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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?

#251

Post by somedude895 »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #131
meitham wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

not to sound all propagandist but russia attacking ukraine infra is "bad" but NATO attacking iraq is "collateral damage".

The 2003 invasion of Iraq is very controversial, even in the West (thank god for free speech and freedom of press) and I'd imagine many people on Ukraine's side also didn't agree with the second Iraq war. Might be different in the US, but it's certainly the feeling I get in Europe, even though many also simply have no opinion on Iraq.

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

#252

Post by troon-lover »

Joeri wrote: post #125
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.

No post body was provided.

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

#253

Post by Markoff »

concordDance wrote: post #247
Markoff wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> One is incredibly difficult to fix with permanent effects Not very significant permanent effects most of the time. E.g. a million people are happily living in Hiroshima right now.

Yeah, but that was very small bomb compared to new ones plus it was dropped on the city, not place where you grow crops.

But I agree with sentiment the fear of nuclear bomb is way overestimated compared to real dangers [1].

[1] see chapter 1

https://ia800501.us.archive.org/35/items/NuclearWarSurvivalS...

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

#254

Post by Markoff »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #235
Markoff wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have we got any historical data or decent models? I guess the problem with this is there's no precedent to formulate a null hypothesis against. If inflation was a factor it would affect digital systems linked to the same currency equally. Cash would still win out on availability. My feeling is that, in the absence of digital systems, physical cash would in fact gain value as a tangible asset intermediate to barter of…

By cash I meant "money" in general, since obviously digital money would be eliminated by lack of grid.

Your piece of papers covered by nothing have no value, if there is no power and everything need to be produced by hand and it's very scarce. I will rather trade my crops for something else valuable than for some piece of paper in unstable society without grid, since I think long term/infinite collapse of grid would basically mean collapse of (central) gov. After all what can gov do for me without grid and money. I can see only local gov surviving potentially because it's made by people close to you who can actually help each other with something meaningful instead just words or worthless pieces of papers.

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

#255

Post by Markoff »

YeBanKo wrote: post #241
nonrandomstring wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we got any historical data or decent models? I guess the problem with this is there's no precedent to formulate a null hypothesis against. If inflation was a factor it would affect digital systems linked to the same currency equally. Cash would still win out on availability. My feeling is that, in the absence of digital systems, physical cash would in fact gain value as a tangible asset intermediate to barter of…

> Have we got any historical data or decent models? Yes, Ukraine is the recent example. Cash still worked in occupied territories, that were cut off from communications. It is the only way to conduct transactions, even with inflated costs.

Ukraine ain't isolated island, so at worst you can still keep using dollars/euros which hold stable value outside compared to local currency. And occupied territories still had gov which performed functions for residents.

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

#256

Post by mikewarot »

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 narrative is that it was persistent NATO expansion after the end of the cold war that "forced" Russia into this.

It's mostly a lie... but many Fox viewers believe it to be the whole truth.

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

#257

Post by meitham »

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.

>>> For most normal countries That's quite a racist thing to say. There is no such thing as normal and abnormal countries! >>> aren't engaged in a power struggle against the world order The US has been engaged in several coups around the world, but you will of course conveniently ignore this and pretend these countries are struggling to defeat the US. >>> The problem with nukes is that any one competent holder of nukes can basically trigger mutually assure destruction Counter point. India and Pakistan have not engaged in war since them both becoming nuclear powers. The US and Russia unlikely to go to war because of the ir nuclear powers! If every country had them it's likely to make the world safer.

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

#258

Post by meitham »

somedude895 wrote: post #251
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to sound all propagandist but russia attacking ukraine infra is "bad" but NATO attacking iraq is "collateral damage".

The 2003 invasion of Iraq is very controversial, even in the West (thank god for free speech and freedom of press) and I'd imagine many people on Ukraine's side also didn't agree with the second Iraq war. Might be different in the US, but it's certainly the feeling I get in Europe, even though many also simply have no opinion on Iraq.

Ukraine sent a sizeable military force to participate in squashing Shia fighters in south Iraq late 2003.

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

#259

Post by jimmydorry »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #198
franciscop wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As explained in the video, people can definitely die after just a day without electricity if not prepared: medicines that need refrigeration, connected to a machine for life support, freezing/heating to death (people do die in major heatwaves/blizzards regularly), etc. Sure those are usually not "guys in their 20s-30s" that is the majority demography of HN (I'm not saying everyone ofc...), but there's a lot of people…

> connected to a machine for life support I am pretty sure all current ICUs have backup power generators (both for equipment and Oxygen line pressure infrastructure). In addition most critical equipment used in hospitals has an independent UPS (ventilators, Infusion pumps etc.) that would extend it a few hours without power. You would have to both have a formidable blackout and several days of lack of diesel supply f…

If you remove a noticable portion of the power generation, fuel reserves will be run down and depending on how many hours of power are lost per day, these places may not be able fully charge their UPSs each day.

Look to South Africa. They underinvested in their power generation for a few decades, and soon rolling blackouts became common and increased in frequency and severity to the point now where having no power each day is the normal (and it will only get worse from here)!

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

#260

Post by t-3 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #222
pmontra wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://ubique.americangeo.org/map-of-the-week/map-of-the-we...

Military bases and alliances aren't a perfect proxy for political influence, but they're a pretty good one.

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