On Sat, 22 Apr 2017 17:19:45 +0100, charles wrote:

All supermarket food spoilt.

most supermarkets have standby generators

They may well have to keep the chillers and freezers running and core
IT.

No transactions possible except cash.
NO working petrol or diesel pumps.
except those at supermarkets?

In my experience loss of mains power forces closure of nearly all
shops, supermarkets and petrol stations. The POS equipment is not
"core IT".

No road transport after a day or so
No water
No sewage.

Gravity will help

A lot of the water supply is gravity. Sewage tends to need pumping,
if only to get it from the buried pipes to the surface treatment
works.

No central heating or hot water
No lights

I have candles -= don't you.

Local power cut here only affects the CH/HW until I drag the genset
out or run out of red. Lighting is mainly gas lanterns, candles are a
crap and risky source of light.

No radio

Most radio transmitters have standby generators.

You'd like to think so, I have my doubts.

A complete grid blackout is highly unlikely. They'd load shed and
island to protect generation and supplies. Of course near
simultanously felling a pylon or three about the country that are
feeding the grid with the ouput of a few of the nukes would present a
serious restoration problem and what the automatics did in trying to
protect the system might be "interesting". Humans would be to slow to
react...

--
Cheers
Dave.