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How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

practical.engineering

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Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#61

Post by epistasis »

I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it out with thousands of cruise missiles and loitering drones.

Perhaps not all countries will be as determined as the Ukrainians are in their constant repairs, but even with half of their generation capability destroyed, and so many substations targeted, the effects are much like rolling blackouts.

My son has Ukrainian language lessons with teachers both in Donetsk and Kyiv several times a week, and only a single lesson has been missed despite the constant destruction that is ongoing. I'm astounded both by the resilience of the grid and the resilience of Ukrainians. I hope that if such a situation ever happens to the US, we will prove to be as resourceful.

This piece also completely ignores the ongoing changes to our grid as it is being revolutionized by distributed energy resources and storage. Soon, islanding of homes, and the spread of more micro grids, means that a lot of the older reasoning in this article won't make much sense. Already, many critical infrastructure from hospitals to data centers plan for independence during outages. This will become increasingly common as the more electric vehicles allow for vehicle to home usage, as well as charging directly from home solar. This is what wealthy people do today, and costs are falling to make this accessible to all. There's even a chance that islanding might be cheaper than the alternatives for a significant chunk of homes in the future.

Already the grid costs us more than electricity generation, something like $0.08/kWh of the average electricity price of $0.13/kWh in the US. As generation from renewables gets cheaper, and storage gets cheaper, and the grid remains stubbornly expensive, more and more people will be looking to abandon it for energy independence on their own, or in smaller micro grids.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#62

Post by acidburnNSA »

cpsns wrote: post #36

> Critical facilities like cellular base stations and data-centers often have an on-site backup generator. These generators have enough fuel to extend the resiliency beyond 24 to 48 hours. During the 2019 hurricane here in Nova Scotia people stole the fuel (and even a few generators somehow), so don’t even count on that. We had no internet, cellular, or landline service for days where I live as a result, much less po…

Just gotta keep your ham radio go box in an EMP-hardened roll of tin foil and have a good crank generator, and you should be good to go. In a grid outage even tiny transmitter powers will be able to get out. It's most power efficient to use CW (morse code) unless you plant to have a computer up and running to run the even fancier digital modes.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#63

Post by lettergram »

cassonmars wrote: post #55
RetpolineDrama wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want civilian EMP hardening not just for a nuclear war, but also for an unexpected solar event. We want to be able to handle whatever nature throws at us, our fellow apes combined. I just rounded off my most recent expansion to 120kw peak production with 500kwh storage, all EMP hardened to well above carrington event levels. Most of you have a house full of IoT crap dependent on AWS (region) to function.

Is there a guide you followed or have for how to do this kind of hardening? I’ve wanted to do this for a while, don’t know where to start.

A grounded steel garbage can with aluminum lining can actual work fairly well as a faraday cage. You can put emergency electronics in there (radio, backup batteries, collapsible solar panel, old laptop, lights, etc).

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#64

Post by baybal2 »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #17

A lot of old Cold War preparatory war game scenarios start with EMPs blanketing the continental US. It only takes a few (like 1) nuclear weapon detonations in thin atmosphere (a few dozen km up) where the primary heat transfer mechanism is radiative (vs. convective, conductive) to cause enough EMP to take out pretty much the entire continental US grid. The military is fully hardened against EMP. Civilian infrastructu…

EMP was mostly relevant for the time when there was no digital grid protection.

Powerlines worked as giant antennas picking up the VLF component of the blast, driving voltages in megavolts for a brief while. All tricky analog devicery which was used to control the grid in seventies had no protection.

Now, fast acting digital safeties will certainly be more robust.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#65

Post by rnk »

cpsns wrote: post #36

> Critical facilities like cellular base stations and data-centers often have an on-site backup generator. These generators have enough fuel to extend the resiliency beyond 24 to 48 hours. During the 2019 hurricane here in Nova Scotia people stole the fuel (and even a few generators somehow), so don’t even count on that. We had no internet, cellular, or landline service for days where I live as a result, much less po…

At my cabin I have starlink, limited solar power and a generator with propane that comes on (power goes out a lot). Eventually I'll run out of propane and food (everyone has some emergency food supply for a few weeks at their cabin, right?), but I wonder how long I'd last with internet plus short trips in my electric car? I never planned for a post-gas future independent of the grid.

Starlink relies on starlink downlinks of course, I assume they'd degrade quickly, do they have generators, and what internet would there be to connect to. But I am independent of the grid for a week at least. There would be a transition period for society. I kind of regret not spending the bigger money for full house solar with battery backup. Then I'd really be in good shape for the end of the world, except for running out of food. And someone coming in and taking it away from me.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#66

Post by PragmaticPulp »

RetpolineDrama wrote: post #38
acidburnNSA wrote: post #17

A lot of old Cold War preparatory war game scenarios start with EMPs blanketing the continental US. It only takes a few (like 1) nuclear weapon detonations in thin atmosphere (a few dozen km up) where the primary heat transfer mechanism is radiative (vs. convective, conductive) to cause enough EMP to take out pretty much the entire continental US grid. The military is fully hardened against EMP. Civilian infrastructu…

We want civilian EMP hardening not just for a nuclear war, but also for an unexpected solar event. We want to be able to handle whatever nature throws at us, our fellow apes combined. I just rounded off my most recent expansion to 120kw peak production with 500kwh storage, all EMP hardened to well above carrington event levels. Most of you have a house full of IoT crap dependent on AWS (region) to function.

> I just rounded off my most recent expansion to 120kw peak production with 500kwh storage

How are you producing 120kw? That's the equivalent of around 300 solar panels (assuming 400W panels).

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#69

Post by Smoosh »

bruce511 wrote: post #35
tevon wrote: post #4

I'd be curious if it would be better to be in the city or the country. My hunch is that the city requires more "inputs" to stay survivable (fewer food/water stockpiles available), dependant on inputs. However cities would also be the focus for recovery efforts and disaster relief. On the flip side, the country has a greater store of natural resources per-capita (water, likely food, heat sources), however would be dep…

In the country you can assume it'll take longer to get power back. But, assuming an extended outage, it'll also be safer, and easier in the country. Until of course the city folk get hungry. It'll all be good-will and friendly neighbors in the city until the food runs out. Then lawlessness will go through the roof, and, I expect, the dystopian future of so many movies kicks in. Assuming fuel is scarce, country areas…

> until the food runs out

Based upon the TP panics during the pandemic, I'd say that just the thought of potential shortages will make some people desperate.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#70

Post by sologoub »

micro_cam wrote: post #30

Growing in the 80s up on the rural olympic peninsula the power routinely went off for a couple of weeks after windstorms. Even still it will be off for a few days every year. There are just a lot of power lines and a lot of trees and they have to check the whole system before it turns back on though they usually get it on for the schools and grocery stores pretty quick. Everyone has a wood or propane heat source. We…

The article talks about phones correctly - at the backbone level it’s mostly VoIP now, which requires power. I bet some places have old mechanical switches that in theory can still be used, but those need some power as well. Landline is great for a localized loss where your central office still have enough power to run.
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