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The farm owners contiguous to my property think about a grid-down scenario quite a bit. It's an expensive and complicated proposition to plan for continuity of operations for a large farm and there are many moving parts. One of the biggest is fuel. They guys around here who prep are serious about storing diesel. Serious.

The guy next door uses 2300 gallons of diesel per year. He wants enough fuel on hand to keep things going for two years. Two years is his planning window for a low-probability, high-impact event (financial collapse, pandemic, CME) and with a longer timeline would give him sufficient time to switch over to using soy/sunflower pure vegetable oil and biodiesel for critical processes. It would be pretty drastic in the longer term--e.g. culling 2/3 of his dairy cows, shifting from corn to sunflowers and potatoes--but he thinks the plan is do-able. He figures using all the land available in our hollow we could keep 600 people alive the first two years and 400 for years 3-5/6. Then it would all depend on how fast equipment degraded and draft animals could be obtained (accompanied by another 10-20% drop in the people the land could support--animals need to be fed).

Here's hoping it never happens, eh?

Anywho...diesel. My friend claims (and my research on the web backs up) that the new ultra-low-sulfur diesel--besides causing a host of problems in older equipment like decreased power, lower lubricity, fuel system leaks, clogged fuel injection systems, and incompatibility with lubrication oil--stores very, very poorly. If there is any zinc or copper anywhere in the delivery/storage path there is accelerated formation of sediments, gels, and soaps. And because it picks up water so easily, ULSD grows biofilms at a much faster rate than high-sulfur diesel. Biocides (Tri-D, BioKleen) help in the short term but not much. And no, you just can't add sulfur back into the fuel, it doesn't work.

The guys around here who store for SHTF are buying high-sulfur (>5000 ppm) home heating oil instead of the current diesel being sold (<15 ppm). Heating oil is just diesel fuel that's been dyed red to indicate it's untaxed and not for on-road use. With biocides added they think they can get years of safe storage and with the epoxy-lined collapsible-membrane tanks and automated fuel polishers some are using, up to 10 years.

In any type of emergency the EPA issues immediate waivers to allow home heating oil to be used for transport purposes so you wouldn't be breaking the law in a short-term blip like a hurricane.

Even now it's getting difficult to find high-sulfur fuel because many larger refiners have switched all production to ULSD but it's worthwhile to search around. Note that newer diesel car and truck engines can be damaged by HSD (the catalytic exhaust systems killed, injector woes). Check your equipment and the impact of HSD before you use it.

If you can't find or use HSD, consider accelerating your rotation schedule to use your ULSD every 6 months if no additives are used and every 12 months if they are.