Ask Lemmy

I think the immediate deaths would all be from people who need electricity to run medical devices.

Followed shortly by people who require refrigerated medication.

Followed by elderly who die from exposure to extreme, unconditioned temperatures.

and that would be in the first, oh, say... week or two.

Then, with fridges full of rotted food, your first major death wave will occur as masses of people lose their absolute goddamn minds in panic and fear and start food riots/try to rob from others/raid big industrial farms/neighborhood gardens/etc, which leads to mass deaths from starvation, exposure, exertion, desperation, and gunshot.

Which will even out after about a week or two.

Then you settle in for the slow burn. 3 months out you'll have another, comparatively small wave of deaths from people who run out of non-refridgeration requiring medications.

Then another slow burn until manufactured canned goods run out in stores and scavanged homes until a wave of starvation.

All in all, I'd say you'd probably be over the bulk of the mass deaths after 6 months, and with a significantly reduced population.. Which will be to the benefit of the survivors, since less people per mile will make farming/hunting easier, and life safer.. because while raiders/thieves will always be a overarching concern and safety issue, at this point, most of the desperation should have passed along with most of the desperate.

There will also be, for at least a generation, possibly two, the lingering unspoken understanding that more people than anyone would ever care to count only survived the famines and fall by eating the long pig.

About six weeks.

After my medications run out, then about one or two weeks and I die. Period.

There is a book that describes exactly that: Ashes, Ashes by Barjavel.

It's a classic of French science-fiction literature and I recommended everyone to read.

It was written in 1943, it describes a parisian dystopian society in 2050 where all the electricity suddenly stop overnight. Even thought the book is 80 years old it is surprisingly accurate in some aspect.

At least long enough to build my own hand-crank generator. Then the raiders would kill me and take it.

:(

However long it would take me to find a tank of nitrogen to strap to my face for happy sleep time.

If given enough notice to store water and fill 3 good coolers with ice, longer than 2 weeks - we lost power for 2 weeks with a hurricane once and had an electric well pump so no water either. Had set up a system with one cooler allowed to be opened, the others not often. By 2 weeks the water that we'd filled the tub with (for washing not drinking - water with a little bit of bleach) was getting questionable.

Like you, I think the biggest issue would be people.

Way longer than your average person but I'd start running out of supplies after few months too. I have food stocked up for few months, 90 litres of drinking water and a water filter, 120 litres of diesel plus what I have in the tank, enough fuel to run alchohol stove for few months aswell and I have a fireplace to keep myself warm basically indefinitely.

It's kind of scary to think that even me whose somewhat of a prepper would run out of supplies quite quick. What does that mean for the average person who doesn't even have a jug of water stored up.

Also, this is the kind of discussion that would fit well on [email protected]

Hard to say.

The biggest challenge would be to get out of the city and make the trip to my family's farm safely. It would take about a week on foot/bikes using less known roads with all the supplies/weapons that would be crucial.

If I could get to the farm, rest would be fairly easy. I can farm, fish and and hunt. Heating works with wood. Fresh water is not a problem, nor is refrigeration with an ice cellar. My family has an old mill that we could restore to get flour and I think I could retrofit it to produce hydroelectricity in a year or so.

I'd trade access to electricity to get horses and other farm animals.

Almost every neighbour is related to me, so forming a defensive alliance should be possible.

I have the gear and the knowhow to make things work, it's the not-getting-killed part at the start that's hard.

There’s a fantastic book series based on exactly this: The Change Series. This is a double storyline with the Emberverse series in which the present time beginning in March 1998 loses electricity and “most forms of high-energy-density technology” due to "The Change", which occurs at 6:15 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, March 17, 1998.

The companion series, which was written first, is the Nantucket Series, in which the island of Nantucket is transported back in time to 1250 BC due to something called "The Event", the same Event that caused The Change. But— they got to keep all their physics intact.

If property rights are still enforced in the turmoil probably indefinitely. Doesn't mean I'd enjoy it, though.

I come from a place where survival agriculture was the norm well into the 1980s. Would have to start having cows and pigs again, need to work out a salting station, which we haven't had for a few decades. I remember soap making was a mess. We got rid of our wood-fueled kitchen at some point, so that's a problem until society settles back in enough to start selling those again. We'd probably have to go back to setting up a corner for a fireplace in the meantime. That's before my time but it should be possible.

Medication would run out so probably about a month.

This question reminded me of the Dr Stone anime. The premise is that a wave turns everyone into marble, several thousands years later a young scientist is unfrozen and uses science to restore society to its former state.

Also, I wonder what the effects of long term exposure to EMP would be to life on earth. Since most neurological systems use electromagnetic waves maybe they are impacted?

Another interesting question would be if there would be a way to work around the EMP. For example, would a Faraday cage work to allow electronics to work inside it? Or maybe electronics are improved to work under the effect of EMP? Like how the CPUs have bit correction algorithms because of random bit flips that occur due to solar flares.

Last but not least, in such a situation my plan would be to go as far away as possible, since there will be food shortages, being in an area where you can forage for food or hunt animals would be a priority. Then, I would probably die eating something poisonous. If I survive long enough to set up a farm, I would probably survive the next 10 years or so until I die of old age at 35 the new average life expectancy.

Indefinitely. What remains of my government will be drafting me into some forced labor group all us sparkies will be ordered to report.

Hopefully quite a while. I'm regularly in the wilderness, a holiday is 2-3 weeks off-grid. The only thing I use electricity for is lighting (torches and camp) and music/radio, powered off battery's that are handled by solar.

I aim to extend food by fishing, which usually is week 2 after my stored meat is gone and I need more protein. I have a couple of different weighted bows, but rarely hunt as it requires extra licensing. Lots and lots and lots of expedition-level outdoor/survival gear.

Combine that all with still having a house for shelter, should be fine. Love a book and crosswords for non-electric entertainment, otherwise mountain biking or rock climbing. I won't get bored.

I think the biggest issue would be food. We have loads of farmers in the area and the bike is usable. However, to many people in the area and a lot of specialized crop.

With the canned food, I guess around a month, then it'll get challeging.

Probably immediately. That's kind of the plan, actually. Why would I want to live in such a world where physical might makes right?

I have a bike and know how to repair it, so if there are materials availiable in case of an emergency, I would have a means of transport that doesn't rely on electricity or gas. I'm a bit out of shape ATM but that's a problem that would fix itself if I "had to" rely on a bike to get around.

I know how to build fires, chop and dry wood, sharpen an axe properly and there are lots of trees around these parts, so with a little extra work I would be able to stay warm and cook food. I think I even still have my grandpa's old axe here somewhere.

My grandparents taught me how to preserve stuff properly; drying, pickling, smoking and canning raw foods, like fruit, veggies, fish, meat and mushrooms. I know how to grow and store potatoes properly - the only thing I'd need here would be a bit of fertile land and a cellar, but in case of a world wide disaster like that, it would probably not be that hard to find people willing to turn their lawn into a field and toss out obsolete electronics out of their cellar to store food there instead.

I know how to fish and I'm not that bad with a bow either (medieval enthusiast here), and I know how to quickly kill and properly prepare chickens, ducks and rabbits. No actual experience with bigger animals yet, but the basics are there and I'm not icky about getting my hands dirty. I know how to skin rabbits too, but I have not yet tried to make leather / pelts.

I am somwehat okay at identifying wild mushrooms, but not good enough to be 100% certain all the time, so that's a point where I needed to be cautious.

There are plenty of small rivers around these parts, so drinking water might not be an issue, provided that stuff is actually safe to drink. Boiling doesn't always remove all the nasty stuff, and I only have a very vague idea of how to build filters out of natural materials, so I would either need to experiment around, rely on the knowledge of others, or look it up on the then nonexistent internet.

I would definitely miss the internet and since I'm a total videogame nerd as well, it would suck big time to lose that hobby permanently, but as for sheer survival, I'm fairly certain I would make it for a while, especially if I could find other people to teach them what I know and build a small community. I can't do ALL of the things mentioned above all on my own every single day for weeks or months on end, but if the knowledge is there and there are people willing to learn and do their share, I'm positive it would work out after a while.

The biggest issues would probably be medicine and other people: My knowledge about natural medicine is VERY limited - birch bark for pain and the like, but I wouldn't be able to treat more serious injuries or diseases properly on my own. And since people as a whole tend to be assholes when presented with disastrous conditions, I would be very cautious about whom to trust. A lot of doomsday preppers seem to have the only plan of hoarding weapons and food and shooting others when running low on supplies so they can take other people's stuff, and that's nothing I would want to have to deal with.

PS: Just to mention it; I live in a somewhat rural area anyway. Plenty of people here still keep their own chickens, live in houses that still have wood stoves and "old timey" fireplaces, grow their own veggies and fruit, and I know at least two families around these parts that still have horse-drawn carriages and trained shirehorses (they offer rides for a fee for events, parties and the like). A lot of older folks here grew up on farms and have the respective knowledge still. We even have a "traditional" blacksmith and farrier here, as well as a hunting club with a couple dozen members. The knowledge of how to survive without elctricity is definitely there, a lot of non-electric tools as well, and everything else is just a matter of time and cooperation.

Medicine would still be an issue tho. (Insulin has been mentoined a couple of times already - you can't just substitute traditional natural folk medicine for everything)

I'd probably die because of looters so a month to 2 would be my guess

There’s a book I read about this. I don’t remember the title, but it was written by some US senator or house rep, probably had a ghostwriter. It was about that, some enemy of the US, maybe it was China or Russia, detonated a bunch of nukes high in the atmosphere, causing the US’s electronics to be fried.

Assuming they did their research, the book had people survive for years, but definitely addressed how hard it would be. There was looting & rioting, the family had to eat their dog eventually, and there was a massive change in the importance of trust & community. I think it was like 3 years later that the reconstruction reached the small town, and it ended along the lines of “and then there was more work.”

It was a decent read, 7/10.

As soon as the health system is out I'm taking myself out. It's just not worth it without medicine

Indefinitely, but significantly less life expectancy than if it didn't happen.

I'm relatively well set up and experienced for that kind of thing. Don't get me wrong, it would suuuck. But I think we'd be okay. I personally would probably not live as long because living rustic is fucking hard work and my kids are still too young to help much. We'd have a rough time of it, but I am confident that with our help my kids would figure out how to thrive by the time my health is failing. So yeah at least another generation or two seems likely even though I doubt I could last more than another 10 or 15 years living that way. Especially given that the first few years would be the hardest.

My job and hobbies would both be affected, and I would be stuck in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a month.