The Siege of New Hampshire

The train leaves Laconia, making its way down through Tilton and Concord, on its way to Manchester. When they arrive, everyone aboard is surprised to see very little ready for them. The city is oddly open-looking. All the trees are gone. lMartin returns home to an enthusiastic welcome, but the chores he frets over were still not done.   Your support helps me keep the Siege story going. Consider be...

Is it better to prep by trying to be an off-grid homesteader, or a basement stasher of a year's worth of all your consumables? Mic, Jeff, and Brian discuss these two poles of the spectrum of prepping.  Brian goes into a couple of rants about the cons of homesteading. He is also frank about some challenges to the basement stasher. Feel free to email Mic with your two-cents on the issues we discusse...

Martin is tasked with riding on the front of Engine #6 to inspect the rails as the train leaves Plymouth. He sees two people running on the tracks toward the train. They jump into the brush beside the rails. More people come running down the tracks and jump off at the same place. Shots ring out. Martin signals for the train to stop just before it reaches a small bridge. What he discovers under tha...

Mic, Brian, and Jeff all watched what might be the first realistic SHTF-Bug-Out movie: Panic In Year Zero (1962). While it is, of course, Hollywood fiction, many of the scenes are directly applicable to today. If you needed supplies, would you steal to get them? If you were confronted by someone you meant you harm, should you 'terminate' them right then? Our three movie-watchers discuss many of th...

As the Train rolls into Plymouth, the gunfire begins. Matt and his men are carrying out their plan, but those plans meet their first wrinkle. The Greens have damaged the tracks. The train can't roll through town as a distraction. It is stuck in the middle of town. The men on the train have to take defensive action. Martin catches a pair of Greens attempting to hijack the train and run it off the b...

What would bugging out to the woods really be like? Mic lays out five historical examples of people surviving in the woods for years. > Nicholas Cresswell , 1770s traveling through the American frontier. > The Lykov family, 1936-78, 42 years in Siberian wilderness. > Max, 1941-43, A young Jewish boy hiding in a Polish forest from Nazis for 2 years. > Christopher Knight , 1986-2013, 27...

The train is finally on its way south. En route, Matt explains his group's plan to neutralize the Greens' northern outpost, then sneak in to free to slave laborers. With their increased numbers, they move on to free the political prisoners. With their larger ad hoc force, they will attempt to capture the Greens' leaders while the rest of the Greens are trying to capture the train. Martin is not to...

Will AI be the cause of human extinction? That's what some experts are warning of. Mic, Brian and Jeff discuss some of the many movies and news stories about artificial intelligence taking over. On the optimistic side, the AI establishes a harsh but overall benevolent dictatorship. On the darker side, the AI systematically tries to wipe out humanity -- as an "inferior" and troublesome pest. How is...

Martin convinces the three railroad partners to carry on the project, even if none of them fully knew what needed to be done. A key to getting the workers to resume work was for the partners to create their own money -- based on firewood -- as a medium of exchange. Once the rails are connected, the engine assembles the first train south. Martin rides in the gondola car to operate the gasifier and...

In the preppersphere, zombies are a metaphor for the masses of the unpreppared, weakened after a prolonged collapse, who slowly fan out into the countryside seeking food. Mic, Jeff, and Brian look a few landmark films and a popular TV series. Does how the characters deal with their zombies hold lessons for how preppers might deal with a possible horde of weakened, emaciated city people? What can y...

Martin, Charles and Tyler begin their second day of work for Farnum. The mood of all the workers starts out upbeat. The old and new tracks are connected and the locomotive is nearly to the old railhead. A squabble among the workers reveals that Farnum has massively over-promised everyone's stake in the profits. The angry mob attack Farnum, leaving him bloody and unconscious. Too late, do they real...

Mic, Jeff and Brian discuss a few movies in which people expect to survive some SHTF event in an underground bunker. Bomb shelters (bunkers) were very popular in scary parts of the Cold War. While bunkers are best suited to surviving Nuke Doom, some people can see sheltering underground as a great way to survive a whole range of SHTF scenarios. But is it? Our trio of prepper movie watchers discuss...

The three men from Cheshire finally arrive in Lincoln. They confront Mr. Farnum about the danger they had to face. Rather than make their ordeal a waste of time, they renegotiate a deal -- one day of labor for a trailer full of wood. Farnum suggests that they might wish to revisit the original terms at the end of the day. The Hendrick brothers repair broken drag saws and create new rail spacers. W...

NH had a storm in early April that took out power for tens of thousands of people. It was a chance to practice using the homestead's grid-down preps. Somethings worked well and life was quite normal, despite the outage. Some things were not as good as they should be. The outage exposed a few weak spots in the preps -- things to fix up for next time.   Here are links to some photos of the preps men...

Martin, Tyler, and Charles are met with an unforeseen difficulty on their way north. The ongoing argument between the Hendrick brothers causes them to nearly crash. To compound their trouble, they learn that the road they were told to take, to get round the troublemakers in Plymouth, has become blocked by them too. How can they sneak a loud white truck past the guards at the new roadblock?   While...

Mic, Jeff and Brian review and discuss the newly-released movie "Civil War" by Alex Garland. The possibilities of civil unrest is an increasing concern among the preparedness-minded, so we approached our look at the movie from a prepper perspective.  There is a no-spoilers synopsis in the beginning of this episode, as well as a spoiler warning and a point to which you can fast-forward to skip the...

Join Mic and his regular co-hosts Brian and Jeff, as they venture into the world of environmental disaster through - literature, film, and real-world predictions. Unlike the commonly explored apocalyptic narratives involving comets or nuclear weapons, EcoDoom is a surprisingly scarce disaster narratives in Hollywood, despite it being trumpeted as an urgent crisis. Where are all the climate change-...

Martin and the Hendrick brothers set out for their journey north. While passing Indian Lakes, they are stopped at a roadblock. There, they meet up with Davy Walsh who was on an assignment to clear out the squatters around the lakes. While Davy hitches a ride to Concord, he tells Martin about the efforts to clean up Manchester's drinking water in hopes of curbing rampant sickness. In Concord, they...

In this episode, Mic, Brian, and Jeff look at three famous fictional works in which an economic collapse is the cause of SHTF.  What caused those collapses? Is there anything we can learn from them? How did the main characters and the populace respond to the collapse? Are there lessons there too?   Links for titles in this episode: "Patriots" by John Wesley Rawles, 1995 (updated through 2011). Syn...

Mr. Farnum visits the Hendricks' farm and is impressed with Charles' new gasifier-generator-welder. He tells of the need the Central Rail Collaborative has for a bigger welder and some of the the difficulties the CRC has faced thus far. Charles tries to finagle profitable terms in exchange for helping the CRC. To his and Martin's surprise, Farnum agrees to a rather generous deal. "That was too eas...

Mic, Brian and Jeff explore some of the fiction featuring pandemics or plagues. They will narrow their scope to include the more realistic stories and save the zombie stories for another episode. They discuss several fictional stories with an eye toward what we really experience with the recent Covid pandemic. They also share their own experiences during Covid as well as advice on being ready for...

Nick attends his first Grange meeting and comes forward for membership. After some farmer-related business, and a lecture about corn by Clyde Graedig, a guest speaker addresses the group. Clive Farnum seeks support for his Central Rail Collaborative, a steam train project that he is promoting as the key to a revived New Hampshire economy. If you're enjoying these new chapters in the Siege story, c...

What would it be like to lose power at your house for two weeks? Mic interviews Jonathan, a Siege stories listener and farmer/prepper, who lost power due to an ice storm. Which of his preps worked well? What holes in his preps did the outage expose? Generators are a godsend but fuel for them is their Achilles Heel. What can be done about that? If you enjoy these 'Extra' content episodes, let Mic k...

Martin and the Hendrick brothers resume work on their gasifier-engine-generator-welder trailer. Mrs. Hendrick tells of seeing her "Corn Ghost" again, with proof of some damaged corn at the edge of her field. Jeff Landers comes by, lobbying Grange members (which includes Martin, Tyler and Charles) for support of a pending warrant article to stem brewing trouble in town over water rights. Support th...

Mic takes you on an early spring / late winter walk-around the homestead. It is the start of maple syrup season and collection has begun. The days are getting longer and the chickens have started to lay more. The ice on the pond might be sturdy enough to cut a couple trees out in the pond. There's still too much snow for gardening, though. You can support this podcast by becoming a Patron on Patre...