After watching hundreds of people arrested in Russia for protesting their governments war on the Ukraine and life-threatening events by third party provocateurs at protests in the USA. I pondered, where are you safest physically and legally? Answer = home What can be done “from home” to show displeasure and PROTEST? Answer = You could send a letter to authorities to state your Grievance that would never be opened. Or you can join with other likeminded citizens and consider something inimitable.
Any urban area has many Achille’s heals in Its infrastructure. The nuts and bolts that support inhabitants’ lives. Any sort of access or service disruption can call attention to a cause or grievance. The most critical human needs are food and water. I offer the idea for protest action consisting of orchestrated usage of public water. Few numbers of participates may be able to effect a temporary disruption of water supply. This can be done without permanent damage to equipment and immediately reversible at end of action. As few as 10% of population could affect flow and pressure for full population. Prolonged action would cause widespread outages and disruption of commerce.
In a perfect world a well-maintained water system would have a 50% safety factor over the highest historic peak flow or usage. The system would also have 2-day reserve storage. In our world that is rare. In fact the water supply infrastructure overall is neglected and fragile.
Common system design uses arbitrary earmarks for capacity such as 200 gallons per day per individual in population. 10,000 people would require a 2-million-gallon a day (MGD) supply in the most severe demand.
In a same sized population (10,000) only 1000 participants could disrupt supply to all population. The prolonged, simultaneous and continuous water use by as few as 10% of the population can disrupt the water supply for the remaining 90%. It can be started by the solitary, anonymous and private commitment to participate People not intending to participate may contribute by hording. Water should be saved for immediate need; any outage should be temporary.
An average faucet flow rate is 1 GPM Or 1440 GPD. Considering the average design production of a water system is 200 gallons per day for each of population. One flowing Faucet will use the supply intended for 7 individuals per 24 hours. Depending on source pressure, three running faucets could take more water than normally used by 20 or more people. This can be done in the privacy and anonymity of a home bathroom. It can be done by the elderly and homebound. In the USA excessive usage will cause higher bills for water service. This is not stealing. In areas that go unmetered no culpability to the protest is exceptionally SWEET. Otherwise, don’t be surprised by the bill. It’s a lot cheaper then the billions of dollars spent by special interests
I am not a lawyer; I am not able to rule out that using (buying) water is an illegal action. I do know that most people are afraid to speak out in protest for fear of reprisal. I believe that the individual is powerless against foreign and corporate interests. I also believe that freedom as we now have it may be endangered. Any action that will not culminate in violence must be considered before violence is all we have left