SDAI I think you are a Pollyanna in your hopes for us plants in this hot house. Let’s take a look.

Solar Power – I may be one in a thousand who actually has access to solar power. I have two 180 watt panels on the roof of my RV but let’s face it you can’t do much with less than 400 watts and that only on the brightest days. You might be able to run one small lamp but you cannot run the microwave with it for more than a few minutes.

Pool water – Sure those with pools could drink from them but after a bit you, without your ‘pool guy’ visiting you would have a green slick that would make the water useless. You may be able to desalinate ocean water but unless the plant is in place and doesn’t use electricity (they all do) you would never get one running fast enough to save more that a tiny fraction of the population and then only long enough for them to die of starvation.

Food – I know for sure you’re not familiar with this area because in Southern California people simply don’t have lawns they could rip out. In my block only one house has a lawn and the only ones that use it are the visiting dogs. I have three citrus trees but the only fruit that I can get from them are lemons. Good for scurvy but not enough to make a diet of. The surrounding hills are covered with avocados but unless you can water them (remember no electricity to pump the water and they all require pumps) they would die in a short time. There is no other food locally grown in this area of about 5 million. Fishing would help but unless you can get out away from shore a mile or so there are virtually no fish nearby. I used to skin dive from shore so I know this is true. If we had lawns to rip out and seeds to plant we still would not have water for the plants nor the time to wait for the crop to come in.

Humans are adaptable – Sure they are but the problem is that adaptability takes time and without electricity and all that it brings (water, food, light, heat) we would not have time to adapt. Thinking about the people that surround me - could they adapt? Let’s see. End of block is a young couple that teaches at the local grade school. Since they are young they *might* be able to fend for themselves for a while. Next to them is a guy that (believe it or not) thinks that the landing on the moon was staged by the CIA. Not much hope for adaptation there. And then there is the young single father with two small children who makes a very nice living (drives two Porsches) designing software. He might have a chance if he has other skills but I don’t hold much hope for him. Then there is me and my wife. We used to skin dive and I could gig a fish with the best of them but that was many years ago so we are a write off I am afraid. Thinking about the rest of our neighborhood yields one or two out of several hundred that might have a fighting chance to live a dreadful life; the kind of life where the living would envy the dead.

I still say that a calamity like the loss of electricity would end our civilization in short order no matter what kind food horde you have or how good you are with a fishing line. If you really want to get depressed read “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy for a description of this kind of world.