This only happens in the dystopian fiction books, as we would like to think. I happen to be reading a lot of them lately, and as I noted in my reply, they will find a way in, if the desperate and hungry, or the others, who could care less about human life, decide that they will gain entry at any cost, unless it's them.

She seemed to think that a well secured exterior door with metal plates would be enough to keep them out. In our current world, with an active police force, yes. But in a different world, where the grid is down for the foreseeable future, no. These severely buttressed doors will only take them longer to get through. Long enough for you to go get your gun and start shooting them through a front window. That is, is if you have a gun, know how to shoot it, and are not hesitant to kill another human being.

A large majority of urban and suburban households in the United States, do not have guns, or they have a gun that they've never taken to a range and practised with it. A lot of people think that if they wave it around, the bad guys will run away or dither long enough for the police to show up. What if there were no more police because the power grid failed? Then what are you going to do?

In the United States right now, we have an ageing power grid, and, out in the south west, the hydro-electric dams on the Colorado River are verging on stopping because there isn't enough water in the river or the reservoirs behind the dams to turn the turbine generators anymore. What happens to cities like Phoenix, AZ, San Diego, CA, Los Angeles, CA and Las Vegas, when the turbines stop making electricity?

In the rest of the country, there are a lot more power outages due to severe storms these days and the utility poles breaking in the high winds or from trees coming down on the wires. Just for example, I live in central Virginia, about a half an hour west of Richmond. The capitol of Virginia. How many of you didn't know that? But I digress.

I have a lot of sensitive IT equipment in my IT room, and I have sophisticated battery back up systems for all of my servers, routers and switches. Even this computer I'm typing from right now. In the last month and a half, I have had 20 power outages. All of them were the flickering power outages that happen in big thunder storms, which we have had a lot of this summer. My battery backups measure these and report them to me on a screen.

I'm lucky. But most people aren't like me. They live in the average home, and when the power flickers, or goes out, they wait for the storms to pass and reset the digital clocks. I do that too, but I also wear an old fashioned military style analogue wrist watch.

What do you think would happen if the power didn't come back on? I will give you a real world example. Back in February of 2021, a freak cold front brought the polar vortex all the way down to central and south Texas. The snow and ice brought down the privatised grid for a week. People died from the cold, or were driven from their homes when they flooded due to frozen, then broken water pipes and burst hot water heaters. Some people couldn't eat, or anything, because they were completely dependant on the power grid, for the better part of that week.

That could happen anywhere in the United States right now, at any time. It does happen a lot during the winter months, but in the northern tier states, they're used to it, and have redundancy plans in place. I know I did when I lived in extreme north eastern Maine for ten years. I had two furnaces. One was a fuel oil burning steam generating furnace, that I rarely used. My primary was a wood burning furnace that would keep my house warm, whether I had electricity or not, due to the way I had it set up in my basement. I eventually replaced it with a wood pellet furnace, that I also could set up to burn without electricity. But again, I'm a survivalist and I always think about things like that when I plan my infrastructure projects for my homes.

Where live, I have solar panels on my roof. And as soon as I can afford it,. I'm going to add in a battery storage system in case the power goes down for a lengthy period. They are very expensive right now, and under Trump's government, there are no more government incentives for green energy anymore. I'm glad I put those panels on my roof long before he became president again.

Anyway, survival is the name of the game. As noted in Ms. Wildfire's article, which I will put the link to at the bottom here, bracing your doors from some idiot who decides he wants what's in your house, in this day of still having a police force, is not a bad idea.

My plan is to strengthen my house, defend it with my weapons until such time as I realise that I may be outnumbered, and bug out before they eventually find a way to get in. Which they will, if there are no more police to deter them. Again, I'm an exception. I have had lots of firearms training, and I have killed people on battlefields. I have no remorse over taking a life when its either me or them. I won't hesitate to shoot or cut someone unto death, in order to protect myself and my wife, if needed. I prefer to bug out before things come to that. I will leave a few bodies on the front porch and/or in the backyard before I go though.

And that is the real truth about what will happen during an extended power outage. The bad guys will come out of the wood work, and try to take advantage of the situation, as soon as they think they won't get caught and punished. The hungry will take a little while longer before their morals will give in to that emptiness that comes with extended periods of no food.

How many people will die within the first couple of weeks of an extended power outage? A lot. Most of them in the first few days will die violent deaths, as the criminals will kill them for whatever they can take. After that, the hunger will set in and, after about a month, a lot of people will start dying of acute hunger. Most will die from the violence though.

How many people are truly prepared for a massive power outage that lasts for a really long time? How prepared are you to defend  your home from violent gangs intent on taking what ever they think is useful to them, including people for slave labour? Do you have an escape plan if you had to get out in the wee hours of the night?

All the steel bolted doors in the world won't help you if a large gang decides to burn you out of your house, just because they want you dead for defying them. If the power grid fails, this will be the new reality for a lot of people around the country.

I have a plan for this, do you?