Solar Flare Dud

The solar flare turned out to be a 1 on a scale of 1 to 5.  That's good since I was three hours from home last night and most of today.  The external hard drive is always in a hardened case as are any extra thumb drives.  They only come out when I use them.  This did get me to thinking about how far along my preps have come.  What if the power did get knocked out?  Would you be ready for it?  What if IT is today?

It's not just the power that would be the problem but the entire commerce system that we use.  Say goodbye to running to the store to pick up the last minute dinner.  So how would we fare here at home?  We have over a year worth of food stored so we wouldn't starve.  We have a full tank of propane which would only be used for cooking.  Hot water would be heated by the sun not the propane water heater.  Contents in the refrigerator and freezer would either be canned or dried.  I'd have to set the well up to the hand pump.  We have plenty of bottled water on hand so this task wouldn't have to be done instantly.  I would be really busy getting things settled but I think we'd do alright if we lost power for a very long term situation.  

Nobody at all seemed to be taking any precautions about these solar flares, although it did make for interesting talk radio, what if the power went out and I was three hours from home?  I can't rearrange my work schedule for a maybe.  If it weren't for that obligation to teach this morning and then run up to Sacramento to pick up items for the class I'm teaching in two weeks, I certainly wouldn't have gone out of town.  The truck will go about 400 miles on a tank of gas.  Even though I drove about 200 miles yesterday and about 300 today I filled the tank after each 100 miles.  Just in case something happened but my truck still ran I'd be able to get home, even if it meant going a very long way around in order to get away from broken down cars and angry people.   My biggest problem was being out of town.  I had to teach a class three hours from home.  It's not something that I could have gotten out of.  I think that's my biggest conundrum - knowing that today may be the day and I'm not home or close to home waiting for IT to arrive.