Doesn't that statistic assume a 60W incandescent? There's plenty of entirely functional computers (and lights, for that matter) you could run for several minutes on that much power, and with a fully distributed generation system comprising manual labor, geothermal, hydro, and some form of energy storage, everyone could manage a few hours of light electrical use a day. Biking may not be an ideal example, but there will be means of turning labor into electricity when fuel runs out.
Clearly other options are preferable, but if there's nobody around to keep the reactor online, fabricate new batteries, or build new solar panels after the old ones cease functioning, people will come up with something. The internet might become a series of BBSes hosted and accessed on microcontrollers with pager LCDs that use milliwatts of power and communicate over shortwave, but people are going to put in real work to keep something reminiscent of modern tech going.
yea, but the best LED bulbs are something like 4x more efficient.
So biking for an hour runs a LED lightbulb for 10 minutes maybe? I don't remember the exact figures but it's ridiculously impractical
a fully distributed generation system comprising manual labor, geothermal, hydro, and some form of energy storage
it's also impossible to make a system that takes advantage of the type of post-collapse labor you'd be doing. People won't be riding exercise bikes when you're trying to survive off potatoes and milk
I clearly made a bad joke that didn't go over well. I was not advocating for any of these things. I know they're wildly inefficient and impractical. My point was that humans will do desperate and ridiculous things to keep tweetin' their tweets and getting into flame wars in the comment section of youtube videos, so power generation options which are obviously terrible are still on the table.
"using a stationary bike in the post-apocalypse to generate just enough power to press 'send tweet'" was meant to be so incredibly absurd that you couldn't take it seriously as a viable suggestion and my defense of that example was intended as a continuation of the bit
Doesn't that statistic assume a 60W incandescent? There's plenty of entirely functional computers (and lights, for that matter) you could run for several minutes on that much power, and with a fully distributed generation system comprising manual labor, geothermal, hydro, and some form of energy storage, everyone could manage a few hours of light electrical use a day. Biking may not be an ideal example, but there will be means of turning labor into electricity when fuel runs out.
Clearly other options are preferable, but if there's nobody around to keep the reactor online, fabricate new batteries, or build new solar panels after the old ones cease functioning, people will come up with something. The internet might become a series of BBSes hosted and accessed on microcontrollers with pager LCDs that use milliwatts of power and communicate over shortwave, but people are going to put in real work to keep something reminiscent of modern tech going.
yea, but the best LED bulbs are something like 4x more efficient.
So biking for an hour runs a LED lightbulb for 10 minutes maybe? I don't remember the exact figures but it's ridiculously impractical
it's also impossible to make a system that takes advantage of the type of post-collapse labor you'd be doing. People won't be riding exercise bikes when you're trying to survive off potatoes and milk
I clearly made a bad joke that didn't go over well. I was not advocating for any of these things. I know they're wildly inefficient and impractical. My point was that humans will do desperate and ridiculous things to keep tweetin' their tweets and getting into flame wars in the comment section of youtube videos, so power generation options which are obviously terrible are still on the table.
"using a stationary bike in the post-apocalypse to generate just enough power to press 'send tweet'" was meant to be so incredibly absurd that you couldn't take it seriously as a viable suggestion and my defense of that example was intended as a continuation of the bit