Armaggedon - a simple affair?

[MrBishop]

Originally Posted by Terry Prachett

...civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism

Civilization is made up of individuals who rely on each other for practically everything that they do. No one man, woman or child can (for instance) make a meal by themselves.

By this, I mean that a simple meal like Spaghetti means that someone else knows how to plant wheat and harvest it, someone knows how to turn it into flour, someone knows where to get salt, someone breeds chickens for their eggs, and someone can turn it all into dried spaghetti, someone else knows how to dig wells for water, how to get water into the house, someone knows how to raise cattle, someone knows how to butcher it, several someone's move it to where the materials are needed, someone...well...you get the idea. Everyone is specialized.

Practically no one knows all the skills needed to live autonomously. We rely on each other and technology heavily in order to simple things like putting food on our plates and a roof over our heads.

The quote above got me thinking. Imagine what it would take to plunge mankind into utter chaos. What would be needed to bring about a human-armaggedon? Not a nuclear holocaust...but a social one.

Imagine a sunflare of monsterous proportions...a cluster of electromagnetic patricles the likes of which make physicists piss themselves. From the Sun to here...a mere 20 minutes, and certainly not enough time to shut down power-plants etc...

Satellites down, power surges knocking out power-grids all over the world, telecommunication lines destroyed etc... a world-wide power outtage and disruption of coomunication that would take X days/weeks to fix.

In the meanwhile... we are in the dark. We don't have phones to call friends and family, or the police. We can't cook food, restaurants are closed and probably..so are grocery stores. Prachett suggests that it would take about 24 hours and two (missed) meals for society to degrade into chaos.

I'd give it a week...less time if it happened in the winter. What about you?

What would it take to plunge the world into chaos? Discuss...