Yes, extreme situations will require extreme solutions, but those are probably not just round the corner yet, if we are realistic. Its kinda nice to feel like you got the upper hand for once thugh
But if we alredy theoretise… l have sayd in many occasions, my bigest fear in a shtf scenario, being war, natural disaster, whatever… is not the primary catastrophy but city folk. Just imagine a few dozzen thousand starving city folks roaming around, trying to find food and prepared to do everything to get it. Thats a picture that wakes me up at night.
Has happened before too. Grandfather reported horible things happening in sieged and starved Leningrad. Butcher shops had pork like meat that everyone knew what its origin was but turned a blind eye to not die of starvetion…
Food comfiscation. Luckly, here we got a lot of practice combating that houses had special hidden compartments where food was hidden. Lots of stories about that feald.
This reminds me of an interesting story my father in law told. The farm was once in the path of a Partisan batalion. They drunk a barrel of cider (dont remember, 300 or 600l) ghen marched on. There is a hill behind the house, maybee 150 paces to the top. Just when the last soldier vanished behind it, a german brigade showed up on the cellar door. Shuld the partisans decided to drink a nother pint and be just seconds slower, the germans wuld of killed everyone and burn the house. Wich they did at neighbours place…
I don’t want to introduce panic and unrest, the saying goes, “no soup is eaten as hot as it is cooked”, so probably this “energy crisis” will hit our buttocks more gently, but I think that inflation and high prices will be quite emptied the people’s savings. Anyway, the knowledge we share here will surely receive attention, winter is long with little sun
I don’t know about other countries, but Americans need to be aware that there is a long standing Executive Order allowing for confiscation of everything you own in the event of a national emergency. Never put all your eggs in one basket. Everything JO wrote is sage advise. When things are bad you will be smart to look even more downtrodden than you neighbors. Cold and hunger will override all ethics and morality. Study some non-propagandized history. Even as recent as the war in Bosnia and Serbia. Somewhere I posted a link to some writings by a guy named Selco. It will open your eyes.
We can all compare scare-your-pants-off triggers. I would put up John Barns “Intuitive 51” series of three books, where all of the variety of Big System individualistic haters on the same day worldwide sabotage modern life’s over-complications, and reliance on electronics, electricity, plastics and ff.
Wood-for-power our systems in my mind, fall into three broad categories:
The well thought out; use-refined; systems done well before a driven need.
My Victory hearth all stainless-steel unit. Anybody with a build using WK. Many of the personal systems here including the charcoal ones using a super special nozzle insert.
Then the system need as J.O. was asked: needing to be built just before an inevitable need is sensed. No time for years of trial and errors refinements. No time for piece-by-piece accumulation of expensive shop equipment’s to do hand TIG welding. Lathe made purr-fect air nozzles or threaded porting. No time or availability to source Nomex cloth to make the best self-shedding filtering system.
So J.O. I’d trust more your using knowledge based schematics you made up as a help far before a Gov’Mint freebee like the p.o.s. FEMA.
Me? I did source and give away to close friends and relatives 22 copies of BenP’s 1st editions books. Sure. To show them in print just what I’ve been up the previous 10 years. They use them or not; those books are real; out there to be picked up by someone like J.O.'s acquaintance. Build now while you still can.
Then the third system category: IT’s already happened. Whatever that is.
The hurricanes in Haiti.
That big widespread series of tornadoes.
One of the Nuclear capable does throw a few your way. Our regional historic repeating 9.0 Cascadia inevitable. The wearing all black anarchist/nihilist psychopaths who are very real now in my region finally mange to stop the wheels of the current culture. Thier 1914 repeated. Only much, much worse this time due to our intertied complexities and higher population levels.
Then in all-fallen down; you just became the 3rd world; wood-for-power system plan must be built of lay-abouts with minimal tools. I offer up this as a much better than the FEMA engine killer:
Yeah. Yeah. A what should be charcoal system being forced to run on wood. Then needing lots of cleaning-up resetting between batch runs. Far from perfect. But made big enough; those batch runs would make the power to charge up scratch-made-up car battery bank for 24 hours.
Pump enough water for 24 hours of needs.
Chill down food & medication refrigerators and food freezers for another 24 hour cycle.
Regards
Steve unruh
Jackson Mississippi. Public water supply on life support. Citizen cannot drink the brownish water without boiling it and not enough flow for showers. This is a state capitol. Whatever the cause, people have to realize that it’s time to sit down and figure out what their absolute necessities are. Sooner of later those little plastic bottles they pass out by the millions when these disaster strike will be gone. Your main efforts should be a reliable water supply. Prioritize your power needs. You aren’t going to live as you have been, sitting in the air conditioning sipping iced tea out of the fridge. You can live on a couple thousand watts for lights and refrigeration, but you will need enough capacity to run that well pump and intermittently fill a water storage tank built high enough off the ground to allow for gravity fed sinks and tubs. The weather patterns we are now experiencing will become worse people will have to adapt. The heat and power situation that is approaching so many in the months ahead should be a set of spurs to get people moving. Some will, most will not. Like many here, I have been ridiculed for a very long time for my insistence on being as self sufficient as possible. It’s like water off a ducks back now. I’m a little ashamed to say I feel some vindication now but to deny it would be a lie.
Tom I agree. I’ve been wishing I had the resources to build a water tower, and have a dual current or easy to swap pump for the well. Direct current I could power it with panels and batteries, filling up during the day, float sensor to tell it to shut off. That would in all honesty settle half of my power demand needs.
Another system type that could cross all three of these categories (well made, pre-made; made in a hurry with resources still; made after full All-Fall Down) is KristijanL’s double flute hybrid charcoal and raw wood capable downdraft gasifier.
On one of his topics he did more than just propose this. Using his hidden Mercedes compact in-trunk heavy walled charcoal unit experience, and his woodgas experiences, he showed he even had acquired the HD tubing to make one up. But a night shift working DAD, on a developing new home farmstead we wait . . . priorities rule.
Dave in Australia says he did try this concept a bit. BobMac says he is 'abuilding.
And one other fellow who’s name will not pop for me ? ? ? Sincere Apologies.
Don Mannes did build. Trial. Then modify. Then to generator running. Here:
Scroll down for his running video and his asnwering questions.
We have common store black gas pipe lengths pre-cut and pre-both ends threaded.
I can see those in a heavy waal made up meatal box, or heavy round can (service pole transformer can) pipe flanges held in place. Then removable, replaceable when buring out beyond usage.
The interior could be outside each flute sloped down to each flute air pipe with SS cooking pot cutouts like Randomn shows in his video interior. Enough pipe flanges and fiberglass stove rope sandwiched and I could see this as weldless.
Welding would be better as lighter cheaper. But . . . needs Musts when the Devil drives the sleigh.
S.U.
I just watched a 3 month old video of Joni driving his car. Windows broken cover with plastic and car damaged all of his tools stolen from his shop, very sad. But his is driving on wood, good for him. I pray for him and hope this war ends soon, I pray this to The Yehovah Almighty God in His Words Name Yesuha.
Bob
Yes, almost every day he is in my thoughts. He recently uploaded again and looking good on YT.
For the rest of the above posts I think exactly the same way.
Tom, you are so right about drinking water. Even in our swamp country we suffer drought.
Kristijan, you are ok overthere on a propertie like that. How would life look like on this poststamp with 18 million people and counting? During WW2 people starved in the big cities eating flower bulbs while potatoes were rotting on the fields where Rindert is from. Bad bad things are going to happen here if shtf.
JO, you will be in a good area too and will be able to take care of yourself. Who cares about energy prices? Not me, only making money with it. I have been asking a lot of people how they manage. Dont know and dont care, just pay the bill they say. Most of them are more occupied with 3 holidays a year, new car and bigger TV. Now more and more contracts are ending and new prices are coming up. Some are in panic and should. It is gonna be a cold winter.
Tone, with your qualities you have nothing to worry about.
And Wallace, that other items bothers me. About the really rich tried to desert. Bah.
All this kept me motivated to finally finish some projects. I hope the battery is live this week.
Edit, just received an email from provider that prices are going up bla bla, more refund is what it means for me For other people And I expect the grid to go down at some moments. That means something, it is never down.
I thought there was a lot of natural gas there in the North Sea, but apparently not enough.
Yes, my aunts and uncles talked about the ‘hunger winter’ (1945). Bad. Many people had tuberculosis. But most of my family there were farmers…
What would the situation be if the syngas ==> methanol==>dimethyl ether process were really functioning? Idiots wold find something else to fight about. They always do.
Rindert
And they were on the good side of the ÍJsselmeer’.
Natural we have a lot and took a lot, sold it abroad and now houses are collapsing, to much gas taken out of the ground. Cranes are shut, only for export contracts there is some pumping.
And dimethyl ether? Dont know, you talk a lot about it. Seems a little complex to me, but I really have no clue. I really thing wood is the freedom fuel. You can grow it yourself and harvest by yourself. The only thing that motivates me right now is the strange time ahead. For PV there are good arangements overhere. The grid is used for a season-battery, so no direct push for me to finish the woodgas project. Better finish the solar and batteries first.
It was identified as a very good engine fuel by Haldor Topsøe, in Denmark during WWII. I first heard of this in 1995. A grad student working at Haldor Topsøe Company, had found a way to produce it much more cheaply.
You can make all kinds of thing from it like soap, plasiic, gasoline substitute. It is also very good as a diesel fuel replacement. It compresses to liquid at 75psi, so existing propane handling equipment can be used.
Now in northern China propane has become popular for indoor cooking, because it makes very little smoke. But there is not enough propane in that part of the world. So they have begun to mix up to 80% dme into it. And in California, Oberon Fuels, Rebecca Boudreaux and Elliot Hicks have been promoting dme. They have some results. They have demonstrated dme as an engine fuel and now they have been working with a propane supplier to mix dme.
There is an International DME Association. They seem to be mostly chemical engineers. And most of them seem to be very high minded, future seeing people.
I hope that large areas of the world like the American Southwest, Australia, Siberia, Andes Mountains where there are wild fires will convert biomass to dme. Also large cities like New York have begun to convert garbage to dme. If people like Wayne Keith and Jan Olson could convert sawmill scraps to dme and sell it this would be success.
Rindert
The chemistry seems a little complex for a knuckle dragger like me and I haven’t found any DYI designs to get this done but if I could I’m pretty sure I could stick something together. The problem is doing everything by oneself is problematic time and energy wise.
By Rindert, DME is an interesting fuel, but for now the production of it is too demanding for most of us, as we hardly manage to produce good syngas,… is there a known process for the conversion? JO is probably already rolling his eyes because we are throwing the dark away, it would be nice to see a picture of a Volvo.
Haha, not at all. I’ve been too busy burning chunks Volvo back and forth to work and Mazda back and forth to the woods. I wish I rembered make a video this evening, pulling full size trees up the steep sides of a creek with the Mazda on wood
Almost certainly no chance for DIY production of DME. While chemistry is not too tricky and some known processes are favorable for woodgas as a feedstock, all known design are based on fine partical rare element catalysts, pressures in scale of MPa and complex product separation. With all deep respect to @tcholton717 skills, the rig for DME is beyond “stick something together“
I think this is probably true. But I am sure there are several companies out there who will be happy to build the high tech parts of the process. Two of those companies are Oberon Fuels and Community Power Corporation.
They will charge money, of course. But the largest percentage of the cost of almost anything you buy is labor. We here are working to make more reliable and easier to use gasifiers, faster and cheaper chunkers, possibly like the screw chipper Tone has for instance… These things are reducing the labor a small business would have to use to produce good syngas. At some point the economics will become favorable to allow a small team of people to go out on the land with a few large trucks and make fuel of some sort. My bet is that it will be dme, but other synthetic fuels are possible. If they can make a living this way they will do it. DIY not exactly, but I think it will be good.
Rindert
Thanks for the country ride on wood,nice country drive indeed. just curious what is your miles per hopper load , and size motor you driving in this vidio. THANKS.
For other people 
And I expect the grid to go down at some moments. That means something, it is never down.
