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Feb. 18, 2021 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
31:47
Situation Update, Feb 18th, 2021 - Texas BLACKOUT report
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Welcome to the Situation Update.
It is Tuesday, at least the day I'm recording this, February 16th, 2021.
I don't think I'll be able to get this file out to you until at least Wednesday, maybe even longer.
But I wanted to let you know the status here in Texas.
We are experiencing either Joe Biden's dark winter or some kind of convergence of multiple black swans.
It's incredible.
It's like living in a third world country at the moment.
Remember, I lived in Ecuador and we had power blackouts from time to time in Ecuador, but nothing like what we're experiencing in Texas right now.
So in this podcast, I'm going to give you just a brief picture of what's actually happening in Texas because almost nobody...
Well, I should say most people do not have internet access.
Cell towers are down because they rely on the power grid.
The power grid is in bad shape, rolling blackouts.
We are experiencing power in some cases.
Well, for every 30-minute window, the power company might give us anywhere from 4 to 10 minutes of power, and the rest of that 30-minute window is a blackout.
And yet there are certain areas such as hospitals and people who live near hospitals who are maintaining their power.
And so they have, you know, water and power and everything else.
Whereas in many other places around Texas, people have no water, no power, and no food in some cases as well.
Some cities...
I saw a message from Kyle, Texas, which is south of Austin, had put out a warning that they have no power to run their water towers, and so the water supply, I think, has already run out.
There are water facilities that have frozen and burst.
The pipes have burst.
That feed entire communities and in some cases small towns or cities in Texas.
So many, many people have very little power.
Millions are out of power completely, 100%.
And then millions more people have power part of the time like I just described.
And then millions of people have no water.
And also most of the grocery stores are closed.
So people who did not prep with extra food are now rationing food supplies.
And this is happening even in Houston, which is typically a very warm city.
It's incredible.
It feels like kind of a post-EMP survival scenario.
And let me tell you, post-EMP life really absolutely sucks.
There's nothing good about it.
So I'm going to share with you some things about what I've been able to do and some things that I've learned here.
This is a real prepping trial run, that's for sure.
And I've found some faults in my own preparedness plans, which I'll mention here.
And it's kind of disturbing to learn that because, you know, I consider myself a very experienced prepper.
But even I did not expect temperatures in Texas to hit like four degrees Fahrenheit.
And then not be able to operate machinery that would provide backup power.
Diesel generators and diesel tractors, in other words, are not starting or running because diesel engines hate the cold.
And so normally you have a diesel engine heater which uses the power grid.
So when you lose the power grid, then you can't heat your diesel engine and so you can't start the diesel generator and so you can't restore power.
And so you're stuck in a loop of failure there.
And that's what I've been experiencing at the moment and just living off power for a few minutes at a time.
That's it.
It's pretty wild.
But you learn how to cook food in just a few minutes.
And you learn how to live with very little water.
And so my wife and I have been able to get by on just three gallons a day for the last few days, just living out of buckets, you know, using buckets of water for brushing your teeth or making smoothies and I'm still able to make smoothies because we have a few minutes of electricity every once in a while.
And so I get the smoothies ready to blend.
And then when the power comes back on, I blend And if you miss that window, you have to wait another 30 minutes or so to get power.
So it forces you to really structure your day and also really conserve water in a huge way.
When this started happening, I knew that water was going to become an issue.
So I left all my water faucets on, dripping a little bit, you know, to keep the water moving.
But the cold wave, the cold burst that hit central Texas was just so devastating that pipes burst and pressure was lost and that didn't work out.
And then after that, all the water pipes that normally feed into those systems also froze.
So there's a lot of pipe repair that's necessary and a lot of infrastructure that has been destroyed, not just in people's homes, but also government buildings and schools and so on.
There are shelters being set up all across Texas, even outside of Austin, for example.
They've turned a school into a shelter because people are abandoning their homes because there's not enough heat and no water, no electricity, no cell service, and so on.
So people are converging in these shelter areas.
Now, there's a lot of speculation about By many people that this is a weather weapon of some kind because this polar vortex, whatever you call it, has really hit the red states, the pro-Trump states, basically the states that signed on to the Texas lawsuit with the Supreme Court.
We don't have any hard evidence that that's the case.
We do know there is weather manipulation technology.
We do know that geoengineering is a real thing, that terraforming is going on and so on, but we don't know that this particular weather incident could be the result of a weapon or not.
It seems like it would be very difficult for a weapon to push that much cold air around.
So I'm not endorsing that theory, just mentioning that a lot of people suspect that this is some kind of weather weaponization.
But one thing that we know is true and very disturbing is that the power companies in Texas appear to be...
It appears that they have extra power to deliver, but they're failing to deliver it because it's costing them too much money, and delivering it would result in a massive loss of money and profit.
And so many people are freezing to death, especially elderly, because the power companies don't want to lose money.
Now, I think that is the case.
Power costs have gone up in Texas from normally something like $25 per megawatt hour to, at its peak, $9,000 per megawatt hour.
Okay.
So, that's $9 per kilowatt hour, which is insane.
You know, normally it's like 2.5 cents or something.
So you can see that for every kilowatt hour that a power company delivers to the consumer, unless they charge the consumer some crazy rate, like many, many dollars per kilowatt hour, then they're going to be losing a lot of money.
The retail rate that consumers pay in Texas may only be 10 cents or 12 cents per kilowatt hour.
So the power companies are withholding power, it seems, from their own consumers in order to not lose money.
So this is the dynamic that Well, there are many factors that feed into this.
On one hand, they may not even have enough assets or cash flow to lose that much money.
They're talking about this exposure of millions of dollars per day from some of these smaller electric companies or cooperatives, and they simply may not have the cash flow.
You may ask, well, why is the power cost so high?
Well, part of the answer to that is that many of the power generation systems in Texas, they froze.
They literally froze up.
So those include coal power plants as well as natural gas power plants.
Oh, and the wind turbines, of course.
The wind turbines froze.
They no longer rotate.
So much for green energy, but also the coal energy is shutting down in many areas.
The problem is these facilities were built in a way that obviously did not anticipate crazy Arctic cold air making its way down to southern Texas or central Texas.
But that's exactly what has happened.
And so a lot of these facilities may have used, for example, water as coolant or heat sinks to circulate heat throughout their system, to take it from boilers to steam turbines or whatever they're using, depending on their system.
And that water...
Apparently, it has frozen.
And a lot of these power stations went offline, I think, what was it, Sunday night?
And so you had this massive power scarcity that was hitting then, at the same time that massive demand was also slamming the system on the part of consumers.
So think about that.
Skyrocketing demand, but then your supply is suddenly cratering.
And then they bid up prices to try to find supply from other sources, such as Mexico, for example, or to try to encourage legacy power generation companies to bring systems online that were still functioning.
So that's what caused the price to go sky high.
There was a desperate demand for more power.
As a result, If power companies were to pass through that cost to consumers, many consumers would be paying, just to power their homes, hundreds of dollars a day, if not like $1,000 a day in some cases.
So those are the economics of what's happening.
And there are some huge lessons in this for all of us, no matter where you live.
Even if you don't live in the U.S., if you live somewhere else around the world, think about how fragile the infrastructure is.
This is something I'm observing firsthand here, observing how even my own ranch infrastructure, you know, the water pipes weren't ready for this kind of Arctic blast, and most people's pipes weren't ready because in Texas you just don't bury them deep enough in the ground to deal with that.
If you live in North Dakota, You know, you deal with this kind of temperature all the time.
So everybody, the tradespeople that build homes and do plumbing, they anticipate this and they engineer systems in order to not freeze.
But in Texas, obviously, no one expects this.
And I don't know when the last time was that this happened.
It seems like maybe in the 1980s or something.
But that's over 30 years ago.
So obviously a lot of homes and buildings and schools and government buildings and so on that have been constructed in Texas since then, and they are not adequately protected against this kind of Arctic freeze situation.
So the lesson for everybody else is think about your infrastructure.
How is it vulnerable in ways that you did not anticipate?
And if you rely on the power grid, if you rely on municipal water, or if you rely on cell towers, or bandwidth, or emergency services, these kinds of things, how reliable is that really?
Because, as you know, I've been teaching for many, many years, teaching people that all these systems are really not that reliable, and you need to be able to get back to basics in order to survive.
And so one of the things that I've been doing, my wife and I just collecting water that's coming off the roof in barrels and then using that water, put it through our gravity filter.
You know, thank goodness we have a big Berkey gravity filter that needs no electricity.
So we use the Berkey.
We take the roof water, which is really rainwater that froze on the roof, but then the sun came out, and so the water started to melt a little bit just because of the sunlight.
Even though the temperature is still below freezing, the sun energy helps it melt.
And so we're able to collect...
I don't know, something like 100 gallons of water just off one roof, just using buckets and barrels.
And then you can use that water as we're doing.
We're using it for flushing toilets.
You have to just pour the bucket in.
Into the back of the toilet, and you can flush toilets, or you can use it to wash dishes, or you can use it to wash your hands.
And then you can filter that water through a gravity filter to have drinking water, or water for brushing your teeth, or bathing water, or whatever you want.
So...
And by the way, showers are out of the picture right now.
It's more like sponge baths out of a bucket with rather...
Rather minimal comfort because, of course, everything's freaking cold.
So that's the way we're living right now, which reminds me of...
Some hiking trips, camping when I was in Peru, hiking up to Machu Picchu many years ago, and we were all freezing our butts off, living in a tent in a sleeping bag and taking a crazy cold shower and some mountain spring water runoff, you know, and shivering to death.
That kind of reminds me of right now, actually, living in Texas in this Arctic freeze.
So you don't want to bathe every day when that's what you have to look forward to.
But it is like camping.
It's like camping in your own home.
Your house is cold.
You know, power's only working every once in a while.
You've got no cell service most of the time.
And you've got no running water, so you have to make do.
That's what it's like right now in Texas for many millions of people.
So I'm better off than most in terms of preparedness, and I feel very thankful for that.
And even though the situation sucks, it is a good practice run, which is why I wanted to record this and share this with you as well.
So I've got lots of food supplies.
You know, I've got a rocket stove, although I haven't had to.
If I needed to, I could just set that up in the backyard or something, and I could boil water, and I could cook food with a rocket stove.
I've got wood heat.
So, you know, I've got wood-burning stoves, and I've got lots and lots of wood on the ranch.
I've been out gathering the wood and chopping the wood and burning it, and so able to heat better than most people, although the blowers and everything that normally circulate the hot air out of that, those blowers only work a few minutes every 30 minutes because of the power grid situation.
But at least we have some heat, where many people have none.
And at least we have water where many people have none.
And I've also got a pond.
And even though the pond has now frozen over, if I needed to, I could use an axe and chop a hole in it and I could grab some pond water.
But I haven't needed to do that because I've got the roof water, which is much cleaner.
So I've got water sources.
And I've got buckets and barrels and things like that.
And water filters like the Berkey filter.
Thank goodness.
Whereas a lot of people don't have these things.
And I've got stored food and a lot of people don't.
And so the grocery stores being closed is a real emergency for a lot of people.
They're rationing food and they're freaking out.
And this is why some people go into the shelters because they can't figure out, you know, how are they going to literally survive in their home with no food, no water, no electricity, no cell service, and so on.
It's crazy.
Yeah, it's a very dire situation for many, many people.
And I did not expect this to happen in Texas.
But then again, this is 2021, and it's a year, as I've said, that we should expect to be very, very crazy, whereas 2020, I said, was just a warm-up.
Get ready for 2021!
And then, as I was joking, feels like this is Joe Biden's dark winter now.
I mean, they knocked Texas offline.
And not just Texas, but also Oklahoma and Missouri and Kansas, you know, Iowa.
But a bunch of states are just out of commission for the whole freaking week.
And that's no small thing.
So, wow.
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about, you know, so my backup power plan, which I've used before during hurricanes and so on.
And hurricane, the last big hurricane, I think it was Harvey or whatever, that was nothing compared to this.
But my backup power plan has always been to have a John Deere tractor with a power takeoff generator.
And then I have a transfer switch and I can just plug in that generator to my local power system and I can power my house and everything.
And I've done that before during hurricanes when the grid went down.
But this plan, of course, is contingent on being able to start the tractor.
And sadly, it's so freaking cold that I haven't been able to start the tractor.
And I've tried.
I've tried jumping it.
I've tried supplemental lithium-ion booster power.
I have tried a number of things.
And these diesel engines just do not like the cold.
They don't like it.
They won't start.
And so my power plan never anticipated these cold temperatures, and that's where it's failed.
And this is going to be true with every diesel generator.
So I'm going to have to rethink the power plan here, the backup power plan.
But even if I had power, by the way, I wouldn't have bandwidth because all of the multiple jumps, the hops on the bandwidth, how do you say it, the bandwidth highway that goes from me to the Internet, those hops all depend on power.
And since there's no power or rolling power, it's very rare that all of those hops are in fact operating.
And so I've got no ability to publish stories or get podcasts uploaded or anything like that, or even to read the news.
That might be why I feel so calm, by the way, even though there's no power and water and all these things are I don't feel panicked.
I actually feel mentally pretty good, probably because I'm not reading the news.
So I have no idea what's going on in the world, and that seems to bring a lot of peace.
Maybe this is the best strategy moving forward, come to think of it, is just...
Just pretend that you're cut off from the world for a week and just chill and focus on the immediate situation.
I've been doing exercise.
I've been doing some cleaning and organizing.
I've been doing some planning.
And all those things are really positive things to do.
So this has given me the opportunity to do those things and also some reading.
I've been reading some more of the Bible verses as well.
So the time has been well spent.
It's just doing totally different things from what I normally do.
So I appreciate, by the way, your prayers and blessings, and trust me, I'm fine.
I'm okay.
I'm always better prepared than most people, even if my own preparedness plans have some obvious vulnerabilities, as I've discovered.
But I'm still better off than most, and So I haven't been able to drive anywhere and see what I can do to help others.
The roads are a nightmare, and what happens is the sun melts some of the snow.
There's snow all over Texas.
The sun melts a little bit of it and then during the afternoons and then that refreezes and creates black ice in the evening.
And then that doesn't melt until the following midday.
And so going on the road right now is a horrible idea.
All you're likely to do is get in an accident and add to the burden of the first responders who are already way overburdened.
And obviously, I don't want to end up in a hospital where they'll have a forced COVID vaccination as well.
So I'm hunkered down.
I've checked with some people that live not too far away to see if they need help, and they're doing fine as well.
They're capable country folks, so they're fine.
I am checking with those folks.
And as far as what we can do as a state, I think, well, obviously we need a better power grid, but I think secession is the answer because we need to keep Texas money in Texas so we can invest Texas money in the Texas power grid or infrastructure, public education, things like that.
Right now, Texas pays way too much money to the federal government, a lot more than it gets back in return.
And the debasement of the money supply causes Texans, as well as people everywhere else, To lose the value of the money they've earned and saved.
And so that doesn't help anyone.
And so I really think the answer is, even though this may sound like a distant stretch, the answer to these problems is really honest money, small government, and having a nation, which in this case would be the Republic of Texas, keep the money within its own borders in order to invest in its own infrastructure.
And then we wouldn't have a third world power grid, which is what we're experiencing sadly right now.
And by the way, the other lesson is that these black swan events can happen to anyone at any time.
And the system is absolutely not ready to deal with this.
And I would encourage you to think about the stock market and the money supply and the debt bubble and money printing from banks, for example, central banks.
This cold spell, this Arctic blast is nothing, in my opinion, compared to the debt bubble collapse that's coming.
And when that happens, I think it's going to be even more devastating.
It will cause mass homelessness.
It will cause people to lose everything they've ever earned.
And I think that financial dark winter is on the way.
And so the answer to preparing for that is to, of course, get out of the fiat currency and get into maybe gold and silver or land or all these things that I've mentioned before that hold value.
Maybe a little bit of crypto so that you can be mobile with it.
Anyway, just some things to keep in mind.
As prepared as we are, Even our best preparedness plans can fail in certain ways, like mine have here in Texas.
But I was able to fall back on other preparedness items to cushion the blow.
So even though my tractor didn't start and I didn't have my own power grid, I did have a gravity water filter so I can have clean, drinkable water, see?
And I do have wood heat.
So that works.
And I did have a lot of wood prepared in advance, so all I have to do is go pick it up and shove it into the wood stove.
So this is why you need layers of preparedness.
And I have, obviously, plenty of backup food.
And so even though the grocery stores are closed, it's not a crisis.
So when you think about preparedness, think about layers, multiple layers, understanding that some of those layers are going to fail in ways that we can't even anticipate.
Even if you think about something big like an EMP weapon that takes down the power grid for the entire continent, normally you think about EMP and you think about just things that have to do with the power grid and electronic circuits and so on, but What would happen if an EMP attack happened at the same time that there was a cold spell, which is kind of what we're experiencing now?
Or what would happen if an EMP attack came at the same time that there was a real pandemic where you couldn't risk being close to other people because of the risk of infectious disease?
I'm talking about a real pandemic like Ebola going crazy or something all across the country.
What happens when two or more black swan events happen at the same time?
That's where things get really dicey.
And that's where I think...
Frankly, that's kind of where we are right now in Texas.
Multiple black swans converging.
It's like a black swan festival in Texas right now, and it's no fun, but it's a good reminder of how important preparedness really is.
So I'm just going to wrap this up here because I just want to share that message with you, tell you I'm okay.
We're doing fine.
We're helping out as much as we can.
And we're going to be working to get back online and get everything back in place.
But frankly, the Texas power grid is not capable of handling extreme cold weather.
And I would imagine the people who just moved here from California, Are suddenly thinking, holy crap!
Not only is it crazy cold, but there's no power here.
Well, it's probably because so many people are moving in.
The housing boom has been huge, and so the Texas infrastructure hasn't kept up with that.
And now we're finding out just how far behind the grid really is and how ill-prepared Texas is for black swan events, especially cold weather.
So I would imagine Governor Abbott is getting an earful every single minute of every day right now.
And the power companies are too.
Probably going to be lawsuits for the next 10 years.
For all the damage and all the deaths that are happening across Texas because of this.
And as far as I'm concerned, I think this is kind of par for the course.
This is what we're going to have to expect for many years to come is a lot of people suffering from a lack of planning or black swan events or convergence of disasters, governments being ill-prepared, corporations being ill-prepared and so on.
It's not going to be a pretty picture.
But if you're resilient and if you have multiple layers of plans, then you can make it through.
And we're making it through.
We're doing just fine.
And I hope to be back online soon to be able to bring you these podcasts every day.
Situation updates back to normal, but we'll see.
In the meantime...
Thank you for all your support.
Oh yeah, the Health Ranger store has also been shut down probably most of this week because of the extreme weather and the road conditions and so on.
So it's a dicey situation, but I appreciate your support and we will be back online soon.
The weather is supposed to be sunny and 70 degrees this coming weekend.
Yeah, imagine that.
It's like a summer day.
Just a few days away.
Thank you for listening.
Mike Adams here, naturalnews.com.
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