I have had a couple discussions with several people recently about the consequences of an EMP on the world and some interesting issues arose.

In many parts of the world… Central America, South American, Asia, Africa… if a Carrington Event level EMP occurred and destroyed the Power Grid and the Industrial/Technological infrastructure a significant percentage of people in those regions would be relatively unaffected. People practicing subsistence level farming in South America or much of Africa or Asia would likely not even be aware that such an even had taken place until and unless they travelled to areas where technology and a power grid was common.

In many of what we call 3rd world countries a much larger percentage of the population knows and uses what we would call “primitive” skills than is true in say the U.S. or Europe.

In much of the world outside the major industrialized nations if you are poor you either find a way to survive or you perish. The poor of Central America survive as they do in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. They do so because there is no other option and no “safety net”.

In most of the Western, Industrialized nations the poor are “taken care of”. In the U.S. and Europe most of the poor are fed and housed and provided for in ways that to much of the world seems like Wealth. Few poor in the U.S. lack cell phones or cars or TVs or at least basic medical care.  At the same time those poor have virtually ZERO skills or knowledge that would help them survive a societal collapse. For many their “survival skills” consist of knowing how to work the “System”.

In Western Industrialized nations it is only the economically well off who have the leisure to learn “primitive” skills and they do it more as a hobby than something they have to rely on daily. Even those who choose to live “off-grid” do so with the knowledge that there is still a social “safety net” available if they fail.

Which leads to an interesting demographic consequence. In much of the 3rd world it is the poor who will survive since they already possess many of the skills and the knowledge of how to live in a non-electrical, no-technological world. In the Western Nations it is more likely to be the well off since the poor of these nations have virtually no skills or knowledge.

One of the results is that a much larger percentage of the population of 3rd world nations and regions will survive whereas in the Western, Industrialized nations the majority of the population will NOT survive due simply to lack of skills needed for even a subsistence existence.

Obviously there are exceptions and special cases. But the basic paradigm still exists and from it grow a lot of other corollary issues.

The Librarian