Hello world

[lovingboth]

The power went off just after nine this morning. A big plume of smoke could be seen towards Crystal Palace and we had a call from someone coming over that the trains weren't going along one of the two lines near us.

A call from someone closer revealed that it was an electricity sub-station going bang, and could he come over to do some washing because it looked like taking four or five hours before the fire was extinguished and - apparently - might be days before power would be restored.

Gosh that was frightening... Never mind having to do all clothes and dish washing by hand, with cold water (gas heating/hot water, but electric pumps), never mind quite probably no school for JA next week, never mind losing a recently refilled freezer's worth of food... no internet!

Fortunately, it came back a few minutes ago, so the power cut was about three hours long.

How long is civilization meant to be away from breaking down? As someone who grew up quite happily with power cuts in the early 70s (miners strikes leading to coal shortages at power stations) it feels like it got shorter.

Comments

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

If road transport into London is substantially stopped for a day (eg fuel crisis), people will start panic-buying and generally panicking.

I think I've told you before that there's 2 1/2 days worth of food in London...

[barakta]

Don't people have more than 2.5 days worth of food in their houses? We could probably just about do a month on tinned stuff, pasta and rice bought in bulk.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Lots of people don't - if you have a largeish family all the pasta and rice could disappear in under a week, and that's hardly a balanced diet.
But the main thing bringing it down is all the schools, hospitals and supermarkets etc doing 'just in time' delivery, because they don't have the storage space. If I've recently done a shop, then I could easily feed 4 adults for a fortnight. If not...

[topbit.livejournal.com]

How much of that food would be in the fridge, or freezer though?

[tanais.livejournal.com]

Without power it will only last as long as the insulating ability of the fridge/freezer (usually 2 days in summer) power infrastructure is one of the first to go along with telecoms. Armed forces and police are advised on a three-day crisis timetable with days 1-2 as "get supplies in... or get out - fast" scenarios.