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The Underappreciated Risks of Severe Space Weather
circletimessquare notes a New Scientist piece calling attention to a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, which attempts to raise awareness of the dangers of severe solar electromagnetic storms. "In 1859, amateur astronomer Richard Carrington noticed 'two patches of intensely bright and white light' near some sunspots. At the same time, Victorian era magnetometers went off the charts, stunning auroras were being viewed at the equator, and telegraph networks were disrupted — sparks flew from terminals and ignited telegraph paper on fire. It became known as the Carrington event, and the National Academy of Sciences worries about the impact of another such event today and the lack of awareness among officials. It would induce un-designed-for voltages in all high-voltage, long-distance power lines, and destroy transformers, as Quebec learned in 1989. Without electricity, water would stop flowing from the tap, gasoline would stop being pumped, and health care would cease after the emergency generators gave up the ghost after 72 hours. Replacing all of the transformers would take months, if not years. The paradox would be that underdeveloped countries would fare better than developed ones. Our only warning system is a satellite called the Advanced Composition Explorer, in solar orbit between the Sun and the Earth. It is 11 years old and past its planned lifespan. It might give us as much as 15 minutes of warning, and transformers might be able to be disconnected in time. But currently no country has such a contingency plan."
I remember when the northeast US had a power outage that lasted a few days just a few years back. It was no where near as dramatic or dire as this summary suggests the situation could be. I still had water and gas in Ohio.
Then you should RTFA. I read this article yesterday and toyed with submitting it but didn't bother. One of the things that could happen with a large enough space weather event is the destruction of distribution transformers on a region wide (nationwide in the case of small countries like the Scandinavian ones) scale.
No power utility has enough spare distribution transformers on hand to replace all of them after they go. They are usually built to order and take 12 months or more to produce. So why don't you imagine a power outage that lasts for months or years across the entire Northeast United States and tell me how undramatic it is? No refrigeration, no gasoline for your car (no electric to pump it through pipelines or service stations), limited and rationed modern medicine, no pumped potable water, no water treatment plants, no HVAC systems, limited communications, etc, etc, etc.
Sound dire enough to take seriously now?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If you don't think loss of the entire power grid would deeply affect your life, I have to wonder where you live (and that's being kind)
Last time a major TEOTWAWKI event was looming (Y2K), I described the threat to my father in great detail. His response: [shrug] "I'll throw another log on the fire and go back to my book." True enough, my folks' lives are pervaded by self-sufficiency, including extensive wood heat, well water and homegrown food. Society shuts down, they just spend a few minutes adjusting and carry on.
But ... you wouldn't guess that at a glance. They have elegantly integrated the survivalist mindset with modern conveniences, enjoying everything technology has to offer without worries of what to do if the grid shuts down indefinitely. Everything has a low-tech backup, preparations for self-sufficiency are ongoing and already in use.
You can live a "survivalist" lifestyle, and still be fully "wired". The two ways of life are not diametrically opposed.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
"Wacky survivalists" is an historically very recent notion. For the bulk of mankind's history, having a well stocked larder-stores adequate to get you through to the next harvest season- and the means to supply yourself with adequate shelter and heat and water, etc based on your own and mostly local sources was quite the ordinary norm. It has only been the last two or three generations where that started to fall out of favor.
We have had numerous examples of much smaller and more localized infrastructure destruction, and the best observations have shown that areas start to suffer fast after a three day outage of general modern technology. Just in time delivery systems and centralized power and water and natgas delivery and so on are the main cause of that.without massive outside the region resupply, that's it, civilization falls apart rapidly. Three days isn't very long. If the event/disaster is much longer than three days, and no outside help is coming in (because the next region over is just as bad off, as the region next to that, etc), you'd see some pretty dire circumstances arise.
Here is one example for the US, we no longer maintain a national emergency bulk food stockpile. It used to be millions of bushels of this or that, dried milk and so on. We maintained that for decades, then they stopped and went to what is called set aside. This is due to farming changes and "the market". We- the government "we"- used to pay minimal price controls and stockpile various surplus foods, in order to maintain our domestic agricultural base through wild market swings and seasonal weather variations, but they more or less stopped that some time ago and now we have no stockpiled food, they sold the last of it off earlier last year finally.
In other words, on a very large scale, we have no backup civilization or big national pantry. It doesn't exist, just not there. The government has zero provisions to help the people in general at any national scale sized event. They have provisions to use military force to "stay in charge", they call it "maintaining continuity of government", that's it. We have a national petroleum reserve as the only exception, and it is in the form of just crude, it would still need refining and delivery-that's iffy enough in such a scenario to even be possible- (and even then most would go to the government and not the people).
On the other hand, there is nothing stopping people from instituting their own stores and provisions and having a personal backup protection scheme, the "wacky survivalists" type method that all our ancestors considered normal and a very good idea. In the community we still call it survivalism, but it has a less scary name now too, "practical preparedness". Here is a plain vanilla example, for roughly the same cash people put into a big screen plasma TV they can have a decent amount of long term dried stored food. For what a cheap laptop or other "must have" electronic gadget of the month costs, you can have a pretty decent gravity powered water filter. The folks in suburbia and in the hinterland get laughed at a lot as having unsustainable lifestyles, but they are living in the only places where you can have a rationally large enough local garden and access to alternative water supplies, etc, along with firewood. Choices one can choose now in other words. All the big cities would collapse rapidly in such a national sized electronic disaster as in TFA, it would become beyond ugly, right up to and including cannibalism.
Basically, the government sucks when it comes to national and practical "civil defense". They only have a military solution. The military doesn't produce anything, it just takes it/spends it/wears it out. Look at the recent articles about the relatively small numbers of homeless in California, possibly our richest state. They can't even deal with such a teeny tiny homeless situation at very low numbers adequately. Extrapolate those numbers from thousands to tens of millions or more and it becomes easy to see the problems...
So it is up to the individual now to decide to incorporate a practical preparedness plan and alter lifestyle a little bit, the article scenario is only one of many potential wildcards that could occur.
Doesn't the tendency of an event recurring increase with the passage of time?
This is a common belief, but it is utterly wrong. Consider flipping a fair coin. The probability of getting heads is 1/2 always. If I got heads the last 100 flips, what's the chances of getting heads again? 1/2.
On the other hand, the probability of getting heads 100 times in a row is 1/2^100. Confusing these two probabilities is the basis of the Gambler's Fallacy.
However, there are some natural processes that fall subject to this reasoning. Take the earthquake example. Let's say that the chances of an earthquake happening increase as subterranean pressure increases. Let's say that everyday the subterranean pressure increases by some (small) random amount. In this situation the chance of an earthquake does get bigger everyday, but that's because there is something actively increasing the probability.
Compare with the earth being struck by a cataclysmic asteroid. In this case, there's no analogous process building up over time so it is fallacious to conclude that the chances are getting bigger every day that we don't get struck.
you are clearly ignorant. this is not meant as a throwaway insult, but a qualitative judgment of your words on the subject matter
here's some intellectual charity:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/electromag/java/faraday2/
start there. follow the links. read. educate yourself
THEN comment
the issue here has absolutely nothing to do with static electricty, or small electronics. it has to do with electromagnetic induction across long powerlines
why is it we have to live in a world where the dumbest amongst us are usually also the loudest?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it