this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
576 points (97.1% liked)

World News

39371 readers
2183 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah, it's true diesel degrades quickly, but oil does not. Depending on where you live, you could more quickly set up a low scale refinery than a solar panel manufacturing workshop. Most likely, people would use coal in most places without access to oil in short distance since it's more widely available and simpler to use.

[–] Vlyn 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Mate, we are talking about a societal collapse. You won't have oil available and you won't be able to refine your own diesel at home (especially without energy).

Your argument about solar panels being difficult to produce is utterly out of place. Your diesel generator and your car are more difficult to produce, but you already own them from before the downfall. So if you own an EV and you own solar panels then it doesn't matter how difficult those are to produce when you're just using them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I wasn't talking about making diesel at home. That's pretty much the immediate aftermath of a collapse.

In the case of a societal collapse, eventually, new city states will be formed using salvaged technology and eventually technology produced of their own. My argument stands that to restart civilization, you will more quickly go back to fossil fuels, which are simpler to salvage, manufacture and utilize than high tech solar panels and batteries.

This includes gas vehicles. It's just a fact that electric vehicles and semiconductor technology are luxuries of the modern era and not long term post apocalyptic tools of survival due to their manufacturing difficulties, durability and maintenance necessities. Just as an example you have Toyotas from the 60s that can still work just fine and i guarantee you a Tesla made today won't work in 60 years, unless you replace nearly every electronic component of which it depends.

I'm all for renewables and sustainability and ditching fossel fuels, but from an engineering point of view, i just don't think I'd be trusting in electrical vehicles and semiconductor tech in a post apocalyptic scenario. The reliability just isn't there.

And diesel generators/fuel refining is most definitely not more difficult to manufacture than semiconductors. Just to make a simple silicon wafer you need more tech than to make a piston engine. Let alone doping it to produce enough photoelectric effect to power stuff with. There's a reason we more quickly figured out diesel/gasoline engines than semiconductors. You need clean rooms, high tech engineers and a lot of robotics for things we can't do with enough precision with our big clunky hands at the nano scale. With piston engines a workshop will do and fuel refining is just basic fractional distillation. As a side note, i could most definitely refine diesel at home. I've distilled things more complicated than diesel. But that's beside the point. I understand you meant the average person with no training wouldn't be able to do it and i understand and agree.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Gas only lasts like 6 months before expiring. It can be stabilized to last a couple of years, but within 3-5 years all existing gas would be unusable (as far as I understand it).

Running a solar system past its ideal life when it holds even 20% of a charge and has lower efficiency is better than nothing.