
A World Without Power (2013) - acdanger
https://jacquesmattheij.com/a-world-without-power/
======
munificent
_> Infrastructure is invisible, as long as it works. And only when it fails do
you realize just how much we are all dependent on it and how badly we are able
to cope with such infrastructure being unavailable for any length of time._

I grew up in hurricane country. We are born and mostly live our entire lives
suspended in a giant web of infrastructure and support systems. When you're
born into it, it's natural take it for granted and treat that as the baseline.
But every now and then you have an experience that makes you realize just how
far down below the ground really is, how far it is to fall, and how few cables
need to fray before people start dropping.

I'm not one of those doomsday preppers who seems to relish preparing for the
zombie apocalypse. I think the much more rational approach is to strengthen
the web itself so that we don't fall in the first place. But I'm _definitely_
aware how quickly and how badly things can go.

Hurricane Katrina is the canonical example. Over a thousand people died in the
middle of a well-developed urban area, in the richest country on Earth, from a
disaster that everyone knew was coming some day. The hurricane didn't kill
those people. The city and state's complete failure to engineer robust
infrastructure did. If that same hurricane had hit an equally populated city
elsewhere, the outcome could have been entirely different.

~~~
iambateman
Not a prepper either, but recently our water turned brown and I realized how
water-dependent we are.

Went out and bought two “life straws.” We have enough food to last a month
without infrastructure just by virtue of large pantries, but when the water
goes out, it’s gone.

My wife laughed at me, but from my perspective, if infrastructure is down for
more than a month, I’m probably toast anyway. ;)

~~~
dillonmckay
I own a small electric water distiller for such circumstances, although
drinking pure water is not supposed to be good, either (needs some minerals or
it will leach them out of your system I was told, could be false).

~~~
dredmorbius
Distilling water takes tremendous amounts of energy.

Filtering with bacterial (or if necessary, viral) grade filters, and
additional chemical treatment (chlorine or iodine) is vastly more efficient.

A backpack filter does double-duty (have a few spare filters and can treat a
litre or so of water in a couple of minutes without too much effort. Larger
filters can be used (foot-pumped) for larger quantities.

Keep in mind that if the water's out, power may well be too.

------
emperorcezar
Years ago when I was growing up in the woods of West Virginia we had a
particularly bad blizzard. During this time the power went out.

We were use to this happening and most of the time it was for half a day or
so. So we pulled out the kerosene heaters and the oil lamps for light. Bundled
up and waiting.

We ended up being snowed in without power for two weeks. My mom and dad would
take turns bundling up and walking a mile or so every few days to get to the
roads to get more fuel.

One thing I remember clearly was cooking on out outside wood fire grill, which
was essentially cinder blocks and a grate. No worry about running out of wood
since there was always plenty around.

I remember the whole ordeal pretty fondly. As a kid it was a good change of
pace and like camping.

~~~
ericmcer
I did something similar as a kid, but not on accident. Parents would take us
for 1-2 weeks to a cabin with kerosene lamps no electricity, no running water.
It was usually ok, but there was one trip where it rained nonstop for the
week. I cannot forget that boredom, you can only play cards and read for so
long before you start to lose it.

I suppose our pre-electricity ancestors had deeper social lives with the
people around them, and a stronger connection with the outdoors, but for those
who lived in climates that required frequent shelter holy cow they must have
been bored out of their skulls.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Did your parents do everything for you?

Foraging and collecting water, making fires (chopping the wood with hand
tools), cleaning, preparing and cooking food, ... you've used most of the day;
couple of hours of reading. Rinse and repeat.

Even camping when you have gas and water on tap, it's surprising how much of
the day is meal-prep, and cleaning (pots, tools, self).

When you needed to hunt, make clothing, maintain tools just with basic tech
then I Can't see there being so much time to be bored.

------
jihadjihad
Years back I was introduced to a terrific BBC show called _Connections_ with
James Burke (1978). The first episode, available on YouTube [0], is all about
the world's reliance on power and that within a short period of time we'd be
catapulted back to the plow.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ)

~~~
Symmetry
There's a great book, _The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch_ ,
talking about how to recover from an apocalypse where most people die. They
recommend as a first step going out to the nearest golf course to grab the
batteries in the golf carts because those are things you'll really need and
won't be able to re-make for a while.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114087-the-
knowledge](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114087-the-knowledge)

~~~
jwr
I've been doing some thinking along these lines and I always end up with the
realization that if most infrastructure around you is down, there isn't that
much you can _do_ with electrical power in the amounts that could be
available.

I mean, you can get light when it's dark, and possibly run a refrigerator from
a solar installation, but otherwise what would you use the electricity for?
Not for heating, not for transportation (not enough of it), your cell phones
and other computer devices won't be of much use without the network anyway.
Perhaps if you have portable radios you could charge them, but otherwise —
what?

My conclusion was that we've become alarmingly dependent on infrastructure. I
decided to get some maps, old-style paper books, and started considering
getting radios and tiny solar panels to re-charge them.

~~~
dTal
Same things we do now. Lighting, yes. Communication. Power tools. Pumps.
Winches. Automation. GPS should last a good while too.

~~~
cheschire
A lot of those heavier duty things you mention require three phase power,
which is very difficult and expensive to handle independently without the grid
to support you.

~~~
dTal
Do they really require it? Or do they just currently use it _because_ it's
convenient with the grid? In an off-grid scenario, you probably wouldn't use
AC power for anything. DC motors will serve perfectly well for the "heavy
duty" applications.

------
smush
I've done some research into the serval mesh project and Briar and similar; I
do wish most cell phones had some mesh networking installed by default.
Something to enable granny to send a text message to me via piggybacking off
other people who happen to be near enough to have P2P communication.

This would have to be a protocol designed for offline-tolerance I suppose, so
something like auto-exchanging private keys while the network is good and/or
in person if network is down for message security, then when in no signal
mode, regularly transmit and receive small messages encrypted with the same
key-pairs as the real ones, then if they can decrypt the short test message
(short enough to be easy to try / won't eat too much battery life), establish
a dedicated connection long enough to transmit full messages back and forth
before disconnecting.

IDK. Probably serval mesh, briar, gnutella or similar already have this
figured out. I'd like it to be end-user easy for us to prep for that though so
if we are in a venue like a theme park or stadium our phones can transparently
be P2P over Blue-Fi-Drop

~~~
jkepler
Have you heard about the GoTenna mesh project,
[https://gotennamesh.com/](https://gotennamesh.com/) ? I haven't got one yet,
but it looks like the sort of thing you're describing (though its a device
that works with existing smartphones, rather than being a protocol our phones
could run. An advantage here is that with sufficient GoTenna mesh users in an
area, one's anonymity could be increased, as typically (at least in the USA
and most of western Europe) one can't buy SIM cards to access telephone
networks without one's ID.

------
hourislate
This was part of the 2003 North East Blackout

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003)

>The blackout's primary cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the
control room of FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio–based company, which rendered
operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded
transmission lines drooped into foliage. What should have been a manageable
local blackout cascaded into collapse of the entire Northeast region.

~~~
S_A_P
My boss claims he is responsible for this blackout due to an errant tibco
message. I can never tell if he is kidding or not, but he has a lot of
experience in the power industry so I have no reason to doubt this.

~~~
smush
If you dare reveal your HN activity and ask him to comment, I'd love to read
his first-hand account.

~~~
S_A_P
I asked and either because of fear of prosecution or modesty or hyperbole he
said its just a bar story...

------
GnarfGnarf
The problem facing service station operators is that they can't charge a
premium for gas when the power fails, to offset the cost of installing
generators. It's seen as "gouging". So there is no incentive to prepare.

The meager profit margins on gas sales are not enough.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _they can 't charge a premium for gas when the power fails_

We had gasoline shortages a few years ago in New York. I can't find the
article now, but a newspaper– _The Economist_ , I believe–noted how supply
disruptions for illicit drugs were virtually nonexistent because a small price
bump compensated for maintaining inventory. Meanwhile, "price gouging" laws
virtually ensured lines at the petrol stations.

~~~
DangitBobby
>Meanwhile, "price gouging" laws virtually ensured lines at the petrol
stations.

Or maybe it was limited supply... Demand for gas seems fairly inelastic.

~~~
solotronics
I believe this to be false. If the price for gas went to $30/gal in a city in
the US there would be tanker trucks, boats, and hotshots with tanks in the bed
lining up to get into town. Alternative means of transporting the gas into a
disaster area would become economical if the price increases enough. The
shortage is created by restricting the free market price.

~~~
dredmorbius
In numerous parts of the country, there is limited cross-transfer capacity
(pipelines, etc.), and worse, formulation requirements and regulations which
make fuel for one region unacceptable in others.

Because of flammability, petrol itself is generally _not_ hauled long
distances, but is instead refined locally and trucked to service stations.
There are some petrol pipelines and marine transports, but those tend to be
more problematic than unrefined crude.

------
clomond
Having lived and experienced the aforementioned blackout (> 55 million people,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003)
)

It was a transformative experience to me and it felt everyone else who
experienced it regarding the hidden importance of these infrastructure pieces.

What I loved about this piece is it reads much like so many people's
experiences of the incident. Even though it happened over 15 years ago, I and
most others remember distinctly and with clarity the sequence of events that
occurred on that day. Seems like most people's stories went somewhere along
the lines of:

\- Interruption of an intended activity due to no electricity

\- Attempt at understanding scope, and an effort to substitute the interrupted
activity (in my experience, we were entering a restaurant for food and was
told "given we don't have power, we can't microwave most of our items - but
the oil in our friers are still a bit hot though so you can have fries... We
wanted to try elsewhere).

\- The realization that this was not a localized one block situation, but
something larger and more serious. (We drove around and the traffic lights
were out, put on the radio (most most stations were "silent"). The few that
were didn't even know what was going on "it appears there is a blackout,
getting reports from as far as <X>" with <X> being of an increasing scope as
the hour went on.

\- Then an abandonment of the days plans for a trip "back to shelter/home"
where one nestled and tried to wait it out until services were re-restored.

The natural gas in our home didn't work either, so the only way we could heat
food was on a fire. It's one thing to realize that all these these are
connected, but its another to feel its connectedness through these services'
absence.

~~~
mikepurvis
I was in high school at the time (in Toronto), working at a technology camp
for kids— the blackout hit late afternoon when our day was mostly wrapped up,
so I took the bus home as usual.

My experience into the evening was totally different from yours though. People
in my parents' neighbourhood sat out on each other's front porches,
barbecuing, eating ice cream before it all melted, hanging out. It was a
pretty unique moment of community, almost like an impromptu street party that
went on for blocks and blocks. It was kind of liberating, I think, in a
reverse paradox of choice kind of way, to suddenly not be able to do a whole
bunch of things, and to be forced to just kill time away from the TV (and
probably outside, as the reality of not having A/C descended).

Anyway, I don't think I'm unique in this recollection:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=2003+blackout+party](https://www.google.com/search?q=2003+blackout+party)

------
closeparen
In a disaster, public transit is one of the first utilities to go. A fun
exercise is “could I walk home from here?” If not, and you spend a lot of time
there, you need to stage an emergency kit there at least as much as you need
one at home.

I wouldn’t count on BART service anytime soon after The Big One. (Not that I’d
count on freeways either. A bike seems like your best bet).

You find dependencies on electricity in surprising places. Good luck getting
water out of an automatic faucet or push button water fountain. Good luck
getting your car out of a stacker system - even if it’s already at ground
level, those doors don’t have manual releases. Good luck getting through any
badge reader doors in your office or apartment complex. (This may rule out the
bike, even if you brought one).

~~~
SilasX
>Good luck getting water out of an automatic faucet or push button water
fountain.

Yikes! I hadn't realized that. I always praised plumbing as a good example of
a well-designed, robust system that works even when the power is out, and how
only the naive, self-styled 10xers would break that to be trendy ... and yet,
they did it already.

Hopefully the auto-flushing toilets don't have this problem?

~~~
sudhirj
They do, automatic = electric. If you're not applying force from your muscles
to move something, that force is being applied by electricity.

~~~
VBprogrammer
To be fair, if you pour a bucket of water down a toilet fast enough it will
"flush" regardless.

~~~
ivl
Or just put water into the tank.

------
dpcan
This was well written. Sounds like he had less than 24 hours without power but
turned the story into a doomsday journal entry.

His note about cell phone towers losing power was scary. Never really thought
about that. I usually assume the phones will keep working as long as we can
charge them, but I suppose the towers need some juice too.

In our small city, one power line blew down last week and 1/4 of the city was
without power for about 6 hours.

I'm baffled at the lack of redundancy.

I have more redundancy behind my customers' blogs about their dogs than it
appears our city has for keeping electricity flowing to 10K people.

Life without power will be hard to survive. And I fear my neighbors much more
than my food spoiling.

~~~
mikestew
_I usually assume the phones will keep working as long as we can charge them,
but I suppose the towers need some juice too._

It was interesting to observe when the power went out in Redmond, WA for two
weeks about ten years ago. Towers stayed online for a while, until some (I'm
guessing) lost their batteries. Still had a little signal, though, because
(again, guessing) some towers had generators. Then the diesel ran out (again,
guessing), and we had no cell signal after a few days.

That's why I keep the amateur radio skills practiced.

~~~
jwr
I consider the communications infrastructure to be extremely fragile and prone
to collapse. It already collapses under load easily, and while it can make
through a short blackout, a solar storm/flare would take it out for a long
time.

Yes, amateur radio makes a lot of sense.

~~~
ecpottinger
Starlink could solve the loss of power problem, but a really big solar flare
could take that out too.

------
jjav
After hurricane Maria in September 2017 the entire island of Puerto Rico was
without power. There was nowhere you could drive out of the blackout area
since it was everywhere.

A few luckier people got power back in one to two weeks, a small minority. My
family in the greater metro area of San Juan got power back after two months.
Friends in smaller cities only got power after three to five months. There are
communities in the mountains which still don't have power today, almost two
years later.

If you haven't lived through anything like this, it is a useful mental
exercise to think how you'd prepare for it.

~~~
kzrdude
Do you know any write-ups of personal stories from this on the web? Something
like the blog post in this hacker news post.

~~~
jjav
There is so much, but difficult to find any one link to summarize..

After a bit of searching found this page which is a similar blog-style page
except has snippets from many different people. In Spanish.

[https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/09/209947/huracan-
mari...](https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/09/209947/huracan-maria-
aniversario-puerto-rico-experiencia-mujeres)

For English language coverage, search for videos by David Begnaud of CBS News
who was on site and provided excellent reporting.

------
Gravityloss
Having solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and electric cars could make
society quite a lot more resilient to these kind of things.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Or if you're rural, an external combustion engine of some sort, so you can
keep the lights on with firewood.

~~~
ccccppppp
You must mean steam engine.

~~~
gwbas1c
Sterling engine, peltier chip...

You can find peltier chip phone chargers that work by being placed in or near
a campfire.

------
protomyth
_One thing that I was very impressed with was how well the cellphone network
dealt with the outage, for at least 24 hours all the base stations worked,
after that point they slowly dropped out one by one as their batteries ran
dry._

As decedents of an industry that was paranoid enough to generate power for
their own equipment, its nice to see some of the cell phone companies take
power seriously. It would be nicer if they could last a bit longer.

~~~
mrtksn
They do have emergency base stations mounted on vans with diesel generators,
these can run indefinitely.

~~~
jacquesm
As long as they have diesel.

~~~
rtkwe
Diesel is pretty easy to get. Even in a power outage you can open the stations
reservoirs and pump it out manually the main issue is getting the station to
agree to it, makes sense for a single big customer but not to do it for
everyone looking to gas up their car.

~~~
jacquesm
Only if the depots have gravity drops, if their pumps are electric and the
reservoirs underground then you're not going to be able to pump it out to the
surface.

Fortunately most depots are aboveground and only need a tap to be opened to
drop their fuel into a truck.

A person looking up their car would not even be allowed on the grounds.
Besides that the volume dispensed is way too high to deal with in a normal
vehicle, you're looking at 1000's of liters / minute.

~~~
rtkwe
No I'm talking about at the individual stations. There are hand or battery
operated pumps that could easily fuel trucks for refueling places like cell
towers or other critical places with generators.

~~~
jacquesm
Ah I see what you are getting at, you'd use the drop ports to pump fuel out.
That works as long as they are not buried too deep, and no gas station owner
would let you submerge a pump to push up.

A typical station has anywhere from 50K to 1M liters of underground capacity
so that should be enough for a bit, if their own pumps aren't running then
they will likely be happy to be able to sell some of it.

------
rbritton
Having an RV set up for remote work where we can leave home for days, weeks,
or months has actually prepared me for outages better than most. The entirety
of the RV can run on propane and battery, and I have both solar and generators
to recharge the battery bank. Depending on the season, the propane I have on
hand can last from 14 days to upwards of months while the generator gas I have
on hand can handle about a week of full-time running. Because of where I like
to visit, I also carry two cellular hotspots and a satellite internet option
and can typically get internet access where others can't.

A few years back, prior to owning the RV, we had a windstorm come through
about ten days before Thanksgiving. Power to most of the area was knocked out
as the weaker trees fell and wiped out much of the powerline infrastructure (I
recorded gusts around 75 mph before my weather station actually broke). As is
normal that time of year, temperatures were in the 20ºF range, which meant
finding alternate heating methods at the very least. We were very
underprepared for it, losing much of the food in the fridge/freezer, and the
house got very cold.

All local generators and gas cans sold out very, very quickly, but I found one
on Amazon that could be shipped to my door overnight for $50 extra. It arrived
on the second day (of seven) of the outage, and I wired the furnace, fridge,
and one multipurpose outlet into it. We struggled with just the one 5 gallon
gas can, though, needing a daily trip to the gas station to refill. Had they
not had power, it would've been worse.

In the end, it was much like camping without adequate preparation. The first
couple days were novel and amusing, but by the end, it was just a daily
routine of ensuring we stayed warm enough and no damage was done (e.g., pipes
freezing).

------
bungie4
Nice to read an article from somebody local, or nearly so, to me.

I remember the outage well, I worked at a major telecommunications company
with reserve generators. I really didn't appreciate the depth of the issue
until I drove home that night. People were telling other people, total
strangers, that nukes were dropping all over the US. You can imagine the
panic.

Word eventually spread and the northern mindset of looking after your
neighbours took hold, as mentioned in the artice.

I went to use the BBQ to make some burgers. We ran out of propane naturally.
My neighbour offered his BBQ which coincidentally, was out of propane. Then
HIS neighbour offered his BBQ. He was out building a deck when the power went
out. He fired up his generator and continued on. His skil-saw was the only
sound to be heard. All the neighbours threw in food and drink and we got to
know one another.

I will admit to being a little said after the power was restored, because,
except for a nod or a wave, we went back to the business of minding our own.

------
chiefalchemist
Infrastructure is a concern. But to me the bigger concern is the food supply.
It, like gasoline, runs lean; very just in time.

Look at what the possibility of a snow storm does to the supermarket. Now
imagine the effect on the public psyche when they're told "we'll have more
food next week."

------
ThomPete
There is a moral to that story.

Making sure we have enough energy for everything we want whether the source is
coal, oil, nuclear or hydro because energy is the single biggest contributor
to a better life, richer and safer life and the more access we have the better
of we are.

------
goda90
This last winter on an incredibly cold night(<-10 F) we had a power outage in
the middle of the night. I was up late and noticed it right away. After I
reported it to the utility, I made sure the dog was on the bed with me, closed
the bedroom doors, and hunkered down. I'm not sure what time it came on but
when I woke up the thermostat was showing it had dropped more than 15 degrees
F in the house. I should probably buy a generator.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Or just put a tent up in the living room.

~~~
dredmorbius
Tents insulate poorly.

A 1 litre Nalgene bottle, filled with boiling water, and slipped in a wool
sock, on the other hand, will keep you warm. Two is generally overly toasty.

------
syntaxing
I really take for granted how great electricity is. I didn't have power for a
week during the big Sandy storm and it's funny how I instinctly turn the
lights on every time I go into a room. It's scary to think what it would be
like if we didn't perpetually have electricity.

------
harel
There was a TV series about a scenario where electricity simply stopped
working:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_\(TV_series\))

~~~
mxuribe
My partner and I loved watching this show!! (We saw it over one of the
streaming service, not live tv.) Too bad they stopped at 2 seasons.

But, thanks for sharing the wikipedia link, because now i see that there's a
comic book series which wraps up the story. Cheers!

~~~
harel
I didn't pay attention myself, so thanks for mentioning about the comics - I
didn't know.

------
EGreg
Most people are too blase about having decentralized backup systems, in every
area.

We need decentralized power generation and storage (solar panel based, etc.)
to survive a Carrington Event or an EMP. Or just a simple blackout. We need
electric cars which represent choice rather than fossil-fuel lockin.

But we also need mesh networks and software to run on them, to survive the
Internet being cut off like in Kashmir or Hong Kong. We need decentralized
town currencies and much more.

Please watch this talk I gave a few years ago:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY)

~~~
rtkwe
How will rooftop solar help with a massive solar storm or EMP. Most inverters
actually cannot provide 50/60hz AC on their own and just sync to an external
source. Even beyond that issue they'd all be fried anyways in the same even
that killed the regular electrical grid.

~~~
EGreg
Solar storm only affects really long wires, not short circuits around the
house and a battery.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/we-arent-ready-for-a-solar-
storm-s...](https://www.cnet.com/news/we-arent-ready-for-a-solar-storm-
smackdown/)

------
ctdonath
Back when the "Y2K Bug" was emerging as a serious threat, I described to my
ex-engineer father the looming issue in great detail. He listened carefully,
then calmly replied "if that happens, I'll throw another log on the fire and
go back to my book." Indeed, he was living preparedness: there was no "crazy
prepper" stuff, just someone who had systematically thought through everything
that could go wrong, and who had seamlessly integrated backup systems into his
lifestyle.

I aspire to do the same, making slow progress. Too few know how close to
disaster their lifestyle is.

~~~
ecpottinger
I had a cabin up northern ontario that you had to canoe and portage to get to,
no power, no running water, outhouse. Invited friends up.

What was interesting while some would come up, others claimed they could not
live without a hot water bath, or electric lighting, and while my outhouse had
seven (yes seven) coats of white paint and the hole was so deep I had problems
getting out when I first dug it - the idea of not using a flush toilet was
alien to them.

Some people are not ready for how basic things can get without power.

------
smush
I wish it wasn't so expensive to have a switch next to your circuit-breaker
that was labelled 'electric lines/natural gas/water' and depending on which
selection would cut-off the home electricity from the others and enable the
electricity to come from, respectively, the central grid, a small natural-gas-
fed generator (with auto-start battery?), a pico/micro hydro generator in the
basement/crawlspace.

Having the ability to convert your electricity bill to a more expensive
water/natural gas bill and still have power during an outage would be quite
nice.

~~~
pinkythepig
The natural gas genny portion exists, the water one does not. The water one
doesn't exist for two reasons:

1\. There is only energy in the water system because your city has pumps/water
towers to give it pressure. So in a disaster, you running your hydro setup is
just placing more strain on the water infra who are likely running on
generators.

2\. Hydro plants need _huge_ amounts of water to provide power. To even power
a single outlet, you are talking in the range of tens of thousands of gallons
of water per hour. Your water bill would _quickly_ eclipse the cost of just
buying a generator.

\---

Going back to natural gas, you are looking for an automatic transfer switch.
When the power cuts, it disconnects you from the grid, turns on the generator
automatically, and you then have power again. When the power is back, it
switches you back to grid and turns generator off. Only downside is that there
will be a several second power cut while generator turns on. You generally can
only get this feature on midrange cost and up generators. For cost savings
measures, you can also buy a manual transfer switch, with the obvious downside
of you having to flip the switch and go start the genny.

------
gao8a
_" The honda was a veritable bomb, it was filled with cannisters as many as
they could cram in."_

Somehow that one sentence shivered me as I imagined a crowd of happy people
surrounding a car with bottomed out suspension.

------
thisisbrians
@dang do you mind adding (2013) to the title?

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4995938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4995938)

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buboard
There is probably a moral to this story: We are too much dependent on
centralized systems because of perceived efficiency, but how true is that
anymore? How hard is it to be i.e. energetically autonomous though? In sunny
places, a house could probably be affordably autonomous, however these
solutions have not been explored at scale and are not cheap yet. (I already
know it's possible to have food-autarky, a garden and a few chicken will do).

~~~
ccccppppp
We can't support 7 billion people if each one of them has a house with garden
and grows it's own food. That's what the middle ages were, look at the
population then.

~~~
pharke
The truth is probably somewhere between the two of you. We shouldn't be
entirely dependant on centralized systems, nor should we attempt to be 100%
self-sufficient. I'm sure there's a best of both worlds approach.

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VBprogrammer
I guess this is a good a time as any to ping Jacques about getting the photos
back on his windmill build page. Still one of my favourite build logs...

~~~
jacquesm
On the todo list. When I shut down Camarades.com/WW.com I took the photo
archive offline as well, but did not realize my blog pics where hotlinked from
it. Now I need to go digging around on some ancient backup server.

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kjar
Check out ‘World Without Us’ by John Wiesman. A fascinating thought experiment
wherein we all suddenly ‘beam up’ and Earth left to go on evolving.

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dsfyu404ed
Keep in mind that in 2003 China still hadn't figured out how to make small
engines with good (enough for western consumers) quality control so everyone
and their brother did not have a backup generator. These days things are very
different. Many businesses (especially ones that depend on refrigeration) have
backup generators now.

~~~
dpcan
But most generators need fuel. It's only a temporary fix.

It's funny how a generator creates peace of mind, and yet we don't consider
the magnitude of the disaster for which they give us peace.

~~~
shadowprofile77
A gas generator can only run on gasoline, which is a complex fuel that can't
be produced without a highly specialized industrial infrastructure But.... a
moderately modified diesel generator can run on pure filtered vegetable oil,
and that's something that any small homestead with a modest amount of planning
and equipment can make, for as long as they have oil-bearing plants at their
disposal.

~~~
oceanplexian
It's not actually that complicated. Anyone can distill ethanol with 12th
century technology, all you need is a source of sugar, such as corn, fruits,
etc, yeast, and a heat source. If you're getting fancy you can use enzymes but
it's not necessary. The only downside is that the yield is low, and modern
engines don't run very well on pure ethanol without modification.

~~~
shadowprofile77
Okay, this is true and definitely useful as one more option in a so called
STHF scenario but ethanol still provides more complications for use and
conversion in modern gas engines (especially if you include newer fuel
injected motors in cars).Furthermore and much more importantly, biodiesel
(slightly different from the SVO of my original comment but close
enough)produces about 90%+ more energy than is needed for its production,
while ethanol only manages about 25% or so based on data I've seen. That's a
major bonus for biosiesel and SVO generators or vehicle engines because in a
real catastrophe situation, you'd want the most fuel energy for the least
production inputs. Also, modified diesel engines that run biodiesel can also
run straight vegetable oil and even animal fats, making them more versatile
and easier to maintain than an ethanol motor.

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bryanrasmussen
reminds me of the movie Into the Forest
[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/into_the_forest](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/into_the_forest)

