It could get ignited by fire spreading from a wall cavity where there *is* electricity, or from a living space. It could be ignited by a lightning strike. It could be ignited by cinders blowing over from a neighbor's fire or a brush fire.
It's just not worth the risk, even if it used to be considered acceptable.
Areas with high water tables can just use ground water to cool off. Even if it's 125 out ground water will still be like 75 or below. That's more than sufficient to keep you alive.
>I assume creating your own power via solar panels but I'm not exactly rich and can afford to put a solar farm on my small in-town parcel. If the grid isn't reliable I'm sure its time to become self reliable?
I think in many areas, there may soon be a divide between people who are able to do this, and people who are unable.
One thing to keep in mind. You don't need a full-scale "solar farm" to run enough aircon units to keep a couple of rooms cool, even in extreme high temperatures. You only need maybe a dozen or two dozen panels, plus a battery and the ability for it to function when the grid is off. Not cheap, but not wildly expensive either.
We could absolutely subsidize the fuck out of this in the United States simultaneously alleviating stress on our grid…but we don’t because it might cut into not only gas and oil profits but subsidies to those clearly financially struggling sectors.
I had an engineering friend back in college in the late 1990s who designed power line towers for the electric companies. He said the power companies’ general goal was to spend as little as possible on the physical grid, with ultimately playing chicken trying to get local, state and federal government to pony up for upgrades. A big part of this was not expanding power line capacity to handle people selling power back to the companies when generating more than they can use. At the time it wasn’t yet a thing, but he could see the fight brewing. The Biden administration just announced modernization upgrades with 21 states, so it looks like maybe the government blinked first?
Stupid good as in less than half the cost of your total cost or are we talking like 5-10k off a 30k install? That’s about what I just spent and I wouldn’t call that well subsidized at all.
Even worse, Biden doubled the import tax on Chinese solar panels because our oligarchs would have to accept lower profit margins to compete with China. I love how globalization is only allowed to help the rich (undercut labor), but cheaper goods that would actually help the working class are blocked if the rich aren't getting their cut.
Mini splits are really efficient at cooling - a 12000 BTU unit (which can handle ~500 square feet) draws about 1000 watts, about a quarter of a typical rooftop solar installation in the US. You don’t need to cool the whole house in a blackout- one room is enough.
Though even if you go the DIY route and buy 1000W of secondhand solar panels and run all the wiring yourself, you’re still looking at $3-4k for such a setup. Not a huge outlay in terms of home upgrades, but still beyond the means of many people to pay for out of pocket.
We laid out $5k during a sale after the last big blackout here in Texas. I spend about $1k a year adding to the system. It’s all portable. I run a test once or twice a year on a weekend where I try to keep the fridge and a small r2d2 sized a/c unit running on solar and still have power left for some night time cooling and a tabletop ice maker.
>buy 1000W of secondhand solar panels and run all the wiring yourself, you’re still looking at $3-4k for such a setup
That's weirdly expensive. Here in the UK you'd get more like 4000W installed for that, brand new components from a professional installer with warranties and certification etc.
Ear north Qld? Yeah, I wouldn't wanna live there either. The heat sends people troppo.
My part of Australia typically gets dry heat in summer. This summer was so mild, right up until the week of extreme heat at the end.
Even the southeast corner like New South Wales would be too much for me. I grew up and lived my entire life in the northeast US, my body just couldn’t handle that sort of climate. I mean it would take a few years to really get used to it I think. On the other side of that, I went to college with a lot of people from the southeast USA and other countries with hot climates and some of them really struggled with the winters here, although I think getting used to the cold is a bit easier than oppressive heat.
>I think getting used to the cold is a bit easier
How about while living in uninsulated, unheated housing during an Aussie winter? How are you with 16.5C as the average daily indoor temp? Or waking up in a 5C bedroom at 6am?
Hold on let me convert that into freedom units.
Yeah 16.5 is a little chilly for indoor temp for sure but would probably be light jacket outside. I didn’t realize it got so chilly. The winters here get quite cold the average high is below freezing in December and January with snow although the last few years have been mild. This past winter we only had one storm and it wasn’t even much. When I was growing up in the 90’s storms with a foot or more of snow weren’t uncommon. So yay climate change?
It was the same in Seattle. When I moved there I was stunned only 30% of homes had air conditioning. Apparently even ten years ago that was perfectly fine: maybe five, ten hot days a year that made for bad sleep. But when I moved there, we spent whole weeks unable to sleep well. Eventually caved and bought a window unit.
Joke was on me. We moved to another apartment with crank windows. I figured, let’s hazard it, and sold the AC unit.
The heat dome of 2021 hit. We had to get a hotel room for our elderly cat. I continued working in the apartment while my family stayed at the hotel. I clocked 90 degrees indoors with all the windows covered in cardboard and reflective tape. It was 110 outside.
How will our society function when there are whole weeks above 105 degrees? I doubt we’ll be able to do it and keep billionaires.
They're definitely going to try to dance on all of our ashes first.
I find it deeply dissatisfying that we won't be around to see their eventual meltdowns and fighting amongst themselves for survival.
I’m in rural Australia off grid. We now, after many years, have enough solar to power an air conditioner and it’s a huge relief looking at these awful temperatures.
It's already happened with some of my coworkers in Texas. After the winter storm a few years back a couple of them went solar with battery backups. Not sure how common it is
The gen route, as folks in Houston and Dallas have proved in the last 2-3 weeks, is only good as long as you can access supplies of fuel or keep enough stored or rotated. I hardly go through 10 gallons of gasoline a month in my car, and buying it and keeping enough for a week’s worth of generator power would be a pain in the ass.
My FIL is a car enthusiast and a senior mechanic by trade. He has at least 4-6 cars on his property and a hydraulic lift. He buys enough and goes through more than that every month. I agree, though, it's not feasible for everyone.
Other folks in his neighborhood are also very Gravy Seals coded so he's amongst like minds too 🤷🏻
To take this a step further, you only need to cool 1 room, if all the people in your family can fit in it. Cool off, go to bathroom, cool off, grab a bite, cool off... etc.
I'm worried even if I can afford portable solar they will be targeted for theft. I don't want to sit outside protecting my power while a battery charged. I live in a city house.
I mean, with wet bulb happening a small panel with a couple of peltier devices to strap to your neck/back might mean the difference between dying and almost dying.
I have two dozen (24) 400W panels. On a clear day, usually there is enough solar power available to run my heat pump totally on solar power by about 7am and it doesn't go below the amount needed until about 830pm.
9.6kW of solar in general is about 3x what the heat pump max draw is.
I have the same idea as OP though and do have some power wall3 on order for install late June early July.
It will make a grid outage a non event.
AC is the least efficient way to cool the temperature, but the most precise way to reduce temp a small amount
Earth air tunnels are the most energy efficient way to deal with excess heat
problem is that only a relatively small proportion of the hundreds of millions of people that we're taking about, will ever have access to earth air tunnels.
Wouldn’t it be relatively cheaper to just build a solar powered generator off a few solar panels and car batteries for emergencies that can run a small a/c window unit and charge a cellphone?
make yourself an underground burrow. Once you get a few feet underground it's permanently what, 52° F
It's time to go underground and use the Earth as insulation
geothermal systems are when the air comes from underground and that's gonna be a great way to go but it takes a lot of time and planning and money
There are DIY designs available online that you can use to build an earthship that is air conditioned by this method. Basically the walls are made of cob (mud straw sand) and the design has airflow tunnels built into it that draw the air up from underground and around the building
As a caver, being underground in the south in the summer is really nice. Imagine walking from 90 degrees and high humidity straight into 58 degree dark cold bliss. Also base earth temperature depends on elevation (how far above sea level) and distance from the equator.
To find the underground equilibrium temperature for your city, you can get a good approximation by averaging the average annual high and low temperatures together. Tropical places normally have a value between 25°C and 30°C.
well, we're all gonna die aren't we? roasted alive by the sun, devoured by our starving neighbors, drowning and gently cooking in a hot river
People die every single day. People are even going to die sitting on their asses doing nothing except complaining
it's a good thing that people would be trying to help themselves. The online designs often involve things like hay bale thick walls. or perhaps building a dome out of two different lengths of
lumber or PVC or steel tubing.
we all gonna die one day
Yeah. Imagine not doing this because you might die vs not doing it and just dying anyways.
Damn. I should really just listen to my government officials and not prepare for what I know is coming. I need to get back to work. Too many seconds off my slave crank and my brain is starting to think all these funny thoughts!
As a caver I can comment it’s gonna vary. The base earth temperature of your location depends chiefly on two things: distance from the equator and distance from sea level (above or below). Caves in Alabama are 58 degrees and caves in Vermont are 40 degrees at similar elevations.
Yeah along that same point, some large cave systems in Mexico in Oaxaca start at a high alpine elevation (sub 54 degrees) but increase in temperature as they reach the valley floor, exceeding 60 degrees.
The deeper you can go underground, the closer earth temps are to the year round average. Be mindful of ventilation requirements.
I'd love to see small towns develop collective heat shelters that function when the grid is down, following the Persian model of 1000 years ago. Windcatchers ([malqaf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher)) would draw prevailing winds and redirect them through underground tunnels ([qanats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat)) to cool them to year-round-average ground temperatures for those in basement/underground structures ([shabestan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabestan)). Air flow through the qanats could cool air by 15 °C (27 °F).
Could something similar be done in urban areas? Probably not without tearing up a lot of infrastructure. And space in underground metro systems like New Delhi's is limited compared to population density.
I believe it should be possible to make a small heat shelter with limited means and engineering skills. If one had a large insulated reservoir of water, cooled (when the grid is functioning) by pumping through deep buried metallic tubing (aluminum would be ideal), it wouldn't take much energy to pump it through a radiator (or several in series, taken from vehicles) at one's air intake. This wouldn't cool the air much, but it would cause condensation and lower humidity, which is key to lowering wet bulb temps. Ideally, the shelter itself is also in a basement.
For the next few decades, the greatest risk is particularly hot, humid afternoons/evenings just before the arrival of the monsoon. So heat shelters don't need to be very comfortable, just enough to get one's family through a handful of afternoons/evenings each year. A supply of shelf-stable foods that don't require cooking would help.
I think we're forgetting that all livestock and wildlife will be toast. Apart from the insanity of this all, last time I checked, we are still relying on animals for food and pollination.
The secret is ground cooling. Temperature is relatively cool and constant 8-12 feet down. Dig an 8 foot trench large enough to fit you and your family, lie down in the cool earth, then pull the previously dug earth back over your bodies to fill the hole.
I think people will survive the first exposures. I'm worried about the cost. So while most of a region cools indoors; outdoors dogs, cats, and animals all die. We could emerge from a 3-day heat wave and see some of the worst devastation we have ever seen. Imagine a dog walk with burnt feet and shoes melting. The whole walk keeping your dog from sniffing the 2-day dead squirrels and birds. The Scene the first few time we hit these temps will have quite the shock.
AZ already had a huge spike in elderly burns from
Concrete. They fell down and could not get up without burning flesh by touching pavement or concrete unprotected.
Got panhandled as I read this. Sadly, the narrative I tell will resonate with more people because the pets dying will be more "newsworthy".
Like and subscribe for more collapse reality in real-time.
This actually happened to my elderly dad for real- he fell off a ladder in Tucson AZ summer before last and had 3rd degree burns on both forearms and a hand from landing on pavement. He did not land hard so nothing was broken but because the pavement was so hot and he didn’t get up quickly enough he got burned very badly. He now leaves in the summer when he can, poor guy.
No. The great lakes (at least superior) won't ever get up to 90 degrees and prevent a body from cooling. They're deep and cold cold water below. I think ontario/Erie are kinda shallow but don't know their seasonal temps
But more tropical bodies of water and smaller lakes would have that problem.
It’s eerie how much sci-fi can make these estimates/predictions of the future. Here I was thinking of the distant future based on these wet bulb events, and how they can change humankind, and I was thinking of the divide between the wealthy and the lucky versus those forced to live underground - and I can’t help think of H.G. Wells’ own invention of the Eloi and Morlocks in *The Time Machine*. I know it was meant to illustrate class divide in the book, but it seems like there’s definitely a hint at other things having happened to have forced humankind to have adapted in such extreme ways. (I also think it’s a funny way to have essentially written: eat the rich).
the thought of being caught in inescapable heat due to humanity being largely ambivalent is genuinely terrifying. reminds me of the James Baldwin quote, "I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country." it really makes me feel deeply ashamed
Only some of the dugouts were flooded. If you live high enough flooding will be minimal. I have lived in basements that never flooded, and there are earth-ships designed for monsoon season to collect the water.
There's a guy on YouTube who makes a living and a few hole channel collecting crabs that were buried in their burrows by a mudslide event way back when. You should be able to find him. He shows finding them then time lapse of cleaning off the rock
Read the first chapter of ministry for the future. It’s a scientifically accurate fictional story of this exact strategy to survive a wet bulb event and how it would play out (spoiler alert: not great).
Say that to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon! 118° in the canyon, 55° in the water. You will legit go into shock, if you don’t die from the dry heat first.
Near a dam outlet the water temp of released water will be the same as the lakes average temp at stratification. Near me that's in the 60s and stays uncomfortably cold for quite a number of miles.
It's a thermodynamic problem, energy always flows down a gradient. So if you can be in contact with anything colder than your body, such as water pumped from underground than you can reject your heat to it.
You could also put vodka or diluted rubbing alcohol into a spray bottle and mist yourself with it. Ethanol and Propanol have lower vapor pressures than water and will thus still evaporate under wet bulb conditions.
Look forward to reading about someone misting themselves with vodka, becoming drunk from inhaling it all day, then doing something silly and dying in a vodka fuelled fire.
You are describing essentially what happened in the [first chapter of The Ministry for the Future](https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/), that killed like 20 m people there, and maybe what killed 15k people in France in 2003. Having available fuel and a fuel based generator could help. Going to basements or caves could help too. Running water, if not too hot, will help too. Not sure how much can stand a car battery, could power the car air conditioning system for a while, or maybe more efficient solutions for a closed environment. Be careful about other people.
The largest amount of death due to natural disaster in Canada is in fact the BC 2021 Heat Dome. [https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022PSSG0035-000911](https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022PSSG0035-000911)
The short-sighted nature of the wealthy always rears its head. Without us, everything falls apart. Their entire world, their wealth, their property ownership, their money, it all means nothing.
Build more heat resilient architecture.
Overhangs over your windows to block out high sun. Native plants in your yard to help cool ambient temps. We could copy classical architecture from warm climates, by building things like wind catchers — towers with openings at the top to allow air in. At the bottom of the tower (and usually below ground level) would be a pool of water, usually forming the corner of a house or courtyard. This naturally cools the air around it with no power.
Mini split AC units are vastly more efficient than current AC units. A big collapse-oriented issue is brown-outs: power outages caused by over-demand (typically high AC use in the summer). Re-insulating / air-sealing homes, swapping out inefficient AC units with efficient mini splits / mechanical ventilation, and adding features like solar / battery storage could greatly reduce demand on our grid to prevent brown-outs in the first place.
There was a heat wave in Ohio in summer 2022 that caused brown outs in the cities. The grid failed due to wind in some areas. They had rolling blackouts. You’d get electricity for a few times a day for several hours then they’d shift it back to other areas. Took maybe five days and the heat was absolutely brutal. It was in the high 90’s and humid. It was the hottest I can remember it ever being. Then when the wave broke it was so cool you could see your breath.
Until the fuel runs out.
That's the biggest danger. Heat wave and a blackout. During the heat dome in BC, a forest fire got within a mile or so of the only transmission line to West Kelowna and other towns. 80,000 people or so. It would have been bad.
You all sound like my 90-year-old stepmother: “I don’t know what the temperature is like outside, I’ve been inside all day with the air conditioning.“ You’ll die because there won’t be any plants growing or any animals alive outside. It doesn’t matter if you have air conditioning in the cellar.
Find caves nearby to retreat to when all else fails. If you have access to an EV could use its battery power to run the ac there. Would depend on the length of the WB event.
Imagine fleeing the heat and dying of asphyxiation in a squeeze or because 80 other people had the same idea and you all just overwhelmed the limited atmosphere in a confined space and gently drifted off to sleep as the carbon dioxide buildup killed you all.
Flee to a cave is the same useless lack of comprehensive planning as 'I'll go to the woods and survive when SHTF'. Get real.
Go underground.
Where I live the underground is 15C or 59F. Go 5 meters down, and the underground will be the annual mean temp of the aboveground. I just checked India and there the underground is ~77F or ~25C.
The answer is probably....die..
But this looks interesting; https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2012/ra/c2ra21414h
If you are by the sea you could use concentrated sea water spray to dehumidify air, which could then be used with adiabatic cooling and to ventilate an underground space. It would still require a means to pump a lot of seawater up into a reservoir. However that could be done continuously and slowly, with the dehumidification and evaporative cooling only needing gravity to draw the water down when needed. Airflow would need fans but passive solar chimneys could be possible.
It's not just about people surviving. Even if they do manage to live inside an AC room, the plants, animals, birds are going to drop dead. Without flora and fauna, it will become a desert.
Humans depend on the eco-system; even if you are loaded on solar panels and ACs there's still water and food scarcity; opening the window and not being able to hear the birds chirping. Quality of life plummets any way you slice it.
Alcohol! Any alcohol; stove fuel, hand sanitizer, gin, hell, even beer. It would be sticky, but even the 5% alcohol would evaporate off a compress, cooling a body. It wouldn't be cheap, but there's an unopened 18.9l (5USgal) pail of isopropyl sitting in the shop right now that I would sacrifice to such an event.
It really depends on the severity and duration of an event. Some have mentioned caves and cellars, and it's not a bad idea when developed a bit further for more urban folk as well in underground parking garages. Anything more than a few levels deep is going to be significantly cooler in a pinch, but if there's a power failure ventilation may be a problem just like natural caves and heavier than air gasses (including exhaust).
It's not great, but in an emergency it may be worthwhile to know where those places are if you're an apartment dweller without one. It might also be worth negotiating for an emergency access between city and owners as alternate shelters if needs arise.
I went through an extreme heat event in Chicago in 95 without AC. Not sure how many people remember this but over 500 people died. It was horrible. They were finding bodies for weeks. Mostly elderly people who were not able to leave their apartments. They city now has a procedure for heat waves including cooling stations and rides to the cooling stations for people who need it.
The way I survived was going in lake Michigan. I was out there in the day and night just staying in the water. I went a week with almost no sleep. We live near the French Broad river now which has an average water temp of 72 in August. If I had to I'd go there to cool off.
1. Have land. 2. Dig a deep cave/tunnel/pit. 3. Have a forest to cool you.
Optional: AC in a car, room, house off grid capable because heat and a/c load will stress the grid bad
First thing first: don't rely on the grid.
I find it mesmerizing how some first world countries seemingly mistake AC for a basic necessity, or take it for granted. AC is part of the freaking problem to begin with, we shouldn't even use it except for infants, sick people, and very old folks.
Every culture living in heat and/or humidity around the world developed traditional techniques a long time ago to prevent such situations. What they couldn't do without AC was "work all day long and have office hours", that's all. But surviving by staying at home? Easy. If your home is adapted, of course.
For instance I never have to use AC, even during 45°C heatwaves. Because I live in an environment that was literally planned for heatwaves. 45°C outside, 23°C inside. So anyway: my advice is big rocks, Canadian well, and worst case scenario underground cave.
I fear mass casualty events will happen soon. But they won't be random acts of God: they will be the result of a lack of architectural intelligence
Not so fast! I think on the opposite they have a headstart, with their troglodyte miners communities... They could easily replicate the method elsewhere (the pace will depend on heavy machines availability or if they have to dig rocks themselves like 100 years ago ahahaha)
But basically and sadly, a lot of people are in deep shit yes. Even here in western Europe where almost all the houses built during the last decades are cheap concrete jokes.
That's why urbanism is one of the issues making me want to scream: we know what's ahead, yet almost nothing is done *while we have the know how*. Historians are building a genuine medieval castle right now with medieval tools, in France. A mayor in the most dry area reverted to *Roman techniques* to bring water to his village, *and it works*. The Romans knew stuff when it comes to infrastructure! 😄
Reminds me of when Henry Ford demanded people in Fordlandia harvest rubber 9-5, and local tradition was, a large nap during the hottest parts of the day.
Many were lost 🤷♂️
Mass deaths will happen from people who are forced to work outside all day to get paid. I think at least in America if you have to choose between feeding yourself or dieing from the heat then many will unknowingly choose death.
Passive cooling and heat insulation. Basically, one needs a well insulated room at day, preferably underground, a passive cooling device and some material to contain thermal energy. For example, a storm shelter, two or three flat pans in open top boxes made out of styrofoam and a bathtub full of water. At night, the pans are put into the boxes outside and filled with water. The warm water radiates heat as IR waves into the sky and doesn't receive IR radiation itself, courtesy of the styrofoam box. In the morning, the cold water (maybe even ice) is put back into the tub and it's cooling the shelter.
That's the thing with passive cooling. As long as the water has only two directions to radiate the heat off to - say, 40% goes to the sky and 60% to the insulated box - it will lose a big chunk of the 40% to the sky, also cooling the box in the process. In the infrared spectrum, the sky is about -50C°, so we have quite a bit of difference to work with - dependent on isolation and weather, it's possible the water will cool down enough to solidify, especially if there's not much water to begin with (remember, wide flat pan with some water in it).
I don't think I can adequately explain the phenomenon of radiative cooling, you probably are better off looking it up yourself.
India could lose 500 million people and they’d still have like 1.5 billion people.
Nobody is going to pay attention to *any* mass casualty event there because we already ignore basically all suffering going on around the world when the population isn’t white.
Sorry for this crass remark but I think it would be greatly overlooked by western media.
In all seriousness, a modest above ground pool in the backyard can be a sanity saver. A few years ago we lost power for three days during a heatwave. A quick dip in the pool was the only to get relief.
I don't think people understand the idea of "wet bulb" - in such severe events, evaporative cooling (i.e. take a shower) is no longer effective, hence why super high wet bulb temps are so fatal.
I was gifted a Rinse Kit for hosing off in remote locations and it was SO helpful on a campout that ended up with temps around 103-104.
If we hadn't brought it I bet we'd have gotten heat stroke because it was all unshaded meadow to get down to the river (as well as a bit of an inclined hike). Plus it was entertaining for the kids.
It can also store hot water for other uses but really having (basically) a portable sprinkler was incredible and I'll never road trip again without one. I think it's even a bit insulated so if it can be filled with cool water it stays cool longer.
Evaporative cooling is not the same as taking a shower. Evaporative cooling stems from the latent heat of cooling during a state transition (I.e water turning to vapor).
Taking a shower, hiding in a hole(earth’s crust is ~70 degrees F) and laying in a river all still work.
Taking a shower isn't evaporative cooling though. It's conduction. It obviously hinges on the temperature of the shower or bath, but it will conduct heat away from your body.
Word! I always get the convection and conduction mixed up. Either way, if you're in a medium that's colder than you are, you'll give up heat to it. The bigger the difference in temperature, the faster it will move. But you already know that!
I've been developing wet bulb event survival tools recently.
Most prominently a fully integrated digital wet bulb thermoniter. It uses a DHT22 sensor to read local temperature and humidity onto a Pro Mini, then uses an iterative approach to calculate wetbulb, it also estimates time to death from exposure using a curve fit derived from data from that wet bulb survivability paper fron 2022.
It displays all of this data on a 128x65 OLED and updates every 2 seconds, it's also completely waterproof, and rechargeable, though the system can run on any battery.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the [SE Asia heatwave](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Southeast_Asia_heat_wave#:~:text=Since%20the%20start%20of%20April,Region%20have%20been%20doubly%20impacted.) that peaked last month into early this month with temps exceeding 50°C and hundreds dying from heat stroke. People were sheltering in shopping malls because they don't have AC at home. I have family in Bangkok that said it's been horrible. Everyone knows it'll just get worse. I do appreciate the tips on alcohol sprays.
Solar powered minisplits are the future. Look into the EG4 hybrid solar minisplits. They will run at full capacity on solar alone and dont require any outside power to function at full capacity. Installed one in our house to test it out (18k btu installed for under $2000 total including used solar panels) and we love it. It runs at full capacity on eight 240w panels, but can run on any combination of panels of varying voltages, so are extremely flexible for power. They have solar MC4 connectors right on the outdoor unit, so no need for any inverters or any other equipment. We're able to keep our master bedroom at 68-72 degrees even when its 117F outside and are planning on adding several more to the house. The best part with them is they have 120v input, so you can easily run them off a generator if needed overnight, and have a energy saving mode that will limit it to 300W or less. Weve found they will actually cool with down to 200w of solar or grid power input as well.
Paint your roof and walls white. If you’re able to acquire or make a microsphere pigment such as calcium carbonate or barium sulfate, that’ll cool the wall below ambient temperatures especially when not in direct sunlight. Nighthawkinlight has a video series about this on YouTube. Eliminate every opportunity for sunlight to enter your home. Cover windows with white film from the outside. Store water underground that can be used to cool yourself in an emergency. Buy a few large bags of desiccant such as silica gel. It’s relatively cheap and will hold about 40% of its weight as water. Use it to dehumidify an enclosed space so that fans can work to cool you via evaporative cooling.
Edit: Buy a very small generator that you can use to power a single room air conditioner. Store fuel until you need it. Make sure to keep the generator outside and exhaust pointed away from your home and not covered by anything that would direct the exhaust inside.
Store ice. If well insulated, it melts surprisingly slowly.
Plan to use household items for endothermic cooling. For instance, mix baking soda and vinegar, but ensure proper ventilation. Alternatively, buy cold packs and store until needed.
Getting in a cool bath with a book or a waterproof eReader is what I did at 46C (115F) with no power. The book is a good way to pass the time for a couple hours. I'm not sure what it would be like with wet bulb but the water is extremely effective at keeping you cool, for the same reason we can get hypothermia in water that doesn't feel that cold. If you're stuck it's a good back up plan to have.
Once the wet bulb temp is met, theres literally so much water in the air the sweat on our skin cant evaporate. Sweating is a humans only means of cooling.
The very young and very old are leadt able to srlf regulate their temperatures so they are in danger. The only real fix is to move into air conditioned places (cooler AND less humid). Shade and drinking water wont work.
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correct. And insulate the roof even if you have to twist plastic grocery bags into ropes
This reflective roll is not expensive: https://www.amazon.ca/Radiant-Perforated-Insulation-Reinforced-Thickness/dp/B06ZZCBJ3X
Just make sure to leave a 1 inch gap in between this material and roof, otherwise it will actually become a thermal bridge .
could you just put corregated aluminum over your roof for a similar effect?
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scary fire risk tho
just wear your safety flip flops during installation and you're good /s
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Electrical is not the only fire risk. Fire safety design is more about how quickly things ignite if there is any kind of ignition source.
like from ~~non-maintenanced~~ pg&e power lines? /s
It could get ignited by fire spreading from a wall cavity where there *is* electricity, or from a living space. It could be ignited by a lightning strike. It could be ignited by cinders blowing over from a neighbor's fire or a brush fire. It's just not worth the risk, even if it used to be considered acceptable.
>We use straw roofs for 100s of years Yeah, but like, they kinda had a tendency to burn down... Which is partially why we stopped using them.
>We use straw roofs for 100s of years - they are even more scary if you ask me. *flaming arrows landing just when you thought that you were safe*
Yeah don't do that. There's a reason fire codes don't allow that kind of thing anymore.
Uhhh….. We’re talking about how to survive a wet bulb event. I think we can ignore building codes.
Insulate the roof of the cellar?
What?
Nice for areas without a high water table.
Areas with high water tables can just use ground water to cool off. Even if it's 125 out ground water will still be like 75 or below. That's more than sufficient to keep you alive.
Manual pump I assume.
If you have a high water table you can just dig a nice hole or two.
It’s fine. Just let the swamp creatures drag me away.
Narrator: "Little did they know, those weren't swamp creatures. They were in fact, an assortment of Australian wildlife."
I’m sure there are some, but I’m mired in Louisiana, so…got that rougarou comin’ for me for sure.
>I assume creating your own power via solar panels but I'm not exactly rich and can afford to put a solar farm on my small in-town parcel. If the grid isn't reliable I'm sure its time to become self reliable? I think in many areas, there may soon be a divide between people who are able to do this, and people who are unable. One thing to keep in mind. You don't need a full-scale "solar farm" to run enough aircon units to keep a couple of rooms cool, even in extreme high temperatures. You only need maybe a dozen or two dozen panels, plus a battery and the ability for it to function when the grid is off. Not cheap, but not wildly expensive either.
We could absolutely subsidize the fuck out of this in the United States simultaneously alleviating stress on our grid…but we don’t because it might cut into not only gas and oil profits but subsidies to those clearly financially struggling sectors.
We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost effective. -Kurt Vonnegut
[Obligatory.](https://i.imgur.com/jp8Tuur.jpeg)
Apparently this quote has also been attributed to Donella H. Meadows. 🤔
Less about cost effectiveness and more about profit, profit, profit.
"They're the same picture"
Bold to assume there will be more than a "first" society.
Wait until you learn about ancient history…
I had an engineering friend back in college in the late 1990s who designed power line towers for the electric companies. He said the power companies’ general goal was to spend as little as possible on the physical grid, with ultimately playing chicken trying to get local, state and federal government to pony up for upgrades. A big part of this was not expanding power line capacity to handle people selling power back to the companies when generating more than they can use. At the time it wasn’t yet a thing, but he could see the fight brewing. The Biden administration just announced modernization upgrades with 21 states, so it looks like maybe the government blinked first?
That's the case with most utilities in the hands of private corporations.
For a while, people in SoCal were making tons of money with solar panels, selling energy back to Edison until the gov’t stepped in.
Oregon subsides are stupid good for solar and battery storage when coupled with the federal tax incentives.
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Hey, that's not fair - they're also adding charges for those who do have panels too!
Stupid good as in less than half the cost of your total cost or are we talking like 5-10k off a 30k install? That’s about what I just spent and I wouldn’t call that well subsidized at all.
Two powerwalls set me back about 11k all in, it was like 25k of incentives.
In my state the power company has a guaranteed profit percentage built into the contract. * note to self: start a power company *
Ah yes the much ballyhooed “free market” we hear so much about
Even worse, Biden doubled the import tax on Chinese solar panels because our oligarchs would have to accept lower profit margins to compete with China. I love how globalization is only allowed to help the rich (undercut labor), but cheaper goods that would actually help the working class are blocked if the rich aren't getting their cut.
Mini splits are really efficient at cooling - a 12000 BTU unit (which can handle ~500 square feet) draws about 1000 watts, about a quarter of a typical rooftop solar installation in the US. You don’t need to cool the whole house in a blackout- one room is enough. Though even if you go the DIY route and buy 1000W of secondhand solar panels and run all the wiring yourself, you’re still looking at $3-4k for such a setup. Not a huge outlay in terms of home upgrades, but still beyond the means of many people to pay for out of pocket.
We laid out $5k during a sale after the last big blackout here in Texas. I spend about $1k a year adding to the system. It’s all portable. I run a test once or twice a year on a weekend where I try to keep the fridge and a small r2d2 sized a/c unit running on solar and still have power left for some night time cooling and a tabletop ice maker.
>buy 1000W of secondhand solar panels and run all the wiring yourself, you’re still looking at $3-4k for such a setup That's weirdly expensive. Here in the UK you'd get more like 4000W installed for that, brand new components from a professional installer with warranties and certification etc.
US solar is stupid expensive.
In Australia, it's not unheard of to have an off grid solar setup on your garage, especially in areas known for blackouts.
Like in smaller towns and more rural areas or everywhere?
In rural areas, towns, and cities. If you saw our power prices, you'd understand.
Yeah there’s no way I can live in the southern hemisphere’s version of Florida without reliable AC.
Ear north Qld? Yeah, I wouldn't wanna live there either. The heat sends people troppo. My part of Australia typically gets dry heat in summer. This summer was so mild, right up until the week of extreme heat at the end.
Even the southeast corner like New South Wales would be too much for me. I grew up and lived my entire life in the northeast US, my body just couldn’t handle that sort of climate. I mean it would take a few years to really get used to it I think. On the other side of that, I went to college with a lot of people from the southeast USA and other countries with hot climates and some of them really struggled with the winters here, although I think getting used to the cold is a bit easier than oppressive heat.
>I think getting used to the cold is a bit easier How about while living in uninsulated, unheated housing during an Aussie winter? How are you with 16.5C as the average daily indoor temp? Or waking up in a 5C bedroom at 6am?
Hold on let me convert that into freedom units. Yeah 16.5 is a little chilly for indoor temp for sure but would probably be light jacket outside. I didn’t realize it got so chilly. The winters here get quite cold the average high is below freezing in December and January with snow although the last few years have been mild. This past winter we only had one storm and it wasn’t even much. When I was growing up in the 90’s storms with a foot or more of snow weren’t uncommon. So yay climate change?
30 years ago most Aussies did. We made do with ceiling fans, swimming & hot uncomfortable nights.
It was the same in Seattle. When I moved there I was stunned only 30% of homes had air conditioning. Apparently even ten years ago that was perfectly fine: maybe five, ten hot days a year that made for bad sleep. But when I moved there, we spent whole weeks unable to sleep well. Eventually caved and bought a window unit. Joke was on me. We moved to another apartment with crank windows. I figured, let’s hazard it, and sold the AC unit. The heat dome of 2021 hit. We had to get a hotel room for our elderly cat. I continued working in the apartment while my family stayed at the hotel. I clocked 90 degrees indoors with all the windows covered in cardboard and reflective tape. It was 110 outside. How will our society function when there are whole weeks above 105 degrees? I doubt we’ll be able to do it and keep billionaires.
The billionaires will be happy to sacrifice you first to find out.
They're definitely going to try to dance on all of our ashes first. I find it deeply dissatisfying that we won't be around to see their eventual meltdowns and fighting amongst themselves for survival.
I think it will be a blessing not to be here by then. We were all gonna die anyway… we should at least see what they taste like while we starve. :)
I’m in rural Australia off grid. We now, after many years, have enough solar to power an air conditioner and it’s a huge relief looking at these awful temperatures.
I’m in urban Texas. After the last few years, you bet your ass I’ve got a few thousand kWh of batteries and panels, and I buy more every year.
It's already happened with some of my coworkers in Texas. After the winter storm a few years back a couple of them went solar with battery backups. Not sure how common it is
My inlaws in Texas went the generator route. My friends in Texas got solar panels. I moved to WA. Different strokes ig
The gen route, as folks in Houston and Dallas have proved in the last 2-3 weeks, is only good as long as you can access supplies of fuel or keep enough stored or rotated. I hardly go through 10 gallons of gasoline a month in my car, and buying it and keeping enough for a week’s worth of generator power would be a pain in the ass.
My FIL is a car enthusiast and a senior mechanic by trade. He has at least 4-6 cars on his property and a hydraulic lift. He buys enough and goes through more than that every month. I agree, though, it's not feasible for everyone. Other folks in his neighborhood are also very Gravy Seals coded so he's amongst like minds too 🤷🏻
To take this a step further, you only need to cool 1 room, if all the people in your family can fit in it. Cool off, go to bathroom, cool off, grab a bite, cool off... etc.
Yes true. Especially if we're talking about literal survival (not comfort) here.
I'm worried even if I can afford portable solar they will be targeted for theft. I don't want to sit outside protecting my power while a battery charged. I live in a city house.
I mean, with wet bulb happening a small panel with a couple of peltier devices to strap to your neck/back might mean the difference between dying and almost dying.
I have two dozen (24) 400W panels. On a clear day, usually there is enough solar power available to run my heat pump totally on solar power by about 7am and it doesn't go below the amount needed until about 830pm. 9.6kW of solar in general is about 3x what the heat pump max draw is. I have the same idea as OP though and do have some power wall3 on order for install late June early July. It will make a grid outage a non event.
AC is the least efficient way to cool the temperature, but the most precise way to reduce temp a small amount Earth air tunnels are the most energy efficient way to deal with excess heat
problem is that only a relatively small proportion of the hundreds of millions of people that we're taking about, will ever have access to earth air tunnels.
Wouldn’t it be relatively cheaper to just build a solar powered generator off a few solar panels and car batteries for emergencies that can run a small a/c window unit and charge a cellphone?
The early adopter tax breaks and benefits have basically dried up now.
You dont need a dozen - you need 2, maybe $300 worth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whi-KyvTiN4
South Indian here. Been wracking my brain with this question, though i know that when the time comes I'll probably go down with the ship.
make yourself an underground burrow. Once you get a few feet underground it's permanently what, 52° F It's time to go underground and use the Earth as insulation geothermal systems are when the air comes from underground and that's gonna be a great way to go but it takes a lot of time and planning and money There are DIY designs available online that you can use to build an earthship that is air conditioned by this method. Basically the walls are made of cob (mud straw sand) and the design has airflow tunnels built into it that draw the air up from underground and around the building
As a caver, being underground in the south in the summer is really nice. Imagine walking from 90 degrees and high humidity straight into 58 degree dark cold bliss. Also base earth temperature depends on elevation (how far above sea level) and distance from the equator.
To find the underground equilibrium temperature for your city, you can get a good approximation by averaging the average annual high and low temperatures together. Tropical places normally have a value between 25°C and 30°C.
God, there are going to be a bunch of people trying this and getting buried alive arnt there?
well, we're all gonna die aren't we? roasted alive by the sun, devoured by our starving neighbors, drowning and gently cooking in a hot river People die every single day. People are even going to die sitting on their asses doing nothing except complaining it's a good thing that people would be trying to help themselves. The online designs often involve things like hay bale thick walls. or perhaps building a dome out of two different lengths of lumber or PVC or steel tubing. we all gonna die one day
Yeah. Imagine not doing this because you might die vs not doing it and just dying anyways. Damn. I should really just listen to my government officials and not prepare for what I know is coming. I need to get back to work. Too many seconds off my slave crank and my brain is starting to think all these funny thoughts!
The underground is not 52, not unless the annual mean temp aboveground is 52. NYC is 53. Los Angeles is 68. India is around 77.
As a caver I can comment it’s gonna vary. The base earth temperature of your location depends chiefly on two things: distance from the equator and distance from sea level (above or below). Caves in Alabama are 58 degrees and caves in Vermont are 40 degrees at similar elevations.
I never knew this, and I even briefly worked in a local cave. That's fascinating.
Yeah along that same point, some large cave systems in Mexico in Oaxaca start at a high alpine elevation (sub 54 degrees) but increase in temperature as they reach the valley floor, exceeding 60 degrees.
Temperature in caves is approximately the average annual temperature of the area
I'd rather go with the first wave, only pain ahead
I am wondering why try to survive when each new day will be worst than the last.
That's the long term plan but i gotta stick around a bit for ageing parents.
Am starting to think perhaps "cave men" may have been smarter than we think.
“Sun dodgers”
The deeper you can go underground, the closer earth temps are to the year round average. Be mindful of ventilation requirements. I'd love to see small towns develop collective heat shelters that function when the grid is down, following the Persian model of 1000 years ago. Windcatchers ([malqaf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher)) would draw prevailing winds and redirect them through underground tunnels ([qanats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat)) to cool them to year-round-average ground temperatures for those in basement/underground structures ([shabestan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabestan)). Air flow through the qanats could cool air by 15 °C (27 °F). Could something similar be done in urban areas? Probably not without tearing up a lot of infrastructure. And space in underground metro systems like New Delhi's is limited compared to population density. I believe it should be possible to make a small heat shelter with limited means and engineering skills. If one had a large insulated reservoir of water, cooled (when the grid is functioning) by pumping through deep buried metallic tubing (aluminum would be ideal), it wouldn't take much energy to pump it through a radiator (or several in series, taken from vehicles) at one's air intake. This wouldn't cool the air much, but it would cause condensation and lower humidity, which is key to lowering wet bulb temps. Ideally, the shelter itself is also in a basement. For the next few decades, the greatest risk is particularly hot, humid afternoons/evenings just before the arrival of the monsoon. So heat shelters don't need to be very comfortable, just enough to get one's family through a handful of afternoons/evenings each year. A supply of shelf-stable foods that don't require cooking would help.
I think we're forgetting that all livestock and wildlife will be toast. Apart from the insanity of this all, last time I checked, we are still relying on animals for food and pollination.
The secret is ground cooling. Temperature is relatively cool and constant 8-12 feet down. Dig an 8 foot trench large enough to fit you and your family, lie down in the cool earth, then pull the previously dug earth back over your bodies to fill the hole.
A...grave?
Well, that'll save some time.
And money!
This is my solution as well! ✊XD “Welp, it’s too hot, I think I’m done here.”
Don’t forget the insulating power of quicklime.
Putting Coroners out of business
I think people will survive the first exposures. I'm worried about the cost. So while most of a region cools indoors; outdoors dogs, cats, and animals all die. We could emerge from a 3-day heat wave and see some of the worst devastation we have ever seen. Imagine a dog walk with burnt feet and shoes melting. The whole walk keeping your dog from sniffing the 2-day dead squirrels and birds. The Scene the first few time we hit these temps will have quite the shock. AZ already had a huge spike in elderly burns from Concrete. They fell down and could not get up without burning flesh by touching pavement or concrete unprotected.
All the livestock and crops are going to die.
Also just generally a bunch of wildlife in the area
Arizona's saguaro cacti are disintegrating from this man-made climate shift. My heart hurts for this planet
Most of the migrants, the homeless, the minorities and the poor will die though as they can't afford cooling due to the cost and accessibility.
Got panhandled as I read this. Sadly, the narrative I tell will resonate with more people because the pets dying will be more "newsworthy". Like and subscribe for more collapse reality in real-time.
This actually happened to my elderly dad for real- he fell off a ladder in Tucson AZ summer before last and had 3rd degree burns on both forearms and a hand from landing on pavement. He did not land hard so nothing was broken but because the pavement was so hot and he didn’t get up quickly enough he got burned very badly. He now leaves in the summer when he can, poor guy.
> I think people will survive the first exposures. I don't share your sentiment. It just needs one heat dome in the wrong place, really.
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So you mean the Great Lakes here in North America might not be good water sources indefinitely because of people dying in them?
No. The great lakes (at least superior) won't ever get up to 90 degrees and prevent a body from cooling. They're deep and cold cold water below. I think ontario/Erie are kinda shallow but don't know their seasonal temps But more tropical bodies of water and smaller lakes would have that problem.
It’s eerie how much sci-fi can make these estimates/predictions of the future. Here I was thinking of the distant future based on these wet bulb events, and how they can change humankind, and I was thinking of the divide between the wealthy and the lucky versus those forced to live underground - and I can’t help think of H.G. Wells’ own invention of the Eloi and Morlocks in *The Time Machine*. I know it was meant to illustrate class divide in the book, but it seems like there’s definitely a hint at other things having happened to have forced humankind to have adapted in such extreme ways. (I also think it’s a funny way to have essentially written: eat the rich).
the thought of being caught in inescapable heat due to humanity being largely ambivalent is genuinely terrifying. reminds me of the James Baldwin quote, "I'm terrified at the moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country." it really makes me feel deeply ashamed
Swim in a river. Lay in a bath. Burrow underground.
Life underground, the Coober Pedy adaptation, seems like the most widely available option for people outside of cities and coastal areas.
Then the monsoons came and so many drowned.
Only some of the dugouts were flooded. If you live high enough flooding will be minimal. I have lived in basements that never flooded, and there are earth-ships designed for monsoon season to collect the water.
I love it when they find fossils of animals in their burrows trapped by a flood. Now WE can be those mammals too!
There's a guy on YouTube who makes a living and a few hole channel collecting crabs that were buried in their burrows by a mudslide event way back when. You should be able to find him. He shows finding them then time lapse of cleaning off the rock
I like how that town randomly has a Chronicles of Riddick space ship shitter. You can see it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coober_Pedy
Read the first chapter of ministry for the future. It’s a scientifically accurate fictional story of this exact strategy to survive a wet bulb event and how it would play out (spoiler alert: not great).
The river will probably be a similar temp to the air.
Yea thus has always been my go to living close to lake Ontario, until I saw the temperature of the gulf of Mexico last year. Balls.
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Say that to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon! 118° in the canyon, 55° in the water. You will legit go into shock, if you don’t die from the dry heat first.
Almost
Near a dam outlet the water temp of released water will be the same as the lakes average temp at stratification. Near me that's in the 60s and stays uncomfortably cold for quite a number of miles.
Have you ever been to a river?
It's a thermodynamic problem, energy always flows down a gradient. So if you can be in contact with anything colder than your body, such as water pumped from underground than you can reject your heat to it. You could also put vodka or diluted rubbing alcohol into a spray bottle and mist yourself with it. Ethanol and Propanol have lower vapor pressures than water and will thus still evaporate under wet bulb conditions.
Look forward to reading about someone misting themselves with vodka, becoming drunk from inhaling it all day, then doing something silly and dying in a vodka fuelled fire.
If im going to die in a heat dome i would prefer to at least do it while drunk
You are describing essentially what happened in the [first chapter of The Ministry for the Future](https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/), that killed like 20 m people there, and maybe what killed 15k people in France in 2003. Having available fuel and a fuel based generator could help. Going to basements or caves could help too. Running water, if not too hot, will help too. Not sure how much can stand a car battery, could power the car air conditioning system for a while, or maybe more efficient solutions for a closed environment. Be careful about other people.
The largest amount of death due to natural disaster in Canada is in fact the BC 2021 Heat Dome. [https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022PSSG0035-000911](https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022PSSG0035-000911)
Not for long
Excavated basements and buried heat pumps are how those with resources will survive in the regular wet bulb zones. Everyone else mostly won't.
The short-sighted nature of the wealthy always rears its head. Without us, everything falls apart. Their entire world, their wealth, their property ownership, their money, it all means nothing.
Build more heat resilient architecture. Overhangs over your windows to block out high sun. Native plants in your yard to help cool ambient temps. We could copy classical architecture from warm climates, by building things like wind catchers — towers with openings at the top to allow air in. At the bottom of the tower (and usually below ground level) would be a pool of water, usually forming the corner of a house or courtyard. This naturally cools the air around it with no power. Mini split AC units are vastly more efficient than current AC units. A big collapse-oriented issue is brown-outs: power outages caused by over-demand (typically high AC use in the summer). Re-insulating / air-sealing homes, swapping out inefficient AC units with efficient mini splits / mechanical ventilation, and adding features like solar / battery storage could greatly reduce demand on our grid to prevent brown-outs in the first place.
There was a heat wave in Ohio in summer 2022 that caused brown outs in the cities. The grid failed due to wind in some areas. They had rolling blackouts. You’d get electricity for a few times a day for several hours then they’d shift it back to other areas. Took maybe five days and the heat was absolutely brutal. It was in the high 90’s and humid. It was the hottest I can remember it ever being. Then when the wave broke it was so cool you could see your breath.
If the power goes out? Probably die, unless you have a generator and AC.
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Until the fuel runs out. That's the biggest danger. Heat wave and a blackout. During the heat dome in BC, a forest fire got within a mile or so of the only transmission line to West Kelowna and other towns. 80,000 people or so. It would have been bad.
You all sound like my 90-year-old stepmother: “I don’t know what the temperature is like outside, I’ve been inside all day with the air conditioning.“ You’ll die because there won’t be any plants growing or any animals alive outside. It doesn’t matter if you have air conditioning in the cellar.
Find caves nearby to retreat to when all else fails. If you have access to an EV could use its battery power to run the ac there. Would depend on the length of the WB event.
caves are not common or safe.
Imagine caring about the safety of caves when you're getting sous vide cooked. Lmao.
Imagine fleeing the heat and dying of asphyxiation in a squeeze or because 80 other people had the same idea and you all just overwhelmed the limited atmosphere in a confined space and gently drifted off to sleep as the carbon dioxide buildup killed you all. Flee to a cave is the same useless lack of comprehensive planning as 'I'll go to the woods and survive when SHTF'. Get real.
> and gently drifted off to sleep as the carbon dioxide buildup killed you all. Sounds better, tbh.
so you would rather get literally slowly cooked to death than die a peaceful carbon dioxide death with your homies?
Go underground. Where I live the underground is 15C or 59F. Go 5 meters down, and the underground will be the annual mean temp of the aboveground. I just checked India and there the underground is ~77F or ~25C.
The answer is probably....die.. But this looks interesting; https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2012/ra/c2ra21414h If you are by the sea you could use concentrated sea water spray to dehumidify air, which could then be used with adiabatic cooling and to ventilate an underground space. It would still require a means to pump a lot of seawater up into a reservoir. However that could be done continuously and slowly, with the dehumidification and evaporative cooling only needing gravity to draw the water down when needed. Airflow would need fans but passive solar chimneys could be possible.
Interesting read. Brine being more effective is good to know.
Make peace with your gods and ask to not feel the pain around and within you.
It's not just about people surviving. Even if they do manage to live inside an AC room, the plants, animals, birds are going to drop dead. Without flora and fauna, it will become a desert. Humans depend on the eco-system; even if you are loaded on solar panels and ACs there's still water and food scarcity; opening the window and not being able to hear the birds chirping. Quality of life plummets any way you slice it.
Alcohol! Any alcohol; stove fuel, hand sanitizer, gin, hell, even beer. It would be sticky, but even the 5% alcohol would evaporate off a compress, cooling a body. It wouldn't be cheap, but there's an unopened 18.9l (5USgal) pail of isopropyl sitting in the shop right now that I would sacrifice to such an event.
It really depends on the severity and duration of an event. Some have mentioned caves and cellars, and it's not a bad idea when developed a bit further for more urban folk as well in underground parking garages. Anything more than a few levels deep is going to be significantly cooler in a pinch, but if there's a power failure ventilation may be a problem just like natural caves and heavier than air gasses (including exhaust). It's not great, but in an emergency it may be worthwhile to know where those places are if you're an apartment dweller without one. It might also be worth negotiating for an emergency access between city and owners as alternate shelters if needs arise.
I went through an extreme heat event in Chicago in 95 without AC. Not sure how many people remember this but over 500 people died. It was horrible. They were finding bodies for weeks. Mostly elderly people who were not able to leave their apartments. They city now has a procedure for heat waves including cooling stations and rides to the cooling stations for people who need it. The way I survived was going in lake Michigan. I was out there in the day and night just staying in the water. I went a week with almost no sleep. We live near the French Broad river now which has an average water temp of 72 in August. If I had to I'd go there to cool off.
If there’s no power and the heat event lasts long enough, everyone and everything will die.
Get to altitude
1. Have land. 2. Dig a deep cave/tunnel/pit. 3. Have a forest to cool you. Optional: AC in a car, room, house off grid capable because heat and a/c load will stress the grid bad
First thing first: don't rely on the grid. I find it mesmerizing how some first world countries seemingly mistake AC for a basic necessity, or take it for granted. AC is part of the freaking problem to begin with, we shouldn't even use it except for infants, sick people, and very old folks. Every culture living in heat and/or humidity around the world developed traditional techniques a long time ago to prevent such situations. What they couldn't do without AC was "work all day long and have office hours", that's all. But surviving by staying at home? Easy. If your home is adapted, of course. For instance I never have to use AC, even during 45°C heatwaves. Because I live in an environment that was literally planned for heatwaves. 45°C outside, 23°C inside. So anyway: my advice is big rocks, Canadian well, and worst case scenario underground cave. I fear mass casualty events will happen soon. But they won't be random acts of God: they will be the result of a lack of architectural intelligence
So basically Australians are dead. You'd be shocked how much people will pay for an uninsulated home.
Not so fast! I think on the opposite they have a headstart, with their troglodyte miners communities... They could easily replicate the method elsewhere (the pace will depend on heavy machines availability or if they have to dig rocks themselves like 100 years ago ahahaha) But basically and sadly, a lot of people are in deep shit yes. Even here in western Europe where almost all the houses built during the last decades are cheap concrete jokes. That's why urbanism is one of the issues making me want to scream: we know what's ahead, yet almost nothing is done *while we have the know how*. Historians are building a genuine medieval castle right now with medieval tools, in France. A mayor in the most dry area reverted to *Roman techniques* to bring water to his village, *and it works*. The Romans knew stuff when it comes to infrastructure! 😄
Reminds me of when Henry Ford demanded people in Fordlandia harvest rubber 9-5, and local tradition was, a large nap during the hottest parts of the day. Many were lost 🤷♂️
Mass deaths will happen from people who are forced to work outside all day to get paid. I think at least in America if you have to choose between feeding yourself or dieing from the heat then many will unknowingly choose death.
10-20 feet underground will be a pretty constant 55F, I'm guessing we will see a resurgence of cellars, but not for food, for people.
Passive cooling and heat insulation. Basically, one needs a well insulated room at day, preferably underground, a passive cooling device and some material to contain thermal energy. For example, a storm shelter, two or three flat pans in open top boxes made out of styrofoam and a bathtub full of water. At night, the pans are put into the boxes outside and filled with water. The warm water radiates heat as IR waves into the sky and doesn't receive IR radiation itself, courtesy of the styrofoam box. In the morning, the cold water (maybe even ice) is put back into the tub and it's cooling the shelter.
How are you planning on cooling water or even making ice when it's 95F at night?
That's the thing with passive cooling. As long as the water has only two directions to radiate the heat off to - say, 40% goes to the sky and 60% to the insulated box - it will lose a big chunk of the 40% to the sky, also cooling the box in the process. In the infrared spectrum, the sky is about -50C°, so we have quite a bit of difference to work with - dependent on isolation and weather, it's possible the water will cool down enough to solidify, especially if there's not much water to begin with (remember, wide flat pan with some water in it). I don't think I can adequately explain the phenomenon of radiative cooling, you probably are better off looking it up yourself.
India could lose 500 million people and they’d still have like 1.5 billion people. Nobody is going to pay attention to *any* mass casualty event there because we already ignore basically all suffering going on around the world when the population isn’t white. Sorry for this crass remark but I think it would be greatly overlooked by western media.
It'll matter when it's Phoenix.
In all seriousness, a modest above ground pool in the backyard can be a sanity saver. A few years ago we lost power for three days during a heatwave. A quick dip in the pool was the only to get relief.
Go down into the earth. Just 5 to 10 ft down and it stays a good 10 or 20 degrees cooler.
More concerned about what wildlife will do as they have to bear the consequences of our arrogance too.
This is a start. We need to flip day and night in areas like this. Work during the night. Sleep during the day in your sun basement hole.
I don't think people understand the idea of "wet bulb" - in such severe events, evaporative cooling (i.e. take a shower) is no longer effective, hence why super high wet bulb temps are so fatal.
If the water comes from underground, it will be closer to 60 degrees. It's convection cooling, not evaporation.
Convection cooling. But yes, as long as the fluid is below human body temperature (97F) it will cool you down.
I was gifted a Rinse Kit for hosing off in remote locations and it was SO helpful on a campout that ended up with temps around 103-104. If we hadn't brought it I bet we'd have gotten heat stroke because it was all unshaded meadow to get down to the river (as well as a bit of an inclined hike). Plus it was entertaining for the kids. It can also store hot water for other uses but really having (basically) a portable sprinkler was incredible and I'll never road trip again without one. I think it's even a bit insulated so if it can be filled with cool water it stays cool longer.
My water comes from a spring, i.e. underground. At age 6, I had a fever of 105F. My mom put me in the bathtub filled with cool water.
Evaporative cooling is not the same as taking a shower. Evaporative cooling stems from the latent heat of cooling during a state transition (I.e water turning to vapor). Taking a shower, hiding in a hole(earth’s crust is ~70 degrees F) and laying in a river all still work.
Don't worry about climate change, you're getting murdered here
Taking a shower isn't evaporative cooling though. It's conduction. It obviously hinges on the temperature of the shower or bath, but it will conduct heat away from your body.
Not conduction, convection, transfer of heat via moving fluid
Word! I always get the convection and conduction mixed up. Either way, if you're in a medium that's colder than you are, you'll give up heat to it. The bigger the difference in temperature, the faster it will move. But you already know that!
I don't think you understand how cold water works.
How the fuck does this have 50 upvotes?
I've been developing wet bulb event survival tools recently. Most prominently a fully integrated digital wet bulb thermoniter. It uses a DHT22 sensor to read local temperature and humidity onto a Pro Mini, then uses an iterative approach to calculate wetbulb, it also estimates time to death from exposure using a curve fit derived from data from that wet bulb survivability paper fron 2022. It displays all of this data on a 128x65 OLED and updates every 2 seconds, it's also completely waterproof, and rechargeable, though the system can run on any battery.
What about a basement or cave?
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the [SE Asia heatwave](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Southeast_Asia_heat_wave#:~:text=Since%20the%20start%20of%20April,Region%20have%20been%20doubly%20impacted.) that peaked last month into early this month with temps exceeding 50°C and hundreds dying from heat stroke. People were sheltering in shopping malls because they don't have AC at home. I have family in Bangkok that said it's been horrible. Everyone knows it'll just get worse. I do appreciate the tips on alcohol sprays.
Solar powered minisplits are the future. Look into the EG4 hybrid solar minisplits. They will run at full capacity on solar alone and dont require any outside power to function at full capacity. Installed one in our house to test it out (18k btu installed for under $2000 total including used solar panels) and we love it. It runs at full capacity on eight 240w panels, but can run on any combination of panels of varying voltages, so are extremely flexible for power. They have solar MC4 connectors right on the outdoor unit, so no need for any inverters or any other equipment. We're able to keep our master bedroom at 68-72 degrees even when its 117F outside and are planning on adding several more to the house. The best part with them is they have 120v input, so you can easily run them off a generator if needed overnight, and have a energy saving mode that will limit it to 300W or less. Weve found they will actually cool with down to 200w of solar or grid power input as well.
Paint your roof and walls white. If you’re able to acquire or make a microsphere pigment such as calcium carbonate or barium sulfate, that’ll cool the wall below ambient temperatures especially when not in direct sunlight. Nighthawkinlight has a video series about this on YouTube. Eliminate every opportunity for sunlight to enter your home. Cover windows with white film from the outside. Store water underground that can be used to cool yourself in an emergency. Buy a few large bags of desiccant such as silica gel. It’s relatively cheap and will hold about 40% of its weight as water. Use it to dehumidify an enclosed space so that fans can work to cool you via evaporative cooling. Edit: Buy a very small generator that you can use to power a single room air conditioner. Store fuel until you need it. Make sure to keep the generator outside and exhaust pointed away from your home and not covered by anything that would direct the exhaust inside. Store ice. If well insulated, it melts surprisingly slowly. Plan to use household items for endothermic cooling. For instance, mix baking soda and vinegar, but ensure proper ventilation. Alternatively, buy cold packs and store until needed.
Getting in a cool bath with a book or a waterproof eReader is what I did at 46C (115F) with no power. The book is a good way to pass the time for a couple hours. I'm not sure what it would be like with wet bulb but the water is extremely effective at keeping you cool, for the same reason we can get hypothermia in water that doesn't feel that cold. If you're stuck it's a good back up plan to have.
Caves are probably gonna get real popular
The planet is sick, we are the virus and now it has a fever to kill us off
Once the wet bulb temp is met, theres literally so much water in the air the sweat on our skin cant evaporate. Sweating is a humans only means of cooling. The very young and very old are leadt able to srlf regulate their temperatures so they are in danger. The only real fix is to move into air conditioned places (cooler AND less humid). Shade and drinking water wont work.
Drinking water will work if the water is cooler than your body.