How long would you live if electricity for the whole world went out permanently?

I was having this conversation with my daughter and thought it was an interesting topic.

If an EMP or solar flare took out everything electronic in the whole world (permanently), how long do you think it would take for you to die, given your current location and circumstances.

I believe my daughter thinks we would live a lot longer than I do, but she is thinking about how long she can live without the internet while I am thinking the world will quickly descend into anarchy.

With no traditional forms of transport, so supplies would dry up, limited resources, health etc, law and order would be a challenge as things become more desperate.

I think I would live for about 3 months. I would try to get the family somewhere safe and remote and come back later, but I think most people would have the same idea.

MxM111,
@MxM111@kbin.social avatar

My brain (and everybody else’s) runs on electrical pulses. So, I die instantly.

tallwookie,

nope, emp’s and solar flares have no proven effect on animals.

MxM111,
@MxM111@kbin.social avatar

Well, the hypothetical situation is that even flashlights stop working and unrepeatable. So, brain stops working too.

Hadriscus, (edited )

The world becoming anarchic (=no individual holding power/authority over any other) would be amazing. Electricity turning off might actually help challenge established power structures. I like your thinking !

I also think we tend to underestimate just how good we are, when rid of our oppressions. We’re set against one another, day after day, and we end up thinking it’s our nature. It’s not ! If electricity were to be cut suddenly and everywhere, I’m certain we would help out one another and manage well.

NeoNachtwaechter,

I would live maybe even longer than in the current world. So much more action would help my physical condition.

I have grown up with low tech, so I know how to get along. It is just a lot less convenient.

morphballganon,

Got a plan for food, long-term?

NeoNachtwaechter,

Grows everywhere. I would go outside of the city, but I have heard about people in cities can also grow things.

The much more difficult “secret knowlege” (nobody seems to know it anymore except a few large companies) is how to store food long-term, for example through a cold winter.

morphballganon,

So you’re planning to find some empty land and then plant some crops?

NeoNachtwaechter,

That’s a possibility. I’m not exactly planning.

ada,
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

This was the storyline for the old Jessica Alba show, a Dark Angel.

Damaskox,
@Damaskox@lemmy.world avatar

Would probably depend on how strongly my survive instinct would kick in, and what I’d be willing to do to survive. And of course on how we as a society would deal with this big change.

A few minutes would be the minimum.

qyron,

I worked closely with an energy company for some time and enjoyed talking with the field maintenace personell and soon discovered that fable of sensible electronics on the power is just that.

Most of the power relies on hardware to control, distribute and protect the grid. And I mean old school hardware, not electronics.

The most electronic dependent part of the grid here is essentially on the end of the line, inside consumers homes, to measure and control the energy delivered and consumed.

Wild fires are more of a menace to power lines and energy distribution than thunderstorms or other massive energy discharges.

sturmblast,

I think I would get by just fine I do survival camping for fun on a regular basis

Coreidan,

When you go survival camping do you also practice fending off hordes of starving people?

sturmblast,

won’t need to cuz I’ll be in the middle of nowhere

Coreidan,

What about all of the rest of the people doing the same thing?

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

About treefiddy

eve_lynn,

Until my medication runs out. :(

ComplexLotus,

Solar pannels and wind farms will continue working, so the grid may fail, but there will remain many small islands where electricity keeps working ig

Da_Boom,
@Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Honestly, I wonder if it would make me live longer. Sometimes it takes a literal crisis to get me out of my chair.

Sure the collapse of society will possibly happen. But that means all polluting systems would inevitably shut down. And at that point you have to get creative. While I don’t live on a farm, it wouldn’t take much to rob a store for seeds and food with the security systems down. And guns are few and far between here in aus.

straypet,

Get some seeds, press the button on the packet and after a bit out comes the food, right?

Farming is hard and electricity plays a huge part in how it’s currently done.

Da_Boom,
@Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

Yes, but I’m not planning on doing full on farming… rather a small set of crops I can manage on my own with gardening implements and my own bare hands. Times will be lean, and I’d have to ration what I have, and there’s always the chance that a bad harvest could cause me to catch my death, but trying anything you can is the aim.

Maybe setting some bird traps or something is a good idea, it’s worth a shot.

Basically to only grow as much as I need to survive. Might even fill tanks with the water to keep a surplus in case the water system loses pressure and water dries out. I have a set of gas stoves and dad loves his barbecues, so we can cook on propane, charcoal and we can even use the wood for our fireplace, and we could chop trees down in the park near my house for more wood heck our Falcon wagon runs on LPG, so we can use that in our barbecues as well if we can manage to adapt the nozzle on the filler cap.

It won’t last forever, but the whole point of doing it is to give yourself enough time to come up with a plan and improve your issues over time.

Even with the power gone I still live in a city. And I guarantee the roads will be blocked with cars as more and more run out of petrol. Unless you can get out as quick as possible and can get fuel before the fuel stations run out of juice to pump the stuff, you aren’t going to get far. So you might be better off staying put and only going short distances to conserve your fuel.

Of could if the outage is the result of EMP your modern car’s electrics could be fried anyway. Unless you can find spare working parts to fix your ECUs and other computers or to manage to adapt your car to magnetos and carburettors, you won’t be going anywhere anyway. Honestly the only thing that might still be working is my dad’s Moto Guzzi. Just put the original ignition back on to it if the upgraded electronic ignition is fried and it will run, may have to push start it, but it will., and you can weave in and out of roadblocks with it, and all our other cars and our lawnmower can contribute their fuel via a siphon.

mogul,

Wait, I’ve seen this TV show before.

morphballganon,

It was a movie. The end of Escape from LA.

mogul,

It’s called Revolution

morphballganon,

Yeah also Dark Angel. My point is it’s been done a few times

kalkulat,
@kalkulat@lemmy.world avatar

I know a place I could last for months, depending on what time of year the power’s lost, but it’s a long ways from here. And then, only if bullets for hunting were still available (they’ll get scarce fast, faster than toilet paper when COVID came around). Once the bullets are gone, I’ve either learned to trap or become a vegetarian.

tallwookie,

black powder tech is very simple, you just need a mediocre blacksmith - and that’s just a strong man (or a woman, maybe) - and a little bathtub chemistry. basic black powder rifles are not the most accurate, you need rifling for that (grooves that create a spiral down the inside of the barrel of the rifle), but it’s easily doable. long/recurve/compound bows are an option if you have the knowhow and material science.

trapping/fishing is an option, as is animal husbandry, but hunting would never disappear

bradorsomething,

So just to start on your first point, let’s assume the flare hit and you need to start making black powder from raw ingredients. Since there are no more available with supply chain breakdown, without consulting the internet (also down), where are those coming from within walking or bicycle distance with maybe a paper map if you still have one?

tallwookie,

well black powder is just a mixture of charcoal (you need wood and mud to make a charcoal pit), saltpeter (aka potassium nitrate), and sulfur. nitrate is found in many household products - hence the bathtub chemistry. there’s a lot of that stuff all over the place, it’s in just about everything - from salts, makeup products, fertilizer, plant food, etc. I’d use that first while building a natural extraction process since it takes a long time, months usually.

you’d take dung from animals (horse works well or cow patties), wood ash, dry straw, and lots of urine (barrels of the stuff). a few months later you drain off the liquid, boil it with finely ground charcoal and then filter it with cloth. simmer the strained liquid until it’s reduced by 3/4, you want it really concentrated. spill it out onto very shallow pans and let it dry to crystalize the nitrates. sulfur is readily obtained from many sources - usually volcanic but these days its in a lot of building/construction materials like gypsum. basic chemistry will allow you to extract it. I live near geologically active areas, so sulfur would be relatively easy to obtain in the future.

there’s no real set recipe for black powder, but approx 75% dried & powdered nitrates, 15% dried and powdered charcoal, 10% dried and powdered sulfur. you want to grind each individually and then mix them together in those ratios. now you have black powder. keep it dry and away from spaks/flame/heat - bull horns work really well for this.

casting shot is just melting lead in a specific form - my father probable still has his old tools for that but if he doesnt they’re not hard to make. the only tricky bit in the whole process of building your own diy black powder rifle is the barrel - you have to hand forge those around a mandrel (a rod of a specific thickness) - I’d use high grade steel rods for that, since they’re just laying around. blacksmithing is usually a two or three person setup. once I had a water wheel constructed I’d probably build a hydraulic powered trip hammer to make things easier.

bradorsomething,

I feel like if this ever happened, you’d want to practice that first step, because it might be easier to get gallons of urine then extract from a number of those sources.

tallwookie,

the average person produces about 5 cups of urine in a day, and a gallon is 16 cups, so a group of people could easily produce anywhere between 1 and 3 gallons every day. the standard drum size is 55 gallons, so that’s easily obtainable. it’s a very slow synthesis, lasting 6+ months, you’d have between 3 and 10+ drums full of urine saved up at that point.

the average black powder musket or rifle gets about 50 shots per pound of black powder, and it takes a good minute or so to reload if you’re skilled, so you really dont carry that much powder around with you at any point in time. I figure you wouldnt need more that 5 pounds of it every month in a survival/hunting/defense against random invaders (rural setting) situation.

FrostyCaveman,

In all likelihood the water system would probably stop working at some point, so whenever that goes plus two or three days is likely an upper bound on how long I could survive for. It’s pretty dry here so that would be a lethal problem.

If somehow it stays working, I could probably survive for a few months… basically until society and the supply chains completely break down and stop functioning followed by a period of mass starvation

NeoNachtwaechter,

the water system would probably stop working

Good point.

The sewage system as well. The smell makes life less fun, but the growth of bacteries there makes big cities uninhabitable after only a few weeks.

meco03211,

Protip. If the apocalypse begins at a punctuated point (bombs literally dropping on major powers as opposed to say global warming), fill your bathtub with water. That can hold a lot of water and should help you out.

FrostyCaveman,

An excellent idea. I’ve had it stuck in my mind since seeing The Road lol

aveline,
@aveline@lemmy.ml avatar

I live in the middle of the Mojave Desert, so I think it would depend on the time of year. There would be too many people fighting over what little water we have, and if it was in the middle of the summer, I don’t know that I would make it very long.

Ser_Salty,

Would it make you wish for a nuclear winter?

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