TE
科技回声
首页24小时热榜最新最佳问答展示工作
GitHubTwitter
首页

科技回声

基于 Next.js 构建的科技新闻平台,提供全球科技新闻和讨论内容。

GitHubTwitter

首页

首页最新最佳问答展示工作

资源链接

HackerNews API原版 HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 科技回声. 版权所有。

A World Without Power (2013)

220 点作者 acdanger将近 6 年前

30 条评论

munificent将近 6 年前
<i>&gt; Infrastructure is invisible, as long as it works. And only when it fails do you realize just how much we are all dependent on it and how badly we are able to cope with such infrastructure being unavailable for any length of time.</i><p>I grew up in hurricane country. We are born and mostly live our entire lives suspended in a giant web of infrastructure and support systems. When you&#x27;re born into it, it&#x27;s natural take it for granted and treat that as the baseline. But every now and then you have an experience that makes you realize just how far down below the ground really is, how far it is to fall, and how few cables need to fray before people start dropping.<p>I&#x27;m not one of those doomsday preppers who seems to relish preparing for the zombie apocalypse. I think the much more rational approach is to strengthen the web itself so that we don&#x27;t fall in the first place. But I&#x27;m <i>definitely</i> aware how quickly and how badly things can go.<p>Hurricane Katrina is the canonical example. Over a thousand people died in the middle of a well-developed urban area, in the richest country on Earth, from a disaster that everyone knew was coming some day. The hurricane didn&#x27;t kill those people. The city and state&#x27;s complete failure to engineer robust infrastructure did. If that same hurricane had hit an equally populated city elsewhere, the outcome could have been entirely different.
评论 #20749732 未加载
评论 #20750687 未加载
评论 #20750476 未加载
评论 #20751770 未加载
评论 #20750178 未加载
评论 #20754404 未加载
评论 #20750709 未加载
评论 #20750407 未加载
emperorcezar将近 6 年前
Years ago when I was growing up in the woods of West Virginia we had a particularly bad blizzard. During this time the power went out.<p>We were use to this happening and most of the time it was for half a day or so. So we pulled out the kerosene heaters and the oil lamps for light. Bundled up and waiting.<p>We ended up being snowed in without power for two weeks. My mom and dad would take turns bundling up and walking a mile or so every few days to get to the roads to get more fuel.<p>One thing I remember clearly was cooking on out outside wood fire grill, which was essentially cinder blocks and a grate. No worry about running out of wood since there was always plenty around.<p>I remember the whole ordeal pretty fondly. As a kid it was a good change of pace and like camping.
评论 #20748627 未加载
评论 #20750073 未加载
评论 #20749342 未加载
评论 #20749917 未加载
评论 #20754475 未加载
评论 #20749885 未加载
评论 #20752718 未加载
评论 #20748396 未加载
jihadjihad将近 6 年前
Years back I was introduced to a terrific BBC show called <i>Connections</i> with James Burke (1978). The first episode, available on YouTube [0], is all about the world&#x27;s reliance on power and that within a short period of time we&#x27;d be catapulted back to the plow.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ</a>
评论 #20748310 未加载
评论 #20749374 未加载
评论 #20754329 未加载
smush将近 6 年前
I&#x27;ve done some research into the serval mesh project and Briar and similar; I do wish most cell phones had some mesh networking installed by default. Something to enable granny to send a text message to me via piggybacking off other people who happen to be near enough to have P2P communication.<p>This would have to be a protocol designed for offline-tolerance I suppose, so something like auto-exchanging private keys while the network is good and&#x2F;or in person if network is down for message security, then when in no signal mode, regularly transmit and receive small messages encrypted with the same key-pairs as the real ones, then if they can decrypt the short test message (short enough to be easy to try &#x2F; won&#x27;t eat too much battery life), establish a dedicated connection long enough to transmit full messages back and forth before disconnecting.<p>IDK. Probably serval mesh, briar, gnutella or similar already have this figured out. I&#x27;d like it to be end-user easy for us to prep for that though so if we are in a venue like a theme park or stadium our phones can transparently be P2P over Blue-Fi-Drop
评论 #20750634 未加载
hourislate将近 6 年前
This was part of the 2003 North East Blackout<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Northeast_blackout_of_2003" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Northeast_blackout_of_2003</a><p>&gt;The blackout&#x27;s primary cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio–based company, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines drooped into foliage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into collapse of the entire Northeast region.
评论 #20749947 未加载
评论 #20749733 未加载
GnarfGnarf将近 6 年前
The problem facing service station operators is that they can&#x27;t charge a premium for gas when the power fails, to offset the cost of installing generators. It&#x27;s seen as &quot;gouging&quot;. So there is no incentive to prepare.<p>The meager profit margins on gas sales are not enough.
评论 #20749446 未加载
评论 #20748893 未加载
评论 #20750036 未加载
评论 #20748938 未加载
评论 #20750812 未加载
评论 #20749349 未加载
clomond将近 6 年前
Having lived and experienced the aforementioned blackout (&gt; 55 million people, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Northeast_blackout_of_2003" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Northeast_blackout_of_2003</a> )<p>It was a transformative experience to me and it felt everyone else who experienced it regarding the hidden importance of these infrastructure pieces.<p>What I loved about this piece is it reads much like so many people&#x27;s experiences of the incident. Even though it happened over 15 years ago, I and most others remember distinctly and with clarity the sequence of events that occurred on that day. Seems like most people&#x27;s stories went somewhere along the lines of:<p>- Interruption of an intended activity due to no electricity<p>- Attempt at understanding scope, and an effort to substitute the interrupted activity (in my experience, we were entering a restaurant for food and was told &quot;given we don&#x27;t have power, we can&#x27;t microwave most of our items - but the oil in our friers are still a bit hot though so you can have fries... We wanted to try elsewhere).<p>- The realization that this was not a localized one block situation, but something larger and more serious. (We drove around and the traffic lights were out, put on the radio (most most stations were &quot;silent&quot;). The few that were didn&#x27;t even know what was going on &quot;it appears there is a blackout, getting reports from as far as &lt;X&gt;&quot; with &lt;X&gt; being of an increasing scope as the hour went on.<p>- Then an abandonment of the days plans for a trip &quot;back to shelter&#x2F;home&quot; where one nestled and tried to wait it out until services were re-restored.<p>The natural gas in our home didn&#x27;t work either, so the only way we could heat food was on a fire. It&#x27;s one thing to realize that all these these are connected, but its another to feel its connectedness through these services&#x27; absence.
评论 #20750837 未加载
closeparen将近 6 年前
In a disaster, public transit is one of the first utilities to go. A fun exercise is “could I walk home from here?” If not, and you spend a lot of time there, you need to stage an emergency kit there at least as much as you need one at home.<p>I wouldn’t count on BART service anytime soon after The Big One. (Not that I’d count on freeways either. A bike seems like your best bet).<p>You find dependencies on electricity in surprising places. Good luck getting water out of an automatic faucet or push button water fountain. Good luck getting your car out of a stacker system - even if it’s already at ground level, those doors don’t have manual releases. Good luck getting through any badge reader doors in your office or apartment complex. (This may rule out the bike, even if you brought one).
评论 #20749327 未加载
评论 #20749452 未加载
评论 #20749410 未加载
评论 #20750205 未加载
评论 #20749575 未加载
dpcan将近 6 年前
This was well written. Sounds like he had less than 24 hours without power but turned the story into a doomsday journal entry.<p>His note about cell phone towers losing power was scary. Never really thought about that. I usually assume the phones will keep working as long as we can charge them, but I suppose the towers need some juice too.<p>In our small city, one power line blew down last week and 1&#x2F;4 of the city was without power for about 6 hours.<p>I&#x27;m baffled at the lack of redundancy.<p>I have more redundancy behind my customers&#x27; blogs about their dogs than it appears our city has for keeping electricity flowing to 10K people.<p>Life without power will be hard to survive. And I fear my neighbors much more than my food spoiling.
评论 #20748287 未加载
评论 #20748990 未加载
评论 #20748508 未加载
评论 #20748950 未加载
评论 #20747932 未加载
评论 #20748049 未加载
评论 #20749087 未加载
评论 #20748277 未加载
评论 #20750616 未加载
jjav将近 6 年前
After hurricane Maria in September 2017 the entire island of Puerto Rico was without power. There was nowhere you could drive out of the blackout area since it was everywhere.<p>A few luckier people got power back in one to two weeks, a small minority. My family in the greater metro area of San Juan got power back after two months. Friends in smaller cities only got power after three to five months. There are communities in the mountains which still don&#x27;t have power today, almost two years later.<p>If you haven&#x27;t lived through anything like this, it is a useful mental exercise to think how you&#x27;d prepare for it.
评论 #20750011 未加载
评论 #20750751 未加载
Gravityloss将近 6 年前
Having solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and electric cars could make society quite a lot more resilient to these kind of things.
评论 #20749583 未加载
评论 #20748934 未加载
评论 #20748531 未加载
评论 #20748521 未加载
protomyth将近 6 年前
<i>One thing that I was very impressed with was how well the cellphone network dealt with the outage, for at least 24 hours all the base stations worked, after that point they slowly dropped out one by one as their batteries ran dry.</i><p>As decedents of an industry that was paranoid enough to generate power for their own equipment, its nice to see some of the cell phone companies take power seriously. It would be nicer if they could last a bit longer.
评论 #20749270 未加载
rbritton将近 6 年前
Having an RV set up for remote work where we can leave home for days, weeks, or months has actually prepared me for outages better than most. The entirety of the RV can run on propane and battery, and I have both solar and generators to recharge the battery bank. Depending on the season, the propane I have on hand can last from 14 days to upwards of months while the generator gas I have on hand can handle about a week of full-time running. Because of where I like to visit, I also carry two cellular hotspots and a satellite internet option and can typically get internet access where others can&#x27;t.<p>A few years back, prior to owning the RV, we had a windstorm come through about ten days before Thanksgiving. Power to most of the area was knocked out as the weaker trees fell and wiped out much of the powerline infrastructure (I recorded gusts around 75 mph before my weather station actually broke). As is normal that time of year, temperatures were in the 20ºF range, which meant finding alternate heating methods at the very least. We were very underprepared for it, losing much of the food in the fridge&#x2F;freezer, and the house got very cold.<p>All local generators and gas cans sold out very, very quickly, but I found one on Amazon that could be shipped to my door overnight for $50 extra. It arrived on the second day (of seven) of the outage, and I wired the furnace, fridge, and one multipurpose outlet into it. We struggled with just the one 5 gallon gas can, though, needing a daily trip to the gas station to refill. Had they not had power, it would&#x27;ve been worse.<p>In the end, it was much like camping without adequate preparation. The first couple days were novel and amusing, but by the end, it was just a daily routine of ensuring we stayed warm enough and no damage was done (e.g., pipes freezing).
bungie4将近 6 年前
Nice to read an article from somebody local, or nearly so, to me.<p>I remember the outage well, I worked at a major telecommunications company with reserve generators. I really didn&#x27;t appreciate the depth of the issue until I drove home that night. People were telling other people, total strangers, that nukes were dropping all over the US. You can imagine the panic.<p>Word eventually spread and the northern mindset of looking after your neighbours took hold, as mentioned in the artice.<p>I went to use the BBQ to make some burgers. We ran out of propane naturally. My neighbour offered his BBQ which coincidentally, was out of propane. Then HIS neighbour offered his BBQ. He was out building a deck when the power went out. He fired up his generator and continued on. His skil-saw was the only sound to be heard. All the neighbours threw in food and drink and we got to know one another.<p>I will admit to being a little said after the power was restored, because, except for a nod or a wave, we went back to the business of minding our own.
chiefalchemist将近 6 年前
Infrastructure is a concern. But to me the bigger concern is the food supply. It, like gasoline, runs lean; very just in time.<p>Look at what the possibility of a snow storm does to the supermarket. Now imagine the effect on the public psyche when they&#x27;re told &quot;we&#x27;ll have more food next week.&quot;
ThomPete将近 6 年前
There is a moral to that story.<p>Making sure we have enough energy for everything we want whether the source is coal, oil, nuclear or hydro because energy is the single biggest contributor to a better life, richer and safer life and the more access we have the better of we are.
goda90将近 6 年前
This last winter on an incredibly cold night(&lt;-10 F) we had a power outage in the middle of the night. I was up late and noticed it right away. After I reported it to the utility, I made sure the dog was on the bed with me, closed the bedroom doors, and hunkered down. I&#x27;m not sure what time it came on but when I woke up the thermostat was showing it had dropped more than 15 degrees F in the house. I should probably buy a generator.
评论 #20749699 未加载
syntaxing将近 6 年前
I really take for granted how great electricity is. I didn&#x27;t have power for a week during the big Sandy storm and it&#x27;s funny how I instinctly turn the lights on every time I go into a room. It&#x27;s scary to think what it would be like if we didn&#x27;t perpetually have electricity.
harel将近 6 年前
There was a TV series about a scenario where electricity simply stopped working: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Revolution_(TV_series)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Revolution_(TV_series)</a>
评论 #20750465 未加载
评论 #20748622 未加载
EGreg将近 6 年前
Most people are too blase about having decentralized backup systems, in every area.<p>We need decentralized power generation and storage (solar panel based, etc.) to survive a Carrington Event or an EMP. Or just a simple blackout. We need electric cars which represent choice rather than fossil-fuel lockin.<p>But we also need mesh networks and software to run on them, to survive the Internet being cut off like in Kashmir or Hong Kong. We need decentralized town currencies and much more.<p>Please watch this talk I gave a few years ago:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=WzMm7-j7yIY</a>
评论 #20751481 未加载
ctdonath将近 6 年前
Back when the &quot;Y2K Bug&quot; was emerging as a serious threat, I described to my ex-engineer father the looming issue in great detail. He listened carefully, then calmly replied &quot;if that happens, I&#x27;ll throw another log on the fire and go back to my book.&quot; Indeed, he was living preparedness: there was no &quot;crazy prepper&quot; stuff, just someone who had systematically thought through everything that could go wrong, and who had seamlessly integrated backup systems into his lifestyle.<p>I aspire to do the same, making slow progress. Too few know how close to disaster their lifestyle is.
评论 #20752305 未加载
smush将近 6 年前
I wish it wasn&#x27;t so expensive to have a switch next to your circuit-breaker that was labelled &#x27;electric lines&#x2F;natural gas&#x2F;water&#x27; and depending on which selection would cut-off the home electricity from the others and enable the electricity to come from, respectively, the central grid, a small natural-gas-fed generator (with auto-start battery?), a pico&#x2F;micro hydro generator in the basement&#x2F;crawlspace.<p>Having the ability to convert your electricity bill to a more expensive water&#x2F;natural gas bill and still have power during an outage would be quite nice.
评论 #20751894 未加载
评论 #20752867 未加载
gao8a将近 6 年前
<i>&quot;The honda was a veritable bomb, it was filled with cannisters as many as they could cram in.&quot;</i><p>Somehow that one sentence shivered me as I imagined a crowd of happy people surrounding a car with bottomed out suspension.
thisisbrians将近 6 年前
@dang do you mind adding (2013) to the title?
dang将近 6 年前
Discussed at the time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4995938" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4995938</a>
buboard将近 6 年前
There is probably a moral to this story: We are too much dependent on centralized systems because of perceived efficiency, but how true is that anymore? How hard is it to be i.e. energetically autonomous though? In sunny places, a house could probably be affordably autonomous, however these solutions have not been explored at scale and are not cheap yet. (I already know it&#x27;s possible to have food-autarky, a garden and a few chicken will do).
评论 #20748714 未加载
VBprogrammer将近 6 年前
I guess this is a good a time as any to ping Jacques about getting the photos back on his windmill build page. Still one of my favourite build logs...
评论 #20750058 未加载
kjar将近 6 年前
Check out ‘World Without Us’ by John Wiesman. A fascinating thought experiment wherein we all suddenly ‘beam up’ and Earth left to go on evolving.
dsfyu404ed将近 6 年前
Keep in mind that in 2003 China still hadn&#x27;t figured out how to make small engines with good (enough for western consumers) quality control so everyone and their brother did not have a backup generator. These days things are very different. Many businesses (especially ones that depend on refrigeration) have backup generators now.
评论 #20747894 未加载
bryanrasmussen将近 6 年前
reminds me of the movie Into the Forest <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rottentomatoes.com&#x2F;m&#x2F;into_the_forest" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rottentomatoes.com&#x2F;m&#x2F;into_the_forest</a>