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Poo Poo all you like, but as it stands there is a domino effect .
I lived in the mountains , where during the winter it was not uncommon for the power to go out for a few days /weeks.
There were 3 grids tied together that fed the area, and and all it took was one of the grids to fall out and there rest fell as well because they alone could not carry the whole area. You could count them ,one blink ,then you wait for the inevitable second and third and out for good.
We had a hand pump well at the time and use propane oil and wood to heat the house, kerosene lamps for light during the power outages. You never had to worry about the out house not flushing . To this day I carry a flash light at all times .
If I wanted music I had a wind up phonograph and several hundred 78 RPM records.
Still have the phonograph and records .
Being ready doesn't make you paranoid, it makes you thoughtful responsible.
If you have an accident in your old car ,and the spare tire is about the only thing left intact ,you had never had to use it, was it's existence all for nothing?
I don't believe so , because provided a margin of safety, and security to the point the car was no longer functional, it was ready to serve until that point . It was not a waste.
May be your the type that take that kind of thing for granted ,but not me.
I value having the training I got in Search and rescue, and other aspects of my life's work , that taught me to be prepared for the unknown.
To this day I cary first aid kits and other emergency items, that have come in handy from time to time.
I am ready to face the unknown , are you ?
Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
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The important thing is will fiber optic cable be affected? If the internets go down it's gonna get bad. Real bad. People with pasty skin and dark circles around their eyes will be wandering around outside in their underware, some for the first time in years. Their thumbs and fingers will be spastically seeking non working game controllers and forum keyboards. Hospitals will be overwhelmed, supplies of valium and prozak will run dry almost immediately. Welcome to the new zombie apocolypse.
We had a hand pump well at the time and use propane oil and wood to heat the house, kerosene lamps for light during the power outages. You never had to worry about the out house not flushing . To this day I carry a flash light at all times .
If I wanted music I had a wind up phonograph and several hundred 78 RPM records.
Still have the phonograph and records .
Being ready doesn't make you paranoid, it makes you thoughtful responsible.
If you have an accident in your old car ,and the spare tire is about the only thing left intact ,you had never had to use it, was it's existence all for nothing?
I don't believe so , because provided a margin of safety, and security to the point the car was no longer functional, it was ready to serve until that point . It was not a waste.
May be your the type that take that kind of thing for granted ,but not me.
I value having the training I got in Search and rescue, and other aspects of my life's work , that taught me to be prepared for the unknown.
To this day I cary first aid kits and other emergency items, that have come in handy from time to time.
I am ready to face the unknown , are you ?
When the underclass has lost power they will wish to make sure that no one else has power either. There is also a love of destruction in many people. Blackout curtains will provide a certain protection, but wind turbines, solar panels, and generators in populated areas will be exposed. A few rocks will take out a solar array.
During the Great Chicago Fire there were hundreds of incidents reported of men and boys starting additional fires in the city.
Cities will receive special treatment. For example, in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina the mayor ordered police and out of state National Guard forces to seize guns from Whites. He set up a camp in a stadium that local gangs controlled. He stopped city buses from transporting people out of the city. The city was sealed for those who hadn't left early. That was probably the most extreme case for Americans, but many areas have experienced long periods without power in the aftermath of hurricanes. In the summer of1977 a blackout of less than a day in NYC saw widespread rioting, looting, and death.
When it becomes impossible to deliver electricity, there will effectively be no electricity. There have been multistate blackouts so we know that they are possible.
My focus is developing a comfortable life without needing electricity. It is a slow but very worthwhile endeavor. I now have my maid ironing clothes without electricity. l'll provide information on the 1880 thread.
The power was out in San Diego for just one day and many people were just completely overwhelmed. Most apt dwellers.
No food at home, no gas in the car, no money to buy anything. Not even flashlights.
I can't imagine what would have happened had it went a few days.
Almost ten years ago in the winter freeze up we had N. Vancouver, BC go down for 5 days. I never thought I'd see a major city go down. We get outs up here, but back in the day it would be a few hours at most, several hours out in the valley, and my cabin in the USA would lose for a few days, but the first thing I did was re-install a PapaBear wood stove. Win/win. Some things never go out of style.
There goes your 3,000 Marine fish tank; it's toast. People start do dumb things like heating with their BBQ indoors: three people died. Storm electrical lines "stretched" and then started to snap several days later, burning right into the ground. Fortunately no one was killed...that time. You furnace needs electrical to fire even though it's natural gas: your lines all freeze up, then burst when they thaw.
Traffic can't figure out the "alternate" stops as all intersections now are four way.
I was sitting in a friends Skyline Drive 3 million dollar home weeks afterward when the entire ceiling failed above us. Ouch.
No one had water set aside. Looks like the Mormon's were right: you're supposed to have a years' supply of food and water set aside just for this situation!!
Well use your imagination and add your outcomes while we patiently wait for Germany to supply us with replacement grid parts
which in a Congressional report could take 1- 1/2 years to restore. It is predicted that 90% of US population will die within the
first year and here is why.
Americans are the worst prepared disaster folks in the world
With all vehicle computers knocked out the grid lock of cars and trucks and RV's will not permit any movement anywhere.
Cell phone systems knock out even those in faraday sheds/metal garbage cans still useless
All pumps gas,toilet, water, sanitation, wells, dams, heat pumps, nuclear plant pumps etc. knocked out
NO showers ( unless gravity solar) No flushing toilets ( unless rain water or tube full for a while) No running anything
( unless a fuelless generator with solar and a full tank of gas to generatate power to generator ( a crank type also may help)
In high rises no elevator , Waste will be thrown out broken windows and pile on sidewalks and cars below ( thousands of pounds of poop)
NO food available unless bardered . No delivery systems including FEMA and RED Cross. (Some chopper drops but few) no planes. except vintage aircraft without computer assisted controls., but no towers no lights once generators ( gas are empty) on runways.
No money exchange No banks No ATMs No operational public restrooms. No laundry, No garbage pick up . No body removal
(OH! don' go in their!!! (Mass cremation or pits ,but bulldozer help or front end loaders to bury millions)
Hospitals, Nursing homes unstaffed and patients dying quickly. No means of care including homecare , medications and most
facilities of care locked down. Most ventilator patients including neonates will die quickly as no bulk gas will be depleated and back up manifolds
of Htanksand E tanks will be empty with zero hope of replacement. Anoneonlife support , renal dialysis , overdoses will die .
Need to protect whatever food or supplies including pet food with many rounds of ammo 9mm pistols hollow points and shotguns recommended or looters will kill you without warning and desperation.
You will not get assistance from anyone unless you formed a network of prepper neighbors as suggested by FEMA.
The grid is vunerable even worldwide via a sun flare ,but if a enemy source can enter the Gulf undetected under a false flag
they could fire two warheads in an atmospheric blast to mimic a EMP one over lets say Kanas and one over Nevada.
The answer to survival rests in preparation ,but that is not going to happen and America will be a waste land for take over
by foreign powers because we are to complacant and ignorant albeit too affluent.
Do you live with this fear everyday? While your examples are overly simplistic and dramatic, your point has a little validity. If the grid is compromised there could be some inconveniences for a few days, maybe a week. I live without power for a week at least once every few years due to weather. We will survive. I doubt this will ever happen anyway, so relax a little and stop worrying so much.
Do you live with this fear everyday? While your examples are overly simplistic and dramatic, your point has a little validity. If the grid is compromised there could be some inconveniences for a few days, maybe a week. I live without power for a week at least once every few years due to weather. We will survive. I doubt this will ever happen anyway, so relax a little and stop worrying so much.
My guess is that many of the posters here do indeed live with this kind of fear, especially when they spend much of their time chatting on line with their fellow doomsday prepper Chicken Littles. This silliness about the inevitability of the electrical grid being permanently or semi-permanently disabled by an EPM or by "a Carrington event" is akin to the hysteria over Y2K that had doomsday preppers spending fortunes on supplies they probably have thrown out by now ... or should have.
An EPM is a electromagnetic pulse. They happen frequently, as in every time there's a thunderstorm! Can thunderstorms wreck electronics? Yep. Can they disrupt electric service? Yep. Can they even cause damage to things like buildings? Yep. Can they kill people? Yep. Can an ordinary person pretty much keep himself and most of his possessions safe from most lightning strikes? Yep. Stay indoors, invest in good surge protectors, make sure that the house's electrical system is properly grounded. Can important computer facilities, electric generating stations, 911-systems, etc protect themselves? You betcha, dudes. Commercial installations have switch and fail-safe systems that can sense minute anomalies like the very flicker of a pulse and shut down or switch to alternate power source before a person could ever react to it. They also have disaster recover procedures that frequently include duplicate systems, including hardware.
There are other types of EPMs, much less frequent than lightning, including nuclear weapons. If you're ground zero for a nuclear blast, I don't think your bunker survives. If you're on the other side of the world from said blast, you're not going to be affected by it very much.
As for the vaunted "Carrington effect" solar storm, it's a rare occurrence, and the best guesses are that it might happen about once every 500 years. Solar storms of this magnitutde happen more often than that, but they don't hit the earth for any number of reasons. Even if one hit the earth, people would have time to prepare. Usually solar flares/storms take several days to reach the Earth, but even the very fast moving Carrington effect storm took 18 hours to get here. Do you really think that scientists, engineers, and other technicians are so incompetent that they wouldn't know this was coming, plot out where it was going to hit, and prepare those areas for the worst case scenarios? Really?
So, the sky isn't going to fall tonight or even tomorrow and likely not Friday, either, so you Chicken Littles can all stop wearing out your worry beads until Saturday am.
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Five days; major city down
Can thunderstorms wreck electronics? Yep. Can they disrupt electric service? Yep. Can they even cause damage to things like buildings? Yep. Can they kill people? Yep. Can an ordinary person pretty much keep himself and most of his possessions safe from most lightning strikes? Yep. Stay indoors, invest in good surge protectors, make sure that the house's electrical system is properly grounded. Can important computer facilities, electric generating stations, 911-systems, etc protect themselves? You betcha, dudes. Commercial installations have switch and fail-safe systems that can sense minute anomalies like the very flicker of a pulse and shut down or switch to alternate power source before a person could ever react to it. They also have disaster recover procedures that frequently include duplicate systems, including hardware.
