You are listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper, sponsored by Duct Tape, the real Duct Tape. It fixes everything except that decision. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. From border to border, coast to coast, and all ships at sea. Here is your host, Keith.
Hey y'all, this is the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast for July the 4th, 2026. Happy birthday, America. Doing something a little bit different. I'm going to do a scenario-based podcast here. Very timely given the weather we're having here on the East Coast as well as where I live geographically. So here's the scenario. It is July 4th. It is 104 degrees. It is 110 with the heat index. And you are at a local county fairgrounds or some other venue with your family. Feel free to substitute as needed. Boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, partner, one kid, two kids. But you do have an elderly mother-in-law, father-in-law, cousin, neighbor, what have you, who is not in the best of health, who's on blood pressure meds. You got your lawn chairs, your cooler, your blanket for the kids to sit on. You and 15,000 of your closest friends are now packed into this fairgrounds with parking lots all around it. There's a high school, there's a middle school. Everybody has parked fairly organized. Kids running around, enjoying themselves, playing in the grass. So the roads were closed up until 4 p.m. to get into this venue. At 4 p.m., law enforcement opened up the roads. They're directing traffic. By 5 30 to 6, the parking lots around this venue were completely full, and the roads have now been closed. The one way in earlier is now closed, and it is going to be the one way out when the venue ends. Fireworks are scheduled for 9. Then they reverse flow with traffic and everybody's able to get out. That's how it's worked for the last several years, and it seems to work okay. Certainly a lot better than the way they had it set up years ago. It's about 7 p.m., still 104 degrees. The sun's starting to get lower, but the heat has not broken. No breeze. It just sucks. So at 7 p.m., DJ's playing, music cuts out mid-song. Speakers go pop and then go silent. So the little string lights at all the food truck vendors and all the tents and everything had hanging from them now go dark. All the fans that were set out next to the food trucks, they all stop spinning. For about 10 seconds or so, nobody reacts. Then someone laughs and says, Oh, we must have blown a fuse. People start pulling out their cell phones. But it's not a blown fuse. It's not just the fairgrounds. Traffic lights on the highway that closest intersection are now out. You can see across the street. Gas stations now dark. So the grid has just gone down across the entire county at least. Looking at half a million people. Roads are closed. And for the near future, you're not going anywhere. So here's the setup. Before we walk through the timeline, here are the conditions.
This is not a nationwide collapse, not an EMP, a regional power outage. The kind that happens when demand exceeds capacity during extreme heat. It's happened before. It happened in Texas in 2021. And it almost happened last week when the U.S. Department of Energy declared a grid emergency across 13 states. So the scenario Chesterfield County, a county, give or take, 500,000 people. The grid drops across the area, transformers are overloaded. There is no timeline for restoration. Could be hours, could be days. Nobody yet knows. And nobody's going to tell you because when you try to call the utility company, you try to call Dominion Power, you're not able to get through. The phone lines are overwhelmed. You try to go to their website, but that's also down. You are at a public event with 15,000 other people inside the gates or inside the perimeter of the event. And thousands more are outside on the closed roads, on the shoulders, tailgating across the street at the medical park. People are all over just to be able to get a view of the fireworks. Roads are shut down, that's by design. And like I said before, once the event is over, reverse flow. And for the most part, you could probably be out of the venue in about 30 minutes, back on the main roads, and back on your way home. But these are not normal conditions at all. Whatever you have on your person, whatever you have in your car, that is what you have. So let's walk through a timeline.
Hour one, 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. We'll call this the confusion stage. For the first 15 minutes, nobody panics. Everybody assumes it's temporary. Fair assumption. Most time when the power goes out, it's up within minutes or hours. So fair assumption. The event organizers are probably on their little handheld radios trying to figure out what happened. Is it a local transformer? Is it something to do with the fairgrounds itself? Can the fire department maybe poke around and see what's going on? Can somebody call a friend at Virginia Power and see what they can tell us? And a few people at this point start walking towards the parking lot. Again, that's fair. Your cell phone still works. Towers have battery backup, typically four hours, give or take. And with cell phones, cell phones work on line of sight. So your cell phone towers are approximately two miles apart, give or take, depending on the terrain. But within minutes, as you can imagine, everyone is on their cell phones at the same time. Calling family, Googling power outage, trying to refresh their social media, what's being said on Facebook, X, Instagram, what have you. The network is congested. Texts go through very slow, and calls are dropping. I have experienced this firsthand at several NASCAR races. NASCAR's major sponsor back in the day, I think, was Sprint or Sprint Next Tel, not even sure what they're called now. But I had ATT. Once I got in the racetrack, I had almost zero coverage. And any coverage I did get or did have was very, very weak. I was not able to send text messages, certainly could not send a text message with an image attached, and was not able to get very many calls out. The Sprint Nextel people, on the other hand, had several mobile towers set aside all around the track. I guess repeater towers, I'm not a sell guy, but if you had Sprint Nextel phone service, you were golden. I digress. So here's what's happening that most people don't even notice in this stage. The food vendors are being split into the haves and have nots. Some food trucks have their own generators, so they can still cook. But plenty of them were plugged into the fairgrounds grid and they're dead. No griddles, no fryers, no refrigeration. So the trucks that are still up and running are their card readers down. At this point, is it cash only? And that line of trucks is about to get very long when people figure that out. So, how much cash do you have on you right now as you're sitting there waiting for the fireworks? Water is finite. Whatever bottled water is on site, that's all there is. There's no resupply truck coming because that was not in the plan. A 53-foot tractor trailer was not scheduled to show up at 8 30 p.m. and drop off more water because the event was going to be over at 9 30, 9 45. There was water on site, but that is going to disappear pretty quick. The water fountains at the fairgrounds, they have stopped. So we have people that have been in the heat for most of the afternoon now, 104 degrees plus. Everybody is already dehydrated to some degree. And then we have the Portageons or the Porta potties. They're not going to be serviced because, again, that wasn't part of the plan. They were going to be serviced late, late tonight, and then picked up in the morning to go back to the Porta Potty rental people. Say that 10 times fast. The Porta Porta potty rental people. So they've been baking in 104 degree heat. Trust me, I've been there at concerts, I've been there at festivals. Ugh. I just cringe just thinking about those days. So Porta Potty's bad and it's getting worse. And again, the roads are still closed. So this is a critical difference from just a normal power outage. The road closure was intentional. It was set up for the event. Come in one way, leave the other way. And again, it was a it's a very good plan. So the plan assumed that the event would run normal. Right now, there's no PA system to make announcements. There's no lights for safe movement as it starts to get dark. And the officers that have been there that were assigned to direct traffic for this event are going to be pulled away for other higher priority calls. Traffic lights are out, heat-related emergencies, assisting rescue, traffic accidents, what have you. So they're going to be pulled away. Most of them, not all. The parking lot at this point is already becoming a bit chaotic. So some people have decided to leave. Okay, fair enough. Now they get to their cars and they try to drive out, but there's nobody directing traffic because nobody's supposed to be directing traffic. The normal flow pattern is not being enforced. People are pulling out of their parking spots and they're driving the wrong way. They're cutting across empty spaces. They're running into each other at intersections between the rows. So we got little fender benders. We've got a Mexican standoff. Two people face to face in their vehicles, and nobody wants to move because they can't, because each car has a hundred other cars back behind it. Patients are wearing thin, people are honking, people are yelling, somebody clips a mirror because they can't squeeze by. Somebody gets into that fender bender. They don't want to pull over to the side of the parking lot. They want to wait to make a police report. So we're at the one hour mark, and most people are still inside the event. They're starting to get annoyed. They're not alarmed. They're just waiting for somebody to fix the problem. The people in the parking lot are getting more and more frustrated. Cars are overheating. The prepared person is watching all of this and needs to make decisions. So here's one question. At this point, what do you do? Do
you wait it out? Do you get your bag from the car and start walking home? Or do you have other options? Your get home bag. What this prepared person has. So we pause the scenario just for a second because this is the gap between being prepared and not being prepared. A lot of folks, a lot of preppers have a get home bag. It's not a bug out bag, that's completely different. A get home bag solves a very narrow problem. You're away from home, something goes sideways, and you need to get back on foot if necessary. Small bag under 15 pounds, and it stays in whatever car you happen to be driving. If you have one of those in your trunk right now, here's what would matter in this scenario. Water. Probably maybe a liter or two, but again, you're traveling light with this bag. A Sawyer Mini for purification, maybe some purification tablets. You cannot carry enough water for a two-hour, three-hour walk in 104-degree heat. It's just not going to happen. But you carry enough to start and you get more along the way. Think about electrolyte packets. You're going to sweat out the salt and minerals super quick. Plain water alone is good, but if you're physically exerting yourself in extreme heat, you are still going to get hydrated, you're going to lose those minerals. Three or four single serve electrolyte packets weigh nothing and they make a huge difference. It's a powder and you simply drop it into your water bottle. A cooling towel, these are worth their weight in gold. It's the PVA kind that activates with water. You soak it, drape it around your neck. It basically evaporates and it cools you as you move. Three or four bucks, they weigh an ounce or two. And in this scenario, it's probably the most valuable thing you have in your bag. Cash, paper currency, 50 bucks, 60 bucks, whatever you can afford in discretionary income to sock away in your get home bag. US currency, a couple fives, a couple twenties, a couple ones, because when card readers are down, cash will buy you water, a ride, or cooperation. Most people do not carry cash at all, be the exception in this case. A power bank. A power bank that is charged. 20,000 milliamp will charge your phone three or four times. Your phone is your line of communication, your map, your flashlight, and your only connection to information. When it dies, you are navigating blind. So walking shoes. If you walked into this event from your car, you're probably in sandals or flip-flops, or maybe tennis shoes. You're not walking home in sandals or flip-flops, especially on hot asphalt. A pair of broken end sneakers or light hiking boots certainly solves that problem. A knife or multi-tool, a quality folding knife or compact multi-tool with pliers and a blade, cut cordage, open packages, again, very valuable. Basic first aid kit, self-explanatory. A hat and sunglasses, self-explanatory. Here's the big ticket item that I carry. The Garmin InReach Mini 2. This is why it matters in this scenario. When the cell towers go dark, network is so congested, the satellite messenger still works. It does not use cell phone infrastructure, it uses satellite, GPS, tracking, all sorts of great features that cell phones do not have. In this scenario, the person with the in reach can send a message to a friend, a spouse, whomever, and within five minutes of the outage, we're fine, we're heading home, don't worry, everybody's accounted for, or it's not good, we're not getting out. Could you meet us at the intersection of so and so and such and such in two hours? We might have to start walking. The person on the other end does not have to have the in-reach mini two. They can have the messenger, the Garmin Messenger app, and receive and send messages that way, assuming they have cell coverage. The inreach mini twos are not inexpensive. They can run quite a bit of money, two or three hundred dollars, depending on if they're on sale, and there is a monthly subscription. I've talked about those before. You can go back and look up some of those episodes. A paper map or printed directions. In this particular situation, I would not need them, but a paper map is always something you should have in your get home bag. A flashlight goes without saying. So the total cost, depending on what you get, for your get home bag, could be $50 or $400. Again, if you don't have the inreach, maybe a bao fang, a budget radio would certainly come in handy. Total weight with water, we're staying under 15 pounds. In our scenario, the person with this bag grabs it from the trunk, bypasses the parking lot chaos, and then starts moving towards home while everyone else is sitting gridlocked, honking their horns. The person with this is not stuck. The person without it is stuck in a dead lot with a dying phone, no water, and no idea what's happening. That's the gap. And it was sitting in your trunk, just ready to go. Okay, back to the scenario. Hour two, eight to nine p.m. It's getting dark. The sun is setting. Normally that would bring relief, but the temperature is still in the high
90s. The asphalt, the bleachers, the buildings, they've absorbed heat all day, and now they're radiating it back, and it's not cooling down. And now it's getting dark. There's no lights, there's no street lights, and there's 15,000 people that were not prepared. Flashlights start flicking on across the crowd like fireflies, all from cell phones. Your mother-in-law or whomever you have in your group that has a medical condition has been sitting in this heat for five hours since 4 p.m. give or take. Let's say 5, 5:30 when you actually got parked. Now she's flushed, she's not sweating as much as she could be, and she's telling you that she has a headache. She's 74 years old, she's on beta blockers, which impairs her ability to thermoregulate. She is now a medical priority, and she doesn't even know it. Your kids are thirsty, they're starting to get scared, it's dark, it's hot, and nothing is working. Cooler you brought is very close to empty, and the ice at this point has already melted. The parking lot has gone from bad to worse. What was gridlock an hour ago is now gridlock in the dark. People are still trying to leave, there's no lights, there's no traffic direction or very minimal traffic direction. Cars are wedged at odd angles. Some people have given up and they're just sitting in their cars burning gas with the AC on. Others have gotten out yelling at each other, you need to back up, no, you need to back up, more fender benders, tempers are starting to run hot. The few officers that did stay, along with EMS, are completely overwhelmed. They're trying to decide whether to open the main roads for egress, but it's dark, no traffic signals, there's not enough officers to get these people out safely. Cell service is kind of spotty, you can get a text through every now and again. So here's the one thing that nobody talks about in prepping. Most emergencies don't happen in your home where your supplies are. They happen when you're away from home, you're at work, you're at an event, your preps are 20 minutes away, 45 minutes away on a normal day. But right now, in the dark with the closed roads and no traffic signals, a gridlocked parking lot, and a half a million other people in the same situation as you, home may as well be 500 miles away. So another question, what should have been in your car before you left the house today to go to this event? Hour three, nine to ten p.m. Now the medical emergencies start. This is where we transition from
inconvenience to a truly dangerous situation. Some were in line at four, sitting in their cars, waiting to get in. The heat has been accumulating in their bodies all day. Now, even with the sun down, the damage is starting to manifest. Somewhere in the crowd, an elderly person collapses, people are yelling for help in the dark. Somebody calls 911. They're able to get through, but again, EMS is overwhelmed. There were firefighters and paramedics at the event. Some have been pulled away, some have stayed. Some of the EMS folks are in side by sides, they're on mountain bikes, so there is help there, but it's dark and it's crowded. 500,000 people in this county without power, every nursing home, every assisted living facility, every house with an elderly person alone, a fire truck and an ambulance would normally respond in eight minutes, but now they're at least 45 minutes out if they're able to respond at all. And even if they're dispatched, the road to the fairgrounds is dark and clogged with cars trying to leave. Your mother-in-law or this other adult in your group is getting a little bit worse. She's now confused, asking where she is, she wants to lie down. You need to get her cooled down and you need to do it with what you have. Do you have extra water to pour on her? A towel to soak and some water to put around her neck. Do you know the signs of heat stroke versus heat exhaustion? Do you know that confusion is a red flag that means she's already moved? Past exhaustion, and it's actually a true heat emergency. If you've taken any kind of first aid class, this is where it matters. If you haven't, you're watching somebody deteriorate in the dark and you don't know what to do about it. Meanwhile, people are driving out anyway in the dark on the closed roads. You can see headlights pointing in all different directions. This is how people get hurt. This is how people get run over, not from the heat, but from the chaos of everyone trying to escape when no working system of egress is in place. Another question: When does this become a leave on foot situation for you? What's your trigger? What's the moment that you make the decision to leave on foot, if you are even able to? Hours four through six, so now 10 to midnight. If you are still here, you are completely on your own. If you have not left by hour
four, you need to accept a new reality. Nobody's coming to help you at this point. You should have realized that before. The organizers have no more authority or capability than you do. There is no announcement, there is no bus, there is no plan. Cell towers are starting to fail, some carriers are dropping calls, communications are going from bad to worse. The one small mercy is that it is finally cooling down. Maybe it's dropped down into the low 90s, high 80s. Maybe it's maybe it gets into the 80s by midnight. That's survivable. It's not comfortable. But the new problem, it's pitch black, no streetlights, no field lights, no lights except car headlights and phone flashlights. At this point, these are your options. One, drive out. If law enforcement has opened the roads, and they may have by now, but traffic lights are out, it's dark, roads are chaotic, and your gas gauge matters. How much fuel did you have when you left the house? Did you leave the house with a quarter of a tank? And now you're under quarter of a tank because you sat in traffic with the AC on waiting to get in. Were you planning to fill up on your way back home? Gas stations don't pump gas without electricity. Two, walking out. Twenty minutes by car is at least, at least 90 minutes to two hours on foot, at least. It's dark, but it is cooler. You've got the kids, you've got the elderly person with the medical emergency. The math on this is not adding up. But do you have a headlamp in your get home bag? Good pair of shoes, and do you know how to get home if you have to leave? Option three. Shelter in place until dawn. Stay at the fairgrounds, stay in your car, wait for light or wait for the power to come back on. This might actually be the right call if your mother-in-law cannot walk, but you have water, her condition is stabilized, but you need supplies to make this work. Most people will not have them. There is no good option at hour four. It's kind of the lesser of all evils. You would get to your car, get your get home bag, and start moving if you still had some daylight. So what are your triggers? What are the decision points? Let's pull away from the scenario. And here's the takeaway. The people who do well in situations like this are not the ones with the most gear. They're the ones who made decisions early.
They had triggers, they had a line in the sand, a predecided set of conditions that told them when to act instead of waiting for someone else to tell them what to do. That is absolutely key in almost any situation. Trigger one, this is not temporary. If you determine the outage is widespread, nearby buildings are dark, no ETA, cell network congested, you need to move towards your car and your supplies immediately. Trigger two, someone in my group is vulnerable. If you have that elderly or very young person that is medically compromised, your tolerance for waiting is near zero. Get the water, get them cool, start planning your exit. Err on the side of caution. Is the person a diabetic? Do they have their medication with them? Does this person suffer from migraines? They have their medication with them. Did the person not eat? So now they have a sick stomach. Trigger three, you can no longer communicate. When your phone stops working, your situational awareness drops to what you can physically see and hear. That's your signal that you're now fully on your own and you need to act on your last known information. Trigger four, it's getting dark and nothing has changed. Darkness multiplies every problem. If the situation is not improved by sundown, it's probably not going to improve in the middle of the night. Make your move while you still can and while you still have light to navigate. So, with all that said, here's the one thing about the scenario. None of this is far-fetched. Every element of this has happened, always likely to happen. The U.S. Department of Energy declared a grid emergency last week for the same grid that I am sitting on right now. 104 degree heat, a holiday weekend with millions of people away from their homes, closed road for events, all these conditions were true simultaneously this week in real life. It's happening right now as I record this. Because it is Saturday at 1500 hours EDT, and this is exactly the conditions that are happening right now. The only thing that has not happened, thank God, is there is no blackout. The grid is still here. Next time you leave your house for any event this summer, or for the folks down under, next time you leave your house for any event this winter, a cookout, a ball game, a fair, a concert, take 60 seconds and answer these five questions. One, do I have water in my car? Two, do I have a way to communicate if my cell goes down? Three, do I have enough gas to get home if the roads are bad? Meaning, do I have enough gas to get home if I have to take one of the three other ways that everybody should know how to get home? Four, does somebody know where I am? Five, what are my triggers to leave this event early? Five questions, 60 seconds. And the get home bag in your trunk is the difference between the person who is prepared and the person who is not. The person who grabbed their bag and started walking home at 8, 8:30, 9 p.m. while they still had a little bit of light, and the people still sitting in their car, gridlocked, not able to move. It's getting late. They have no water, they have no plan, they have no phone. All right, folks, thank you so much for stopping by. Happy birthday, U.S. And as always, be careful out there, drink plenty of water and stay hydrated,
take care of one another, and until next time.
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