I was discussing a topic with my dad the other day and it really got us both thinking, so i thought i'd pop it up here to see what you lot thought of it.

What do you think would happen is electricity no longer worked. Now i know some of you will think "hey, haven't we already got a topic like this?" But i'm not talking about if we ran out, i'm talking about if it no longer worked. That means, no renewables, no batterys, no potato cloaks, nothing. It just doesn't work anymore. There is no way to getting it working again, it is quite simply stuffed.

Apart from the fact that we'd all be buggered, you mean? Communications, phones (which use a small amount of current), the internet, no vehicles - cars, boats, planes, trains - which start with an electronic ignition or fully electric trains; no Hornby train sets, either; no lights; a number of homes without heating and/or cooking; no hospitals; no refrigeration for the stacks and stacks of dead people in morgues; no refrigeration at all, come to that; much less music (CD players; amps; PA systems, etc); no kettle (!), no toaster or microwave; apart from all of that?

The philosohpical ramifications would be massive - not quite as devastating if gravity stopped working, because it'd all be over before anyone had a chance to ponder such things - but close, because the very assumption of science would be undermined: that scientific laws are eternal and universal. We'd have to question everything, from the discovery of fire onwards. Religion may even become credible again as a way of producing knowledge.

we'd live like they did in the past... well thats what we should do but what would really happen would be panic as no one would know what was going on.

We'd eventually get to that point - but of course, an awful lot of people will die in the short term due to food shortages, lack of hospital treatment, fighting over food and other suddenly necessary commodities, and so on.

It doesn't look very good, on the whole...

thats one thing i wouldn't like :S getting your own food to survive hahaha send out a man to do it for me

in a way it depend how we define electricity:

• if you include all forms of electrical charges moving to create information and energy - the human body will not be able to perform.

• if you don't, and the shift is gradual (due to radioactive contamination for example), a move toward ion based electronics will be more expensive, but has much potential that can't be reached with electron-electronics (no signal degradation, implementation based on biological concepts, biological based machines, self reproducing machines, smarter-then-human computers ).

• but if we don't have time - it's back to the dark ages for the part of humanity that don't live in N.korea . on the brighter side - life in N.korea may even improve.

There are of course other alternatives. We are more and more relying on fibre optic cables these days which are far faster, can be layed over a larger distance and do not rely on electrical charge. Fibre optic cables use light to carry information rather than electricity.



I never thought of that actually. Every living animal would be stuffed because nerves would no longer be able to transmit impulses to any muscle. So thats means no walking, no talking, no breathing, your heart would stop pumping blood, there would litterally be no movement.