10 things the recent D.C. power outage taught us about a real, large-scale collapse

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10 things the recent D.C. power outage taught us about a real, large-scale collapse

In the wake of violent storms, the power went out for millions of Americans across several U.S. states. Governors of Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio declared a state of emergency. Over twenty people were confirmed dead, and millions sweltered in blistering temperatures while having no air conditioning or refrigeration. As their frozen foods melted into processed goo, some were waking up to a few lessons that we would all be wise to remember.

Here are 10 hard lessons we're all learning (or re-learning, as the case may be) from this situation:
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http://www.naturalnews.com/036406_power_grid_failure_lessons.html
 
Pretty dark tone on that article. While more people need to be more prepared, that article paints a very bleak picture of a disaster. Growing your own crops? great if you keep it up, won't work at all if you are trying to plant post disaster, it just isn't that easy! in a purely agrocultural mode, the planet only has room for a few billion. We invented cities so that we could live better, longer, and with more services. Yes cities could be better, but the simple fact is, most people are gambling that a single point of failure system will get them by, and most of them are winning. Simple systems are cheaper, complex systems have all kinds of unintended costs and dangers as well. As for this "national grid down" scenario, I doubt that it could happen. We might loose an integrated system for quite some time, but no power anywhere for years? Not gonna happen.
So things could be better, yes, but I don't think they are as bad as that guy is saying. And really, who is gonna nuke the US? really, are we really still worried about that?
 
This guys a little over the edge.

Most of Montgomery county had power back in a few days. This incident was an uncomfortable inconvenience, but not that bad, or wide spread. Drive a half hour to the north, and we stocked up on ice and supplies at the Safeway in Middletown Maryland. By 3 to 4 days, 90% of the people had power back. The U.S. is not quite as fragile as this idiot would like to believe. I think there's a lot of people making a living on the fear that "it's all gonna fall apart" thing. In the entire history of mankind, civilization has never fallen apart. It's had a few bumps, but while a society may fail, another will quickly rise in it's place. Since man left the cave, he's been a social creature that creates society where ever he goes. A wilderness camp will quickly grow into a law abiding town. I'm sure that the alarmist media would love to build up the fear, as does Hollywierd, but it won't happen. While I saw one or two incidents where people got ugly, I saw much much more of people coming through with great spirit and behavior. My own neighborhood just got together and treated the occasion as a reason to have a big block party. When roads were blocked, we all sawed and hacked off enough of the huge tree that a couple of regular cars could move the main trunk of the tree enough to clear a path for a car.

People are more adaptable than you think. If we were not, we'd have died out long ago. But people will and do adapt to new conditions. Yes, it will be hard, but we'll be there. Authors like this guy are just to be ignored. If everyone just has some basic emergency stores put up, that's all that's needed.

Armed motorcycle gangs roaming around killing? This guys been reading too many survivalist novels. I'd be more afraid of the cops like after Katrina.

Carl.
 
Two points in the article that jumped out at me:

"When the power goes out to a local hospital, there might be a temporary backup generator, but even that generator relies on the delivery of fuel. The delivery of generator fuel, in turn, relies on the availability of diesel truck fuel, which depends on petroleum refineries functioning, which in turn depends on the power grid staying up and highways remaining navigable. This is a complex chain of dependencies which can suffer disruptions or even total failure without warning."

True dat. I was in DC on 9/11, and I remember the panic. I remember the streets of downtown DC packed with cars that couldn't move, the students and feds desperately trying to get a hold of relatives because the cell phone system was overloaded, etc. It can all come crashing down in a heartbeat, and it's more fragile than most people know.

"If the power grid goes down across planet Earth for just one year, 90% of human civilization will perish, and along with it all the DVDs, Nike shoes and designer bling as well. Even the entire fictional construct of society's laws and banking system will cease to exist."

It amazes me how some people think there's anything real or authoritative about laws, social rules, rank, etc. They are all just ideas created by men just like you and me. A deed to a house is just a piece of paper. A law is just a piece of paper. If you take out a pen and paper and make your own deeds and laws, who's to say which one is legitimate? Just because our society has grand, impressive halls of the people and skyscrapers doesn't change the fact: it's a bunch of stuff created by intelligent apes (humans) trying to impress other intelligent apes. Beyond that, it's just ink on paper that isn't actually worth anything.
 
Hey Mag, I'm a bit confused by your tone there. I hoping you aren't coming from a "enlightened anarchist" point of view. Maybe its just how I read it.
As for the cell service thing, yes, I think we all agree that most people rely on their phones way too much, but what are you going to do? A cellular system robust enough to handle a call from every possible phone would be so expensive, it would make cell phones economically impractical. People will learn from those events, and its not like the systems are ever knocked out for days. A couple hours, and things are back to functional. Is that going to be too long for some? yes, but it would be impossible to have any system able to handle the worst case scenario. It always comes down to an economic question. Can you afford to keep a firetruck staffed and parked on every street?
This "complex chain of dependencies" is what allows large societies to function. Otherwise all we have is small City States, and there was a reason why that fell out of favor. America has only advanced at the speed of its communication, first pony express, then rail, telegraph, etc. and most of those were never 100% reliable.
As to your second point, what does the author mean by "90% of civilization"? It can't be population, as most of south america, africa and even most of china are not reliant on electricity for survival. Sure things will become more local, you won't have the great international trade that we have now, so coffee and tea will become things of the past in most northern countries. Culture will change, as it has with every step in human history. Tough, but not life threatening.
As for your comment on Laws, at the heart of it, that is all that society is, just a set of agreed upon rules for everyone to follow. In a representative democracy, the rule is that we pick other people to make the rules. It's like art, it just is, because we as people have said that it is so. If the world was to loose all electricity for a year, then Law would change. Like everything else, they would become more localized, since there would be little communication with a centralized government. So really we are only dropping back 100-150 years. Big whoop. we aren't all going to die.
Sorry if I mis-read your post, it just seemed very "I know what's going on and everyone is an idiot" to me.
 
I didn't really find anything educational or informative in that article, although I did feel like it had a scolding tone to it.
 
The worst problem I see is how dependant some have become on air conditioning.

I remember life before it and when people were hot they just slowed down and drank more icewater.

I have heard that the economic development of a lot of the South had to do with widespread AC.

But of course that comes at the cost of pollution from burning more coal and fossil fuels and coal mining which can ruin rural dwellers wells and streams making even THEM more dependant on "The Man" for food and water.

Anyway we lose power drop of a hat. The longest we have gone in the past was 10 days but amazingly this time we dodged the bullet.

If we didn't though I have an extra well with a hand pump on it. Have chickens for meat and eggs and goats for milk an cheese. Have free natural gas and gas refrigerators and some gas lighting. I only have 1 window unit air conditioner anyway and could run fans off my solar panels and batteries!

The only problem for me was if I was at work and the roads were closed I'd need to walk to my home which is 25 miles away. I could do it but it would take about 12 hours at least.
 
I guess I can see both sides. Google "Carrington Event" and you'll get an idea just how catastrophic a large power grid failure can be. I could see us going for months without power, but I'm not sure about years. I certainly hope not...
 
Mag, the "enlightened anarchist" or so I call them at least, are the folks who consider themselves above the law because they are smarter than everyone else. They dismiss the rules of society as a crutch for the blind, and if only everyone saw the world as they did, we would have no need for governments(I agree with this point, but only if I'm the supreme dictator of the world). Some can be very conspiracy minded, as in, the world is all a sham to keep the people calm, and all that. Or just simply that all of civilization is somehow a fraud that we should all just be done with, and be better off.
They are different than regular anarchists who just want chaos for chaos's sake.
Hey man, I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, I do my best to understand people, so I can put what they say into context. I agree with you on the first point, I've seen how fragile cell phone systems can be, but I think I disagree with your second point... but I might not, depending on where you are coming from.
 
gadgetgeek said:
Mag, the "enlightened anarchist" or so I call them at least, are the folks who consider themselves above the law because they are smarter than everyone else. They dismiss the rules of society as a crutch for the blind, and if only everyone saw the world as they did, we would have no need for governments(I agree with this point, but only if I'm the supreme dictator of the world). Some can be very conspiracy minded, as in, the world is all a sham to keep the people calm, and all that. Or just simply that all of civilization is somehow a fraud that we should all just be done with, and be better off.
They are different than regular anarchists who just want chaos for chaos's sake.
Hey man, I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, I do my best to understand people, so I can put what they say into context. I agree with you on the first point, I've seen how fragile cell phone systems can be, but I think I disagree with your second point... but I might not, depending on where you are coming from.
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No, I don't consider myself above the law. And I am not an anarchist, "enlightened" or otherwise. What gave you that idea? I think I made my point clearly in my original post, so "where I'm coming from" should be pretty clear. I say how I feel. You can agree or disagree as you like. I'm not hiding some agenda, anarchist or otherwise.
 
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People like laws and rules. It's in human nature IMHO. Rules are powerful if the majority agrees and enforces them, which they seem to have done throughout history. What's written on paper usually just codifies the principles people already practice and share. People will always live in groups and groups will always have rules, whether or not we have electricity doesn't figure into the situation much.
 
My misunderstanding then. No harm done. Since I disagreed so much with the original article, I guess I read your comment with a bias. Again, my bad.

I honestly don't think that the earth would collapse nearly as much as the author of the article seems to think. No power for a year would have a huge effect, most cities would definitely change as far as population density is concerned, and there would be a large number of deaths in some areas. However I think society as a whole has so many buffers and inherent controls, that we would adjust relatively quickly. Part of why I think that, is a world wide blackout would cause a quick reaction from government to stabilize things. There would be no reason to have a "wait and see" approach passed the first few hours. Leaders would probably know the cause, although some would be tempted to use the event to impose martial law, once its clear that everyone is in the same boat, it won't take long to respond. And in the case that central government does little, then anyone outside of that influence will just start their own local governance. Even a huge solar flare event won't take out everything, maybe most things, but at least most major militaries will have some communications. I don't think we'd see huge militant groups running around pillaging, definitely small gangs, but nothing different than now. Maybe I have more faith in humanity than some. So yeah, world wide blackout means no more facebook, and maybe a global population reduction of 20%? But humanity would re-build, thinking about it, it might take longer than a year to rebuild, but I don't think we'd drop much behind 1890 or so as far as most things go, and now we know more about food storeage, and public health.
 
I read somewhere that if the system shut down for just three days, say no fuel for vehicles, all the stores would be empty in 3 days. In other words, every three days all the stores need to be re stocked and if not there will be empty shelves. So if we have a problem where the nation has lost it's power for like a month, all hell will break loose because people will be freaking out. So those that have the basics, food, water, candles, batteries, guns, ammo, a means to hunker down and survive will make it, the uber rich with tons of gold will kill themselves because all the gold in the world can't buy food from empty shelves.
 
Food for 3 days?

In NYCity, we have Farmers Markets set up in the summer. I've seen the potato trucks and the watermelon trucks in the Bronx.

For long term disturbances, the country comes to the city to sell crops.
 
I agree that the article is a bit hyperbolic in its depiction of a quick societal collapse. But I don't think that you should ever underestimate what people will do to keep their love ones safe and their own bellies full. Use this as an example, as a model to go by, when thinking about your own prepping.

"Enough is never enough, you could always use a little bit more."
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Food for 3 days?

In NYCity, we have Farmers Markets set up in the summer. I've seen the potato trucks and the watermelon trucks in the Bronx.

For long term disturbances, the country comes to the city to sell crops.
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Under the situation I described, there will be no fuel, hince why the stores can't be re-stocked, you can forget about the farmers they won't be able to help either, the point I am trying to make is if you are prepared you will make it, for me right now I don't have the funds to prepare like most Americans, but if you do then again the ones that have the basics will survive.
 
...the article...the article...the article...the article...the article...the article...
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Sheesh. Didn't anybody read the whole thing to the end? It's not an article. It's an advertisement.

Although I guess if people aren't reading it all the way to the "A resource for preparedness" section, it's a failed advertisement....
 
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