How long could we last w/o electricity?

Factual Questions
21

No one seems to have considered these questions:

[ul]How long would it be before power could be restored?[/ul]
[ul]Who could restore the power?[/ul]
[ul]How many people have the knowledge and/or are capable of learning enough to restore power to an area?[/ul]
[ul]What kind of disaster would it take to wipe out power more or less permanently to a large area of the US?[/ul]

Many situations have shown that any kind of problem that affects a lot of people leads to social unrest and possibly rioting, so I will not argue that wide scale violence and disruption won’t happen. I’m pretty sure they would. However, just because the power goes down doesn’t mean it will be impossible to restore it, riots or no riots. I think it would take more than just a power outage to completely unbalance the U.S. government.

Also, just because standing government resources may not be enough to keep order doesn’t mean that the whole government and social structure will collapse overnight. Pretty much from the beginning there will be people who will volunteer to help.

Take a look at what happened during the attacks in New York or the riots in Los Angeles in 1992. There was looting, but there were also rescue squads and protection groups. When the authorities get to almost any big emergency they typically find people already helping. Most people won’t volunteer when they aren’t really needed, but when there is a real need it’s pretty rare for that it to be completely ignored.

Government representatives are almost always augmented by local resources and volunteer squads anyway so all you really need are a few people with appropriate knowledge and some recognized authority to form a core group. Even people who really don’t want to help out will sometimes be shamed into helping since most people have an aversion to appearing to be cowardly or selfish. You can see this pressure at work in many aspects of normal life. How many people do you think would contribute in church if it weren’t made public or if they got no recognition, positive or negative, for their contribution?

Most people will realize that it is in their best interests to support rescue and restoration efforts. The real problems come if there is a large group of people whose best interests are in not supporting these efforts. In the event these people take advantage of the opportunity and mobilize, things could get very hairy. Even more frightening is if there is a group that is already organized and ready to exploit the opportunity to seize control of an area and its resources, rather than a spontaneous aggregation of people with a temporarily common goal.

As far as I know, there are currently no groups large enough or organized enough to attempt a takeover of even a city in the U.S. The largest disaffected segment of the population that might become a pro tem organization are the inner-city poor, but one of the major difficulties with this group of people is that they are not motivated or organized enough to affect changes in their shared community quickly and efficiently, so they would represent a problematic but ultimately minimal threat to continued government authority.

I would guess that there would be huge problems, wide scale murder and mayhem, but that general equilibrium would be restored in weeks to a couple of months at the outside, not years. Most riots do not involve a whole city, they involve a segment of the total population. Even in large-scale ongoing unrest, looters typically represent a small percentage of the total population. Just because the lights go off doesn’t mean that people will automatically start causing as much trouble as they can. I’m a pessimist about human nature and even I think that people will be more likely to cooperate–even if it is out of enlightened self-interest–than they are to start rending each other with “tooth and claw.”

Note that these statements are about society as a whole. Your neighborhood might turn into a slaughterhouse, but society would probably pull out of it. That would probably provide small comfort to the people affected in the interregnum.

22

IIRC my bottles have an 18-month to 2-year expiry date on them. I know that from when I was very poor and using old insulin that I could go beyond that date a bit and still had success, provided that the insulin had been kept cold and in a dark place. So I figure that if I had enough bottles, and kept them in a cold well (like in a cooler in the basement cooled by water) I might have insulin to last for 3 years or so. I typically only carry a 3-month supply at my house, however, so I’d have to raid the pharmacy to get more…which of course means it would be denying others insulin.

23

Take a look at the 2003 blackout. There was very little crime then. I’d rather go through 100 blackouts than another 9/11–When you’ve been through hell, purgatory is a breeze.

Our local Shop Rite has its own backup generator. I found that out when I was in there during a tremendous thunderstorm that took out the electricity. A friend of mine was in Shop Rite when the electricity went out in 2003, and she didn’t even realize there was a major Blackout till she got home. I image that generator paid for itself that day. People were even going in there, buying meat, and paying extra to have the store cook it on their grills.

24

By the way, in answer to some of the recent posts, let me just throw in that I am assuming that the OP meant that for some strange reason (the laws of physics change), electricity just becomes impossible, with no means to restore it. This isn’t a loss of the power grid that can be restored in five years type of hypothetical (at least that is what I’m going on).

25

Aren’t you all overlooking something?

No electricity = No SDMB = humankind doomed to future of ignorance, unanswered questions and unranted rants.

Pretty bleak.

26

A few large nuclear weapons detonated at high altitude should produce enough EMP over large enough area to bring down most of the electric grid(and most anything electronic) in the United States. This scenario was thrown around often during the cold war because it was assumed the Soviets would open any attack on the US with an EMP strike first to blind and cripple the country. As far as returning power, I have zero idea how long that would take.

I’ll throw a few cites in later when I get a chance but a google search on EMP will produce all sorts of lovely results, not all of which require tin-foil hats to read.

27

Sure, I’m just saying that I assume that under the OP, there will be no return of power. Electricity will be gone forever, or so long as to render its return meaningless for purposes of the discussion. I do not believe the OP intended a “can we hold together for five years while the grid is rebuilt” scenario, but of course that is my interpretation.

28

Without electricity, all human life, and most, if not all, other life would immediately end. It would also screw up the basic operation of the universe, in many more ways than I can think of.

29

Agreed. It is impossible even to hazard a guess without assumptions about the manner of elextrocity’s disappearance from the scene. Perhaps our brains stop fumctioning and we all immediately drop dead. Or maybe a disease wipes out everyone over the age of 2, leaving no one who understands electricity, or gravity, or how to read for that matter – and electrical sources fizzle out ober a period of months.

30

I was in the Peace Corps for three years and did fine without electricity. I now live in rural Colorado. In the area we have cattle, chickens, hogs, sheep, goats, deer, elk, trout, wheat and some vegetable farming. We even have a handful of stills.

I don’t know how you city types will do, but we’ll get by OK out here.

TV

31

I may have missed a mention, but a recent science fiction novel depicted this exact scenario. Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling depicts one version of what happens if electricity stopped.

32

I agree with you but it would be a full time job to protect our farms from the city people. See my post above.

33

I would say… MASS CANNIBALISM!

Then we’ll all figure out how electricity works.

34

Come on people. Let’s all take a deep breath here.

What would happen?

First we would all wail, moan and gnash our teeth…no more X-Box, no more Tonight Show, no more Starbucks on your way to work.

Then, we would realize that we are all still civilized human beings, we all still care about our fellow man, and we would all make the adjustments necessary to shift our priorities and lifestyles to a non-electric world…and the army would shoot the idiots trying to riot – that’s their job, and btw they don’t do it for the $24K a year, they do it out of a sense of duty to their fellow citizens.

You know all those Mom and Pop farms you pass commutting to work or when you drive to the lake or beach. Well they still know what they’re doing when it comes to growing your own food. So do a lot of people with a whole bunch of letters after their names at Universities all over the country. Yes modern agriculture would have to adjust, but it would.

People would help each other out. The government would set up workshops all over the place teaching people how to grow food, can food, make water potable, and all the other things we used to do just a couple of generations ago. College degrees in history would actually become an asset in a job interview.

You’ve got to remember, people are basically good and are more than willing to step up to the plate to help each other out. I would hope that the last couple of years have shown us all how deep that truth runs. Sure post apocalyse fiction is fun at the movies, but in reality we’d get by. You’d just have to get the straight dope from Grand Dad on the porch instead of from Uncle Cecil via the Internet.

Have faith.

rainy

35

At least where we are, it is far enough away from the cities that it will not be on normal routes of people exiting any cities. And our neck of the woods is a neck of the woods so it will not take much effort to defend it.

And probably by the time most city types realize the situation they are in they will have used up almost all of their gasoline on genarators and such and won’t be able to get out here anyway.

TV

36

** How long could we last w/o electricity?**

Well, the current record is about 300,000 years…

37

So exactly how would all the power go out? I ask because one of the most important communications systems does not rely on the national power grid (land line phone network) and can run independantly for a long time. When the Aug 2003 blackout occured our phone system didn’t miss a beat.

My work place has power back up. Enough to power the whole building and every computer for months. I know because when the power was restored but on the edge our building was running on it’s own, off the national grid. We were asked to turn off unused machines but we still got work done.

I agree with rainy. Most of us would go home and bitch about not having power. We’d then accept it and move on. Of course I only have about 3 weeks worth of food at home and all my fish would die but I wouldn’t start rioting :smiley:

38

after a couple days gone, i see my topic has done surprisingly well.

I see a couple peeps were trying to understand the Equation of the Q…

as I envisioned the scenerio: Something catastrophic happens. The form of electricity that powers every piece of modern technology (as opposed to the electricity that powers every living creature and lightning for that matter) is suddenly gone…

whether or not electricity is gone FOREVER is not quite what i had in mind… for purposes of the Q, i meant for the Forseeable future (at least months, probably years)

for purposes of the Q (and simplicity), I purposed that it was the U.S. only… however it could include the whole world…

and further, for simplicities sake: focus the results on the U.S. (brits and aussies can either feel lucky or mad to be left out)…

some of y’all are hopelessly optimistic, by my thinking…

obviously, how any perticular person would be effected initially, would depend on where said person was located.

I think it could be agreed that peeps living in big cities would be screwed. Peeps living in the country, would have a better chance of surviving the initial loss of food, income, means of travel, etc… Any ONE person here could probably survive… however, I meant society as a whole. (U.S. society specificly)

Peeps in the city would have no food or water in a very short period of time… peeps living anywhere near a large city, w/ foragable/farmable land or not, would be swarmed by city folk looking for food. I think mass starvation and disease would onset w/in weeks.

Yes, other parts of the world do fine w/o power… however, lots of them are fed food rations courtesy of the U.S./U.N… Who would feed the U.S.? The government? I think they’d be pretty preoccupied w/ other matters, like trying to restore power (but that would depend largely on what caused the outage in the first place).

The Great Black-Out of 03’ showed jest how vulnerable the grid is. And that was simple mechanical failure compounded about a dozen times by human morons. What if something catastropic happened, is the Q.

If the Zombies are unleashed… well, we have other problems besides lack of power… but that’s another story… heh.

I guess, the Q I had in mind was: how long could we survive before our society (U.S. or world) was irrevocably changed?

39

kinda along the same lines (though result of Nuclear war) is: The Day After.

40

Well I’m guessing I’m the “hopelessly optimistic” guy around here but lets look at the facts.

Human beings have been learning ways of modifying their environment for thousands of years. By modifying their environment I mean things like cooking foods to make them safe, preserving food to eat later when nothing is in season, staying warm, staying dry, making tradable goods (cash is just shorthand for this after all). Only in the past hundred or so years did any of those modifications include electricity.

We would just learn to accomplish those things without electricity. We would all probably be a little leaner for a time. If your work consisted of building houses, you’d be using a hand saw instead of a circular saw. If you raised chickens, you would have to modify your farm (and expected yield) to not depend on electric motors to open the ventilation system and deliver the bird’s food directly from storage to feed tray. If you worked building electronics, you’re going to be looking for a new career. But new positions would abound as our electric automation became useless. Things would have to be built by hand again. There would be plenty of positions open in agriculture, which would require more manual labor to replace the automation as well. There is nothing wrong with earning your living as a farmer. My grandfather was a share croppper. My mother remembers picking cotton by hand.

Tons of new businesses would spring up providing the items we would need to replace the ones rendered useless without electricity. Maybe I’m a hopeless optimist, but I don’t see how there is going to be much room in the post electric economy for running about wringing your hands and figuring out where to stage a riot.

Now if there are zombies…“You got a problem with zombies? Contact Reese Pest control. Our crack staff of undead pest specialist can get rid of those pesky inlaws who just won’t stay buried. You don’t have to listen to them scratching at the back door and moaning all through the night. And hey, if we make a mess ‘taking care’ of the situation, we’ll clean it up before we leave. Holy water available for an extra charge.”

rainy