The After Ripples

Another week has gone by, yet we are still finding the aftermath of the past few weeks. The first, and most obvious, thing is I have found a few contacts of mine not being contactable.

A couple have managed to send short messages via message boards, limiting themselves to a short phrase or two along the lines of "alright, but keeping on the move". A number of others, however, have not been contactable at all. Most worrying, one who has... Correction... One whose forum avatar has been in use, with short emails sent out, yet with a tone that does not match what I know of them...

Police, or at least, people dressed like police have knocked at the door a few times... and these are definitely not the locals.

It seems like a few agent provocateurs are about... Most people I know, even with the local survivalist groups, aren't really revolutionaries. Very, very few talk in tones supporting major illegal activities; most aim toward personal survival, keeping themselves and their families alive - not overthrowing the government.

It's difficult to do major surveillance in a semi-rural area, though. A vehicle parked across the road is very conspicuous, when you can spend a day with only seeing half a dozen cars.

It does, though, seem things are quietening down though, and many of us have made sure that very limited evidence could be used against us... Most tricks that are known are too well known to be of use. Of course, it does mean a certain amount of learning has had to be memorised... Of course, what the government/judicial system/etc finds objectionable can be quite arbitrary. Simply having the Collected Works of Thomas Paine on one's shelf could be taken as being of Revolutionary or Treacherous Intent.

Bradbury was right, but perhaps of a limited range of books. At least for the moment...

We return to our authorised programming...

It has been an interesting fortnight, to say the least, since I was last able to write. And, indeed, a cold one.

The coal & rail strikes were quite aggressively put down, by all accounts - news has been sketchy. What has been made clear is that the military was brought in both to arrest strikers, and to get coal through. There has been talk of treason charges being brought against a lot of the strikers, and unfortunately quite a few people seem to be accepting of certain liberties being taken taking away liberties. In other words, governments are getting their way attempting to intimidate and harrass, and most people are happy to let them.

It is a simple fact - people like comfort. They get annoyed when they are subject to brown-outs, black-outs, limited access to television.

At work, we seemed to have quite an interest going on solar panels. Of course, with limited access to money, internet, and so on, delivery and supply has been limited - without even considering the rush on them. Now that the lights stay on, we are starting to get phone calls cancelling orders... Not the best situation for a business - much money tied up with expensive products.

The other problem we have had is disabusing customers of the ideas of exactly how much power a solar panel can deliver... Some mathematics...

An 80 Watt, unregulated solar panel is able to deliver roughly 5 Amps at 16 Volts (80 W = 5A * 16V). If the solar panel is regulated down to 12 Volts, this can easily drop the delivered power down to 60 Watts (60 W = 5A * 12V).
Watts and Amps are what are happening that second, not a measure of total over the course of time... An 80 Watt panel will, in 1 hour, produce 80 Watt-Hours (80 WHr = 80W * 1Hr). When regulated, this can easily come down to be 60WHr.

Say the sun shines (depending on your location, time of year, weather, cloud cover) 6 to 8 hours per day. This means that the panel will produce 240 - 320 Watt Hours per Day.

Small fridges run at 12 Volts using 4 Amps for 24 Hours per day. This means that the fridge requires 12*4*24 = 1,152 Watt Hours per Day, which is roughly four times what the panel can produce. Of course, this assumes a few things - most fridges will only run at that level when they need to cool down, which won't be too often if they are well insulated and not opened much.

So, in order to keep your batteries charged, and fridge operating, indefinitely, you need to put into the batteries at least as much energy as you take out - so you'll need a few panels - easily up to four 80W panels.

Which means quite an outlay... the best part of $2,000. Something that people rail against... Most people will accept the numbers, when you lay it out for them, a few get aggressive. And a very few will tell you how a friend of theirs is very close to making a perpetual motion machine (rather an over-unity device) work - in complete contradiction to the known (and well established) laws of physics.

The Growing Shadows

Night is starting to fall.

Significant arguments in the middle east threaten oil supplies led to a shortage. Industrial action and strikes are threatening to shut down many industries, and only a few days after my last entry, a nationalist group managed to shut down train lines that supply coal to power stations.

It has been difficult, to say the least, to write when you are not sure how long the power will stay on. It has started a small boom in solar panels, although people never quite realise that a single, small panel will not power their house. A small panel will barely keep a battery charged when people insist on using computers, relying on large fridges, airconditioning, and all mod-cons. Even medium sized televisions make a dent. And, customers being customers, they get aggressive when you point out that, to get the most from their system, they need to spend money on getting low-power things (like LED lights) and, worse than that, need to do some mathematics to work out what they can operate.

Having lived for almost two years without television, it has been little more than a space occupier anyway, although going without the internet has caused a few withdrawals... With limited power, we make do with what is available, and our own entertainment in the mean-time. Power is limited during the day, enough to keep commerce and industry going, and even only available in fits and starts in the evening.

The government has taken several days to get the electrical system back into some sort of shape, but it has ramifications. Using the disruptions as an excuse, rumour has it that round-ups of certain disliked people have occurred.

Which leads to a question...

Some one with training in chemistry, engineering, alternative technologies, bootstrap tech, as well as an academic interest in weaponary, explosives, and the like, yet not employed in such industries. If they were to fall afoul of the new "investigations", would context vindicate or convict them?

Of course, this is a purely academic question.