What If America Went Dark? | Hacker News Reader

What If America Went Dark?

nytimes.com

43 pointsdanso21 comments

I am surprised that nothing is mentioned about weather, as people have been moving to cities that are dependent on air conditioning.

It estimates that about 1% of the population [of Phoenix], or 13,250 people, would die, and half the city, or 816,570 people, would be put in emergency rooms if power was completely out for two days, then slowly restored throughout the region over the next three.

https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2023/06/05/study-phoenix-face...

I doubt ER would fit half of the city.

It blows my mind to hear from friends in my home state of FL (miami), telling me about all the people moving down there and 95 becomming even more gridlocked daily. I left 20+ years ago because the summers were literally dangerous to my health. When the power would go out in the summer we would take showers and lay under fans soaking wet just to keep from suffering.

There was a multi-state blackout in 2003 that lasted up to 4 days in some areas. It was pretty bad. The gas pumps, requiring electricity, didn’t work. People quickly ran out of gas and left their cars abandoned at the station, waiting for power to be restored.

I had about half a tank and remember just heading west, hoping I hit an area with power before I ran out of gas… thankfully I did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

If America went dark I think parts of it would be OK. ERCOT and hurricanes have forced quite a bit of resilience throughout my region.

I know of multiple people in the TX hill country with thousands of gallons of buried propane on site and brand new generators waiting to be fired up for the very first time. If the weather is mild, most of these people could go two solid months before refueling.

If they had bought solar+batteries they'd never even have to worry about refueling in a few months

> I know of multiple people in the TX hill country with thousands of gallons of buried propane on site and brand new generators waiting to be fired up

I assume that region also has a lot of people without buried propane and generators, but who do have lots and lots and lots of guns.

Currently on Day 4 of no power on the Big Island. Can confirm it sucks.

I feel for you. Went one to two weeks without power a few times from hurricanes over the years. One time our power came on after two weeks just as I came home. I had two hours to enjoy it before a storm came through and knocked it out again. Had to wait a few more days. I had a super loud gas generator and was worried about the noise but my neighbor just begged me to use it to dry her hair. I threw an extension chord over the fence and told her to keep it there.

Just a little bit of solar goes a long way to keep the lights on.

I’d like to be optimistic and say we’d have about a week before things started getting Mad Max-y out here in the suburbs.

I routinely tell my wife I'm ready to assume the rank of neighborhood warlord if things go tribal.

The question is if your neighbors are ready for that.

I think a lot of survivalist planning seems to forget that few of us live somewhere so far out that we don't need to account for our neighbors actions.

Some parts of the country are going to be more resilient than others.

I grew up 45 minutes away from Boston and all of the neighbors had standby generators. Even more have wood stoves. Water is abundant. Actually a lot of the old houses were built pre electrification or shortly after so there’s no limit to how long you could survive without the grid.

Non-paywall link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/magazine/national-blackou...

"Someone unlocked this story for you. Log in to read for free."

WTF NYT?

https://archive.md/dlq1V

Works, thanks... the OP gave a free but login-required link.

Then we would be likely to be eaten by grues

What if pigs fly?

Then it would zonk the Zark.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com