Grid Down, 4 Months, 250 million dead
September 13, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
The following is comment and opinion from a reader, ‘TripodXL’, regarding the dire scenario of a long term wide spread power outage. This scenario is one of the few that I respect the most when it comes to ‘real’. Given that modern society is entirely dependent upon electricity to the point of not having ‘manual’ backup systems, and given that there are a number of events that could eliminate that electricity – potentially for a substantial period of time, and given that supply chains of all sorts are of very short duration and extremely interdependent, this should inspire the thinking person to stock up and think this one through…
In a true SHTF that involves loss of the grid even for say 2-3 months, the death toll would be staggering.
The fact that Just In Time delivery of all inventory at EVERY store in the nation guarantees millions will die. The average grocery store has 3 days of inventory, max. The average home has 3-7 days supply of food. All reorders in national and regional grocery chains is all done by computers over phone lines. There isn’t even a mechanism in place to do manual ordering, it doesn’t exist!!!
I live not too far from two large box grocery store distribution centers and one regional distribution center. I would just about bet the county commission and the sheriff’s dept will lock them down. All orders to food producers will not be made. Most of the food in the modern part of the world will ROT.
So with the numbers quoted above most everyone in the city will be out of food in 10-14 days and water before that. Say a CME hit the earth and there isn’t 2% of the world’s lights on and those only on generators that need fuel, ordered by computers. If you live in the metro area post 2 weeks TSHTF and you do not have an impregnable concrete bunker or are well hidden in some odd magical place that won’t be found and you have food, guess what? Hope you don’t have any daughters and your wife is really ugly. You, you’re gonna be a slave or dead and your son will be somebody’s little puppy or a slave.
If this came to pass it isn’t just wait till they get the lights back on. The lights wouldn’t be on for years in the cities and decades outside the cities. My conservative estimate is that 80-100 million people will die in the U.S. by the end of 60 days having starved or dehydrated to death or was murdered.
The thing about it is that people will wait until it is too late to bug out cuz the gubment is gonna fix it. Until they come to the oh shite moment that they realize that the cavalry isn’t coming. When they do try to bug out it will probably be too late. They will be half starved to death, subject to now rampant disease and fetid rotting bodies and hordes of gangs in as bad shape as they are except they are going to kill them and take what little they might have. That’s also why I think that roving bands from the cities will be scarce outside of metro areas.
By the end of 3-4 months I think 150 to 250 million people could be dead and that’s just here. Those that manage to feed themselves and survive and come out to the country to look for easy pickens will not live too long. If we wind up with 60-80 million left, which would be the population level of 1880-1910, we would have a lot of room to grow, a new point of view and perhaps we could get it right this time. Who knows?
As an idealist and a romantic patriot I would like to think that the U.S.A. would survive. Unless there is some dynamic true leadership at the helm and lot of luck, I’m not sure how it will turn out. My grandaddy told me one time some gubment man came around Flora, Mississippi in the late 30s and asked how much better things were getting from the depression years and grandaddy said “what depression”? There will be areas even in our country like that, some continents, Africa, a lot of the South American interior, Siberia, rural China. India will suck as they are actually a modern country. Hopefully we will not repeat the early and mid 20th centuries in the coming decades.
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The book, “One Second After” details a scenario of how things might pan out after a power outage. Excellent reading and on target. Suburban neighborhoods might fair better banding together by relocating to large, defensible factory’s or office buildings opposed to remaining vulnerable in individual homes.
This article scared me a lot more than “One Second After” – in the book you had a sence of community during hard times. You knew how bad it was (especially in the begining of the book) but people worked together and everything worked for them. This article makes me wanna run right now. The daughter and son comment was just to much.
@Jennifer; I wish I could make myself say something to you to console you. My premise is not to be a fear monger but an informer. I am very passionate about this. I moved my family in 1988 to a rural area for this very reason. My kids are grown and have moved off and it’s me and my wife and some friends. I have some land and a house that’s paid for and I am now retired. I moved where I am to get away from the city and it’s ills. I am an optimist, I PLAN(key word) on surviving. I just optimized my survival by moving where I did. I had a high tech job in medical imaging and was lucky by my co. having need of an engineer in a small town and I moved 15 miles outside of it. My wife worked for a multimillionaire oil man in the big city and had to give up that 108 mile commute and the money to be here. We knew that what we were doing was for the best. We would make less money but have a better quality of life. I hope I did not offend you, that was not the point of the son and daughter comment. It’s just that until someone says something out loud, people that are thinking the same thing hope no one says it and maybe it won’t come true. That’s not logical. The best way to avert something is to say it out loud and if it bothers you that much, then maybe you’ll do something about it. I hope this is all a load of crap and that none of this happens, I don’t want it to happen. But I see it every day, in the news, the economy, the way people act, the obvious grass eaters out there that don’t have an effing clue about the realities of life. There are no unicorns, rainbows and blue skies on the other side of one of these disasters. I wish (and hope) it wouldn’t happen. Now I’m going to tell you what my daddy told me about wishing (he did everything except name me Sue). I don’t say this to be vulgar or rude or just for the sake of shocking you, but it is reality and my daddy really did this to me and I hope Ken leaves it in. I said something one Christmas about wishing for something that I wanted Santa to bring me and my daddy said “son, I want you to hold both hands out, now go shit in one and wish in the other one and come back and tell me which one fills up first”. Well, I went off and cried, I guess I was about 6 and never figured out what he meant, just that he was mean to me and mean people suck. I hate to admit what a slow learner I am, but it took me 35 years more to understand what he meant and regardless of how mean it was, I have to tell you it’s true. I spent 38 years being a warrior for this country all over this God-forsaken world, and there is no place like here, but the layer of civilization is paper thin. I’ve seen it first hand how people that are neighbors, whose kids play with each other will turn on someone because of the tribe their grandparents came from, the color of their skin (and I’m talking different shades of brown or yellow), what religion they are, what imaginary line they live across. Do you think that if one of these scenarios came to pass and people are starving that they will be any less barbaric? Our civility, unfortunately, is significantly related to our comfort and how full our stomach is, I promise you. I sincerely hope I have helped someone with my information and what I know in my heart. Best Regards.
Very well written and 2 the point. time’s up.
Hi, good of you to post. Did you see the 09/13/2011 ” Mike Adams- Solar Flare” article or is this one of those hundredth monkey moments. Yes, His has a far more dire scenario but, is based on a catalyst that comes close to Harlan Ellisen writings. If you didn’t see the Mike Adams post, bottom line the nuclear reactors would go down in short order for all the reasons you have compiled giving us far less time;as a specices. This is for the consideration of the clan not anything negative regarding this post. The closure of ALL nuclear systems needs to be in the forefront of the human psyche. Survive-All…
Most individuals in this country would think 250 million would be grossly exaggerated, HARDLY! I use the Jetsons cartoon analogy that people in the United States have become completely dependent on modern technology for EVERYTHING. People cannot function without everything done for them. The people that come to this site and other survival sites are AT LEAST thinking about the possibility of not having these conveniences. The common person, ass monkey, does not have a clue what life will be without the everyday life of everything provided for them, like the Jetsons.
Now people in backwater countries in which they have to farm little patches of land, haul water, scrounge around are hardly going to notice a blackout of the grid and will fare all right. It is kind of like the modern day car in which everything is run by a computer, take that away the car likely goes dead and is useless. Take a car pre-computer mode and it will remain usable and still get you around, most of them even after an EMP attack. The Jericho TV series is a wonderful example of what happens when the society goes down. The old “muscle” car of the 1960′s is the only real vechicle that remained functioning. This of course was fiction, but the TV series really showed just how totally vulnerable everyone that depends on modern age gadgets are going to be totally screwed upon losing them.
Just look at how active the sun is, and the last EMP effect from the sun was not 100,000 years ago, it was a little over 150 years ago, the frequency of large earthquakes. It is not IF, it is when the planet is hit by another EMP effect from the sun. It will all depend on how long it lasts and which part of the planet, if not all of it, that is hit.
There are so many movies and television series that have been made to depict what life will be like after technology goes to the toilet. These shows are from the imagination from writers, but are most often quite accurate. The survivalist is well aware of what life will be like, but the total in denial common person, again ass monkey, not only is not aware but absolutely does not want to even admit or think about something like this occurring. To the more adventurous person that goes camping and “roughs” it for a weekend has the misconception that they are READY for the collapse, but fails to understand that after that weekend on the mountain that they can come back at anytime to their modern conveniences.
The survivalist has to also realize that the common person, ass monkey, after losing the modern life will regress very quickly to the primate instincts and try to take anything and everything still available. The survivalist must prepare for just how rapidly the people that they knew in their cities will panic because so much has been taken away from them. The more that someone has that is taken away from them, the more shocking it is to their systems and the more intense their emotions will be.
250 million might be underestimating what will happen. Look at the movie The Postman, this movie really hits hard to the plight of the simple collapse of modern society without some calamity such as all out nuclear war or some asteroid slamming into the planet.
@BI; Yes, 250M is an underestimate. I try to not be extreme. My honest estimate is based on 330M pop. and 80-90% fatalities. 267-297M lost.
A question, is this power outage limited to the USA or is it world wide?
Because if it’s only to the USA, I can only imagine a “Red Dawn” with either Russia or China taking advantage of this problem.
Its funny that a lot of people think they are another “Daniel Boone” or like the old mountain men of the 1820′s to 1850′s. From what I’ve read these people had unbelieveable survival skills. They could carry all they needed in “possibles bag”. and no electronic toys-like they are all glued to today.
Me, all I’ve got is a cheap, prepaid cell phone for emergencies.
@lone; My premise is a world wide grid down. When a CME is generated it is actually a plasma cloud of sorts and as such is not homgeneous bubble of stuff but a long strung out variable cloud that could last hours or days. The CME interacts with the atmosphere and creates an ionization (a very large charge)that “generates large voltages through axial conductors” (makes large amounts of electricity in wires). Since it is interacting with the atmosphere it would probably affect the entire planet as opposed to an EMP bomb attack. You’re right about a Red Dawn event if that were to be only the USA. But as I have posted in other topics the military would not be significantly affected as far as being able to respond to an act of war, which is how a nationwide EMP burst would be treated.
Just watched the movie Contagion and, while it was theatrical to say the least, I couldn’t help but think that even though the whole country was under threat of a severe pandemic, life seemed to go on with people travelling and what not. Even more interesting was how the lights still seemed to stay on, water worked, seweres never backed up and even though the grocery stores were ransacked early on people still seemed well-fed months into it. I say we just put the hollywood writers in charge in such a scenario and we should be fine.
Be I. Your comment that the backwater countries may survive may not be accurate. Most “Backwater third world countries” now have massive populations living in the cities. Many of the populations of these cities are living off relatives or scavenging. – i.e. one or two family members have employment and bring home hard cash – this resource often needs to be spread around 6 – 10 family members+.
In the event of city collapse the hoards of the city hungry will head out to the sustainable farming areas and chaos will overtake that rural population.
Big third world countries with massive populations rely on mass produced often government sponsored food production.
A massive CME will create chaos world wide – not just in the U.S. During the 1859 Carrington event, telegraph services were disturbed as far away as India.
Here’s Nuclear Physicist James A. Marusek’s site : Impact Very Interesting reading if you ahave a day or so to go through the articles.
He has done studies for the Navy on the potential consequences of a repeat of the Carrington flare, here is his report : Solar Storm Threat analysis</a?
@ Beano. You could be right about this, but still it is easier to adapt when someone already has almost nothing, the old saying nothing to lose. In the big slum cities I can imagine what that will be like. Rats, pigeons, cockroaches, anything that moves and use to move will become food. I was more referring to people in general that will not be able to mentally handle having everything taken away from them at once. When the bankers jumped out of windows after the 1929 crash and the depression later it was because they lost everything, and that everything was a lot. Someone that is dirt poor that loses everything it just doesn’t have the same impact on the psyche.
I haven’t mentioned this in awhile, but your comments are always very interesting and MSB is lucky to have them.
Be I. I lived and worked in third world countries in North and south Africa and all over Asia for 15 years. In the city slums, birds don’t exist now – if they get caught they’re eaten – same goes for many other living things.
Those who live off the rubbish dumps are eating cast off foods or finding produce to sell that has been discarded by those more well off. If those well off disappear then there is no leftovers for the scavengers.
Having said that. I know of a place close to the tropics that would be the perfect hold out. It’s up in the mountains – between 5000 and 8000 feet. There are huge market gardens growing vegetables and rice – all for export. Easily self sustaining. There’s a source of spring water that is bottled and exported. They have their own electricity plant – generated by a thermal source from an active volcano.
This place is easily defended. The locals are Christians, forthright, intolerant of laziness, outspoken but conservative, very family and village oriented. Best of all they are fierce warriors – well known for it. 10 of them with swords and shields would slaughter 100 of the government troops – even with some modern weapons. 10 of them with swords and shields would terrify a normal angry mob. And very unusual for third worlders – will aim and shoot a rifle with their eye open.
I have been into the interior of one place in Asia where heavily armed government troops can’t go. The indigenous people hide in trees and slaughter the troops with poison darts from blowpipes.
@ Beano. The closer someone is to the equator the better if and when they let the nuclear missiles fly and the air is almost constantly rising and spreading out north and south of the equator. High altitude around the tropics is ideal for growing just about anything. Hawaii is at about 20 degrees in latitude and does not have the raising air that closer to the equator has, but up the slopes of the mountains this is the best growing climate in the country. You are correct about being between 5 and 8 thousand feet in elevation is perfect. I have heard many talk about the higher elevations being the best places for survival when everything goes into the crapper. Higher elevations though get too cold when you get much above 40 degrees in latitude. High altitude tropics or subtropics is probably one of the best places to be.
Oh,you old optimist,you!
Be I.
here’s a picture of the area. The only problem is that the thing in the middle of the photo erupted last year
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4137/4937478340_2a29d57077_b.jpg
@ Beano. Thank you for sharing the picture with me and everyone else. It sure is lush and green there, minus an active volcano it looks like a kind of nice place to retreat to when things go very bad in the world.
@ lone survivalist, I hear you… Never used a cell phone, killed the T.V. many years ago, don’t have a land line, don’t own a computer, ( This is a somewhat fearful friend’s I use and being no dummy, the owner knows all I post and research is being filtered and appears as theirs. ) don’t have an e-mail address and I use my given name Otter Walks on Two Feet. A good kit ( small P-bag as you mention ) and some time in the outdoors can present you with the practice makes perfect wisdom. As to Boone and so many of the legendary Fronterismen, they where all half breeds and it’s no wonder they survived as long in life as they did. Living day to day with bare essentials… It’s going to be, what it’s going to be. Best we can do is stop all this foolishness yesterday. Oh, and Lord don’t trust the wisdom of all these survival guy shows. I’ve seen some videos and they walk right past what they need and try to teach as they learn . Blistering their hands and spewing time consuming, irrelevant- this is how you do it disinformation. Survive-All…
Tripod,
I’m curious why you believe rural areas will be spared the “roving bands from the cities”? I think that you believe they will be too weak for whatever reason because they don’t “bug out” ASAFP. Why do you think some “roving bands” won’t head immediately for “the hills”/the closest rural area once the SHTF?
Kang..here’s my two cents b4 Tripod answers..
Rural areas will be somewhat safe if they are not in a major travel corridor. Remember when TSHTF, fuel will be in short supply. Now we all know that gas has a limited shelf life if it is not treated. Gangs will not have a large supply to travel long distances, they will have too much “fun” getting their stuff close to home. If a grid down scenario plays out, it will be almost impossible for anyone to get gas from a UST. Underground Storage Tank. The pumps need power to pull the gas up…now there are a few places that have above ground storage tanks…mainly small companies that need fuel (usually 500 gallon tanks)the best part is most of the above ground tanks are many times diesel…which makes them worth their weight in gold. Diesel has a very long shelf life…you just better have an engine that runs on diesel!
I appraised Gas Stations for a few years, and one trick I learned is to find out where UST’s are located. Every state has a database that lists the size of tank, type of tank and number of tanks. This is a valuable resource you should plan out for….because even abandoned Gas Stations tend to have a small amount of liquid at the bottom of the tank…which stay there until removed. Now don’t laugh…I have a 12v (old breast pump) that with 30 ft of tubing can draw about 1 gallon in 10-12 minutes….This is my gift to you so use it wisely.
GhOman, Are the inlets to gas station UST’s locked? The apparent screw-top covers are obvious when you look around the concrete pad of any gas station, but I’ve never looked closely to see if there is a locking mechanism beneath. Thanks.
@Ken and GhOman; Saw another blog, so I can’t take credit for it but it was a 24vdc pump with a long tap hose with and output hose long enough for putting gas in a tank. Two batteries and you’re golden. You could raid a junk car yard or abandoned vehicles and find a 12 or 24 vdc fuel punp and tubing. However, I do know that some pumps will not pump fuel w/o igniting it, so you would have to use the correct pump. Having said that, this demonstrates the need for an old style mechanical diesel truck. You have a fuel that is common (D4) with military vehicles AND is not the common fuel that most everyone is trying to get. Diesel will be the last fuel gone, plus it can be made from vegetable oil, gasoline can’t. GhOman, didn’t mean to hog things. The more input the better. Yours is certainly correct as gasoline would not be any good after 6 mos maybe a little more.
Ken…Most tank cover (taps) are locked, and the gas delivery operator has the key…but in older tanks or abandoned ones I have been able to open and look down into the tanks. I did about 60 gas station appraisals covering the midwest and east coast from 2007-2010 and around 10% were not locked. Also depends upon where they are located…the rural ones seemed to be the least security minded. I figure in a complete collapse, anything goes and people will do about anything to get things opened…how? I don’t have a clue.
@Kang; First let me offer a book to read. “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram. It is probably out of print but it is about psychological experiments how people will, by and large, obey figures of authority. The experiment involved people giving shocks to people when they got the answer wrong to a question. The more wrong answers they gave the higher the voltage of the shocks. Even when people asked if the voltages were lethal and objected most people went ahead and administered the shocks when TOLD to go ahead and do it anyway. They weren’t really shocking anyone as they were being fooled, but they didn’t know that!!!!!!!!Wow?? Now, yes, in a CME, worldwide, grid down I don’t believe roving gangs will be a problem and the book explains why. NOW LET ME BE PERFECTLY CLEAR, I DO NOT TOLERATE BIGOTRY AND CATEGORICAL DISCRIMINATION, MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THAT! However, we have cultivated a certain deferment to authority (as noted above) as well as a large entitlement class of people that EXPECT the government to take care of them. They will do this to the point that they will, in the described circumstances, wait until they are near death before they attempt to take care of themselves. I have one word to say, Katrina! Mandatory evacuation orders and people stayed at home or went to the Superdome and fully intended to wait out the storm and go home the next day. You know have a hurricane party at the Superdome and go home. And then, they stayed and stayed and waited and waited. That didn’t work out for them. Now consider a situation where the people wait and wait and wait and…….but there is now nation to support them because it is the same every where. In THIS situation I don’t think roving gangs will be a large problem, I didn’t say it wouldn’t happen. But it would be the exception, not the rule. I simply think they will wait too long for the help that they EXPECT to come save them. And as I said before, somewhere, the scenario that I fear the most is a slow economic burn to the ground. It leaves large swaths of people unemployed, crime rampant, the infrastructure in place, people starving past the ability of the government to feed them, then we will have Mad Max roving gangs. I truly fear that scenario! Hope this answers the Q.
This scenario is a little bit hyped. It would be impossible to destroy 100% of the system with an EMP no matter how strong it was. The effect tends to be line of sight and any obstruction would decrease the effect. The effect itself is dramatically decreased with distance, i.e. the inverse square law. Within an hour of any part of the grid going down there would be utility workers at work to bring it back up. Within hours to days power would be restored to some parts of the grid with emphasis placed on hospitals and crisis centers. Population centers would get the most attention and would be brought back on line quickly. The grid is interconnected but when they have a problem like this they break those connections creating nationwide thousands of small discrete systems which can function alone. While it would be likely that rural or other desparate locations might not get power restored for months the system would be restored for most in days or weeks.
One of the boogeymen often cited as a likely reason we could not restore power is that transformers would “burn out”. But 99% of the transformers in the grid are basic, simple devices that are incredibly easy to rebuild. The only difficulty is that they are large/heavy and need a shop with a hoist or jacks. But the process to repair them is relatively simple and could be done by any electric utility in the country. They don’t do this (much) today because it is easier and more productive to just buy them when they go bad, but they could do it.
The real issue is if the EMP were the result of an nuclear attack it would in effect be a nuclear war with reprisals and counter attacks, etc.
Huh? I thought I just read CME, not EMP… “Almag” is in very short supply as regards “incredibly easy to rebuild”… Another issue of blown transformers is the hazmat clean up that would be required to prevent contamination of soil, ground water, and the list goes on. ( Read between the lines as this exponentially grows to include man power working in an organized fashion, with their own personal concerns, no transportation, communication… ) If it rains prior to clean up depending on location this goes from bad to worse. For those that haven’t heard of “Almag” it’s the main reason transformers are largely bucket shaped. This allows the components within to be in an aluminum/oil solution. Very poisonous stuff, hence while many substations keep it in some small supply, it is doubtful that there would, given that all of the other workings were also available, be enough to repair even a mile of transformers. Also remember that a “CME” cuts through everything and that any stored back-up units being conductors would be toast so that angle is off the table in this scenario. Yes; Just went back and checked… After the intro., 4th paragraph in “CME”… So while I hope this doesn’t come to pass… We haven’t even touched on the imminent failure of all nuclear reactors… Fukushima Extermination Event Horizon, giving us only days as we have seen occur on a tiny scale and with it the massive and hurried need for cover-up. The Black rain continues and more and more news of “D.U.” use, leaks, fires, flooding of sites… What they can’t see can’t hurt them??? Huh??? Awareness/Preparedness/Action… Survive-All… P.S. Well done TripodXL; I hope “They” don’t pull the plug on this system the masses are addicted to in our life and times…??? Not forgetting CME is out of our hands, just seems such a current topic with the EAS test? 11/9/11 and flipping switches…
@Otter, Yes. A CME, if strong enough (like the 1859 Carrington Event) could prove to be highly disastrous to our way of life. It WILL happen again, there is no doubt about that.
@Ken, The 1859 Carrington Event would seem the foundation of of this post… We continue to grow and hence face larger potential falls. (The bigger they are… Good to hear your feedback…) As always, Thank You for this site and your efforts… Best to you and yours, Health, Peace, and Smooth sailing until later… Survive-Always…