Speaker 1: The technology. What's text from dot com? Heyden, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I am joined today
Speaker 1: by Joe McCormick, my co host of Worth Thinking, one
Speaker 1: of my two colors, Forward Drink and writer extraordinaire and
Speaker 1: all around hoopie food. Joe, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that word you said means, but okay,
Speaker 1: you need to read Hitchecker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Ford Prefect is one who food who knows where his
Speaker 1: towels in the back of my brain. So well, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me on today, Jonathan, especially to talk
Speaker 1: about this really exciting topic. Yeah, completing utter breakdown of society. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So first, Joe, before I get into the listener request
Speaker 1: that prompted this entire episode, I should let you know
Speaker 1: that the previous episodes that went up and we're just recorded,
Speaker 1: we're with Ben Bolin about the Manhattan Project, so it
Speaker 1: deals nicely into this one. Um. So, the this discussion
Speaker 1: actually comes to us because a listener, Benjamin Gen McCall
Speaker 1: on Twitter's wrote to us and said, after watching Mad Max,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what tech would be viable in a post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic world, what which tech would be jerry rigged? So really,
Speaker 1: this is such a huge topic. We could end up
Speaker 1: having discussions about all sorts of different doomsday scenarios. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. One of the options we talked about for
Speaker 1: this episode was just coming up with a list of
Speaker 1: like the maybe, uh, I don't know, weird tech hacks
Speaker 1: you could make, yeah, in a post apocalyptic scenario. But
Speaker 1: then we realized, like, uh, you know, we're not the
Speaker 1: inventors of the waste land, right, Yeah, there there are
Speaker 1: so many different science fiction stories out there that cover
Speaker 1: this sort of material that two to kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: we could have, I guess gone through each one in
Speaker 1: Gray did it on a plausibility scale, but that would
Speaker 1: have taken forever to sure. But we figured maybe a
Speaker 1: better approach would be to say, Okay, let's imagine there's
Speaker 1: a scenario that has represented a technological apocalypse. Suddenly all
Speaker 1: of the technology that sustains our lives that usually just
Speaker 1: runs in the background and keeps us happy without us
Speaker 1: even noticing what it does for us? What if all
Speaker 1: that went away? Yeah, so we're not so much focusing
Speaker 1: on specific scenarios. We will some of them will come
Speaker 1: into play because they factor into, uh, the contingencies we
Speaker 1: might we might use in the case of a catastrophic
Speaker 1: failure of technology, Like there could be somewhere you say, hey,
Speaker 1: what if we use blah blah blah. So well, if
Speaker 1: the reason for the catastrophe, if he was this, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, would not work. We'll get into that. But
Speaker 1: but just some general catastrophes that that could be the
Speaker 1: ones that lead into this nuclear war would be a
Speaker 1: big one. Yeah, right, so that people always want to say,
Speaker 1: zombie attack, zombie attack. Okay, so some store of pandemic
Speaker 1: would be a possibility, right, The more realistic version of
Speaker 1: and pandemics could end up being something that is directly
Speaker 1: affecting people, or could be indirectly affecting by killing off
Speaker 1: let's say, crops or livestock anything like that that could
Speaker 1: lead to famine obviously, could also capitulate into technological failures sure,
Speaker 1: like is imagined in the movie Interstellar where they talk
Speaker 1: about the idea that there's like crop blight getting all
Speaker 1: of their food supply. Yeah. So in that case, you
Speaker 1: could end up having a vast reduction of the population
Speaker 1: on Earth, which in turn would cause technological issues. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other ones to supervolcanic eruption
Speaker 1: could potentially at least four leading to catastrophic climate change.
Speaker 1: Really anything that leads to catastrophic climate change, So really
Speaker 1: just waiting around. Sadly, I wish that weren't the case,
Speaker 1: but uh so, there are a lot of different scenarios
Speaker 1: that could lead to this, and and we got a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different variations of that in literature. And
Speaker 1: at the end of this episode, Joe and I are
Speaker 1: going to talk about our favorite post apocalyptic stories and scenarios. Uh.
Speaker 1: The reason why I'm putting it at the end is
Speaker 1: so that we have something wonderful to look forward to
Speaker 1: on our journey through terror. But honestly, my favorite ones
Speaker 1: are kind of depressing, so so are mine. It's fine,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's kind of hard to have an
Speaker 1: upbeat post apocalyptic scenario. I promise you folks, you're at
Speaker 1: least gonna hear us talk about zardas. Yes, Zar does.
Speaker 1: But okay, what's the first thing that we need to
Speaker 1: talk about? The big tune in the basket, as I
Speaker 1: might say from I think I said that recently. I
Speaker 1: think pretty sure that was a forward thinking but I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely certain. But let's get that out of the basket.
Speaker 1: It's power. Yeah, the power grid. Yeah, the power grid
Speaker 1: where our energy comes from, because almost everything that sustains
Speaker 1: our life depends on it. Yeah, and on some form
Speaker 1: or another, If not directly, then indirectly. Correct. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the power grid is the big one. Let's say that
Speaker 1: whatever the catastrophe is has hit the power grid, and
Speaker 1: we're largely going to be focusing on the United States
Speaker 1: because that's where Joe and I live. But power grids
Speaker 1: across the world have varying degrees of vulnerability. Many of
Speaker 1: them are very old. There are elements of the United
Speaker 1: States power grid that date back to the late nineteenth century. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, our current power grid is not there. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I hate it when that happens. Our press temporary power grid, yes,
Speaker 1: is not necessarily in the best of shape. No, this
Speaker 1: could come as a rude awakening to some people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So here's here's the deal. First of all, the power
Speaker 1: grid is incredibly complex. We talk about it as if
Speaker 1: it's this big united thing, but really it's a collection
Speaker 1: of lots of smaller things. So in most basic terms,
Speaker 1: how does it work? All? Right? Most basic terms, if
Speaker 1: you want to look at kind of the the microcosm,
Speaker 1: the individual element that makes up the power grid, you're
Speaker 1: looking at a power plant, uh, something that is generating
Speaker 1: electricity through some means. There are a lot of different
Speaker 1: versions of this. There are coal fired power plants that
Speaker 1: use coal to generate heat, turns water into steam. Steam
Speaker 1: turns a turbine that's what generates the electricity. Uh. Have
Speaker 1: a hydro electric plant, hydro electric that's using the power
Speaker 1: of water moving turbines in a similar fashion, there are
Speaker 1: wind turbines that use wind to do that. Solar generation
Speaker 1: where you're you're you're really just converting solar power into electricity.
Speaker 1: That's one of the few that doesn't require steam or
Speaker 1: or turbines. You've got, of course, nuclear power, which is
Speaker 1: really like coal fired on steroids, except it's using obviously
Speaker 1: nuclear fuel, not burning coal, and no smoke, no smoke,
Speaker 1: there's lots of steam. Uh. Yeah, if you're if you
Speaker 1: are have designed it properly, it's perfectly safe. At least
Speaker 1: the operation is the nuclear fuel and the waste generated
Speaker 1: is something else that is an issue, But we're not
Speaker 1: going to go into that because it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: a side issue to what we're talking about today. Though,
Speaker 1: if you are interested in that, we did a couple
Speaker 1: of episodes before thinking about that some time last year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those were a lot of fun. So definitely recommend us.
Speaker 1: One might be a word to describe how we Well,
Speaker 1: it was fun nuclear way. It's fun in the sense
Speaker 1: of really trying to wrap your brain around something that's
Speaker 1: truly complicated, not just the technology, but the political and
Speaker 1: cultural side of it. Uh. Then you also have things like,
Speaker 1: um not, there's there's natural gas uh. And there's also
Speaker 1: oil power power plants, power plants that rely on oil
Speaker 1: belthough that's a very small percentage of the ones that
Speaker 1: are used here in the United States. So you've got
Speaker 1: these power plants. They generate the electricity a the The
Speaker 1: electricity is sent through a transformer which steps up the voltage.
Speaker 1: The reason for this is that the higher voltages will
Speaker 1: transmit over a greater distance with less loss of energy. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's going to be alternating current going out through
Speaker 1: all of the wires of the grid to the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Direct current will not work in a transformer. You have
Speaker 1: to use alternating current. So yeah, it steps up the
Speaker 1: power you have. You have different types of lines. There's
Speaker 1: a distribution power line that is pretty heavy duty. That's
Speaker 1: what carries the super high voltage that gets stepped down
Speaker 1: by a different type of transformer for the power lines
Speaker 1: that you typically see in the neighborhood. So like the
Speaker 1: telephone polls that have the power lines um dangling from them,
Speaker 1: particularly on a hot George today, Uh, those are those
Speaker 1: have been stepped down from the major transmission lines. There's
Speaker 1: another transformer that will step that power down again before
Speaker 1: it goes into a building or a home or whatever
Speaker 1: to be the proper voltage for us here. Uh. So
Speaker 1: that's your basic setup, right. That's and the power grid
Speaker 1: is made up of lots of these. By the way,
Speaker 1: these power plants are run by different organizations, different entities,
Speaker 1: so it's not all a unified thing. You're in the
Speaker 1: United States and not just like the government or something
Speaker 1: privately owned power generation company. It's not like the monopoly
Speaker 1: board where you just you land on the utility and
Speaker 1: you own it and that's all of it. It's not
Speaker 1: the way it works. So it's the real monopoly. You
Speaker 1: should be able to win monopoly as soon as you
Speaker 1: buy electric right, like exactly like, Hey, do you want
Speaker 1: power in your hotel? Guess a lot, buddy, I am it.
Speaker 1: So as it turns out that's you know, that's not
Speaker 1: the case. There are all these different entities across the
Speaker 1: power grid that and that generate power, and they're doing
Speaker 1: it with different types of hardware and software, which makes
Speaker 1: it even more complicated. And we'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit when we get into cybersecurity. So um. Because
Speaker 1: of this complexity, there are lots of potential points of failure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the complexity both cushions the power grid from failure
Speaker 1: and also is vulnerable to to further failure. It all
Speaker 1: depends upon the actual conditions that exist at any given time, right.
Speaker 1: I guess in the best case scenarios, all of the
Speaker 1: interconnectedness of it would mean in some cases you have
Speaker 1: some degree of redundancy. Yeah. It's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you think about the Internet, how if a a single
Speaker 1: computer goes down, traffic can route around it. The power
Speaker 1: grid's kind of like that. But depending upon where you are,
Speaker 1: you may you know, if a power plant goes offline
Speaker 1: for whatever reasons, if it is quote unquote tripped, which
Speaker 1: means that it turns off essentially for any amount of time.
Speaker 1: You may be without power until it's returned to service. Uh.
Speaker 1: Other areas might be able to receive power through rerouting
Speaker 1: or whatever. But the goal, of course is to create
Speaker 1: a smart grid that can respond to those issues in
Speaker 1: real time. But the reality is we do not have
Speaker 1: a truly smart grid throughout the United States. It's not
Speaker 1: a unified system like that. Here's an interesting fact I'm
Speaker 1: seeing in the notes that I wasn't aware of before.
Speaker 1: We've got three interconnected grids in the United States. That's correct. This. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Eastern Interconnection, which you would think at first, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be the East Coast, right, Well, yes, it's
Speaker 1: the East Coast all the way out to the Rocky Mountains. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the Eastern Interconnection. It's a large part of the nation.
Speaker 1: And then you've got the Western Interconnection, which is the
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. And then you've got the
Speaker 1: Texas Interconnected System which covers Texas big shock there. So uh,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in that electricity sense either, So
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to, but yes, you've got these three
Speaker 1: larger interconnected grids that collectively make the power grid of
Speaker 1: the United States. There are two related concepts when it
Speaker 1: comes to power grids that we want to talk about.
Speaker 1: There's reliability and there's resiliency. So reliability is how consistent
Speaker 1: is that power grid? How frequently are there any interruptions
Speaker 1: in power? The fewer the more reliable. Obviously, so if
Speaker 1: you're having freak went brown outs, that's not reliable. No,
Speaker 1: it's not reliable. It would be rough to UH, and
Speaker 1: obviously we have had periods of that in the history
Speaker 1: of the United States and in different regions. Then there's resiliency,
Speaker 1: which refers to the power grid's ability to withstand adverse
Speaker 1: effects like solar flare activity or severe weather or you know,
Speaker 1: an apocalyptic scenario like if an e MP went off.
Speaker 1: By the way, if an e MP goes off, electromagnetic pulse,
Speaker 1: that's what that stands for. UH, there's not I don't
Speaker 1: think there's a power grid on the world that is
Speaker 1: resilient enough to withstand a truly powerful electromagnetic pulse. UM.
Speaker 1: Also the interesting thing with those is that you know,
Speaker 1: you hear about these, like especially in movies. You'll see UH,
Speaker 1: like Oceans eleven uses an e MP at one point
Speaker 1: to knock out the security system of casino, because if
Speaker 1: you're gonna do it, this will go a whole long.
Speaker 1: Um yeh, then they get back outside somehow. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at any well, you know, hey, it's a movie. Um.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, the the e MPs, depending upon
Speaker 1: how powerful they are, they and how close you are
Speaker 1: to the pulse. Uh, that can affect all sorts of
Speaker 1: levels of electronics, although generally speaking, the larger the system,
Speaker 1: the more vulnerable it is, because the more more likely
Speaker 1: it will have current running through it as a result
Speaker 1: of this electromagnetic pulse. It's the same principle that's affecting
Speaker 1: the transformers. It's just imagine that it's this enormous pulse
Speaker 1: that isn't a controlled element of the power grid. So uh,
Speaker 1: most e mp s would probably affect large systems like
Speaker 1: the power grid, but leave smaller stuff like The less
Speaker 1: complicated and smaller it is, the less likely it's going
Speaker 1: to be directly affected by the MP's. Yeah, so your
Speaker 1: battery operated stuff might work for a while at least
Speaker 1: until the batteries run out, even in the face of
Speaker 1: an MP, unless you happy to be really close to
Speaker 1: where the pulse goes off. Alright, so resiliency and reliability
Speaker 1: to very important concepts. I read a report and boy
Speaker 1: was this sort of a report hard. It was a
Speaker 1: report card. Yeah, The American Society of Civil Engineers released
Speaker 1: a report card that grade of the United States on
Speaker 1: various elements of its infrastructure. And this came out in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. The whole thing is available online. It's
Speaker 1: a very interactive site that will depress you if you
Speaker 1: live in the United States because overall US got a
Speaker 1: D plus and that was for everything. That included things
Speaker 1: like not just electricity and energy, but drinking water, bridges, damns,
Speaker 1: hazardous waste handling, and aviation were also in there. Um,
Speaker 1: none of the grades were great. So what's are like
Speaker 1: gym class grade that's waiting it up? Oh right, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them are a little better than others. Actually,
Speaker 1: D plus being the the average the g p A.
Speaker 1: That's also what we got for energy. So it's still
Speaker 1: a failing grade, but it's one of the higher ones.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, it's not a D like are I think?
Speaker 1: I think bridges got a D? So like, so you're
Speaker 1: telling me, is I really need to charge my cell
Speaker 1: phone before the zombies attack and you really need to
Speaker 1: make sure your your your commute home doesn't go over bridges. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they also, by the way, graded individual states. Not every
Speaker 1: state got a grade, but Georgia did. We gotta ce.
Speaker 1: Oh so that's better than average. Yeah, we we it's
Speaker 1: better than the average score for the United States. By
Speaker 1: the way, in case you are unfamiliar with this grading score,
Speaker 1: the scale of grading, Uh, the school's not used that anymore,
Speaker 1: not not not universally, and we have listeners from all
Speaker 1: over the world. So this would be a grade system
Speaker 1: that typically goes A, B and C would be the
Speaker 1: passing grades see being average, B being good, and A
Speaker 1: being superior. Then you have D, which is technically a
Speaker 1: failing grade, and you've got plus and minus as well.
Speaker 1: So on the highside, D plus would be oh, you
Speaker 1: almost passed, but you didn't. Uh. I don't know if
Speaker 1: anyone who has ever used E, but F means fail.
Speaker 1: I thought a D was just a shameful passing grade.
Speaker 1: I always thought of C as well, maybe, but I
Speaker 1: always thought C was passing like C minus was the
Speaker 1: for me, the threshold of passing. Essentially, that was the
Speaker 1: equivalent if you looked at it percentiles A seventy folks
Speaker 1: right in and let us know what you think about
Speaker 1: D S. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a failing grade,
Speaker 1: but I could be wrong. Uh F is outright fail
Speaker 1: D is like on the cusp um. So maybe I
Speaker 1: guess if you're a glass half full kind of guy,
Speaker 1: you might say that D is a passing grade D
Speaker 1: plus for energy. Energy, by the way, was not just
Speaker 1: the power grid. It was all the elements of energy
Speaker 1: in the United States, but they did focus quite a
Speaker 1: bit on the power grid. They reported the aging infrastructure
Speaker 1: of the power grid as a huge problem, some of
Speaker 1: it again dating all the way back to the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, so it's pretty old um. And they also
Speaker 1: said that they these older facilities and potucular are they're
Speaker 1: prone for failure for things like just the fact that
Speaker 1: it's such an aging infrastructure. They're not very good at
Speaker 1: handling uh adverse conditions like weather events or solar flares,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. And they said that the significant
Speaker 1: power outages in general are on the rise. They said
Speaker 1: there were seventy six recorded significant power outages. They didn't
Speaker 1: define what significant means in the stuff I was reading,
Speaker 1: so I'm not sure exactly what that refers to, but
Speaker 1: seventy six of them in two thousand seven and three
Speaker 1: hundred seven of them in two thousand eleven. So it's
Speaker 1: a problem that is getting worse. So that's that's an issue.
Speaker 1: But they also had some less awful news in it.
Speaker 1: So they said that the United States is having a
Speaker 1: very slow growth in population in general, the rate of
Speaker 1: increases is fairly low when it comes to the need
Speaker 1: for electricity. So, in other words, our population isn't growing
Speaker 1: so quickly that our need for electricity is outpacing our
Speaker 1: ability to generate electricity, and in fact, there probably won't
Speaker 1: be a significant issue until around And that's that's saying
Speaker 1: that we don't we haven't invested in our ability to
Speaker 1: generate electricity. They of course very strongly advocate that we
Speaker 1: should be investing in that, both in the the power
Speaker 1: generation or the electricity generation and the transmission of electricity.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's look at one particular type of
Speaker 1: threat to our energy infrastructure. How about a cyber attack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this on tech stuff quite a few times. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, could foreign hackers just shut down the United
Speaker 1: States with some with some smart malicious computer people, probably
Speaker 1: not the United States, but certainly elements within the United
Speaker 1: States very targeted ones. Yes, because this is not a
Speaker 1: surprise we have discovered, we being people in the United States,
Speaker 1: not myself in particular, UM that there are elements of code,
Speaker 1: malicious code within several different facilities throughout the United States,
Speaker 1: within our our power grid infrastructure. UM A lot a
Speaker 1: lot of them originating from China, some from Russia. But
Speaker 1: there are elements of code that clearly have been planted there,
Speaker 1: possibly as a way to weed out vulnerabilities and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in the effort to exploit them in some
Speaker 1: potential future. So it's not necessarily the case that these
Speaker 1: are all going to shut off on the same day.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's probably not going to happen. And it's
Speaker 1: largely because of what I talked about earlier, the fact
Speaker 1: that the power grid is actually made up of all
Speaker 1: this diverse you know, hardware and software run by different organizations.
Speaker 1: It means that there's not a unified means of shutting
Speaker 1: everything down, so any attacks would probably be very specific
Speaker 1: and people know to look out for this stuff now.
Speaker 1: So there's there's there might be individual utilities that are
Speaker 1: lagging behind because they're not paying enough attention to this problem.
Speaker 1: But it's not a universal issue. So in other words,
Speaker 1: it's kind of patchwork, right. You You may be that
Speaker 1: the target you've selected is really vulnerable, but also means
Speaker 1: that the effects are going to be localized to that area.
Speaker 1: You can't. You can't say like, oh, he has a
Speaker 1: big red switch and when we push it that lights
Speaker 1: go out. It's not gonna be like that. Also, I
Speaker 1: don't know why I would, Well, they're actually Austrian, but
Speaker 1: it is just because that's where I go for the
Speaker 1: my mad scientist. It is scent to our German or
Speaker 1: Austrian listeners. No, or to our Russian ones who who
Speaker 1: really agree that the Russian mad scientists is the best one.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's they all have their charms, is what
Speaker 1: I'm getting at. Well, you know, one possibility that strikes
Speaker 1: me is you're saying that a cyber attack could potentially
Speaker 1: target a localized facility or small subsection of infrastructure, though
Speaker 1: there's always the possibility that by doing so they could
Speaker 1: trigger chains of larger events. Yes, and this is where
Speaker 1: you have to start taking into consideration the specific conditions
Speaker 1: around that localized area. So is this is scenario people
Speaker 1: have actually imagined, like a sort of a cascading series
Speaker 1: of problems that get bigger and bigger with infrastructure failure.
Speaker 1: It absolutely is. Yeah. There have been studies that have
Speaker 1: looked at specific UM systems that have centralized critical nodes,
Speaker 1: which would be very much similar to United States power grid,
Speaker 1: and if you were to target one of those important
Speaker 1: critical nodes and take it down, there's the potential to
Speaker 1: have this cascading domino effect where it would the the
Speaker 1: loss of that part of the power grid would put
Speaker 1: such a burden on the surrounding ones that they too
Speaker 1: could fail, which could potentially cause others to fail as well.
Speaker 1: It might not be a nationwide outage, but it might
Speaker 1: be much more significant than that one utility going down.
Speaker 1: UM for that to happen, generally speaking, you have to
Speaker 1: have other elements that are at play. It's it's generally
Speaker 1: understood or believe that if it's an average day that
Speaker 1: probably it would just be the localized utility that was affected,
Speaker 1: but if other issues, like if it was at a
Speaker 1: peak demand when other neighboring utilities were working overtime to
Speaker 1: supply power, because just because the way that particular day
Speaker 1: is unfolding, then you might have a different situation on
Speaker 1: your hands. I have to imagine somebody has tried to
Speaker 1: simulate this. There have been a lot of interesting simulations
Speaker 1: that I looked in to, most of which we're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: it's not as bad as we think unless and it's
Speaker 1: always that unless you like you're like, I guess, I
Speaker 1: guess if if things are aligned just right or just
Speaker 1: really really wrong, then it could be really bad. In fact,
Speaker 1: in August two thousand thirteen, there was an article in
Speaker 1: Nature of Physics where scientists from the United States and
Speaker 1: Israel asserted that a cascading failure in the system, it
Speaker 1: depends on those few critical elements, but they pretty much
Speaker 1: guarantee that at some point it will happen. And this,
Speaker 1: by the way, it doesn't necessarily mean that there was
Speaker 1: an attack. I mean, an attack could be the precipitating
Speaker 1: event that causes us. But it could just be a failure.
Speaker 1: It could be a you know, a particular power plant
Speaker 1: in a grid fails and it and conditions just happened
Speaker 1: to be right for other facilities to fail as a
Speaker 1: result of that, and then you have a rolling blackout
Speaker 1: that could be pretty huge um or it could be
Speaker 1: a failure due to some other event, like a solar flare,
Speaker 1: which causes a similar event to an e MP going off.
Speaker 1: It's not good. Well, maybe we should get back into
Speaker 1: the possibility of an MP solar flare, you know, any
Speaker 1: one of these high energy events that can sort of
Speaker 1: fry the components of our electricity infrastructure. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: super bad news. Like, this is stuff where it's not
Speaker 1: just that it shuts down the power, it does damage
Speaker 1: to the infrastructure. Uh. And again, one of the other
Speaker 1: issues about this complexity we were talking about is you
Speaker 1: don't always necessarily know where the problem is ultimately or
Speaker 1: which elements of your infrastructure are the ones that were
Speaker 1: damaged by this activity. So if it's a significant solar
Speaker 1: flare that shuts down power in an area, you may
Speaker 1: have to do some really extensive testing to figure out
Speaker 1: which elements need to be repaired or replaced. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: you've got people who are without power. Not only are
Speaker 1: they without power, that a lot of them are going
Speaker 1: to be without any means of receiving communication to hear
Speaker 1: what the status is. And the longer that goes, the
Speaker 1: worst things are going to get right. Like like people,
Speaker 1: some people will react all right, you know, they might
Speaker 1: hunker down or whatever. Some people might panic. UH. You
Speaker 1: also have other elements at play that are going to continue,
Speaker 1: whether you've been able to communicate or not, things like
Speaker 1: hospitals having to treat patients. I mean, there are some
Speaker 1: major issues that have to be addressed, and meanwhile you're
Speaker 1: scrambling to try and fix a broken system and you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily know where the problem is. That's the real
Speaker 1: danger with these these UH events that would overload a
Speaker 1: power of grid by putting a huge amount of electricity
Speaker 1: through a system that wasn't prepared to handle it. UM
Speaker 1: And there's not a whole lot you can do to
Speaker 1: prevent that. I mean, like the these are events that
Speaker 1: are outside of our control. The best you can do
Speaker 1: is is make your system as robust as possible so
Speaker 1: that it can resist electromagnetic interference. But that actually involved
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean really mostly it involves separating
Speaker 1: UH elements out into micro grids. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things we could do is instead of having these giant
Speaker 1: interconnected power grids, UH concentrate and create an infrastructure that
Speaker 1: has more micro grids that are only serving a small region.
Speaker 1: They can be interconnected with other systems still, but they're
Speaker 1: not dependent upon them. They're not as interconnected as the
Speaker 1: current systems are. That way, if a local event knocks
Speaker 1: out a few systems, they are not going to pull
Speaker 1: down surrounding neighboring systems. In this cascading effect, it isolates
Speaker 1: the problem, which means that you can devote more attention
Speaker 1: to solving a localized issue than you would if it
Speaker 1: were a general nationwide problem. A nationwide blackout would be catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Like you want to talk about post apocalyptic. Sure, you
Speaker 1: might argue that it's not an apocalypse, but a nationwide
Speaker 1: blackout would cause enormous problems. Well, yeah, we can, I
Speaker 1: guess talk more about the projected consequences of that in
Speaker 1: a bit. But how about the zombie attack scenario? People
Speaker 1: always want to know about this. I have to kind
Speaker 1: of remind people sometimes that like, that's not going to
Speaker 1: happen because zombies are sort of physically impossible. But you
Speaker 1: could have something like a zombie sort of problem. You
Speaker 1: could just basically have a pandemic, really really bad uh
Speaker 1: infection that spreads throughout the population. So in this case,
Speaker 1: we're looking at a snail where it's not necessarily physical
Speaker 1: damage to the infrastructure, right, It's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: dramatic reduction and human population where you just don't have
Speaker 1: the people to run the systems anymore. Right. So, so
Speaker 1: let's say that you've got um really terrible conditions where
Speaker 1: the people who would be running the power plants and
Speaker 1: the various utilities mostly have been wiped out, so there
Speaker 1: are very few of them left um, along with giant
Speaker 1: swaths of the population in general. So how long would
Speaker 1: you have electricity? You are one of the lucky survivors
Speaker 1: the zombie apocalypse. Yeah, Rick Grimes has not made it
Speaker 1: over to your house yet, so you're still on your own.
Speaker 1: How long could you expect to continue to have electricity? Well,
Speaker 1: this largely depends upon what style of power plant is
Speaker 1: providing electricity to your home and whether or not your
Speaker 1: home is on the grid. Now I'm assuming your home
Speaker 1: is on the grid. If you have managed to create
Speaker 1: and off the grid power scenario, you are in way
Speaker 1: better shape as far as how long your electricity is
Speaker 1: gonna last, but at least for the short term. But
Speaker 1: let's say that you are connected to the grid. Well,
Speaker 1: if you are getting your electricity from a coal fired
Speaker 1: power plant, which by the way, makes up the vast
Speaker 1: majority of power plants in the United States, more than
Speaker 1: six I believe our coal power plants. Uh, you would
Speaker 1: probably have electricity for the event has happened people have
Speaker 1: been wiped out for maybe twelve to eighteen hours after
Speaker 1: that event, you would have electricity. That's that's about how
Speaker 1: long the coal firing power plants would probably operate at
Speaker 1: their best before tripping, before shutting down automatically. Uh, that's no,
Speaker 1: And that's because there's no there are no humans there
Speaker 1: to keep the operation moving. Because even with automation, there
Speaker 1: are things that require human attention. An alarm will go
Speaker 1: off and you'll look, and it may not be that
Speaker 1: it's like a catastrophic failure. It could be something like
Speaker 1: you need to vent some ash out of the system,
Speaker 1: and if you don't do it, then ah, it'll trip.
Speaker 1: It'll say, all right, well, this will get to unsafe levels,
Speaker 1: so we're shutting down. Um, and it's an adult. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And all it would take is to vent it. It's
Speaker 1: not a it's not otherwise a huge deal. It's not
Speaker 1: like it's leading to a astrophic failure. But it's one
Speaker 1: of those systems that's put in place for safety that
Speaker 1: if it's not monitored and acted upon, the plant will
Speaker 1: shut off. We need to get some robots in those plans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and well, there's actually been some people who have suggested
Speaker 1: that if this were an event where it was more gradual,
Speaker 1: like it's not a sudden thing where humanity disappears. If
Speaker 1: it were more gradual, then you might be able to
Speaker 1: alter the system so that some alerts don't trigger an
Speaker 1: automatic shutdown anymore. Because you prioritize what what is the
Speaker 1: most important of the alerts and which ones can we
Speaker 1: absolutely not ignore and we have to respond to anything else.
Speaker 1: The power plant just keeps on going until it can't
Speaker 1: go anymore. Okay, So is natural gas is going to
Speaker 1: be pretty much along the same lines as coal kind
Speaker 1: of um so, Cole. Here's the other issue with coal.
Speaker 1: You only have a certain amount of coal stored ready
Speaker 1: to go, and once that's gone, if you don't have
Speaker 1: people pushing bulldozers to push more coal into the system,
Speaker 1: you're out of fuel. So even if somehow magically the
Speaker 1: cold power plant works perfectly, you burn out of coal
Speaker 1: within a day. Natural gas is a little better. Uh.
Speaker 1: You will essentially continue to get natural gas to feed
Speaker 1: into the power plant as long as the pressure inside
Speaker 1: the pipelines remains constant. But that's a big if. I mean,
Speaker 1: any any problem that would trigger one of those UH
Speaker 1: systems to go into shut down mode would stop a
Speaker 1: natural gas power plant from operating. So you might go
Speaker 1: a couple of days maybe if everything went well, like
Speaker 1: if there were no if nothing was messing with the
Speaker 1: lines and no errors happened, So one of three days,
Speaker 1: let's say. You know what, Joe, it turns out we
Speaker 1: got a lot to say. We recorded this full episode
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be a super long one.
Speaker 1: So we're going to end this part right yere. We'll
Speaker 1: pick up again in our next episode to continue this
Speaker 1: conversation because, um, we like talking about it is it's
Speaker 1: a real nothing more fun than the end of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, relax, right, that's the end is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the end now and now it's hard to stop. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's true when it's the end. Yeah, I um, I'm
Speaker 1: going to start quoting your galaxy in a second, but no, guys,
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