Disaster Squared

The other day, I was idly wondering what would happen if a Harvey-like storm / hurricane were to hit an area like Houston again — only this time, because Evil Glueball Wormening, all the cars were not powered by gasoline or diesel but by government-mandated electricity.

Fear not; in a fine example of synchronicity, Longtime Reader Mike G. sends me this little study which, if you’re too busy to read the whole thing, can be summed up quite simply: everyone would be fucked. Hard. A sample:

Imagine if the environmentalists had had their way and had managed to force the US into electric cars…something that is underway now in some countries like Norway, the UK and soon France. Germany recently has been discussing in earnest banning by 2030 the internal combustion engine.
And now imagine with Irma approaching if the millions of citizens evacuating populated south Florida had had electric cars instead to make the 400-mile journey to get out of harm’s way. After 100 miles or so these cars would have lost their power, and charging stations quickly would have become overrun with cars waiting to make the one-hour charge-up.
Traffic would have rapidly come to a halt.
These millions of stranded people then would have been sitting ducks waiting to be blown away by nature’s fury.

I await with bated breath to see how the Greens will respond to this hypothesis. (Of course, given that most Greens hate people in principle and espouse a policy of going back to nature, they’ll most likely shrug and say something about staving off over-population by natural means, the amoral assholes.)

This whole unicorn philosophy of the Greens is going to end up killing more people than the internal combustion engine.

10 comments

  1. I’ve been bringing up the “electric cars are lousy disaster prep” argument for quite a while now, and the best counter-argument they can seem to come up with is “well, we just need to build a lot more high speed rail so everyone can evacuate at once.”

    When I point out the capacity issue (only so many people can fit on a train, only so many trains can fit on a track), they just handwave.

  2. I think that may be the point. Don’t many of the Greens believe that humanity (except for their enlightened selves, of course!) is a blight upon dear Gaia and needs to be pruned back?

  3. The greens cannot understand scale. Even with all the wind and solar we have installed it is less that 5% or the total footprint for energy usage in the entire US.

    Micro they do well enough, but for the macro it is kill them all.

  4. > I await with bated breath to see how the Greens will respond to this hypothesis.

    Let me save you the time:

    “They can take the TRAIN!”

  5. “This whole unicorn philosophy of the Greens is going to end up killing more people than the internal combustion engine.”

    That’s a feature not a bug.

  6. Heck, you don’t need a natural disaster. Electric cars can make their own. All you need is enough of them. Hot weather, everybody running AC, get home from work, plug the car in, multiply by enough people and the grid goes down.

    But smart meters and insecure internet of things appliances are the answer. The utility can turn off the AC and your appliances to charge the cars. For your own good.

    1. Indeed, sir. The grid. I used to make the same argument in Chico, CA. Just give every household in the city limits and electric car. The air will be clean. Life will be wonderful. Let everyone come home from work at 5 p.m. , plug in their car and turn on their A/C. In the summer. On a 110+ degree day. Grid? Yeah, right.

      I lived there back when we had rolling blackouts. Got shut down at work more than once. We discovered where to find the code on our electric bill that said which physical grid we were in at home. Grid 00, which was the same as the local airport, so no blackouts at home.

  7. Tesla announced that in the interest of helping their FL customers, they had initiated an internet upgrade to their cars in that area allowing them an extended range (another 50 miles or so) on a temporary basis for those who choose not to pay for the upgrade.
    All Hail Elon!

  8. Until the electric car can at least reach parity with the current breeds of internal combustion engine vehicles, it will remain a novelty.

    No one is going to willingly buy a car that can only go 100 miles, and require hours of recharging, versus a car that can go 400 or so miles on a tank that can be filled up in five minutes.

    (I inserted ‘willingly’ in there because we all know the Green Nazis will happily FORCE you to buy one, if they could.)

    I think I might pass your musings on to a compatriot who’s been writing about prepping, Mr. du Toit. Be interesting to see what her thoughts on it are.

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