One of the things the Admiral and I really liked when cruising was self-accountability. We were self-accountable for more than 10 years and could go anywhere in the world and be self sufficient. Now that we're on land we're tied to the grid and to this place. We lost power for 10 hours last year. 'Only 10 hours!' When we lost power everything went down. 6 hours into the outage, cell phones went out. We had our 2K generator but cable television along with internet went down at hour 8. The only communication we had was the AM radio in the car and our handheld VHF. San Onofre power plant has shut down and we're dependent on power from a distant plant. They're talking about local water rationing. Our government is going all to hell and when a disaster hits I don't think we can or should rely on outside help to get through it. Now we're alienating Russia and I don't want to contemplate where that could lead.

We're working on being completely self sufficient for 3 months. That of course means we need food. We're almost there except for the food.

Paranoia? Maybe, maybe not.