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Comment by Muromec | Hacker News Reader

> Actually, what’s the most useful way you’d prepare for a worldwide grid outage?

Be on a government payroll and have the skills necessary to repair the damage.

Part of what makes me take prepping seriously is that the majority of payments are electronic now and there is no failover as far as I'm aware. In ~2015 I saw a power outage briefly take down the payment processsor at a grocery store. despite having cash I could not check out.

If something like that happens but sustained long enough to cause a mob to loot the store (which the media would of course amplify), it wouldn't be long before there was widespread panic.

It's not the CME itself that terrifies me, but the knock-on effects.

It's really too bad we didn't have a major CME in the 90's. That was the perfect time for a good lesson in redundancy and why you can't and shouldn't jettison "the old ways" so quickly. Perhaps its not too late now, but the pain will be considerably higher. Earth lucked out in so many ways, but a CME spanking in the 1990's is asking for too much I guess.

That's just the anthropic principle for you: If we'd have been any less lucky, we wouldn't be here to write about it :)

I think you miss the point s/he's making: back in the 90's we were much less reliant on computers than today, much more cash based. It would have been a wake-up call, today it would be a calamity.

The 90s were not that long ago, we should restore and document and know the old cash-based ways while we still have those experts and those workers with us. Great thread and reminder about these things.

I would like to think that the servers that run ACH networks, IBM mainframes that actually store your account balance, etc are shielded from CME and even an EMP.

But the vulnerable side then becomes the power grid and Internet backbone. Part of a resilient disaster plan would be to allow ACH and other payment traffic to take priority if we were relegated to a low bandwidth connection. If we cannot transfer money, we will collapse, plain as that, once panic over food security sets in.

An EE friend said that we do not have enough transformers to replace if a critical number of them fried. Substation level components could be a huge bottleneck if we had another Carrington event.

I know for a fact at least one insurance company’s IBM aix mainframes are in an underground emp proof (faraday cage which connects through the door) vault.

In which no one follows the protocols, so someone ran an extension cord into the cage, because some supervisor couldn't charge his phone in there.

Or something similar.

That was one of the big problems in Puerto Rico in 2017 - all the credit/debit card systems were out and almost nobody had money.

Or load on ammunition, and be ready for your neighbor to go cannibalistic within 3 months...

Try days, not months. Especially in densely populated areas.

The government has done studies showing that the vast majority of the population would be dead not long after a sustained nationwide power outage. All it takes is people missing a few meals before the fun starts.

Do you have a link to the study?

I had to dig around but I think this the one I remember. There are two other reports linked in the comments.

https://old.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/11tblpp/found_it_...

Thanks! This is the doc I found the "90 percent of our population is dead" quote from, which is asserted indirectly:

https://irp.fas.org/congress/2008_hr/emp.pdf

It's referring to a fictional story in that quote, but the scientist says that 90% is accurate for the real world if that scenario were to happen. Pretty chilling.

This is an interesting read. I noticed also that Roscoe Bartlett, the rep running that hearing, moved entirely off the grid after retirement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Bartlett#Personal_life

He was born in 1926, he grew up "of the grid" and likely spent most of his early life mostly off grid.

It's not especially noteworthy .. to those of us that also grew up away from large connected services - you have your own sewerage, generators, mail, drive | walk to town to pick things up.

Currently I'm "mostly" off grid - I have internet connection, a well, leach drains, solar + wind (electric) + wind (mechanical mill), etc and live in a rural community with a lot of people older than 60 who also grew up off grid.

> Their cabin lacks electricity, phone service, and municipal plumbing. Bartlett currently works as a senior consultant for Lineage Technologies, a cyber security group that seeks to protect supply chains.[39] Bartlett is a vegetarian and does not drink alcohol or smoke. He also grows his own organic vegetables.

Reads more like a self-written personal home page than an encyclopedia entry produced by independent volunteers.

You do realize humanity has had countless famines before right? I grant you, a few of them brought out a regrettable side of humanity but by and large people come together during times of hardship, they don't tear each other apart. I feel like only those who've never felt hunger could contemplate such a savage reaction.

And I hope you realize China had multiple famines with cannibalistic events as recent as 1959: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

I hope you realize that about a million people died during the Irish great famine with almost no events of cannibalism. Suggesting that it's a normal occurrence during famine is very insulting to the character of those that survived those famines while still upholding basic human decency.

Irish person here: the “almost no” is being disputed by more recent scholarship/research. And was even featured in a documentary from the national broadcaster a few years ago.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/role-of-s...

I hope you realize that these events are notable because they are unusual and not because they are the rule.

This entire thread is about preparation for the unusual, not the rule. Considering the human response to significant adversity is not out of line here.

It's an understatement to say that only "a few" famines have brought out a regrettable side of humanity. The situation is very similar to a war. Remember that the rate of violent death was much higher before agriculture and farming were invented. A breakdown of infrastructure would bring us closer to our natural condition from those times. Accepting that doesn't require anyone to be a misanthropist or a cynic about human value.

Days. After the soviet union fell in Armenia there was no supply of food the first days. Also no gasoline nothing. The first day people were normal. Second day people started stealing. Third day all birds and rats were shot for food. Luckely soon food became a normal thing again. But chaos is quickly there. I believe even quicker in rich western countries. Most men and women cant survive on their own for a week.

You can survive with no food for a week. And you can use water from toilet tank for this week.

Most people have a weeks worth of food in their house. Unless they are people who don't cook.

It is easy to make that longer by keeping extras of stable food they normally eat. I like to keep extras of everything I use regularly. Which really helped during the pandemic.

While I agree, I think many apartment dwellers have less storage. Home owners tend to have more, just due to that extra space.

But the other factor is, some people literally only eat pre-made food, which often a large portion consists of frozen things. I've been in some homes, mostly single people, which have no flour, rice, oats, etc. No real raw materials, such as eggs or butter. No canned food. Maybe a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread, and a package of processed meat in the fridge.

The rest are frozen things like prepared chicken wings, and so on.

What I wonder is, what are the percentages of people in these situations?

20%?

Tangentially, that's a reason not to use any "cleaning" additives in your toilet water tank, since you are rendering some emergency water undrinkable.

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