ROD H thanks, I'd never heard of TED talk before.
I believe DEFCON has had a few mentions of the problems with "smart" meters and to a lesser extent the problem with making a industrial machine with hardwire passwords internet aware.
Those generators sound rather small, they are probably planning to switch it between the various freezers keeping them from defrosting.
Fuel reserves are probably 2 or 3 days at most for those little units, unless the store has a private fuel pump and storage tank setup for company vehicles.
In the past 8 to 10 years here in the US changes to fuel blends of both gas and Diesel has made these fuels very unstable, at least in terms of storage and to add to the problem government mandated changes to gas jugs also causes any fuel stored in them to degrade even faster.(Many problems small gas engines have is the fuel for them going bad before it's used.)
Most of the advice I've seen says you need to rotate emergency fuel stored in plastic jugs every 60 days or so, if you can get metal jugs and add something like Sta-Bil to your emergency fuel it should last a minimum of 6 months. Most say you can safely get 12 months if you keep the fuel in metal jugs in a building with a stable temperature.
Also remember here in the United States a recent Executive Order limits how much fuel you can store.
Individual redundancy is good, but for most of American citizens you only have the resources to have a few days or at most a week or so.
If the power grid goes down nation wide we are talking about months where water, food and transportation for these essentials will drop to late 18th century methods and remain at those levels for months or in the worst cases remain near that level for years.
Thre are all sorts of catch 22's that will make it very hard to restart our nation's life support and economy once the national power grid is shut down for any length of time.
On the individual level extra canned food and Bicycle with a 12 volt pedal or solar powered battery head light is probably a more essential long term survival tool than buying extra fuel for a personal generator.
Another very good way to build redundancy into personal life support is to get with a local group or organization, from my personal bias as a Christian I'd suggest finding a small local church and get to know the people that attend it. Another bias I'll suggest is find a local HAM radio club, with them you have access to technicians and long range communication. Another good suggestion is any local boyscout or girlscout troops.
Just as your encouraged to have a plan in case of fire, have a plan, it's more than local towns and cities around here have. I've mentioned the fragile non redundant nature of the power grid to a few local town officials and most all didn't want to talk about it or "waste" any time planning or preparing, after all a 100 years ago we lived without a national power grid.
I rather suspect that if the power grid fails within a week the local criminal gangs will be better organized and reacting better than the local police and city councils will be reacting to all the life threatening problems thier citizens are suddenly facing.
HDM
I believe DEFCON has had a few mentions of the problems with "smart" meters and to a lesser extent the problem with making a industrial machine with hardwire passwords internet aware.
Those generators sound rather small, they are probably planning to switch it between the various freezers keeping them from defrosting.
Fuel reserves are probably 2 or 3 days at most for those little units, unless the store has a private fuel pump and storage tank setup for company vehicles.
In the past 8 to 10 years here in the US changes to fuel blends of both gas and Diesel has made these fuels very unstable, at least in terms of storage and to add to the problem government mandated changes to gas jugs also causes any fuel stored in them to degrade even faster.(Many problems small gas engines have is the fuel for them going bad before it's used.)
Most of the advice I've seen says you need to rotate emergency fuel stored in plastic jugs every 60 days or so, if you can get metal jugs and add something like Sta-Bil to your emergency fuel it should last a minimum of 6 months. Most say you can safely get 12 months if you keep the fuel in metal jugs in a building with a stable temperature.
Also remember here in the United States a recent Executive Order limits how much fuel you can store.
Individual redundancy is good, but for most of American citizens you only have the resources to have a few days or at most a week or so.
If the power grid goes down nation wide we are talking about months where water, food and transportation for these essentials will drop to late 18th century methods and remain at those levels for months or in the worst cases remain near that level for years.
Thre are all sorts of catch 22's that will make it very hard to restart our nation's life support and economy once the national power grid is shut down for any length of time.
On the individual level extra canned food and Bicycle with a 12 volt pedal or solar powered battery head light is probably a more essential long term survival tool than buying extra fuel for a personal generator.
Another very good way to build redundancy into personal life support is to get with a local group or organization, from my personal bias as a Christian I'd suggest finding a small local church and get to know the people that attend it. Another bias I'll suggest is find a local HAM radio club, with them you have access to technicians and long range communication. Another good suggestion is any local boyscout or girlscout troops.
Just as your encouraged to have a plan in case of fire, have a plan, it's more than local towns and cities around here have. I've mentioned the fragile non redundant nature of the power grid to a few local town officials and most all didn't want to talk about it or "waste" any time planning or preparing, after all a 100 years ago we lived without a national power grid.
I rather suspect that if the power grid fails within a week the local criminal gangs will be better organized and reacting better than the local police and city councils will be reacting to all the life threatening problems thier citizens are suddenly facing.
HDM