How Long Would Society Last During a Total Grid Collapse?

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I lived with out electricity for almost three weeks in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. I washed my clothes in a swimming pool and bathed in a creek. Three weeks with no lights, A/C or running water. By that third week we had exhausted all of our food and water resources and had begun standing in lines for basic supplies. Then one day while sitting in the living room around sunset the power just turned back on. It was like a modern miracle!!

My father was an electrical engineer who designed power distribution systems in rural areas. He was always very concerned with the fact his industry and the government never seemed to take the threat of attacks on the system, or a system wide blackout, very seriously. He actually worked on a set of proposed guidelines to harden certain infrastructure. No one cared until 9/11 happened, and he actually had DHS call him (when it was brand new) because there was no guidance for that kind of thing, they had to start somewhere. I often think of what he would have thought of the way things are now, because he was obsessed with providing reliable electricity. He'd be livid I'm sure. But he would have enjoyed this video a great deal.

It’s scary how vulnerable we are to the system.

We lost power during that winter storm in Texas and we were NOT prepared. Ever since I’ve been storing water, wood, non perishables, everyday essentials ect. Out of all our immediate relatives we were the only ones who lost power and really felt the impact. We ended up going to my in-laws on day 3 without power. I’ll never forget how angry my father in law made me when I voiced how the whole ordeal made me realize how unprepared we were. He made the comment “oh this will never happen again” I was enraged. It made me prep even more and I’ve never stopped. Long story short that event shook me up enough to get my house in order.🤷🏽‍♀️

As a Grid Operator, you are spot on and no one thinks about the little things that electricity provides. No phone services, water, natural gas, gas/diesel. All powered by electricity. That same ice storm in 2021, I was sitting pretty with a generator, working heat and enough food for a week. But knowing what I know, had it been longer, it could have been a lot worse. Be prepared.

I went without electricity for 10 days when Sandy hit in 2012. I almost feel guilty writing how it was an amazingly positive experience. A few neighbors had generators so we had hot coffee every morning (it was cold outside!) everyone worked together and we all considered it a forced “vacation”. But that was because we had trust that our town would take care of us. And they did. We went to Target with flashlights and paid cash for supplies. We gave snacks and drinks to the electric company employees who worked 24/7 out in the cold. When I look back, it was a positive memory but I can totally see things going “bad” if we didn’t get power back…

It was rough and I have a backup generator. Some friends of ours, an elderly couple, were out of power for 3 weeks. I took over a bunch of firewood and meals and we took hot coffee daily. This wonderful woman made 3 square meals a day in a Dutch oven set in the fireplace and shared food with us every time we came over. We all helped each other but learning to be more self sufficient is invaluable.

I live in Hong Kong, last year there was a total blackout occurred in a town of 300,000 population due to a power facility was on fire. In densely populated area like Hong Kong, especially when most people here had never live without electricity, the society show signs of breaking in a matter of hours. People were very worried and some even started crying on the street after about an hour without electricity and communication service. Because we house thousands of people in a single building and buildings are packed closely together. People who cannot go home due to the lack of working elevators, some of us cannot buy food and water immediately because we rely on electronic payment so heavily that we don’t have cash. Even for those who have cash, most stores do not trade because their cashier is connected via network and didn’t work properly. Those people started to break down and disrupt society order within a very short period of time. Luckily there were signs of power grid recovery and phone service were totally recovered within a few hours, otherwise the affect on human can cause more damage than the power outage itself. I think you may want to explore that issue in this series too.

Hey! I’m a Transmission operator at a utility in texas. I worked through the storm and it wasn’t pretty. A lot is going on in the background to keep things going. We were in charge of shedding firm load at the request from ERCOT. It wasn’t an easy job. We knew what we had to do but it was also in the back of our minds that we were effectively putting people back into the Stone Age in freezing temps. It still messes with me to this day. TSOs are also responsible for black starting the grid once it goes down. We have extensive process and procedures to do that and we train twice a year on a simulator to hone our skills. God forbid the grid ever does go down, but you can be assured a great group of people are behind the scenes doing everything possible to get the lights back on. Even on a normal day, with planned switching something bad can happen and bring down a part of the grid. It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen. We don’t settle for being perfect only 98% of the time. We HAVE to be perfect 100% of the time.

It’s hard to believe how fragile everything is until it’s broken down in such a detailed way like this! Makes me thankful for everything when I watch this channel. Thank you!

I weathered Snowpocalypse in Texas. I had food, gas heat, and a generator and did just fine. I did travel outside my neighborhood to get more gas for my generator and it was immediately apparent that we were close to having a total breakdown in order because no stores had power. I could see the panic on people’s faces and in how they were acting.

I was the IT and facilities manager at a mid sized suburban fire department for 17 years. I had six stations which obviously are critical infrastructure. We had fixed mount commercial generators at each location with enough fuel for several days (not going to say exactly). We'd test run the generators every two weeks and take the load of the buildings for an hour. We also had our own above ground diesel and gas tanks with several days supply at high load on site which had hand crank emergency pumps (double redundant). I felt our weakest link was domestic water supply and I even proposed drilling a well at our HQ station. There is a saying in emergency services and preparedness: you can live 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. Use that to guide your priorities. Excellent video!

Society is far more fragile than any of us want to believe

As a professional engineer who works for a water and sewer utility in northern Virginia, I can tell you that we conduct tabletop exercises all the time designed to simulate our response to events just like this. We also "game out" other events, such as water contamination in the Potomac River, contamination of water already in the distribution system, floods, fires, hurricanes, snow storms, transmission main breaks, and all manner of "Force Majeure" events that could potentially disrupt service to our customers. A lengthy outage in the power grid is certainly crippling, but it's not the only scenario that could potentially deprive water and sewer service to people who normally take it for granted, thanks to the hard work of highly trained, skilled employees whose work seldom is even noticed by their customers (unless something goes wrong).

We went through the outage in Texas. We lived out in a rural area an hour south of Houston. As the storm started to move in but it hadn't gotten to the peak yet, and they shut us all off out where we lived. They had us off for almost 3 days. Even running our fireplace and shutting off the living room as our "hold up" location, we couldn't get above 50 degrees. The second full day without power, the water in the toilet bowl was frozen solid. The failure of the system was an eye opener, "they" don't actually care about "us" as long as they have theirs. While I don't feel that the answer to much is to trust, believe in or ask the government for help. Be prepared to self rescue, no one is coming.

For SHTF comms, is why I was SO against getting rid of AM radio for widespread use. FM and even digital FM can easily be knocked out, or blocked, but AM is only as strong as the signal driving it. It may not be crystal clear, but easily audible enough with its simplicity to be useful.

I remember when the bad ice storm took our power out for two weeks in rural Ohio. We did fine due to having a wood stove, and the ability to melt ice in pans on said stove. Many were not so lucky to have wood heat, and even then many didn't have to wait 2 weeks like us. Cant imagine wide spread loss witbout alternative heat sources.

I live in Prince Edward Island, Canada. When hurricane Fiona hit us this fall our entire province lost power, and it took 13 days to restore power to 50% of the province. My area of around 3000 customers was without power for 17 days, but even entire neighbourhoods in the capital city of Charlottetown were without power for more than two weeks. It was a difficult time for my family, but infinitely worse for people in apartments and nursing homes that had no lighting and limited heat and water access.

Annnnd this is one of the reason why I have an amateur radio license. I can completely bypass local infrastructure to get information and communicate with people.