Meet the Preppers: Derek Price
Meet the Preppers: Derek Price (View larger version)
"I'm preparing for a solar flare that will wipe out the power grid and all of modern technology."
Derek Price lives in Bear Grass, North Carolina, where he runs Deadwood—a Wild West theme park open to all ages. Derek and his family are worried that a solar flare will hit the earth’s atmosphere and completely disable the power grid. So instead of spending the profits from the amusement park on a lavish lifestyle, the Prices use ticket sales to prepare for an event that Derek fears will wipe out modern technology and bring society back to the days of the Wild West.
Derek lives in a home adjoining the park along with his wife Christine and his two young kids. His father and mother live next door and help run the theme park. But when they’re not working, they’re prepping. Derek and his father are building a steel bunker on the property.
Prepping has been passed down to Derek from the two generations before him and the amusement park is actually their most valuable prep. The Prices have designed the park with strategic defense components in place. Derek even has vintage canons capable of utilizing live ammunition, and he is constructing a 2,000 square foot fort.
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This is a real threat, with the last such flare ocurring right before the invention of electrical grids. The severity of this threat is debated, however. Society was able to get along just fine before electricity. There is the potential for many months of no power as the disabled transformers are difficult to replace en masse. I imagine the federal government will rally manufacturers to reduce the number of months without power. Such a flare during a cold winter would be particularly bad. The good news is that the type of solar flare responsible would fairly predictably occur during the peaks of the 11 year solar cycle. It would have to be an unusually active peak, so there would be some advanced warning of trouble.