I was having this conversation with my daughter and thought it was an interesting topic.
If an EMP or solar flare took out everything electronic in the whole world (permanently), how long do you think it would take for you to die, given your current location and circumstances.
I believe my daughter thinks we would live a lot longer than I do, but she is thinking about how long she can live without the internet while I am thinking the world will quickly descend into anarchy.
With no traditional forms of transport, so supplies would dry up, limited resources, health etc, law and order would be a challenge as things become more desperate.
I think I would live for about 3 months. I would try to get the family somewhere safe and remote and come back later, but I think most people would have the same idea.
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.
Sorry, what’s the long pig? Other humans?
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You forgot water in your scenario.
To be fair most people in a first world country don’t need to think about water since it’s just “there”, all the time.
But as soon as the electricity goes out the water supply goes out too.
No water supply means no water to drink, with no water the human body die within 3 days, so people will start to rely on any dirty water they can find.
About dirty water, no water also means no WC. I repeat: no WC so no evacuation of feces and urine. Within a few day a big city swill be covered with human excrement. Mixed with no clean water access it means that deadly waterborne diseases will spread extremely quickly.
I wonder about the population using non-refrigerated but still vital medication being “comparatively small.” There are countless people who would no longer be getting things they need to live, and only a very small percentage of those folks would have the ability to grow a plant or something and refine themselves a substitute of some kind. I am really curious how those numbers would line up.
Username doesn’t check out. I would watch that movie.
Yep. I’d have about a month and a half of insulin to use, since it lasts that long out of refrigeration. It would take a while to actually kill me probably, but yeah that would be what gets me I think.
So basically Walking Dead without zombies.
Even in TWD the bigger danger was from the living.
My post apocalypse strategy - and the only way to avoid prolonged suffering - is suicide on day 1.
Turns out that’s not a good dinner party answer.
Bravo
You got it right. If you’re already in a hospital you’re screwed. Anyone on a ventilator etc. is dead in hours.Then there’s people who need special meds that require refrigeration. They’re dead in days. Depending on the season, many more are dead in weeks. Food would be an issue but there are lots of shelf stable/canned goods that could last for a bit. Scarcity would be the bigger concern.
The dead bodies themselves could also be an issue at scale.
The crazier issue in my mind are all the industrial plants, nuclear power plants, chemical processing facilities…
In any major catastrophe they are abandoned and likely the meltdown and other issues could render whole areas uninhabitable. Might be manageable in certain power loss scenarios… but anything major and sudden like if you’re country suffered a nuclear attack or a major natural catastrophe and you survived I’d stay away from nuclear plants or chemical processing facilities. Potable water will be hard enough to come by…