which apocalyptic senario do you fear the worst?

[bonestomper]

I have decided what i fear the most is long term wide spread power outage.

discuss

[Snowreap]

can you honestly call it an apocalypse if you don't have widespread long-term power outages?

-ken

[bonestomper]

sure. disease being the first thing to come to mind.

edit. then mass crop failures from global warming or something else that disrupts the food supply.

[Vllad]

I grew up in a house that had zero electricity. We had propane appliances and a wood stove for heat. I shit in an outhouse until I was 7. It certainly wasn't the end of the world. That was only as far back as the 1960's.

Don't forget that up until the 80's if you didn't live in urban area's we didn't rely on electricity near as much as we do now.

Sure I would miss my computer but that is what board games were for.

/shrug,

Contrary to current belief's electricity is not what seperates us from ape's.


Vllad

[Snowreap]

ha, we'll just see how long the power-generation infrastructure lasts when everybody is too sick (or malnourished) to operate the machinery that keeps the power plants running.

coal won't shovel itself into those furnaces!

-ken

[bonestomper]

no more running water in urban areas. sewage treatment.

no refrigeration.

no easy use gas pumps.

no sophisticated health care.

no heating or cooling.

without electricity you have no drug manufacturing.

no banking system

and then Vllad i think it will get your propane deliverys too.

[Slamz]

I grew up in a house that had zero electricity. We had propane appliances and a wood stove for heat. I shit in an outhouse until I was 7. It certainly wasn't the end of the world. That was only as far back as the 1960's.

Don't forget that up until the 80's if you didn't live in urban area's we didn't rely on electricity near as much as we do now.

We're so reliant on it now that it would be a serious nightmare. How many people in the city have any means of cooking food without electricity? I bet even most restaurants would be unable to cook. Nobody in the city has wood stoves, and the gas furnaces weren't meant to operate without blowers. More rural settings could probably get by but cities would be a catastrophe. I imagine we'd have to bring in the army or something to supply prepared food to tens of millions of people until the infrastructure could adapt or get repaired.

Interesting thing about this scenario is there was that solar flare that blacked out Canada some time ago. I don't know what the probabilities are like, but one good solar flare could potentially knock out the whole power grid to the entire planet and zap all the satellites to boot.

Not sure what it takes to fix something like that. I should go look up the Canada event to see what, exactly, the flares did (I'm guessing it's like a massive power surge through the system and probably fries/blows up transformers and so forth?)



Anyway, I vote that as "most likely" natural disaster scenario. Earthquakes and tsunami are bad but localized. Unless Yellowstone blows up into a new supervolcano or something (which is, apparently, about due... like it blew up 1.2 million years ago and 600,000 years ago, or something like that).

Disease would be scary but I feel like that's less likely. Nature has tried to kill off the planet enough times that we're probably pretty resistant by now. Though maybe some genetically altered virus could get out and kill lots of people.

Massive meteor strike could be bad but we've been tracking everything big enough to see, so that doesn't seem overly likely anytime soon.


Maybe the most reasonable scenario is simply economic collapse and another Great Depression.

[Vllad]

I am not saying it won't change things but I would hardly call it an apocolypse.

We did live for a few hundred thousand years with out electricity and we could live with out it again for week or a month.

I guess you would have to lay out your scenario. Its not like the common man today doesn't have the ability to create electicity.


Vllad

[Moristans]

One of those previews for the "Life After People" on the History Channel said something about exploring why Times Square would still be lit up. didn't watch it though.

I fear Squirrels taking over the world. They are vicious enough when you are hiking the Grand Canyon Rim.

Betond that, I guess I fear a Pandemic.

[Hoofhurr]

Anything involving illness or starvation would really suck. If I'm going to die I want it to be quick. Anything that would dim or darken the skies for years/decades would really suck too.

[Trotts]

I grew up in a house that had zero electricity. We had propane appliances and a wood stove for heat. I shit in an outhouse until I was 7. It certainly wasn't the end of the world. That was only as far back as the 1960's.

Don't forget that up until the 80's if you didn't live in urban area's we didn't rely on electricity near as much as we do now.

Interesting thing about this scenario is there was that solar flare that blacked out Canada some time ago. I don't know what the probabilities are like, but one good solar flare could potentially knock out the whole power grid to the entire planet and zap all the satellites to boot.

A few years back in 2003 we had the power outage in the north east.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North ... a_blackout</a><!-- m -->

Being a Canadian our first and foremost concern was that our beer would get warm.

After that though, most people just hung out together, had BBQ's drank and took it easy for a until the power came back on. Some areas lacked power for a week or so.

I took great pleasure in cooking on the BBQ for every meal of the day, and drinking beer because we all know that you can't allow beer to stay warm for too long of a period of time. Long term power outages, well sure there would be pressures but overall, we'd be able to dig in and get through it.

Hell, can always cook with wood over a campfire, boil water, hell you can even flush toilets without power for that matter (just need to dump the water in manually).

As for the worst disaster imaginable, I find it pretty hard to imagie anything worse than a full out Nucleur War. Just the long term effects and the future repurcussions of it, not sure that no matter what measures we took, if we'd have much of a chance.

Pandemics, we've been there done that many times in human history.

Huge Meteors hitting the earth.. huge volcanic eruptions etc, global warming, or any other variety of scenarios that create dramatic changes in the environment, I'm pretty sure we'd get through, or at least have a chance of getting through it.

We'll have to wait it out and see =) what happens and who's dreams come true ;>

[Breand]

Extended loss of electricity would pretty much cause the apocalypse as every nuclear power plant has their spent fuel rods stored onsite and needs electricity to keep it cool or else it will meltdown, because the gubment wont get off their asses and create a storage site.

[Moristans]

Pandemics, we've been there done that many times in human history.

I'd have to check, but other than HIV/AIDS, I'm not sure if there has been a true pandemic that has ripped through a population of 6 billion people. I'm not sure that there has ever been a highly contagious pandemic that's ripped through a population of 6 billion people

If HIV ever went airborne, for example, my biggest fear would be the mass panic that would ensue long before the disease actually reached my community. Although, in LA, I'm probably screwed anyway.

[Thudz]

EMP

Not only do we lose power but all of our electronics powered by batteries and our cars would no longer work. No communication by radio and no transportation other than by foot or peddle.

[Dustie]

Mine would be food and water shortage due to _______. It only takes 3 days for society to break down and revert to anarchy when no one has any food to eat.

[Moristans]

If you don't get water, you're dead in 3 days.

[Hoofhurr]

Piss will keep you alive a bit longer.

[Vllad]

Loss of electricity is a result of a disaster not really a disaster directly. It can be fixed to quickly as long as other issues don't prevent it.


Vllad

[Dustie]

If you don't get water, you're dead in 3 days.

Yep. I figure though that people would be able to get water in most places, it simply wouldn't be very clean water (creeks, streams, ponds, rivers etc). Of course that would then add to the disaster as 300 million people are hungry and have the runs.

[Hoofhurr]

You'll dehydrate a hell of a lot faster if you drink bacterial water than if you didn't. Might as well drink salt water.

[Slamz]

You'll dehydrate a hell of a lot faster if you drink bacterial water than if you didn't. Might as well drink salt water.

As long as you also have fire, should be fine.

I live in the suburbs. I can walk to a decent sized lake surrounded by woods. If it came down to it, a bucket, an axe and a lighter gets me all the water I want.


Still, I can't imagine a widespread water outage that lasts. Even if it was a solar flare that fried power generation throughout the continent and it would take them months to restore service, I'm sure they'd find a way to get water pumping stations back online very very quickly.


The more I think about it, the more I think a massive electrical outage, even a long one, wouldn't be a huge problem. Food would be in short supply due to refrigeration going out but we'd probably survive. Hope everyone likes bread. They'd get critical systems online quickly with portable generators if necessary, although it might take them half a year to fix the transformer outside your house.


I guess the worst and most plausible disaster would be something like massive volcano eruptions. I'd rate that as more likely than massive nuclear war. Enough volcanos erupt to impact the light reaching the earth and cause massive crop failures and then we're in a world of hurt and there's not much you can do about it.

[bonestomper]

Loss of electricity is a result of a disaster not really a disaster directly. It can be fixed to quickly as long as other issues don't prevent it.

EMP might be a problem, but i am talking more the solar flare example where it fries all the transformers.

it would be hard to call that a disaster as few people would be directly killed most would just see the Northern Lights. especially after the power went off...

the result of no electricity for an extended period of time (think a month or two) would be the disaster.

[Vllad]

EMP might be a problem, but i am talking more the solar flare example where it fries all the transformers.

EMP's only hurt things that have current running through them and are not long term problems.

If something blew out every transformer in the world we still have other means to generate electricity. A month with out electricity just wouldn't be the end of the world. Everyone would find a way to get by. I am not saying their wouldn't be some chaos but we would get over it.

You would have to come up with a disaster that permantly got rid of electricity.

The only that happens is if you kill the majority of the worlds population.


Vllad

[Vanraw]

Killing Pandemic is the worse. Or germ warfare, which would be the same really.

Brett

[Diggles]

You'll dehydrate a hell of a lot faster if you drink bacterial water than if you didn't. Might as well drink salt water.

As long as you also have fire, should be fine.

I live in the suburbs. I can walk to a decent sized lake surrounded by woods. If it came down to it, a bucket, an axe and a lighter gets me all the water I want.


Still, I can't imagine a widespread water outage that lasts. Even if it was a solar flare that fried power generation throughout the continent and it would take them months to restore service, I'm sure they'd find a way to get water pumping stations back online very very quickly.


The more I think about it, the more I think a massive electrical outage, even a long one, wouldn't be a huge problem. Food would be in short supply due to refrigeration going out but we'd probably survive. Hope everyone likes bread. They'd get critical systems online quickly with portable generators if necessary, although it might take them half a year to fix the transformer outside your house.


I guess the worst and most plausible disaster would be something like massive volcano eruptions. I'd rate that as more likely than massive nuclear war. Enough volcanos erupt to impact the light reaching the earth and cause massive crop failures and then we're in a world of hurt and there's not much you can do about it.

Without powered pumps, SW United States dries up in a week. Everyone dies