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Discussion: How long would these last?
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R3DSlip |
How long would these last?
Dec 15 2011, 11:22 PM EST
Okay so I've been searching for these answers forever and i cant even get a rough guess to these questions. So if a zombie apocalypse were to happen, how long do would it take before;1.)Phone lines (including cellular) stop working. 2.)Electricity in homes and buildings would go off. 3.)Radio lines stop working. Do you find this valuable?
Keyword tags:
cellular
grid
nuclear plants
phones
power
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JunkCollector |
1. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 15 2011, 11:51 PM EST
1. Depends on power outages, lines going down, and phone equipment damage without maintenance. Cell phones depend on cell towers that need electricity. 2. Electricity depends on what type of power station the area lines are being powered by. Also this depends on power line damages and power station maintenance, along when the power stations run out of fuel to generate power (except hydro, solar, and wind). 3. Radio travels through the air not lines and depend on power, people to operate, and wear and tear along with damage. 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
Zombot |
2. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 12:55 AM EST
There was a History/Discovery (one of those awesome channels) special about life after humans, if we were all to suddenly disappear. I have a feeling that a z-poc would actually go down in a semi-similar fashion, save for the fact that some of us would be around to deal with the aftermath. Some of the nuclear plants most likely will go boom. The ones that don't will shut down. I don't remember exact timelines, but nature reclaimed the world pretty durn quickly, nuclear areas aside.
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R3DSlip |
3. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 9:23 AM EST
"Some of the nuclear plants most likely will go boom. The ones that don't will shut down. I don't remember exact timelines, but nature reclaimed the world pretty durn quickly, nuclear areas aside."Nuclear plants would explode? Holy crap, and i was wondering, what about state toll booths (like the ones on major highways and on turnpikes ect.)? Would they close them down and try to prevent anyone from passing through? or would they just abandon them, allowing for a free pass? Do you find this valuable? |
chitoryu12 |
4. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 1:37 PM EST
Nuclear power plants are designed specifically NOT to explode in case the people working them just up and leave. The Chernobyl disaster occurred due to the safety features being actively shut down before performing a dangerous task, along with no containment structure (Three Mile Island had one of these structures, and as such your computer is emitting more radiation at you now than the disaster did). All nuclear reactors will automatically shut down if the reaction goes above safe limits or the power shuts off for even a moment, as well as multiple redundant switches located all around the facility that will shut down the reaction immediately. So no, nuclear reactors won't go boom unless every safety feature possible was turned off by the workers before they fled for their lives and all of the automatic safety features that activate when power is lost or the reaction got too hot somehow didn't work. Do you find this valuable? |
StrykerPez |
5. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 3:05 PM EST
Verizon (because they're awesome) has back-up generators at all its cell tower sites. Granted, these are diesel or propane powered, and won't last forever, but will at least hold out for a few days after the grid shuts down. Other cell providers will be dead as soon as the power goes out, unless they sublease a Verizon tower. The grid will not last long. Assuming all utility workers said "screw this" and went home to their families, it will only take one car hitting one transformer to cause a local cascading grid failure. Heck, a few months ago, ONE worker at a San Diego Gas and Electric transfer station caused all of Southern California and parts of Arizona and Mexico to have a blackout because he pushed a wrong button. When the transfer station went offline, the rest of the grid automatically tried to compensate for the power loss, causing San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station to shut down because of threat of overload. A Mexican power plant blew next, and then the whole grid shut down all the way through LA... all within seconds. The power surge blew transformers and substations across Socal, and Edison and SDGE took several days to get power back to everybody. Radio transmissions are dependent on the transmitter and receiver, nothing more. If a broadcast station has a back up generator (most do), they will keep transmitting. If you have batteries in your radio, you can listen. As for HAM radio, be careful. HAM relies on transceiver relay towers that may or may not survive the S hitting the F. These can be solar powered, generator powered, or grid powered. And the thing about reactors. No, they won't go BOOM right away. Most of the reactors in the U.S. can't go BOOM at all due to their newer design. What they can do is catch fire after cooling systems fail and have a meltdown. Once the rods melt, they sink into a bed of material that stops the reaction. Do you find this valuable? |
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StrykerPez |
6. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 3:09 PM EST
Oh yeah. A bigger threat than the reactors themselves are the spent fuel storage pools. These are swimming-pool size and full of nuclear fuel rods that have outlived their life but are still generating some decay heat as the rest of the fissile material breaks down. The pools have to be full of water to keep the rods cool. If the pumps and cooling systems fail, and no one has a fire truck on hand to pump tons of water into the pools like in Fukushima, the rods will catch on fire and release massive amounts of fallout into the air.
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chitoryu12 |
7. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 3:24 PM EST
Thing is, most of these reactors shouldn't have a meltdown because even if all the workers leave because they will automatically shut down the reaction in case of power loss or the reaction getting too hot. Again, this is assuming all of the workers die or evacuate without bothering to even flip the SCRAM switch on the way out.
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StrykerPez |
8. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 3:54 PM EST
"Thing is, most of these reactors shouldn't have a meltdown because even if all the workers leave because they will automatically shut down the reaction in case of power loss or the reaction getting too hot. Again, this is assuming all of the workers die or evacuate without bothering to even flip the SCRAM switch on the way out."Agreed... most reactor fail-safes are designed to operate without human intervention. Even the emergency core cooling systems are passive, using only the heat they're removing to circulate the water in the reactor. It's not that reactors are just sitting around waiting to blow if somebody takes their eyes off the gauge. The real issue is the spent fuel pools. The cooling pools WILL boil off all their water approximately ten days after failure of the pumps that circulate the water. Then the rods will catch fire and release more radiation than a meltdown ever could. Once the reactors enter cold shutdown, the plant is no longer making electricity. If the grid is down (which is likely) the circulation pumps rely on diesel generators, which have a week of fuel at most. So we've got about 17 days after SHTF before all the nuclear plants become a dead zone for a mile in every direction, and fallout drifts on the wind. Do you find this valuable? |
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chitoryu12 |
9. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 5:34 PM EST
Aren't these rods (along with the rest of the reactor) located in the containment building? The Three Mile Island disaster was barely a disaster specifically because of this building, which greatly restricted any form of radiation, steam, and pyrotechnics. It's basically like throwing a grenade into an empty concrete bunker to contain the explosion.
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OutlawJames |
10. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 6:57 PM EST
| Post edited: Dec 16 2011, 6:59 PM EST
"There was a History/Discovery (one of those awesome channels) special about life after humans, if we were all to suddenly disappear. I have a feeling that a z-poc would actually go down in a semi-similar fashion, save for the fact that some of us would be around to deal with the aftermath. Some of the nuclear plants most likely will go boom. The ones that don't will shut down. I don't remember exact timelines, but nature reclaimed the world pretty durn quickly, nuclear areas aside."Actually, most nuclear reactors will scram and shut themselves down. What becomes a danger is Spent fuel storage containment. Used fuel creates a lot of heat and is still radioactive. The spent fuel is stored in containment pools which have pumps circulating the water...( Some people claim there is boric acid in the pools to raise the boiling temp), but I have contacted a couple Nuclear engineers here in the states just doing research and they all say it is just water. When asked what happens if the pumps go out they all say the same thing. Reguardless of what the coolant is..it will continue to heat till it boils off, "Then you get a China Syndrome" Super heated fuel melting down hitting ground water and then vapor explosions. Do you find this valuable? |
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chitoryu12 |
11. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 7:33 PM EST
Again, my question is exactly WHAT is in the containment building. I know that even a meltdown would be made relatively fine by the building, but I don't know if the coolant is located in it.
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R3DSlip |
12. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 8:05 PM EST
What about state toll booths (like the ones on major highways and on turnpikes , and major bridges, ect.)? Would they close them down and try to prevent anyone from passing through? or would they just abandon them, allowing for a free pass?
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NotAlice |
13. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 16 2011, 8:50 PM EST
"As for HAM radio, be careful. HAM relies on transceiver relay towers that may or may not survive the S hitting the F. These can be solar powered, generator powered, or grid powered.I beg to differ. Ham radio is hardly dependent on relay towers, with the exception of VHF and UHF bands. Shortwave and longwave radio have ranges that span the globe. Do you find this valuable? |
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chitoryu12 |
14. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 17 2011, 7:27 PM EST
" What about state toll booths (like the ones on major highways and on turnpikes , and major bridges, ect.)? Would they close them down and try to prevent anyone from passing through? or would they just abandon them, allowing for a free pass?"If they weren't planning on manning the toll booths with armed guards to serve as an impromptu checkpoint or blockade, they'll likely just have the gates left open for people to evacuate. Even if the gates were closed, I don't think it would be hard to open them or simply break them with a vehicle. 2 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
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BackwoodsJack |
15. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 17 2011, 10:12 PM EST
Sadly, I can pretty much guarantee that cell phones and land lines wont last much longer than the initial couple of days after the PAW break-out. There is alot more of a "human element" to these systems than your average lay-person is cognizant of.First, its mechanical alot more complicated than "cell phone goes to tower, tower goes to next cell phone". The signal flow relies on modems, digital multiplexers, RF upconverters, and high powered amplifiers to name just the basics. Any one of these devices failing means the entire system goes down, and they arent as self-sufficient as most people would like to think. Second, transmission involves more than just your voice going over the air in analog wave form. All transmissions require analog-to-digital conversion equipment (modems), encryption, and most important, some form of network timing to maintain end-to-end connection. As anyone involved in the business can attest, a micro-second's loss of power, or enough atmospheric propagation loss, to any of these devices will result in loss of that comm circuit unless someone is phyiscally present to "bump" the device so that they can re-sync, otherwise they will not link up end to end. Ham radio, on the other hand, requires no more equipment than you can maintain yourself (assuming you arent trying to transmit over 50 km or so), and even if the "repeater" towers fail, you can still easily communicate with anyone else with a HAM within, say, your own city limits at the least (based on your own personal equipment). I recommend everyone who is into survival or planning for the basics of the PAW get familiar with HAM operation, if not actually get a base station of their own. Do you find this valuable? |
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StrykerPez |
16. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 17 2011, 11:31 PM EST
http://www.propublica.org/article/electrical-fire-knocks-out-spent-fuel-cooling-at-nebraska-nuke-plant/singleCheck this article out. It details an accident at a Nebraska plant that would have been very serious if humans weren't around to restore cooling to the spent fuel pool. The containment structures surround the reactor pressure vessel only. The rest of the buildings simply protect the other equipment from the weather. They cannot contain burning spent fuel. Do you find this valuable? |
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StrykerPez |
17. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 17 2011, 11:33 PM EST
"( Some people claim there is boric acid in the pools to raise the boiling temp), but I have contacted a couple Nuclear engineers here in the states just doing research and they all say it is just water."Boron or Boric Acid is a Neutron absorber. It kills the reaction and stops decay heat a bit. Nothing to do with boiling temp. Do you find this valuable? |
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Zombot |
18. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 22 2011, 9:23 PM EST
Also, on the note of reactors, imagine if a Zombie horde managed to get inside of one? The chaos that could potentially cause through fires, firearms, etc. adds an element of uncertainty to the mix. Additionally, not every fail safe works 100% all the time. Look at what happened with Japan after the tsunami? They had several reactors almost go critical, to include some leaked radiation. That's why the Nuclear Commission decided to do a whole new set of inspections.As for what Pez is saying, that's new to me, and again, very disconcerting. Either way, I plan on staying far away from Nuclear Reactors, because if they aren't putting out electricity, I have no use for them, and the risk certainly outweighs the rewards. Do you find this valuable? |
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OutlawJames |
19. RE: How long would these last?
Dec 22 2011, 11:04 PM EST
"Also, on the note of reactors, imagine if a Zombie horde managed to get inside of one? The chaos that could potentially cause through fires, firearms, etc. adds an element of uncertainty to the mix. Additionally, not every fail safe works 100% all the time. Look at what happened with Japan after the tsunami? They had several reactors almost go critical, to include some leaked radiation. That's why the Nuclear Commission decided to do a whole new set of inspections.Oh my god, RADIO ACTIVE MUTATING ZOMBIES...just when I thought it couldn't get anymore original.... I wonder if they'll glow in the dark too. Do you find this valuable? |
