A balkanized America would see Texas have an immediate failure of its power grid and general breakdown of emergency services. Border territory and probably large swaths of the infrastructure would get seized by Sinaloas and Golfos. The only territory I imagine staying part of Texas proper would be the strip of land going from Houston to Port Arthur, only because of international oil trading.
The separately maintained grid is the exact reason for why it's terrible. There was a winter storm that knocked out power for 4 million people in February 2011, and then again earlier this year in February and around 500 people died. People were boiling snow for water. They didn't fix the problem for 10 years and it happened again. A 2019 study showed that Texas is the only region of the US with insufficient power reserves to meet peak demands during summer months. With climate change accelerating I can only imagine the problem getting worse.
remember how the Texas grid nearly collapsed last winter? that was at least partially because it isn't sufficiently interconnected with the rest of the North American power grids (primarily so they can avoid muh big government regulation). it didn't, and still doesn't, have enough power generation capacity to compensate for surges in load (i.e. a bunch of people suddenly need electric heating in an area where they usually don't), and they couldn't rely on the rest of the country's grid to supplement.
Some states are net energy exporters to the grid, and others are net importers.
Assuming that state lines don't break down along with state apparatus (whih is a big "if"), then that should give you an idea of who will be okay and who will be in trouble when the lines are cut.
You're assuming that everything will be cut along state lines. It won't, look up "American Nations" to find out why- and also why Texas would be extra fucked.
If a state produces more power than it uses, it will mostly be okay if the lines are cut, assuming the people there continue to operate on a state level. But the lines will probably cut at a very short distance, likely wherever the culture changes, wherever the radius of "people like us" ends (3 Californias, upstate vs downstate NY, east and west PA, north/south FL, north/south IL, lots of different regions in Texas).
It's possible that states (or groups of states) that are culturally homogeneous enough, and also net energy exporters, might reconfigure a grid on the fly that would be better than Texas'.
But take this "cutting the power lines by local boundary" concept, and apply it to all resources. It'd be a shit show. That's why I think it's more likely that people would start to get used to doing a lot more things locally, and then re-constitute regional polities.
texas?
Who with?
itself
Oregon looks more primed for violence at the moment.
plausible
Literally everyone
A balkanized America would see Texas have an immediate failure of its power grid and general breakdown of emergency services. Border territory and probably large swaths of the infrastructure would get seized by Sinaloas and Golfos. The only territory I imagine staying part of Texas proper would be the strip of land going from Houston to Port Arthur, only because of international oil trading.
deleted by creator
The separately maintained grid is the exact reason for why it's terrible. There was a winter storm that knocked out power for 4 million people in February 2011, and then again earlier this year in February and around 500 people died. People were boiling snow for water. They didn't fix the problem for 10 years and it happened again. A 2019 study showed that Texas is the only region of the US with insufficient power reserves to meet peak demands during summer months. With climate change accelerating I can only imagine the problem getting worse.
deleted by creator
remember how the Texas grid nearly collapsed last winter? that was at least partially because it isn't sufficiently interconnected with the rest of the North American power grids (primarily so they can avoid muh big government regulation). it didn't, and still doesn't, have enough power generation capacity to compensate for surges in load (i.e. a bunch of people suddenly need electric heating in an area where they usually don't), and they couldn't rely on the rest of the country's grid to supplement.
tl;dr the bigger the grid the better
deleted by creator
Some states are net energy exporters to the grid, and others are net importers.
Assuming that state lines don't break down along with state apparatus (whih is a big "if"), then that should give you an idea of who will be okay and who will be in trouble when the lines are cut.
deleted by creator
You're assuming that everything will be cut along state lines. It won't, look up "American Nations" to find out why- and also why Texas would be extra fucked.
If a state produces more power than it uses, it will mostly be okay if the lines are cut, assuming the people there continue to operate on a state level. But the lines will probably cut at a very short distance, likely wherever the culture changes, wherever the radius of "people like us" ends (3 Californias, upstate vs downstate NY, east and west PA, north/south FL, north/south IL, lots of different regions in Texas).
It's possible that states (or groups of states) that are culturally homogeneous enough, and also net energy exporters, might reconfigure a grid on the fly that would be better than Texas'.
But take this "cutting the power lines by local boundary" concept, and apply it to all resources. It'd be a shit show. That's why I think it's more likely that people would start to get used to doing a lot more things locally, and then re-constitute regional polities.
deleted by creator