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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?

#221

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

robryan wrote: post #163
monero-xmr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly I do not like authoritarians and therefore feel very bad for North Korean citizens. However I don’t understand why they are not allowed (or Iran, or any country) to build their own nuclear weapons. Many countries have nukes - what is their right to have them? Shouldn’t every country have the right to mutually assured destruction? I wish nukes would go away, but morally speaking if one country can have them…

For most normal countries that aren't engaged in a power struggle against the world order it is probably safest for them if no one else can have them. The problem with nukes is that any one competent holder of nukes can basically trigger mutually assure destruction, so more actors are likely going to be more dangerous than the danger from the current holders.

so why should "west" have them as opposed to someone else?

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

#222

Post by thaumasiotes »

pmontra wrote: post #217
thaumasiotes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Are political control of all of Europe and East Asia (a term that refers to 4-5 countries...) things the US has now?

Note that Wikipedia's statistics have China comprising just over 90% of the population of East Asia. In what possible world would China not be in control?

By analogy to the Manchus, you'd need an invasion from Japan or, I guess, Korea, that was supported by the PLA.

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

#223

Post by KptMarchewa »

paganel wrote: post #177
jes5199 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The densely populated cities are going to be the hardest to transition - but in rural and suburban areas it may already be cheaper to generate and store your own power than to get it from the grid, most of the year

You need capital to be able to generate "your own power", the same goes for storing it. Most of the people from the rural parts of Eastern Europe don't have access to that capital and most probably will never have, for the simple reason that they are (relatively) quite poor.

That's a misguided view. Giant amounts of money were pumped into rural parts, mostly under EU agricultural funds, cohesion policy and other similar programs.

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

#224

Post by snickerer »

monero-xmr wrote: post #154
chii wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shouldn’t every country have the right to mutually assured destruction? not really. If you didn't already have nukes, but your regime is much against the west, i'd argue that it is the right thing for the west to deny it from them. I am attaching no moral argument to this - simply a practical, utilitarian argument. The reason russia has free reign to invade ukraine is _because_ they have nukes. Iraq invaded Kuwait…

I agree from a western perspective. In a power struggle of west vs. various eastern alliances, it is in the west’s interest to prevent the spread of nukes. From a plain and simple moral perspective, IMO every country has the right to build them. Preventing that is about what team you are on rather than morals.

It is a mistake to think in moral categories regarding to international politics.

Morale is something a group-in-power uses to control (or influence) the public. Like fear, greed, or compassion. Morale is not a basis for political decisions or political analysis.

Every country's ruler wants nuclear weapons. And every ruler wants the other rulers not to have the bomb at the same time.

To force the others not to develop the bomb, you must put pressure on them. A good way to put pressure is... to have the bomb.

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

#225

Post by dncornholio »

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…

If Covid has learned me anything, it's that people are not resilient at all and love to give it blame for their own problems. It worried me how many people thinks Covid has had a permanent impact on their lives. It's negligible imo..

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

#226

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

epistasis wrote: post #143
vkou wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It doesn't have to, because the past 83 years has proven, over and over again that strategic bombing does not work . [1] And so far, this war is once again, proving that same point. The purpose of t…

Agreed on your points with regard to waging war. But with regards to destroying an electrical grid, it would be a very topical intro to the idea. And there's some interesting info, in that destroying a grid is proving to be much harder than one might expect. Russia is a particularly incompetent foe, much like the Pakleds in Star Trek, but even with their massive armament, and being able to target an indefensible numb…

I'm now imagining Putin talking like the Pakled captain. It's a tremendously amusing mental image.

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

#227

Post by account42 »

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…

"And would rather we dedicate our resources to bettering our own clearly failing country."

So do that too.

"But that's socialism."

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

#228

Post by Markoff »

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.

You are downvoted because you are equaling nuclear attack with no power.

One is incredibly difficult to fix with permanent effects, other is minor nuisance and not that big of a deal to fix or even switch to life without power grid, you can just have own wind turbine/solar/hydro if you really need the power.

Also TIL Middle ages were like 100-150years ago, in some countries just decades ago, I'd say you could get by without power very easily even in 1950s. I am pretty sure my grandma didn't much need electricity for anything and she didn't live in Middle Ages. You can have mechanical pump in well, you can store stuff in cold basement and you can use oil lamp or candles for light in dark to cover the basics (water/food/light). Sure you would need to change the way of life, but equalling this to nuclear attack is just plain stupid.

As someone who admires Amish I find it actually appealing.

If I have to choose whether time travel to 1920s-1950s or live in nuclear war wasteland it's pretty easy choice for me.

I've travelled to places with no electricity (they jsut use generator in evening) and people were doing just fine over there and I was also not missing much.

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

#229

Post by stareatgoats »

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…

> 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

This. Not only is it not mentioned in the article, it seems to be largely absent from the minds of planners, as the development and implementation of micro grids is mostly ad hoc and haphazard. But the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine, as well as the increased likelihood of natural disasters (tornadoes, floods) should make the support of microgrids priority number one.

I assume the tardy adoption is because microgrids is still a fairly new technology, and not some nefarious plot by central governments to keep people dependent on their centralized systems. Right?

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

#230

Post by Markoff »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #201

A big factor in social resilience is cash, because the inability to conduct commerce quickly leads to civil unrest. People will tolerate no entertainment, heating, or light for weeks or months. The danger is not with electricity itself so much as the tech that depends on it, because when there's food in the shops, and fuel in the tanks, but no way to buy it, force is quick to follow. Physical cash acts as a buffer th…

I don't think cash would hold much value, there would be insane inflation due to hardly any value of cash and extreme demand after limited resources, cash introduction would be fine after maybe a year when people would get used to live without grid, but in first weeks/months it would lose all the value.
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