PV Gap

Louise Said:

electricity/internet hypothetical question...?

We Answered:

Ok, power plants would probably continue to work unless something went wrong. The problem would be that the power consumers (mostly heavy industry) would fail, which would reduce electricity consumption, which ordinarily would lead to some power stations switching off while others would continue supplying the remaining load. Which probably would lead to something like the last East Coast blackout, i.e. one emergency overload trigger could cascade through all of the network and shut it off. Without anybody intervening, that would be it.

Getting a generator or solar panels to work is easy, so unless they're a TV show cast they'd probably manage it. But then your problems start:
- where do you get the fuel?
- where do you get spare parts?
It might work for a year or so without problems, but after maybe 20...50 years, you'll run out of spares.

Now for the networks you've been talking about:
- landline phones again are easy, the simplest military types don't even need grid power - just a hand-crank generator and a pair of wires between the two stations
- mobile phones are complicated, forget it
- ham radio might work - if at least one of your survivors is a ham operator
- internet basically yes (not a big problem to connect two computers), but what would be the point? All the servers (google, yahoo, ....) would be down, so it would be easier to just carry a USB stick around (that is, as long as you can keep the computers working)
- tv - getting your receiver to work shouldn't be a bigger problem than it is now, the problem is as with the internet, the stations need to be operated, otherwise all you're going to see is static

You might want to read 'The Last Man Alive' by Alexander Sutherland Neill. The book is a bit older (no internet in 1938...) but essentially describes your scenario - down to the last fight for an earthworm ;-)


--- Additional answers :-) ----

Looking up stuff on the internet: it's chancy, but if they're fast in noticing that the other people are missing/frozen, they just _might_ be able to download the offline/DVD version of wikipedia within the time the various back-up power supplies (internet provider, routers, wikipedia servers) will stay online. But books are a safer bet - and the only way to look up the repair manual for your generator.

Radio: as I said, shortwave/ham radio would be your best bet. Both for simplicity of operation and range - ordinary TV and FM is line-of-sight, i.e. you'd be as well off with a signalling fire, shortwave is over-the-horizon (up to and including once around the globe). The problem with radio/TV in general (no matter which type) is its energy consumption - and somebody somewhere must be listening on your frequency in order to establish contact.