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Comment by fogihujy | Hacker News Reader

Not at all. It's quite different from what the Nordics are like today, though.

When I lived in Denmark the Copenhagen subway was shut down because of a bit of snowfall. 10 cm of snow brought Aalborg to a halt for days. Things we laugh at in Finland, but which they are simply not prepared for.

I'm afraid good old-fashioned -30C Siberian cold front would cause serious disruptions in Denmark and the southern half of Sweden (and possibly southern Norway -- not sure how used they are to cold weather, being blessed with ice-free coasts and all that). And without the North-Atlantic current to keep things nice and warm, it's just a matter of time before proper winters become a regular thing.

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I'm in Ireland, which is (was?) gently moderated by warm ocean current to a perpetual 11C drizzle, with 10c swing between summer and winter.

Besides short winter days, it's easy to forget how far north we are. Inland Russia, Canada, even europe at much lower latitudes have far more extreme weather.

OK, there will be a disruption if this scenario plays out. Trains shutting down, new infrastructure that needs to be built. But all of the people migrating away? Come on now.

Between failing agricultural industry, increased food and electricity costs, and heavy taxation due to increased government spending, it will be hard on the economy. It's not the place will be rendered uninhabitable - it's simply not going to be an attractive place to live.

Thats some wild speculation spoken with conviction...where WILL it be attractive to live btw?

Good question! :D

YouTube presented a video on one of the coldest cities - Yakutsk in Eastern Russia. Cars stay running all the time to stop them freezing, bare skin gets frostbitten in ~15 minutes, market traders keep meat in the open air because it's frozen solid. One native in this video says -40C doesn't register as cold, she doesn't feel cold until -52C, and she wouldn't want to leave. 300,000 people live there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz4ZMLsPzqM

Sure, disruption for a while. But people would cope. There's plenty of houses in Canada built to 1800's standards which are surviving fine through -30C winters. The cars, electronics and transport infrastructure isn't radically different there either.

At least here in the UK the plumbing isn't really designed for extended cold periods - meaning pipes often freeze when they come. If that happened every winter it wouldn't take very long for people to retrofit insulation and interior pipes.

Otherwise it's just a question of insulating buildings and having more infrastructure for snow. Snow often causes chaos because it comes so infrequently - there's very few snow ploughs, the trains don't have ploughs, pipes were routed without planning for freezing weather, people don't know how to drive in it, people don't have snow tires. All these things can be fixed in a few years of cold weather.

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