A year without electricity. Could you survive it?

[Aori]

Family has 100+ acres of wilderness with lodgings, just about all of them hunt and fish. I'd survive with them. Summer would really suck here though.

[apepi]

Survive? Yes, Thrive? No. I would read so much.

[Independent voter]

Have to talk to the gf, might run out of things to say, a visit from company might be welcome after a while. Candles and lanterns could set the house on fire.

[Hooked]

If the electricity went out in the bay area I would go into lockdown mode. I expect after a few days some "people" would probably resort to rioting, stealing, and cannibalism.

[Tojara]

Would be able to live, but it would be boring.

It gets cold in the winter but most of our heat is generated by wood stove and we already get and produce our own firewood. It gets hot here, but we live near the ocean so not having access to A/C really isn't the end of the world.

We all know how to hunt, and there are literally deer and rabbits everywhere.Put snares out for rabbits, hunt deer and you would be in pretty good shape for a year. That's not even counting the ocean, which in such an event you would likely be permitted to set out your own lobster traps without a license. It's pretty easy to catch them and where I live also has loads of mussels and clams.

Growing vegetables is easy here, we have apple trees growing on our land, and there are wild berries literally everywhere. Honestly in such an event I'd probably actually be eating far healthier than I do now.

It would be really fucking boring though. Would actually have to play sports and shit for entertainment

[shadowmouse]

<bungee checks CPAP> Gonna need a bigger battery. Nope, I'm a gonner.

[Deleted]

I can sew, cook, eat pretty much anything, I am educated blacksmith, I've lived alot in the forest and I actually kinda would like to see somekind reset in this world sometimes.

What shall you eat?`Are you a skilled hunter or farmer? Can you do that trade widout suport of modern society? It sound like the Alaskan "independent guys" that they show on Discovery and they use factory-made ammunition and use a kerosene lamps.....

They will die then there store run out...

[Nyoken]

Of course we would. If I was out of power, so would everyone else be. Wouldn't have to feel bad if work actually "called" me. Humans adapt, this wouldn't be a problem at all.

[Deleted]

It would knock out the entire countries electricity for at least a year.

Why a whole year? Is the power substations destroyed in a nuclear attack? If there are somthing left you can jury rigg it. introduce martial law, close down all unnecessary large electricity consumers, like aluminum smelt works and private air conditioning. Hospital and cold storehouse do consumes very little power in the grand scale.

[Thoughtful Trolli]

all those batteries at walmart and stuff, gone in one day.

[druenos]

Quite the contrary. Turn off the power and everyone dies. See my above post.

What of this scenario is fact and what is fiction? Nobody would die from industrial run off ( whatever that is ). I would think pollution would lower quite considerably when industry stops. Why would there be a sudden epidemic of septicaemia. I'm sure people would be more careful of infections and if someone did get a cut infected they could always resort to the old fashioned method, burn the infection with a red hot poker . You seem to forget the human race has only had electricity for less than 200 years, before that civilizations flourished. Yes our way of life would end but we would survive. In life you survive with what you have and make the best of it.

[Deleted]

We all know how to hunt, and there are literally deer and rabbits everywhere.

after millions of straving people have hunt them?

[Kithelle]

As someone born and raised with electricity, hell no. I've had to live a few days without electricity because of hurricanes and while I managed, it absolutely sucked. Even then, we had a generator.

No one would absolutely die without it unless your body requires machines to stay alive, not many would be will to part though.\

Want to see alt energy kick off? Turn off the power.

Yeah...most I've ever gone was 4 days without electricity...if we didn't have a large freezer that we stored food in I don't know what we would have done. The whole area was without power.

[Ihazpaws]

What shall you eat?`Are you a skilled hunter or farmer? Can you do that trade widout suport of modern society? It sound like the Alaskan "independent guys" that they show on Discovery and they use factory-made ammunition and use a kerosene lamps.....

They will die then there store run out...

My family have had always small farm or plant for potatoes etc and I spend alot of my time helping my parents when I was younger. I am somewhat good at fishing and ice fishing but never hunted other animals. I am very handy when it comes to metal, stone, leather, wood products and fixing/making those probably would be good for some trading. Living alone most likely would not work out. But would go to and live with my family (father). He already lives in middle of nowhere next to the lake and surrounded by few farms that also work without electricity. He has zero need for the electricity aswell, if it's not available.

Would be hard but how I have been raised I am pretty sure I would be able to survive without bigger problems. (Let me just make sure that you know, it's so much different in here Finland than what it is in US).

[dwightyo39]

I'd be ok so long as I had an acoustic bass and some spare sets of strings.

[Miyagie]

The only people having something like a slim chance are those living fully pastoral/subsistence farming lifestyles at least hundreds of miles away from civilization. (Such things basically don't exist in the Western World).

And I haven't even talked about what would happen when the first winter kicks in.

If we talk about a EMP yeah we are fucked but the loss of all coal/gas and nuclear powerplants isnt that apocalyptic alot western countrys are save thanks to water/solar/metan and airpower.

[Zelorra]

Of course I could survive. But life would suck ass...

[Tojara]

after millions of straving people have hunt them?

I live in a rural community with like 1500 people. I doubt you're going to see a mass exodus of populations elsewhere to the south shore of Nova Scotia.

You realize in such a scenario a lot of people would just raid grocery stores or stay in their urban centers until those resources are exhausted? Not to mention a lot of those people don't have the skills, nor the ability to live off the land or hunt for themselves.

Realistically a year without power wouldn't be the end of the world, as long as you're healthy and able bodied. Would really suck for people who rely on medication that has quick expiry dates, or needs to be kept cool. Like diabetics.

[Surfd]

If we talk about a EMP yeah we are fucked but the loss of all coal/gas and nuclear powerplants isnt that apocalyptic alot western countrys are save thanks to water/solar/metan and airpower.

Largely useless when they all feed into the same main grid. If the main grid goes down, you are still just as fucked regardless of what the source of your power is. I mean, its not like it is even remotely feasible hot wire, say, a county full of windturbines to just feed back into the county. Most of the equipment designed to regulate and distribute all the power they are generating is way up stream in the grid.

I am pretty sure the general scenario in this instance is likely predicated around some kind of Cascade failure: ie, hit X number of key points during peak times, and when they all simultaneously drop out of the grid, the grid tries to re-direct power flow elsewhere. When that elsewhere ends up being woefully incapable of handling all that shifted power flow, shit will either failsafe shutdown, or more then likely, overload and brown out, possibly frying huge chunks of the grid into unusable slag in an ever expanding cascade of similar failures.

You will notice the article also posits they also hit a Major Manufacturer of Transformer Parts at the same time, effectively crippling the ability to repair the damage.

In a very best case scenario, you might get the odd major city back up on skeleton power if they were close enough to a Power Generation Source with enough usable or salvageable infrastructure between them and it, but you could probably rule out 95% + of the rest of the country.

And if the power ever did go out, if you are anywhere near a major city, you will want to get the hell out of dodge if they expect it to be out of power for anything over a week, cause shit will start to get REALLY bad in major cities with no power really fast considering that 99% of your infrastructure stops working the instant the power goes out.

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Realistically a year without power wouldn't be the end of the world, as long as you're healthy and able bodied. Would really suck for people who rely on medication that has quick expiry dates, or needs to be kept cool. Like diabetics.

Umm, a year without power would be catastrophic. You would be lucky if 80% of the population wasnt dead within 2 months, as that is probably a very conservative estimate on how long it would take for almost every major population center nearly everywhere to run out of food and water. I mean, I honestly have no idea, but with no power to keep things fresh, no power to make MORE food, and an infrastructure that is totaled which would prevent easy moving of existing food, exactly how long do you think it would take for say, the population of New York city, to eat everything available and start spreading out looking for more? 2 weeks is probably a conservative estimate.

[Deleted]

Overall your survivability depends hightly on where you live. If you live in a city you are pretty much fucked but if you are living in the countryside you are much more self-sustaining anyways.