I have this idea for a story were the surrounding infrastructure is intact. Now barring regular maintenance, how long would it take for existing infrastructure to not function? How long could a house run on existing utilities?
Thanks for the help!
In: Engineering
Minutes to hours, even if the apocalypse suddenly killed all humans without breaking everything.
To start with water. The water treatment plant could run for a few days on its own likely. Depends if the control system has things like backwash cycles fully automated. Either way, it’s eventually going to fail. Things are going to go into alarm that need operator input, chemicals are going to run out, reservoirs are going to overfill or empty. Potable water production is going to stop within a couple days at best. The water distribution system again is somewhat automated. Depending on how well automated it is, it could run for a few days before things start to go sideways. But this is all rather irrelevant, as it hinges on electricity. Some parts of the water system might have back-up diesel generators to keep it going for a few hours, but that’s not going to last long.
Now onto power. The power system will probably crash and burn within hours. It’s a delicate balance of matching power produced to power consumed. Generators need to change inputs to maintain speed, generators need to come online and offline, power billing rates are adjusted on the fly, power is sold to other regions over lines. This need to happen every second, 24/7. A lot of this is automated, especially on the fast and small swing end. That’s why turning on your light switch doesn’t crash the grid to a hault. However, the larger scale fluctuations need human input. The issues and alarms of the plant and grid need human input. Everyone dying is definitely going to cause an unexpected shift in demand. And all it takes is one error not being addressed to crash a large part of the whole thing. In 2003 50 million people in North America lost power because of one hiccup at one plant. One plant took down about 250 of them. Things are going to get pretty out of control fast with cascading issues without anyone directing the system, without anyone responding to issues, and without the demanding being predictable.
Now, something immediately killing all humans but not damaging any of this semes unlikely. You more than likely are going to have downed power lines, broken transformers, ruptured water lines, out of control fires. Even if the apocalypse just kills humans, that’s a lot of car crashes. That’s a lot of planes falling from the sky. That’s a lot of stove tops setting buildings on fire. That’s a lot of factories and plants exploding.
I’m leaning on the answer is within an hour most shit is well beyond repair.
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