
A world without power - ColinWright
http://jacquesmattheij.com/a-world-without-power
======
david927
Complex systems, like the human body, are incredibly robust (failure rates of
the death penalty in the US, for example, are surprisingly high), and
incredibly fragile (we've all heard stories about the person who slipped on
the ice, hit their head and instantly died). We get used to the robust and we
sometimes forget the fragile.

When I lived in Switzerland I was surprised to find that every modern building
has a nuclear bunker in the basement, and that even now they are kept up:
supplies are rotated, there are inspections, etc. At first it seemed quaint,
but then I realized that as arguably the richest country in the world, they're
not as interested in getting richer as they are in preserving what they have
-- thus different forms of insurance, including even bunkers. I now find that
quite smart, actually.

~~~
jacques_chester
Switzerland's bunker policy is the logical extension of that country's
historically defensive posture.

The Swiss have deliberately made it very, very difficult to perform a
conventional invasion of their country; the geography makes it a natural
fortress and they've studiously added to it.

If conventional invasion is impossible, then the next option is weapons of
mass destruction. Relatively cheap and effective. The Swiss have no WMD
deterrent of their own, therefore they have to bet on survivability. Hence the
bunkers.

As a country they definitely take the very long view.

~~~
LaGrange
It's also worth to notice the way Swiss survived WWII. They sat on critical
supply routes, and organized guerilla before anyone could invade, giving them
an incredibly strong bargaining position.

Keeping bunkers actually works well with that. And they're not really wasted
space — people use them as wine cellars, washing rooms or whatever else.

~~~
gadders
I don't think their neutrality would have lasted very long had Hitler finished
off the UK and USSR.

They also turned away plenty of Jewish refugees, as well as secreting gold
stolen from concentration camp victims.

Their record during WWII is shameful.

~~~
esrauch
The US also turned away plenty of Jewish refugees. US and the UK refused to
let Black Free French soldiers take part in the freeing of Paris since they
wanted it to be a "white victory". The US also put Japanese Americans in
internment camps.

Its ridiculous to single out the Swiss as shameful in WW2, looking at norms 70
years ago would make all people "shameful" in some way.

~~~
JohnsonB
>Its ridiculous to single out the Swiss as shameful in WW2, looking at norms
70 years ago would make all people "shameful" in some way.

Are you actually equating all acts of 'shamefulness' during the 30s/40s at the
same level? Your statement is tantamount to equating the actions of the allies
with the axis, which is obviously ludicrous. The Swiss acted
uncharacteristically selfishly and shamefully, even when compared to the
record of the US. There's no need to jump to some half-baked defense of the
Swiss, they deserve every bit of criticism leveled at them for their actions
during WW2.

~~~
esrauch
I was only replying specifically to the two claims that you made.

The first of which was exactly the same in the US (and possibly less
justified; given it's size, the US could have absorbed Jewish refugees much
more easily than the Swiss).

The second was almost certainly done at a smaller scale by US banks, and is
mostly just because the US didn't have the opportunity since fewer Holocaust
victims had their Gold in American banks than Swiss banks. It's ridiculous to
think that Americans were so much more moral than the Swiss just because they
had fewer opportunities to steal.

If there are other things that the Swiss did that were so shameful, I am
interested in knowing.

~~~
JohnsonB
>I was only replying specifically to the two claims that you made.

Well, that's not really true. Your post acted as a rebuff of the criticism of
Switzerland, based on the logic that the US undertook similar actions. You
said Switzerland "shouldn't be singled out" for criticism, yet OP _wasn't_
singling Switzerland out but merely adding information to the topic at hand,
which was Switzerland's record during WW2. So why even bring the US up?
Nothing they did eliminates the need to remind people of Switzerland's
abhorrent actions during WW2, and yet you still state this shouldn't be done
("Its ridiculous to single out the Swiss as shameful in WW2.")

Secondly, the statement that I quoted of yours made quite a specific argument
that you didn't mention most recently, regarding how Switzerland's actions
should be viewed in perspective of the times. I argued it was fallacious to
say that flattening the morality of the issue just because standards were
lower during the war results in less of a need to discuss Switzerland's crimes
during this time. You haven't attempted to refute this point, yet your latest
post still made the statement that "I was only replying specifically to the
two claims that you made [Swiss rejection of refugees and theft from Holocaust
victims]" (which is aside from the fact that I am not the original author of
the post you first responded to.)

So it's still curious why you felt the need to rebuff gadders criticism of the
Swiss during WW2 given that it was on topic, even acknowledging similar
actions take by the US.

~~~
esrauch
I understood the original post as implying that the Swiss were effectively
Nazi sympathizers since they turned away people fleeing the Holocaust; the
statement is very misleading when stated alone. I mention the US did the same
and they are very unlikely to be accused of being Nazi collaborators.

The reason I bring up the context of other countries at the same time period
is _not_ to say the actions are admirable, I am providing context of what else
was happening at the same time. I think many people don't fully realize that
actions that used to be routine would be reviled through the lens of today's
politics and norms; examine any one country and you can easily condemn anyone.

I assumed the response most readers would have with that knowledge is to
vilify the Swiss while still holding the Allies in high esteem.

------
RyanMcGreal
The Great Outage of 2003 was a fun time. We had a gas stove so we could still
cook dinner (though as a newspaper columnist friend of mine wrote at the time,
the entire neighbourhood was suffused with the smell of everything out of
every fridge cooking on the barbecue), and several neighbours came by to share
a glass of wine on our front porch.

It was breathtaking, that night, to look up at the clear sky and see the
countless stars blazing down without having to compete with light pollution
from the city. Normally you have to go several hours into northern Ontario to
see the like.

One of the things that impressed me was how civil everyone was. I was at the
downtown library when the power failed, and the 2 km walk home was filled with
curiosity (just how big _is_ this thing?) but free of incident.

Even at intersections, nearly everyone slowed down or stopped and eased
through without trouble. On a few corners, self-appointed crossing guards
helped maintain order - in fact, those tended to be the worst intersections,
because drivers would cede responsibility to the crossing guard instead of
responding directly to the conditions.

~~~
DonnyV
It was fun because you knew there would be an end to it and the power would go
back on. If it lasted a month and there was no communication, survival mode
would kick in.

~~~
pavel_lishin
A month is generous, though it depends on the community, I suppose.

~~~
jacquesm
If you want to see how strong society is turn off the water supply, and leave
it off. Never mind the power.

~~~
Dylan16807
What's that supposed to do, exactly? Worst case is you buy $1 gallons of water
at the grocery store for a while and don't shower.

~~~
jacalata
And don't use the bathroom?

~~~
Firehed
Humanity got by for quite a long time without flush toilets. That would be
relatively low on my list of concerns.

~~~
alexqgb
Humanity got by without a lot of things for a very long time. But around 1800,
the population begun to climb. After taking 200,000 years to reach our first
billion we, reached our seventh just 200 years later. A sudden reversion to
the conditions known by America's Founding Fathers would leave ~7/8th of the
global population unsupported.

So yes, flush toilets would be the least of your concerns, what with the
zombie apocalypse in full swing and everything.

------
DennisP
According to the IEEE, another geomagnetic storm like the ones that happened
in 1921 and 1859 would take out power grids continent-wide, for years:
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-
grid/a-perfect-s...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-
grid/a-perfect-storm-of-planetary-proportions/0)

The main problem is high-voltage transformers, which are built mostly by hand
by highly-skilled labor. There's a fairly simple way to protect them, but no
utility does it.

~~~
ky3
_There's a fairly simple way to protect them, but no utility does it._

You mean a faraday cage? Will wrapping it with foil work?

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _First, the intense magnetic field variations in the magnetosphere induce
> electric fields and currents over large areas of Earth's surface. In turn,
> this geoelectric field creates what are known as geomagnetically induced
> currents, or GICs, which flow in any available conductor, including high-
> voltage transmission lines, oil and gas pipelines, railways, and undersea
> communications cables. These interconnecting networks essentially act as
> giant antennas that channel the induced currents from the ground. Hit with a
> 300-ampere GIC, a high-voltage transformer's paper tape insulation will
> burn, its copper winding will melt, and the transformer will fail, either
> right then and there or in the future._

> _There is a quick and relatively cheap fix to help protect these
> transformers from geomagnetically induced currents: They can be retrofitted
> to block the inflow of GICs. But no utilities anywhere routinely protect
> their multimillion-dollar transformers in this way._

~~~
mseebach
So this is basically just fusing the transformer, right? The grid will still
be down?

~~~
PeterisP
Well, if both the transformers and actual long distance wires survive the
event, then the grid can be brought back up.

Most of grid 'defenses' involve some temporary disconnection of components;
the robustness question is how quickly you can reconnect again - is it an
automatic switch after half a second, or does it require sending repair squads
to thousand remote locations.

------
lifeisstillgood
My lesson is slightly different - regulation really does matter. I know many
(myself included) subscribe to a small (ish) government - but infrastructure
is one of those areas that has to be regulated.

The markets did not correct the situation (jacques gas station is not now the
preferred suppliers for all Ontario) So a simple regulation (you must be
designed to keep your service flowing) seems to deal with a huge amount of
this - power companies that don't have rolling brown outs get to be in
business the next day etc

~~~
jacquesm
Jacques' gas station actually went out of business:
[http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/stick-to-what-you-know-a-
tale...](http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/stick-to-what-you-know-a-tale-of-an-
investment-gone-wrong)

~~~
wisty
Due to lax accounting, it seems. (There's a more proximate reason, but the
story's too good to spoil with a tl;dr).

~~~
jacquesm
More due to a lack of oversight and an excess of trust.

I'm pretty sure my Canadian accountant would be quite upset at your
conclusion. Cash disappearing has nothing at all to do with accounting.

~~~
wisty
Maybe I'm using the term "accounting" a bit loosely. It's not the accountants
job to monitor day-to-day cashflow, that's more a bookkeeper's or manager's
job. If they're crooked, it's a bit harder to catch (especially if they are
able to offset cash losses with by opening secret a line of credit with a
supplier).

------
nicholassmith
It's funny, we're so highly dependent on electricity for everything that
there's not more failsafes in place. Generators aren't exactly super cheap,
but they're at a price point where if your business requires power then having
one in the wings is useful. Even more surprising that a big petrol station
wouldn't have one.

It's also telling that when power goes down, or there's a big event (inclement
weather and so on), there's a rash of panic buying, some incredibly ugly
behaviour (looting, greedy price increases) but offset by some truly wonderful
behaviour (free gas to stranded people? Friends for life at that stage).
Society might be a veneer of polish, but at it's core there's still a lot of
incredibly nice people.

~~~
olliesaunders
Price increases are the natural response from market forces given the
reduction or merely risk of reduction in supply. This has at least two
important beneficial effects: 1) people are less likely to panic buy 2) the
incentive for supplying increases.

~~~
nicholassmith
No doubt, free market economies do love price increases but it's often at a
level that could be viewed as price gouging to make money off someones
misfortune. Whether that's a truly bad thing is probably a longer conversation
for a different day (is there a morality in the marketplace, and so on).

------
jacques_chester
Every Infrastructure-We-All-Rely-On (electricity, water, roads, medicine,
banking IT) person I've ever talked to says a variation on the same thing:
it's a good thing that terrorists are so fond of "hollywood plots".

~~~
Tichy
Although most infrastructure things seem to be distributed and don't usually
have single points of failure that would make good targets for terrorist
attacks. Or am I mistaken?

~~~
TeMPOraL
You could poison water. After 9/11 in Warsaw, Poland we had some jounralists
sneak up to a municipal water storage facility and pour powdered sugar to
water supplies on camera to show how easy would it be to do the same thing
with another, more lethal, white powder.

Also I guess doing serious damage to power grid isn't beyond the realms of
possibility? You could of course bomb a substation, but I guess there are more
subtle (and difficult to repair) ways you could inflict the damage if you took
control over a small part of the grid. I guess I should stop speculating and
leave the specifics to those in the know ;).

Big (and long lasting) infrastructure failures will have more damaging impact
on both the local economy[0] and people's "ease of mind" than a random mall
bombing.

[0] - remember the recent jwz story about power cable? How as long as it
wasn't repaired, it costed the city $13k/hour?
<http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/>

~~~
Tichy
Don't know about the power grid, but I think at least in Europe it seems to be
networked among several countries. If one country does not produce enough
power, it can import power from other countries. Unless there is a single main
line between the countries, it seems difficult to destroy.

~~~
jacquesm
Ask the Czechs and the Poles how they like their hook-up with Germany.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/windmills-
overload-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/windmills-overload-
east-europe-s-grid-risking-blackout-energy.html)

~~~
Tichy
Too much energy - funny problem :-)

I don't think this is much of an issue, though.

~~~
jacquesm
On the contrary, it's a huge problem. Sooner or later there will be the surge
they can't deal with and then we could easily get the same cascade issues that
destabilized the North American grid during the outage. Island mode - the
disconnection of all external connections - is the failsafe of last resort but
by that time there will be large areas of Europe in the dark ages.

The grid has become so interconnected with such highly fluctuating loads that
it's a miracle we haven't seen a serious outage yet.

Basically Germany uses Polish, Czech and Hungarian grids as a load leveler and
as a way to transport power inside the union to countries they have deals
with. But exactly those grids are amongst the oldest and weakest that we've
got.

This is not a simple problem and the potential for error is much larger than
you'd expect given the number of people that rely on these systems. So far so
good. I personally believe that Germany should pay for the conditioning
equipment to deal with the varying load of their windplants, the load patterns
are a direct consequence of using wind energy and it should not fall to
Germany's neighbours to fund a chunk of infrastructure that solely exists to
deal with the wind surges.

In the United States every windplant has a conditioner at the uplink to make
sure that the relatively fragile long distance network does not suffer. That's
one single economic entity so there is no externalization possible.

~~~
Tichy
So the terrorist plot would be to overload the power grid. Since they come
from oil rich countries, they'd probably have the spare energy to do that :-)
Place some oil powered generators at strategic locations and blam -
darkness...

But in seriousness, I find the issue interesting, but it seems solvable.

~~~
jacquesm
It's mostly a matter of who picks up the bill. Until then we're playing
chicken with a critical resource.

~~~
Tichy
True - while I think it is solvable, I have less confidence that it will be
solved :-(

------
tapertaper
Eliminate price gouging laws and give gas station owners an incentive to buy
generators and this problem goes away. Also gives an incentive to truck gas in
from afar. Obviously people view increased prices during a crisis to be
morally repugnant, hence the laws. Just sayin' it would work.

~~~
jacquesm
In Northern Ontario everything except for lumber, iron ore and moose meat gets
trucked in from afar.

------
flexd
It's very interesting to see how quickly things turn ugly (or at least uglier)
in situations like that. With power down for two days, did they see any
increase in crime beyond what you described?

As it happens I was watching a TV-series yesterday that has this exact
plot/theme, not exactly HN material as it's Sci-Fi but anyway: The world loses
power globally. Anything using power is dead. Planes, Cars, batteries, etc.

Not sure if it's a hit that will last but I found it entertaining and it made
me think a bit, what would I be able to do to survive something like that?
What would my plan be?

I'm not about to go all doomsday prepper but I guess it does not hurt to at
least have an idea.

Or just be prepared like in the story, preparing for the worst as we usually
do when designing redundant solutions.

<http://www.tvrage.com/Revolution>

~~~
vl
Revolution is the silliest TV show ever contrived. 15 years in the power
outage, they still wear clean tailored designer clothes. Resistance fights the
only organizing and governing force, why?, just because. Electricity is out
(or rather blocked), but diesel engines don't work either - surprise, many
diesel engines don't depend on electricity to operate.

~~~
flexd
Well yes, I'm not saying the show is not flawed or silly. But I found it
entertaining enough simply because it made me think 'what if .. ?'

~~~
andreasvc
I like the premise because exploring the ramifications is interesting and
useful. Unfortunately they then turn to magical plot devices. I was very let
down by that; it got steadily less entertaining after the first few episodes
(just like Fringe).

~~~
Dylan16807
Yeah, I love the idea of the show, but then I read about the execution (
[http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-10-dumbest-things-tv-so-
far-...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-10-dumbest-things-tv-so-far-this-
season/) ) and have nothing to do but sigh.

------
xentronium
This is a brilliant story. I wonder how other infrastructure coped with the
outage (water supply network and sewers). Living in a dormitory in Russia, we
had outages in water supply periodically (once it lasted for whole two weeks)
and that quickly translated into a horrible mess of insanitary.

Also loved the little episode with bikers, as I'm fascinated with their craft.
Hope there is a going to be a followup about them.

~~~
maxerickson
Systems that relied on pumping for pressure ended up under boil water
advisories. Detroit, Cleveland, others. I think water pressure was mostly
restored 3 or 4 days in though.

~~~
pyre
The tap water in Detroit never tasted the same afterwards, though no one else
in my family felt the same way. I felt like I could taste and sometimes smell
chlorine. Even the last time I visited Detroit (years later, and in a
completely different part of the surrounding area).

~~~
jacquesm
You can get sensitized to Chlorine. (and to lots of other stuff as well).

~~~
pyre
The Detroit water system completely lost pressure. My assumption was that they
upped the chlorine content to compensate for possible contamination in the
system. They probably never reduced the concentration (either by design or by
accident).

------
skrebbel
> _if you’re in the infrastructure business design as if lives depend on it._

This. Is not as simple as it sounds.

It is why some colleagues of mine stubbornly refuse to write software for
medical appliances: even if they design as if their lives depend on it, they
might make a mistake and cause serious harm.

~~~
jacquesm
Smart guys. Know your limits. I have daily fights on this subject :)
(colleagues, all in good humor but serious all the same, we'd rather not ship
than ship something that breaks which has slowed us down in a terrible way).

~~~
smoyer
I once designed an ultrasound system that was used to decide the magnification
of the plastic lens implanted in a cataract patient's eye. It scares me more
now than it did then (the late '80s / early '90s).

It takes a while to learn your limits ... and to become a "sage". Once you
become a "sage", you realize that you don't actually know much in the grand
scheme of things. More people look up to me now that I know less ... That's
pretty amusing in its own way.

~~~
jacquesm
It's funny how over the years my programming style changed. First it was
'C100', then it was more and more complex with ever increasing mastery of the
language and ditto for other languages that I'm familiar with. Now I find I've
come full circle. I keep things as simple as possible even if I know the
'perfect' (but more complex) way to solve something I'll stick to simple
patterns and bullet proof rather than 'clever'. It took me a long time to come
to the realization that clever code really isn't.

~~~
unimpressive
"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the
first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will
you ever debug it? " - Brian Kernighan (Sourced from wikipedia)

------
caboteria
I remember watching the first episode of "Connections" when I was a kid and
being pretty badly frightened by the power-loss scenario that James Burke
described: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOp-nz3lHg>

~~~
nickpinkston
For those of you who haven't seen Connections - they're all on YouTube:

<http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesBurkeWeb>

------
loteck
A reasonable part of this conversation is the possibility that an EMP could be
deployed in our atmosphere that would knock out power from coast-to-coast. US
government commissions have been setup to study this, and they have come back
with dire predictions about how quickly society would collapse in that event.
And, if you'll pardon the author's bias, someone recently wrote
([http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/19/north-
korea-...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/19/north-korea-emp-
attack-could-destroy-us-now/)) about how North Korea's new ICBM capabilities
threaten the US right now.

I'm not saying we should all be running around waving our hands in the air and
acting like our hair is on fire, but if you want to talk about single points
of failure, you apparently need look no further than your nearest wall outlet.

------
ohwp
Sometimes it bothers me that consumption is very cheap. It makes us unaware.
Unaware of environment issues, ethical issues, safety issues, and so on.

------
enraged_camel
>>Infrastructure is invisible, as long as it works.

This is exactly why it is so difficult to convince politicians and the general
public that infrastructure spending is absolutely worthwhile. Even though it
makes the entire economy more efficient and fail-proof, most people take it
for granted until it fails.

------
rdl
I've never understood why gas stations don't have generators. They already
meet most of the permitting requirements (having underground tanks is the big
thing), are generally staffed, and are fairly well distributed.

Maybe it's not frequent enough (and, with anti-gouging and no consumer
loyalty, not a worthwhile investment), but that just means the business model
is broken. Either do it as a subscription service (if you have amex platinum,
you get access to a network of hardened gas stations; or, if you pay $50/yr),
or have government do it.

If the homeland security people lost $1-2b in budget and it got used to put
generators and caches of supplies at them (maybe just a cell site with long
runtime), we'd be a lot better off.

------
pm90
One of the things I often like to point out to those that criticize India's
unreliable infrastructure is this: If it came to be that India were at war,
taking out its power stations would give very little benefit to an enemy. Most
industries and businesses have made provisions for generators and inverters
(huge batteries that store electricity for a few hours of use) so as to not
depend on the flaky power utilities

------
ilaksh
I think the trick is to distribute power generation and other services and
goods manufacturing as widely as possible. Ideally, each individual home or
building could provide for its own basic needs, or at least a significant
portion or backup. I think that new technologies (nanotech, biotech,
greentech, etc.) and popular dissemination of older technologies could make
this possible.

------
joubert
Two years ago I visited the site of a company in South Africa that delivers
(short-term) emergency power to remote areas in modularized fashion.

I wrote about it here: <http://joubert.posterous.com/modular-mobile-power>

~~~
ColinWright
Now submitted as an item in its own right:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4998770>

------
gz5
excellent writing. how long until similar "world w/o Internet-access" type
essays?

even today, something to keep in mind as we design and implement Internet
dependent/co-dependent systems and processes?

