Blackout sounds very inconspicuous but has disastrous consequences.
The simplest definition of the term blackout is a regional power failure. Only this and so much. You can think - okay, there will be no electricity for a while, great tragedy, but the real impact of the blackout is many times greater. This is because humanity is totally dependent on electricity. The dimensions of this addiction are gigantic - virtually every device in the home or industry is powered by electricity. Not only that - almost all the electricity needed is taken from the public grid. If for any reason there is a blackout, the efficient mechanism of modern civilization will collapse like a house of cards.
What consequences can a power outage have for you?
Imagine that one day you get up and you find that there is no electricity in the socket. The first consequences are quite obvious - there is no light, so unless you have a window in the bathroom, you will have to wash in the dark or with a flashlight. If you do not have a gas installation at home, you will have to give up coffee. Television and radio are also down, so forget about morning news or entertainment. The laptop has a few hours of battery life, but the WiFi in your home will not work. It will be a pretty bad morning, but all in all, there is no tragedy yet, a few hours without electricity can be lived relatively painlessly.
The problem begins when a power failure lasts more than a few hours. The first victim is your freezer and the products that inhabit it. Your food supplies will cease to be inventory and will become consumables. Other victims are all devices powered by rechargeable batteries - laptops, mobile phones and tablets. Soon, the lack of household appliances will become a nuisance - air conditioning, air purifier and kitchen appliances are not working. If you do not have a gas stove, you cannot prepare a hot meal. Evening comes, it gets dark and you have to look for candles or flashlights. Deprived of the usual amount of sensory input, you get drowsy and fall asleep earlier. You wake up the next day - no warm food, no coffee, no TV or radio. A mobile phone, which has enormous energy requirements, has already died at night, a tablet and a laptop will soon face the same fate.
The situation is bad, but not dire yet - it is a bit boring, but you have access to the essentials for survival - food (cold, unless you have gas at home), water and heating. You could go on like this for months. But the above situation is not a blackout yet, it is just a local power cut. So:
What consequences can blackout have for you?
Blackout, or regional power failure, does not only affect you, but the entire neighborhood where you live. For the sake of an example, let's say you live in a large city, in a modern building without gas installations, where hot water and central heating are supplied through the city. The above conditions are one of the worst scenarios for a blackout, because the lack of electricity in your city will quickly translate into a much more serious problem - lack of water in the tap (about how important water is and how long you can survive without it, see our article on water ) The reason is simple - in order for the water to enter your apartment, the plumbing must be under pressure.
If the power plant fails, the pressure in the taps will drop very quickly and you will not have access to water. Or maybe our country is prepared for such an eventuality and has backup power generators connected to hydrophore stations? Well no, it's not prepared. Yes, it is a real surprise, and yet there is something for which the Polish state is not prepared! If you've read the previous articles on radioactive contamination, then you know our opinion - do not rely on government services for anything. The only thing you can count on is that, with a little luck, they won't get you in even more trouble.
Without water, the situation becomes much less interesting. Okay, but there are stores, that's why you will direct your steps there. However, you will be surprised - the store is not working because there is no electricity. The larger the store, the more problems - first of all, cash registers do not work, but there is also no lighting (how many windows do you see in large-area stores?), Automatic doors, gates and various security systems, which often prevent the store from functioning, do not work. What to do? The last hope in small, traditional stores that are able to function without electricity. But another surprise awaits you - a huge line of people who came for the same reason. Within the first few hours, the entire supply of drinking water in stores will be taken out.
Do not be under the illusion that the stores have huge warehouses filled with water cans for months - maybe it used to be like that, now there is a completely different logistics model based on the constant supply of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). This means that it is the physical warehouses that are located in the logistics centers and not in stores with limited inventory.
As you stand in line, you realize that you don't have any cash with you. First thought - I'll go to the ATM. Wait a minute, but the ATM doesn't work either, and neither do the banks. So you do not have access to your money, people are just buying the last bottles of water, the crowd in the queue is getting more and more impatient, and you slowly realize what a terribly bad situation you just found yourself in - you do not have water, you do not have money to buy it, and the store supplies have just run out. It is bad, very bad.
But it soon turns out that it could get even worse - cellular base stations are down and connectivity is failing, adding to the overall chaos. If there is no water, no central heating, the radiators go cold, so if blackout occurs in winter, you are in trouble. And this is just the beginning - each problem causes another, more dominoes fall, riots in the streets and assaults on shops begin, and the state begins to embrace chaos. However, you still have doubts and the question arises in your head:
Is blackout a real threat?
What is the easiest, cheapest and most effective way to paralyze the whole country? That's right - blowing up several switchboards, or sabotaging power plants. The snowball effect will soon follow and the country will be shrouded in darkness, literally and figuratively. In addition, climate change and the increasing droughts are another problem for power plants.
If you still have doubts about the reality of the threat, take a look at the following description of the UK blackout, described in the Government Security Center's bulletin:
The power outage that took place on August 9, 2019 in Great Britain is considered to be one of the most serious in the territory of the United Kingdom in the last decade. The consequences of such a serious incident included approximately 1.1 million inhabitants without electricity for a period of 15 to 45 minutes, a break in trains, and a lack of power at the hospital in Ipswich and at Newcastle airport.
The temporary disconnection of the hospital and airport from electricity supply, the immobilization of the metro and trains raises the question of why such key facilities were not adequately protected.
The growing demand for electricity, with the use of sources that do not guarantee the continuity of supply in combination with the effects of weather phenomena (resulting, among others, from climate change), increases the level of vulnerability, probability and thus the risk of similar events in the future.
According to the money.pl website:
Hundreds of thousands of consumers were deprived of electricity for nearly an hour. This, in turn, paralyzed the communication system, which had its biggest effect on the railways - passengers were stuck in a subway car for six hours. According to media reports, there were Dante scenes: some passengers tried to take care of their physiological needs through the window. The normal operation of the trains was not restored until the next day.
And it's only 45 minutes without electricity ...
Prof. Władysław Mielczarski from the Institute of Power Engineering of the Lodz University of Technology, in a commentary on the pages of the Information Center for the Energy Market, warns that such phenomena will become popular in the near future.
- Energy supply will no longer be something that is reliable because it is a basic commodity. You have to be prepared for more and more frequent breakdowns. The old days are back when we had to travel with our own drinks, and sandwiches, and leaving the car without even one spare can of petrol was considered risky at least, the professor says. As he adds, it is necessary to train people how to behave during such a failure. So as to minimize losses and reduce the risk of accidents.
The latest blackout in England showed another problem. Even though the failure was dealt with after an hour, modern electric trains, which have spare batteries to reach the nearest station, have stopped because the failover system did not work. Moreover, once the electricity was restored, it turned out that the trains would not go further without being serviced by a specialized IT service.
This is the tip of the iceberg. The number of electronic systems that fail to restart properly after an hour-long power outage can be enormous. It's even hard to predict how many problems a blackout that no one has foreseen will generate.
The first idea that will pop up in your head is to evacuate an area of chaos. However, two problems arise. The first is that most people will want to do exactly the same, which will result in huge traffic jams and communication paralysis. The second problem is fuel - gas stations will not work, so your range will be limited by the amount of fuel you have in your tank. By the way of this point, good advice - make a habit of refueling when the fuel level drops below half. This way the effective evacuation range will always be kept at a decent level.
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