Which is not a problem, if the legislators, governor and regulators are working for the public. The public needs a grid and base generation capability, and the utility is guaranteed a safe and reasonable profit if it provides these things.

Bostonian here.

My work has taken me to cities all over the country, and I have to say that I've found New Yorkers to be the most considerate and helpful big city denizens in the US. The picture of the typical New Yorker as an obnoxious ogre is a phony movie and television trope.

People mistake adaptations to the pace and concentration of urban life as unfriendliness. Yes, people don't smile and nod at everyone they meet as they stroll the length of 5th Avenue, because after three or four blocks they'd need a chiropractor. But approach one of those people on 5th Avenue for directions, and most of the time he'll be pleasant and eager to be helpful.

Of course, you take your chances approaching strangers in any big city, but I also think that a lot of the treatment you receive is determined by the attitude you bring with you. I've heard wildly different reports on the infamous rudeness of Parisians, but the reports are usually a reflection of the kind of person making the report. Courteous people tend to be met with courtesy wherever they go, and obnoxious people get a rude reception.

The original poster did:

3D printed guns and powerful computers

I think the big concern is power lines picking up huge voltage spikes that fry power supplies everywhere. It would be interesting to see how good surge protectors are all over the country. I suspect a lot of them will fail to deliver on their stated promises. I do think these scenarios where an EMP goes off and suddenly everybody has to hunt for game in the woods with bows and arrows is silly though. It would damage a lot of equipment and require a lot of work to repair, but society is more resilient than people think.

Actually, most Boeings do still have a mechanical connection between the stick and the control surfaces. The most modern ones are fly by wire only, but older planes like 737s, 747s, 757s, and even 767s still have a mechanical link that the pilots can attempt a hail mary with. Airbus planes have been fly by wire only for some time though. Also note that these vehicles are rated for lightning strikes, which is not terribly dissimilar than a EMP and they don't fall out of the sky when hit by lightning bolts.

I think that article is counting every infant in an ICU, everybody on medical devices, and maybe every pacemaker in the US? I guess this assumes the EMP is strong enough that it actually damages the equipment (and that surge protectors are worthless) so the normal backup power generators are not effective. It's sometimes hard to figure out where the numbers are coming from when talking about scaremongering articles like this.

Most cars power breaks are powered by engine vacuum and a completely mechanical linkage. Tesla owners and some people with Hybrids might be in trouble, but even then the e-brake should still work. They'll be able to stop even in the event of a total computer shutdown in the car. Loss of power steering won't kill too many people either, the mechanical linkage is still there and while your steering is heavy, you probably weren't making sharp rapid maneuvers when the EMP hit anyway. Even an old grandma can muscle her car over to the side of the road while it's still moving (steering once stopped maybe not, but by then who cares?)

Aircraft have the biggest problem. They're highly computerized and the failure mode is fatal. Plus, even if the aircraft aren't disabled, the loss of ATC in todays crowded skies would be a huge issue. Trying to get all of the planes down safely would be a monumental task.

Where do you 3D print computer chips? Use the right technology for the job man.

My experience with splitters is that they were much faster than doing it by hand, but we were always splitting stuff that required a wedge and multiple strikes because the interlocking fibers would hold the log together (and snap back if you pulled the wedge) until you had pounded practically all the way through the wood. Of course sometimes we got some nice dry poplar and we would be finished with the whole tree in a couple of hours, but usually the wood we were splitting was just awful.

I can't imagine the guy in this video doing the same with some choke cherry logs.

Yeah, my impression of the video is that he's making wood that's easy to split even easier. On something like scrub pine, that axe would probably be a nightmare. I really don't need a breathtakingly expensive maul to split dry birch.

I've seen a lot of manuscripts that follow this basic template in my writing group. You have an enemy (often Muslims speaking dog-of-an-infidel Arab-ese) who launches a ludicrously successful EMP superweapon, and in the collapse that follows a charismatic leader with a military background emerges to lead the building of a new, and looks-likely-to-be-better society.

I've seen enough of these to justify doing some research on the physics of nuclear EMP, and have yet to see a Ms that is even remotely scientifically accurate. These stories come out of a sense of dissatisfaction with where 200 years of democracy have brought us. These authors long for rule by extraordinary men (always men), unencumbered by the dead weight of by-definition-mediocre 300 million ordinary people. Remove technology, remove most of that 300 million people and set the remainder to the task of survival, and there is no longer any constraint on the greatness of the extraordinary few.

Of course there's nothing wrong with an authoritarian fantasy, any more than there is anything wrong with a story about the restoration of the "rightful" king. You can enjoy such a story without *really* believing you'd be better off under a charismatic military leader or king. The key to enjoying such a story is "suspension of disbelief".

Butamax is a shell company of BP and DuPont. It is suing Gevo to prevent it from selling Butanol fuel based on an obvious patent developed at public university, partly with our tax money.

That depends. Top Gear reports when the cocks have shifted brand, I believe they've moved from BMWs to Audis just in time for me to buy one and remove all doubt. Otherwise, they seem to get rid of their cars (What's a $70k car? S-Class, A8, Jag...) about the same time all the electrical stuff takes a dump. I don't think they're worried about being current, only having the correct brand.

Holy shitballs, batman. Even on an Audi A8 the transmission lines are only four hundred bucks. They only list one part so apparently that's both of them and you buy them together.

On the other hand, the Chevy dealer wouldn't sell me door handles, they wanted to sell me door handle mechanisms. 2000 Astro, a thousand bucks in door handles. I got the handles on eBay for ten to twenty bucks a piece depending on placement. So I guess Chevy really is worse than Audi

The suspension is pretty much guaranteed to be ripe for a rebuild by or before that time, because they're still not using polyurethane bushings. That's spendy and it's no less (or more) spendy on the Leaf.