In Case of Apocalypse Break Glass

With the current Ebola scare, concerns about an upcoming apocalypse are once again ramping up.  But I don't want to talk about your petty viral apocalypse.  Instead, an article (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/) I read in July detailed how Earth had nearly been hit by a gigantic solar flare a couple years ago that would have taken out most of the electrical infrastructure of the developed world.  It was so close, Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado said, “If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.”

Ironically, if all the electrical power in the world went out, the safest place you could be is a third world country.  That’s because third world countries already have systems in place that do not rely on electricity, whereas the first world countries are 100% dependent upon it.  Consider what would happen to your food supply if there was no more power in the world—even for as little as a month.

Most people would be unable to cook food.  Microwaves won’t work.  Ditto electric stoves.  After just a few days, all the food in your refrigerator would begin to spoil anyway.  Perhaps you have canned food—that’s good, but do you also have a non-electric can opener to open the cans?  If not, you’re going to have a hard time even with canned food.

If you live in a temperate climate, or if it’s summer, you’ll probably be fine for heating concerns—but if you live in a cold place and rely on electric heat, then hopefully you have a lot of blankets available or food will be the least of your concerns.  You can live for up to 40 days without food, but can die of hypothermia in as little as 15 minutes (of course, that’s worst case scenario).

Perhaps you’d think that you’ll just use a generator.  But of course that requires gasoline (or some other kind of fuel) to run, and when you’re out of your supply how are you going to buy more?  Stores will not be able to use their electronic cash registers, and even if they break out mechanical ones, most of our money supply exists solely in the electronic realm right now.  Speaking just of my own bank account, my actual cash on hand is less than 1% of what’s in my bank account.  Thus, I already almost live a 100% cashless lifestyle.  This would mean that I couldn’t go out and get any new supplies, and even trying to barter for them would not work very well since most of what I have to barter with requires electricity to run in the first place.

In addition, we must consider the fate of food at the local grocery store.  They will be running into the same problems.  Their freezers will cease keeping food cool, and if things are not purchased with hard cash (or outright stolen), they will quickly spoil.  And before we forget, if a solar flare did take out all the power on Earth, it is quite likely that you wouldn’t even be able to drive your car to the store even in the event that you had fuel for it.  How much of our modern cars are based on computer technology?  You cannot even start new cars if the onboard computer is malfunctioning.  So this leaves people with old cars being the sole drivers on the highways.  And again, when they are out of fuel, trying to buy more gas is going to be next to impossible for an American.

Of course, people aren’t stupid (not even those who live in Detroit).  They will look for non-electrical devices to help survive, and I’m sure that we would quickly come up with some other kind of non-electronic funds.   Furthermore, the electronic grid will be repaired over time. But in the short term there will be massive problems simply because we lack a large pool of non-electrically dependent devices.  Since our world assumes a constant supply of electricity, there aren’t a lot of household items you can purchase at your local Wal-Mart that don’t have a plug or battery.  Until production on non-electrical devices ramps up, supplies will be extremely limited no matter how much cash or how many other goods you have to barter with.

But that’s in the first world.  In third world countries, where lack of electricity is the norm, and even places where electricity is found are subject to rolling blackouts, these non-electrical items are already far more plentiful.  For people in those areas, the entire world losing power would have negligible effects.  They already have stock and supplies, and a month without electricity would at worst be a minor inconvenience.  In America, there would be a noticeable death toll (we haven’t even gotten into the medical side of things, with pacemakers, dialysis machines, even refrigerated medications and blood supplies being affected).  In the third world, there would be at most a minor bump in the stats.

So ironically if the world were to lose the entire electrical grid and all electrical devices, it is much better to be living in the third world than in the first world.  There aren’t many times that can be said, but our reliance on electricity does bring about this result if the power apocalypse ever occurs.