Bog Iron: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Skill?

 I actually think existing scrap steel supplies will be adequate but it is always good to know how to make your own iron.

More About Balcony Solar

I mentioned a couple days ago.  When I searched on amazon for "balcony "plug and play" solar" I got matches that look interesting.  A long-time concern that I have had about PV systems as civil defense is EMP damage.  If you bought one of these and put in a Faraday cage, you would have a post-apocalyptic power solution that you could be pretty sure will work.

Interesting Article About Balcony Solar

11/30/25 Guardian:

"Acquiring solar panels to use on balconies are soon to become available for millions of Americans, with advocates hoping the technology will quickly go mainstream.

'Earlier this year, Utah became the first state in the country to pass legislation allowing people to purchase and install small, portable solar panels that plug into a standard wall socket.

"When attached outside to the balcony or patio of a dwelling, such panels can provide enough power for residents to run free of charge, home appliances such as fridges, dishwashers, washing machines and wi-fi without spending money on electricity from the grid."

The output of the micro inverter is a 110VAC plug so the current goes into your existing wiring feeding anything plugged in to other outlets on that breaker.

Theoretically, anything that can feed power back into the grid needs an interrupter to protect electric utility workers in the event their side is down.  It appears these changes in state laws would allow PV systems producing low voltages to be hooked up to the house wiring.  This is attractive for its simplicity and relatively low cost.

Anyone have any knowledge to share?

Making Electricity From Apocalyptic Scrap

I mentioned my desire to see how practical is was to make thermocouple for generating electricity.   So what scrap metals will i find in Mad Max world?

I started with a piece steel angle and a copper wire.  I stripped insulation from the end to get a pretty solid contract on the steel.  It does not need any insulation.   A copper bar in full contact with the steel works just fine.  Perhaps better with more opportunities for a solid connection. 

The copper strands are wrapped around the steel not very tightly.  I may try using a soldered connection next time.  The voltmeter lead is literally just lying on the steel and the other lead has the other end of the copper wire wrapped around it pretty securely. 

In shade, I was getting .1 millivolts. 

When I moved the junction into direct sunlight it went to .2 millivolts and stayed there.  Then I took a 5.5' lens leftover from a 1970s aerospace project that I have been lugging around for 50 years and focused the Sun on the junction point. A solid .3 millivolts. 

I tried this with the copper wire and a piece of aluminum rod.  This showed zero current in shade and only .1 millivolts in sunlight with magnifying lens.  I would expect the copper/aluminum junction to be more effective than copper and steel based on elextronegativity numbers for copper, iron, and aluminum.  Aluminum, however; produces a strong oxide coating as soon as it is exposed.   I may not be getting much of a voltage because of that.   I have ordered a small copper rod for further experiments. 

Okay you are going to need a lot of cells to produce a useful voltage for recharging, but while waiting for civilization to come back up you will have time.  Unlike PV panels, many of which I expect will be EMP fried, this is as simple as it gets.

What If Your Furnace and Electricity Go Out?

This guy shows how to make a lamp/heater using a Mason jar and copper pipe that can both give basic illumination and heat.  He recommends using denatured alcohol but demonstrates that 70% isopropyl (rubbing alcohol) works just fine.

You could make these in advance but you can also make these once disaster hits if you still have a working cordless drill, a Mason jar, some pipe, and a way to cut the pipe. 

Thermocouple Power Generation

One of my biggest concerns about relying on photovoltaic panels as backup power is that the Big Dog of backup power needs involves EMP, which fries electronics real well.  I have found conflicting statements about how vulnerable PV panels are to EMP.  Of course, even if the panels survive, the inverter is not likely to survive.  

I am reading Stern and Grinspoon's Chaoosing New Horizons about the mission to Pluto.  Because I worked on Voyager, I was already familiar with the use of radio isotope thermal generators (PV is a lost cause that far out).  RTGs use radioactive materials to heat a thermocouple producing electricity. 

Thermocouple aren't terribly effective sources of DC current.  They have two advantages:

1. They are not at risk of EMP destruction of chips.

2. They are utterly simple to make.  Two dissimilar metals joined together.  Apply heat at the junction: DC power output.  You still need an inverter but you keep that in a Faraday cage until needed.

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The output voltage is tiny.  You couple thzijc em together in series to produce a thermopile, analogous to multiple cells summing to a battery.

I have a temptation to use my scrap copper and zinc for experiment. 

Retired Missile Silos

I have always thought a retired ICBM silo would make a neat home: quiet, well -insulated, and earthquake-proof. (Oh, and safe from anything but a very near atomic bomb explosion.  Not that most of us worry about that.) This video conveys how much was required to render one useable after the Air Force decommissioned an Atlas base.  It looks profoundly cool.

I Am Assuming (Hoping) This is Just Tit-for-Tat, Not a Genuine Fear

8/3/25 CNN:

US President Donald Trump said Friday he was ordering two US Navy nuclear submarines to “appropriate regions,” in response to remarks by Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and current deputy chairman of its Security Council.

In what he called an effort to be “prepared,” Trump said in a Truth Social post that he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”

The president did not specify what type of submarines were being moved or where to, and the Pentagon usually reveals little about any of its subs’ movements.

I really doubt Russia would telegraph a warning of imminent nuclear attack without some quid pro quo of bargaining.  But Putin needs to worry that the oligarchs or the military will ask, "Why did we spend a million men, much of our conventional military, many of our strategic bombers, and drive two neutral neighbors into NATO.  What did we get for this?"

I hope you have an emergency food and water supply just in case.

Again: Do Not Worry

11/18/24 Guardian:

Two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, have been severed, raising suspicions of sabotage by bad actors.

The episode on Monday recalled other incidents in the same waterway that authorities have probed as potentially malicious, including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Sea gas pipelines.

The 1,200km (745-mile) cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped working at about 0200 GMT on Monday, Finnish state-controlled cybersecurity and telecoms company Cinia said.

A 218km (135-mile) internet link between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland island went out of service at about 0800 GMT on Sunday, according to Lithuania’s Telia Lietuva, part of Sweden’s Telia Company group.

Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage”.

UPDATE: Danish Navy seizes Chinese ship captained by a Russian for this.

Nothing to See Here, Just Move Along

11/18/24 CNN:

Sweden and Finland have updated guidance to their citizens on how to survive war, as NATO allies bolster defense measures against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict.

Both nations joined the transatlantic alliance in the past two years, after Russia invaded its neighbor. Many European countries have since ramped up military spending to bolster long-term security in the region.

Booklets distributed to millions of households in the Nordic nations include instructions on how to prepare for the effects of military conflicts, communications outages and power cuts, as well as extreme weather events.

From stockpiling bottled water and sanitary products, to growing edible foodstuffs at home, government authorities offered tips on how residents could sustain themselves in the event of war. The brochures also include advice for parents and caregivers, instructing people to preserve diapers, medication and baby food.

The Swedish government will distribute “Om krisen eller kriget kommer (If crisis or war comes),” to all five million households over a two-week period from November 18, according to the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), a governmental agency that compiled the pamphlet.

The fifth version of the Swedish brochure, which was first published in World War II, will place “greater emphasis on preparing for war,” a statement from the MSB said on Monday. The digital version of brochure, released in October, has been downloaded about 55,000 times, the agency added.

I Think This is Still Saber-Rattling, But Make Sure You Can Prepare with Potable Water and Spare Foodv on Short Notice

 11/19/24 NBC News:

Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for his country's use of nuclear weapons Tuesday, days after the United States allowed Ukraine to strike inside Russia using American missiles.

The Kremlin announced that Putin had approved an updated nuclear doctrine — a document that governs how Russia uses its nuclear arsenal — including the declaration that Moscow could unleash a nuclear strike if subject to an attack by a nonnuclear country that has the support of a nuclear state.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed later Tuesday that Ukraine had carried out its first strike on Russian territory using U.S.-supplied long-range weapons, hitting a military facility in the Bryansk region with an ATACMS missile.

I suspect Russian ICBMs and SLBMs may well turn out to be in the functional state as their conventuional forces turned out to be.  Viktor Beleno's MiG Pilot recounts how ground crews used the MiG-25's ethanol coolant for drinking.  I doubt any part ofb an ICBM is drinkable or smokable (yes, I am imagining an ICBM transformed into a really, reaaly big blunt) but still....

I Feel So Much Better

7/19/24 CNN:

"US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said that Iran’s breakout time – the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon – “is now probably one or two weeks” as Tehran has continued to develop its nuclear program."

Fortunately,  Iran only calls us "the Great Satan," because they respect and love us.

Unexpected Places

The title is not startling: "How to Build a Fallout Shelter in Your Home (on a Budget, to Boot)".  The location is: realtor.com.

Maybe North Korea Is Not the Nuclear Threat To Us They Pretend

7/1/24 Newsweek:

"An abortive North Korean missile fired on Monday may have endangered the nation's capital after the South's military said one of the rockets fell short of its intended target."

Their artillery shells sent to Russia have been QC failures.   Perhaps we can hope their ICBMs are equally produced.

Emergency No Flame Cooking

I mentioned that the electric lunchbox was certainly heating the water but I forgot it was running and the battery was at 0V by the time I checked it.  I just looked more carefully: it is a 7A-Hr battery.  At a draw of 70 watts that drains pretty quickly.  Plugged into a car that works well I am sure.  Using the 110VAC connector makes the plate too hot to touch almost immediately and the water unpleasantly warm in a few minutes.  Maybe I will repeat this experiment with a higher capacity lithium battery.

I will start with the tire pump/jump starter box from the car next.

Why Being Prepared Only Seems a Little Overwrought

6/19/24 Eurasian Times:

"The US Congress could reinstate nuclear weapons capability on 30 B-52H Stratofortress bombers, which were previously reconfigured to launch only conventional weapons under the terms of the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) with Russia."

That Electric Lunchbox I Mentioned...

I plugged it into my 13 A-Hr Lithium battery and within a couple minutes the heating element was too hot to touch.  I put a Pyrex cup with two cups of water on it. Then I forgot all about it.  Several hours later, the water was warm.  The battery was so empty that even the LED voltage display was showing nothing.  It is recharging now.  I have no idea how hot the water got while I was writing a rebuttal.   I will try this again with a timer running.   Unlike the chemical heater that I used, the heating element was definitely too hot to touch for more than a second or two.

I Am Doing This for You

You may recall several weeks (months?) back I asked about a non-fire method of warming canned food and ideally boiling water for Minute Rice that could be run off batteries for a civil defense role.  One of you mentioned the J.C. Whitney catalog used to have items intended to run off cigarette lighter plugs.

This seems to be like that.  It is an electric heated lunchbox that can operate off 110 VAC or 12VDC.  Reviews indicate it can warm up a meal in about 40 minutes drawing about 80 watts.  A stack of charged lithium batteries in your emergency improvised bunker would make canned chili and rice a palatable meal once you have consumed the emergency rations most Americans wear on their bellies.

It will arrive tomorrow and I will put it to the test warming chili and trying to cook rice.  I will then inform you of the results.   A lithium battery is, I think, pretty well immune to EMP.  A small solar panel stored in a Faraday cage could recharge lithium batteries enough on sunny days to keep you eating hot food until you ran out of food or farmers start producing food to exchange for ammo.

Let's face it, if Putin became desperate enough to go nuclear, we all know the geniuses that tell Joe what to misread from the teleprompter will solve the crisis without missile launches,  right?

Between the Initial Flash and the Shock Wave

If you live far enough from Ground Zero like I do, there is one important step to take after a light brighter then the Sun gets your attention.  If you are 20 miles back, the shock wave will take at least two minutes to get here.  Even a one megaton blast will produce only light structural damage this far out.  But that includes broken window glass. This is both a personal hazard from flying glass shards but also a dangerous mess to clean up.  

If you have glass doors, open them so the shock wave will go past not through the glass.  Open all windows.  The outer facing panes may well break but likely be held from farther entry by the inner window.  Remember that most windows now are double pane.  I suspect that most combinations of four panes will prevent shards inside.

Of course, the outfacing windows may well be broken but close the windows and tape plastic over the broken windows to keep fallout from entering.

I am not sure what I am missing.  Hints?

Preparing to Move

The movers will not move guns or ammunition so I am removing everything that is not (magazines, holsters, extraneous weapons from my master's thesis) and boxing it.  When we moved here four years ago, the safe was on a not entirely level floor so I weighted down the bottom with ammunition.  How did I forget that I had 3000 rounds of 9mm, .45 ACP, .22 in addition to my already more absurd stockpile.  The radiation shielding just got more complete