by chiggerbit » Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:06 pm
I did a little personal experiment last year, went off the water grid for a few days (diary is in the self sufficiency forum), and I have to tell you that the adjustment was NOT easy FOR A FEW DAYS! I think the hardest part was doing the laundry by hand. Ack! Not fun and not a nice result. Of course, if things got that serious, we probably would be back to the wringer washers, and using gray-water for laundry water, if we were lucky enough to have enough water for that. I could even live with sponge baths (why do they call it "sponge", when no one ever used sponges in the old days?) most of the time, but damn, would I ever miss my long soaks in deep water. And of course, at chigger time, hot baths and a stiff bath brush are almost a must. Well, or stay out of the woods during that time of year. But the people of the Western world are so spoiled that I really wonder what they will do when the time comes. I'm not a fussy person, but if I found it difficult, fussy people would find it doubly difficult.
Water has been of interest to me since my junior college days many decades ago when my sociology teacher said it would be a big issue in future times. Sure wish I had kept those notes. Great teacher. I wish I could still find the article I read a few years ago about drougths here in the Midwest US. Scientists determined from tree rings, etc. that the area that I live in had drougths that lasted way longer than the thirties dust bowl one did, that some of them lasted as long as fifty years, occurring about every five hundred years, and the next one is overdue. I suppose we have the Jordan aquifer, but these aquifers were formed by the glaciers and replenishment is very, very slow, so what happens if there is little rainfall to replenish? Abundant water could suddenly be turned off like a spigot, and we'd be screwed.
There just may not be time to plan.
