Let's talk realistic fail times for power/water.

[BanDHMO]

The settings in sandbox for when power and water will fail got me thinking what would be a good realistic value to select. What do you guys think?

Power. A little research reveals that a coal-fired plant burns through 140 rail cars of coal every day. Given that, I can't imagine it has a supply of fuel to keep the power on for weeks or months - more likely days. And that's assuming that the staff who operate it did not turn infected and did not desert their positions in order to survive. I'm not sure what level of automation there is at power plants, but I can't imagine it will keep going for long without operators.
My estimate: 0-1 weeks.

Water. Surprisingly, the final part of the water distribution system seems very simple and can probably work without staff. It's just a tower, filled with water, and hooked up to pipes. The problem is that the tower normally can't store very much water compared to what a typical town normally uses, so the question is how quick it will run out. Assuming everyone closes their taps before turning z, there will still be some usage from automated sprinklers and such, as well as leakage from breaks (somebody's car crashed open a fire hydrant, etc). I would guess this to be much less than typical usage, but much more than if you were the only one drawing on the tower's supply.
My estimate: 0-4 weeks.

Anybody wants to share your estimates and reasons for them?

[Alastor]

I found an interesting article on the subject: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2165/when-the-zombies-take-over-how-long-till-the-electricity-fails

I'm not sure which plants specifically supplies Muldraugh but 92% of Kentucky power is coal.

Anyways, it depends on whether the plant was left unattended or not. In case of utter catastrophe I imagine they would attempt to reach their families or look out for their own future survival and if for whatever reason the coal plant is no longer manned at all the reduced input would lead to reduced power within 2-4 hours and it should automatically shut down within 12-18 hours when sufficient alarms are triggered.

A nuclear plant would likely stay operational for a few days to a week before shutting itself down. Gas plant would lose pressure in 1-3 days. If there was zero effort to keep power going there'd probably be cascading failures with most of the US being without power within 24 hours.

Renewable power fares much better though, but I don't think Muldraugh has much of that and the US mostly uses hydro. Amusingly if it happened in my country I imagine we'd have thousands of surviving power sources from windmills and solar panels...

If the power plant personnel stay on their stations and does everything they can to maintain power then the limit might be that coal power plants on average have maybe 45-60 days' worth of coal on hand.

Which supports the "0-2 months" option with closer to 0 being favored (it would probably require government/military intervention to keep them manned). My last game power went out after 3 days though which seems reasonable if the government survived briefly.

Water
I think you are right that usage will be smaller, but it might get drained a lot in the final hours putting out fires and pressure will start dropping after the power fails.
However, under normal circumstances 10-30% of all water pumped by a normal utility is lost to underground pipe leaks. This produces a virtual guarantee that the towers will be empty sometime between 3 days to 15 days after the electricity goes out, even with no end-user consumption.

I guess I'd again say the "0-2 months" option, but everything depends on how soon power fails. If everything goes wrong power will be out within a day and water will be gone 3 days later.

[MuthaF]

nice research, kudos

[Naphtha]

Yeah very good job I cant believe you put so much effort into it

[Bomoo]

Wish you could upvote posts on here. +1

[virusaki94]

Вода это да, но на электричество ♥♥♥♥♥.

[Bomoo]

Moon runes.

[HighPlains Drifter]

Once the electricity goes out, all your pump-stations and lift-stations go out to. The water towers that provide water are gravity fed, but electric pumps get the water to the top of the tower. Also most larger communities use pumping-stations, not water towers. No pumping-station, no water.

Water will go out very shortly after the electricity, because of the dependence on electricity to move the water.

[Hertz]

No more than 1 week.. (My guess is hours) presuming the chaos, all logistics ( power and water lines ) aren't capable to support the insane human-rat behavior about needs and storage.

[Alastor]

Yes cities rely on pumping-stations rather than towers BUT as I understand it they still have a largish reservoir that will refill as long as there is power and then still last a few days after power goes out.

It's done that way to reduce power costs by drawing on it during the night where requirements are low. Even if they don't have a tower per se they will have some sort of reservoir.

Ideally the personnel should shut off access to the city to preserve the reservoir before they leave. It would make a decent supply for a survivor group and those few extra moments of water likely won't do anyone any good anyway. I guess that scenario might explain day zero outage.

[HighPlains Drifter]

Originally posted by Alastor:

Yes cities rely on pumping-stations rather than towers BUT as I understand it they still have a largish reservoir that will refill as long as there is power and then still last a few days after power goes out.

If no pumps are running at the pumping station because there is no electricity, there is no water pressure. Period. No water pressure, nothing goes up-grade, to the distribution system.

However...

What you will have, is a small amount of water-pressure in the lines, post pump-station, in the city were the water lines are much smaller. Like 8-10" piping that's gravity/pressure fed. That won't last long at all. Water will go out very shortly after the electric grid is down. Some pumping stations will have diesel generators, but someone has to be there to man them.

Trust me, without electricity, there is no water distribution. Just residual water in the lines, but that's not going to last long as the pressure drops the water won't flow to your taps.

[BanDHMO]

Originally posted by HighPlains Drifter:

Once the electricity goes out, all your pump-stations and lift-stations go out to. The water towers that provide water are gravity fed, but electric pumps get the water to the top of the tower. Also most larger communities use pumping-stations, not water towers. No pumping-station, no water.

Water will go out very shortly after the electricity, because of the dependence on electricity to move the water.

I think it's safe to assume in the case of small town Kentucky we are talking about a water tower, not a straight pumping station. Here's West Point's water tower: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Muldraugh,+KY/@37.996539,-85.950733,3a,75y,172h,98.89t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sN0xbofs_h7gsnicUCoUTgQ!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x886920e97d5031c9:0x70e1eb33a4c46c0

As for the rest, you are, of course, absolutely right. Without power there will be no fresh water coming to the tower, so the only question is how long will the tower last. Not long at all is a good generalization, but I'm interested in quantifying it somewhat.

Discovery states the size of an average water tower to be 1-1.5 million gallons: http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/how-much-water-is-stored.

USGS says average water consumption per capita in the US is 80-100 gallons: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-percapita.html

The population of West Point, KY, as per game is approximately 4000 people. So, taking the worst numbers and running the math, we see that the town should be able to live off its tower water for 2.5 days.

Of course, zombies don't bathe or cook, so the consumption will be lower. A figure of 10-30% waste was cited by a poster above, so I'll use 25%. That means after the power shuts off, water will still run for roughly 10 days.

[Rah'Kalesh]

Well, Basing my theory's off where near where I live, as well as what I know (or have been told.) Power stations work like ISP's, The burn,radiate,move water at the rate power is requested (Think of the hoover dam.) And on any given day, there are two full coal trains of about 500 cars each to the duke energy center, I've been told by one of the workers that I met in passing that the grid could stay afloat easily a week with nobody at the helm, Due to the station not letting you burn at 100% (which is never done.) to not letting it drop to zero, There's alot of computers in there so i've told, And it can automate itself within 15-25% of current demands, It won't let the power useage drop lower or higher than that. And he mentioned needing around 75 cars a day, So we're talking a decent time except for the fact the second zombies hits, that third or second shift is not coming in the morning.

He mentioned that the nuclear plant could run for a few months with nobody there, but the results would be very glow in the dark.. Somehow I don't believe that to be true, Nuclear is kinda.. nuclear.. I don't think the plant really does to much except pull the "ohshi-" handle when required. Unless the cores need like constant watering like some kind of flower, But I don't know.

On the water situation, You have to take into account the people who had their faucets on ahead of time, The people that got out of the shower when they got the OMG ZOMBIES phonecall, people washing their cars with garden hoses, They aren't gonna care about turning the water off. I'd say the water might be gone in around 4 days.. But the eletricity? I'd say that's up to how you want to roleplay it in your mind, If it's like 2050 and you want to think solar panels are on every house and power is infinite, Nuclear power.. maybe 0 - 2 months.. Coal..? Maybe a week. I doubt they have that much on hand to do much more.. I'd honestly say maybe 0 - 2 days. Hydro stuff is done by letting water naturally make energy, And I hear that most dams are completely autonomous, So maybe 0 - 6 months. Maybe a rubber band broke or someone forgot to replace the Hubba Bubba in the wall. Lol

In reality I wish there was a setting where you could make the highrises/business have infinite power but the houses go for a certain set of time, Would make it a point to be in the city for the power cause most businesses have solar panels on the roof for reduced cost.

Just my 0.2 cents

[Rah'Kalesh]

There's always that, But guarrenteed someone somewhere is crashing into some powerpoles.. It happens in the movies.. man!

[HighPlains Drifter]

or weather. Without an active line crew, where i live wouldn't have electricity after 1 good spring storm.

[Alastor]

Originally posted by Rah'Kalesh:

He mentioned that the nuclear plant could run for a few months with nobody there, but the results would be very glow in the dark.. Somehow I don't believe that to be true, Nuclear is kinda.. nuclear.. I don't think the plant really does to much except pull the "ohshi-" handle when required. Unless the cores need like constant watering like some kind of flower, But I don't know.

Not sure on the specifics but I believe the process continually gets too hot which eventually would cause a meltdown, but the maintenance of the process is automatic and if it was simply abandoned it'd keep going for a while until shutting down by itself when problems pile up.

Originally posted by Rah'Kalesh:

In reality I wish there was a setting where you could make the highrises/business have infinite power but the houses go for a certain set of time, Would make it a point to be in the city for the power cause most businesses have solar panels on the roof for reduced cost.

Not sure where you live but I don't think it applies throughout the US and especially not in a state like Kentucky which is one of the least solar-using States. I mean in 2012 they drew 4.8 MWp vs California with 2,559.3 MWp. It's a pretty new trend so I don't think "most" businesses have it, but I could be wrong I suppose.

I do think it'd be a nice game feature if a few select houses/buildings had installed solar panels and retained power. It should also be possible to find a generator and burn your own fuel though. Eventually I suppose.