Living without electricity

[ban-all-sheds]

in a prolonged disaster the over 40's are toast.

Or stew.

 

[EddieM]

Or stew.

possibly.

 

[JohnW2]

hmm.. you neglect the biggest danger. Dystopian I know, but in a prolonged disaster the over 40's are toast.

I think you may underestimate the staying power of some of us oldies

... and what about the "under 1s" and suchlike?

Kind Regards, John

 

[EddieM]

I think you may underestimate the staying power of some of us oldies

... and what about the "under 1s" and suchlike?

Kind Regards, John

not at all. you are prey and easy prey at that.

 

[JohnW2]

not at all. you are prey and easy prey at that.

I'm not sure that I understood you correctly. I initially thought you were suggesting that the over-40s would not be able to survive adversity, but it now sounds as if you are talking about the 'elimination' (or, at least, total neglect) of them - is that the case?

If the latter, then, given the rising proportion who have delayed having children until their mid/late 30's, elimination of over-40s would leave a whole generation of small children who would struggle to survive (without parents) - and unless the youngsters started breeding quickly, the entire human race might be at risk!

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnD]

unless the youngsters started breeding quickly

In a world without contraception, nature ensures that youngsters do exactly that.

 

[JohnW2]

In a world without contraception, nature ensures that youngsters do exactly that.

True, but if it were a world without contraception, we would probably have returned to a world in which there was horrendous foetal, neonatal, infant and maternal mortality, which would presumably moderate that to some extent.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

It didn't make us extinct in pre-historic times, not even when (as postulated by mitochondrial DNA analysis) something caused the population to fall to a very small number, and we had medicine- and technology-free births until very recently indeed.


Don't forget that in times of stress, birthrates swing to a significant F:M bias, that being the most efficient gender-split for rapid growth.

 

[EddieM]

I'm not sure that I understood you correctly. I initially thought you were suggesting that the over-40s would not be able to survive adversity, but it now sounds as if you are talking about the 'elimination' (or, at least, total neglect) of them - is that the case?

If the latter, then, given the rising proportion who have delayed having children until their mid/late 30's, elimination of over-40s would leave a whole generation of small children who would struggle to survive (without parents) - and unless the youngsters started breeding quickly, the entire human race might be at risk!

Kind Regards, John

no. you have missed the point by a Buckinghamshire mile. neglected... no..

 

[bernardgreen]

Never forget that many of the over 60's have the experience and knowledge of how to survive the bad times. Get rid of them and the young ones will have to do learn quickly how to cope. So be careful which old fogeys you dispose off.

 

[oceansoul]

Someone told me once (and I have never bothered to look into it, so IHNI how true it was) that Greater London relies on three main HV grid substations, and that if they were all knocked out in ways that took weeks, or months, to repair, then the whole of London would be without power for weeks, or months. A city that size without power for that long is basically uninhabitable.

One of the largest water treatment plants serving London (about two thirds of all water) is fed from 3 SSE 22kV incomers. But all three of these are from the same SSE substation. A fire in their substation took out the treatment site for about 24 hiurs. There is now standby generators on the site, but not enough capacity to run at full capacity.

 

[SimonH2]

Are you saying that the available rate of flow of imported gas is not high enough to enable us to deal with the 'shortfall' in real time, such that we have to import, and store, during Summer in order to satisfy our Winter requirements?

That is what's being done - gas bought during summer when it's cheaper, and stored for the following winter. Had a tour of Rampside gas terminal a few years ago which was "quite interesting" ...
We were told that originally the field was expected to last for quite a long time - many many decades IIRC - being drawn off at a modest rate. But with all the splitting up, loss of central planning, etc, etc, it got used quite a bit faster and the pressure has dropped in the field. Lately they've been using it as storage, pumping imported gas into it during summer.
But by far the thing I remember most was seeing the high fences, with high voltage (IIRC something like 10kV ) wires along the top. Apparently there are other defences that "weren't detailed". But when you consider that a single site provides a significant % of the demand during winter, "losing it" could cause some serious issues nationally.

Hmm, as I say it was a few years ago now. And I see from it's Wikipedia page that the Morecambe South terminal has been closed though the other two are still operating.
Also, the gas turbine power station next door is no longer there. The site is currently being developed as a 49MW battery storage plant (24.5MWHr of LiIon batteries !) to be used for rapid response frequency control (yup, another cost of intermittent generators that gets swept under the carpet by certain camps).

 

[EddieM]

Never forget that many of the over 60's have the experience and knowledge of how to survive the bad times. Get rid of them and the young ones will have to do learn quickly how to cope. So be careful which old fogeys you dispose off.

none that are worth much in an apocolypse.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I was thinking earlier, all the end-of-civilisation-as-we-know-it films and books I can recall are all based on some catastrophic event which kills off most of the population. Sometimes specified (The Stand, Survivors), sometimes not (The Road).

Can't think of any where the event happens and it does not, in and of itself, kill anybody on Day Zero.

 

[JohnW2]

There are countless works of fiction related to the aftermath of Electromagnetic Pulses, and, as far as I am aware, many do not involve catastrophic numbers of deaths (even if a few million!) on, or even very soon after, Day Zero.