it was discussed how long electricty would last w/o any human intervention. (Answer: not very long)
that got me to thinking (always a dangerous proposition)…
In light of the Great Power Failure of 2003 (and also inspired by the low budget movie classic: Trigger Effect)…
if for whatever reason, we were to lose electricty for the forseeable future (i.e.: human error on the power grid, Natural Disaster, Zombies and/or Terrorists)…
How long, as a society (for arguments sake, let’s stick w/ the U.S.) would we be able to survive w/o electricity?
Now, before you go and say: Indefinately, we started out w/o power, we’d be fine…
Stop and think about it and the implications it has… EVERYTHING uses electricity now… w/o it, you have no refrigerator, so food becomes an issue… gas pumps require power… where do you get your gas… Generators require fuel… refineries require power… …and how many employers could function at all w/o power? Even most government facilities would be shut down. All commerce would come to a screeching halt in a rather short order would be my guess. And, how many people do subsistance farming anymore? Not many is my guess. Food becomes a major issue after a while.
My guess is that if there was NO power for the forseeable future… our society would utterly collapse in less than a month.
Opinions, Scientific Analysis?
(hopefully this Q duzn’t fall into the realm of great debate… let’s stick w/ a time frame answer )
I don’t thikn there is any factual way to answer your question as it would be mostly conjecture. It also depends on your definition of society. Better in IMHO, IMHO.
That aside of the entire national power grid went down and couldn’t be brough back up we’d be knee deep in shit pretty quickly. Provided this isn’t a Klaatu style power outage there would still be a few things operationg while local backup generating systems had fuel but things would go to hell pretty fast as soon as the food in grocery stores ran out which could be as quickly as a few days. Same goes for municipal water systems which would have an even quicker impact. Mormon families could hold out a while with their own non-perishable food supplies provided they keep from getting looted by those that only stocked up on weapons and ammunition.
I could accept that the major distribution systems could be destroyed or severely damaged, but it would take the Twilight Zone to wipe out the diverse collection of systems that generate electricity. There’s hydro, geothermal, nuclear, solar, wind, coal, oil, gas, diesel, petrol. In a pinch, nuclear submarines can be used as mobile generators. There are truck-mounted diesel generators that can be moved to critical locations. A gas station can operate from a portable generator.
That the premise is implausible doesn’t enter into it. Even if it was only the distribution grid that went down there aren’t enough local sources of power to keep much going. Even if some gas stations are open with a local generator the supplies will be quickly depleted by people trying to get fuel for their own generators.
Things get tough when you get to a grocery store. I don’t imagine it’s practical for any to have a backup generating system with enough capacity to run freezers and coolers long term. Oh, I hope you don’t mind paying for everything in cash. Financial institutions rely on computer centers and most of those have only battery backup power supplies. As soon as that Liebert runs low on juice you can forget about making an ATM transaction. As far as that goes I don’t think the communications network could stand very long if at all without a functioning power grid.
It would obviously be extremely unpleasant to live without electricity. But we would survive somehow. A large portion of the world’s population doesn’t have electricity now.
Don’t forget the Amish Though… I’d wonder if they’d even notice. Except when people stopped showing up to buy thier quilts and pies. :smack:
I happen to work at a Super Wal-Mart… and the answer (for them anyway) is no. They do not have generators… so perishable food would go bad in a very short order. (Thier short term answer is to pack perishables w/ dry ice… but obviously that’d only last a couple days at most)
Obviously, as a HUMAN society, it would survive… that the ENTIRE world would lose power (by any cause other than intergalactic catastrophy… but let’s not got THERE ) is highly unlikely… but if the U.S. lost power… (as stated in the OP)
This prolly wuzn’t a good Q for GQ… but still… it’s an interesting Q. I’m still sticking w/ about a month time-line before total mayhem and starvation really kicked in.
Well I made it for 8 days without electricity during storms in Memphis last year. It was very hot and very boring, but you adjust after a few days. If this power outage was U.S.-wide I believe I would have been capable of scrounging food for a few weeks by eating up what we’ve got left in the house or going through dumpsters. At that point I would be forced to leave the city in search of food and water, but even a big city has parks and forrests and lakes nearby. I I could hunt enough fish or squirrels locally to survive for quite a long time. Cities here in the middle of the country are also always within a few miles of enless farmland which could be exploited I’m sure. Eventually small bands of people would probably form and start working together to gather food (since I’m sure most houses today would be fine for a very long time since many come from a time before electricity anyhow) and reorganizing some sort of hierarchy. We could scrounge scrap metal and anything we could find to build generators if we desired, but as someone said above we’d probably live like the Amish for a long time while society slowly rebuilt itself over a few decades or centuries.
There’d be rioting and looting from day one. Do you really expect gas station employees to set up generators when they should be out collecting food and water? Same for super market employees, not to mention police and firefighters.
After the supermakets have been picked clean, no food. No tap water. No transportation. No communication. No medical care.
You’re planning on living like the Amish? Who do you have to kill to grab a piece of land? How will you defend it? How much do you know about farming? Where will you buy seeds and livestock? Where will you get a non-electric plow? Where will you get horses? How will you feed them? Where will you get fresh water? Where will you get clothing and shoes and medical supplies? How will you heat your home in winter?
Don’t forget that all agrarian societies are sustained by knowledge that’s passed down through each generation, for centuries. You can’t expect billions of people to survive by learning everything at once.
I lived the first 15 years of my life with no electricity. Wasn’t no big deal back then. You didn’t miss what you didn’t have. We lived on a farm. We had a windmill that pumped our water. We raised most everything we eat.
It would take major adjusting but I think I could survive today with no electrical power. But the big reason I could is… I still have a farm. I still know how to live off the land. The biggest problem would be protecting what I have from the city people.
First, that endless farmland is going to get you shot because I’m sure the farmers don’t want city folk going on their land and eating whatever they want. The hunting and fishing thing sounds great till you realize how many other people will be doing the same thing. How long will the wild game and local fish stocks last against the millions of people trying to eat them? Any idea how long the squirrels in the city park will last when 2,000 people are out there shooting them? I figure about a day at most.
You might be able to live off the food stocks in your house for a few weeks but that does not factor in water and looters. Unless you live next to a lake or stream, how long can you live off the water in your toilets and the hot water heater? No electricity means no running water and lack of food is going to bring hordes of looters into the area. Going without power for 8 days might seems harsh but you knew that eventually the power would be back on. There were many typical signs of civilization such as police and fire departments. Relief from outside, undamaged areas is almost always present. People did not degenerate into a kill or die mentality which would be present if all electricity were suddenly gone.
My own take on events: Riots within the first week, then disease starts up as sanitation fails due to no running water. It would come down to who had the best combination of firepower and ability to use it.
I used to work at a Super Wal Mart about three years ago and the store I was in did have a back up generator that was used at least once while I was working in the store so at least some of them do.
I’m not going to go through the evidence to back it up, so I understand what this argument is worth, but I think the whole, “We’d degenerate into struggling warring anarchy within 2 weeks,” line of analysis is Star Trek philosophy and wrong. It’s not as though the world without common electrical use was some ur-state where cannibals roamed the land. It’s as recent as U.S. Civil War-WWI-ish, when culture and society in the western world was still flourishing by any stretch. No one has been able to convince me why losing a powerful modern tool suddenly makes you regress to a point thousands of years before you gained the tool (which is what the "instant degeneration into murdering warring bands level of society really is).
People would get excited and freaked out for awhile, small clusters of idiots would overreact precisely because of the reasoning given herein (like the Y2Kers who stocked up on shotgun shells and MREs), the government would step in and do the job it is formed for, begin shooting the idiots, and restoring order (much like they were supremely capable of doing well before electricity). We have not lost the ability to engage in pre-electrical agriculture, and although the much greater population size we have now would cause problems, to my understanding we already export far more food than we possibly need, and still have tons of untapped land that is not used for agriculture (just drive around in the country side of nearly any non-east coast state for awhile; see all of the vacant land that could be used for hunting, agriculture, etc.). Bear in mind that the impact would be greatest for the western world; large amount of the rest of the world may feel less impact because of the lower level of electrical infrastructure in place (although they may feel a food pinch as western agricultural shipments stop pouring in).
Hell, don’t vegetarians/vegans love to throw out some quote about how a human being can be fed for a year on a garden the size of a tennis court? The frightening thought that everyone is going to be scrabbling for their own personal 100 acre stretch just to feed the family doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Sure, we did feed ourselves before electricity but that’s not the point. The question revolves around how well could today’s society function without electricity. I guess we can fall back on the onld standby of “the government will swoop in and save the day” argument. The problem with that line of reasoning is shown if you look at any natural disaster with looting and problems of supply, and then put that over the entire nation. Ask anyone who had to live in Homestead after Andrew how effective the government was in helping them.
If we lost all electricity, we would not be losing a powerful modern tool, we would lose all the powerful modern tools which run off of electricity. How much cash do you have on hand to buy supplies?
Take a modern large city such as New York. With no power and running water, how long before the system starts to collapse? How many troops would it take to transport enough food and water into New York City for an extended people of time? Add to that the additional amount of troops needed to keep looters/rioters under control and you can easily see how thin resources would be stretched. Those troops need to be supplied with fuel and paid to keep working. All additional forces also need to be paid(cash or gold only) and supplied with essentials. Now multiply this by every single city and medium sized town in the United States and the problem become clearer.
I never said society would completely collapse within 2 weeks but I believe that riots would start within a week. When people with very limited food supplies can’t buy more food and poor people are not getting government assistance, how long before they take to the streets? Without running water in peoples homes, how long before the backed up sewerage causes outbreaks of disease?
Society certainly would not end but it sure as hell would lose a lot of members until it stabalized.
NO electric power results in no gas/diesel fuel pumped, no cars/trucks rolling, no food on store shelves, no water, no gas, not much of anything but short tempers and soon starvation. Riots if everyone isn’t too debilitated. No transportation and walking even 10 miles a day wont’ get you far till you collapse. Survivors will be those in small towns with large agricultural areas roundabout. Tough going for a few years and then things will gradually immprove.
If Al Qaeda could pull this off nation/continent wide…
“How many troops would it take to transport enough food and water into New York City for an extended people of time?”
Whoops, lack of editing on my part. As far as I know, we are not currently measuring time in terms of people. Sorry. Read as “extended period of time”.
If there’s truly no large-scale power for a long time, I will die in about 2-3 years due to lack of new insulin production, as will many relying on pharmaceuticals to keep them alive.
What’s most interesting about this to me is the storyline in the book Lucifer’s Hammer. One of the characters needs insulin and comments several times about having to kill one sheep per month to produce insulin. Not so much on topic as something your post made me think of. I guess people who new how to produce insulin and had access to sheep would make it.
Una, if the power failed tomorrow, how long would your current stock of insulin last you? In stating that you would last 3 years, would you have immediate effects or would it be an extended decline? I really have no idea about how people without insulin cope so I apologize in advance if these questions are bothersome.
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Though… I’d wonder if they’d even notice. Except when people stopped showing up to buy thier quilts and pies. :smack: