Is there any way earth could lose industrial electrical production forever?

Inspired by How long could we last w/o electricity?

That OP asks “how would society change it this technological change happens?” My OP is asking what mechanism or combinations thereof could cause the technological change posited in that OP?

Or to quote more directly “for the forseeable future” is the time frame as stated in that thread’s OP. I’m having problems with that time frame, when cosmologists are postulating the life of the universe out to however many gazillions of years thatonly your cosmologist knows for sure. :slight_smile: But if you also allow from that OP that animal and plant life is unaffected, electricity itself still exists.

My first pass at coming up with how this might conceiably happen came up with two theories:

  1. Some God or another strolls in, and rewrites the laws of the universe just to fuck with us.
  2. 1920’s Style Death Ray-type beam from outer space-- the planet and solar system more less cruises into the path of some previously undiscovered force field of some kind that chamges the physical structure of certain definable forms of matter…

Upon closer inspection I decided that for all intents and purposes the two theories could be treated as one. Though I’d put my money on plan 2.

Anyway, what mechamisms would be needed tp meet all these conditions? Maybe something like matter being unable to sustain electrical fields above certain strength? Life it dissolves or something if you run to big a current tthrough it/ The only other thing I can come up with is virtually all types of inanimate matter to completely, or nearly so, lose their reisitance to electrical flow. Essentially we lose our ability to diirect the flow of electricity.

Any more thoughts on this?

About the only way this could work is if the Earth entered an area of space (or the sun went totally nuts) where there were massive electromagnetic pulses hitting the Earth at relatively short intervals. That’d make it difficult to generate electric power until someone built Faraday cages around the generating plants, and every other electric gizmo out there.

I’m assuming that “killing every living thing on Earth” doesn’t count, right?

Yes, I intended that as a specification in my OP, as ot was in the thread that started me thinking about this.Perhaps my language was not explicit enough.

Well I can’t consider any of this without being influenced by a children’s TV programme of my youth.