Since the nucleus of every group of survivors would be a nuclear power plant, you’d at least have the technicians that run the plant.
Of course, once people realize that, they’ll start converging on the plants demanding a spot on the ark. If you could organize the entire industrial production of the planet to create survivable arks, you could do a lot. But this would be impossible, since once everyone realizes that they’re doomed they’re not going to work like dogs to stockpile an ark for a few thousand strangers. They’re either going to try to fight their way in, or give up hope and stop working.
I hadn’t heard of that story, but thanks for the link. I enjoyed it.
I actually got to wondering because I’ve been reading The Night Land. Since that is a work of fantasy rather than science fiction, I wondered about what would really be involved in losing the energy of the sun.
For some reason that didn’t even occur to me, but it’s a very good point. How thick a layer would the frozen atmosphere form anyway? Considering that by the time the air froze the oceans would be frozen over (thus making Earth’s surface 100% land), it seems like it would form a layer over the entire planet of about equal thickness everywhere. Even survivors would find their shelters buried under frozen air. I wonder about the structural integrity that might be required to hold up to that too.
Also, if the atmosphere freezes and falls down in layers, as “A Pail of Air” suggests, it might make it difficult to get through the thickest layer of useless nitrogen to get to our precious oxygen.
I understand at this point, especially from Stranger’s post, that human survival for longer that a few weeks is incredibly unlikely. But it’s fun to think about. I may have a strange sense of fun. But that’s why I like this board.
Strangers post appears to me to be talking about the Sun just going out so to speak. Taking a month or two to get out to Mars and beyond means things start getting pretty chilly soon, but not NEARLY as bad/fast as the not having ANY sunshine.
Oh, another core of short term survivors. Nuclear sub crews. They dump all those missiles, cram the sub full of canned goods and submerge. They might make it a couple of years.
My guess is the frozen atmosphere would be about 50 feet thick give or take.
It just occurred to me that food might not be very high on the list of problems. Wouldn’t most of the world’s biomass freeze and be preserved soon after death? Accessing it might be difficult but the planet would hold the equivalent of trillions of tons of frozen steak and veggies.
Good point. It might be easier time/energy wise to “mine” food than to try to grow it. But I sure as hell wouldnt eat anything/anybody dug up along the Jersey Shore.
I would think it would be a lot faster than that. The air can cool down quite a bit just overnight. I’m thinking you’re going to be in deep winter by the end of the first week, which is a lot faster than your WAG. Of course, this is still a WAG on my part too.
The thing that bugged me about A Pail of Air, even when I first read it as a kid, is that they had the survivors bringing in pails of frozen oxygen, then thawing it beside the fire. Oxygen + fire = instant disaster.
How much less sunlight is the Earth going to get one week out? About 10 percent less.
How much less sunlight does a hemisphere get in dead of winter vs middle of summer? Very rough number is 50 percent less. At mid latitudes you get about 16 hours of light a day during the summer and more like 8 during the winter. Then there is that whole angle of the sunlight on the surface thing too.
So its going to take something like a month (and more like 2) to get total sunlight intensity due to increasing distance down to winter levels. Then there is the thermal lag. It does take some time to cool the air, ground, and water down. Average coldest day is something like a few weeks to a month after winter solstice, even though the amount of sunlight received after the solstice is increasing during that time.
Then there are the oceans. Once you try drive the temps way down (like antarctica cold) the oceans will start to freeze. That will slow the cooling down till most of the ocean surface freezes to a decent thickness, so that probably also slows down things a bit for a few weeks.
Add all that up and its 2 to 3 months.
Or to take another tact, IIRC the standard line is that Mars would be chilly but liveable if it had a nice thick earth like atmosphere. If the Earth for some reason just keeps going straight in its orbit (tangential to its orbital path) at any point, its going to take like 2 months for the Earth to be same distance from the sun as Mars. This estimate jives with the first one.
Now, if you happen to be in the hemisphere thats in the dead of winter when the big fling happens you probably have more like just a month before things get ugly.
For some reason, it stuck in my head that the reason the earth had gone off on a tangent was because the sun had disappeared, and that stayed in my head even as I skimmed down the thread. So sorry, brain fart. Carry on.
It kind of means the Sun isn’t exerting a gravitational force anymore. Since we’re assuming all sorts of things here, I think it’s fair to assume that the combined efforts of mankind could create a deep underground chamber where a bunch of people could stay alive for a while before the food or heat runs out. But that just prolongs the inevitable. Everybody is going to die eventually.
