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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?

#121

Post by epistasis »

ammonammonammon wrote: post #99
epistasis wrote: post #61

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 effe…

Sincere question so please don't overreact as if I'm trolling. Why is your son learning Ukrainian! I could make a couple guesses but the subject is understandably too sensitive I'd like to just inform myself as to something I may be missing! I detest ignorance, above all especially my own.

Long digression away from energy here: My wife is Ukrainian, and we have two бабусі (grandmas) living with us now due to rockets making their Ukrainian home uninhabitable. So Ukrainian is actually the dominant language in my house, though I only know a tiny bit, since I grew up in the US. The lessons are speech therapy, not merely learning the language as itself. But the therapy immediately transfers from Ukrainian to English. When he figured out pronouns in Ukrainian from the lessons, he immediately started using I/me/you correctly in English. His particular speech pathology allows for acquisition of many languages very quickly once he is taught the concepts (he's roughly equally strong in English, Ukrainian, and Russian now, and is quickly picking up the very small amount of Spanish I know).

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

#122

Post by meitham »

woodruffw wrote: post #107
piyushpr134 wrote: post #90

Coming from India and as someone who has lived, growing up (in the 90s), without power for hours and days...trust me you are going to be deeply inconvenienced but not going to die. We had hand fans (hot climate) and fire in large bowl shaped vessels (when cold). Nights without power are spent sleeping on terrace. We had oil lamps for light in the evening. Most night activity would siege by 8pm max to wake up early at…

I think the experience you've described mostly works out because the infrastructure has developed (or not developed) in conjunction with unreliable power. It would be a pretty different story in a dense US city: there are no wells to draw from, no simplified infrastructure designed to operate with minimum power or water, etc. In other words: mature infrastructure is both our greatest strength and our greatest weaknes…

From Iraq, we went from zero power cuts in decades to no power at all within two weeks in the gulf war in 90, as NATO countries attacked all our civilian power stations. Life became horrible but we adapted. In some cases there were fights between people no different than the fights you saw in western countries over toilet rolls during covid, but I wouldn’t say it was a total society collapse. People will always find a way to adapt.

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

#123

Post by balthigor »

Victerius wrote: post #77
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #40

In Puerto Rico a few months back we lost power and water due to the hurricane. Living without power and water, even for a few days starts to have a severe psychological impact. You don't realize how much of a luxury and a blessing it is to have clean running water until it's no longer available. You can't flush the toilet, freshen up, shower, wash your dishes, or wash your clothes. If you don't have a backup power ge…

I regard attacks on critical civilian infrastructure as strategically indistinguishable from nuclear attacks, and deserving of a similar response. Edit: Why is this being downvoted. I'm right. One will kill 100k people instantly. The other will send them back to the Middle Ages. The former group might actually be the luckier one.

No, stranger-friend, you are not right in your assertion.

Exploding nuclear bombs destroys civilian infrastructure and harms ecosystems.

Destroying civilian infrastructure harms civilians.

Both are despicable acts of destruction.

One is not deserving of the other.

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

#124

Post by pc86 »

modoc wrote: post #48
quacked wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a smart instinct, but the ammunition only lasts so long. Someone deep in the boonies with a good stash will be okay, but anyone within 1-5 day's march near the cities had better be prepared to "stack 'em high' for a long time before the stream of starving city ex-pats slows to a trickle.

You'd probably be surprised by the number of folks who have tens of thousands of rounds. When ammo prices started going up, pretty much everyone I know who shoots at all started buying in bulk. Not saying everyone who has a gun is trained or mentally prepared to shoot trespassers for months on end, but I think a lot of people who think farms and ranches will be easy pickings haven't spent enough time with the folks w…

I shoot recreationally, two guns in the same caliber, maybe once every two months, and have 4-5k rounds stacked in the closet.

If you shoot often, and have multiple guns in multiple calibers, 50k rounds is not difficult at all, especially if you have anything "weird" where you will likely buy as much of the ammo as you can find.

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

#125

Post by Joeri »

epistasis wrote: post #61

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 effe…

I have a friend whose mom lived in zaporozhya until 2 weeks ago, and the rolling blackouts were the reason she finally fled the city, despite months of explosions. The blackouts were getting more severe, and when you live on the 11th floor with no elevator, no water, no heating, no way to warm food, life is very difficult.

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

#126

Post by procinct »

lettergram wrote: post #50
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…

If I recall correctly, in that situation we’d expect a 90% fatality in 1 year. https://energsustainsoc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... People thought I was nuts in 2021 when the lockdowns continued and I bought enough tools to survive such an event. I figured, people aren’t working, things gonna break. Lol For reference, some basics would go a long way — survival straw to filter water, 3 month emergency food…

I’d be curious if you had any good book recommendations for covering the basics?

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

#127

Post by woodruffw »

meitham wrote: post #122
woodruffw wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the experience you've described mostly works out because the infrastructure has developed (or not developed) in conjunction with unreliable power. It would be a pretty different story in a dense US city: there are no wells to draw from, no simplified infrastructure designed to operate with minimum power or water, etc. In other words: mature infrastructure is both our greatest strength and our greatest weaknes…

From Iraq, we went from zero power cuts in decades to no power at all within two weeks in the gulf war in 90, as NATO countries attacked all our civilian power stations. Life became horrible but we adapted. In some cases there were fights between people no different than the fights you saw in western countries over toilet rolls during covid, but I wouldn’t say it was a total society collapse. People will always find…

Iraq's pre-war HDI was 0.560[1]. The US's in the same year was 0.865[2].

People will indeed always find a way to adapt! But I think these comparisons are fundamentally suspect: there really hasn't been think kind of mass-scale infrastructure collapse in a country nearly remotely developed as the US (or Canada, or the EU). The closest thing would probably be the war in Ukraine, and even there the infrastructure failures are relatively localized.

[1]: https://countryeconomy.com/hdi/iraq

[2]: https://countryeconomy.com/hdi/usa

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

#128

Post by pc86 »

nelox wrote: post #54

For the hundreds of millions of people who have never had access to electricity, their survival without it is a moot point. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/world-without-...

With the exception perhaps of North Korea, every single one of these countries has a climate that you can mostly survive in outside, or with minimal protection. The comparison seems meaningless.

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

#129

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

piyushpr134 wrote: post #90

Coming from India and as someone who has lived, growing up (in the 90s), without power for hours and days...trust me you are going to be deeply inconvenienced but not going to die. We had hand fans (hot climate) and fire in large bowl shaped vessels (when cold). Nights without power are spent sleeping on terrace. We had oil lamps for light in the evening. Most night activity would siege by 8pm max to wake up early at…

yeah, as my name suggests, i live in a place where "today", as in 23/11/2022 i have a 9 hour electricity cut "EVERYDAY" in near to 0C temperatures. It is winter and snowing most of the places. Heck, the places that are snowing get close to zero electricity for days and when it does come back, at best 3-6 hours.

People adapt to living in harsh conditions. as you said, "creature comforts" take a hit but you don't just die from having a collapse in the grid.

many days during bitter cold, our water pipes just freeze for weeks and we resort to using up saved up water (that we already save in big buckets as a habit) and ending up doing commando style wet tissue rub in place of a facewash, on and on....

It's not fun but when things improve, everyone laughs it off

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

#130

Post by throwaway742 »

epistasis wrote: post #61

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 effe…

I have a friend who works for a major power company in the US. They told me there are severe supply chain issues that are making it difficult to order new replacement parts for electrical infrastructure. As critical infrastructure they do have stockpiles of replacement parts, but they are limited. I wonder how long Ukraine can sustain these repairs.
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