The Aftermath
No social media bullshit needed.
Storm’s over. I didn’t lose power this time around, but the lights did flicker a few times. We’ve seen less power outages as of late thanks to more micro-power generators on the distribution side of the grid (like the solar farm that’s a bit less than a mile down the road), utility vegetation management, and system upgrades. Still though, a lot of people have their utility feeds coming in on an overhead wire instead of underground, and if a tree or a big enough branch lands on the wire, or someone whacks a utility pole because they drove past their ability in heavy weather, you’re gonna lose power. Short-term power loss is not too big a deal in the grand scheme of things, and is manageable. I spent most of yesterday and last nite listening to the scanner and occasionally watching weather radar feeds while I worked on my presentation for HOPE. Between the two I was able to keep pretty close track of the storm’s progress, local conditions, and storm damage. Radio traffic is less busy than it was last night. Recovery operations are in progress, and will probably be going on for most of the day.
When you do communications monitoring, or private sector SIGINT in cool-speak, you’re getting raw data about local incidents and conditions. What you’re hearing is actually going down, right then and there. No social media bullshit needed. There is a certain freedom about that, versus the free dumb you get online. The Internet could have crashed and burned locally last nite, and as long as I kept my receivers powered up I would have stayed in the know.
The sun is out, I was inside most of yesterday, and I’m feeling restless. Time to go outside, do something in meatspace. You should too, if the weather is cooperating with you. If you want to learn how to independently get information and communicate in meatspace without the use of the Internet, I wrote a book, Down-Grid Communications. It’s only $5. That’s less than the cost of breakfast at your usual morning stop. My book is not gonna change your life. There’s no magnificent insights in it. All it’s gonna do is show you how to set up a monitoring post and communicate without the Internet, taught by the guy who has been doing it since before the Internet even existed. Go to https://litchfieldhillspress.gumroad.com/l/snxffn and thank you!