A couple days ago, Susanville, CA lost power for about 6 hours. I was coming back from some trail exploring, and wanted to pick up some groceries for a curry Sosa was planning on making. The Grocery Outlet politely waved us away; we barely picked up that they had a power outage. Thinking it was localized, we tried Safeway, then Walmart… we could finally conclude that the outage was town-wide.
We’ve been keeping our fridge and food supplies light: My food is back in Hat Creek, at a Forest Service bunk house. Sosa had meal prepped days before and just finished the last of her cooked meals. We had a few bagels, bananas, and eggs. I was fine with snacking on that until the power came back on, but Sosa was hungry. She could have heated up some extras, but our stove is electric. My camping stove was also at Hat Creek.
We decided to find a place to eat out, laughing whenever we tried to call a fast food chain and getting a dead line. After a few tries, we had a theory: What place in town would always have power, by sheer obstinance? The local casino. We called the Diamond Mountain casino. Their restaurant was open. Upon arrival, it seemed like half the town was trying to get dinner there. They set up a ticketing system to seat us. It only took about 40 minutes to get a table, but two hours to receive our entrees after ordering.
I take situations like this very lightly. Of course the power will come back on, but while it isn’t, the house, town, and environment reveals an untapped world of potential. Without electricity, people get to see another perspective of their daily activities, and what tools might be needed to temporarily stave off the reality of having no power: Camping stoves, portable batteries, canned or instant foods. When the glue that holds our society together leaves for a bit, we get to experience a small adventure of food-getting, entertainment, and wonderments about when it will end.
By the time we were done with dinner, the power was back on and we headed home to watch a tv show we’ve been wanting to finish for days. The adventure was over, but it was an experience worth thinking about, at least for just a bit.
David Gladish thought about it in a more fantastical way, the way that all preppers yearn for: The day technology and society collapses, and we must rely on no other person for our food and survival, but from the angle for the “love of camping.”
We’ve been keeping our fridge and food supplies light: My food is back in Hat Creek, at a Forest Service bunk house. Sosa had meal prepped days before and just finished the last of her cooked meals. We had a few bagels, bananas, and eggs. I was fine with snacking on that until the power came back on, but Sosa was hungry. She could have heated up some extras, but our stove is electric. My camping stove was also at Hat Creek.
We decided to find a place to eat out, laughing whenever we tried to call a fast food chain and getting a dead line. After a few tries, we had a theory: What place in town would always have power, by sheer obstinance? The local casino. We called the Diamond Mountain casino. Their restaurant was open. Upon arrival, it seemed like half the town was trying to get dinner there. They set up a ticketing system to seat us. It only took about 40 minutes to get a table, but two hours to receive our entrees after ordering.
I take situations like this very lightly. Of course the power will come back on, but while it isn’t, the house, town, and environment reveals an untapped world of potential. Without electricity, people get to see another perspective of their daily activities, and what tools might be needed to temporarily stave off the reality of having no power: Camping stoves, portable batteries, canned or instant foods. When the glue that holds our society together leaves for a bit, we get to experience a small adventure of food-getting, entertainment, and wonderments about when it will end.
By the time we were done with dinner, the power was back on and we headed home to watch a tv show we’ve been wanting to finish for days. The adventure was over, but it was an experience worth thinking about, at least for just a bit.
David Gladish thought about it in a more fantastical way, the way that all preppers yearn for: The day technology and society collapses, and we must rely on no other person for our food and survival, but from the angle for the “love of camping.”
A love of camping can make you see the natural resources that your own neighborhood may have to offer that would come in handy in case of emergency. The creak nearby with year-ling trout residents would be a great resource for my fly rod. The trees on my property could provide firewood for staying warm, and my camp hatchet would be the tool for the job. (Gladish, Adventure Journal)
The fantasy is that one’s outdoor skills is the key to “survive”. Gladish points to last year’s Texas power grid failure, and pats himself on the back for knowing he has purchased the correct gear to survive days of power failure. For the estimated 246 deaths that occurred (out of 11 million affected for at least three days), 148 of them were caused by hypothermia. Other categories don’t point to a lack of the “love of camping” or having “an entire room full of camping and backpacking equipment”. These categories included falls, motor vehicle collisions, and carbon monoxide poisoning. If we include all 246 deaths, we find that .002% of the population were mortally affected by the power outage.
What did the .998% of the population have that the others didn't? Gladish focuses on camping equipment and that love for the outdoors. I think that it was humane support for one another. The family, friends, and neighbors that actually checked on one another to make sure that their community was doing alright. Communal support is a final distribution of survivability in the face of unknown, catastrophic circumstances. When you didn't have the camping stove, the hatchet, the sleeping pad, someone else may have extras to lend out. Some portion of the .002% experienced a communal failure, because while humans are instinctually communal, we are separated by modern cultural circumstances in which one does not care about friends, family, or neighbors in a time of need.
While a power outage is a technological, egoistic failure of a modern society, communal failure is an existential failure, a sign that the normal person acted against their natural instincts to support others (I must emphasize normal, there are always exceptions). Gladish focused on his ability to transcend communal failure with camping technology, to set himself with the .998% who survived. But think about the .002% who didn't, and what circumstances they may have been in to have been the few that didn't. Then we can compare catastrophe to a modern inconvenience.