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A 1700's steam engine would be like having 1000 high end graphics cards right now if the alternative was threshing grain manually.
End of the world (ish) scenario 99% mortality
- Thread starter moon man
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A 1700's steam engine would be like having 1000 high end graphics cards right now if the alternative was threshing grain manually.
Sure thing, until the inevitable and I end up having to take you down because there’s not enough for both of us.
As long as you’re happy with that, jump aboard!
Soldato
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I know pitbulls are on the banned list, but I see dogs about that look very much like pitbulls, which is why I said "pitbull types".
And there are lots of those where I live.
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Rightly or wrongly the government have banned dogs which just LOOK like a pit bull terrier:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dogs-banned-uk-full-list-21688691
When every one's dead rendezvous at the Manchester museaum for science and industry!
Would one sqkm actually be enough to support a single human in Scotland?
Given the conditions I don't think it would be able to provide all your food
Thier babies would be!
Thinking about it even more, if 99% of people just died most dogs would be stuck inside houses and just starve to death. It's not like we'd have packs of marauding staffies roaming the country after 3 weeks
Thinking about it even more, if 99% of people just died most dogs would be stuck inside houses and just starve to death. It's not like we'd have packs of marauding staffies roaming the country after 3 weeks
But a lot of them would be outside. And breeding fairly quickly, after a year or so packs of feral dogs would be a real issue
And I bet a lot of dogs breaka door or window before they starve to death?
I disagree. They would have no food as humans would be gone, no rubbish to eat etc. They arent going to be out there hunting in packs, doubt they would survive winter outside either tbh.
There's millions of dead humans and all thefarm animals? And cats for shelter there's all the shopsthat would be open and malls and houses
Caporegime
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Why wouldn't they survive winter?
The guy behind me who used to breed dogs kept his outdoors all year round in cages as well so not in anything protecting them from the climate.
I'm fact don't a lot of dogs live in cold places like Siberia, Canada, etc and were bred for the conditions?
Most pets like cats and dogs won't have any trouble surviving winter - we had a stray cat which once lived next door and came back to haunt the neighbourhood - it would sleep in our old greenhouse in the depth of winter for days on end sometimes before moving on and survived fine for several years.
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I'd head to Trago Mills, it has food, hardware and hunting/camping supplies - including solar power and petrol generators (if there's still power to make use of the petrol station).
Then I'd probably look for a cottage in a small village in Dartmoor that has a wood burner and start growing mushrooms while trying to learn how to grow crops. I've seen Clarkson's farm - I'm sure it'll be fine...
Then I'd probably look for a cottage in a small village in Dartmoor that has a wood burner and start growing mushrooms while trying to learn how to grow crops. I've seen Clarkson's farm - I'm sure it'll be fine...
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Surely domestic cats and dogs would become a food source in the end.
Caporegime
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People survived here for thousands of years before.
Potatoes. Oats. Carrots. Turnips.
https://www.nfus.org.uk/farming-facts/what-we-produce.aspx
Plenty of berries too.
We got plenty of sheep and cattle roaming free too.
I think the original premise of 99% of people instantly dying is a bit silly frankly. Something like a giant asteroid that could cause that to happen even within a day would pretty much render the world uninhabitable anyway. Realistically the only thing that could quickly eliminate all but a small percentage of humanity without taking out most of the buildings, plants and animals as well is an epidemic of some kind. Yet even something far more infectious and deadly than Covid would likely take months to achieve this. So I think you'd be looking at mass panic and anarchy long before there were only 1% of people left and a lot less intact resources left behind once there were.
As I recall from Fukushima the problem was that the earthquake caused the reactor to shut down and the tsunami took out the back up diesel generators. So there was no power for the pumps that circulated the coolant for the nuclear fuel and this risked the reactor going into meltdown. Presumably in this scenario with no human intervention safety cut outs in the nuclear reactors would shut them down, the diesel generators would cut in for a month or so until the fuel ran out and then all the reactors in the world would start cooking off. Not sure what would happen if we got hundreds of Chernobyls over the space of a month or two but it probably wouldn't be pretty for the Northern hemisphere. Then you'd have all humanity's other toxic messes from untended oil wells, chemical industry plants and so on to deal with. Overall I think you'd be better off dead.
As I recall from Fukushima the problem was that the earthquake caused the reactor to shut down and the tsunami took out the back up diesel generators. So there was no power for the pumps that circulated the coolant for the nuclear fuel and this risked the reactor going into meltdown. Presumably in this scenario with no human intervention safety cut outs in the nuclear reactors would shut them down, the diesel generators would cut in for a month or so until the fuel ran out and then all the reactors in the world would start cooking off. Not sure what would happen if we got hundreds of Chernobyls over the space of a month or two but it probably wouldn't be pretty for the Northern hemisphere. Then you'd have all humanity's other toxic messes from untended oil wells, chemical industry plants and so on to deal with. Overall I think you'd be better off dead.
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What's a neutron bomb? Don't they leave infrastructure intact?
Soldato
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So when the reactor shuts down on a trip the moderator rods (if we're talking PWR's and BWR's and similar) drop into the reactor and the reactor ceases to be critical. There are no longer enough free neutrons to maintain the reaction. The problem is decay heat. Short half life isotopes created during fission are continuing to break down and release heat. As I understand it 12% is decay heat is not unusual for a PWR. Now an EPR (like Hinckley will be) is 1600MWe (electric), assume 40% efficiency so 4000MWth (thermal). The decay heat the instant of shutdown is 480MWth, that's a lot very difficult to get rid of that much energy passively so stuff is going to heat up quickly. Eventually the fuel melts and runs to the bottom of the reactor where without the moderators it becomes a critical mass and the reaction starts and it carries on melting it's way down.
The cooling pumps don't need to run for months only long enough for the decay heat, which will taper off as the isotopes break down, to drop low enough to be passively lost. Don't know how long that is but it won't be months.