Prepare Part the Second

10:12 Thursday, 29 October 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 55.96°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 10.04mph
Words: 727

Back in August, I shared a thought about our vulnerability. A week from Friday I'm going to have coffee with the director of emergency management here in our county.

The Pentagon is ordering U.S. military bases to begin infrastructure improvements to support up to 90 days without grid power.

This stuff is in the ether these days.

And it should be.

With the advances in AI capabilities, the growing instability in international relations, the rate at which we're enraging our enemies and alienating our friends, the difficulty of actually deterring cyber attacks because they don't come with a return address, all spell a period of severe vulnerability for the United States in the months to come.

I spoke to an ex-SEAL classmate of mine and asked him if he thought I was making too much of this. This was before the recent Pentagon order, and around when I was trying to make up my mind if I should meet with our local director of emergency management. He didn't endorse all of my premises. He thinks Putin finds Trump too valuable to risk alienating him. But that will no longer be the case by 2028, when Trump is in the final year of his term.

In any event, there are any number of potential bad actors who may singly, or in coordination with others, plan to attack the United States. Not kinetically, but through the internet. If Russia is involved, they will include acts of physical sabotage contracted out to criminal organizations within the U.S. Ordinarily, I'd be fairly confident that the FBI and the NSA would have a pretty good handle on that. I have no faith in the FBI's ability to defend us in that domain anymore.

I have little faith in Hegseth's politicized military to defend us in cyberspace.

I believe it is more likely than not that we will be hit with a wide-scale, coordinated cyber attack intended to inflict economic and political damage on the United States in the next 18 months. Whether or not it will succeed, or what the degree of damage may be, I can't predict.

But any significant wide-spread, prolonged grid outage will have massive consequences for the areas affected, and we should begin planning for those now.

We recently observed the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. They were "unthinkable," until we realized they weren't. And we had plenty of "indications and warning," that something might occur.

I believe we have similar I&W today, or we wouldn't be seeing Britain telling its citizens to prepare for grid infrastructure attacks.

I'm not confident in the federal government, under present leadership, taking the necessary steps to prepare the nation to withstand an attack of this nature.

It's going to be up to us, at all levels, to try to plan, prepare and organize to withstand and recover from an attack of this nature.

For many weeks now, I've felt as though we're in a race against time to get this house built. And then it'll be another race to get some solar panels and battery storage installed. Then at least we'll have water and power. We'll be able to flush our toilets. Food will be a challenge, but that is manageable compared to big, capital-intensive, permit-requiring projects like solar and batteries.

For those of you living in the suburbs, figure out how you're going to manage your waste. There will be a run on 5-gallon buckets from Home Depot, so maybe beat the rush? Food? Meds?

My mom is 93 and has Parkinson's. She lives alone, and if the power goes out she can't get out of her chair. Members of your family may be similarly or otherwise challenged.

Do your own table-top exercise. Figure it out. You don't want to start thinking about this on day three of an outage that lasts more than a week; and one where help isn't coming from out of the area because everyone, everywhere has gone dark.

We had a fairly extensive Civil Defense program back in the 50s and 60s when we were worried about nuclear war. You can debate all you want about the merits and effectiveness of that program, but it showed that we can think about preparing. To my knowledge, we're doing nothing today.

We're all preppers now.

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Sunset 10-28-26

07:24 Thursday, 29 October 2026

Current Wx: Temp: 48.54°F Pressure: 1022hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 9.78mph
Words: 493

I had a productive back-and-forth with our heat pump vendor's engineer regarding Claude's design. We have, I believe, one remaining issue to resolve and then I should have a complete parts list and schematic to present to a competent plumber and get this thing installed.

The company with the $50K HVAC quote has been in contact, and it seems like they want to try to make a deal. I need to go collect my equipment from them, because I think that ship has sailed. They did notify me of a recent change regarding new construction energy efficiency incentives. Previously, the only incentives available were for retrofits, not for new installs. Now there appears to be a rebate for new construction systems, and a program for design assistance. I need to dive into the rebate requirements, but it looks like things may be more affordable than we'd feared.

There will still be some ducting that will have to be done for the ERV and the dehumidifier, which is non-trivial but also not outside the realm of local HVAC contractors' experience, unlike air-to-water heat pumps.

I want to be kind of cautious about my optimism regarding the HVAC, because every time I've thought that this thing was nailed down, something has thrown a wrench in it. But after each setback, we've made some good progress. So I'm sure we'll get their eventually. I'd just like to stop losing sleep over it. I slept well last night, thank you very much.

We're nearly dried in. All the windows are in and two of the three doors will go in today. The front door delivery date has slid to mid-November, which was a disappointing surprise.

The standing-seam metal roofing should go on next week, and we'll review the schedule on the siding to see if it may require the front door installed.

The low-voltage, DC LED lighting and ceiling fans arrived yesterday. I need to inventory all the items today and make sure we got everything.

The electrician should be on-site next week to make his final connections. Then we can get an inspection to allow the utility to come out and hang another 200 amp transformer, install the meter and turn on the lights! That'll be exciting. Then we can get the well connected, which will allow us to get the heat pump installed! Electricity seems like a critical path item.

Every tradesperson, vendor or visitor who has been to the house has commented on the view, often taking pictures. As views go, it's not one that you'd ever call "iconic," but it is beautiful. We are so looking forward to living in the new house which has been designed to take advantage of that remarkable landscape.

It's been a journey, and we're only about halfway through, but we can see our destination and it keeps us excited about moving forward.

As always, the beat goes on...

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