This week in our preparation and survival meeting we discussed the topics of power and communication. Our guest for this week was Sam, and he brought some excellent information to the table for us. We are all well aware at this point that the possibility of living without power is a real concern. It may be for a short period of time, or it could be for up to several months. Be it from a natural disaster or a purposeful event such as an EMP attack, the threat of these conditions occurring, as well as the possibility of a complete power grid failure or rolling blackouts is something that absolutely must be considered.
Sam has been intrigued with technology since he was a child. As a young child his father gave him a Lionel train set. And with this, his fascination with technology was brought to life. These classic train sets were a big part of childhood for many children growing up in America and Canada. As Sam put it, “For a lot of kids it was actually early training on how to operate machinery and gave them a basic grounding in concepts of electricity.” His grandmother also gave him a crystal radio kit when he was 8 years old, and this gift caused his love of technology and electricity to grow even further. As for his occupation today, he currently works in an aircraft factory as a CNC programmer, and he has been in this field for about 15 years. He was also an apprentice aircraft mechanic for two years before that, but he decided to go a different direction in the field.
With what is going on in our world today, it is crucial that we understand not only what is being pushed in terms of green energy, but also how we would protect ourselves from this move away from natural resources such as gas and coal, as well as the threat of power failure. This does not mean that we should give these things up and go along with the Globalist’s plans. But it would be incredibly beneficial for us to have a solid foundation of knowledge when it comes to electricity and alternative energy sources, as well as our history of technology.
“With the increase in electric powered vehicles and the fact that the governments all over the world want to mandate people to give up their gasoline powered vehicles and adopt EVs, to actually do that, for everyone to replace their gas-powered vehicles, there would have to be a massive increase in the amount of electrical power generation in North America. Just in Canada alone we would have to probably build something like nine nuclear power plants. And obviously that’s not going to happen. You look at South Africa, most areas are without power for up to nine hours every day, spread over various three-hour intervals. But this has been going on there for years. And I’m not necessarily saying that is going to happen here, but obviously there is a crunch coming up in terms of electrical power generation and the fact that there’s not enough capacity and the grid is many years out of date and needs to be updated and is highly vulnerable to a number of issues, as we’ve seen in recent months.”
-Sam
Another thing that we need to be aware of is the cost of electricity. The more that we move into electric sources of energy, the more the prices will rise. We all know that the cost of electric is much higher compared to natural gas. And as these prices continue to soar, people will naturally want to look for alternative sources of energy.
As Sam pointed out, we can even look back to what happened in the UK in 2022 where many businesses out there, including many of the pubs that had been around for a few hundred years, were forced to close down due to the rising cost of electricity.
This is a situation that all of us could likely face in the future. And one that we all need to be prepared for. No matter the reason for the loss of power, it would be a good idea to have some tools on hand that could be used to generate power and pick up any communication from people who may be broadcasting during those times of emergency. With that being said, Sam gave us a rundown of a few different methods of communication and energy production that we can create ourselves.
Crystal Radios
Crystal Radios, as Sam put it, are considered to be the original devices used for entertainment and communication. These are the types of devices that were used before the creation of commercial radio, which did not occur in America until 1920.
These radios do not require batteries or A/C power but are instead powered by the radio waves they produce. They got their name due to their use of minerals such as galena, carborundum, or iron pyrite (fool’s gold), and these minerals were chosen because they act as semiconductors. They could be placed into a metal cup and prodded with a sharp wire called a cat’s whisker until the most sensitive spot on the crystal was found. Another important point that Sam made about these types of radios is that they do not give off any signals, therefore they cannot be detected by any electronic equipment. He also showed us one of his own kits, and we got to see some of the components that it has, such as the tuning capacitor, the coil, and the diode, which we were told, in this sense, acts as the detector.
“The radio transmitter in its simplest form is what’s called an oscillator. Where you feed the output of an amplifier back into the input and it reamplifies it again and you end up getting a note. It could be an audio tone, or it could be in the radio frequency above the range of human hearing. But it is able to send out electromagnetic waves into space and then a resonant circuit tuned to the same frequency can receive that information and the detector ends up converting it into a form of audio that you can listen to directly.”
-Sam
There are many schematics out there that will instruct you on how to build your own radio and how to make sure it is tuned to the specific frequency you choose. The plans would give you information for the coil like the outside diameter, the length, the number of turns, spacing, etc. And you could easily use items that you would already have lying around the house, such as a toilet paper roll or a cylinder Quaker oat box. You would need magnet wire to make the coil, some type of variable capacitor, an antenna and something to ground it.
Sam explains that “a coil and a capacitor connected together is what’s called a tank circuit, a tuned circuit, or a resonant circuit. This is essentially the basis of almost all kinds of radio. An inductance and a capacitance together.” You may also need to create a tap, or two coils that are separated on the same tube that are joined together with a connection. To ground the device, Sam suggested using something like a metal stake driven into wet ground or a cold-water pipe. Everything would then be connected to the diode, and you could use either headphones or an output jack leading to an amplifier to hear what is being picked up.
Here is an example of some schematics for this type of radio. This is from Radio Engineering Principles from 1928:
If you are interested in building one of these for yourself, here is some additional information to help get you started:
Crystal Radios and Sound Powered Phones
Sam, as well as Josh, also took us through a bit of a history lesson with similar methods of communication from our past. Looking back in time to see how people used to communicate before all of our modern inventions is a good thing to do because these are all tools that can be utilized in the case of emergency. And it is never a bad thing to have that foundation of knowledge of how technology has progressed through the years.
Sound Powered Phones
Sound powered phones were used on Naval ships during WWII. And they use the magnetic energy that they produce. They have a coil as well as a metal diaphragm. The diaphragm receives the sound waves from your voice and because it is moving through a magnetic field, it induces a circuit in the coil. It then travels down the wires to another set, and those signals then create magnetic waves within the coil which moves the diaphragm.
The compression waves, oscillations, or vibrations induced onto the mechanical aspect will produce electromagnetic waves that are equal or conducive to the amount of sound put in. With something similar on the opposite end that produces an output of sound, those electromagnetic signals are going to transfer that same oscillation or vibration to the speaker.
-Josh
Reliability of Sound Powered Telephones
“A sound powered phone mechanism which uses a balanced armature is a bit different in construction. Same basic magnetic principle as this earphone from 1935 shown disassembled so you can see the thin disc is the diaphragm, and the coil is underneath. In a balanced armature the moving element inside the coil is connected to the center of an aluminum diaphragm with a rod. This makes them more sensitive than this diaphragm which is steel and acted upon by the coil directly.”
-Sam
Sam also made an interesting point when he told us that telephones were invented around 1880, and back then they did have lines from the telegraph infrastructure, but they did not have any tube amplifiers to carry signals for longer distances. The first tube repeaters were not used until 1914, and from 1904 until that point, they would use repeaters from carbon microphone technology to produce amplification.
Development of the Telephone Instrument
Carbon Telephone Repeater Cartridge
Carbon Microphones and Amplifiers
Sam also talked to us about carbon microphones and amplifiers. He explained that carbon microphones are basically just a metal container that contains carbon granules and a couple of electrodes. And if you have it hooked up to a battery then it can provide some amplification, though the sound quality will not be very good.
With the amplifiers or the vacuum tube, Sam told us that they were originally based off of light bulbs. That they have a filament, or a heater, like an indirectly heated cathode, which is the negative terminal. The plate would be the positive terminal. And in between the cathode and the plate is a grid. He explained that there are lots of electrons boiling off of the cathode and rushing to the plate due to its positive charge. And if a signal is fed into the grid, it will control the flow of electrons and create a signal at the plate that replicates what was put into the grid.
History of the Audio Amplifier
Foxhole Radios
Another device that Sam discussed was the foxhole radio. He told us that these were used during WWII and that the soldiers who produced these types of radios did not have access to the minerals that are used in the crystal radios. What they used instead were razor blades. He said that one of the things they would do is use salt water to create corrosion on the blades and then they would probe the patches of oxide with a sharp wire, safety pin, or more commonly a piece of graphite from a pencil, and that would act as a detector for radio signals. They would also use some type of wire, such as barbed wire, for the antennas, as well as a telephone earpiece or something of that nature to listen to the signals being picked up. “In most of the foxhole radios there is no tuning capacitor but rather a sliding tap on the tuning coil that changes the inductance by effectively shortening or lengthening the coil, which then makes it resonate on other frequencies. This shows a sliding tap. The big wire handle can be moved along the coil where the lacquer has been scraped off so contact can be made.”
This is all valuable information to have. And it would be highly beneficial for us to learn how to build these old school instruments of communication. But we do live in a time where we have easy access to premade technologies, therefore, we should be tapping into these resources as well while we are still able to. As Josh pointed out, you can easily go online and buy something called a hand crank radio. These radios are relatively cheap, and they are typically made with attached solar panels as well as a handle to manually crank and power the radio. Most of them also come with a built-in flashlight as well as a charging port for smaller devices like a cell phone. And these are a wonderful addition to your bug out bags because they are small and portable.
The conversation then led into the ways in which you would protect your devices, and this would be done primarily with faraday cages. This was something that we touched on as well in the previous week. But these cages can be in the form of a case, a bag, a metal trash can, or even something that is homemade. Just make sure that whichever type you decide to purchase or create, always test it out first to make sure that it is working properly. All you would need to do to test its efficacy is to place your cell phone inside and call it from another phone. If it rings, it is not protected.
But what if we did end in a situation where we had complete failure due to an event like a giant solar flare or an EMP attack? What could we expect?
“Let’s say that we’re in that type of scenario, where there’s a massive EMP, nuclear disaster, or solar flare and it wipes out all of our electrical infrastructure. I’ve read quite a few analysts from the US military saying that if there is a large-scale Carrington type of event, which was an event that occurred in 1859, where North America was bombarded by solar radiation and all of the telegraph lines had too much current go through them and it exploded all of the telegraph and relay stations, then the United States would be dark for months. And they say that if we do have some type of EMP event or nuclear disaster then it would likely be 6 to 12 months before you hear anything from the government in the sense of getting things back up and running.
-Josh
Sam also informed us while there are many things that would get fried from an event such as this, there are certain parts that would be safe from an EMP, such as vacuum tubes.
“Materials that people would commonly term as the solid state, all those things are vulnerable to EMPs. Vacuum tubes generally are not. They are somewhat. But I was advised by a member of the Canadian Forces that they aren’t one hundred percent immune. But this is the reason that so much military equipment kept using vacuum tubes long after solid state devices were invented because they wanted to have that just incase of a nuclear war or an EMP. Russian aircraft in particular, a lot of their avionics were using tubes well into the nineties. There is probably still equipment now, like radios in tanks, that will still use vacuum tubes because they will be highly resistant. And every day there are people throwing things like that out to the curb and recycling old stuff with tubes in it. And it would be a good idea to grab onto that stuff when you see it.”
-Sam
With that being said, what are some ways in which we could generate our own power? Because as we know, there are other sources of power that we could easily purchase, such as solar panels. But as Sam pointed out, even with solar panels there is the possibility of not being able to use them due to stormy or cloudy weather.
Alternator Bicycles
The first time Sam had ever heard of an alternator bicycle was when he was reading a 1981 issue of a magazine called Mother Earth News.
“They had plans in there for an alternator bicycle where they welded up the frame with an old 10-speed bike and they obtained a flywheel from an old Volkswagen Beetle. And as it turns out there was a lot of them available because when the flywheels break on a Volkswagen, you can’t really fix them. But they found out that if you attached a heavy flywheel to where the rear wheel would be on the bike, the flywheel would smooth over a lot of those impulses of the unevenness of a human pedaling and it would actually make it a lot more consistent.”
-Sam
He told us that with a lot of the plans you would find today, especially when looking on a platform like Youtube, instead of using the flywheel, people now tend to use the rear wheel as a pully. He said that they will remove the tire and place the belt around an alternator that is held in place by some type of mechanism that allows for tension. He says that with this, what you are essentially doing is replicating the charging system from the vehicle. That you would have the alternator and a 12-volt lead acid battery that has been charged. And you would use the battery through an inverter, or you could connect it to something like a USB port that plugs into a cigarette socket to generate power.
But what if there was something like an EMP attack? Sam tells us that these devices have components in them that would not be working after an EMP. However, the coils in the alternator are not going to sustain any damage. He said that you could still use the alternator for alternating current, you would just have to find another way to turn it into direct current. And it would also be a good idea to make something like this before hand so that you could have it ready if it were ever needed. You would also be able to take any necessary precautions to protect it from an EMP event if it were already built.
“Any direct current motor, like a permanent magnet motor, something inside of a cordless drill perhaps, will act as a generator if you apply rotation to the shaft. So, it will be producing a pulsing D/C and you could run that through a capacitor as a filter to smooth that out. And that fixes the problem of your alternator not having a way to rectify the alternating current it is producing.”
-Sam
He said that the bicycle could be simpler if it were to use direct current. He said that instead of the belt pully, you could have a tire or a skateboard wheel attached to the shaft of the D/C motor to run against it. He said you could also take that D/C motor and attach it to a turbine that is placed into a body of water.
Here are some plans to show you how to build one if this is something you are interested in doing:
Bike Powered Generator Using Alternator
One thing that Sam told us to be aware of though is that most people will only be able to produce around 60-75 watts of energy, and maybe for a short time someone could reach up 250-400 watts, but that would not be sustainable for long. And with something like this, it would be difficult to generate enough power to keep larger appliances like a refrigerator running. So, this would likely be something for smaller devices. Although Josh did tell us that if we were to have a battery bank, we could also use this to charge those batteries. But keep in mind that the labor aspect would be intensive. There are also other means of obtaining mechanical energy than this. And perhaps this aspect will be explored further in the future.
“Your cars are going to be worthless in the advent of an EMP or these types of events. The chips are going to be fried. But you can take your alternator out. What does your alternator do? It allows you to hook up any type of mechanical energy to that and make that alternator spin and you’re going to have 110 amps and 12 volts coming out of that. And there are multiple methodologies out there to do this. We could also do damming. You could create a dam if you have running water like a stream or a river. You could have a boiler system and that could be very easy. There is natural gas if you have that. There are many different ways to produce this mechanical energy.”
-Josh
Thermopiles
Sam also talked about something called thermopiles. This is something that was used during the 1800s for electroplating. He said that if you have two different metals at a similar junction and you were to heat the junction then it would produce a current. The two most common metals used for these were iron and constantan (copper-nickel alloy). There would be hot junctions and cold junctions, and at the hot junction you would have a coal reservoir with a fire in it to produce the heat. He also told us that these devices were used for civilians in the Soviet Union during WWII. That during this time, you could buy a device that could be placed onto an oil lamp that would allow all of the hot junctions to be lined up with the flame of the lamp. And they would use these to power things like a tube radio. Here is an image of a thermoelectric device from The Boy Mechanic in 1913:
Thermopile: What Are They and How Do They Work?
Batteries
If you needed to, you could also create your own batteries, and it is actually pretty easy to do this. All you would need is two different types of metal, such as copper, zinc, silver, or aluminum. Sam tells us that you could do this by taking the two metals and placing a paper towel between them that has been dampened with salt water and vinegar. You could even use change that you have laying around your house like some dimes and pennies.
A great idea that Josh had for this as well is to take some pennies and alternately stack them with some aluminum strips, then place that into a container, such as an old cylindrical oak barrel. But they would still need to be alternated with an absorbent material that was dampened with a salt water and vinegar solution. And you would need to make sure that the materials with the electrolyte solution were each separated from one another so that each cell could connect properly.
“A lot of other science kits that are sold for kids, you might have seen potato clocks or lemon clocks. They contain a strip of copper and a strip of magnesium, and you insert them into a lemon or potato, and it produces enough current to run a small digital clock.”
-Sam
How To Build a Homemade Battery
One last thing that Sam recommends for everyone to do is to read some books on electricity, batteries, and various types of electronics and become familiar with these things. Many books on these topics can easily be found online to read for free. It may appear to be intimidating at first, but it is not as daunting as one might think. And this knowledge could really serve you in the case of emergency and survival.
Here are some more good books to get you started that were recommended by Sam’s wife Rosemarie:
Some other good resources that Josh recommends for the purposes of learning are to become familiar with the lectures of two men by the names of Irwin Moon and Eric Laithwaite. Irwin Moon’s videos can be found on Youtube, and he talks a great deal about electricity. Eric Laithwaite’s videos can also be found on Youtube, but the one in particular that was recommended is called Magnetic River.
Rosemarie also shared some images with us of many of the electronic kits that they have there at home. These would be great things to purchase to help you out and get you better acquainted with electronics. Also, if you are interested in joining other people who share this same interest, Sam and Rosemarie have a Telegram group where people can come together to share and learn more about these topics. Check it out here:
Radios n' Electronics Telegram Group
Stay tuned for week 5 of Preparation of Survival and make sure to subscribe and share this content with others so that we may all become better prepared for what is to come.