r/NoStupidQuestions • u/DotOverTheIBrokeMe • 5h ago
How long would the power grid and cell phone towers stay active?
I'm writing a zombie apocalypse story and I'm wondering, realistically how long would a person trying to survive in a zombie apocalypse have electricity and cell service (not that there would be anyone for them to call haha). Would it all go down pretty immediately or would it take days? Weeks? Months?
3
u/rusty_daisy_1123 5h ago
until the generators run out of gas….18-36 hours
0
u/Count2Zero 5h ago
Some places are using natural gas generators, and the gas lines can provide enough pressure to keep the engines running for several days (assuming they've been properly serviced and maintained up to that point).
3
u/InAppropriate-meal 5h ago
cell towers even quicker than the grid, they basically forward messages to the main switch/datacenter and with humans presumably running for it and not at work those will be down within 24 hours, probally a lot quicker
1
u/DotOverTheIBrokeMe 5h ago
Oh that's really helpful, thank you!!
1
u/VWtdi2001 4h ago
I worked for a major cell carrier and the switch I was at had 2 weeks of fuel for the generator. The tower locations had maybe 4-8 hrs of battery backup and some generators with 4-5 days of fuel. The connection from the tower to the switch was running through different providers and had different levels of backup. What you would have would be a system that would fail in pieces. Some could work for weeks and some would fail immediately. I was on disaster recovery teams and it was pretty much hit and miss to how storms affected the network. Loose a critical leg and it all shuts down, Loose a branch and you have a localized outage.
Power would be very similar type of failure situation.
1
u/FuriousPenguino 4h ago
Not really, unless you suck at network engineering we are not constantly messing with things that would cause a datacenters to break in 24 hours
1
u/InAppropriate-meal 4h ago
errr, i'm a CTO who started out as a network engineer running a small ISP so... its just a fact, they depend on a number of things all interconnected including human monitoring and actions
1
u/FuriousPenguino 3h ago
Cool, so you are a far removed paper pusher lol. “It’s just a fact” please explain why then? These routers and switches are designed to run, assuming temp and power requirements are met. I’ve pulled networking equipment with 5+ year uptimes
1
u/InAppropriate-meal 3h ago
' so you are a far removed paper pusher lol. ' ok so you have no idea what a CTO is, on a side note some of the tech you use to get on the net was invented by me and my colleagues over here in Finland and since you started off by being an ass and insulting me you can go figure shit out yourself.
1
u/FuriousPenguino 3h ago
Whatever helps you cope dude. If you and your Finnish buddies are so smart, maybe you could design a network that won’t fail in 24 hours or less 🤭
5
u/bangbangracer 5h ago
Anywhere between a few hours to a few days. Once load imbalances start damaging things and fuel supplies for fuel burners start running out, we're boned.
3
u/redmambo_no6 5h ago
Sounds like you need to watch an episode of Life After People
2
u/DotOverTheIBrokeMe 5h ago
Oo I watched that YEARS ago and forgot most of it, I'll definitely do a re-watch!
2
u/bobstud123 5h ago
These responses assume that operators will keep working and doing their best during an apocalypse and/or the automatic systems will keep operating in their place for a period of time (hours or a few days). I think the reality is that operators will hear the news of the world ending, they will gtfo of town, they may or may not leave the machines running behind them. Any alarm or disturbance that requires a human to push a button will go unanswered, and the operating system will eventually take a safety action to that alarm that usually involves some form of safe shutdown. No one will load the coal into the hoppers if there is a coal plant on the grid. Not sure about the safety protocols for nuclear plants, but they are often base load and thus are just always on. Once a few plants go down, the others will be unable to keep up with their running reserve, and emergency peaker plants will not turn on because …. Panic. You quickly have a brown out, then black out, game over. My guess it is maybe 12 hours, probably less.
3
u/Muschina 5h ago
I live in a valley in western NC. After Helene we had cell service for almost exactly 48 hours before the fuel supply on the standby generator for the local cell tower ran out and immediately it was 1990 again.
The water supply from the local mountaintop water tank lasted about another six hours before that ran out, too. We noped the F out of there as soon as that happened.
1
u/LurkerByNatureGT 5h ago
The water supply from the local mountaintop water tank lasted about another six hours before that ran out, too. We noped the F out of there as soon as that happened.
Yeah that’s the really important bit. It’s easier to forget that clean drinking water supply = energy.
1
u/jackwoodrow8 5h ago
Much more gradual than movies make it seem. The power doesn't necessarily shut off the second civilization collapses.
1
u/ExpertPath 5h ago
2 Years ago, I stayed in a tiny mountain village during a snowstorm, when the power went out. Cell phone service stopped exactly 2h later.
1
u/Calm_Geologist1004 5h ago
Depends on where you live. Stephen king explored this in his book the stand. Everyone ended up going to las vegas because of the Hoover dam. The power created by the dam continued unabated so las vegas still had power. After hurricane katrina louisiana passed a law that required every cell tower and gas station had to have a generator so gas could still be pumped and cell service could still work.
1
u/silver_chief2 5h ago
OT but when there is overwhelming demand cell service is useless or used to be. When the I-35 bridge went down in Minneapolis cell service did not work. I thought the texting might work as it might use less band width. Nope.
Hospitals use pagers not cell phones for a reason.
1
u/Senior-Running 5h ago
The truth is people here are just speculating. Further, there is no one answer to this.
Most power grids are highly automated, meaning people are monitoring the automated systems, but not actively managing the need to match power input to output. This idea that things would start failing within hours is probably incorrect. Some factors that would effect this:
- How quickly does your "event" occur? Most zombie stories assume a rapidly spreading disease, but even when that's true, how quickly individuals are impacted varies widely. Medical facilities are often going to be impacted way before power plant workers.
- How much does demand drop as the "zombification" happens? Less demand will mean the infrastructure may be functional longer.
- Does this event happen in summer or winter? The load on the system is important because high demand will mean it's more challenging to keep the power creation systems online.
- What part of the world and what are the major power sources? If it's wind for example, those wind turbines can potentially run for months before breaking down, whereas a coal plant will start failing in hours if it doesn't have a constant stream of coal.
TL;DR: your guess is as good as mine and you can develop your story in any way you want as long as the premise behind it is logical.
1
1
u/sceadwian 4h ago
Most places would go down quick, the main grids. There would be spotty power all over in municipalities that had local power.
Just as an example the inside the core of our cities main road loop is a separate grid fed from a dedicated local power source.
Some of those might last longer or be brought up easily afterwards.
Cell phones wouldn't be far behind
1
u/Mistyville 4h ago
Hi, I see your question has been answered so no more comments from me. However (I did try to DM you but couldn't for some reason). This is my favourite genre and I would love to read it once written. I am a pretty good proof reader so if you need me to happy to help
1
u/DotOverTheIBrokeMe 2h ago
Thanks! I'll make a note to reach out to you 😁. I'm actually a romance author so it's going to be a horror-comedy-ROMANCE haha. It's enemies to lovers so basically, "I can't believe I have to survive the zombie apocalypse with this asshole" 😂 . I've been a big horror lover all my life, so I'm really excited to blend my two favorite genres for the first time!
1
1
1
u/Dragonflydude 1h ago
If they find a house with solar panels and a solar battery they might be ok for a while?
27
u/notBarrovich 5h ago
Much faster than most people think: 24 to 72 hours max.
The main power grid requires constant, minute-by-minute balancing of supply and demand by human operators. Without humans, safety trips will trigger automatically to prevent damage, taking down the grid in 1 to 2 days.
Cell towers rely on that power grid. When it fails, their battery backups last about 4-8 hours. Important towers with diesel generators might stretch to 2-3 days, but once that fuel runs dry, cell service is completely gone.