Ron Foster Prepper Author

Ron Foster Interview Part I – Solar Flares and EMPs

While hundreds of thousands are preparing for a vast variety of reasons, solar flares and threats of an EMP attack by North Korea are weighing on the minds of many right now. Either one of those disaster scenarios could significantly impact our power grid and change life as we know it. Even if a solar flare only adversely impacted our power grid for a week or even a month, civil unrest and starvation could very likely occur.

Off The Grid News recently sat down with perhaps one of the most academically and technically trained preppers in America – Ron Foster. The highly-educated former military man is a post-apocalyptic author who specializes in electromagnetic pulse and survival fiction.

Ron Foster is the author of the popular prepper and survival series, The Prepper Trilogy. In addition to holding several master’s degrees in emergency management related fields, Foster also brings real-life disaster experience to the table. The author’s academic credentials include certificates in Global Security and Terrorism Studies, Law and Public Safety, Displaced Persons, School Security and Safety Administration, and Non-Profit Organization, Administrative Science, and Emergency Management Administration.

OTG – If a Carrington Event size solar flare hit Earth today, what do you feel would happen to our power grid?

RF – This will depend on the size and geographic orientation of the impact of a coronal mass ejection (CME) on Earth’s magnetosphere. Can you imagine if say, it was lights out for North America and Asia was somewhat spared of its effects? This scenario or its reverse is entirely plausible and the political and military ramifications of such an occurrence is something I delve into from time to time in my stories. The age and type of power plants, as well as hackers and cyber warfare opportunists could sway the outcomes of any impact on the power grids worldwide.  Brazil has been shut down by hackers during a CME event it was proven with China as the culprit.

OTG – How does your professional experience as an emergency manager play into the text of your popular survival fiction books?

RF – I hate to admit it, but I “leak” info for what we are not prepared for, as well as make a case as an advocate for a “holistic” approach to emergency management; versus the DHS model of a more militaristic response of “command and control”. These are not state secrets, but observations and expectations that preppers need to mentally file away in order to evaluate their own circumstances in an evolving threat scenario.

OTG - If a strong solar flare did take down our power grid for just a few weeks or few months, describe how you think life as we know it would be altered?

RF – A few weeks is a walk in the park. A few months is chaos, compounded by idiots and then a journey into societal collapse and martial law – the start of the burning times. The recovery will be years and the death toll will exceed any known war or plague. Yet continuity of government will still exist in many fashions yet to be reckoned with.

OTG - The last sizeable solar flare occurred on March 15; it took two days to travel to Earth and gave us just a mild glancing blow. Even with the new detection capabilities the telescope in Australia offers, tracking and predicting sun spot activity is far from a scientific process. What type of warning time do you think people will have should an Earth-directed solar flare maximum actually occur?

Ron Foster

RF – Scientists keep saying that they were surprised about some of the new things the sun has been doing. The power grids are debating a two-hour notice to shut down or divert power to minimize damage, so based on this I say one-hour at best. Even if they turn the satellites away and portions of the grid are shut down for safety or maintenance, there is no guarantee on what the size of an unknown super CME will cause or its duration or repetition. It’s a crap shoot. If we get warning, great! I will be busy disconnecting my car battery and hanging a chain off the bumper to ground it. If not, I hope my little fictional scenario in my book “Preppers Road March” has thousands of people in a better mindset to hoof it home and have gained a few survival skills so they will not stress as bad about it.

OTG - Scientists from both NASA and NOAA agree that the Sun is nearing the end of its 11-year cycle. The experts vary greatly in opinion when it comes to predicting when the peak or double-peak will actually occur. What are your thoughts about the potential for a significant solar flare this year?

RF – Until recently, most researchers had been predicting that solar maximum would probably occur sometime around May. That is according to the latest data I have been following, but this is just one of the many evolving scientific models that has caused me concern. I have ultimately decided the scientists and mystics can only warn us about a “Not if but when” event and any potential for a significant solar flare this year on my part is sheer speculation. I admit I do prep more for this type of event, but I also did the same last year. The insurance companies are freaking out about such a possibility. This peak in solar activity comes in accordance with the sun’s 11-year cycle.  So yes, I feel there is a significant threat to prepare for just like I know there will be hurricanes this year.

Secret Garden Of Survival (pic courtesy of Amazon)

The vulnerability of the power grid is one of the primary motivations for thousands of Americans who have become preppers or opted for a homesteading lifestyle. Secret Garden of Survival-How to Grow a Camouflaged Food-Forest author Rick Austin recently talked about what life would be like after the lights go out with Off The Grid News.

Austin’s homesteading advise is designed to help his fellow man not just survive a natural or man-made disaster, but to thrive in the face of adversity. Mainstream media outlets are leading the evening news with a plethora of North Korea EMP attack stories, but offer no advice on what Americans should be doing to prepare for such a disaster.

The Carrington Event of 1859 should serve as a cautionary tale about the extreme impact a strong Earth-directed solar flare could have on our everyday lives. Both a natural disaster like a solar flare and a man-made tragedy like an EMP attack have the ability to take down our overly-taxed power grid.

OTG – How would an EMP effect life as we know it?

RA – There would be mass panic, society would unravel, and the “have-nots” would take from the “haves” to feed themselves and their families. People would die quickly in the cities, and many of the survivors would “head out toward the country” to find food and resources. We would be blind, without radio, television, or any form of communication; we would be without gas pumps, and without transportation. Just about every vehicle today is run by computer chips.  The grocery stores would be out of food within hours-and could never be replenished again. The man-made version of an EMP is one of the things that those “in the know” fear the most, and are not talking much about.

Why would our government really be worried about Iran or North Korea getting one measly little atomic weapon?  Well, that is because one weapon launched from a cargo ship over the center of our country would cause an EMP that would take down our entire power grid, and that would, in less than one second, fry every computer, cell phone, ATM, and electronic device in the country.

OTG – What pitfalls would well-prepared Americans face after an EMP attack or downed power grid?

RA – If you are a homesteader, prepper, or just have a traditional garden in your yard, you and your family will be a “target” for the hordes of “locusts” that will be hungry and wandering the countryside, consuming everything in their path.

The great thing about having a Secret Garden of Survival, is that in a situation like the one above, the starving hordes will most likely pass by your house, because your garden doesn’t look like a garden- in fact, it looks like the property was abandoned.

My book, the Secret Garden of Survival-How to Grow a Camouflaged Food-Forest is about having a homestead garden that doesn’t even look like a garden.  It looks like overgrown underbrush. It looks “natural” because it is the way that nature grows things.  Nature does not grow plants in nice, neat, straight rows, nor does it grow fruit on trellises, etc.  Nature grows things wildly, and plants naturally work together in symbiotic relationships that intermingle, intertwine, and ultimately benefit one another.

On the other hand, this Secret Garden of Survival permaculture food-forest, actually grows 5x more food per square foot than traditional gardens, it grows in three dimensions, and you don’t need to use pesticide or fertilizer to make it grow.  Where are you going to get pesticide and fertilizer after the grid goes down anyway?

Using my Secret Garden of Survival concept, you plant only once, and then harvest for the next 30 years. You, and your livestock, can live off perennial fruits, nuts, and berries for the balance of your lifetimes.  And you don’t need to weed, use fertilizer, use pesticide, and to top that off, no-one will even know you have a garden planted there.

Straight Row Garden

OTG – What is the difference between homesteading and typical farming?

RA – In my view, typical farming today is based on the paradigm of mechanized farming that uses machinery and petrochemicals (fertilizers and pesticides) with mono crops planted in rows, so that machines can more easily harvest these crops in a manner that will maximize yield and bring more produce to market in a short period of time. Unfortunately, this typical farming has stripped the land of its nutrients to the point that the same food in the grocery store today has one-third of the nutrients that those fruits and vegetables had in the 1960s.

That means that you would have to consume three times the food today that you would in the 1960s to get the equivalent amount of nutrients. Maybe our national obesity problem might have something to do with our bodies starving for nutrients that we cannot obtain, no matter how much we stuff ourselves full of food.

Homesteading, on the other hand, is about growing enough food to support yourself and your family. It is much less about making a business out of selling produce, and more about having a “back to the land” lifestyle, and being self-reliant.

Homesteading  is about growing your own food, taking care of yourself, and to a larger degree, living on less consumer products, less electricity, and being less dependent on having to earn a paycheck in order to eat and have a roof over your head. I think homesteading is a lifestyle choice. It is the way most families lived before World War I, and many of that old homesteading knowledge was becoming lost as that generation of people passed away.

However, recently we have seen more and more people becoming  interested in this simpler, less complex lifestyle and I am seeing a resurgence in people wanting to learn these old homesteading techniques.

OTG – Is there a link between the homesteading and prepper lifestyle?

RA - I see that some preppers are homesteaders, and some homesteaders are preppers.  But there are a lot of preppers out there that may have a bug-out location, however, they are not now living that kind of lifestyle.  I think that is dangerous for them. You have no idea what you will be up against, until you live that lifestyle every single day.  The time to learn how to grow your own food, take care of livestock, and preserve your own food, is before there is a crisis situation.

Furthermore, I see a lot of preppers that still have a consumer oriented mind-set and think that they can buy their way out of a disaster situation.  They may have all the toys, gadgets, weapons, and prepackaged storage foods, but they have no plan for the day – in a long term scenario like an EMP -when they have to fend for themselves once their food and water stores have run out.

And because they simply bought their food stores as another packaged consumer product, they do not have the skills it takes to grow what they will need to replenish it. In my experience, most people today cannot even recognize food unless it is packaged and labeled.  They could not tell you what a food growing plant was in the field, and most would starve to death, with food right under their nose.

OTG – Has there been an increase in people living a homesteading lifestyle in recent years, or is the topic just gathering a lot more news attention now?

RA – I see there is a real resurgence in homesteading, in self-sufficiency, and in wanting to be self-reliant.  I find people are becoming more educated about the “homesteading arts,” in part, because they have seen that they cannot rely on governments to save them in times of crisis.

However, I also see that it is more than just disaster preparedness.  I think people are wanting a simpler, less stressful life, and there is a great deal of personal satisfaction from being able to pick your own food, collect your own eggs, and consuming milk, butter, and cheese from your own livestock.  And it is a far healthier lifestyle, with better quality food, and less chemicals.

OTG – How difficult is it for a novice to begin a homesteading lifestyle? How do you get started in the self-reliant lifestyle?

RA – For the most part I think people just lack information.  They can do it, and there are more sources of information available today than ever before.  You can do searches on the web, and find websites and videos on how to do just about everything in homesteading.

My advice is to take advantage of gathering that knowledge now- before an EMP.  Because after that, you can forget about searching the web for anything. Ultimately, you have got to make the leap.  You can’t just have one foot in the city and one in the country.  At some point, if you are really going to be self-reliant, you have to just make the switch and learn by doing it.

Solar Power Plays A Big Role In Survival

OTG – Does solar power play a significant role in the homesteading existence?

RA – I believe that if you have an efficient home design in the first place, passive solar heat, solar hot water and active solar electricity (photo-voltaics) can play a role in homesteading. 

The biggest mistake people make is trying to live off grid and use solar power to heat, and run electric devices that are totally inefficient to start with.  You need to think about having a minimal footprint, so that you are not trying to heat or power a 6,000 sq. ft. house with solar.  That is where you get into costly solar systems that will never pay back their investment.  The best way to use solar is to have an efficient house to start with, so that you won’t need to use a lot of power to heat or cool the property.

A simple thing like painting the walls bright colors, reduces the need for stronger light bulbs, and reduces your electricity.

Most power in a typical household today is consumed by heating, cooling, and heating water.  If you can focus on making those things more economical, you will greatly reduce your need for power in the first place.  The best places to start, therefore, are on having good home insulation. There are a lot of spray-in foam insulation products today that are super-efficient and non-toxic, that didn’t even exist 10 years ago. In addition, efficient windows, and an efficient hot water heater will go the furthest toward reducing your need for power consumption in the first place.

We use solar panels to store power for batteries for our lights at night, lights in the garden, solar motion sensor lights for the house, and to power fans during the day.  This way the sun runs fans that cool our house (and barn) during the day and lights up our house at night.

OTG – What are the average advantages and disadvantages of living life on a homestead?

RA -As I stated before, it is a simpler, less stressful lifestyle and is gratifying in that you are taking care of your crops and your animals that will ultimately take care of you.

Yes, it is a lot of work and requires long hours. But there is no boss breathing down your neck, no threat of losing your “job,” and the commute to work is short and without stress.  Compared to the white knuckle-take your life in your hands- driving to and from work every day in the city that I used to do before we took the leap to living in the country on our homestead, this is like living in heaven.

Being less stressful, and living on better food, with more exercise, certainly makes it a healthier lifestyle as well.

OTG – What advice would you give to someone interested in homesteading?

RA – Do all the research you can, talk to people who are doing it.  Make a plan, and give yourself a deadline to make the leap into the homestead. If you own property, start working on it now.  If you are looking for property, there are a lot of farms and farm land in the country that is very reasonably priced these days.

The way I see it, people who are living anything but a homesteading life are on a sinking ship. The Titanic is filling up with water- even if the passengers don’t know it yet.  It’s just a matter of time before they go under, and there are not enough life rafts to save everyone once it sinks.

OTG – How do homesteading families deal with medical and schooling issues?

RA – Most non-catastrophic needs for medicine can be dealt with at home, in the same manner people used to do so for ages.  Most of the over-the-counter drugs today ultimately come from plants, herbs and other “medicines” that people had available to them before the days of multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies patenting ingredients found for free in nature.

There are also some great books on the market, such as The Doom and Bloom Survival Medicine Handbook. It discusses how to deal with everything, from minor medical issues to acute traumas, in a disaster situation. And should an EMP actually happen and take down our power grid, there will be no more hospitals, doctors, or nurses available to take care of you and your family after the first two weeks- if that.

As far as schooling goes, without an EMP, there are plenty of distance learning alternatives today that didn’t exist back in the day.  So learning, schooling, and the like can be done from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection.

We have a lot of books too.  We have books about everything from history, to disaster preparedness, to the classics.  In a world without power, these books will become our “television” and our entertainment. And in many cases, these books will answer our questions on everything from basic physics to medicine.

OTG – Are there any online homesteading groups that connect for social or training purposes?

RA – There are homesteading websites, magazines, and conferences all over the country that people can tap into. In fact, I am speaking at a three day homesteading conference on May 17-19 in Waynesville, NC called the Heritage Life Skills II Weekend, and this event will be teaching people many of the lost homesteading arts, from canning foods, to tanning hides, to blacksmithing.

Off The Grid News - Solar Flares

Solar flares are expected to hit solar maximum in May, but scientists can’t seem to agree on exactly how strong the impact will. The Sun entered the peak of its 11-year cycle in 2012. The frequency and power of the sunsposts and solar flares that have already occurred is a hotly debated topic among scientists and the prepper community.

A NOAA/NASA scientific panel created to track and predict solar storm activity released their predictions for the Sun’s peak activity recently. Although it was definitely not a unanimous decision, the experts feel a solar flare maximum will be two-peaked and not strong enough to end the world as we know it.

Although the findings are somewhat reassuring, they do not mean we should halt Farraday cage construction just yet. Recent solar activity has been weaker than expected thus far, but we are barely three months into 2013. Solar storm strength is expected to increase as we hit the summer months. May is the month the majority of NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle Prediction Panel scientists expected the next solar maximum to hit.

Goddard Space Flight Center Solar Physicist, Dean Pesnell, said the solar maximum is shaping up to look different than what researchers had anticipated. The Sun’s 11-year peak will possibly boast two solar maxima. In 1989 and 2001, the solar maxima was also two-peaked. Pesnell also believes that there will be a second peak during the Sun’s current 11-year cycle as well. We should reportedly expect to experience the increase solar activity later in 2013 or as late as 2014.

During the past two years solar activity has been in a type of mini-cycle, with vast fluctuations in activity. The massive sunsposts that evolved on the surface of the Sun so far this year have caused great concern for even those who do not necessarily identify themselves as survivalists or preppers. If the solar maximum produces a strong enough solar flare directed at Earth, the power grid could easily collapse.

Harness the power of the sun for your energy needs and be prepared if the grid goes down…

A coronel mass ejection has the potential to render all electronics entirely useless. A scenario similar to the Carrington Event of 1859 would happen today, billions of dollars in damage would occur. Scientists may not believe doomsday is on the horizon as the Sun’s 11-year cycle peaks, but even a lesser Earth-directed place could devastate our over-taxed and antiquated power grid.

Fixing the power grid would take at least months to years, depending upon the level of damage. Although solar flares themselves are not thought to possess enough radiation to pose great harm to humans and animals, a multitude of deaths would still likely occur.

The hemispheres on the Sun do not always hit peak period at the same time, causing a swinging pendulum of solar activity. According to the NOAA/NASA panel, the northern region of the Sun is currently lagging behind and will likely be the spot where the second peak occurs in May. Scientific experts now feel that solar flare activity will be below average during the peak of this 11-year cycle. Researchers feel that we will experience a maximum of 90 sunspots in 2013.

Those impacted first by a downed power grid would be hospital patients. The elderly and the very young who could not withstand to a live without heat or air conditioning for an extended period of time would be the next to wither and possibly die. Folks who have not stored food, water, and other necessary items would be in dire straits in as little as a week. Civil unrest spurred by a panicked populace would likely claim more lives the first three examples combined.

How concerned are you about solar flares?

However, several CMEs (coronal mass ejections) also occurred in association with these flares. These CMEs are traveling faster than 1100 miles a second and are slated to impact Earth and Mars, as well as several NASA spacecraft. The first CME will reach Earth around 1:25 AM EST on Thursday morning. NASA says such a CME “could result in a severe geomagnetic storm, causing aurora at low latitudes, with possible disruption to high frequency radio communication, global positioning systems (GPS), and power grids.”

In addition, a CME associated with a smaller March 4^th solar flare distorted the magnetic fields of the earth, triggering a moderate geomagnetic storm. These new CMEs threaten to further agitate the Earth’s magnetic field.

These storms may seem stronger because the Earth has enjoyed a period of relative quiet in regard to weak solar activity. Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the space weather center said, “This is a good-size event, but not the extreme type.” However, because of radiation and communication problems, some airlines have already begun altering flight routes.

There are several ways that these events can impact us, causing extensive problems, and that’s through magnetic, radiation, or radio emissions. The magnetic part of the storm that affects the power grid has utility companies around the world standing by in case the timing and speed of the storm knocks out service. A 1989 solar storm took down the power grid in Quebec, leaving over 6 million people with no power.

©2012 Off the Grid News

There are numerous solar storms of varying intensity but this may mark the beginning of a series of solar super-storms. The sun is nearing the height of a predictable 11 year cycle. That cycle will culminate with its greatest solar activity between March and December 2012.

An alert from SpaceWeather.com warns, “”There is little doubt that the cloud is heading in the general direction of Earth. A preliminary inspection of SOHO/STEREO imagery suggests that the CME will deliver a strong glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on Jan. 24-25 as it sails mostly north of our planet.”

Solar flares have received increasing scrutiny over the years due to potential damage from what are called CMSs (coronal mass ejections). Coronal mass ejections are closely studied because they can produce potentially harmful geomagnetic storms when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field.

Many scientists are warning the sun is reaching a level of activity unseen in the modern electronic era. Our only frame of reference for such an event is the last recorded Solar Maximus of this level on September 1, 1859.

Numerous sunspots occurred on August 28 with solar flares occurring from August 28 to September 2. On September 1, the sun released an immense coronal mass ejection (CME). Hours later, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, resulting in numerous fires. Auroras were seen as far south as Rome and Hawaii. The 1859 Event was a combination of three factors. The CME was extraordinarily fast; the magnetic fields were extremely intense; the magnetic fields were in direct opposition to Earth’s magnetic fields. This combination overwhelmed the Earth’s magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate into Earth’s upper atmosphere; thus creating the havoc.

This cycle of solar activity may or may not be as intense as the one in 1859. But, one major factor makes this one much more troublesome. The worst event that could have occurred in the last century was what did – telegraph lines downed for short periods of time. A similar event occurring now could be near catastrophic.

Power grids are exceptionally vulnerable. What most people don’t realize is that a power plant requires an enormous amount of power to go online. A regional temporary interruption of power can quickly cascade into widespread chaos. A direct hit from a high level coronal mass ejection could throw North America’s power grid off line for weeks, months, or even years.

Vulnerable circuit boards and microchips are everywhere. Medical equipment, electronically dependent nuclear power plants, and most vehicles (land, sea, and air) are laden with microchips. In fact, most of our civilization’s entire infrastructure is one huge integrated circuit.