90% dead at the end of a year after complete grid loss

- November 21, 2022

It only takes two 5 kiloton nukes in orbit at particular places to blow the entire U.S. grid.

The U.S. death toll at the end of a year without electricity is the high end estimate.

Some crucial parts for our grid are no longer made in the U.S.

1. Reliable protein source you raise yourself. Cuy. Floor to ceiling shelves, plywood boxes, wire tops. Got the idea from a family in Peru.

2. Water. A well. In some urban environments you can hand drill a well…. if you know how. There are you tube videos that will show you how. I bought a hand pump from a local hardware store for 64 bucks.

3. Tools to grow food.

4. Protection.

You can learn about what else you need by thinking about what you will need.

For cooking…. Folding hand grills over cinder block stoves fueled by dried wood for me. Can also boil water..

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I’ve heard that 90% of people will die within a year of the grid going down stat before. I know many will die shortly after an event like this happens because our society is so just-in-time shipping dependent, but I truly do not think that 90% will die. 

At most maayybbee 20%, and that is a stretch. IF two EMPs hit over a country, knocking out it’s grid, many other countries will notice and immediately take action to help. Maybe I’m an optimist about this, but I believe that people and governments will react and take action to send in supplies, resources, and help. They may not be able to get everything up and going like nothing happened within a few months, but I’m thinking they will give people what they need to keep them alive.

I also strongly believe that we as citizens will come together and figure out how to halt the death toll. Community gardens, public clean drinking water depots, and more.

Those with reliant medical conditions, those who don’t prep whatsoever and have no stores of food and water in their homes, time of year depending (winter will see many people die from cold), and there will be chaos and killings unfortunately. It won’t be ideal, preppers will have a better chance at surviving, but I think and hope that people will come together and get through something horrible like that.

Those are my thoughts, what do you think about them?

 

I happen to agree with the government studies that show up to 90% would die.  Up to…could be less.  A lot would depend on what happens after the attack on the US.  I don’t see that as the end of the conflict… just the beginning.  Our military would still be intact as would be our government.  As you may have heard in the talks about the conflict in Ukraine, any attack on a NATO country is an attack on the whole of NATO.  It would not be just the US responding.

Secondly, I don’t see the people coming together after a crisis, with all working together for the common good.  IMO, those days are long past.  I see chaos as folks do anything, and I mean anything, to stay alive.  But even if they did, you think there is enough seed, tools etc. sitting around to eventually feed hundreds of millions of Americans?  Not to even speak of the knowledge to actually grow something.  If folks in the country grow something, you think they will be shipping the food off to the cities or feeding themselves?  How would the food get to the cities without refrigeration or transportation.  How do you disperse limited food to hundreds of millions?

Then what happens if the attack is in the late fall or winter, where nothing would grow for months?  If other areas of the world attempt to help, how long would it take to organize such a relief effort?  Once again, if a shipment made it to the US, how would you disperse the food to hundreds of millions?  Nothing like this has never been attempted.

 

I see your point and you are definitely right on many things. Dispersing food to hundreds of millions would be quite the feat and would take an incredible amount of time and resources to do so. We as elementary school preppers as you call it, I like that term, need to store and prepare to endure however long it takes before help arrives, and be able to get to that help when help does arrive.

 

My intent is not to insult any preppers.  I hope calling your everyday prepper an elementary level prepper is not insulting to anyone.  My only point is, prepping for this level event ain’t for the faint of heart.  No one can prepare or plan for everything but that should not keep anyone from prepping.  My advice to preppers is to start small and slow but consistently add to your preps.  When you reach the level that you have strived for… don’t stop.  Strive for the next level (grade).

 

Redneck, I didn’t take it as insulting either and think it was a great way to demonstrate varying levels of preparedness. I am rather prepared myself and still consider myself in the elementary school level of prepping (which is 110% fine). And something like graduate school level of prepping is becoming self sufficient, off-grid, etc.. That is a level of preparedness that very few will ever reach, and many never even have to. 

It’s like the 80/20 principle talked about here, 20% of the work will take you 80% of the way, and that is great!

 

To prep for such an event is taking prepping to the graduate school level, when most preppers are in elementary school.  Nothing wrong with elementary school level.  That type of prepping would save you from most crisis events… just not something like the grid going down for an extended time.

You might hand drill a well, if you happen to have the tools required, the knowledge to actually do it and a water table low enough that you could reach it by hand.  I think a better option is treating the water that is already on the surface in ponds, lakes, rivers, etc.  In my case, I have a well.  I also have the tools & knowledge to pull the pump from the well during an extended power outage.  I also have the well bucket that can be lowered by hand to access the water down the well.  I likewise have a flex well pump (AC or DC) in a Faraday enclosure, as well as several solar panels to pressurize my existing plumbing.

You say tools to grow food.  Do you realize how many tools you would need to be self sufficient?  What about seed?  You keep enough seed in storage to be self sufficient during a crisis?  Insecticides in stock?  Fungicides?  Fertilizer? Do you currently garden?  What varieties would you grow & why?  Do you have orchards, berries, nuts already growing?  Do you know how to raise livestock for this source of reliable protein?  What animals would you raise and why?  Which would be best in a crisis?  You have the knowledge to raise farm animals?

Protection is a whole different story.  It is not so simple as owning guns & having ammo in stock.  Most folk think of protecting their stuff from invading hordes fleeing the city.  That is possible but I say the most dangerous threat is a hungry neighbor.  You prepared to shoot your neighbors?  What stops them from shooting you?  They aren’t invaders and have a right to be out & about?

Graduate school is tough and takes many years and a considerable investment in resources & knowledge building.  It is a long & expensive process.  

 

I just read The Prepared’s article on EMPs and it said there is a 1-3% chance every year of a coronial mass ejection (Sun EMP) which would knock out the grid. That could be an event where my optimistic outlook gets shut down and would affect not just one particular country, but possibly all the world at once. 

I have a better chance of getting hit by an end of the world as we know it Sun EMP than I do of winning the lottery. 

 

 Read 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Admiral James Stavridis (Ret) for a very informed view of what might happen once nukes (whatever kind) are exchanged. Admiral Stavridis told an interviewer that he wrote a work of fiction about a serious topic because it allowed him to say more than otherwise.

Spoiler: not every nuke in the world will be fired.

IMO, Redneck knows more about this topic than anyone else on this forum.

 

…..I respectfully disagree…. somewhat. Some advances have been made in grid hardening…. so it may not be as long as you think for some parts of the US and that 2, 5 kiloton blasts have been debated by experts several times. It’s NOT cut and dried that it would take out all systems. It’s all theory. I have a family member who was an Air Force subject matter expert on this very subject and he’s optimistic that it wouldn’t be as bad as the doom & gloom “experts” say. Remember, they have an “agenda”-more money for research and selling survival supplies and books! Catastrophic? Oh hell yes…end of the world? Maybe not. This coming from a man who built a working high voltage rail gun as his high school senior project and was darn near drafted into the AF 7 days later and put into a weapons research lab. He knows his stuff.  

 

That’s impressive.

I worked with a developer with a similar story. He’s a Brit and as a young teen built his own rocket and rocket fuel. He and his younger brother didn’t know if it would work but when it reached 5,000 feet it was picked up by ‘the Forces’. It took them a long time to find their rocket but the police were there waiting for them. He said the ‘Forces’ were nice to him and encouraged him with some restrictions. He went in when he was older.

 

The Air Force paid my way thru college and in return, I was a Minuteman Missile Combat Crew member for 4 years.  Last 2 years I was a crew commander.  I did have the opportunity to actually launch a Minuteman from Vandenberg AFB in California.  They removed the nuclear component of the 3 reentry warheads and replaced those sections  with telemetry components & self destruct mechanisms.   This missile was pulled from its launch silo outside Minot, ND and shipped to our test facility & range at Vandenberg.

This is an actual picture of my missile taking off.  I was lucky enough to see it lift off myself.  At our base, Minot AFB, to launch a Minuteman it requires 2 separate launch control centers to issue a launch vote… key turns.  At Vandenberg, we only used one launch control center for the test launch, so to enable the missile to launch, there were 2 separate crews in the launch control center at the launch time.  My crew was the first crew, so at the countdown, we turned keys and that gave the missile one vote.  Maintenance crews then replaced the equipment drawers that issue the launch vote with new drawers.  During this time, my commander and I made our way topside.  By the time new drawers were installed and the 2nd crew turned keys, we were outside & witnessed what you see below.  Our warheads targeted a building in the central Pacific… and hit same.

 

most preppers I speak to think it will be more like 99%.

most of the population do not prepare, do not have more than a few days food in the house at any one time, most dont even have a flashlight, when the big one comes most will be dead within a month never mind a year, no food no water no chance.