How long would society last without electricity?

[Lark]

In Fight Club the book it was the electricity power plants that Durdan aims to destroy to reset humanity, in the movie it was the banking sector and peoples credit records, why do you think there was the difference and how long do you think society would last without electricity and why?

 

[muir]

Things would turn to chaos very quickly because it would disrupt food production

People can live without TV and internet and kettles and ovens and lights but they can't live without food

The shop shelves would empty within hours and the food in peoples fridges and shelves would last about a week

So i think there'd be food riots in the cities within a week of the lights going out

 

[say what]

How would no power impact nuclear plants? Would they leak? Blow up? Or would nothing happen?

 

[Eventhorizon]

The vast majority of the population would die off in a month. After that its anyone's guess.

 

[sprinkles]

How would no power impact nuclear plants? Would they leak? Blow up? Or would nothing happen?

They'd have to run generators to power the cooling system even if the reactor is shut down, until it is safely cooled off after the shutdown. If they could manage that, it would be safe afterwards.

If not, it could go boom.

 

[Eventhorizon]

If not, it could go boom.

Boom or simply melt?

 

[sprinkles]

Boom or simply melt?

It could melt or it could actually explode. Depends how bad it is.

Edit: and actually there could be a high probability of melting followed by booming.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=8603]Eventhorizon[/MENTION]

Or basically if it's kind of bad, you get Three Mile Island.

If it's pretty bad you get Fukushima 1

If it's super disastrous bad you could get Chernobyl.

 

[digitalbum]

How long would society last with no electricity?

2 days tops.

Humanity would survive, obviously, but we'd all turn into our most basest animal forms. Once food production stopped, organized rednecks, or ex-military milita groups and preppers, that today most people scoff at, would be running part of the show. There'd be roaming bands of very well armed men capturing and/or retrieving resources from the weak.

Here's the main part of the show:
The entire Military of each country would quickly mobilize and set up outposts at all major resources of food/fuel/etc., with possible skirmishes with inferior militia groups. They'd also reinforce existing military bases. Once they had settled some modicum of order with the military machine, making sure soldiers were all well fed, then they might start building refugee camps for the civilians that had managed to survive if there was more than enough food to ration out to them. Some more dictatorial governments' military with much smaller resources, may just start executing civilians.

Shit, it'd be, in a word, bad.

 

[rawr]

there's a show about this, guys (a pretty good one too)

[video=youtube;yDDyitbqBmop]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDDyitbqBmop[/video]

NBC's Revolution

 

[Rift Zone]

30 thousand years! Well, we've done it before.

The vast majority of the population would die off in a month. After that its anyone's guess.

In America... seems like it would be getting really interesting a month in. I'm more comfortable with most being history at the two month point.

In India, tree months could go by and most might not be seriously affected.

 

[Matt3737]

A nuclear explosion of a power plant is impossible. It may meltdown or a regular explosion might occur, but not a nuclear explosion.

An emergency shutdown of a nuclear power plant is referred to as a scram and can occur as quickly as within 5 seconds.

In any reactor, a SCRAM is achieved by a large insertion of negative reactivity. In light water reactors, this is achieved by inserting neutron-absorbing control rods into the core, although the mechanism by which rods are inserted depends on the type of reactor. In PWRs, the control rods are held above a reactor's core by electric motors against both their own weight and a powerful spring. Any cutting of the electric current releases the rods. Another design uses electromagnets to hold the rods suspended, with any cut to electric current resulting in an immediate and automatic control rod insertion. A SCRAM mechanism is designed to release the control rods from those motors and allows their weight and the spring to drive them into the reactor core, in four seconds or less, thus rapidly halting the nuclear reaction by absorbing liberated neutrons. In BWRs, the control rods are inserted up from underneath the reactor vessel. In this case a hydraulic control unit with a pressurized storage tank provides the force to rapidly insert the control rods upon any interruption of the electric current, again within four seconds. A typical large BWR will have 185 of these control rods. In both the PWR and the BWR there are secondary systems (and often even tertiary systems) that will insert control rods in the event that primary rapid insertion does not promptly and fully actuate.

 

[sprinkles]

A nuclear explosion of a power plant is impossible. It may meltdown or a regular explosion might occur, but not a nuclear explosion.

An emergency shutdown of a nuclear power plant is referred to as a scram and can occur as quickly as within 5 seconds.

Well yeah, the explosion is from the steam system running away. It's a steam explosion. If there's a breach it will be radioactive steam.

I did not say it was a nuclear explosion.

Edit:
Also I wouldn't play this down if I were you. A radioactive explosion is about as bad as you can get short of a nuclear one. You don't get the gigantic fireball but you might get the 500km exclusion area.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=4822]Matt3737[/MENTION]

Three Mile Island and Chernobyl had steam explosions. Fukushima had hydrogen-air explosions.

All of them happened after the reactor tried to SCRAM.

 

[sprinkles]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster#Backup_generators

The plant comprised six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric (GE) and maintained by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Units 2 through 6 were BWR-4, while unit 1 was the slightly older BWR-3 design. All six were housed in Mark 1 containment building designs. At the time of the earthquake, reactor 4 had been de-fueled and reactors 5 and 6 were in cold shutdown for planned maintenance.

Immediately after the earthquake, following government regulations, the remaining reactors 1–3 automatically SCRAMmed; control rods shut down sustained fission reactions. Although fission stops almost immediately with a SCRAM, fission products in the fuel continue to release decay heat, initially about 6.5% of full reactor power. This is still enough to require active reactor cooling for several days to keep the fuel rods below their melting points. In Generation II reactors like the GE Mark I, cooling system failure may lead to a meltdown even in a SCRAMmed reactor.

Coincident with the SCRAM emergency generators were automatically activated to power electronics and cooling systems. The tsunami arrived some 50 minutes after the initial earthquake. The 14 meter high tsunami overwhelmed the plant's seawall, which was only 10 m high, with the moment of the tsunami striking being caught on camera. The tsunami water quickly flooded the low-lying rooms in which the emergency generators were housed. The diesel generators were flooded and began to fail soon after, their job being taken over by emergency battery-powered systems. When the batteries ran out the next day on 12 March, active cooling systems stopped, and the reactors began to heat up. The power failure also meant that many of the reactor control instruments also failed.

 

[sprinkles]

And you know what, I'm in a mood so I'm going to post about this again.

Doohohoo, details.

Reactor melt is not really your biggest worry. "It won't explode, it'll melt!" Damn details. If you're lucky and the reactor ONLY melts you might be better off because modern reactor containment has design considerations to deal with just melt. If you're lucky, the material might not even escape containment.

But if shit starts exploding you have real problems - explosions help breach containment, and they help scatter stuff around, and they can break safety measures to cause things to go more wrong than they'd have to otherwise. It's not the explosion, it's what the explosion does. The scary blast wave that kills people standing by it is not the main consideration. What it does to the containment of the reactor and the dispersal of radioactive material is.

It's not the fire that burns you, it's the heat. It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end. Damn details.

 

[the]

Maybe the author wanted to disrupt the credit company's records and so by putting out the electric he could disrupt society and clear the credit company records, but in the movie they wanted you to "get it" without a lot of explanation?

anyways society would last til the second to last human died off. I think city's would be hit the hardest, it would create food and water deserts. That would kill off most people in a city, where I live in the rural suburbs I feel like I'd do alright but certainly I'm not in an ideal position.

 

[Eventhorizon]

[MENTION=8603]Eventhorizon[/MENTION]

Or basically if it's kind of bad, you get Three Mile Island.

If it's pretty bad you get Fukushima 1

If it's super disastrous bad you could get Chernobyl.

Dont know. Have you heard whats happening at Fukushima? Its still not contained and apparently never will be. Radioactive material making its way into the sea and ground water. Chernobyl, even though the building is falling apart and needed to be repaired, at least was mostly contained.

 

[sprinkles]

Dont know. Have you heard whats happening at Fukushima? Its still not contained and apparently never will be. Radioactive material making its way into the sea and ground water. Chernobyl, even though the building is falling apart and needed to be repaired, at least was mostly contained.

You might be right, Fukushima may actually be the worst one. I didn't check all the numbers.

But still that's even worse news because Fukushima was a more modern plant than Chernobyl and Chernobyl already had severe problems due to an experiment they were running to try and figure out a way to solve the backup generator start-up time problem they were having - the core was already in a critical state before they tried to SCRAM it.

With Fukushima the reactors SCRAMed successfully without problems, in normal circumstances there wouldn't have been a disaster. The big problem with Fukushima was the backup coolant system generators being taken offline by the flood - the exact scenario I'm referring to. They could have had a cold shutdown if it were not for that. All it took was that one weakness.

This could very well happen somewhere if there were a global power outage for whatever reason that we simply aren't prepared for.

 

[Eventhorizon]

You might be right, Fukushima may actually be the worst one. I didn't check all the numbers.

But still that's even worse news because Fukushima was a more modern plant than Chernobyl and Chernobyl already had severe problems due to an experiment they were running to try and figure out a way to solve the backup generator start-up time problem they were having - the core was already in a critical state before they tried to SCRAM it.

With Fukushima the reactors SCRAMed successfully without problems, in normal circumstances there wouldn't have been a disaster. The big problem with Fukushima was the backup coolant system generators being taken offline by the flood - the exact scenario I'm referring to. They could have had a cold shutdown if it were not for that. All it took was that one weakness.

This could very well happen somewhere if there were a global power outage for whatever reason that we simply aren't prepared for.

I did not hear that but I have to be honest with you, doesnt that sound a bit suspicious to you? After the accident people would and did ask if Japan should have ANY nuclear reactors given that they are so earthquake prone. That if one was taken down so EASILY (even though it was a large quake etc) the rest should be taken off line. So coming up with a story that the reactor WOULD have been ok if operating normally might cause people to not be as concerned.

Maybe Im just speculating but, it seems a little out of place...