Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

[Chuckwks]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

That is very true and why a group such as the military wouldn't have a sufficient knowledge base to make those calls as to what can be started or what process monitoring has to be in place to keep from creating another disaster. Granted there are people in the military who are very knowledgeable about power plants, transmission lines, etc, and could concievably restart the power generation process at a plant. But there are not enough of those folks to be able to restart 850 plants over 2-4 weeks, and more importantly, to know in what sequence.

 

[Laidback Al]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

Welcome Chuckwks. Interesting points, I like you car analogy. Perhaps as part of infrastructure planning there should be a "Startup Guru" for each utility.

 

[Chuckwks]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

Plus, there is another fly in the ointment, it is called politics. Once the worst of the pandemic has begun to subside, the politicians will emerge demanding that their piece of the pie be restarted first, no matter what the consequences to the rest of the infrastructure. That is where you need a very commanding presence directing the overall recovery who doesn't care a flip about what connections a politician has, and has the authority to tell them to get to the back of the line if necessary, and the clout to enforce their decisions. This would be the role for the military to fill.

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

Military clout + small workforce may at least get infrastructure up for cities.

Does anyone know how long hospitals can go without utility power? We recently had a long power outage and our hospital ran for 18 hours on alternative power. They cancelled all elective procedure, but essential surgery, etc. ran just fine.

.

 

[LMonty]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

welcome, Chuckwks! glad to have you here.

good points. I also dont think the military can accomplish this alone. Perhaps I should explain my assumptions.

there will be surviving members of the command/control staff of the various grid locations. the military can station experienced technicians where needed to supplement manpower. they could also supply the needed, integrated communications for such an effort. if regular communications are limited by the grid outage or other infrastructure failures, this communication capability will be critical. They can also supply the needed security for the facilities, which I believe you most likely be more vulnerable at that time.

I'm not an expert and didnt sleep at a Holiday Inn last night LOL- just remembering some of the pre Y2k discussion from power grid specialists,. I beleive thats the gist (or close to it) of some of the "black start" discussions that might apply now....

if we can find archived discussions about power grid issues from that period, it may be helpful. after all, it doesn't much matter what took it down (computer vs human failure), its how to get it back up that has everyone stumped! TB2k may still have the Greenspun board archives available. Some of that insight may still apply.

One other interesting thing that we didnt have Pre rollover- the military now has quite a few trained individuals involved in all aspects of power system rebuild after the practice they have had in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of it is in physical rebuilding, but also in system reapir and black starts. On a smaller scale, I agree- but the military pool of those involved is definitely more robust than it was just 5 yrs ago. IIRC that phsycial repair aspect may be important if the grid goes down for any period of time, as trouble shooting lines may be critical because failure and restart can potetnially cause small failures in tranmission and plant equipment.

We may just have to isolate and start small again, each location coming up as possible. Location, location, location....

 

[Chuckwks]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

Personally I believe we will have to restart in an isolated environment for each locale and gradually add function back in. This will work, but because we have not got sufficient generation capacity in all regions to meet normal demand, they will have to make some calls about rolling blackouts, or what industries/functions are not essential in getting each area back on its feet. As a society we have come to take for granted that each and every convienence is a necessity.

 

[4-ABBA]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

I am a professional contingency planner with 20+ years experience working for a large multinational corporation. The restarting of a country that is as complex as ours is going to be a major issue. There is absolutely no experience in trying to do this. Each piece has restart instructions, but they are usually dependent on something else which is assumed to be available. Because of the power grid, a power plant can't just come back up and throw the switch. It has to be isolated from the grid and areas slowly brought back online. .... Very little thought appears to have been given to what happens if we have to shut everything down because of a critical resource like power going away and then try to bring it all back up again.

THANK YOU Chuckwks for joining in! I'm the little guy in the back of the room who started this topic. I did so because there are sooooo many interconnections to western countries infrastrucures and economies.

Its a huge ripple effect. One isolated example:

Lack of oil affects power generation which affects banking which affects production / delivery of goods and sercives which affects food supply (etc etc)

It appears that there will be difficulties bringing these interconnected systems back online because other systems that each one requires may not be available.

The larger the number of interconnects that are down, the more diffucult local recovery will be for cities and towns.

(Modern cities require soooo many "interconnects" to function that it boggles the mind.)

In your experience, is there any plan for addressing this "ripple effect" on a locaL--OR national level??

4-ABBA

 

[Niko]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

Thank you Chuckwks for joining this discussion. I have been a fly on the wall of this thread so far. I have nothing to add to the energy restart ideas but appreciate the imput from everyone.

Once an adequate barter system is emplaced, a priority system needs to be developed. Babies need milk, so too do young children. Teenage boys in particular but, also men need more calories than do women and children. Everyone needs vitamins C, E and all of the B's. Looking for unusual sources of these to fill the gap should be in the back of everyone's mind. Using rose hips as a source of C is a good example. Spruce needle tea is another. Get a good reference for edible weeds. Euel Gibbons' books are one place to start but there are many other notable books as well.

I've done a little reading on the topic of edible landscaping. There is much that can be done depending upon size of yard and time to grow. A small yard (i.e. suburban USA) probably couldn't produce enough for a family, but may provide fresh foods to add to stored foods and/or to supplement during a recovery period. This seems a good place to start:
http://www.efn.org/~bsharvy/edible.html

 

[LMonty]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

THREAD DRIFT ALERT!


Niko, if you enjoy that topic, look for a book called "Edible Landscaping" by Rosiland Creasy, its probably the definitive work on the topic, and very useful. Out of print AFAIK, so a used dealer may have it. Here's a quick net article on planning an edible landscape:
http://www.alpharubicon.net/primitive/edible1lablover.htm
http://www.alpharubicon.net/primitive/edible2lablover.htm
http://www.alpharubicon.net/primitive/edible3lablover.htm

Now, back to our regularly scheduled thread!

 

[vinny]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

we are al worried about bird flu becoming a human pandemic,but one thing i wanted to say what are the chances of this ending up like Y2K and all the panic over that ,and that ended up becoming nothing to worry about because of all the work going on behind the scenes we new nothing about,is it possible BF could go the same way.?

 

[Chuckwks]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

My thoughts originally, but after careful study of it for a year, I don't hold that belief at all. Y2K was a manmade problem, with a manmade solution. Pandemic is a re-occuring natural problem, with no current solution. Prediction of its arrival is imprecise. Unfortunately, the current H5N1 variety is a kissing cousin to the 1918 pandemic flu with no human genetic characteristics, which the last two minor pandemics have had. Is there a chance that the current H5N1 will burn itself out without ever becoming a pandemic strain. The answer is yes, but we don't know what the odds of that happening. Is it one chance in 3 that it will mutate to a pandemic form, or one chance in 1.2, or one chance in 300. No way to know at this point, but what the concern is all about is that it may be much closer to 1 chance in 1. The RNA string has about 14000 genetic sequences for the typical virus, compared to several billion for human DNA. Assume the genetic sequences are like a key, which they are, to let them come into the body. This key is like the one in your pocket, it is just that it has 14,000 peaks and valleys instead of the 4 or 5 your house key has. What the researchers were saying two weeks ago was that we were one or two mutations away from the current H5N1 becoming human to human transmissible. That means one or two of those peaks or valleys on the key have to change before it becomes a master key. That also means that the other 13,998 peaks and valleys are set right for entrance to your human cells. You tell me, is it a potential problem with a high probability of occurance?

 

[Chuckwks]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

4 ABBA, I'm sure this is a topic that has come up, but I doubt there has been much planning on what to do. It is like a ship taking damage in a storm. The first focus has to be to keep it from sinking, plugging the leaks, etc. After that you do a damage assessment and determine how to get the water out, how to restore the propulsion systems and power for the pumps and steering equipment after the crisis point is past. I'm betting that most of the focus is towards trying to prevent the infrastructure from "sinking" in the first place, very little has been directed towards what to do later

 

[MHSC]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

THREAD DRIFT ALERT!


Niko, if you enjoy that topic, look for a book called "Edible Landscaping" by Rosiland Creasy, its probably the definitive work on the topic, and very useful. Out of print AFAIK, so a used dealer may have it. Here's a quick net article on planning an edible landscape:
http://www.alpharubicon.net/primitive/edible1lablover.htm
http://www.alpharubicon.net/primitive/edible2lablover.htm
http://www.alpharubicon.net/primitive/edible3lablover.htm

Now, back to our regularly scheduled thread!

Thanks for posting the website, I found some of their other articles informative, like how to start a fire with AA batteries and steel wool.

 

[Chuckwks]

Re: Local Recovery After Pandemic: HOW?

No, that is beyond my expertise, but they generally require 4 things to operate, electricity, source of water. treatment chemicals, and people. You have to not only have power at the treatment plant, but also out at the source, be it a well or holding pond/lake. Since those are going to be remote from the population center, they could be some of the last places getting power restored. This is what I mean by the sequencing of stuff to come back up. What is seemingly the last place that needs power (rural area), is actually one that may need to be restored first. Chemicals will be the next big item. The plants that produce them will have been down, and everywhere in the country will need them all at the same time. Most cities don't keep a large quantity of these chemicals on hand, some I've heard only have a 3-5 day supply available normally. So who makes the decision where to ship the chemical supply that the chemical vendor has on hand and the plant isn't back on full production?