[Certhas]

Blackouts. Do what Stuxnet did to the control rooms of a large number of power plants, spinning up the machines to hard, coordinate this attack so it triggers in a large number of places.

If you can pull this off for a continental scale, you're looking at potentially months to restore power to everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2015_Ukraine_power_gr...

[blattimwind]

Actually for power plants it isn't quite so simple. Because turbines and turbogenerators at nominal speed are quite close to the limit of what the material can support, they have multiple independent fail-safes. For example, if you tried to spin a turbine above safe speed, quick acting valves redirect the steam elsewhere in a fraction of a second.

However, there are absolutely things you could do in a power plant that greatly accelerate wear. It might be possible to accelerate wear enough to achieve failure of some parts before the next maintenance happens.

"Just shutting a plant off" on the other hand is not too difficult; for most plants and upstream systems "off" is the safe state, so all systems are designed to fail into that state, if they really have to.

[toong]

Without power, logistics & supply lines stop working, no more groceries after a few days, riots and plunderings in the streets a week later...

[Cthulhu_]

Anything that doesn't require refrigeration would still work though, trucks run on diesel after all.

Which makes me concerned about the future; if the transport network becomes electric, a power outage will cripple things even more. Unless we build self-contained, internet-disconnected charging stations maybe, but that's not going to be done at any kind of significant scale.

[toong]

I think your missing the point.

You can maybe drive a truck, but there is a lot more to a logistics pipeline then actually driving the truck. Without power the whole scheduling automation etc. has to be done manually, and it's by now simply impossible to do every automated job manually again.

Your logistics pipelines could maybe run at a few percent efficiency if every step is manual, but by then your trucks will be raided on the streets.

[Certhas]

Just a guess, but: Gas stations use pumps that run on electricity.

[bluGill]

They are still pumps: a physical system. Give me a couple hours and I can get gasoline out of any gas station without needing electricity. Of course I will destroy large parts of the machine in the process. I'll get my gas, and so will anyone else while that turns the crank. The pump will need to be replaced to use normally afterwards.

The bigger worry is gasoline in tanks is good for at most a month. The refinery is much harder to start/operate without power. They have their own backup power on site (I assume) so this might or might not be a real worry. If it is I'll just brew some ethanol.

[Certhas]

Maybe you would, would people everywhere? Also, the tanks are underground, encased in concrete, with a submersible pump, and there are no power tools.

Might be possible to get to them. But that's solving one problem. If we're talking continent scale blackout it's also unclear what that gets you.

Typical backup power is measured in hours or days. Black start time scale for a blackout that scale is potentially significantly longer than that.

Long before petrol in refineries runs out our logistics system that distributes food to people has failed. The water system probably has failed. Now if you're in the countryside with a full pantry and a stream next to you that might not matter too much. You'll sit this one out. But if you're in the middle of New York?

[bluGill]

I said I could, not that I would.

My first thought when this happens is society will get itself going again in a few weeks. I wouldn't want to be the looter who robbed a gas station in the trouble. By time it was obvious that society isn't getting back together the gas in their tanks is bad so I wouldn't want it. I'd be more interested in robbing the hardware store to get shovels, and other supplies for gardening so that I can live long term. Hopefully my neighbors are helping as well, division of labor is helpful.

This assumes I survive. Anyone who is this interested in destroying society is probably going to use other means as well to kill people at the same time.

[fractallyte]

This was the subject of the novel Blackout by Marc Elsberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_(Elsberg_novel))