Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It may possibly lead to a world that realizes that people must be productive, generating surplus usable goods and services, equitably trading and enjoying that surplus, regardless of money. Otherwise, civilization collapses.
having the electric grid working won't do any good if most of the items it powers are fried. we had our power go out for a few hours and the neighbors didn't know what to do with themselves with the internet down. if an emp were to happen in the summer - a lot of folks in the south would sorely miss their AC - with some likely not able to make it through the heat. good night Irene...
I'm in rural Minnesota. My job as a programmer would be history but there will be plenty of farm help being needed with us all becoming Amish and what not.
I'm in rural Minnesota. My job as a programmer would be history but there will be plenty of farm help being needed with us all becoming Amish and what not.
That assumes you live long enough to engage in farming.
A carefully planned EMP attack would take place in the Fall just after harvest at the end of September, beginning of October. All that food -- various grains and vegetables and what not -- harvested, sitting on trucks, on trains and at canneries etc, rotting away (while people starve to death) with Winter coming and all.
Before you contemplate becoming Farmer Brown, you might want to calculate the Carrying Capacity for your county, you know, to see how many people will die-off initially.
To calculate the carrying capacity for the county in which you live, you can get the data you need right here on City Data. The carrying capacity will determine how many people your county can sustain. I'll use my county as an example. From the City-Data info, we want this information:
Quote:
Hamilton County, Ohio (OH)
County population in July 2009: 855,062 (98% urban, 2% rural)
County owner-occupied houses and condos: 207,533
Renter-occupied apartments: 139,257
Land area: 407 sq. mi.
Water area: 5.4 sq. mi.
Population density: 2099 people per square mile (very high).
[Note: The following info will be near the bottom of the file so you'll have to scroll down]
Agriculture in Hamilton County:
Average size of farms: 74 acres
Irrigated harvested cropland as a percentage of land in farms: 5.57%
Average number of cattle and calves per 100 acres of all land in farms: 6.07
Milk cows as a percentage of all cattle and calves: 20.76%
Corn for grain: 3347 harvested acres
All wheat for grain: 660 harvested acres
Soybeans for beans: 5267 harvested acres
Vegetables: 418 harvested acres
Land in orchards: 138 acres
This is the data I will use for the calculations:
Corn for grain: 3347 harvested acres
All wheat for grain: 660 harvested acres
Soybeans for beans: 5267 harvested acres
Vegetables: 418 harvested acres
Orchards are nice, but I ignore them. We have a total of 9,692 acres of cropland.
It takes 2.5 acres of land to sustain one person at Subsistence Level. Subsistence Level is the minimum basic calorie requirements that will allow people to function and perform manual labor tasks (like farming). Our carrying capacity is the number of acres divided by 2.5:
9,692 / 2.5 = 3876.8 or 3,900 rounded up.
Unfortunately there are 855,062 people in Hamilton County so that means 851,162 people are going to die in the Die-Off.
That's a lot of dead bodies.
If the population of you county is less than the carrying capacity, then you probably do not need to worry about defense. For comparison we'll look at rural Bullock County, Alabama. From the City-Data info, we get this:
Quote:
County population in July 2009: 10,985 (35% urban, 65% rural) County owner-occupied houses and condos: 2,967
Renter-occupied apartments: 1,019
Land area: 625 sq. mi.
Water area: 1.0 sq. mi.
Population density: 18 people per square mile (low).
Agriculture in Bullock County:
Average number of cattle and calves per 100 acres of all land in farms: 7.06
Corn for grain: 492 harvested acres
All wheat for grain: 35 harvested acres
Vegetables: 67 harvested acres
Land in orchards: 980 acres
The total farm land is 594 acres.
594 / 2.5 = 240 people
Ooops.
The carrying capacity for this county is only 240 people. Note that you do have a lot of orchards. You might be able to carry 500 people here, but that is unfortunate because the population is 10,985 people, so more than 10,000 people are going to starve to death or die trying to take your food or someone else's food or just give up and kill themselves or die of disease or illness or injury.
Note that it can take up to two months to die of starvation, but after about a month, people will be so weak as not to be able to do anything, so they won't be much of a threat physically, and during Fall and Winter months, they're likely to die of hypothermia or disease.
Your job would be to stay alive long enough to be able to plant crops in the Spring and then harvest those crops in the Fall.
That assumes you live long enough to engage in farming.
A carefully planned EMP attack would take place in the Fall just after harvest at the end of September, beginning of October. All that food -- various grains and vegetables and what not -- harvested, sitting on trucks, on trains and at canneries etc, rotting away (while people starve to death) with Winter coming and all.
Before you contemplate becoming Farmer Brown, you might want to calculate the Carrying Capacity for your county, you know, to see how many people will die-off initially.
To calculate the carrying capacity for the county in which you live, you can get the data you need right here on City Data. The carrying capacity will determine how many people your county can sustain. I'll use my county as an example. From the City-Data info, we want this information:
This is the data I will use for the calculations:
Corn for grain: 3347 harvested acres
All wheat for grain: 660 harvested acres
Soybeans for beans: 5267 harvested acres
Vegetables: 418 harvested acres
Orchards are nice, but I ignore them. We have a total of 9,692 acres of cropland.
It takes 2.5 acres of land to sustain one person at Subsistence Level. Subsistence Level is the minimum basic calorie requirements that will allow people to function and perform manual labor tasks (like farming). Our carrying capacity is the number of acres divided by 2.5:
9,692 / 2.5 = 3876.8 or 3,900 rounded up.
Unfortunately there are 855,062 people in Hamilton County so that means 851,162 people are going to die in the Die-Off.
That's a lot of dead bodies.
If the population of you county is less than the carrying capacity, then you probably do not need to worry about defense. For comparison we'll look at rural Bullock County, Alabama. From the City-Data info, we get this:
The total farm land is 594 acres.
594 / 2.5 = 240 people
Ooops.
The carrying capacity for this county is only 240 people. Note that you do have a lot of orchards. You might be able to carry 500 people here, but that is unfortunate because the population is 10,985 people, so more than 10,000 people are going to starve to death or die trying to take your food or someone else's food or just give up and kill themselves or die of disease or illness or injury.
Note that it can take up to two months to die of starvation, but after about a month, people will be so weak as not to be able to do anything, so they won't be much of a threat physically, and during Fall and Winter months, they're likely to die of hypothermia or disease.
Your job would be to stay alive long enough to be able to plant crops in the Spring and then harvest those crops in the Fall.
You watch way to many SHTF Movies and BELIEVE them.
You watch way to many SHTF Movies and BELIEVE them.
240 might be too low but he's closer to being right than he is wrong.
If our country went back to 1850 overnight, after loss of medications, medical infrastructure, food, water, sanitation, there would be a tremendous amount of people dying from infections, lack of medications or medical treatment, heat stress, freeze to death, dehydration etc, long before they were even able to starve to death.
It's not unrealistic to say that a typical random county in this country would only have a few thousand people alive 1 year after an emp.
240 might be too low but he's closer to being right than he is wrong.
If our country went back to 1850 overnight, after loss of medications, medical infrastructure, food, water, sanitation, there would be a tremendous amount of people dying from infections, lack of medications or medical treatment, heat stress, freeze to death, dehydration etc, long before they were even able to starve to death.
It's not unrealistic to say that a typical random county in this country would only have a few thousand people alive 1 year after an emp.
First of all you would need to believe that an EMP could cause total infrastructure destruction. Which it will not.
Perhaps the electronics of the 1970-1980's were vulnerable but today's are not.
There was a time when simply breathing on some electronics would pop them but those days are long gone and most of those problems have been solved.
Electronics are very robust today and can take a lot of damage. If they couldnt, the Iphone and computer craze of today would be impossible.
Then you would have to believe that you could create energy from nothing. The amount of energy that needed to reach the earth to cause this level of destruction is immense and not achievable even if using hundreds of weapons.
You could burn out small places and have spotty outages but the overall destruction just isnt possible.
First of all you would need to believe that an EMP could cause total infrastructure destruction. Which it will not.
Perhaps the electronics of the 1970-1980's were vulnerable but today's are not.
There was a time when simply breathing on some electronics would pop them but those days are long gone and most of those problems have been solved.
Electronics are very robust today and can take a lot of damage. If they couldnt, the Iphone and computer craze of today would be impossible.
Then you would have to believe that you could create energy from nothing. The amount of energy that needed to reach the earth to cause this level of destruction is immense and not achievable even if using hundreds of weapons.
You could burn out small places and have spotty outages but the overall destruction just isnt possible.
Have you ever researched the Soviet project K nuclear tests over Kazakhstan in the 1960s? They did tons of damage when things were mostly vacuum tubes and not nearly as dependent on circuitry as they are now. The Soviet union still won't declassify the extent of the damage that occurred in what is today Russia's territory.
The fact of the matter is no one knows for sure what will or won't happen. I pray we never find out.
When only moderately powerful solar storms can knock out a large portion of the grid, I tend to believe experts who say it is possible a few EMPs can wipe out our grid.
What could definitely be debatable is how much damage would be done to other electronics, cars, etc.. It depends who you ask.
Even if there was an EMP over a portion of the country it would have the potential to overload unaffected parts of the grid as electricity already in the grid gets re routed and overloads certain transfer points which could cause cascading failures.
Have you ever researched the Soviet project K nuclear tests over Kazakhstan in the 1960s? They did tons of damage when things were mostly vacuum tubes and not nearly as dependent on circuitry as they are now. The Soviet union still won't declassify the extent of the damage that occurred in what is today Russia's territory.
The fact of the matter is no one knows for sure what will or won't happen. I pray we never find out.
When only moderately powerful solar storms can knock out a large portion of the grid, I tend to believe experts who say it is possible a few EMPs can wipe out our grid.
What could definitely be debatable is how much damage would be done to other electronics, cars, etc.. It depends who you ask.
Even if there was an EMP over a portion of the country it would have the potential to overload unaffected parts of the grid as electricity already in the grid gets re routed and overloads certain transfer points which could cause cascading failures.
When have solar storms knocked out large portions of the grid?
Anyhow every transformer in every distribution center has a transformer that shunts to ground if overloaded. Most pole and other local transformers do too.
Almost all of the transmission lines have overload devices on them that will kill any overload. (mainly installed for lightning strikes) and short it to ground.
Yes, many vacuum tubes poped during those tests. Mainly because they were A/C types and directly connected to the grid thru their Flyback transformers and their heating elements fried. But if you ever owned an old vacuum tv set you would know that this is a every week occurrence especially during stormy weather.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
