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Our urban areas are FAR ABOVE the resource availability and skill level for the same amount of people living at this moment that would be able to survive no matter how hard they try in a long term grid down/EMP scenario.
We are the "smartest" generation ever but the majority of us wouldn't survive if we were suddenly all teleported to 1880 at the exact same time. We don't have the skills or experience, our neighborhoods cities and towns are not built or designed to function without electricity and services.
There are simply too many of us now. If you look at the forest in the late 1800s and early 1900s there were no trees. Humans cut down everything so they could build wood frame houses, heat their homes, and tan their hides. There were very few animals; some people would take long horseback trips to see a dead deer.
We had an ice storm about a decade ago that took us off grid for five days. Every day the house got colder; the outside temperature was right around freezing. While a woodstove would have been better; we had only a fireplace. So we either had to be content with just one side of us being warmed, stay in bed with heavy blankets, or spend time in our vehicles or out shopping where they had electricity. We have a generator now. But that is a short term solution if the grid would go down for months or years. The 'no phone', no TV, no internet; is also very difficult to deal with. You have no idea of what is happening. Even portable radios/car radios are a joke in rural areas - you cannot count on them for up to the minute news when you need it.
My feeling is that many would never survive a long time without any power. It would require martial law and an effective leader that we would listen to and respect. The chance of that happening in today's political climate is just about zero.
Our urban areas are FAR ABOVE the resource availability and skill level for the same amount of people living at this moment that would be able to survive no matter how hard they try in a long term grid down/EMP scenario.
We are the "smartest" generation ever but the majority of us wouldn't survive if we were suddenly all teleported to 1880 at the exact same time. We don't have the skills or experience, our neighborhoods cities and towns are not built or designed to function without electricity and services.
I think it's more that everybody would WANT to live, but many COULD NOT hack it without electricity, because they wouldn't have time to adapt. And I think it would be worse in the urban world than in the rural world, generally speaking. Dropping 21st century Americans into the Middle Ages with no advance prep or acclimatization would be... difficult... for most of them at the very least.
I have had so many people remark that " I wouldn't want to survive if I couldn't have...…………" usually mobile phones, the internet, coffee, foreign holidays, their current lifestyle, or something similar.
its perfectly possible to live a non electric lifestyle, it just needs some adapting to, I have done it in the past but not everyone will be able to or would want to. but they have to start NOW not wait until something bad happens, skills and knowledge have to be learned and that takes time.
More like 2-3 hours to repair if it's a transformer on a pole.
A substation explosion/fire disrupts local power for a few hours until the utility can re-route the service around the downed substation. The equipment at the substation may take some time to fix/replace, but people don't go without power for long stretches of time because of the repairs that need to be done.
They might in the future. 50 mva and down transformers are common 100 + rarer and the big 500 mva plus typically come from overseas and take over a year to get here. Most utilities plan for a long time to replace these because it's too expensive to keep a spare on the shelf. With the advent of renewable generation resources and the rapid closing of base load power plants the interconnected transmission grid is rapidly losing stability. In the event of a nationwide collapse (NOT caused EMP) Folks who relay on grid tied solar and wind will be up chits creek. Grid tied wind and solar have to have electricity to operate and they produce volts not amps. Useless, unless you have one in your yard.....
More like 2-3 hours to repair if it's a transformer on a pole.
A substation explosion/fire disrupts local power for a few hours until the utility can re-route the service around the downed substation. The equipment at the substation may take some time to fix/replace, but people don't go without power for long stretches of time because of the repairs that need to be done.
Re-route?
The power line that goes through my town, is strung through 10 other towns before it gets to our town.
Only about 1/4 of the properties in our town have access to this power line.
Whenever there is a wind storm trees blow down. Somewhere it is likely that a tree will blowdown and take out the power line. It might be here in our town, or it might be up-stream eight towns away.
There is no 're-routing' the power. There is only one power line here.
A power line could be strung through 30 towns, and at the end of that power line, it simply ends.
I am in a state that is over 92% forest. That is what we have trees. When there are storms, trees will blow down. Thankfully we do not have droughts here, so the trees are not dead, brown and ready to feed forest fires.
I find it interesting that someone has the idea power can simply be re-routed via some other power lines to get to our town.
The Northern third of Maine gets its power from Canada.
The bottom third of Maine has its power 'grid' tied in with the states to our South. The surplus power that we generate basically feeds the Southern states like Mass and NH.
Right in the middle of Maine there lies about a third of the state that has no power lines. Hundreds of townships have never been wired with power, yet.
No refrigeration, so food will rot. No electricity to ANY pumps, and all gasoline needs to be pumped out of the tanks in the ground, or above ground. Hand pumps are SLOW. Yes, most smaller aircraft (general aviation) will be able to fly, but again will need hand pumped aviation gasoline. A few years ago, we lost power in my area only for a few days, and you'd think the world was ending. People get very weird, very quickly.
... A few years ago, we lost power in my area only for a few days, and you'd think the world was ending. People get very weird, very quickly.
Two years ago, a friend of ours scheduled a meeting with his town planning board. He was nervous about it so he asked a group of us to attend this meeting as his moral support.
On the appropriate day we all met at his town hall parking lot and we went inside. That was when we discovered that his town's grid was down. The town clerk told us that the grid had been down, countywide for 2 days. Their conference room is on the interior of the building, so we could not meet there. We ended up shifting the meeting into one fo their offices that had a window, so we could get a little bit of light.
As we sat down, was when we realized that among our group, none of us were on 'gridpower' so we had no idea the grid was down, again.
The frequent power outages in our town were a big factor in our decision to shift to solar power.
Our cities are designed to function with public services.
Many cities/suburbs/urban areas are built locations that do not have readily accessible water. Without electricity that is needed to power our water treatment and distribution system no one in the city gets water.
Urban areas now are dependent upon long supply chains of food production and distribution. Of that supply line collapses people starve.
Most Urban homes, apartments would be lucky to have a wood fireplace at most. The majority don't even have that. Many Sun belt locations were way less populated in even 1900-1950 because without cheap and reliable air conditioning they were inhospitable. Take that away now and people run a serious risk of heat stroke or hypothermia.
Just basic food, water, shelter would be an absolute struggle in modern urban areas. Our Urban areas are not designed to be habitable without ekectricty. It would be an epic ****storm.
My only fear is a disruption of financial markets. I'm good for at least a year at my home. Thankfully, I'm far from hurricanes.
Such a disruption would postpone my hostile takeover of Amazon. Can't have that.
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