Come Hell or High Water

As I write this, 11,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in Minot, North Dakota. Hundreds of homes are already flooded and id one article I read stated that as many as 4,000 houses might ultimately be flooded. The crest, expected to be a foot and a half higher than the present water levels is supposed to occur this weekend, after which we may assume that an end to the weeks long battle will finally be in sight. Minot and many other communities on both sides of the border have run themselves ragged coping with the flooding.

In fact, they have done a magnificent job, but as in Minot and some other towns, sometimes everything you’ve got is just not enough. And that not enough came with plentiful government assistance from state, provincial , and federal aid in many cases. In some places, there was just too much water and not enough money, manpower or time.

Now think about this sort of disaster in the context of financial or societal collapse. Who will evacuate you, shelter you or build your dykes and levees when there is no money? As we have seen in many towns and municipalities around North America since 2008, when the money runs out, the services stop being delivered. Stories of desperate communities laying off police and firefighters, and cutting services to whole derelict areas are easy to find on the web.

The much ballyhooed TEOTWAWKI may not be with the bang of a Carrington Event or nuclear war; it might be the whimper of bankruptcy, financial disorder, and the slow erosion of services we now see as the bare minimum of civilized living. If you wake up one day to a house full of water, it may be because no-one had the money to maintain levees, not because the water was too high.

Once infrastructure begins to fail, it can result in even bigger crises. Consider the Cooper nuclear plant in Nebraska. Recently, floodwaters had risen to a level of 44.8 feet. At 45.5 feet, the plant would be shut down, and at 46.5 feet, the power plant would flood. If flooded, it is likely that it would be months at least before resuming generation of electricity. Now think what happens if there is no one to help, no one to build dykes and levees, no one to ensure a safe shutdown if necessary.

It’s just that easy. It takes little in our interconnected world to start a chain of failures. Very often, one event will precipitate another, and if you do a little reading of true survival stories, it becomes obvious that it is usually a chain of events that causes a serious problem, not one isolated incident.

Your only defense is to be aware. Stay informed, and make your decisions on the basis of worst case scenarios, not best. Analyze your preps in the light of serial or concurrent failures.

Of course, if you listen to the politicians, the “high water event” we are experiencing comes along once in 300 years, an unfortunate conjunction of saturated soils, large winter runoff and unprecedented rains.

On the other hand, I’m told we’re at the start of a fifteen year wet cycle. I think I’ll keep prepping for now.

It’s just common sense.