How Long Would Society Last During a Total Grid Collapse?

[Supervisor42]

Talking ALL grids down!

Not gonna happen.
Too many, and they are separated by miles all over the country.
Like when we blow a bunch of ours down, the lights in New Yawk never even blinked.
...Or when the ice storm took yours to the ground, our lights never blinked even though we are only 300 miles away.

 

[Neb]

Not gonna happen. Too many, and they are separated by miles all over the country.
Like when we blow a bunch of ours down, the lights in New Yawk never even blink.

The theme of this thread is they are all down.

Roscoe Bartlet speaks in this video.



That it can/will happen.

Ben

 

[Pearl]

Nope! They come quickly from other states to save our buts.

Talking ALLgrids

The theme of this thread is they are all down.

Roscoe Bartlet speaks in this video.



That it can/will happen.

Ben

Put the train back on the tracks!

 

[TENNGRIZZ]

We are just 9 meals from anarchy. And 28 days from it's WWZ if the trucks ever stop rolling. Now some folks Math is racist but those cold, hard Brutal don't lie. They don't care about your feelings either.

 

[lonewolf]

there is only one power grid here and it covers the whole country, an EMP will take down sub stations and even the power stations, forget the actual power lines.
and nobody is coming to help you in those circumstances, we are all on our own.

 

[sonya123]

well if you are that worried about it, buy some solar panels. I just ordered some more to add to what we have, they were on sale
our entire neighborhood would do just fine without the grid, most are not even hooked up to it, we only have power in the kitchen and livingroom

 

[lonewolf]

not bothered about power post collapse, I lived without power of any kind for years and will do so again.

 

[sonya123]

there is only one power grid here and it covers the whole country, an EMP will take down sub stations and even the power stations, forget the actual power lines.
and nobody is coming to help you in those circumstances, we are all on our own.

that;s btw not really true, there are at least 3 grids in the US
but yeah, if someone was really determined to take it all down and planned a full scale attack on the US they could take it down , but that would be a war and somehow I doubt any terrorist group would have the ability to pull it off. They might take down some of it but not everything. It would take an army to do it
Pretty sure the only thing that could do it would be nuclear war with a major world power

 

[lonewolf]

that;s btw not really true, there are at least 3 grids in the US
but yeah, if someone was really determined to take it all down and planned a full scale attack on the US they could take it down , but that would be a war and somehow I doubt any terrorist group would have the ability to pull it off. They might take down some of it but not everything. It would take an army to do it
Pretty sure the only thing that could do it would be nuclear war with a major world power

I'm not in the US. see left under my username.

 

[UrbanHunter]

I'm not in the US. see left under my username.

@lonewolf has a point, there are lots of folks here from around the world and each has a different GRID condition, the Canadian GRID is linked in part to the US GRID, so they could be impacted by a US event. The folks in the UK (England) are independent and would not be directly impacted by an event in the US or the EU... the folks in Australia are also isolated (GRID Speaking). Everyone has a different GRID experience, even in the US different localities have variations in GRID quality and redundancy.

I know that many of us think that we are superior to any force that would want to take our GRID down, but I know of several instances where a single mistake by 1 individual has taken down a major section of the GRID for several days... That being said, the information regarding the soft spots for every countries GRID is considered to be very sensitive information that is not easily obtained...

But if someone wanted to attack a country bad enough, they could find soft targets that would lead to a cascading failure. For this reason, I try to ensure I have a plan to maintain my needs for an extended period of time (> 1 week).

 

[lonewolf]

there was a report some weeks ago about a Russian spy ship snooping around where the internet and other cables come ashore onto the UK mainland, it would not take much for the Ruskies to sever them, and I am sure the same can be said for other countries infrastructure.

 

[Weedygarden]

BUT those trucks will be in their hometowns, or useless!

The trucks may be in their hometowns, but there will be efforts to get things up and going.

Puerto Rico was hit with that hurricane that caused them to be without power for a long time, after the U.S. (yes, P.R. is part of the U.S.) had previously sent them money to improve their power grid, but instead, as corrupt politicians will do, they pocketed the money and did nothing to improve their power grid. The U.S. realized they could keep sending good money after bad, or they could take control of the situation. A former student of mine was married to a man whose career was about this, as a leader. He spent around 3 years in P.R., working on their power grid, to get it up to standard. I have no updates on how it is in P.R. with power now.

We may be without power for a long time, but even if the world goes crazy, I expect that there will be attempts, if even if they fail, to get us back up and running again. There are people who will have the know how and are altruistic enough to do what they can to restore the world, even after a collapse. Will they succeed? Maybe, but more likely not.

 

[Weedygarden]

there was a report some weeks ago about a Russian spy ship snooping around where the internet and other cables come ashore onto the UK mainland, it would not take much for the Ruskies to sever them, and I am sure the same can be said for other countries infrastructure.

I expect that the internet may or will be down, maybe forever.

 

[Hardcalibres]

Preppers should study the Dark Ages (which lasted about 500 years).

It was triggered by a collapse (of the Western Roman Empire) and eventually humans did get back to where they started culturally and technologically - but it took 500 years to do so.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

 

[sonya123]

I'm not in the US. see left under my username.

sorry didn't see that
I think you will have more problems were you are than we will in the US since it is a much larger country with more resources

Speaking of outages, none of our phones are working ( Verizon)
This is the first time that has ever happened

 

[elkhound]

#1 item to have.....woodcook stove.....keeps you warm and fed and big pot of water on it keeps you clean with weekly bath and daily dishes and clean hands etc.

 

[Hardcalibres]

#1 item to have.....woodcook stove.....keeps you warm and fed and big pot of water on it keeps you clean with weekly bath and daily dishes and clean hands etc.

......and if your water supply becomes suspect for any reason, the ability to boil your drinking water in bulk, becomes the difference between life and death.

When I travel around the third world dumps, the richest guy in town is the guy with a donkey cart and an IBC to cart water for all the villagers. He makes a pretty good living carting water from where it naturally is (which varies at different times of the year) to where people live.

 

[Old Whatshisname]

The timeline to complete WORL will differ by locations. Blue cities will crash and burn within 3 days of the grid going down. Red cities will last a bout a week or so. Rural towns may last several months. The more liberal the area, the faster it will burn. Conservative areas will last longer but eventually it will be everybody for themselves. Nobody can prep enough to feed and supply all the people. Some very small and rural towns may be able to pull it all together, organize the ranchers and farmers, establish local citizen patrols, setup food distribution point and do all this without establishing a new mini warlord. The big problem with getting organize is it requires leaders. Selecting the leadership will be the downfall of most towns / organizations.

My impression, based only on my first-hand experience and no poll-reading, is that there's a positive correlation between lower-density areas and religion-activity. Small-town/rural people perhaps lack the ability to go to various crowded places to shop; and rely on local social activities such as extended families, neighbors and -- churches.

My colleague Amish Heart has confirmed that her neighbors -- despite (or perhaps because of) their lack of interest in modern "conveniences" -- seems to have developed and maintained a community spirit in case of hard times. I believe the Amish (and other Plain People such as the Mennonites) will progress rapidly to a self-sufficient and self-sustaining cohesive society.

I think that having a strong church (or temple or mosque -- it doesn't matter) is the logical starting place for a post SHTF environment. There already is a hierarchy in place, and guidelines (typically the same for Christians, Jews, and Muslims) will keep them on the same page as their fellow congregants.

If you think you are lacking in support of your plans regarding SHTF, you could look for a church in your area. As long as you ignore the big-city super-churches, you'll see a pretty strong group of preppers within their ranks. The Mormons, of course, are all preppers and usually better at it than most of us.

Bottom line: don't ignore a church as a possible key part of your shelter-in-place. You might find some worthwhile people and groups.

 

[lonewolf]

sorry didn't see that
I think you will have more problems were you are than we will in the US since it is a much larger country with more resources

yes and a larger population to riot and steal.

 

[Magus]

If you wanted to wreck America, just cut back the internet speed and satellite coms, There's no need to destroy them, just DNS them and I guarantee the BLM riots will look like a Saturday night beer brawl!
Infrastructure and banks can still operate, but the wireheads and phone zombies will go bats!

 

[lonewolf]

take down the power grid and NO banking would take place, internet would be down and no ATM would work. neither would card readers.

 

[Magus]

Yes, but if you only wanted chaos instead of destruction of everything...

 

[lonewolf]

everything seems to be online these days so you only have to take down the internet to cause total chaos.

 

[Magus]

exactly. But I'm saying, if you wanted to save the infrastructure...

 

[lonewolf]

would not happen, once the internet goes down the infrastructure would be useless and 99% of the population would panic.
in a total grid collapse, as per the thread title, society would collapse entirely.

 

[viking]

For sure, cities would be utter chaos in a week ,maybe less, and depending on how far you live from the closest city will likely dictate when it hits home, so to speak.

It would not take very long, even in the small town like we live near I used to see people going for food on a daily basis, I'd really be surprised if anyone has more than a days worth of food on hand. I hate to say this but even some of our neighbors would do well to have more than a few days worth of food on hand, normalcy bias reigns above all and the end result is not going to be good.

 

[lonewolf]

most people over here have less than 3 days worth of food in the house, city people even less and many live on ready meals which I dont call real food.

 

[montanabill]

I have read where there are nine major nodes on the power grid in the us that if taken out by simple means would shut the whole countries grid down.
There already have been some outages caused by attacks on transformers...The same transformers that have a year or more replacement time.....from china.

Where we live we are on a electrical co/op developed for outlying areas the main power company didn't want to mess with or wasn't profitable enough for them. I love it since the rates are lower and we get a check at the end of the year if they make more than enough money to run and invest in the system....Several times now the regular power company has lost power and we still have it. Looking down and towards the town we see our outlying places lit up and a solid line of darkness starting on the outskirts of town.
If we could maintian control and not have to ship power out of our area on the upper missouri we have several smaller dams generating electrical power right in the area.

 

[lonewolf]

I was told a long time ago if whatever took down the UK power grid took out the transformers there are no spare ones kept on the shelf, these have to be ordered, made and shipped from abroad-probably China.
it would take 2 years to replace every single one thats even if they can find enough engineers .
can you imagine the population sitting in the dark for 2 years? society would have collapsed long before 2 years, probably more like a few months.

 

[lonewolf]

whatever happens, once the power goes down and the lights go off that would be it for most of the population.
there arent many people these days who can live without electricity.