How air-conditioning created the modern city

Re:How air-conditioning created the modern city by jandrese on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @07:27PM (#17762754)

I was talking with my parents about what people did in New Orleans before they had air conditioning. Turns out that what they did was die. There were quite a number of heat related deaths every year before A/C came along, something like 15% of the population would die off.

In the event of the apocalypse New Orleans will be one of the first cities to go. Between losing the pumps, the oppressive heat (exacerbated by global warming), and the insects the survivors would be forced to flee the city if they wanted to survive.

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Re:How air-conditioning created the modern city by batiudrami on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @09:44PM (#17763245)

I don't doubt that there were heat deaths in summer (Europe sees them every year as air conditioning is not normal for many countries) but 15% a year is insane - you'd need to be at least an order of magnitude off to have a sustainable population.

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Re:How air-conditioning created the modern city by jandrese on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @12:22PM (#17767241)

Sustaining the city required a continual influx of residents. To be fair, a lot of the deaths were from slaves, but it was something of a deathtrap between the high heat, humidity, hot nights, disease carrying insects, flooding, and hurricanes. Were it not such a valuable port the city would probably have died out.

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