Le 2013-01-10 08:11, Le_Forgeron a écrit :
> The real issue is to be "no electricity" over a whole hemisphere or
> bigger, for a very long term. Batteries are to be depleted very fast
> (less than a week)... no pump, no fridge, no light at night, no
> heating... The powerplants might be running, but without a distribution
> grid, cities are going to be very hard places: the
> replacement/restoration of the whole grid, in such situation, had been
> estimated to more than 10 years for the big U.S.A. (and very very
> expensive).

Yep. Fifteen years ago to the day, the Montreal area was subject to the 
worst ice storm it had ever endured and areas were without power for 3 
weeks.  During the first week-end, there were talks of having to 
evacuate the whole island of Montreal (1M people) due to the limited 
pressure in the water system and the problems it would cause 
firefighters in case of fires... combine thatwith the fact that everyone 
had reverted to candles, fireplaces, and BBQs.  Fortunately the power 
company was able to restore power to the main water treatment plant 
before the deadline (that water plant now has two 50MW Rolls-Royce 
generators).

The evacuation would have been made rather tricky considering it's an 
island, and that most of the bridges were closed due to ice chunks 
falling from the super structure.

Now, if you extend that to an areas the size of a country, you will 
definitely run into some serious problems.
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