Electronic Armageddon (video)

“Come to think of it, that was a dumb novice question. “

Yea, you did jump the gun on that, a bit. You can still make a case that keeping your personal electronics working is better than the alternative. But life would still bite.

Anyway, I forgive you, having to spend years dealing with Governor Perry’s attempt to wreck our freeway systems does take its toll (so to speak) on all of us.

BFL

I watched a documentary “Trinity & Beyond” last night that was compiled in 1995.

I love that film. My wife hates it.

The fact that any of one’s electronic devices might, by themselves, be operable is really moot when we’re talking about an EMP (or a powerful enough CME). Why? Simply because there won’t be any electricity for connectivity of any kind. The E3 wave of EMP (most similar to what a CME would generate, BTW) will fry the ultra-large transformers that we depend on. There are only about 400 in the entire nation, and not only are none made here any more, but the backlog is on the order of 18 months - in normal circumstances, with no war, no destroyed infrastructure, no fried financial system, etc.

YOUR phone may work, but it won’t connect to anything; ditto for your computers, because even if you could connect to other computers, you’d run out of electricity pretty soon (unless you had stored PV panels in a Faraday Cage and could recharge batteries).

Oh, and even if the system was able to work because you did everything right, virtually nobody else has done so to date. That means massive numbers of deaths from dehydration and/or starvation and/or disease and/or violence. Refineries won’t work, meaning that no gas or diesel will be produced, meaning that food won’t get transported. Also, there’d be no medical system to speak of, and anyone dependent on the delivery of drugs will soon die. There will be a lack of sanitation, and between that, he lack of medical attention, the general fall-off in nutrition and the enormous rise in stress, disease will take off and kill a lot of people that survived the water and food shortages. Oh, and during the course of starving, etc., there will be a lot of people who decide that what you thought was yours is really theirs by some messed-up morality. In short, having a working computer or cell phone, EVEN IF you could connect with some others (doubtful), will be of little concern to you. Note that many EMP experts believe that as much as 90% of the US population would die within 1 year of a well-executed EMP strike. http://www.thedailysheeple.com/catastrophic-effects-of-emp-starvation-violence-90-casualties_122011 (interview with Frank Gaffney, a military strategist). Everyone’s chief concerns will be obtaining clean water and food, followed by not getting sick or injured and not getting killed by the few others that have survived, who wish to take whatever you have for themselves.

Yes, people will survive, but we are utterly unprepared as a society to sustain ourselves without electrical power. We don’t have the tools of those living 150 years ago, nor the knowledge/experience to use them, even if we had them. Without modern farming techniques (requiring fuel for tractors, oil by-products for fertilizers and pesticides, fuel for transport and electricity for processing and refrigeration), this country simply cannot support 310 million people. Without the availability of relatively clean water (which needs electricity to purify and pump), people will die within a matter of days (or they’ll drink disease-ridden water and die from dysentery, etc. We have constructed a magnificent society - but it depends on everything working right. Failures in one major system can easily lead to a cascade of failures in other systems. We simply don’t have a robust system, and either enemy action or a massive CME (like the 1859 Carrington Event) could literally destroy us.

We don’t have the tools of those living 150 years ago, nor the knowledge/experience to use them, even if we had them.

Why yes, I actually do. I did build a shack in the wilderness and live off-grid for a couple of years.

Did you know that wine can be made from cactus pears?

/johnny

“We” is meant in its collective sense - i.e. “we” as a society. I’m glad that you have the knowledge (and, obviously, some of the equipment), I just wish that 1/3 or more of the population did. I think that you understood my point, you just didn’t want to discuss it.