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Tell HN: Living without electricity in Kyiv

23 points by Max-Ganz-II ↗ HN
So, rolling power cuts probably begin today, power company says four hours or less.

The attacks on power generation are awkward. To my eye, if Putin can keep up the attacks and inflict damage more quickly than it can be repaired, Ukraine ends up with increasingly long blackouts each day, and then maybe days of blackouts. Cities do not work without power, in ways we can hardly imagine - for example, you can’t buy anything, because the tills no longer work.

You could in theory use cash, with the shops keeping a pile of ready cash at each till for this, but how do you as a customer get cash when the ATMs are not working because the power is out?

The metro shuts down, of course. So do the traffic lights. How do you get into the city, or from A to B? you can walk, but only so far, and when you get to your destination, if it’s an office block, or condo, the elevators are not working.

I live on the 15th floor.

Automatic sliding doors are okay, you can force them open - but then you can’t really shut them, I think, so it gets cold.

How do you work from home, when the power is out - your laptop may be working, but you have no Internet.

Also when power is out, I think water goes out too, after a little while.

I need to buy some of those large containers of water, for home, in case needed.

I’ve been laying in some non-perishable foods, but most of what I eat is fresh and is in the fridge - fine for 24 hours, but after that, mmm. I will need to adapt my diet, and my life, to getting stuff done while electricity is available, and… getting other stuff done, which does not need power, when it’s not.

Needless to say, heating and lighting are off the menu. That’s fine so far, I’m in a well insulated apartment and it’s not yet cold (4C today, but sitting in a quilt is just fine), and lighting isn’t needed when you work at a laptop.

Well, in any event, back to coding :-) I’ve an AWS Redshift instance up right now, for dev work; if the power abruptly fails, I’ll be paying for until the power comes back - I could run an EC2 instance, and heartbeat to it, and when the heartbeat dies, it shuts down the cluster and itself… but that’s a lot of work and debugging and testing. I’d rather just wait the four hours :-)

18 comments

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tuatoru
Money: maybe get to know your local shop workers/owners, and talk to them about short term credit for times when the ATMs are not working, and how to make that work for them?

Water: a teaspoon (5ml) of plain bleach per litre should keep it safe to drink for months. It won't taste or smell nice, but it won't kill you.

Food: if the max temp outside is 4C, then that's your fridge. Food should last a week. Maybe a tradesman's tool chest screwed to the roof (if you have roof access), with a padlock?

Thanks for the update!

badpun
> Maybe a tradesman's tool chest screwed to the roof (if you have roof access), with a padlock?

Most apartments in Ukraine probably have a balcony (the Soviets really insisted on them for some reason), so that shouldn't be a problem.

2rsf
Soon temperatures will drop below zero and food will freeze, that's fine for preservation but without a proper heat source you might get stuck with food you can't eat
Max-Ganz-II
Well, it's a first rolling blackout so far, so the power is back on now.

I took out a bunch of cash from an ATM.

Water - going to pick up a big canister of mineral water and lug it home. Maybe roll it home :-)

Food, that's going to be a learning curve, if it comes to it.

Max-Ganz-II
Actually, as an aside, I fast ever other day, and occasionally take five day fasts, so periods with no food is fine. In the longer term though you need access to fruits and vegtables. Protein much less so.
tomohawk
Putin's terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure make no military sense. The only thing I can think of as to why he's doing it is that he's a dictator on thin ice and has to demonstrate something in order to hold on to power.

And we can also thank the Iranian mullahs and IRGC for making this possible. This is the world the IRGC has been pushing for for decades.

EDIT: in case you're interested, a link to what is going on:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-repo...

farseer
Power plants were also a target of American bombers on the opening night of 1991 gulf war.
tomohawk
Oh, and whatabout...

These whataboutisms are tiresome and off topic.

knewter
"whataboutism" is the stupidest way I see people avoid engaging actual debates .

> Putin's terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure make no military sense.

(Points out that there's plenty of military precedent for this, aside from it being an obvious tactic)

> WHATABOUTISM!

maybe you can see how this behavior ruins discourse and guarantees you get dumber over time, but I doubt it.

yetihehe
And in medieval times, there were dead bodies with diseases thrown over the wall with catapults. Maybe we should try this next on Russians? Or maybe bomb their power plants, if all is permitted?
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mamonster
Of course it makes military sense. Attacking supply lines and civilian infrastructure is one of the oldest military tactics that exist.

The line of argument against that is obviously "but Hitler tried it in Britain and it didn't work", but for the majority of history it did work.

When electricity is disabled, civilian life takes a massive hit. As the OP shows in his post, modern cities don't work all that well without electricity. And remember: Food for the soldiers, heating in their army base, etc, all run on it. So with winter approaching it will most likely be very uncomfortable, as the heating requirements are obviously magnified.

Of course, there is an option to mitigate it: oil/gas/coal. Where will the civil society get this oil/gas? Fossil fuels are probably the one thing that NATO cannot supply this winter(remember that Ukraine was until recently exporting energy to Europe, namely Poland), given how horrible the markets are in general. And remember that any oil that is used to heat something could have been used to fuel a tank.

To summarize, there are very real reasons to bomb civilian infrastructure for a military goal. The civilian society is the one that supports the war effort and provides the army with a lot of stuff they need to fight, and in the modern world civilian society needs electricity to run. Given that Putin is now resorting to such tactics, the next step for him would be openly bombing electricity lines and railroads.

NATO has to take these attacks very seriously, in a military context. Don't know how they will do it but they need to figure out how to get Ukraine electricity this winter.

rapjr9
However Russia's troops probably rely on Ukrainian electricity in their temporary bases. Without it they have to bring even more fuel with them, especially in the winter, creating new logistic problems. On the other hand most of Ukraine's trains are electric, so moving war machinery and industrial supplies will become more difficult for Ukraine. Yet if Ukraine can't use the rails they will likely damage them to keep Russia from using them, which again will create logistic problems for Russia. Seems like both sides are harmed by cutting electricity. An obvious response will be to cut power to Crimea and other occupied territories as well.
samson8989
Russian media has continually repeats all the "terror" attacks that ukraine has committed on russian soil. The ones ukraine boasts about, and the ones ukraine denies any responsability.
qikInNdOutReply
The solution seems to be massive power banks and something aching to camping stoves that charge batterys like BioLite?
_int3_ 

    >  How do you work from home, when the power is out - your laptop may be working, but you have no Internet.
Obviously you can't and are too much dependent on Internet. Maybe you should consider alternative. Use offline-first applications in future.