"Blackout" - Channel 4

[jonny2mad]

I’ve watched the show online and the prepper guy is pretty dopey, all the children seem badly behaved and daft. I think there’s a thing in the uk to portray preppers as idiots a lot of transition towns people are I suppose

Really if you’re going to be a prepper especially in somewhere like London you need to have tough people about you that will watch your back being a nuclear family one man one women and some annoying children won’t work .

Did he know his neighbours nope, he lets some guy who looked like he was casing the joint have dinner with him instead of telling him to git

The prepper had a generator did he have a gun no when the person came into his house he let the guy attack him first after telling him to leave the house a couple of times, he has all his food in one place so it can be found and taken he didn’t cache some of it .

Really he was lucky just to get beat up and robbed

I think a lot of the people living in London lots of the transition town types are just too soft , mainly mentally he had a sign saying please rob me.

The guy helping the women and child was nice but really I think I’d have left them to get on with it the first time they wanted to go .

Places like greater London you have high population density 8.3-9 million people lots of different ethnic groups with a recent history of rioting and looting, you may get conflict with people blaming people for being linked to the terrorists.
Katrina in in New Orleans it was surprising to a lot of people how fast the city fell to pieces few days, even with outside help London is about 16 times larger.
I think going forward even with slow crash you’re going to see longer and longer power blackouts and especially London and the big cities are going to be dangerous places to be .

During the petrol protests a few years ago you had shelves being cleared, nationally you had people like Sainsbury’s saying if the protests went on you would be out of food in a couple days I think in London at one point it was shorter than that .

In this show you had the roads blocked with traffic if the people have sense really they might be better off loading up everything they can eat and fleeing London, and just avoid the place for a while the prepper guy if there was a way out and he had stored petrol might have been safer .

If you had longer blackouts that you would get in say a fast crash being in London would be pretty suicidal actually being in most of the uk would be very suicidal, some people would come through it but they would need to be lucky and tough

I think if things got really bad in the main citys you would see a exodus of people

[adam2]

In the event of a slow crash then rota power cuts, perhaps for many hours daily are likely.
I doubt however that rota cuts would result in much danger, only inconvieience and financial loss.
A likely "worst case" rota would be 3 hours on and 3 hours off, every weekday. 3 hours is entirely survivable without any proper preps, and is trivial for the prepared.
Looting is somwhat of a risk, but would be limited by the police concentrating there resources on the affected areas. Many shops etc are protected by steel shutters and would probably close during blackouts.

If however the power goes off for days, then the results could be far more serious as shown in this fictional but believable account.

Let this programe be a timely reminder not only to prepare, but to keep such preps either low key, or entirely secret.
Dont prepare strong smelling foods, and certainly not outdoors.
Think twice about running a generator due to the noise.
Think twice about showing smoke from a fireplace or stove.
Wear old, dull coloured clothes and shoes.
A gun is useful, but only as a last resort, apart from legal consequences, remember that the report can be heard for miles.

There are many threads on these forums about stocking up, and I would urge giving particular attention to supplies and stores that dont attract attention in use.

Chocolate bars, lifeboat rations, dried fruit, and most tinned goods can be eaten without the need for cooking or heating which is liable to attract unwelcome attention.

Thermal underwear and blankets keep you warm without consuming fuel or emitting smoke from a stove or fire.

If heating is essiential, then bottled gas or parafin attracts less attention than smoke from a wood or coal stove.

Lighting and small appliances from a battery bank has a lot to commend it, but yet again remember discretion ! dont show bright lights, Dark curtains and lamps of very low power are useful.
Dont play loud music, not only does it advertise that you have power, but it may conceal the noises made by intruders.

Stock up on clothing in general, not forgetting dayglow garments for safety on unlit roads, and dark clothing for when a low profile is more important.

[Little John]

Just been watching the first few minutes of blackout.

You just know that smug, middle class prepper is going to get f***ed right over....

I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh

[emordnilap]

"Traffic chaos" and that familiar Ameri-speak phrase, "Long gas lines" (translates, I believe, as "vehicles queuing for fuel"). Aaargh.

Too many people are too frequently in the wrong place, trying to get to another wrong place and reliant upon petrol stations.

Buy a couple of bikes and a trailer if you have to go anywhere. But, most importantly, make your home somewhere you actually want and prefer to be.

[extractorfan]

Just been watching the first few minutes of blackout.

You just know that smug, middle class prepper is going to get ****** right over....

I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh

He did remind me of many internet preppers though, and I thought it a good cautionary tale.

I mean, he ended up murdering a man just as the lights came on, if they'd stayed off he may well have evolved into a J2M character.

[jonny2mad]

sadly I think he would just evolve into being more annoying and then get killed , the whole scorning pet food annoyed me his scavenging was generally not very good .

He was prepared to kill someone after a short time going hungry in a fight for food yup, but generally from a survival point of view he seemed clueless the whole moral dilemma thing recording what you’re doing on a cell phone seems a bit pointless .

in those circumstances I'd have just headed out of London, I don’t think I'd have left my family or the car, would I have killed someone over a packet of flour and some olives nope because it wasn’t winter, he wasn’t that starving although he was hungry (he should have practiced with his family fasting before this) and he didn’t know the consequences of the murder, the guy could have been armed or had friends and just generally it wasn’t worth fighting over.

as a teenager I used to see how far I could travel with just the clothes I stood up in, most of the year I'm a freegan and I'm pretty good at foraging ,in calories he scorned the best food in the store , just generally he seemed foolish (he still doesn’t seem to have any form of weapon I notice) .
Even in London during the early stages of a collapse I think I would find it pretty easy to find stuff to eat without killing people.
Would a lot of people act like this guy yup quite a few, and in a fast crash you would have a selection of the fittest and most lucky going on, would he start preying on other people yup very likely, I imagine he will be there robbing old ladies and justifying it on his cell phone

[jonny2mad]

In the event of a slow crash then rota power cuts, perhaps for many hours daily are likely.
I doubt however that rota cuts would result in much danger, only inconvieience and financial loss.
A likely "worst case" rota would be 3 hours on and 3 hours off, every weekday. 3 hours is entirely survivable without any proper preps, and is trivial for the prepared.
Looting is somwhat of a risk, but would be limited by the police concentrating there resources on the affected areas. Many shops etc are protected by steel shutters and would probably close during blackouts.

If however the power goes off for days, then the results could be far more serious as shown in this fictional but believable account.

Let this programe be a timely reminder not only to prepare, but to keep such preps either low key, or entirely secret.
Dont prepare strong smelling foods, and certainly not outdoors.
Think twice about running a generator due to the noise.
Think twice about showing smoke from a fireplace or stove.
Wear old, dull coloured clothes and shoes.
A gun is useful, but only as a last resort, apart from legal consequences, remember that the report can be heard for miles.

There are many threads on these forums about stocking up, and I would urge giving particular attention to supplies and stores that dont attract attention in use.

Chocolate bars, lifeboat rations, dried fruit, and most tinned goods can be eaten without the need for cooking or heating which is liable to attract unwelcome attention.

Thermal underwear and blankets keep you warm without consuming fuel or emitting smoke from a stove or fire.

If heating is essiential, then bottled gas or parafin attracts less attention than smoke from a wood or coal stove.

Lighting and small appliances from a battery bank has a lot to commend it, but yet again remember discretion ! dont show bright lights, Dark curtains and lamps of very low power are useful.
Dont play loud music, not only does it advertise that you have power, but it may conceal the noises made by intruders.

Stock up on clothing in general, not forgetting dayglow garments for safety on unlit roads, and dark clothing for when a low profile is more important.

Well the police tried concentrating their resources during the looting we had a couple of years ago it still went on, and that was with closed circuit TV a mobile phone network and most important it was a small number of people doing the looting.

A lot of people live hand to mouth especially in cities they don’t have big amounts of food stored, in the 2011 lootings you had a few thousand taking part and they deployed 16,000 police in London (a lot from far outside london) 25,000 emergency calls per night, but you didn’t have hundreds of thousands looting or millions looting which you could have if these people ran out of food and the govt wasn’t able to feed them .

Yup you have steel shutters on shops but sledge hammers or maybe a portable angle grinder could open any of them if there are not enough people to stop you.

You also have a few million illegal firearms in the UK, you also have political dissatisfaction.
Put it all together failing govt economic collapse and fuel and power and food shortages, it will be mighty bad, the LA riots 53 people killed about a billion worth of damages and that wasn’t caused by anything as bad as say a currency collapse .

[adam2]

We must distinguish between short but frequent rota power cuts, as are likely in a slow collapse, and a longer blackout as portrayed in the recent TV programme.

In the event of planned rota cuts I doubt that large scale looting, violence, or other disorder would be much of a problem.
The police would mount extra patrols in the affected areas, and most busineses would close until the power was back on.
Steel shutters give some protection, and will probably become more popular.
I consider it possible that the law may be changed to permit of more determined deffence of shops etc.
In many urban areas each side of major roads are on seperat circuits, such that when one side of say the Old Kent Road is cut off, the other side will be on.
Standby generators and battery backup equipment are readily available. Many firms do not consider purchasing such to be worthwhile whilst times are normal, but it would assuredly become more popular if rota cuts became a regular feature.

In the event of a large scale blackout lasting for days then I would expect significant looting, violence and other disorder, at least somwhat similar to that portrayed in the TV programe.

[kenneal - lagger]

There would be quite a lead in time before rota cuts were imposed so people could be educated in that time to keep a store of food in the house. Storage of enough pizzas and big macs might be a problem though

[extractorfan]

There would be quite a lead in time before rota cuts were imposed so people could be educated in that time to keep a store of food in the house. Storage of enough pizzas and big macs might be a problem though

We're eating lentil curry tonight and I do wonder if OH thought of this after watching this show. We never eat lentils and it certainly wasn't my idea!

[emordnilap]

We never eat lentils

So what do you do with them?

[extractorfan]

We never eat lentils

So what do you do with them?

I thought their main use was for making artwork in primary schools

[emordnilap]

Phew.

[biffvernon]

Here's the real thing - not just a film: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/14 ... -blackout/

[jonny2mad]

done for political reasons

would any of our political leaders cause a blackout like that ....lastlight came to mind and all the false flag stuff govts have been involved in in real life