HELP! EU/DE/FR: Impending infrastructural apocalypse and possibility of civil war

[knorps]

Dear friends, our incompetent German government, along with their French counterparts, have willingly pushed us very close already to a climactic situation with their idiotic energy policies.

Our gas reserves are running out quickly, while nuclear power plants in France face historically high numbers of shut down reactors due to urgent maintenance.

This poses an imminent threat to the entire european power grid, which has had alarmingly high counts of stability issues in the past years and months.

With home heating in France depending largely on electricity, decoupling from the paneuropean grid to avoid spread of inevitable local or even nationwide blackouts has become basically unavoidable, unless hardly enforceable drastic measures of energy rationing are implemented.

In winter, we will come very close to or actually have to face cataclysmic infrastructural meltdown and subsequent civil unrest with enormous risk of looting and war due to an energy and food distribution crisis, being facilitated and dramatically accelerated by continued inadequate Covid infection control, which in turn allowed numerous viral immune escape variants of skyrocketing infectiousness to emerge.

In light of this situation — which i hope we can still work to avoid — i would like to call upon every member in the general area to help form alliances and instate a network of mutual assistance.

I am not exactly sure how to organize, since we as a society are now fatally dependent on uninterrupted energy and telecommunications infrastructure.

Let us come together, at least in spirit, and put our minds to work to save the day.

It is imperative we act as one, and do so immediately.

 

[Stephan]

Let me suggest to worry more about the time span until the end of this decade, rather than panic what "immediate" effects could happen next week or next month. Which I think you got wrong.

Gas reserves are mandated by law now to be increased in local storage. To like 90% full in early December. So not running out, but big biz using alot like BASF in Ludwigshafen might see impact. Especially if winter should turn out to be harsh, also should they need to buy from spot market (4x-10x price hike). Poorer countries will see LNG tankers all go to DE now, instead to them. Because we can afford it, they not so much. We are offloading energy crises and unrest to abroad. There is also chatter about ex-chancellor Schröder, friend of Putin's in Moscow, saying Putin is seeking a diplomatic solution to the mess he created. In the event of a cease-fire energy will be the first thing to flow or re-open again.

It is summer right now, no immediate threat to electricity grid. Winter with 1..5 mio space heaters could be a different story. In 1H22 ~600k units were bought. I.e. one nuclear power plant's worth of power. There are 40 mio homes in DE, 20 mio use gas for heating. If a significant portion would start to use them, the grid would be in trouble. That would be 25% load over previous peak load seen. Again, this is far from certain, because in the event of a gas shortage, industry will be shut down first, private heating LAST. If you are that worried, you do not have enough solar on your house with island and black start capable inverter.

In recent WELT poll 2/3 of Germans are now in favor of at least prolonging operation of last 3 nuclear power plants, fewer want to see this extended and fewer want the previous 3 shut down late last year re-opened. So energy security is a big theme now. Will imho mean a nuclear renaissance in other countries than DE. Difficult to do in DE, a country governed by fear and misinformation through media. Still, DE is a large consumer of energy. There is a bunch of large gas fields near Turkey and Cyprus. Maybe a pipeline will be made in the Adriatic or over Italy or over Baltic. But 10 years out. Until then we'll fire up all old coal plants still standing.

More problematic is inflation due to money printing and rising prices due to Covid production losses. ECB unlike US Fed can't hike rates without throwing Spain or Italy under the bus. The loss of purchasing power might push a sizable chunk of lower middle class into poverty IF wages do not keep up, which they won't at first. You will see increased risk of strikes as first symptom. Since DE is a nation of renters opposed to so-called red whine countries, DE is also much more at risk of impoverisation of lower and mid middle classes. Because their cash flow goes into rent instead of owning your house with much less cash flow demands every month. Similarly young couples have been priced out of the housing market for more than five years now. This will ease off in later part of this decade because if you look at population graphs there will be alot more deaths than births in DE. Lots of empty houses then, because owners have died and children left to live elsewhere.

Add to that a bunch of hot wars like Ukraine-Russia or China-Taiwan. Taiwan is 2/3rds of important chips. If this turns hot, we'll see a renaissance of Dresden 12nm GloFo chips instead of TSMC 5nm. EU and US foundries will take another 5-8 years until production. Good thing ASML is Dutch eh.

My recommendation therefore is a) think about and try to counter purchasing power loss happening this decade. This is the big issue. b) Think about cost of living in retirement, try to minimize. c) Buy cheaper in bulk what you will need in the next years anyway. d) Buy stuff that lasts, can be curated, and is free from 3rd party interest. See my signature. e) Avoid news (read Dobellis paper).