Cartoon 804: Electricity

Modern life is based on the ubiquitous availability of electricity. Every modern industry makes critical use of electricity. Even heavy industries such as aluminum and steel are large electric users. Waste treatment and water plants are big users. In fact there is little in the modern world that does not depend on electricity in its various forms.

During the Christmas holiday there was a server farm outage that resulted in a suspension of Netflix service. It put it out of business. Let us imagine a wider condition of limited or no power. What would be the impact on television and cell phones? What about hospitals? The gas pumps at your service station are electrically operated. Many of us have “total electric homes”. In a power failure our homes become like earthen caves, dark, cold and completely dysfunctional. The recent hurricane Sandy gave people a real appreciation for electric power.

This year is the period of highest solar activity. A single solar eruption could render electricity in the world a mute issue. How likely is this? There is no way to predict a catastrophe eruption. You can only react after it has occurred.

There is also another scenario that is more sinister. A nuclear detention in low earth orbit over America would wipe out electric devices. America is the most powerful nation. Therefore you attack its Achilles Heel. That heel is electricity. America has a teetering electric grid. Another calamity is a cyber attack and the specter of turning our electric devices against us. We do little to mandate that businesses and municipalities take appropriate precautions. The reason is expense. Our approach is to pick up the pieces after the fact.

Back during the summer we had a storm in this area. I was without power for nearly seven days in hundred degree weather. Communication was out because my cell phone, telephone landline and internet service failed. Even when the power returned, there were other problems. It was another week before I had internet service again. The outage caused collateral equipment problems for service providers.

It is now becoming accepted for archaeologist to assert that some civilizations that seemed to disappear overnight were the result of sudden climate change. It is folly to believe that something devastating might not happen to the continuity of human civilization that has evolved over the last two millennia. We are on borrowed time. Rather it is an asteroid impact, climate change, pandemic, solar flare, or something else, the odds are against us. Our existence is a form of Russian Roulette.