Burke: We’re not ready for the ‘Big One’; here’s where to start

Published 1:30 am Thursday, August 14, 2025

By Tom Burke / Herald Columnist

So what’s it gonna be this week? Should I write about:

• Trump, Epstein and MAGA outrage?

• Trump, tariffs and the economic hit in store for most households?

• Trump and Putin meeting in Alaska about the war in Ukraine without Zelensky?

• Trump threatening to invade Mexico?

• Trump and seven IRS commissioners in six months?

• Trump changing the census to benefit white Republicans?

• Trump and Republican-partisan gerrymandering in Texas?

• Trump losing the trade war he started with China?

• Trump and gold leaf, paving over the Rose Garden, and a Mar-a-Lago banquet hall as the East Wing of the White House?

Or perhaps Trump firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for reporting bad (but accurate) news?

Or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endangering public health with firings, bad science, and wing-nut delusions?

How about an international topic: Netanyahu absorbing Gaza into Israel? Dead and starving kids in Gaza? Border wars between Thailand and Cambodia? European heat waves? Chaos in Haiti?

Or maybe domestic news: Sydney Sweeney’s jeans? Pete Carroll’s return to Seattle? The Seahawks first pre-season game? More fires in L.A.? Shootings in Atlanta, Montana, and New York City?

Then there’s the wildfire in the Olympics and the blazes at the Grand Canyon, in Colorado, California and Alaska? Heatwaves in U.S. Midwest and South? Or the earthquake (8.8 on the Richter scale) in Russia, followed by a tsunami in the Pacific and Krasheninnikov, a Russian volcano, firing off after 500 years of dormancy, or the mini-quakes in New York state that got headlines there?

Well, gentle reader, I think it will be the quakes this week; or in more dystopian terms, the coming apocalypse — the one where the Cascadia fault “slips” (a 9 on the Richter scale?) and that amongst the devastation — all the lights go off; as in there ain’t no electric power. And they stay off for a long time.

(I was at school, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, when the entire Northeast U.S. electric grid failed. The blackout of 1965 affected 80,000 square miles and over 30 million people who were left without power for up to 13 hours. And even in that pre-screens era it wasn’t pretty.)

Now as someone who’s spent a bit of time outdoors backpacking and in some countries without universal “juice,” I’ve pondered how people in Western Washington would fare living on candles and campfires.

Is anybody ready for life without all the “modern” conveniences today’s technology affords us: like gas pumps, ATM’s, microwaves, routers, streaming, telephones, Amazon, hospital operating rooms, Whole Foods and Aldi, cars (especially plug-ins), air conditioning and/or heat pumps, prescription refills, toaster-ovens, washing machines and clothes dryers, garage door picker-uppers, schools, traffic lights, street lamps, clean water and sewage systems, a job to go to, the Rumba, the radio, your cpap machine, a hair dryer, Keurig, and (gasp) the Internet with(out) TikTok, X, What’s App, and Truth Social.

I think not.

Regular readers know I’ve been writing about disaster prep for more than a few years.

And there has been a spate of media about the subject such as HBO’s “The Last of Us” and its nod to a pandemic-fungus-induced zombie apocalypse; the 12 seasons of The History Channel’s “Alone” which has helped glorify the challenges of utilizing traditional skills and surviving the elements; and a post-apocalyptic book “Station Eleven” is to be produced as a 10-episode entertainment romanticizing survival.

But from personal observation, not an awful lot of people are taking me, the predictions of the earth-science experts, or the disaster-prep professionals seriously.

But we should.

Maybe it really is time to start brushing up on friction fire and foraging skills, or start stocking root cellars, or even fortifying our homes like “Bill” in Season One of “The Last of Us.”

At the very least, maybe we should get our hands on some smoked salmon. (‘Tis the season.)

When I worked in advertising and government, one of my rules was you can’t decry a problem without offering a solution.

Well, frankly, there isn’t a solution to a blackout like the 1965 regional outage in the Northeast, besides owning a generator or a water mill.

But that will only power your house; things like ATMs, gas pumps, and the internet will all be gone.

And so, some fear, will civil society. Consider the state of “law and order” after a month or six when there’s no food (heck, there’ll be no grocery stores and we can’t look to FEMA for help anymore), no gas, no clean water and people get desperate.

So what to do, apart from watching zombie apocalypse shows for inspiration?

The quick answer is to stock up on non-perishable food, water and water filtration devices, medical supplies, flashlights, batteries, car chargers (and keep, all the time, a full tank of gas), own a generator and have plenty of gas and oil for it, have propane and a grill, and a hundred or more in small bills, and for some, take, perhaps, self-defense measures.

But here’s the longer answer and solution: read. And then do what the books say.

There’s no shortage of good advice from the Red Cross, your power company, FEMA, etc. on how to prepare.

Because when the lights go out there’s gonna be a whole lot of people cursing the darkness.

But you can be one of the ones who lights a candle. (Electronic, of course.)

Frankly, the Boy Scouts got it right in 1907 when their founder, Robert Baden-Powell, published their motto “Be Prepared.”

Good advice then, still good advice today.

Slava Ukraini.

Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.