Remember also, that after WWII, a devastated, non-electric mainland China still had roughly 450 million people surviving—not richly, I agree—on approximately the same land mass as the US, without much electrification.
It would be rough for the first few months. Cars and trucks would be re-configured to work with old-style distributors. Generators would work, but would supply power to local areas with a damaged grid. It wouldn’t be the Dark Ages, but it would be a major disaster.
“the nuclear crisis of 2013 ... North Korea”
Umm, a few vague threats from North Korea hardly amount to a crisis, but perhaps we should send them a pulse, after all, their ruling classes are probably the only ones on the grid anyway.
The transition would kill most, if it was truly widespread. Those Chinese were already supporting themselves that way.
We could hire North Korea to come in and teach us how to do it.
I doubt you would need to reconfigure cars. Its not like the initial EMP would redamage them. Just replace the bad circuits and start them up.
The biggest problem would be with banking and people who rely on delicate electronics to work. They would be SOL for quite a while, before new electronics arrived.
There is a huge difference between a time when people and a society was living without electricity, versus a modern suddenly losing electricity.
Before electricity, everything could get done, agriculture, food distribution, factories, the individual had everything he needed as well and the store shelves were stocked with all his needs, from lanterns and oil, to candles, and horse harnesses, the chemicals to glass his eggs.
The home was built and equipped for a non-electric world, and the use of horses, we don’t have all that today, we don’t own those things and they aren’t even made anymore in many case, or in tiny numbers in others, there is no agriculture or distribution system, or plants, that doesn’t depend on electricity.
If the farmer lost electricity, as did everything that comes to him, seed, fuel, pesticides, irrigation, harvesting, and everything that goes from him, then we would lose the growing season and the next, and who knows when it end.
What would it take after a few months of being shutdown and fallow, for the local supermarkets to rehire, and restock, and become supermarkets again?
Our hardware stores carry hammers and nails, but they don’t carry non-electric sewing machines, and horse plows.
it would be way more than months- just to get parts to reconfigure trucks would be hard, with little communications to organize and then ship parts
“....China still had roughly 450 million people surviving—not richly, I agree—on approximately the same land mass as the US, without much electrification.”
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But the Chinese were mentally and physically much stronger than the pampered, overweight, self-indulging American. Don’t forget that they were accustomed to suffering and depravation during WWII.
They could survive under conditions that would kill most Americans.
growing up i never had running or elec.i joined the navy at 17 they had plenty of it.
growing up i never had running water or elec.i joined the navy at 17 they had plenty of it.