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.
This is always a fascinating subject. I assume many have read ONE DAY AFTER by Fortschen (sp). I have and have read other fictional accounts of massive disasters. And yet, I don't think we really can get our minds around such a thing. We have been groomed to having technology make our lives run smoothly. But think how having your car breakdown and the inconvenience of that. I live in AZ, a hot part of the state. I was thinking of what it would be like to have a Carrington event when it is 112 degrees and your kids are at school. No buses. No phones. No transportation. You are going to walk to that school to get your kid(s). You have one in kindergarten, one in middle school etc. You have to carry water, a lot of it, else you won't make it and neither will your kid. And, you are going to carry the kid most of the way. The other item is you have type 2 diabetes and you take insulin. No refrigeration. No refills. You are a single parent. You have maybe a few weeks until your insulin is gone or ineffective. Even were a store to still have food, you cannot get to it.
That is just one sample. And it isn't even a complex one. Your kid's bus could come to a stop in that 112 degree heat and you can't know where it is. The bus air conditioners not working. One adult on a bus filled with maybe 30 children.
This nation is vulnerable. We are into the 21st Century and yet fires consume an entire town in CA and all our technology cannot save it nor the people in it. NC gets flooded big time and all that can be done is watch it.
Long term survival is a group activity; a group where members have skills.
As for transformers, it is my current understanding that those are made overseas; at least the massive ones that take several years to construct. Profits over people. That should be our national motto.
I was told that transformers are not kept "on the shelf" any more, not here in the UK anyway, they have to be ordered, made and shipped from a foreign country probably China and this will take several months for each one, then they have to be fitted, I am told to replace all the transformers in the UK power grid will take anything up to 2 YEARS. people are not going to sit meekly in the dark for 2 years, we would have societal collapse within a few months.
Most people only think about themselves and not the big picture.
Our entire country, economy and culture would change in ways most people can't understand.
Here's an example.
Has anyone thought what would happen to refineries or chemical plants?
The vast majority of them are volitale places that are contunally controlling some type of reaction. In normal conditions this is fine. If we suddenly lost power and our supply chain collapsed what would happen to these type of facilities? As an example many reactors or hydrogen cracker units are extremely combustible. They are typically blanketed by inert gas like nitrogen to prevent a run away explosive reaction. What happens when they run out of nitrogen? More likely than not many of these locations will struggle to have a controlled shutdown and will have a hazardous incident. Similar things will happen at steel mills, furnaces, foundries, and other manufacturers.
What about power plants? Nuclear reactors? ???
Even if/when we get power back in the grid a significant chunk of critical industry infrastructure will be significantly damaged or destroyed, and these are the very industries we would need to use to rebuild our country.
This is always a fascinating subject. I assume many have read ONE DAY AFTER by Fortschen (sp). I have and have read other fictional accounts of massive disasters. And yet, I don't think we really can get our minds around such a thing. We have been groomed to having technology make our lives run smoothly. But think how having your car breakdown and the inconvenience of that. I live in AZ, a hot part of the state. I was thinking of what it would be like to have a Carrington event when it is 112 degrees and your kids are at school. No buses. No phones. No transportation. You are going to walk to that school to get your kid(s). You have one in kindergarten, one in middle school etc. You have to carry water, a lot of it, else you won't make it and neither will your kid. And, you are going to carry the kid most of the way. The other item is you have type 2 diabetes and you take insulin. No refrigeration. No refills. You are a single parent. You have maybe a few weeks until your insulin is gone or ineffective. Even were a store to still have food, you cannot get to it.
That is just one sample. And it isn't even a complex one. Your kid's bus could come to a stop in that 112 degree heat and you can't know where it is. The bus air conditioners not working. One adult on a bus filled with maybe 30 children.
This nation is vulnerable. We are into the 21st Century and yet fires consume an entire town in CA and all our technology cannot save it nor the people in it. NC gets flooded big time and all that can be done is watch it.
Long term survival is a group activity; a group where members have skills.
As for transformers, it is my current understanding that those are made overseas; at least the massive ones that take several years to construct. Profits over people. That should be our national motto.
I got the book title wrong. Apologies. It is ONE SECOND AFTER by William R. Forstchen.
we aren't talking about isolated failures, the title of this thread is "if the electrical grid should go down what are the ramifications?" so we aren't concerned about what caused the failure but what comes after WHEN the grid shuts down.
I've never been too bothered what caused an event, nothing much I can do about actually stopping an event from happening, but what I can do is to put plans in place to survive the aftermath of what comes after.
we aren't talking about isolated failures, the title of this thread is "if the electrical grid should go down what are the ramifications?" so we aren't concerned about what caused the failure but what comes after WHEN the grid shuts down.
I've never been too bothered what caused an event, nothing much I can do about actually stopping an event from happening, but what I can do is to put plans in place to survive the aftermath of what comes after.
Again there is no thing called the "electric grid" that can fail. There are in fact thousands of different interconnects between systems and within systems. There will be a large number of failure modes including some which protect the system. There will be plants not on line which take little if any damage.
So any failure of the Carrington sort will have damage ranging from severe to virtually none. That means in such an incident there will virtually always be resources to power up a system boot strap as soon as enough repairs are made.
i'm not an electrician or an engineer, are you? I was told by someone wiser and more knowledgeable on the subject that an EMP either natural or man made or a solar storm would blow every single connector in the system, I wont call it The Grid.
now if that happens the lights are going to go off very quickly, so is the power to a lot of stuff people rely on in the 21st century.
I was also told it would take several months to order, make and supply all those connectors to be replaced because they are not kept on the shelf anymore but have to be specially ordered, and it will take 2 years to replace all the connectors in the entire British system.
i'm not an electrician or an engineer, are you? I was told by someone wiser and more knowledgeable on the subject that an EMP either natural or man made or a solar storm would blow every single connector in the system, I wont call it The Grid.
now if that happens the lights are going to go off very quickly, so is the power to a lot of stuff people rely on in the 21st century.
I was also told it would take several months to order, make and supply all those connectors to be replaced because they are not kept on the shelf anymore but have to be specially ordered, and it will take 2 years to replace all the connectors in the entire British system.
Electric transmission components are always in the inventories of utility companies because they continually replace them. They're hardly high technology.
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.
