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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?

#211

Post by MrVandemar »

paganel wrote: post #162
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…

> Coming from India and as someone who has lived, growing up (in the 90s), without power for hours and days... Most people in the West will most probably catch a disease, if nothing else. Meaning if you live on the 8th floor, like I do, it means that if you have no running water for days and weeks on end then you cannot literally flush the shit down the toilet. Multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of people who…

> On the other hand my parents who live in the countryside 2 hours away from where I live will be just fine.

Until the "have-nots", who until recently were really enjoying being the "haves", turn up with their guns.

That's when it'll all get very feudal and very nasty, as the people with guns suddenly realise that not only do they have power, they don't have those laws that used to stop them acting out whatever violent fantasies gun-owners enjoy, and shooting people will probably be the least of it ...

Have a nice apocalypse.

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

#212

Post by hef19898 »

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…

Despite real world examples constantly showing the opposite, from civil wars, famine, large scale disaster and all-out war, people still believe that somehow 3 weeks in the world turns into The Walking Dead or something. Not gonna happen, society in the 14th century survived the plague.

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

#214

Post by hef19898 »

irrational wrote: post #195
baq wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can’t comprehend how it is possible to support Russia in the US after the Cold War and Putin. I literally have a blank space in my mind when thinking about that.

How is it possible to fly a confederate flag after the civil war? How is it possible to be a nazi sympathizer after WWII?

Aren't those people, in Germany without the Confederate Flag since the German Empires flag from WW1 is used instead, quite often the same people?

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

#215

Post by Kbelicius »

brnt wrote: post #182
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…

Perhaps worthy to note that the timing of the invasion coincided with an EU-Ukraine test of syncing up their power networks. A wholesale switch of Ukraine away from synchronisation with Russia and permanent synchronisation with the EU was planned later in 2022. Interrupting this switch, and the Ukrainian resilience against Russian manipulation through power was likely a reason to start the war when it started.

IIRC Ukraine synchronized with EU earlier because of the invasion, sometime in march I believe.

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

#216

Post by arghnoname »

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.

Electrical production facilities have been considered by the US and its allies as dual use and as such, legitimate targets in their strikes against enemies for quite a long time. Anyone who has watched any US 'shock and awe' campaigns notices the power goes up very, very quickly.

As an American citizen, I'm very glad this wasn't treated as indistinguishable from a nuclear attack. I regret that no one was held accountable for initiating the war, but MAD would have been bad news.

I was and am against those wars, but I am not a pacifist. If a war is a 'just way' and should be fought (there's a whole scholarship on when wars are just, I have a high bar, but it can be met), there will always be targets that are 'dual use' and in that regrettable circumstance in my mind, those would be legitimate targets after a very careful calculus was made to weigh lives lost and saved by destroying them.

Most American military experts assumed the Russians would have started the war with a much more aggressive arial bombardment. It's just kind of how these things are done. I assume them doing this now is Russia paving the way for a more traditional operation to begin when the ground freezes. It's going to be a bloody winter. It's a tragedy.

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

#217

Post by pmontra »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #197
pmontra wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't at least a part of those billions going back to the USA as purchases of American weapons? They are subsidies to American workers. Example from https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/11/15/white... > The $21.7 billion in Pentagon funding is “for equipment for Ukraine, replenishment of Department of Defense stocks and for continued military, intelligence and other defense support,” according to a summar…

> No more money, the empire shrinks and other countries take what's American now. What would that be?

Future is hard to forecast but let me try.

The USA de facto surrenders to Russia in the Ukraine war and Europe starts to buy gas from Russia again (if the USA can't protect us we have to buy protection somewhere else). Russia use European money to start buying European politicians again. Eventually they'll politically control all of Europe. Maybe not the UK.

China gets East Asia because a retreating USA must be seen with suspect there too.

The USA maybe keeps the Americas, which however are not very happy with them even now (the countries that don't speak English.) Some countries will try to jump ship to Russia and China. More colonial wars to follow.

Overall effect: reduced reach for American companies, products and services. A small side effect: we won't be here to discuss this on HN but on a site of another country/language. Eventually: switch to a different worldwide common language (France experienced that demotion around the 60s/70s - French was the previous lingua franca) and further reduction of reach. Eventually: a poorer USA.

Seen from outside the USA this doesn't look MAGA to me. The opposite of it. Hard to assess the impact on inequality, healthcare, tuition, etc. Maybe the USA will go the way of the European Nordic countries or they'll implode. I won't get into that.

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

#218

Post by brnt »

Kbelicius wrote: post #215
brnt wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps worthy to note that the timing of the invasion coincided with an EU-Ukraine test of syncing up their power networks. A wholesale switch of Ukraine away from synchronisation with Russia and permanent synchronisation with the EU was planned later in 2022. Interrupting this switch, and the Ukrainian resilience against Russian manipulation through power was likely a reason to start the war when it started.

IIRC Ukraine synchronized with EU earlier because of the invasion, sometime in march I believe.

I believe so too [1]. Of course, Russia and many others believed that by mid march, the war would be over and that the change would not have completed. I'm relieved that those initial expectations collided with Ukrainian resilience.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-european-power-grid-rus...

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

#219

Post by KptMarchewa »

vxNsr wrote: post #172
snoopy_telex wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience differs. The right leaning members of my family strongly support Russia and the left leaning strongly support Ukraine. It’s caused a lot of strife in my family. And I don’t think the right folks feel like they’re on the fringe. They do watch a lot of Fox, but they’re not Q folks, afaik at least.

Odd, I know lots of right folks and none support russia, they just don’t support sending more money to Ukraine, either bec they believe the accurate reports of widespread corruption (which Biden himself attested to 6 years ago) or bec they’re isolationist and don’t really believe our interventions have helped “spread freedom” anywhere. And would rather we dedicate our resources to bettering our own clearly failing co…

The thing is you can easily check that the funds are spend property: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

Also, nation united against aggressive, genocidal war does great to improve cohesion and trust, and remove low level corruption.

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

#220

Post by Markoff »

snoopy_telex wrote: post #166
epistasis wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian war is actually one of the least political things in the US right now, there is great bi-partisan support, and it's hard to imagine anything else that garners such broad support from all but the most fringe of fringe (the left-right red-brown alliance against Ukraine is so tiny that it can barely be found). But it is a very timely issue. Maybe in a couple years, after it's no longer timely, he will dive i…

My experience differs. The right leaning members of my family strongly support Russia and the left leaning strongly support Ukraine. It’s caused a lot of strife in my family. And I don’t think the right folks feel like they’re on the fringe. They do watch a lot of Fox, but they’re not Q folks, afaik at least.

> The right leaning members of my family strongly support Russia and the left leaning strongly support Ukraine.

Yeah, I doubt anyone really supports Russia, it's more like you are projecting them NOT supporting Ukraine and wasting money in that blackhole of corruption as "supporting Russia".

"You are with us or against us" - there is nothing in between for Democrats/NPCs.

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