24v, it will give enough voltage to charge a 12v battery when pedaled slowly. Just weld to block the freewheel of the motor and peddle backwards. Should be <100eu.
$_84.JPG

We used to run a beamer on it, and even a bar, music and lights with a couple of these motors fitted onto bar-stools.
You don't have to peddle hard. Or connect an inverter to refreeze the food when in a pinch.
 
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To add: Use 25A diode when charging a battery. Maybe good to fit race type toe-clips so you can pull with the other leg instead of having to compensate the push with the upper body.
IMO its better to use normal appliances and an inverter or 2 than expensive camping gear.
Car batteries don't have many cycles in them, especially when drained too far. Use only half the stated capacity. Lipo ans LiFePo have many more cycles in then and are thus cheaper. There is a problem when charging from the sun, the cycle should be finished before the sun sets. This could mean charging the 2nd thing from a buffer battery.
My biggest problem is that the freezer doesn't work when it freezes outside, thus thawing the meat..
 
Using a or a couple of bicycle batteries can be a good choice. Make an adapter to use it without bike. Change voltages with a buck- or booster-circuit, cheaply available where they sell Arduino's. Many low power stuff has problems with the wildly varying voltages a battery puts out anyway. Newer car radios are very energy efficient (check that it has no big cooling ribs on the back) and can be used with normal loudspeakers.
 
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