Haris’s answer to “does it bother anyone that in the 20 years since these people got slammed and the human race got al…” > Likes and Comments
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But, what about car batteries already assembled and sitting on the shelves at Walmart and in all those derelict vehicles? No need to start everything from scratch. Run the engines for 20 mins a day, then use the battery thru the night, hooked up to lights/space heaters. I'm no engineer, but even with only 0.1% of people left on earth, certainly a traveling Symphony would've happened upon someone with the requisite knowledge.
I get your point, but batteries deteriorate quickly, and more importantly are very heavy. There's a reason electric cars are just now becoming a thing: until recently batteries were too heavy to move themselves. And of course every person maintaining your battery farm is a person that has to be fed and clothed that isn't obtaining food or clothes.
If you're into this genre, try Happy Doomsday. It does exactly what you suggest in the immediate aftermath, but I think it does a good job showing how quickly everything falls apart and nature takes over.
On the issue of getting vehicles running again, the book does mention that petrol has a life of about three years, after which it spoils and is useless. Co-incidentally, I recently read about this in "Blowout", Rachel Maddow's book about the oil industry, so all the car batteries on the shelves at Walmart and in derelict vehicles wouldn't be any use.
Exactly. Not enough people survived to bring back civilization. When there's a population reduction that is so extreme, it will take a long time to build anything resembling civilization back.
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Jcb
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Dec 26, 2018 11:48PM
But, what about car batteries already assembled and sitting on the shelves at Walmart and in all those derelict vehicles? No need to start everything from scratch. Run the engines for 20 mins a day, then use the battery thru the night, hooked up to lights/space heaters. I'm no engineer, but even with only 0.1% of people left on earth, certainly a traveling Symphony would've happened upon someone with the requisite knowledge.
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I get your point, but batteries deteriorate quickly, and more importantly are very heavy. There's a reason electric cars are just now becoming a thing: until recently batteries were too heavy to move themselves. And of course every person maintaining your battery farm is a person that has to be fed and clothed that isn't obtaining food or clothes. If you're into this genre, try Happy Doomsday. It does exactly what you suggest in the immediate aftermath, but I think it does a good job showing how quickly everything falls apart and nature takes over.
On the issue of getting vehicles running again, the book does mention that petrol has a life of about three years, after which it spoils and is useless. Co-incidentally, I recently read about this in "Blowout", Rachel Maddow's book about the oil industry, so all the car batteries on the shelves at Walmart and in derelict vehicles wouldn't be any use.
Exactly. Not enough people survived to bring back civilization. When there's a population reduction that is so extreme, it will take a long time to build anything resembling civilization back.
