Our Dependence on Technology
\”Are YOU Ready?\”
Technology is a wonderful thing. It makes our lives much more comfortable than our ancestors had it. We live longer, eat better, communicate on a global scale in the blink of an eye, and we have more time to play. Really, technology is truly a wonderful thing.
But when it goes wrong it can create chaos. Blackouts are a good example. A loss of power can bring a city to it’s knees in a very short amount of time especially if it’s during a heat wave. In the winter if the power goes out people stay inside and huddle under their blankets, but in the summer they tend to get angry and go out looking for trouble.
Indeed, grid failure is one of the many reasons we preppers work so hard to get stocked up on batteries, food, water, etc. When the power goes out we don’t want to lack in the most basic amenities needed for our well being and comfort.
But there are other ways technology can cause problems. Computer glitches or virus’ are a good example. Pretty much everything runs on computers these days and a computer system crash can bring an entire airline to it’s knees canceling flights for days and costing millions of dollars. Anybody ever have the computer chip running their vehicle crash? Nothing works!
The reason I’m thinking about this is that yesterday I was at the campground with my family, having fun swimming and biking and other campground related activities. We have a camper, so I just take my laptop and write the posts while I’m there. I downloaded software that turns my cell phone into a Wifi hotspot and I connect the laptop to the phone and voila! Instant internet. How cool is that?
Until the power went out that is. My phone was running low on power, so I wasn’t able to connect to the ‘net. When the power finally did come back around 8:00 pm on I turned on my laptop and got this message, “WINDOWS IS INSTALLING 1 OF 97 UPDATES. PLEASE DO NOT TURN OFF OR REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER,” or some such nonsense. Usually this takes a few minutes and it’s done, but not last night when I really needed it! Oh no! It was a couple of HOURS for everything to get installed. I couldn’t believe it.
I was about two seconds away from reenacting the printer scene in Office Space with all of my technology. (Not safe for work. Swearing.)
(Side note: I actually did take a printer from work once that was being retired and a bunch of shot it up with AK 47′s and AR 15′s. Most satisfying.)
Anyway, if you have any technology fail stories or observations please feel free to share them.
One quick note here though, a camper is very well suited for a short to medium SHTF duration event as far as simple survival goes. You can cook, take a shower, have hot water (at least in my camper), and refrigeration,which is all powered on propane and a 12 volt battery that sits on the camper. Anyway, that’s a post for another day.
Questions? Comments?
Sound off below!
-Jarhead Survivor
Source: http://www.shtfblog.com/our-dependence-on-technology/
