# Is there really any \*real world\* way modern society could collapse back to pure survival levels? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 27, 2016, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172 "2016-08-27T18:45:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ataraxy22](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ataraxy22/32/307_2.png) [@ataraxy22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ataraxy22)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/61 "2016-08-30T00:01:18Z")
> [@Disposable Hero](#): > > Global Thermonuclear War > > Remember when that was the big fear? And it really was an existential threat _(even if it couldn’t actually kill every human, never mind all life, it would certainly have knocked civilisation in the northern hemisphere at least back quite a bit)_. ISIS and Islamist terrorism in general is weak-sauce. > > Though at this point I’m not sure how many nuclear weapons all sides have ready to go, its certainly not on the same scale or hair-trigger as the bad old days of the early 1980’s. Actually, it more or less is . Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![JackieLikesVariety](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackielikesvariety/32/296_2.png) [@JackieLikesVariety](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JackieLikesVariety)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/62 "2016-08-30T00:31:09Z")
[Bird Flu pandemic](http://www.birdflubook.org/a.php?id=114) ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/63 "2016-08-30T06:02:03Z")
Of the major nuclear powers that we know today, I believe, as I did during the Cold War, that everybody’s too chicken shit to use them. It’s a standoff, is all. Who _really_ wants mutually assured annihilation? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/64 "2016-08-30T06:42:26Z")
The trouble is that people aren’t too chicken-shit to practice brinksmanship and dangerous escalatable aggression. It wouldn’t take too awfully much for a scenario to spiral up out of control, and then we would use the big city-busters and let fly the missiles. One might as well have said, in 1914, that the big powers were too chicken-shit to go to full mobilization. The world would have been better off if that were true, but never underestimate the ability of powerful nations to make large-scale blunders. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/65 "2016-08-30T06:50:56Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > In Googling the topic, I found one guy who said that, if an enemy really wanted to knock down our electricity, they could just sneak saboteurs out to the desert and blow up some of the big transmission lines. I can attest, from years of driving desert routes, many of those big towers don’t even have a fence around the base. You can walk right up to 'em. One guy with a few sticks of dynamite could disconnect the link between, say, Yuma and San Diego. Dark time in the old town tonight! My guess: if the towers truly are in the middle of the desert, someone realized that putting fences around them would be useless. Unless you wanted to post a 24 hour guard there, you’d have all the time in the world to breach perimeter security, plant your explosives, and haul ass out of there before anyone would be within hours of reaching you. ---
**Author:** ![DoggyDunnit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5fc32e/32.png) [@DoggyDunnit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoggyDunnit)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/66 "2016-08-30T07:35:51Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Some sources claim an EMP will destroy all electronics if they aren’t in a faraday cage, but those are the ones selling something. > [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > Lets also not forget that an EMP attack would knock out like 99% of cars and computers…in addition to the power grid. I’ve wondered about the truth regarding EMPs for a while now re: the impact if one happened, either from a detonation or asteroid strike or whatever. I’ve heard everything from “it’d ‘only’ affect the big grid infrastructure and a few unfortunate business-/consumer-level devices but most conventional consumer electronics will be just fine, especially if they aren’t plugged in” to “well, maybe more devices and cars/other motorized vehicles with computer chips in them, too, but excluding stuff like four-wheelers” to “anything that uses electricity is a goner”. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/67 "2016-08-30T11:38:39Z")
> [@DoggyDunnit](#): > > I’ve wondered about the truth regarding EMPs for a while now re: the impact if one happened, either from a detonation or asteroid strike or whatever. I’ve heard everything from “it’d ‘only’ affect the big grid infrastructure and a few unfortunate business-/consumer-level devices but most conventional consumer electronics will be just fine, especially if they aren’t plugged in” to “well, maybe more devices and cars/other motorized vehicles with computer chips in them, too, but excluding stuff like four-wheelers” to “anything that uses electricity is a goner”. What I think people forget is that even if, absolute super duper worst case scenario and everything that uses electricity is fried - that’s not reverting us to the stone age; more like about 1890 (when electric lighting started becoming relatively widespread). Also, the knowledge on how to make electricity isn’t going to vanish; it’s just going to take a while to get power grids and the like back up and running. In the interim, people will have to manage with local solutions (solar, steam, rivers, windmills or whatever) for their energy needs. Obviously the knock-on effects are going to be huge (no power, no refrigeration, all the food in the supermarket goes off and there’s no more food coming to replace it…) but the knowledge on how to do pretty much everything is written down in physical books; the loss of the internet would certainly be damaging to society but it’s not like people are going to forget how to make the wheel or be entertained by animals doing amusing things or anything in its absence. The point is, people throughout history managed without electricity right up until the 20th century (and there will undoubtedly be remote places in India, Africa, and China which _still_ don’t have it); so it would be difficult for the modern world to readjust to not having it, but not impossible or insurmountable IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/68 "2016-08-30T11:58:48Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Eh, the metro area I live in would still have @1 million people. Sure, there’d be a short term shock and period of adjustment, and a period of recovery involving mass burials and figuring out who is still alive and which companies remain operational. I’m an awful person, because I was just trying to figure out how many people would have to die for me to get one of those small-scale gentlemen’s farms in Concord or Lexington. Also that a major die-off would solve the housing problem here. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/69 "2016-08-30T14:41:28Z")
How much vital knowledge requires electronic access? (Thus the paradox of survival tips on DVDs. :smack:) ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/70 "2016-08-30T15:13:28Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > (snip) > I personally believe this to be the case. The _Apocalypse_ will not take minutes, hours or even weeks, but decades. We might well be within it even now. > (snip) William Gibson - who seems to have crystal balls for reading glasses - used this scenario in _The Peripheral_. The Jackpot, which is what his characters call the collapse of society, was a string of small disasters: local pandemics, economic breakdowns, climate change, rather than one global apocalyptic catastrophe. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/71 "2016-08-30T17:23:51Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > What I think people forget is that even if, absolute super duper worst case scenario and everything that uses electricity is fried - that’s not reverting us to the stone age; more like about 1890 (when electric lighting started becoming relatively widespread). > > Also, the knowledge on how to make electricity isn’t going to vanish; it’s just going to take a while to get power grids and the like back up and running. In the interim, people will have to manage with local solutions (solar, steam, rivers, windmills or whatever) for their energy needs. > > Obviously the knock-on effects are going to be huge (no power, no refrigeration, all the food in the supermarket goes off and there’s no more food coming to replace it…) but the knowledge on how to do pretty much everything is written down in physical books; the loss of the internet would certainly be damaging to society but it’s not like people are going to forget how to make the wheel or be entertained by animals doing amusing things or anything in its absence. > > The point is, people throughout history managed without electricity right up until the 20th century (and there will undoubtedly be remote places in India, Africa, and China which _still_ don’t have it); so it would be difficult for the modern world to readjust to not having it, but not impossible or insurmountable IMHO. My bug-out bag should consist of a shopping cart and a lot of paper cash. Edit: In this scenario the cashier has no clue. All power goes out. no cars are moving…i walk the two blocks with my shopping cart to the market, load up, bribe the cashier and off i go. ---
**Author:** ![BobArrgh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobarrgh/32/2881_2.png) [@BobArrgh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobArrgh)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/72 "2016-08-30T18:09:51Z")
I just read an article yesterday about what happened to the refrigerators in New Orleans during the aftermath of Katrina. Here is the Wikipedia article on the phenomenon: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katrina\_refrigerator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katrina_refrigerator). > [@Wikipedia Article](#): > > When they returned, they found that their refrigerators were filled with decomposing food. This food was so toxic that it melted plastic, corroded metal, and dissolved rubber refrigerator liners[citation needed]. Even residents who suffered no flood damage lost their refrigerators in this way. Residents took photographs of their destroyed refrigerators for the insurance companies, taped the doors shut, and carried them out of their homes as soon as possible. If society loses power for a sufficiently long period of time (apparently measured in weeks), there are a lot of ancillary problems that are going to occur, simply because we have become so dependent upon it. Take our reliance on GPS. How many of us know where to find a paper map? Or, for fun, give a teen or twenty-something a map and ask them to find a landmark. I bet it is more tragicomical than you would think. IME, most people don’t even know how to drive through an intersection when a _traffic signal_ loses power, so traffic would be pretty dicey. Then, if the gas pumps don’t work, people will be abandoning their cars wherever they stop, which would potentially lead to gridlock. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/73 "2016-08-30T18:38:09Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > Lets also not forget that an EMP attack would knock out like 99% of cars and computers…in addition to the power grid. But for how long? I’m sort of willing to buy the idea that massive transformers can’t be easily replaced quickly. Although I expect that something functional could be created in less than years if we really needed it. Normal factory lead times aren’t the same thing as emergency efforts. And getting enough transformers shipped from working installations to let each community have power for a few hours a day goes a long way toward fixing the “societal collapse” problems. Sure, lots of cars aren’t going to work if the main computer boards die. But how hard is that to retrofit? Fundamentally, there’s still an engine and a transmission under there, and neither the firing of spark plugs nor the chatter on a CAN bus is rocket science. I’m _sure_ it doesn’t take years for someone to figure out how to retrofit/hack a breadboard to get my Honda Fit to turn over. ---
**Author:** ![ultimate11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/49beb7/32.png) [@ultimate11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultimate11)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/74 "2016-08-30T18:48:55Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Trump presidency. Doubt it. We survived a Bush presidency three times. :rolleyes: Same can be said for a Clinton presidency, We survived it already twice, and a Obama presidency to boot. ---
**Author:** ![rainy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@rainy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rainy)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/75 "2016-08-30T19:22:45Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Even a pandemic that killed 0.6% of the population and left 99.4% of us alive would cause significant disruption of the status quo, especially if it cut an even swath across age demographics. The numbers I could find say 0.88% of the world population dies every year (1 in 113). So a pandemic that killed 0.6% will kill less than we normally lose in a year anyway. That it happened all at once would be tragic, but hardly Mad Max territory. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/76 "2016-08-30T19:25:30Z")
> [@rainy](#): > > The numbers I could find say 0.88% of the world population dies every year (1 in 113). So a pandemic that killed 0.6% will kill less than we normally lose in a year anyway. That it happened all at once would be tragic, but hardly Mad Max territory. However, 0.88% would turn into 1.48%, and you also have to take into account the number of people who got sick and recovered, which would also put numerous strains on the social order. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/77 "2016-08-30T20:10:34Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > My guess: if the towers truly are in the middle of the desert, someone realized that putting fences around them would be useless. Unless you wanted to post a 24 hour guard there, you’d have all the time in the world to breach perimeter security, plant your explosives, and haul ass out of there before anyone would be within hours of reaching you. It isn’t just way out in the desert. There are thousands of miles of power transmission lines in the rural parts of the US with no security around them at all. The local ones where I am even have access roads where anyone with a truck can follow the lines until they run across a canyon or stream. No gates, no fences, no anything. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/78 "2016-08-30T21:15:12Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > It isn’t just way out in the desert. There are thousands of miles of power transmission lines in the rural parts of the US with no security around them at all. The local ones where I am even have access roads where anyone with a truck can follow the lines until they run across a canyon or stream. No gates, no fences, no anything. A few power lines being blown up isn’t a national security threat, though. It’s generally a minor inconvenience. Those same bombs going off in any populated area would have much worse results. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2016, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/79 "2016-08-30T22:14:12Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > It isn’t just way out in the desert. There are thousands of miles of power transmission lines in the rural parts of the US with no security around them at all. The local ones where I am even have access roads where anyone with a truck can follow the lines until they run across a canyon or stream. No gates, no fences, no anything. Exactly! I only mentioned the desert, because that’s where I drive. There are towers right in the heart of the city, and, yes, they usually have a fence…which anyone with a wire-cutter could easily get through. (And some of the towers don’t have fences, even in the middle of the city.) > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > A few power lines being blown up isn’t a national security threat, though. It’s generally a minor inconvenience. > > Those same bombs going off in any populated area would have much worse results. I’d have to say…maybe? The principal attraction of blowing up transmission towers is that one could almost certainly do this and not get caught. It’s a lot harder to sneak a bomb into the basement of a hospital, and harder yet to affix them in just the right places to cause a floor, or part of a floor, to collapse. Maybe blowing up a major freeway bridge, right at rush hour, would be more damaging. But cutting off electrical power to Los Angeles for six hours goes way beyond a minor inconvenience! In any case, it certainly wouldn’t bring down civilization. I don’t think that could be done by any cabal of nihilists with dynamite, or anthrax, or even with home-built nuclear weapons. Only a major exchange of strategic nuclear weapons between the superpowers would rise to the challenge – and even then, civilization would stabilize at medieval/renaissance levels, probably right around the equivalent of A.D. 1600 (with military formations appropriate to 1750. We wouldn’t see massed pike battalions.) ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2016, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-really-any-real-world-way-modern-society-could-collapse-back-to-pure-survival-levels/764172/80 "2016-08-31T01:52:25Z")
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