I'm old enough... if I only had stockpiled some of those Sony VFETs.... or bought gold in the 80s.
At least I was forewarned in December '19 and I had stockpiled more than 300 rolls of fine Costco TP, disinfectants and soaps by early January '20. 🚽
Oh, I did load up the up the cart with CSCO in the 90s and sold before Y2K... 😉
Selling a mint very good FM tuner so this caught my eye. We have to be careful with our doomscenarios I think but what would be the better choice? FM, AM or short wave? Internet is likely to fail first as dependance on it has become very large. Maybe too large.
Ham radio.
Can we even get a CB radio with a 100 watt amp for the car?
"Roger, Big Ten Four, this is the Audiophile on your tail... ".
Some plants produce leaves that can replace TP and it's a mater of knowledge about nutrition to minimize the need for it. Use of soap can be minimized as well and it can be made from wood and fat fairly easy. Hence I only took care of technical stuff that requires complex technology for production. It was a matter of good karma to be living at a place where water is distributed via gravity and free from metering.
I always joked that I have a yard, a chair and a shovel... but I became a connoisseur de papier pour le toilet.... I got some Hello Kitty stuff, some Japanese brands that claim they will make your life happy, and so on... I even got some Hillary paper, but that one is sort of abrasive. 😳
Will people be able to build simple transmitters today? Personally I only can when I would have a schematic. In the doomsday scenario I think using animals as means of exchanging messages will be likely.
Mmm, I am off to the shops to buy stuff for prepping 🙂 If they have stock that is.
The animals you think about for communication might be someone's BBQ at the other end...
The only good thing about the SHTF is that no neighbors are gonna complain when you key that 100 watt linear amp and their TV reception goes to crap...
S**t!!! What do we do now? Rats will be there in abundance. Eat them or use those for messages? What will PETA and the vegans do? Disapprove both?
MarcelvdG, I agree on my posts becoming a little absurd (from post #82 onwards that is).
MarcelvdG, I agree on my posts becoming a little absurd (from post #82 onwards that is).
Last edited:
In the part of Latin America (where I'm living) short wave is dead. With FM and antenna on hill top, even with cheap radios a 1 KW TX has a coverage up to 600 Km. AM doesn't need such a location and with proper antenna, 150 Km with a 1 KW TX is doable. Too few CB sets in use to make a difference. The damage caused by hurricanes has been bad enough to realize that being prepared never is wasted (here even cell phones went dead for a couple of days).
OK first a coffee. My impression is that, regardless of time, the first that is being targeted is defense/telecommunication and today specifically internet.
Internet seems to have had a profound effect on individualism. So in other words we have to take care for ourselves as (it seems) not many will take care of others. Please correct me if I am wrong. Won't it be that telecommunication is a little pointless then? We can cry for help but so will the others.
Imagine zombies with their cell phones wandering around in a wartorn environment looking for reception of signal of which they previously did not even know that it existed.
Internet seems to have had a profound effect on individualism. So in other words we have to take care for ourselves as (it seems) not many will take care of others. Please correct me if I am wrong. Won't it be that telecommunication is a little pointless then? We can cry for help but so will the others.
Imagine zombies with their cell phones wandering around in a wartorn environment looking for reception of signal of which they previously did not even know that it existed.
Most likely. As much as I hate to say it, semis were underpriced for what they delivered in terms of societal benefits for decades. I say this as a guy who watched a pair of SMPS motherboard mosfets go from 70 $ cents to 12 $ cents in about 4 yrs. we used to supply NE5532/4 (P company got it from Signetics when they bought them way back) ended up at about $ 8 cents in volume. We pulled out of both businesses eventually focusing on other things.
We only see the disti prices as hobbyists, but the volume commercial prices were always brutal and why the industry loved allocation - prices went through the roof for a year or so.
He was very lucky. My car, Hyundai i30 Fastback, arrived last year with 2 months late after the initial 6 month deadline.
Store only what you know for sure you will use in the near future. I have too many integrated ones in stock that, although they are still performing and used, I personally started using more special ones. Even the operational amplifiers I have, although they are relatively new and high-performance models, I don't really intend to use them anymore and move on to other models.
Last edited:
In that situation, it is far more likely. People will need a COVERT method of communication. Advertising your position to government/corporate/global authorities with an illegal linear amp spewing kilowatts into the air is signing your own death warrant. (Recall the MASH episode where they panted a huge target over the weapons depot so even 5 o’clock Charlie could hit it).
BTW, they will be looking for the 455 kHz and 10.7 MHz IFs so they can find receivers in operation too. Redesign for another frequency, even if it means you can’t buy off the shelf filters.
And one should have been stocking up on the general-use parts you need for the stuff you build a long time ago. I began stockpiling high-value items some 20 years ago, and about 6 years ago started on the general-use stuff. By then I had a list of stuff that I usually designed into everything. Last on the list were TV tubes and 200 volt mosfets. Those mosfets were painful - the ones I wanted Had lead times into next century, so I had to settle for a $9 each version using an older generation process. Got one of the last tubes of 100 on the planet. When those run out, no more solid state speaker relays (the 1200 WPC amp uses 8 per channel). No more audio for 3 years till the heavily armed secure compound in the middle of nowhere is built, anyway.
Last edited:
Starting 10-15 projects and leaving them unfinished is very common, and a huge waste of components, money, space, etc.
This is a Hobby after all, done for Fun, maybe it pays to choose 2 or 3 projects, tops, which can and will (not the same) be built in the next 2 or 3 years.
Then buy all parts needed for those , period.
And then just turn the soldering iron ON and have a go at it, when/if time allows.
This big mess will be solved by then, and we can return to "normal life".
Hey, even WORLD War 1 and 2 were solved in 5-6 years, this is "nothing".
This is a Hobby after all, done for Fun, maybe it pays to choose 2 or 3 projects, tops, which can and will (not the same) be built in the next 2 or 3 years.
Then buy all parts needed for those , period.
And then just turn the soldering iron ON and have a go at it, when/if time allows.
This big mess will be solved by then, and we can return to "normal life".
Hey, even WORLD War 1 and 2 were solved in 5-6 years, this is "nothing".
I don't remember seeing this thread, but I did stock up on op amps, transistors, and regulators before it hit the fan. Still have some. I can't always get the resistors I want though, and the price has more than doubled. Long lead times on semiconductors and some resistors (the good stuff). I've always been able to work around it.
It looks like the supply chain has creaked back to life for many goods. China faces some challenges and I hope they work through them. China is Too Big To Fail and if they falter, it will affect markets in all countries.
It looks like the supply chain has creaked back to life for many goods. China faces some challenges and I hope they work through them. China is Too Big To Fail and if they falter, it will affect markets in all countries.
" It is up to the Chinese people to resolve the Taiwan issue and China will never renounce the right to use force but will strive for a peaceful resolution"
- President Xi Jinping, october 16th
That pretty clear to me. And the answer is yes. Also we don't know if a more dangerous COVID variant will emerge (with a higher morbidity and mortality rate). Fall and winter put the exposition conditions to better viral transmission and concurly to the virus mutation. And the war in Ukraine seems to escalating. We should also do not underestimate the risk pose by climate changes worsening. A bad weather event in the wrong place could have unanticipated effect.
So it is probable that the supply chain will be affected in the future months/year. I recommand that everyone who need uncommon product should made some reserves.
China has already faced, and will continue to face, threats and challenges from worsening climate change. Growing population exacerbates the situation.
Water is the next oil. Is China going to be able to provide fresh water for the next 30 years? I really don't know the answer for China but I know that here in the US a water shortage threatens the Pacific Northwest. It's been a severe drought for years and there's been some catastrophic wildfires. Watering your lawn is verboten in most areas. My buddy in San Jose says his landscaping is 100% dead. I told him many times to get his money (his modest ranch is worth over a million dollars) and come back to Chicago, where you can still water your lawn ( and buy a real nice house for $500,000). He's starting to think about it.
The irony is that for decades people have been moving to places like California, Arizona, Texas, etc where there's a severe water shortage. Plus places like Arizona are so damn hot that you will have to be in the air conditioning most of the time. My point is that all these hellholes back here in the Midwest and Northeast - hellholes like Detroit, Chicago, Scranton, Cleveland, Buffalo NY, etc- will be prime real estate when the climate feces hits the fan. When they run out of water they'll come back so fast. We have water and our climate (which is being affected, no doubt about it) is always buffered by the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.
Water is the next oil. Is China going to be able to provide fresh water for the next 30 years? I really don't know the answer for China but I know that here in the US a water shortage threatens the Pacific Northwest. It's been a severe drought for years and there's been some catastrophic wildfires. Watering your lawn is verboten in most areas. My buddy in San Jose says his landscaping is 100% dead. I told him many times to get his money (his modest ranch is worth over a million dollars) and come back to Chicago, where you can still water your lawn ( and buy a real nice house for $500,000). He's starting to think about it.
The irony is that for decades people have been moving to places like California, Arizona, Texas, etc where there's a severe water shortage. Plus places like Arizona are so damn hot that you will have to be in the air conditioning most of the time. My point is that all these hellholes back here in the Midwest and Northeast - hellholes like Detroit, Chicago, Scranton, Cleveland, Buffalo NY, etc- will be prime real estate when the climate feces hits the fan. When they run out of water they'll come back so fast. We have water and our climate (which is being affected, no doubt about it) is always buffered by the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.
Toronto and southern Ontario will be good places to be in the future if the climate goes nuts and people run out of water. Hold on to that real estate!
- Status
- Not open for further replies.