Scenario Game

[izzyscout21]

These are always fun to me.

Here's the setup:



Scenario; 9:27 AM February 13th 2012. Yellowstone blows her top and 50 miles of land are cleansed in hot ash and rock instantly. The next 20 minutes dictate if you live or die ; depending on your location you have at most a few hours.


What is in your SHTF Bag?
24 hours later all of the western United States as far east as Texas will be carpeted in 6 feet of fine silt and ash. The sun blocked from atmospheric pollution within 48 hours.


Discuss..

[Fatty]

Spend every penny I have saved up on canned goods while the rest of the population is still in shock and awe, then bug TF out. Not a whole lot else you can do. Maybe make a 2nd trip for more "comfort living" if theres time before the roads get grid locked. Thats my 45 second prognosis.

[Sniper-T]

Empty accounts, but all the food/water I could.
Stop at the local CT, buy all the dust masks, and water filter cartidges I could.
Buy several replacement airfilters for my truck/quad/snomobiles.
Buy all the cheesecloth I could.

Head home, drop everything off.

Grab any empty jerrycans, some home cash and head into the local small town(s), and repeat the above.

Also, canning jars, frozen veggies, dog food, vitamins, etc.

I wouldn't expect it to get 'bad' where I am for a couple few days soonest. But the media would instill the fear of the rapture into the sheeple, and by day 3, I would imagine that shelves would be getting empty, and pandemonium would be the word of the day. I would batten down the hatches at that point, and ride it out.

I'd have my dehydrator running overtime, drying everything from outside freezers.

I'd use the cheesecloth and make filters to cover all incoming vents into my home (on the inside)

I'd cover all my garden boxes and planters with tarps.

All the while... listening to the radio/tv.

[Sparrow]

Volcanic winter for how many years?

[Stg1swret]

They cannot predict how long the volcanic winter would last, but they have determined global temperatures would drop approximately 20 degrees F, on average. Because of the nature of the ash particles, and the height to which the massive Yellow Stone caldera could throw particulate matter, it is possible that sever winter conditions could exist for a period of years, without abating in the Northern Hemisphere. Wind patterns, would surely change as ocean and land temperatures dropped further aggravating the conditions.

[mitunnelrat]

I did a quick read on some aspects of this before I lost internet yesterday, so I apologize for not having the links to my info, but I'm gambling I won't be getting blanketed in a multi-foot layer of ash (this eruption would need to be double the magnitude of the most severe of the three that have already occurred, and, prevailing winds will push most of what I could get to the SE, from all indications. Sorry, Stig, its heading right for you.)

With that in mind, my local time would be 11:27. There's a lot of day's I'm not even awake by then, so there's going to be a lag between the eruption and my learning of it, and it'll most likely be a phone call I get first. Depending on who it is, I could be wasting more time dressing down the caller for waking me up and throwing such nonsense at me. Call it, 11:40 before I'm fully awake and on board. The panicked phone calls from close friends and family members looking for advice should be rolling in by then.

All I'll be able to do, at present, is advise them to throw their food, blankets, and their winter clothes into their cars; then go buy tape, plastic sheeting, fuel, and food while enroute to my mom's house, which is the only one with a generator. It also has enough indoor parking to accommodate everyone's vehicles.

I think the temperature drop and power loss will be bigger threats over the long run here than the ash itself will be, but I'll push for them to do that as quickly as possible so they can still seal the doors and windows before a few hours is up. They'll also need to figure out how to protect the generator's intake, provide for its defense against theft, and figure out safe refueling. There's enough PPE there they should be able to handle all that. I'll tell them to sit tight for 17 days, by which point they should see me, and I'll have a backup plan in place by then.

Meanwhile, I'll be doing something similar with my dad here, and will prepare to ride things out. I should mention he'll have excellent input on home protection I can relay to my mom's, and between the two of us there's a good chance of the two locations surviving the initial event.

The back-up plan is contingent upon things totally falling apart. Its a better defensible, more secure location with maintenance facilities, SCBA gear, ample room, and a ready supply of fresh water. There's also a ton of game in the surrounding area, and many other amenities besides. I'll check it while enroute to my mom's house after a self-imposed two week lockdown, and assuming it isn't compromised, I'll move everyone to the one location and begin working against the coming, bitter cold.

This basic premise is at least adjustable according to the circumstances at the time and their severity.

[The Stig]

(this eruption would need to be double the magnitude of the most severe of the three that have already occurred, and, prevailing winds will push most of what I could get to the SE, from all indications. Sorry, Stig, its heading right for you.)
.

Sweet!

I wonder if being on the coast would push that ash off to the east before it gets to us. Most of our air is coming up from Texas and sort of loops along the coast, or comes mostly directly in from the gulf.

Plan 1:

My original thought reading this was to break out the heavy plastic and start covering all the windows, and grab some of the wife's extra fabric to use a filters on the underside of the soffets up in the attic, or over the exhaust stack of the toilet.

I'd then fill the emergency water cans along with bringing the prepared emergency water inside to secure it. Generators would be moved into position on the back porch and locked & chained down. Emergency radios pulled from their tubs and batteries refreshed if it's been over a year.

I'd send the Mrs to top off any of the emergency gas cans that aren't already full, and hit the bank to take out a big wad of cash. Not all of it, because if things go sideways in the short term I don't want to have life savings in the bedroom. If they are going to go tits up for a long period of time then I do want a big wad of cash to work with (because power grid is likely to fail). I'd also have her pick up the inlaws because they are elderly and might as well hold up with us.

Because of our isolation, and being in a subdivision, I don't think we'd have to worry about bands of ruffians roving about. That said, if the power goes out for more than a few days, or I see odd faces walking around, the firepower would go from my daily carry to an AR without a second thought. It also doesn't help that we're the first house inside the subdivision so anybody who walks into it looking for help/trouble is going to come to our house first.

Plan 2:

If Mitunnel is right and the ash is just going to keep blowing down here until we're under 20' of it, we load up both vehicles, all the gear and head east. I could head to Birmingham, or press on to Tennessee if conditions allow. On the other hand, I have a brother in Ft Lauderdale and relatives in Tallahassee. With the downgrade in warmth, getting to a warmer location makes sense.

I just hate the idea of "bugging out" however because you lose so many options. You lose your base of operations. You lose most of your supplies. You lose most of your contact with incoming news. You lose your ability to react quickly (ie being in a traffic jam on the highway). D

[Jerry D Young]

Being west of the event, I'd simply use my available cash to add a few items to storage that you can never have too many of, fuel up the truck and the cans, load the game cart and other supplies in the truck and head to Winnemucca and help my brother get things ready for long range food production.

[Stormfeather]

I wanted to add a little bit of input here as well. Back in 1991, I was on a WestPac deployment coming back from Desert Storm when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. We had just left there not more than 4 days earlier on our way home, when we got recalled and the ship turned around. Heres some quick observations that still stick with me.

1 - Ash is heavy, accumulation will collapse most buildings, roofs especially. It will get into every nook and cranny, and if its wet, plan on it being worse than snow. It will tear up engines, and anything mechanical.

2 - People will get desperate quickly. I saw people fighting over the minimal basics, rice, water, umbrellas, t-shirts to make makeshift masks to stop breathing the ash. All sorts of crazy things people were doing was almost surrealistic.

3 - Along with the deviation of normal behavior of people, be prepared to witness some pretty crazy stuff with the behavior of animals. I watched a pack of monkeys run down the middle of the street and literally tear a live dog to pieces for something to eat. Watching this same pack of monkeys then proceed to attempt to attack a child, myself and a few other Marines intervened. These animals were literally running around like rabid beasts attacking anything they could for food. I saw similar behavior in dogs and cats there as well.

[The Stig]

Ash is heavy, accumulation will collapse most buildings, roofs especially. It will get into every nook and cranny, and if its wet, plan on it being worse than snow. It will tear up engines, and anything mechanical.
.

This is why I love this place. That's something I never thought about. Excellent point.