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Is a 'Katrina-Like' Space Storm Brewing?
pilsner.urquell writes "A newly released NASA report warns that the world has forgotten the power of the sun, creating a technological society susceptible like never before to large infrastructure damage from solar storms.
According to the report, the world has grown so dependent on modern technologies without respect of what the sun can and has done, that it's risking major communications, finance, transportation, government and even emergency services disruptions."
At the height of the cold war, this was one of the concerns. As I recall the detonation of a nuclear device in space would cause a massive EMF pulse (Electro-Magnetic force Pulse) that could trash electronics. (Yes, one on the ground is obviously much worse, but this would allow a government to "blind" an enemy without collateral damage.)
It seems that with the end of the cold war, and the fact that an EMP can occur naturally, has been forgotten.
Greg P
It really, really bugs me. A lot. I know they are only using it to give the impression of a powerful and disastrous storm. It just seems that likening a coronal mass ejection to a "katrina-like" event is as realistic as likening a tornado to that little swirl in your bathtub drain.
I'm beginning to think that in general, modern society is a Perfect Storm factory.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Lessen? Yes. Could it still be catastrophic? Yes.
First, every satellite would be "down". That means no GPS. No communication satellites. No weather satellites.
Second, a violent storm can overload the power grid. Which means days without electricity - assuming important components aren't overloaded and destroyed.
Third, cell phones, radios and other wireless devices could go down. Your home network will probably be fine. But forget using your 3G phone for anything. Your cordless phone will probably be OK to call emergency services but they won't be able to get them on the radio to tell them where to go.
So, as long as you don't depend on modern technology, you should be fine.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Think the report is kidding around? Go lookup what happened in Quebec on March 13th, 1989. The whole power system was knocked out in seconds. Then go read about the kind of storm they're worried about - the solar storm of 1859.
It actually caused telegraph wires to short out across Europe and the Americas - some even caught on fire. If that happened now, it would cause global power outages, fried computer equipment (including the ones that control your fancy electronic car), and everything except for milsats in orbit could be knocked out.
So will people be directly killed? No. But when the fly-by-wire planes fall out of the sky, your new car won't work, your cell phones are dead, power is dead, the internet is down, and landlines fried - I bet it won't take long for a lot of people to die anyway.
At least he didn't forget. One of the events he mentioned in his writings was the massive corruption of magnetically stored data. I believe it was his 2001 series (2001, 2010, etc...) where he mentioned a devastating solar storm that wiped out a vast majority of Earth's digital records.
I have an honest question:
How many people here truly think that if there were an anomaly that they would be able to survive without
A) Electricity
B) A grocery store
C) Modern medicine -and most importantly-
D) Fresh (clean) water
I know for a fact that I'd safely have A, B and D. I live in the woods anyway, huge garden, plenty of animals to slaughter for tasty bbq and we have a very high water-table with multiple ponds around. Not the cleanest but I'd figure out a way to survive.
I'm just wondering about statistics here.
What do you do when people with guns realize this and force you off your land? I had the same thing at my last place, including 4K of windpower and 2K of solar backed by enough batteries to last me through 3 days. Everything that could be gas was gas. 800gal propane tank. What was I to do when that ran out? Someone would find out I was living comfy and then more people would decide they need what I had more than me.
Oddly enough, that is precisely the problem. A Faraday cage works because the conductive shield allows eddy currents to flow, which create fields in opposition to the original event. This prevents things inside the cage from seeing what happened outside. Unfortunately, the cage in this case is our power grid -- and the eddy currents in it are precisely the things causing concern.