Powers out in india

[stevelyn]

I wonder if the residents of the US would be quite as calm if the country went dark?

In the rural areas no problem. In the urban cesspools, big problem.

[Doggy Daddy]

You know that the looting/violence in Katrina was vastly exaggerated even by people who were there, right?

Except for the looting/violence done by cops, which was vastly under-reported even by the cops who were there, right?

DD

[RocketMan]

More Indian power grids crashed today.  This time it's 600 million without juice.  It just keeps getting more interesting.

[RevDisk]

Talked to some buddies in India. Apparently problem was in North, Northeast and East India.  

"half of india was in power outage today...more than 700 train halted, all metro stopped, traffic signals light stopped..hospitals and houses were in electricity crises today"

"Govt till now dont know what happened and what could be done to stop this crises....however, govt promised that after 7 pm...it will be resolved...but every state is getting electricity in installment."

"As per govt. this problem arises as many states in India are consuming much electricity more than its quota...as per govt. western and northern Grid power station has failed due to overload capacity"

"Yeah...people are angry and critising govt....but right now there are no rallies...no riots..."

"there is little electricity crises in some states...as some states have started consuming more power in recent years...Govt is building more hydro and power plants..but consumption is more than production....even Nuclear power electricity project is also in vain...when there is no power and when our invertors/generator also exhaust...we indian normaly goes out and meet friends and gather together in groups...but depands upon climate...or sit in our homes and use flashlights and wait till electricity comes back"

[Jamie B]

http://news.yahoo.com/even-wider-blackouts-sweep-india-second-day-090157631.html

Second India blackout in two days cuts power to 670 million

Here is round two.
I do wonder how that US Tech / Call Center support is going these days! 

[MicroBalrog]

In the rural areas no problem. In the urban cesspools, big problem.

Maybe your problem is not so much the average American, but the.... let's say, 'specific groups of people dwelling in certain inner-city areas'?

[Gewehr98]

Frack.  I just bought 2 more Dells.

Hope I don't need tech support...   

[Gewehr98]

I'd be afraid that if the power went out too long, I'd be trapped on an escalator. 

Scary, that.

[TechMan]

I'd be afraid that if the power went out too long, I'd be trapped on an escalator.  

Scary, that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXCuGvsThEw

     

[stevelyn]

Maybe your problem is not so much the average American, but the.... let's say, 'specific groups of people dwelling in certain inner-city areas'?

Nope. They're all lumped together. Most American urbanites are enslaved to a centralized power, water, food, garbage and sewage system. None of them can operate independently without it except for a short period of time measured in hours at the most especially those that live in apartment buildings. And I'll bet few have any provisions of any kind stored away. Even those in suburbia in their cookie-cutter cracker boxes on a little sliver of land are still enslaved to the same centralized distrbution system.

People out in the rural areas have wells and independent sewage systems and can go Amish at the drop of a hat. Plus those of us in the bush have up to three months or more of supplies where we wouldn't starve. Those along the road system probably less as they get out more. We also manual back-ups for water and alternate water sources. Can't use the indoor shitter? I can have an outhouse dug and hammered together in a day with scrap materials. Garbage? That's what burn barrels are for. Try that in the backyard of your HOA-ruled suburban paradise.

Most of use can produce our own power to run pumps, keep the freezer frozen even if they are only run for a few hours or less a day. We can maintain indefinitely. The only issue after several days is fuel.

For proof, all you have to do is watch the chaos that happens when a little storm passes through any populated area down there that shuts off the power and services for a few days. The cities are chaotic. Those living out away from town just settle in until it's over.
 

[Typhoon]

Interesting discussion, particularly between Micro and CSD.  My own experiences after the Northridge Earthquake mirrored Micro’s arguments.  

At the time of the quake, I lived in a very densely populated area of Los Angeles.  To be sure, it was West Los Angeles (my neighborhood was solidly middle class) and not East LA.  Also to be sure, the quake happened on a holiday weekend at 4:31 am (on the morning of the fairly recently adopted MLK day).

Also, I was not at the epicenter of the quake.  On the other hand, just a few miles east of me, the Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10) pancaked in two large sections mid-city (poorer neighborhoods).  Several areas not even close to the epicenter suffered extensive damage.

Virtually no civil disturbances were reported throughout the entire city.  Looters were all but non-existent.  People came together to check up on one another and help in the clean-up.    

How could this happen?  By all accounts, Los Angeles is this den of iniquity, where many theoretical worst-case scenarios are played out, in films, the forums, etc.  

A former LAPD official offered his thoughts.  

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-02-06/opinion/op-19644_1_northridge-earthquake

Maybe it was the time of day, in the middle of winter, on a holiday weekend.

Maybe, as the quake happened less than two years after the Rodney King riots, people were tired of fighting.

Maybe, the quick and organized responses of emergency crews kept people civilized.  As a result of the quake, my telephone and electricity were knocked out.  Gas, thankfully, was unaffected.  Phones were up by 9:00 am and electricity, albeit shakily, was up by 1:00 pm the day of the quake.  If the outages had gone on longer….  Who knows.

Maybe the current economic climate will cause a stronger negative reaction in a disaster (although, at that time, I believe that we were also undergoing a recession – not as bad admittedly).

These are some things to consider.  Based on the above, however, I am not going to immediately assume that Americans are likely to go feral in the case of a disaster.  Stories abound where folks around the country got together and rebuilt/fixed/whatever.  

Andrea

[brimic]

The tale wherein "everyone starts murdering each other for their gold fillings after the power goes out" is a media myth. The closest thing to that is the New York blackouts of 1977 (not a single man was killed in the blackouts of 1977)- but then again, there were multiple incidents of major, multi-state blackouts that ended peacefully. On the other hand, the blackout of 1965, leaving 30 million people without power, constituted the lowest-crime night in the entire history of New York City.

I would expect that outside of inner cities, crime would actually drop or become nearly nonexistant if the grid goes down.
The idea that robbing/burlarizing a farmhouse or semi-rural home could get you 'disappeared' into a shallow grave instead of 3 squares and roof over your head in county lockup has got to be a great deterrent.

[HankB]

. . .  the quake happened on a holiday weekend at 4:31 am  . . . Phones were up by 9:00 am and electricity, albeit shakily, was up by 1:00 pm the day of the quake. . . .

I suspect an evening or night blackout may have produced a less benign response than a morning with no power, at least in some parts of the city.

When I was a kid, I went through a couple of prolonged blackouts in Chicago . . . my area had no "urban unrest" and the police were very high profile in the bad areas to keep a lid on things. Of course, those were different times . . .

Here in TX, I suspect an outbreak of looting in the absence of police would be very dangerous . . . for the would-be looters. ESPECIALLY at night. 

[gunsmith]

I was in NY for both the 65 blackout and the 77 blackout, the 65 blackout happened in cooler weather and before the huge changes the sixties had to offer.

The 77 one was wild, I was in the Bronx standing on Broadway when the lights went- I could see block after block go black all the way south into Manhattan, then a minute later-a huge roar, like millions of people literally screaming then immediately following that the sounds of windows being smashed.

iirc it was pretty warm, so lots of folks headed for the streets.

I think things would be calm for a week but after that a nationwide blackout would be pretty bad with riots and such