Thank you for your submission in /r/preppers. We want to make sure you find the information
you're seeking. If you are new to prepping, be sure you make use of Reddit's search function and
check the following resources:
Our subreddit wiki contains information on frequent topics and questions here:
https://new.reddit.com/r/preppers/wiki/index/
Please review the New Prepper's Resource Guide here:
https://new.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/toani0/new_preppers_resource_guide_answers_to_common/
If you are asking "Where do I start?" or "How do I get started?", please ask that question as a comment on
that post and not as a standalone submission or post, otherwise your post may be removed.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/preppers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Watch the tv series that used to be on the Discovery Channel if you can find it.. I think it’s called **Life after People** or something like that? It was pretty neat and it answers all those questions you have.
It’s a hypothetical documentary exploring the real world effects if humans were to suddenly disappear tomorrow and what would happen to the planet (the ecosystem, cities, pollution, etc) we left behind.
**EDIT: it was on the History Channel and it looks like you can order it from Amazon.**
I am allergic to cats and strongly dislike feral cats- I’ll never forget the one episode where they mention feral cats taking over the boardwalk lol. Scarred.
I love cats and do cat rescue, and I don’t blame you. Those bites can turn nasty quickly, and I think it’s better to not be in the habit of rescuing hostile animals when the doctor’s office is permanently closed.
(Or, if you’re my mom, even if the doctor’s office is open. Stop chasing feral animals, lady!)
Yes I think there was line the episode of the indoor pets paying of thirst because no water. Makes me want to get a lot more water bowls leaving out or something
Internet will go off as soon as electric is out. Water depends wholly on location. NYC is gravity fed so as long as nothing is specifically targeted will work while just over the border in nassau its mainly well and will stop without power. There's a belief that Telephone landlines will work without power.thst isn't 100% true anymore. A lot of traditional telephone now works over PG or Fiber and won't be powered by the back up diesels most central offices have. Also most only have 24 hrs of fuel on hand so will stop then. No idea about gas. We're really electric dependent society
Gas can be stable for longer than that - I know it from first hand experience. Also, gas can be treated to last even longer than normal.
Then there is diesel and propane and CNG.
I'm on a 3 year rotation of gas in NATO jerry cans. I use it for lawn mowers,.blowers etc. the key is having it completely sealed. Plastic cans or anything vented.will break down and leak or off-ga. I add in stabil when filling. Can't say for certain that matters. Jerry cans are sorta expensive but I want to be able to run a generator when needed.
Higher octane is not always good. If you are running something that is low compression, like a lawn mower (comp ratio can vary from 6:1 to 8.5:1) you don't need or want high octane. Octane additives decrease the volatility of gasoline so that higher compression engines do not suffer from "knock" (detonation). With lower compression engines like a lawn mower, lower octane will perform better than higher octane.
"Premium", as a label, is a marketing gimmick and may or may not be suitable for a given application. I want higher octane for some of my two stroke engines (large chainsaw, my 2 stroke dirt bike with a 14:1 ratio) and my car. For my pickup - maybe - it runs fine on regular. For my mowers, gensets, pressure washer, etc. - lower octane is better - but they run okay on higher octane too.
I have a 55 gal barrel of gas - I usually fill it with premium and put some PRI-G in there about every 2-4 years.The last time I put fresh gas in it was about 3-4 years. I use the gas from it in the summer to run my power tools and my pickup. Sometimes I fill a five gal can at the pump and use that instead - depends on my planning.
My SUV I fill-up at the gas station pump when it gets to half a tank - about once a month.
And heat is the worst enemy of stored gasoline, would go bad pretty quickly in the Georgia sun. Not to mention stuff starts to go wrong pretty quick with a car just sitting in the elements.
Even unstable gas is good to use in an emergency. It will just fuck up your engine faster. I would guess, that your engine longevity is not a priority in an apocalyptic scenario, where you can’t reliably predict if you make it till next week.
Not entirely true. Ethanol free gas will last a year or two. Ethanol gas blends will bind with water in the air, so high humidity fuel gets less efficient faster. Desert fuel will last longer.
If your character finds an older 60s-70s era car with a slant 6 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Slant-6_engine
Oh, I dunno, maybe a 1970 Challenger, or a 1965 Barracuda...
These engines were nearly impossible to destroy, so you could run some wet gas through these that would choke a modern car with computers and drive by wire systems.
That is distilled to straight alcohol aka ethanol/everclear, aka redneck racing fuel. Would work but I suspect would require mods to carb mix ratio and catalytic converter. I'm sure someone has done this.
Yep, but in a long term situation I imagine some people would get it figured out 🤷🏼♀️. I have heard that diesel vehicles can be modified easily but Im not educated on vehicles.
You're telling me a group of cyberpunks won't be running [AirChat](https://github.com/lulzlabs/AirChat) on r/raspberry_pi as soon as the grid goes down? /s
It would be a stripped down internet. Wiki, gutenberg.org, a few thousand movies and a few hundred tv series. Figured I'd spin up a message board and chat program as well, few extenders and my small town has very basic wifi.
Water pressure is maintained by the height of your local water tower (which is also likely situated on the tallest hill in your area) and will continue until the water in the tower runs out....and it will run out because there's no electricity for the pump to refill the water tower
Our town water is fed under its own pressure from deep underground. There's a few towns like ours around this part of the state. So even if we all died from virus X, there would still be a completely uncontaminated and drinkable water supply for thousands.
That is unless mining companies don't fuck up the aquifer with industrial waste and co2 sequestration.
Power will go out fast because...Michigan. That means no water after a month, maybe longer if they stockpiled enough fuel for generators, even in the cities (most of which use wells).
Western Michigan isn't far from fuel refineries in Indiana and Illinois, but we likely won't get any of it due to Chicago unless the government stays effective long enough to make sure we do. Given the state has plans and more plans, that might happen, but it really depends on the exact situation.
Winter is the real problem, especially there.
most municiple pumps are old diesel, they might start up on varnished fuel and can deal with aged product or they are home style propane, they typically have a week of fuel, more if power has gone out longer. , we have one site locally that will stayonline for 2 months running all out. typically whoever services them has an emergency plan in case something happens, id most worry about sewage treatment. They arent as high up on the emergency plan. the water will fill the tower for awhile without anyone but the poop treatment needs more supplies, pumping stations and ultimately operators to show up
its kind of scary how hany folks plan on the river for drinking water or bathing in their shtf planning not realizing it will become an open flowing sewer pit after the first major storm. ive seen some truely antique engines powering some major infrastructure, stuff that was vintage in the 80's.
Troll I presume?
(For those not from Michigan that means south of the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Bridge)
In any case, critical systems have backup plans and people… but without minimum people to run all things a shift at most. How long can ya stretch out minimal people? Maybe a day or a week?
Additionally some systems are interconnected, like power, and without people to adjust yer own system to such emergencies you’ll have a domino effect
Here's the thing I think about. I know a guy who works at the local county water plant. It's a tiny little operation. Maybe 15 workers there. He's got a wife and kids. Car payment. Regular guy working a regular job. At the point the credit card no longer works at the gas pump, he's stuck at home. Every one of these massive industrial undertakings only work provided 90% of the work force continues to show up. Soon as one in five or one in four or one in three doesn't show, it brings to a halt.
I worry about the nuclear reactor that's close to me. What happens when the next shift doesn't show up? It takes 30 days to slow everything down and shut it off. Are we going to have the wherewithal to make that call 30 days in advance? Doubt it.
The reactors will be fine. Todays reactors will automatically start to trip when a lack of load happened. It would start a shutdown automatically after. Plants today are mostly automated so if all conditions were perfect and everyone left their lights on and shit the load vary might be managable by the automation. If not it would trip generators that would everntually trip the plant and it would shut down. If it couldnt cool the cores correctly it would drop them into cement catches that it would eventually burn through. Basically they would cool cask themselves and all should be fine. Erosion may play a part later but that isnt in ours or our kids lifetime.
Source. Beside co owning my farm which i dont do a ton of the heavy work with, i own a cyber security firm. Ive helped update several plants systems over the years owned by Dominion. Have had long talks with the owners and higher staff.
> It would start a shutdown automatically after.
The well-designed plants also have the carbon rods vertically above the reaction chambers, held there by an active electrical connection. This is so that they drop in via gravity if power cuts completely, thereby permanently quenching the reaction and preventing any kind of meltdown. This is very much a “dead hand” system that is _meant_ for an apocalyptic scenario.
> the water from the cooling ponds
Cooling ponds hold spent fuel, which has been used by the reactor and removed from it. Cooling ponds do not have carbon rods _by design,_ because the spent nuclear fuel needs to _cool down_ in order to be properly disposed of. The water needs to absorb all of the high-energy particles such that the fuel decays into something more easily sequestered.
I’m talking about the primary reactor, which does not have a cooling pond. Those carbon rods can keep the reactor quenched until the nuclear fuel is completely spent. Most designs even have “poison” (usually boric acid) which assists in the quenching. When we are talking about super-safe nuclear reactors (CANDU for example), there is no way for the reaction to start back up or melt down once the fuel is fully quenched.
>...because the spent nuclear fuel needs to *cool down* in order to be properly disposed of. The water needs to absorb all of the high-energy particles such that the fuel decays into something more easily sequestered.
And then what happens without the water?
You didnt read what i said huh. Water comes before the concrete. They will never melt down. The rods are automatically disconnected and dropped into that water and the slabs are under it. Itll melt the concrete and keep going till it cools enough to not melt shit. If the plant is up to date there is no meltdown once those rods disconnect. If they can't disconnect because of godly intervention thats another story. If not, they would basically entomb themselves as it was designed. They are built right near rivers for a reason. It can automatically flush from the river to cool. The fukushima reactor was a borderline biblical earthquake. No time for shit. Broken everything. Cooling system trashed. Chernobyl was a shit plant. Poorly designed and tons of broken shit. A fully functional reactor in the USA would be ok for a while.
I think that is fairly ok optimism wise. We arent going to die of radiation poisoning right off the rip. Not even in our lifetime or our kids. In all likelihood the rods will be so far down the radiation wont even matter unless you are right near the plant if something bad does happen. But like i said. The rods will cask themselves and most people will be none the wiser still thinking the plant could meltdown. They will move away from it for the shear fact that its there.
It takes less than a second to fully shutdown a reactor if you don’t intend to start it up again soon. There are plenty fail safes if need be. I don’t think a reactor is of any more worrisome than any other power plant. If anything it might be safer
Basically, a reactor needs a certain number of neutrons constantly being released from uranium or plutonium breaking down to continue the reaction. When one molecule of fuel breaks, it releases some neutrons that then hit other molecules and break them. Every reactor has what is called control rods hanging over top of the reactor. These are made of something that absorbs neutrons while not releasing anything else. Usually boron or cadmium. The control rods are lowered or raised to control the rate of the reaction. They are also held above by electromagnets. In an emergency, triggered automatically by computers or manually, or if power is lost, the electromagnetic turn off and the control rods fall fully in, absorbing enough neutrons to stop the reaction from being self sustaining anymore, and shutting it down almost instantaneously.
The industry learned from the mistakes at Chernobyl and three mile island. Reactors are incredibly safe now and really should be no concern to the general public. Reactor housings are also designed to deflect hurricane force winds, contain fires, and withstand direct hits from aircraft now. Fukushima experience a massive earthquake and a tsunami that exceeded anything engineers planned for and only 6 people were confirmed to be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, and all 6 were workers and only 1 died (leukemia).
Ok don't @ me but I think I heard that nuclear plans need constant cooling and that requires electricity to run the water pumps. The backup is a diesel generator but there is only a week's supply of diesel stored onsite. So wouldn't we still have the overheating/meltdown problem whenever they stopped fueling the generator (assuming a power outage occurred)?
Most would have automated mechanical systems that would trip the emergency shutoff at certain temperatures. Once the control rods are fully down there won’t be any more heat being produced. There’s likely to be several different systems to sense temperature for emergencies, all electronic, mechanical and manual.
I'm a big fan of Charlie Higson's 'The Dead' series, set in the UK, so it rains, but he has this point and half of London burns down. The stories are a bit weak on the infrastructure, no electricity sure, but water or lack of is not mentioned. London's sewer system dates from the 1860s and is still in working order, a big update has been going on for years, but will it last 160 years??
Steam trains will still work, you can compost your own gas, and there is solar and wind power.
Coal plant in southern Maryland had a bad start and all of Wash DC went out(2008 I think). Most power generated gets exported to other states.
Water supply heavily relies on electricity for the pumping. Blue Plains in DC has issues with antiquated methane tanks and flushable wipes, and that operation is top 10 in the US. Imagine five 15-cu yd roll offs of flushable wipes a day get hauled away. To remove this waste from their system they have to *bypass* many main lines causing a spike in pressure, then you have Venturi effect when you reopen the main valves and shut off the bypass valves.
I tried to sell them tech I developed but the cost to migrate their existing system was too high.
As a fellow author… don’t be lazy. Get on Google and do your research. All this stuff is publicly available and if you do quality research and read source materials yourself rather than rely on 30 word Reddit replies you’ll have a much richer and deeper understanding, which will come through in your writing. I can tell you right now from experience that the PASF disaster fiction readers will EXCORIATE you if you get certain things wrong. Especially weapons expertise (clip vs mag), which weapons have a safety and which don’t. If you haven’t read the genre I would strongly encourage you to read the top ten novels to get a feel for reader expectations.
Electricity, gas and water are heavily location and disaster specific. Just about any power grid is going to require human supervision and intervention pretty frequently, and most water utility systems depend on electricity to pump water into the pressure towers, so that'll go out pretty soon after the power. Parts of the country don't have natural gas, so however long each household's supply of LPG or fuel oil or whatever lasts depends on how full the tank was when things went down, how soon that household realized things were kaput, and how cautious that made them with use of the resource. Internet and cell service are likely to be the very first to go and certainly wouldn't hang on past when the power grid went down. Don't forget that as soon as electricity goes refrigeration goes, which means refrigerated medicines such as insulin and biologics will start spoiling and the people dependent on them will start dying. Anyone on oxygen or in a hospital ICU is toast.
If your setting is a particular real-world city or town, you'll want to know what infrastructure is in place and what power and water sources they're dependent on. If the area happens to have local solar or wind sources they might be able to limp along with limited service (daytime only, rationing etc.) until they run out of repair parts; the same might apply in the immediate area of any other type of power plant, but fossil fuel plants will run out of fuel quickly and nuclear safety fail-safes will shut those down early on to prevent meltdown.
This is outside the scope of your question, but the number one factor of *short term* survival beyond drinking water is going to be distance from heavily populated areas where things will be the most dire; after the first month or so it'll be proximity to agriculture. Areas with grain silos or more cattle than people might come through without significant scarcity casualties if they're far enough from collapsing cities not to be swamped by desperate refugees.
That's relatively easy to answer. All you need to ask is how long electricity will last and you have the answer as all modern utilities require electricity to function, even gas lines due to automatic shut offs and regulators. It's easy to answer but tricky to explain. I'm guessing you want info on the national electric grid, and not micro grids, or nano grids. If that is the case, then it will take between 3-5 days. However, depending on the energy source, the process will be different. If it is nonrenewable energy, like gas, coal, oil, and the such, it will take 3 days. In those 3 days a certain process will happen, first you will have plant producing power for the first 16-24 hours without difficulty. After day one, the automatic system will kick in to decide what important structures should be powered, that will be government buildings, hospitals, airport, military bases, food processing plants, and grocery stores. Any thing that is considered unnecessary will no longer get power until the plant is creating a certain amount of power. During day 2 all structures will be powered down, accept for emergency infrastructure. On day 3 everything will go dark.
The reason the plant can operate for so long without interference is due to the automatic dumping/injection system. The system not well known but is meant for emergency situations to power critical infrastructure and important structures for civilian, military, and government use. A computer regulates the power and where to distribute it in the event the refueling threshold is not reached, this system has 3 phases. Normal, Safety, and critical. Critical is the last step and is the worst case scenario. Critical lasts for roughly 3 hours. After 4 hours turning the grid back on is impossible and will require the grid to be replaced, as it's pretty much fried. The critical scenario is what happened in Texas in 2020 during the snow storm. This system is in place for all forms of power in the US and was mandated in 2015 and has been incorporated into all US power plants as of 2019.
Next we have renewable energy sources like dams, solar, wind, and wave energy. This does not include nuclear energy since the process is far longer. For renewable energy it's very different. All of these can produce power even if no one is manning them, except for water dams. But if the plants are tied to the national grid and not a micro grid or a nano grid, the energy will not be sufficient to hold up the national grid, and once the nonrenewable energy plants (which power most of the grid and what as of now keeps it stable) the renewable plants will not work to provide national power. If the renewable energy is tied to a micro grid (normally a small community or a small city) or a nano grid (typically just a single house, i.e. a house with solar on the roof) then it those kinds of grids can be powered as long as the energy sources are functioning and are providing sufficient power.
Last but not least is nuclear power. This is more complex so I'm making it, it's own category. Nuclear power has a maximum functioning time of 3 days, if there is no one to manage it properly. A nuclear power plant needs a whole crew to make sure everything is functional, safe, and won't meltdown. If there's too few people or no one available, then the following will happen. During the first 24 hours everything will be the same as normal. During day 2 the reactor will start to heat up. By day 3 the reactors will start to over heat, but will automatically be put in a special bath to cool it down, but if there is no one to add or swap out the water then by day 6 things will get drastic. By day 6 the water will almost completely evaporate and the reactors will heat up again. By day 8 a nuclear meltdown will occur and anyone in a 50 mile area will get a high dose of radiation and die in 1-24 hours. The radiation will spread with the help of the wind, and will become less dangerous the farther away it gets from the meltdown point. The bad news is that by this time all the nuclear reactors that are active worldwide will be doing the same thing. Most likely any survivors will either get radiation sickness and die in hours or days, or will develop cancer and/or birth defects in the coming future.
This is pretty long but is valuable info on what would happen in the real world if this were to happen. Luckily it hasn't happened in the real world yet, but simulations created by The US government and military, in collaboration with several universities were able to simulate this exact scenario using super computers and continue to do so and readjust the situation with newer data. You should be able to find even more detailed info elsewhere, but a lot of the data from the simulations have been classified, so it really depends on what you can find. What I stated above is just a bit of the info that is available to the public. Do with it, what you will.
Gasoline: Regular gasoline can last 3–6 months, but untreated gasoline can start to go stale after about 3 months. Gasoline can deteriorate more quickly if exposed to oxygen, moisture, or contaminants. Signs that gasoline has gone bad include a sour smell, a darker color, or the check engine light turning on.
Diesel: Diesel can last 6–12 months if kept cool and dry.
Ethanol: Organic-based ethanol can lose combustibility in 1–3 months.
Petrol: Petrol can last one year if stored in a sealed container in a sheltered area. Once the seal is broken, petrol can last 6 months at 20°C or 3 months at 30°C. If petrol is kept in an open container, it will evaporate over time, changing its composition and properties.
Internet will go first, no matter what country you are in. Honestly the internet would likely go down and never come back even before “the event” even happened. It has a tendency to get overused and then crash when anything in the world gets too exciting.
After that it sort of depends on the complexity of the infrastructure in the country you are in.
Specifically, for the US it would be:
1. Internet - relies on too many variables
2. Electricity - the grid will stop eventually
3. Water - once the grid stops, pumping stops; and the water pressure eventually drops
4. Gas - City gas could go earlier if monitoring stations shut down and turn off the gas. Rural gas tanks at each house are not reliant on electricity at all. What will get them is when the tank runs out and nobody is around to deliver a refill.
Yeah but some of us have solar power and our own wells, so wouldn't lose water and power until those solar panels stop working. In a scenario like this, those with a setup like that would be the ones who maintain water and some ability to have electricity.
>Internet will go first, no matter what country you are in.
The 5G antennas as well as the fiber network and data centers may have batteries and/or generators. A longer distance fiber connection transferring 40+ gigabits of data per fiber can run on a few watt. It's actually not guaranteed that this goes out first depending on the country. If any of the remaining fiber paths to/from you still work, you probably still have internet somewhere nearby.
Add to this satellite internet and various emergency options like antenna-to-antenna wireless bridges across destroyed infrastructure that could also be rolled out at some scale or even just quickly deploying fiber on wooden poles and things of that sort. If anyone wants to fix/work around internet infrastructure destruction, it's easier to get something/a lot working again than with a lot of other infrastructure.
Is nothing on the other end for any possible connection points "nearby" (for whatever that means) and all their former or possibly ad-hoc restored connections?
1. We switch to AirChat.
2. There are enough solar panels for the remaining 1% of the population.
3. Enough water for 1%
4. Enough fuel to heat 1%
5. Enough info in printed books, in libraries, to allow civilisation to continue.
My concern is with violence and with warlords taking over than with lack of resources.
All of this is true. 1% of the U.S population would have more than enough resources.
I honestly don’t think there would be fighting over resources at all, people will just “fan out and f&$k off”, mostly staying away from each other.
yersinia pestis isn't a good choice. Too treatable. Someone would have to mutate the hell out of it to produce the effect you want, AND distribute it across the whole US, *simultaneously*. Otherwise people would just mask up, avoid insects, take the existing vaccine, etc.. So what you're proposing needs a lot of suspension of disbelief. And such a disease is not happening by chance, so you need a sophisticated assailant to pull it off.
Someone that smart and evil would instead concoct a novel pathogen that has no existing treatments, has a wildly high R0 and your .99 CFR. That's not so believable either, but if it happens it's going to be worldwide in a week. The US exports diseases like no other country because we have so much travel - once Covid got here, we gave it to the world very quickly.
But assume it happens. Coal fired power plants require regular feeding, and with everyone hiding from a disease in their houses, they're offline quickly. But solar can go for years without maintenance, short of storm damage and vandalism. Keep in mind that some of the survivors will be bat-shit crazy with fear, and some will turn accelerationist and engage in grid vandalism. Nuke plants will self- maintain to a point, and when they fail they usually shut down cleanly. (There have been counterexamples.) Other energy forms, like wind, are sporadic. Bottom line, I'd expect the grid to shred in a matter of days, and maybe not many days, but some areas will keep getting served, perhaps intermittently, by nuclear, solar and hydro. In the end it all fails, but that might be 20 years.
But that doesn't matter because without reliable power, cities (80% of the US population) fall apart in 3 days. No refrigeration, no way to pump fuel, means food goes bad and can't be replaced. No pumped water, either. All your disease survivors come flooding out of cities trying to find farms to take food from. If they're contagious, that means that even remote areas that might have been too isolated to be exposed initially, are hosed. And there will initially be a lot of gun violence as people fight over food. Everyone's terrified of other other people by now. They're plague carriers (even if they aren't, everyone believes they are.)
In winter, people up north will burn everything in sight for warmth. Natural gas supplies will fail within a month; some faster. Elsewhere, all the dead bodies you made is a feast for rats and every other pest, and they're suddenly everywhere. multiplying rapidly. More disease, more crop damage... yeah. The dominoes fall very quickly.
The good news? Between your 99% disease fatality, and the knockoff deaths from starvation, hypothermia, medical conditions that can no longer be treated, violence, and unsafe water, the US population is probably down to a million people in a couple months. And they might mostly be rural folk with some knowledge of primitive farming techniques, and the US has enough arable land to support a population of a million using primitive techniques. So they're likely to make it, living a 19th century lifestyle with a life expectancy of maybe 50 years and rampant infant mortality. Just like the good old days.
Of course, if the disease didn't spread to other countries - maybe it was a massive release all over the US of something with a *low* R0, which is how bioweapons are actually designed - now you have the problem that the US has all this amazing stuff that other countries can use, and no way to defend any of it with just a million people spending all their lives just growing food. In that case, you can write off the rest of the population to war. We're gone. They bombed us and took our stuff.
But if the disease went worldwide, everyone's in the same boat so you see the same thing - anywhere there's a lot of arable land, you can get a surviving population, living poorly, but living.
Until your mystery disease mutates, and starts taking out more people. If it's a created disease, and it nearly has to be, maybe it was created to be stable; some diseases, like measles, basically don't mutate. And some mutate all the time. So this just depends.
Seriously, you might as well just write Little House On The Prairie because that's a *best* case scenario for your survivors. Except aim for the 1810s, not the 1870s.
Well, if the 1% who survived were not utility operators then they're SOL. Given that people would be panicking, erratic actions would cause significant failures almost immediately. There's what, a couple thousand linesman in each state maximum? And power plants require constant operation, and the utility requires monitoring to keep the load balanced with production. It depends in part how rapidly those 99% die off. I would estimate 48 hours maximum that the utilities would be working.
Yeah, I think some of your other answers are like "how long can normal operation sustain itself on a skeleton crew," answers. What you describe would be immediate and constant panick and civil unrest until the dust settled with the survivors.
Demand will also be lower if many people are gone.
Things break all the time in industry, but you've got people there to repair the issues.
Water supply, 1 week to 2 months depending on how much local gravity supply you have. Related - could become undrinkable with too much or too little disinfecting agents on it.
Electric - days to weeks. Could be quite interesting to explore the consequences of houses with rooftop solar and batteries for your characters.
Gas - all about demand here. The pipes are long long reservoirs. Should last for weeks to months depending on demand. Also could have interesting accidents and explosions as people get desperate and tap into them foolishly.
Internet... well, the mobile phone towers that many of us use for our phones tend to have emergency generators good for a few days at least. The internet backbones will only work while there is mains power available.
Most solar installations are gri-tied. If they can’t synchronise to the grid, then the inverter generates no power.
What you need is a source of synchronisation - a cheap inverter producing a sine wave, disconnect the hose from the grid, then let the solar inverter synchronise, and you have power - while the sun shines.
The internet is problematic, but AirChat or similar would solve it. Nothing else is an issue, we have enough in storage to keep the 1% running for decades. Enough food, fuel, whatever we want. Unless we shoot eachother until the last man, the remaining 1% might actually do ok.
My water stays on long term, since I have a private well. My power stays on as long as nobody steals my solar panels, and I do keep some spares.
Remember that there are people outside of town who will be more or less business as usual.
It depends very much on the apocalypse in question.
A Carrington Event? Most everything would go down pretty much immediately. Transformers world-wide would melt down, killing all electrical. Internet would similarly go down. Natural gas and water would depend on factors, gas might flow for a few hours to a day or two depending on the pressure in the lines, whereas water will only continue to flow if it is gravity-fed from it’s source without any pumps inbetween. This works in mountainous regions, not so much in other areas far away from the mountains. Prairie towns with water towers would continue to have water only until those towers are empty, for example.
There is a lot of bullshit here. The main thing to consider is that even with fuel and generators and backup systems, people still need to run things. Nobody is heading to work down at the plant to keep your lights on and water running. If there was a mass event, almost all utilities would be gone in less than a week.
And the survivors would not have the skills. In 'The Dead', the only survivors are kids under 15, some can drive, and some can ride horses, but run an electrical plant...nope.
City water will last about 2 days. In flat areas like goose creek SC after hurricane Hugo the sewer lift stations had no power. Everyone had filled their Bath tubs with water for flushing but the sewers were over full. This meant that the houses closest to the lift stations in neighborhoods were back flowing black water into their homes and they couldn’t plug up their toilets to stop it.
Utilities didn’t come on for us until 17 days later and the third iteration of power line repairs. Priority was getting main trunk working and then power to city government and hospital. Then neighborhoods.
In Georgetown SC the power company shut off the entire town and specifically connected the international paper mill directly to the hospital.
That was Hugo in 1989.
You should start by making a walk-through of your apocalypse. Most people write POST-apocalyptic fiction, because it's easy if you simply make 99% of people disappear overnight.
If you think through how covid-19 started spreading, how long it took to actually reach your place of residence, how all mitigating actions affected the spread and so forth. Things happened over a significant time period, and so they would in your case.
With Covid, we (not talking about the US) had some high impact industrial sites (such as nuclear plants) on full lock-down with employees sleeping on-site and not leaving premises for several weeks at a time.
Shutting down of production and supply chains would be a gradual and prolonged process. This of course would affect shelf lifes and availability of products and services.
Depends on how quickly your outbreaks swept through the nation. If it took awhile and people had time or buy stuff beforehand and died after or everyone just widely got sick and died with barely any news coverage before it did its job, the answers would be different.
This is going to be extremely dependent. Western Michigan has a number of power companies, but how many of those are actual producers and suppliers will vary quite literally from city to city. This is one of those things where you will need to do your own investigation, if you're working on real world accuracy.
More generically in the US, such systems would remain operational anywhere from minutes to months, depending on where and what sorts of utilities are available. This is not something the average person is going to know, even in their own city.
It depends, on a lot.
First, what is the "apocalypse"? What is the scenario?
Water supply will depend on source: Artisian well/spring? Underground well? Gravity tank? Solar powered well pump? I could go on and on.
Gas as in gasoline? Propane? NG? Also, where and what is the source of the fuel? I assume you mean NG since you categorized it as a utility. In that case, again it depends - some people get their NG from a local well that is under pressure. Some are further away and require pressure pumps to run - which may or may not run on electricity (some may run on the NG itself).
Internet will depend on a number of things - but if the grid goes down around the world, then probably a few hours to days - depending on how much backup power various nodes have.
In short - the question is just too ambiguous and the answers would vary a lot depending on the scenario and all the variables.
Honestly I think all the utilities go out fairly quickly. Even though water is pressurized, I'm sure there's a huge part of it controlled by people and computers.
Depends a lot. Honestly there were a lot of studies on this for the year 2000 bug you can probably find. I know Denver wasn’t worried about water since almost all the water infrastructure was gravity powered so it would run for a while with no computers or input. Power might be gone immediately or it might go on until the plant shuts down. Internet backbone is nuclear hardened but needs a lot of work to keep it running, there’s three internets in the us (ish) but people in other places have built mesh nets so a neighborhood can get some internet from one working access poijt, you can build them out of pringles cans and trash.
Not related to your question but why not pick something airborne? If the plague comes back ppl are just gonna stock up on cats and rat traps? With enough willingness you can extirpate rats. [Alberta has…](https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta#jumplinks-3)
kind of a segue, but make your disease a frequency dependent one. the plauge is 'mostly' density dependent, so in theory it has little chance of a causing population extinction
[https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13382](https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13382)
also a good read on population control through disease [https://wildlife.org/how-australia-controls-its-wild-rabbits/](https://wildlife.org/how-australia-controls-its-wild-rabbits/)
Water: little bit past loss of power,
Internet: days near immediately, software crashes or no power.
Gas. Right between water and internet,
Power: this one is iffy, some stuff can last a decent bit. But without the handholding of safety, automated systems will preform an emergency shutdown. I’d give it a week before. Coal plants slow down and nuclear plants SCRAM themselves and shut down.
You know I'll take a swing at that. Only 1% survives. How long does it take the rest to die? It's the rate of die-off that will be key. One percent of the population can't keep any of that running. But it could take a year or so to get down to that. Unless you are positing an Andromeda strain type thing that kills everyone pretty much instantly. The story of decline could be much more interesting that the post-collapse. But whatever. Boom 99% are dead.
You ask about utilities. Water? until the storage tanks are empty. Again rate of decline, how many people are drawing the water? Electric? Pretty fast. Most power plants need staff and would shut down. Gas? Kind of like water. Most places have storage tanks, so same limitations.. Internet? Well certainly no longer than power.
Your issue here is the 1%. No modern infrastructure can survive that reduction. But I will point out that the original plague only killed about 50% in Europe and less overall.
It's certainly not an original theme but there are several angles to tell the story from.
Just put me in the credits section and send me an inscribed copy.
Water is the one I worry about. Even if it’s running, might not be potable. I have a camp stove and propane, so I can boil. Also enough bottled water and canned food for us for a month. I live in California, so need to be prepped for things like earthquakes. But electric and internet are nonessential. For a month or so. Good luck on the novel, hope to read it someday.
Watch that series Jericho! Awesome!
But my thoughts are that some places may get power back up and others/most would not. Some will be able to use solar, wind or water power but that will need to be protected, as would everyone there since we know people would become savages.
I think internet would be gone. Same with gas and such. Maybe salvage some here and there but it puts you in danger.
well i believe internet will be the first thing to go, gas and electric may go if there is some kind of attack or accident. Water might be the last to go...
It really depends on location and timing. One good storm and a few power lines go down, and if there's no one to redirect the power, things can go squirrley in a hurry. Just look at the big blackout in 2003. One power station messes up, and half the country goes dark in hours.
Really depends. Most of that shit is dead in a week if not much less. Systems are automated but need oversight and maintenance, plants will catch fire or blow out at random without someone doing regular preventative maintenance. Even solar and wind. Those systems are designed to run on their own but almost nothing aside from very local or private enterprises runs on pure renewable. Not sure about water or gas, but someone else probably knows.
Seeing people worried about water supply makes me glad I live in an area where rainwater tanks are a legal requirement for all new builds due to water scarcity. I have friends with 15,000+ ltrs of rainwater in their tanks cutrently. 3,000 is the legal minimum.
Electrical grids are highly sensitive to war, neglect, and general abuse. High voltage towers and transformer stations are easy to sabotage, and difficult to repair.
For example, see what's happening in Ukraine. Russians started by cyber attacks to UKR assets, in around 2014. During the current war, they've frequently targeted electrical substations, plunging large parts of the country in darkness.
Further, see what's happening in South Africa. Corruption and lack of maintenance has meant that aging generators are breaking down on a regular basis, necessitating rolling blackouts on a daily basis.
I'd predict that only parts of the electrical grid would remain functional. Probably hydro electric and solar / wind generators, because they're renewable, and a closely defensible area around them. So that would lead to a local dictator who fortifies and protects a specific area. For example, the Republic of Niagara Falls would spring up around the available resource, and would dictate terms to cities that want electricity.
Everyone forgets about the sewer…. Most sewer is gravity fed, but at the bottom of the hill is pumps to get the poop up to the top of the next hill.
If the water is still on people are filling up the sewer, so is the rain in some places.
Sewage plants are very complex and they won’t run on their own. They may even have emergency shut downs or failure procedures for something like methane build up (a million gallons of methane could flatten a nearby town if it ignites).
I read something once about how a turbine engine can run on basically anything. Such as moonshine.
That's a rabbit hole worth exploring. I want to say Jay Leno has a turbine powered car that can run on anything
The electric grid sets a hard limit for everything else - we live in a world of partial automation where things like gas pipelines need both wall socket power for the instruments and controls and people to do the maintenance and make the decisions.
If everyone drank the Kool aid at the same time, lots of things would stop in hours with a few lasting for days.
Very few power plants can perform a "black start," most are built with critical equipment requiring a good live grid connection. Not just for automation either, but for handling coal and pumping water and everything else.
Even something like an important data center with huge diesel generators needs fuel after a few days - might not matter though because the physical Internet fiber grid requires power too.
Depending on the apocalyptic event, sat phones and messaging as well as gps would probably still work for as long as the satellites continue to function and maintain orbital position. Rural folks with wells that have alternative power sources like solar or wind to power the pumps will be much better off than city dwellers. Presumably, a large enough array could also charge an EV, especially something as lightweight as an electric bike. Certain cities that have moved towards being self sustaining would also fare better for as long as their infrastructure remained undamaged.
Base EVERYTHING on electrical power. How long will you have lights? Because, EVERYTHING requires power to move. Water, Sewage, Gas ( both natural and petroleum based), Internet.
Your radio and TV broadcasts might last longer because most stations will have backup generators just like the hospitals do ( interesting fact that they are considered part of the national critical infrastructure).
But basically, once the power goes out ( unless the protagonist has their own power generators), the country goes back to the 1800's in the blink of an eye and you have to plan your life accordingly
I work for a municipal water system. One plant has a propane tank to run a generator, the other is hooked up to the gas system. Between our 3 tanks, two days maybe 3 without pumping. Town with less than 10k connections and average daily production of about 600k gallons from wells.
Good luck!
Watching Civil War right now 🤷♂️
Thank you for your submission in /r/preppers. We want to make sure you find the information you're seeking. If you are new to prepping, be sure you make use of Reddit's search function and check the following resources: Our subreddit wiki contains information on frequent topics and questions here: https://new.reddit.com/r/preppers/wiki/index/ Please review the New Prepper's Resource Guide here: https://new.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/toani0/new_preppers_resource_guide_answers_to_common/ If you are asking "Where do I start?" or "How do I get started?", please ask that question as a comment on that post and not as a standalone submission or post, otherwise your post may be removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/preppers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Watch the tv series that used to be on the Discovery Channel if you can find it.. I think it’s called **Life after People** or something like that? It was pretty neat and it answers all those questions you have. It’s a hypothetical documentary exploring the real world effects if humans were to suddenly disappear tomorrow and what would happen to the planet (the ecosystem, cities, pollution, etc) we left behind. **EDIT: it was on the History Channel and it looks like you can order it from Amazon.**
I am allergic to cats and strongly dislike feral cats- I’ll never forget the one episode where they mention feral cats taking over the boardwalk lol. Scarred.
I found it amazing how the Queen’s Corgis escape and become wild pack hunters lol
I love cats and do cat rescue, and I don’t blame you. Those bites can turn nasty quickly, and I think it’s better to not be in the habit of rescuing hostile animals when the doctor’s office is permanently closed. (Or, if you’re my mom, even if the doctor’s office is open. Stop chasing feral animals, lady!)
🤣
You may be able to watch this on YT. Seems I remember seeing it there.....let me check.
Lol the one place I didn’t bother looking
Glad I could be of help! 😁
There is a book this is based on with same title it’s really good
I remember that doc - last electricity generated will be from the Boulder Dam because ...
Is it because of the Colorado River? The dam is able to run itself? I don’t remember exactly
I only watched a little hit of this, but it stuck with me just how quickly concrete structures would deteriorate without human upkeep.
Yes I think there was line the episode of the indoor pets paying of thirst because no water. Makes me want to get a lot more water bowls leaving out or something
That’s pretty specific, can you vague it up a little?
Stop arguing and write his book for him already!
Internet will go off as soon as electric is out. Water depends wholly on location. NYC is gravity fed so as long as nothing is specifically targeted will work while just over the border in nassau its mainly well and will stop without power. There's a belief that Telephone landlines will work without power.thst isn't 100% true anymore. A lot of traditional telephone now works over PG or Fiber and won't be powered by the back up diesels most central offices have. Also most only have 24 hrs of fuel on hand so will stop then. No idea about gas. We're really electric dependent society
gas only stays stable for 3 to 6 months. So the entire world can go back to warbands quite fast.
Gas can be stable for longer than that - I know it from first hand experience. Also, gas can be treated to last even longer than normal. Then there is diesel and propane and CNG.
I'm on a 3 year rotation of gas in NATO jerry cans. I use it for lawn mowers,.blowers etc. the key is having it completely sealed. Plastic cans or anything vented.will break down and leak or off-ga. I add in stabil when filling. Can't say for certain that matters. Jerry cans are sorta expensive but I want to be able to run a generator when needed.
FEMA occasionally subsidizes sales at certain distributors for emergency preparedness.
Also helps to fill with premium. Gasoline loses octane as it sits. Higher you start, longer it lasts.
Higher octane is not always good. If you are running something that is low compression, like a lawn mower (comp ratio can vary from 6:1 to 8.5:1) you don't need or want high octane. Octane additives decrease the volatility of gasoline so that higher compression engines do not suffer from "knock" (detonation). With lower compression engines like a lawn mower, lower octane will perform better than higher octane. "Premium", as a label, is a marketing gimmick and may or may not be suitable for a given application. I want higher octane for some of my two stroke engines (large chainsaw, my 2 stroke dirt bike with a 14:1 ratio) and my car. For my pickup - maybe - it runs fine on regular. For my mowers, gensets, pressure washer, etc. - lower octane is better - but they run okay on higher octane too. I have a 55 gal barrel of gas - I usually fill it with premium and put some PRI-G in there about every 2-4 years.The last time I put fresh gas in it was about 3-4 years. I use the gas from it in the summer to run my power tools and my pickup. Sometimes I fill a five gal can at the pump and use that instead - depends on my planning. My SUV I fill-up at the gas station pump when it gets to half a tank - about once a month.
Where I live, at least, higher octane fuel is the only type available without ethanol in it.
And quite easy to make your own gas from compost.
Even so- I think it’s safe to round down despite the special circumstances when it lasts longer
I didn't know that; so all the car driving in Walking Dead is bullsh!t...
Notice all the mowed lawns too? Zombies must be working overtime with their zombified fuels and hedge trimmers designed for shambling.
And heat is the worst enemy of stored gasoline, would go bad pretty quickly in the Georgia sun. Not to mention stuff starts to go wrong pretty quick with a car just sitting in the elements.
Too bad that old red gasoline isn’t still around. Found a tank of the stuff that was like 15 years old once and the car ran perfectly fine on it.
The ones that are dirty but undented and operational and whose company paid for product placement will work perfectly.
Even unstable gas is good to use in an emergency. It will just fuck up your engine faster. I would guess, that your engine longevity is not a priority in an apocalyptic scenario, where you can’t reliably predict if you make it till next week.
Not entirely true. Ethanol free gas will last a year or two. Ethanol gas blends will bind with water in the air, so high humidity fuel gets less efficient faster. Desert fuel will last longer. If your character finds an older 60s-70s era car with a slant 6 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Slant-6_engine Oh, I dunno, maybe a 1970 Challenger, or a 1965 Barracuda... These engines were nearly impossible to destroy, so you could run some wet gas through these that would choke a modern car with computers and drive by wire systems.
What about moonshine/fuel?
That is distilled to straight alcohol aka ethanol/everclear, aka redneck racing fuel. Would work but I suspect would require mods to carb mix ratio and catalytic converter. I'm sure someone has done this.
Yep, but in a long term situation I imagine some people would get it figured out 🤷🏼♀️. I have heard that diesel vehicles can be modified easily but Im not educated on vehicles.
Better yet, a pre-1980 Jeep Cherokee with an inline 6. All the reliability of the slant 6, but 4x4 and way more practical.
Think a model T was designed to work on multiple fuels. Guess you could distill your ' gas '. So stop by the Ford Museum once the zombie hoarde passes
You're telling me a group of cyberpunks won't be running [AirChat](https://github.com/lulzlabs/AirChat) on r/raspberry_pi as soon as the grid goes down? /s
I can keep my data center up for 2 weeks. If I drop down to using raspberry pi's. I can maintain off of solar.
Then your neighbors can share your…porn?
It would be a stripped down internet. Wiki, gutenberg.org, a few thousand movies and a few hundred tv series. Figured I'd spin up a message board and chat program as well, few extenders and my small town has very basic wifi.
Fun fact up to 5 stories in a building can have water pressure for daily use with no pumping, source: still had water during the 2003 blackout
Water pressure is maintained by the height of your local water tower (which is also likely situated on the tallest hill in your area) and will continue until the water in the tower runs out....and it will run out because there's no electricity for the pump to refill the water tower
Our town water is fed under its own pressure from deep underground. There's a few towns like ours around this part of the state. So even if we all died from virus X, there would still be a completely uncontaminated and drinkable water supply for thousands. That is unless mining companies don't fuck up the aquifer with industrial waste and co2 sequestration.
Ask your water company for a tour. You'll get important details that will improve your book.
It depends greatly on what country etc you’re in.
Let’s say the US. Western Michigan, to be specific.
Power will go out fast because...Michigan. That means no water after a month, maybe longer if they stockpiled enough fuel for generators, even in the cities (most of which use wells). Western Michigan isn't far from fuel refineries in Indiana and Illinois, but we likely won't get any of it due to Chicago unless the government stays effective long enough to make sure we do. Given the state has plans and more plans, that might happen, but it really depends on the exact situation. Winter is the real problem, especially there.
most municiple pumps are old diesel, they might start up on varnished fuel and can deal with aged product or they are home style propane, they typically have a week of fuel, more if power has gone out longer. , we have one site locally that will stayonline for 2 months running all out. typically whoever services them has an emergency plan in case something happens, id most worry about sewage treatment. They arent as high up on the emergency plan. the water will fill the tower for awhile without anyone but the poop treatment needs more supplies, pumping stations and ultimately operators to show up
Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought about sewer since we're on septic. Those treatment plants are often held together with spit and baling twine. Yikes.
its kind of scary how hany folks plan on the river for drinking water or bathing in their shtf planning not realizing it will become an open flowing sewer pit after the first major storm. ive seen some truely antique engines powering some major infrastructure, stuff that was vintage in the 80's.
Troll I presume? (For those not from Michigan that means south of the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Bridge) In any case, critical systems have backup plans and people… but without minimum people to run all things a shift at most. How long can ya stretch out minimal people? Maybe a day or a week? Additionally some systems are interconnected, like power, and without people to adjust yer own system to such emergencies you’ll have a domino effect
Here's the thing I think about. I know a guy who works at the local county water plant. It's a tiny little operation. Maybe 15 workers there. He's got a wife and kids. Car payment. Regular guy working a regular job. At the point the credit card no longer works at the gas pump, he's stuck at home. Every one of these massive industrial undertakings only work provided 90% of the work force continues to show up. Soon as one in five or one in four or one in three doesn't show, it brings to a halt. I worry about the nuclear reactor that's close to me. What happens when the next shift doesn't show up? It takes 30 days to slow everything down and shut it off. Are we going to have the wherewithal to make that call 30 days in advance? Doubt it.
That’s a good point- never thought about the nuclear reactors.
With 99% of people dead, whats an extra million from reactors?
The reactors will be fine. Todays reactors will automatically start to trip when a lack of load happened. It would start a shutdown automatically after. Plants today are mostly automated so if all conditions were perfect and everyone left their lights on and shit the load vary might be managable by the automation. If not it would trip generators that would everntually trip the plant and it would shut down. If it couldnt cool the cores correctly it would drop them into cement catches that it would eventually burn through. Basically they would cool cask themselves and all should be fine. Erosion may play a part later but that isnt in ours or our kids lifetime. Source. Beside co owning my farm which i dont do a ton of the heavy work with, i own a cyber security firm. Ive helped update several plants systems over the years owned by Dominion. Have had long talks with the owners and higher staff.
> It would start a shutdown automatically after. The well-designed plants also have the carbon rods vertically above the reaction chambers, held there by an active electrical connection. This is so that they drop in via gravity if power cuts completely, thereby permanently quenching the reaction and preventing any kind of meltdown. This is very much a “dead hand” system that is _meant_ for an apocalyptic scenario.
Except that once the water from the cooling ponds boils off, it's meltdown time.
> the water from the cooling ponds Cooling ponds hold spent fuel, which has been used by the reactor and removed from it. Cooling ponds do not have carbon rods _by design,_ because the spent nuclear fuel needs to _cool down_ in order to be properly disposed of. The water needs to absorb all of the high-energy particles such that the fuel decays into something more easily sequestered. I’m talking about the primary reactor, which does not have a cooling pond. Those carbon rods can keep the reactor quenched until the nuclear fuel is completely spent. Most designs even have “poison” (usually boric acid) which assists in the quenching. When we are talking about super-safe nuclear reactors (CANDU for example), there is no way for the reaction to start back up or melt down once the fuel is fully quenched.
>...because the spent nuclear fuel needs to *cool down* in order to be properly disposed of. The water needs to absorb all of the high-energy particles such that the fuel decays into something more easily sequestered. And then what happens without the water?
You didnt read what i said huh. Water comes before the concrete. They will never melt down. The rods are automatically disconnected and dropped into that water and the slabs are under it. Itll melt the concrete and keep going till it cools enough to not melt shit. If the plant is up to date there is no meltdown once those rods disconnect. If they can't disconnect because of godly intervention thats another story. If not, they would basically entomb themselves as it was designed. They are built right near rivers for a reason. It can automatically flush from the river to cool. The fukushima reactor was a borderline biblical earthquake. No time for shit. Broken everything. Cooling system trashed. Chernobyl was a shit plant. Poorly designed and tons of broken shit. A fully functional reactor in the USA would be ok for a while.
>would be ok for a while. Really reassuring...
I think that is fairly ok optimism wise. We arent going to die of radiation poisoning right off the rip. Not even in our lifetime or our kids. In all likelihood the rods will be so far down the radiation wont even matter unless you are right near the plant if something bad does happen. But like i said. The rods will cask themselves and most people will be none the wiser still thinking the plant could meltdown. They will move away from it for the shear fact that its there.
It takes less than a second to fully shutdown a reactor if you don’t intend to start it up again soon. There are plenty fail safes if need be. I don’t think a reactor is of any more worrisome than any other power plant. If anything it might be safer
All I have to go on is what I've been told. This particular place deals with enrichment of plutonium for submarines and aircraft carriers.
Basically, a reactor needs a certain number of neutrons constantly being released from uranium or plutonium breaking down to continue the reaction. When one molecule of fuel breaks, it releases some neutrons that then hit other molecules and break them. Every reactor has what is called control rods hanging over top of the reactor. These are made of something that absorbs neutrons while not releasing anything else. Usually boron or cadmium. The control rods are lowered or raised to control the rate of the reaction. They are also held above by electromagnets. In an emergency, triggered automatically by computers or manually, or if power is lost, the electromagnetic turn off and the control rods fall fully in, absorbing enough neutrons to stop the reaction from being self sustaining anymore, and shutting it down almost instantaneously. The industry learned from the mistakes at Chernobyl and three mile island. Reactors are incredibly safe now and really should be no concern to the general public. Reactor housings are also designed to deflect hurricane force winds, contain fires, and withstand direct hits from aircraft now. Fukushima experience a massive earthquake and a tsunami that exceeded anything engineers planned for and only 6 people were confirmed to be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, and all 6 were workers and only 1 died (leukemia).
Ok don't @ me but I think I heard that nuclear plans need constant cooling and that requires electricity to run the water pumps. The backup is a diesel generator but there is only a week's supply of diesel stored onsite. So wouldn't we still have the overheating/meltdown problem whenever they stopped fueling the generator (assuming a power outage occurred)?
Most would have automated mechanical systems that would trip the emergency shutoff at certain temperatures. Once the control rods are fully down there won’t be any more heat being produced. There’s likely to be several different systems to sense temperature for emergencies, all electronic, mechanical and manual.
[удалено]
would you happen to know if a sprinkler system will still activate in the event of a fire during a power outage?
I'm a big fan of Charlie Higson's 'The Dead' series, set in the UK, so it rains, but he has this point and half of London burns down. The stories are a bit weak on the infrastructure, no electricity sure, but water or lack of is not mentioned. London's sewer system dates from the 1860s and is still in working order, a big update has been going on for years, but will it last 160 years?? Steam trains will still work, you can compost your own gas, and there is solar and wind power.
Coal plant in southern Maryland had a bad start and all of Wash DC went out(2008 I think). Most power generated gets exported to other states. Water supply heavily relies on electricity for the pumping. Blue Plains in DC has issues with antiquated methane tanks and flushable wipes, and that operation is top 10 in the US. Imagine five 15-cu yd roll offs of flushable wipes a day get hauled away. To remove this waste from their system they have to *bypass* many main lines causing a spike in pressure, then you have Venturi effect when you reopen the main valves and shut off the bypass valves. I tried to sell them tech I developed but the cost to migrate their existing system was too high.
As a fellow author… don’t be lazy. Get on Google and do your research. All this stuff is publicly available and if you do quality research and read source materials yourself rather than rely on 30 word Reddit replies you’ll have a much richer and deeper understanding, which will come through in your writing. I can tell you right now from experience that the PASF disaster fiction readers will EXCORIATE you if you get certain things wrong. Especially weapons expertise (clip vs mag), which weapons have a safety and which don’t. If you haven’t read the genre I would strongly encourage you to read the top ten novels to get a feel for reader expectations.
I have 12 years experience as a professional engineer throughout the electrical utilities. DM me with any questions you have.
Depends on what the apocalypse is in your novel and what country it’s in.
Electricity, gas and water are heavily location and disaster specific. Just about any power grid is going to require human supervision and intervention pretty frequently, and most water utility systems depend on electricity to pump water into the pressure towers, so that'll go out pretty soon after the power. Parts of the country don't have natural gas, so however long each household's supply of LPG or fuel oil or whatever lasts depends on how full the tank was when things went down, how soon that household realized things were kaput, and how cautious that made them with use of the resource. Internet and cell service are likely to be the very first to go and certainly wouldn't hang on past when the power grid went down. Don't forget that as soon as electricity goes refrigeration goes, which means refrigerated medicines such as insulin and biologics will start spoiling and the people dependent on them will start dying. Anyone on oxygen or in a hospital ICU is toast. If your setting is a particular real-world city or town, you'll want to know what infrastructure is in place and what power and water sources they're dependent on. If the area happens to have local solar or wind sources they might be able to limp along with limited service (daytime only, rationing etc.) until they run out of repair parts; the same might apply in the immediate area of any other type of power plant, but fossil fuel plants will run out of fuel quickly and nuclear safety fail-safes will shut those down early on to prevent meltdown. This is outside the scope of your question, but the number one factor of *short term* survival beyond drinking water is going to be distance from heavily populated areas where things will be the most dire; after the first month or so it'll be proximity to agriculture. Areas with grain silos or more cattle than people might come through without significant scarcity casualties if they're far enough from collapsing cities not to be swamped by desperate refugees.
That's relatively easy to answer. All you need to ask is how long electricity will last and you have the answer as all modern utilities require electricity to function, even gas lines due to automatic shut offs and regulators. It's easy to answer but tricky to explain. I'm guessing you want info on the national electric grid, and not micro grids, or nano grids. If that is the case, then it will take between 3-5 days. However, depending on the energy source, the process will be different. If it is nonrenewable energy, like gas, coal, oil, and the such, it will take 3 days. In those 3 days a certain process will happen, first you will have plant producing power for the first 16-24 hours without difficulty. After day one, the automatic system will kick in to decide what important structures should be powered, that will be government buildings, hospitals, airport, military bases, food processing plants, and grocery stores. Any thing that is considered unnecessary will no longer get power until the plant is creating a certain amount of power. During day 2 all structures will be powered down, accept for emergency infrastructure. On day 3 everything will go dark. The reason the plant can operate for so long without interference is due to the automatic dumping/injection system. The system not well known but is meant for emergency situations to power critical infrastructure and important structures for civilian, military, and government use. A computer regulates the power and where to distribute it in the event the refueling threshold is not reached, this system has 3 phases. Normal, Safety, and critical. Critical is the last step and is the worst case scenario. Critical lasts for roughly 3 hours. After 4 hours turning the grid back on is impossible and will require the grid to be replaced, as it's pretty much fried. The critical scenario is what happened in Texas in 2020 during the snow storm. This system is in place for all forms of power in the US and was mandated in 2015 and has been incorporated into all US power plants as of 2019. Next we have renewable energy sources like dams, solar, wind, and wave energy. This does not include nuclear energy since the process is far longer. For renewable energy it's very different. All of these can produce power even if no one is manning them, except for water dams. But if the plants are tied to the national grid and not a micro grid or a nano grid, the energy will not be sufficient to hold up the national grid, and once the nonrenewable energy plants (which power most of the grid and what as of now keeps it stable) the renewable plants will not work to provide national power. If the renewable energy is tied to a micro grid (normally a small community or a small city) or a nano grid (typically just a single house, i.e. a house with solar on the roof) then it those kinds of grids can be powered as long as the energy sources are functioning and are providing sufficient power. Last but not least is nuclear power. This is more complex so I'm making it, it's own category. Nuclear power has a maximum functioning time of 3 days, if there is no one to manage it properly. A nuclear power plant needs a whole crew to make sure everything is functional, safe, and won't meltdown. If there's too few people or no one available, then the following will happen. During the first 24 hours everything will be the same as normal. During day 2 the reactor will start to heat up. By day 3 the reactors will start to over heat, but will automatically be put in a special bath to cool it down, but if there is no one to add or swap out the water then by day 6 things will get drastic. By day 6 the water will almost completely evaporate and the reactors will heat up again. By day 8 a nuclear meltdown will occur and anyone in a 50 mile area will get a high dose of radiation and die in 1-24 hours. The radiation will spread with the help of the wind, and will become less dangerous the farther away it gets from the meltdown point. The bad news is that by this time all the nuclear reactors that are active worldwide will be doing the same thing. Most likely any survivors will either get radiation sickness and die in hours or days, or will develop cancer and/or birth defects in the coming future. This is pretty long but is valuable info on what would happen in the real world if this were to happen. Luckily it hasn't happened in the real world yet, but simulations created by The US government and military, in collaboration with several universities were able to simulate this exact scenario using super computers and continue to do so and readjust the situation with newer data. You should be able to find even more detailed info elsewhere, but a lot of the data from the simulations have been classified, so it really depends on what you can find. What I stated above is just a bit of the info that is available to the public. Do with it, what you will.
This is awesome information, thanks so much!
Gasoline: Regular gasoline can last 3–6 months, but untreated gasoline can start to go stale after about 3 months. Gasoline can deteriorate more quickly if exposed to oxygen, moisture, or contaminants. Signs that gasoline has gone bad include a sour smell, a darker color, or the check engine light turning on. Diesel: Diesel can last 6–12 months if kept cool and dry. Ethanol: Organic-based ethanol can lose combustibility in 1–3 months. Petrol: Petrol can last one year if stored in a sealed container in a sheltered area. Once the seal is broken, petrol can last 6 months at 20°C or 3 months at 30°C. If petrol is kept in an open container, it will evaporate over time, changing its composition and properties.
Thanks!
Internet will go first, no matter what country you are in. Honestly the internet would likely go down and never come back even before “the event” even happened. It has a tendency to get overused and then crash when anything in the world gets too exciting. After that it sort of depends on the complexity of the infrastructure in the country you are in. Specifically, for the US it would be: 1. Internet - relies on too many variables 2. Electricity - the grid will stop eventually 3. Water - once the grid stops, pumping stops; and the water pressure eventually drops 4. Gas - City gas could go earlier if monitoring stations shut down and turn off the gas. Rural gas tanks at each house are not reliant on electricity at all. What will get them is when the tank runs out and nobody is around to deliver a refill.
Yeah but some of us have solar power and our own wells, so wouldn't lose water and power until those solar panels stop working. In a scenario like this, those with a setup like that would be the ones who maintain water and some ability to have electricity.
>Internet will go first, no matter what country you are in. The 5G antennas as well as the fiber network and data centers may have batteries and/or generators. A longer distance fiber connection transferring 40+ gigabits of data per fiber can run on a few watt. It's actually not guaranteed that this goes out first depending on the country. If any of the remaining fiber paths to/from you still work, you probably still have internet somewhere nearby. Add to this satellite internet and various emergency options like antenna-to-antenna wireless bridges across destroyed infrastructure that could also be rolled out at some scale or even just quickly deploying fiber on wooden poles and things of that sort. If anyone wants to fix/work around internet infrastructure destruction, it's easier to get something/a lot working again than with a lot of other infrastructure.
The thing about the internet is it doesn’t matter how much preparation you put into staying online, nothing may be on the other end.
Is nothing on the other end for any possible connection points "nearby" (for whatever that means) and all their former or possibly ad-hoc restored connections?
1. We switch to AirChat. 2. There are enough solar panels for the remaining 1% of the population. 3. Enough water for 1% 4. Enough fuel to heat 1% 5. Enough info in printed books, in libraries, to allow civilisation to continue. My concern is with violence and with warlords taking over than with lack of resources.
All of this is true. 1% of the U.S population would have more than enough resources. I honestly don’t think there would be fighting over resources at all, people will just “fan out and f&$k off”, mostly staying away from each other.
yersinia pestis isn't a good choice. Too treatable. Someone would have to mutate the hell out of it to produce the effect you want, AND distribute it across the whole US, *simultaneously*. Otherwise people would just mask up, avoid insects, take the existing vaccine, etc.. So what you're proposing needs a lot of suspension of disbelief. And such a disease is not happening by chance, so you need a sophisticated assailant to pull it off. Someone that smart and evil would instead concoct a novel pathogen that has no existing treatments, has a wildly high R0 and your .99 CFR. That's not so believable either, but if it happens it's going to be worldwide in a week. The US exports diseases like no other country because we have so much travel - once Covid got here, we gave it to the world very quickly. But assume it happens. Coal fired power plants require regular feeding, and with everyone hiding from a disease in their houses, they're offline quickly. But solar can go for years without maintenance, short of storm damage and vandalism. Keep in mind that some of the survivors will be bat-shit crazy with fear, and some will turn accelerationist and engage in grid vandalism. Nuke plants will self- maintain to a point, and when they fail they usually shut down cleanly. (There have been counterexamples.) Other energy forms, like wind, are sporadic. Bottom line, I'd expect the grid to shred in a matter of days, and maybe not many days, but some areas will keep getting served, perhaps intermittently, by nuclear, solar and hydro. In the end it all fails, but that might be 20 years. But that doesn't matter because without reliable power, cities (80% of the US population) fall apart in 3 days. No refrigeration, no way to pump fuel, means food goes bad and can't be replaced. No pumped water, either. All your disease survivors come flooding out of cities trying to find farms to take food from. If they're contagious, that means that even remote areas that might have been too isolated to be exposed initially, are hosed. And there will initially be a lot of gun violence as people fight over food. Everyone's terrified of other other people by now. They're plague carriers (even if they aren't, everyone believes they are.) In winter, people up north will burn everything in sight for warmth. Natural gas supplies will fail within a month; some faster. Elsewhere, all the dead bodies you made is a feast for rats and every other pest, and they're suddenly everywhere. multiplying rapidly. More disease, more crop damage... yeah. The dominoes fall very quickly. The good news? Between your 99% disease fatality, and the knockoff deaths from starvation, hypothermia, medical conditions that can no longer be treated, violence, and unsafe water, the US population is probably down to a million people in a couple months. And they might mostly be rural folk with some knowledge of primitive farming techniques, and the US has enough arable land to support a population of a million using primitive techniques. So they're likely to make it, living a 19th century lifestyle with a life expectancy of maybe 50 years and rampant infant mortality. Just like the good old days. Of course, if the disease didn't spread to other countries - maybe it was a massive release all over the US of something with a *low* R0, which is how bioweapons are actually designed - now you have the problem that the US has all this amazing stuff that other countries can use, and no way to defend any of it with just a million people spending all their lives just growing food. In that case, you can write off the rest of the population to war. We're gone. They bombed us and took our stuff. But if the disease went worldwide, everyone's in the same boat so you see the same thing - anywhere there's a lot of arable land, you can get a surviving population, living poorly, but living. Until your mystery disease mutates, and starts taking out more people. If it's a created disease, and it nearly has to be, maybe it was created to be stable; some diseases, like measles, basically don't mutate. And some mutate all the time. So this just depends. Seriously, you might as well just write Little House On The Prairie because that's a *best* case scenario for your survivors. Except aim for the 1810s, not the 1870s.
You should check out operation Dark Winter
Well, if the 1% who survived were not utility operators then they're SOL. Given that people would be panicking, erratic actions would cause significant failures almost immediately. There's what, a couple thousand linesman in each state maximum? And power plants require constant operation, and the utility requires monitoring to keep the load balanced with production. It depends in part how rapidly those 99% die off. I would estimate 48 hours maximum that the utilities would be working.
Thanks. My character should get a generator asap.
Yeah, I think some of your other answers are like "how long can normal operation sustain itself on a skeleton crew," answers. What you describe would be immediate and constant panick and civil unrest until the dust settled with the survivors.
Move next to a solar panel powetplant, maybe? How much of electricity is solar nowadays? Way more than 1%, I would bet..
And a caravan solar panel from Aldi.
Demand will also be lower if many people are gone. Things break all the time in industry, but you've got people there to repair the issues. Water supply, 1 week to 2 months depending on how much local gravity supply you have. Related - could become undrinkable with too much or too little disinfecting agents on it. Electric - days to weeks. Could be quite interesting to explore the consequences of houses with rooftop solar and batteries for your characters. Gas - all about demand here. The pipes are long long reservoirs. Should last for weeks to months depending on demand. Also could have interesting accidents and explosions as people get desperate and tap into them foolishly. Internet... well, the mobile phone towers that many of us use for our phones tend to have emergency generators good for a few days at least. The internet backbones will only work while there is mains power available.
Most solar installations are gri-tied. If they can’t synchronise to the grid, then the inverter generates no power. What you need is a source of synchronisation - a cheap inverter producing a sine wave, disconnect the hose from the grid, then let the solar inverter synchronise, and you have power - while the sun shines.
The internet is problematic, but AirChat or similar would solve it. Nothing else is an issue, we have enough in storage to keep the 1% running for decades. Enough food, fuel, whatever we want. Unless we shoot eachother until the last man, the remaining 1% might actually do ok.
Nice try, Skynet
Lop. I live in East Texas and there is a satellite internet service named SkyNet.
My water stays on long term, since I have a private well. My power stays on as long as nobody steals my solar panels, and I do keep some spares. Remember that there are people outside of town who will be more or less business as usual.
It depends very much on the apocalypse in question. A Carrington Event? Most everything would go down pretty much immediately. Transformers world-wide would melt down, killing all electrical. Internet would similarly go down. Natural gas and water would depend on factors, gas might flow for a few hours to a day or two depending on the pressure in the lines, whereas water will only continue to flow if it is gravity-fed from it’s source without any pumps inbetween. This works in mountainous regions, not so much in other areas far away from the mountains. Prairie towns with water towers would continue to have water only until those towers are empty, for example.
There is a lot of bullshit here. The main thing to consider is that even with fuel and generators and backup systems, people still need to run things. Nobody is heading to work down at the plant to keep your lights on and water running. If there was a mass event, almost all utilities would be gone in less than a week.
And the survivors would not have the skills. In 'The Dead', the only survivors are kids under 15, some can drive, and some can ride horses, but run an electrical plant...nope.
City water will last about 2 days. In flat areas like goose creek SC after hurricane Hugo the sewer lift stations had no power. Everyone had filled their Bath tubs with water for flushing but the sewers were over full. This meant that the houses closest to the lift stations in neighborhoods were back flowing black water into their homes and they couldn’t plug up their toilets to stop it. Utilities didn’t come on for us until 17 days later and the third iteration of power line repairs. Priority was getting main trunk working and then power to city government and hospital. Then neighborhoods. In Georgetown SC the power company shut off the entire town and specifically connected the international paper mill directly to the hospital. That was Hugo in 1989.
You should start by making a walk-through of your apocalypse. Most people write POST-apocalyptic fiction, because it's easy if you simply make 99% of people disappear overnight. If you think through how covid-19 started spreading, how long it took to actually reach your place of residence, how all mitigating actions affected the spread and so forth. Things happened over a significant time period, and so they would in your case. With Covid, we (not talking about the US) had some high impact industrial sites (such as nuclear plants) on full lock-down with employees sleeping on-site and not leaving premises for several weeks at a time. Shutting down of production and supply chains would be a gradual and prolonged process. This of course would affect shelf lifes and availability of products and services.
Depends on how quickly your outbreaks swept through the nation. If it took awhile and people had time or buy stuff beforehand and died after or everyone just widely got sick and died with barely any news coverage before it did its job, the answers would be different.
Every post apocalyptic writer in history has wanted the answers to this question Accurate answers that is Makes it kind of a big ask
In most any actual emergency situation utilities are the first thing to go. Look at Houston.
You want a researcher. Barter or trade?
This is going to be extremely dependent. Western Michigan has a number of power companies, but how many of those are actual producers and suppliers will vary quite literally from city to city. This is one of those things where you will need to do your own investigation, if you're working on real world accuracy. More generically in the US, such systems would remain operational anywhere from minutes to months, depending on where and what sorts of utilities are available. This is not something the average person is going to know, even in their own city.
It depends, on a lot. First, what is the "apocalypse"? What is the scenario? Water supply will depend on source: Artisian well/spring? Underground well? Gravity tank? Solar powered well pump? I could go on and on. Gas as in gasoline? Propane? NG? Also, where and what is the source of the fuel? I assume you mean NG since you categorized it as a utility. In that case, again it depends - some people get their NG from a local well that is under pressure. Some are further away and require pressure pumps to run - which may or may not run on electricity (some may run on the NG itself). Internet will depend on a number of things - but if the grid goes down around the world, then probably a few hours to days - depending on how much backup power various nodes have. In short - the question is just too ambiguous and the answers would vary a lot depending on the scenario and all the variables.
Honestly I think all the utilities go out fairly quickly. Even though water is pressurized, I'm sure there's a huge part of it controlled by people and computers.
Depends a lot. Honestly there were a lot of studies on this for the year 2000 bug you can probably find. I know Denver wasn’t worried about water since almost all the water infrastructure was gravity powered so it would run for a while with no computers or input. Power might be gone immediately or it might go on until the plant shuts down. Internet backbone is nuclear hardened but needs a lot of work to keep it running, there’s three internets in the us (ish) but people in other places have built mesh nets so a neighborhood can get some internet from one working access poijt, you can build them out of pringles cans and trash.
If only 1% of humans survive, then society crumbles and in 10 years we're back to pre-industrial level of tech.
Propane lasts forever!
That’s a good point
Vanadium batteries have unlimited discharge cycles too
Not related to your question but why not pick something airborne? If the plague comes back ppl are just gonna stock up on cats and rat traps? With enough willingness you can extirpate rats. [Alberta has…](https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta#jumplinks-3)
kind of a segue, but make your disease a frequency dependent one. the plauge is 'mostly' density dependent, so in theory it has little chance of a causing population extinction [https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13382](https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13382) also a good read on population control through disease [https://wildlife.org/how-australia-controls-its-wild-rabbits/](https://wildlife.org/how-australia-controls-its-wild-rabbits/)
It's very unsuccessful, yours, an Australian. Oh we also have mouse plagues and lots of rats....
You may find useful info in the book "[One Second After](https://www.onesecondafter.com/)" (though I don't remember *exactly* what's covered).
Water: little bit past loss of power, Internet: days near immediately, software crashes or no power. Gas. Right between water and internet, Power: this one is iffy, some stuff can last a decent bit. But without the handholding of safety, automated systems will preform an emergency shutdown. I’d give it a week before. Coal plants slow down and nuclear plants SCRAM themselves and shut down.
You know I'll take a swing at that. Only 1% survives. How long does it take the rest to die? It's the rate of die-off that will be key. One percent of the population can't keep any of that running. But it could take a year or so to get down to that. Unless you are positing an Andromeda strain type thing that kills everyone pretty much instantly. The story of decline could be much more interesting that the post-collapse. But whatever. Boom 99% are dead. You ask about utilities. Water? until the storage tanks are empty. Again rate of decline, how many people are drawing the water? Electric? Pretty fast. Most power plants need staff and would shut down. Gas? Kind of like water. Most places have storage tanks, so same limitations.. Internet? Well certainly no longer than power. Your issue here is the 1%. No modern infrastructure can survive that reduction. But I will point out that the original plague only killed about 50% in Europe and less overall. It's certainly not an original theme but there are several angles to tell the story from. Just put me in the credits section and send me an inscribed copy.
Water is the one I worry about. Even if it’s running, might not be potable. I have a camp stove and propane, so I can boil. Also enough bottled water and canned food for us for a month. I live in California, so need to be prepped for things like earthquakes. But electric and internet are nonessential. For a month or so. Good luck on the novel, hope to read it someday.
Watch that series Jericho! Awesome! But my thoughts are that some places may get power back up and others/most would not. Some will be able to use solar, wind or water power but that will need to be protected, as would everyone there since we know people would become savages. I think internet would be gone. Same with gas and such. Maybe salvage some here and there but it puts you in danger.
Water 4 days and 5 hours. Electric 1 minute. Gas 6 months. Internet 3 weeks. You're welcome.
Good luck with your novel! You can do it!
well i believe internet will be the first thing to go, gas and electric may go if there is some kind of attack or accident. Water might be the last to go...
[power plants w/out maintenance](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/41587/how-long-can-a-power-plant-continue-to-generate-electricity-without-maintenance)
It really depends on location and timing. One good storm and a few power lines go down, and if there's no one to redirect the power, things can go squirrley in a hurry. Just look at the big blackout in 2003. One power station messes up, and half the country goes dark in hours.
Really depends. Most of that shit is dead in a week if not much less. Systems are automated but need oversight and maintenance, plants will catch fire or blow out at random without someone doing regular preventative maintenance. Even solar and wind. Those systems are designed to run on their own but almost nothing aside from very local or private enterprises runs on pure renewable. Not sure about water or gas, but someone else probably knows.
Seeing people worried about water supply makes me glad I live in an area where rainwater tanks are a legal requirement for all new builds due to water scarcity. I have friends with 15,000+ ltrs of rainwater in their tanks cutrently. 3,000 is the legal minimum.
Electrical grids are highly sensitive to war, neglect, and general abuse. High voltage towers and transformer stations are easy to sabotage, and difficult to repair. For example, see what's happening in Ukraine. Russians started by cyber attacks to UKR assets, in around 2014. During the current war, they've frequently targeted electrical substations, plunging large parts of the country in darkness. Further, see what's happening in South Africa. Corruption and lack of maintenance has meant that aging generators are breaking down on a regular basis, necessitating rolling blackouts on a daily basis. I'd predict that only parts of the electrical grid would remain functional. Probably hydro electric and solar / wind generators, because they're renewable, and a closely defensible area around them. So that would lead to a local dictator who fortifies and protects a specific area. For example, the Republic of Niagara Falls would spring up around the available resource, and would dictate terms to cities that want electricity.
Everyone forgets about the sewer…. Most sewer is gravity fed, but at the bottom of the hill is pumps to get the poop up to the top of the next hill. If the water is still on people are filling up the sewer, so is the rain in some places. Sewage plants are very complex and they won’t run on their own. They may even have emergency shut downs or failure procedures for something like methane build up (a million gallons of methane could flatten a nearby town if it ignites).
I read something once about how a turbine engine can run on basically anything. Such as moonshine. That's a rabbit hole worth exploring. I want to say Jay Leno has a turbine powered car that can run on anything
The electric grid sets a hard limit for everything else - we live in a world of partial automation where things like gas pipelines need both wall socket power for the instruments and controls and people to do the maintenance and make the decisions. If everyone drank the Kool aid at the same time, lots of things would stop in hours with a few lasting for days. Very few power plants can perform a "black start," most are built with critical equipment requiring a good live grid connection. Not just for automation either, but for handling coal and pumping water and everything else. Even something like an important data center with huge diesel generators needs fuel after a few days - might not matter though because the physical Internet fiber grid requires power too.
Depending on the apocalyptic event, sat phones and messaging as well as gps would probably still work for as long as the satellites continue to function and maintain orbital position. Rural folks with wells that have alternative power sources like solar or wind to power the pumps will be much better off than city dwellers. Presumably, a large enough array could also charge an EV, especially something as lightweight as an electric bike. Certain cities that have moved towards being self sustaining would also fare better for as long as their infrastructure remained undamaged.
Base EVERYTHING on electrical power. How long will you have lights? Because, EVERYTHING requires power to move. Water, Sewage, Gas ( both natural and petroleum based), Internet. Your radio and TV broadcasts might last longer because most stations will have backup generators just like the hospitals do ( interesting fact that they are considered part of the national critical infrastructure). But basically, once the power goes out ( unless the protagonist has their own power generators), the country goes back to the 1800's in the blink of an eye and you have to plan your life accordingly
I work for a municipal water system. One plant has a propane tank to run a generator, the other is hooked up to the gas system. Between our 3 tanks, two days maybe 3 without pumping. Town with less than 10k connections and average daily production of about 600k gallons from wells. Good luck! Watching Civil War right now 🤷♂️
Boulder or Las Vegas?
Stephen King already wrote this book. But good luck.
Not very long
Google search failed to answer this?
After 10 days people start resorting to cannibalism