An Exercise To Model a "Solar Radiation Katrina"

Hugh Pickens writes in with an update on the warnings we discussed a year back about the dangers of a "solar Katrina." Now NPR is reporting on a tabletop exercise mounted in Boulder, Colorado by government workers attempting to model the effects of a worst-case solar electromagnetic storm. "...an exercise held in Boulder, Colorado, has investigated what might happen if the Earth were struck by a solar storm as intense as the huge storms that occurred in 1921 and 1859 — a sort of solar Katrina — and researchers found that the impact is likely to be far worse than in previous solar storms because of our growing dependence on satellites and other electronic devices that are vulnerable to electromagnetic radiation. 'In many ways, the impact of a major solar storm resembles that of a hurricane or an earthquake,' says FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, except that a solar Katrina would cause damage in a much larger area — power could be knocked out almost simultaneously in countries from Sweden to Canada and the US. In the exercise, the first sign of trouble came when radiation began disrupting radio signals and GPS devices, says Tom Bogdan, who directs the Space Weather Prediction Center. Ten or 20 minutes later electrically charged particles 'basically took out' most of the commercial satellites that transmit telephone conversations, TV shows, and huge amounts of data we depend on in our daily lives. But the worst damage came nearly a day later, when the solar storm began to induce electrical currents in high voltage power lines strong enough to destroy transformers around the globe, leaving millions of people in northern latitudes without power."

Comments

Since when?

[peragrin]

Since when did solar flares change tides and throw debries around to cause massive flooding, and random destruction.

If a major flare hit. Sure gps would fail but major diasters would be relativly limited. It would be more like the northeast blackout of 2003 as opposed to Katrina. People stuck in elevators. Minor traffic accidents, maybe a ship or two run aground.

Also the areas affected would be dependant on the current tilt of the earth and which side is facing the sun as it hit. The other half would be mostly unaffected.

Re:Since when?

[somersault]

Any excuse for them to play with their tabletop Transformers roleplaying kit. I thought Megatron had given up on trying to harvest the power of the sun anyway?

Re:Since when?

[tgd]

Um, 100 million people without power for a few months is a much bigger deal than a few tens of thousands who chose to live below sea level, or chose to stop insuring their house when they no longer owed any payments on it.

The key problem about the flare is the rate of production of transformers -- it would be literally months before much of the northern part of the US and Canada got power back.

If that happens during the winter, you're talking a LOT of people freezing to death.

Re:Since when?

[jibjibjib]

The "Katrina" metaphor is comparing the impact of the disasters on our society. A big solar storm could be much more widespread and damaging than previous blackouts, and end up killing quite a few people. Nobody's suggesting that it will literally cause floods and random physical destruction.

Re:Since when?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

So if only a quarter of the planet is left powerless for weeks or months during the winter, this would somehow be less severe than a single city getting flooded?

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Asia lose electricity world sows to a snails pace for 5+ years. North America loses power we recover 80% in ~6 months and 100% in 3 years. Europe loses power almost nothing happens. Africa or South america loses power deaths increase. Antarctica loses power scientists die. Oceania loses power sydney is destroyed.

Re:Since when?

[Walterk]

If that happens during the winter, you're talking a LOT of people freezing to death.

Buy stock in petrol, natural gas and coal companies now. Perhaps in Honda as well (electrical generators).

Re:Since when?

[Chicken04GTO]

"Also the areas affected would be dependant on the current tilt of the earth and which side is facing the sun as it hit. The other half would be mostly unaffected." These storms dont last a few minutes, they last days.

Re:Since when?

[dkleinsc]

or chose to stop insuring their house when they no longer owed any payments on it

Although this doesn't affect your main point, it's worth mentioning that a lot of the folks who got no or a minimal insurance payment were insured against flood damage, but the insurance companies found creative ways not to pay. An example of the kind of thinking that was employed: your neighbor's house crashing through your living room isn't water damage, so we don't have to pay the flood policy on that damage. But because the incident in question was caused by a flood rather than a fire or tornado, we also don't have to pay the regular homeowner's policy. Therefore, you get only payment for cleaning up the water damage. Another common tactic was to refuse to pay unless the homeowner could provide documentation for their policy, which was of course lost in the flood.

In short, insurance offered very limited at best protection for New Orleans homeowners.

Re:Since when?

[flaming error]

> a few tens of thousands who chose to live below sea level

Your casting this as innocent vs willing is completely ignorant. Why don't those, "um, 100 million people" whom you more sympathize with just "choose" to live off the grid? Problem solved.

Re:Since when?

[delt0r]

You would not be without power for months. This is not some cheap 2012 disaster flick. Canada's grid was up and running in 9 hours. A big outage would be days in parts at most. It won't "destroy" transformers outright... merely "disrupt" them (ever heard of rewinding). Many would be fixable in a reasonably short time.

The idea that everyone would just sit around twiddling their thumbs for months without power is totally laughable. That they would sit around waiting to freeze to death is plain stupid.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm certain the New Orleans levee maintenance boards haven't properly maintained their levees for a solar storm, so we can blame them for damage to their city due to the solar storm.

Re:Since when?

[CrimsonAvenger]

My own experience says otherwise.

Flood Insurance isn't the Insurance Company's money - it's federal dollars. So the insurance companies had very little incentive to not hand it out like candy.

I got a much larger payout on my flood insurance than on my regular homeowner's insurance, even though the water damage wasn't really all that severe on my house.

Re:Since when?

[aurizon]

I think a solar flare varies in intensity over the sphere represented by Earth's orbit.
  There is a mass of charged particles tossed out that take a number of hours to reach Earth's orbit. There is also a flare of radiation that gets here in 9 minutes.
From what I read this radiation, magnetic as well as assorted stuff from Gamma to long wave radio spreads out uniformly and is spread over a large area by the time it hits Earth's orbit.
The large lump of particles is far smaller and might miss the earth, pass close by or whack us. If it whacks us, we get these large induced currents in long lines and the peak volts associated with them, so with a solar flare known to be in transit we need to snoop it to see where the ejected material is going to hit and when. With this knowledge we can close down some transmission lines and produce a man made blackout of short duration that we can end in a controlled manner, with little or no destruction of lines and transformers. Once the flare has passed, back to the way we were. As for satellites? Possibly they can be powered down or placed into a mode that minimizes the flare damage, and then turned on afterwards, and we will suffer less destruction, but we will have the interruption of services as a lesser evil.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

GPS failure is not a minor thing. The FAA is on the way towards a "Nextgen" airspace system that is getting rid of radar for flight tracking, depending instead on transmissions from airplanes (with GPS coords) for flight separation. The GPS navigation function is also taking over for all the land based systems (that have at least a little better chance of survival). ADF sites are being phased out now, LORAN just got the axe, and VORs are rumored to be next. We're well on our way to being totally dependent on those GPS satellites for commercial aviation (I suspect shipping may have the same problems). About the only people that are safe are private pilots in single engine airplanes that are not required to have flight following and can operate solely by visual reference.

Re:Since when?

[FTWinston]

The logistics of modern society are extremely complicated, and highly interdependent. Think of how important power is in food production, for example. There's more than a few steps involved after harvesting grain before its turned into bread, breakfast cereal, or many other consumer food products. Many of them dependent on electricity. Food supplies in cities will be a signifiacnt issue. And even if the food gets in, how will banking work? Sure you can bypass the ATMs, but bank branches will struggle to know how much is in your account, even if they get a petrol generator running locally. I bet those things become pretty damn expensive, very fast indeed.

I'm sure there's many other issues that I haven't thought of, also. All of these could be worked around individually (mass distribution of banknotes to employers, paying employees cash-in-hand, greatly simplifying our diet, etc.) ... taken together, it's a clusterfuck.

Re:Since when?

[gartogg]

Insurance adjusters were set up after the event; because of limited capacity on the insurers part, a lack of insurance adjusters in the market, and legal limitations on waiting on claims, they had tables with people writing checks for the full value of the houses in many cases, with visual confirmation of destruction, or in some cases based purely on the location of the house in an area with massive damage. Insurance companies, in many cases, paid out more in total than they expected to ever pay out for an event. Their rates were too low to cover events of this magnitude, because they hadn't seen it happen before and didn't rely on models properly to understand worst cases losses. You may hate them because they make money, but they got killed on Katrina, almost all lost significantly more than anticipated.

Disclaimer: I work in the industry, and have spoken to adjusters and catastrophe modelers who were involved in the post-event insurance cleanup. I wasn't there, but neither were you.

Re:Since when?

[Waffle Iron]

(ever heard of rewinding)

That would work great if all utilities keep enough spare transformer wire and insulating paper on hand to rebuild most of their transformers, and they train their staff to do the highly technical work required to safely assemble a high-powered transformer.

However, what are the odds of that amount of foresight happening in the real world? Just about nil.

Re:Since when?

[Canazza]

What we need is a planetary Faraday Cage!

Re:Since when?

[confused one]

While I agree they're blowing it all out of proportions, sensationalizing it you might say, I don't believe you understand the magnitude of the referenced geo-magnetic storms. They were orders of magnitude worse than the storm that downed the power in Canada. There will be widespread damage to substations as well as damage done to our satellite network, if such a significant event happens again. And it will.

Re:Since when?

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Asia and Africa lose electricity and there goes all those lovely cell phones, or any phones. Asian cities lose power to keep those sewage plants and water supplies running and disease starts taking hold in a big way. Asia loses electricity and you can't even use trains very effectively because you use electricity to control traffic, so food and medicine supplies are diminished.

Thinking this would only effect white people in Europe and the Americas is racist nonsense. Thinking that people in Asia and Africa don't depend on electricity and petroleum as much as Europeans and people in the Americas is potentially dangerous delusion.

Re:Since when?

[Chris Mattern]

Don't be absurd. You can choose to live above sea level without significant hardship.

Re:Since when?

[delt0r]

So whats in the transformer in the first place? Rewinding uses the same windings. Not new ones... well new insulation. But this already changes the "months" thing. We don't need a raw supply of new transformers for the whole grid. Just as Canada didn't, even in the areas affected.

The approximately DC surge from a CME saturates the cores, this leads to high currents that can over heat just about everything within the transformer. However breakers etc will still protect many transformers from this type of failure, and all local ones are not on big enough loops to be at risk. The idea that it will completely burn out everything is not based on fact.

The UK report I read, was about a week without power for the worst (isolated) parts. But intermittent power could be supplied to all cities with a day. This was consider poorly prepared. And the use of building generators to give temporary power was not considered.

Re:Since when?

[delt0r]

No i know that it would be a very big deal. But months without power? Much of the other infrastructure would still work. Like airplanes can and will still fly, trucks can still drive. Gas will be far less disrupted and still capable of heating. We would adapt for the short term until and to help things get restored. Remember that local grid infrastructure would be far less affected, hence local generation and grid use could be set up reasonably easily.

I lived in the Central area of Auckland NZ when they had blackouts. Its was disruptive. But it wasn't the end of the world.

But hay I come from a place where people help each other with things go a little pear shaped.... rather than some disturbing things i have seen from another country.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rewinding large power transformers is a real pain, and something done as a last resort.

They are sealed units, normally full of oil containing nasty chemicals and in inaccessible places. Also, the coils are replaced as a single unit, it's very rare to actually find the correct wire and 'rewind' one. In the big units the wire is sometimes more like copper pipe.

After the transformer has been repaired it needs to be extensively tested and then reinstalled.
There are only a few places that do this, as the normal practice is just to replace the whole unit.

Re:Since when?

[Waffle Iron]

Rewinding uses the same windings. Not new ones..

Yeah, I'm sure that electrical arcs and overheating don't damage copper wires at all. They'll still be able to handle thousands of amps. Just reuse it!

Considering that big portions of power grids have crumbled like dominoes on their own just because of minor instabilities in normal generation, I don't think its safe to say that safety systems would work in a worst-case solar storm.

BTW, I saw manufacturing power transformers on one of those "how they make it" shows. It wasn't exactly a simple process. They used special machines to precisely arrange the rather thick, inflexible "wires" (more like thin bars) around the core. This isn't a toy train set.

Re:Since when?

[Nadaka]

Bullshit.

A: New Orleans had a population of about 300 thousand. not tens of thousands.
B: There were over 3 million people severely affected by hurricane Katrina. The radius of destruction was over 200 kilometers.
C: The problem was not people who were uninsured. It was people who were insured and the insurance company refused to pay their rightful claims, delayed payments for years or attempted to pay less than they owed.
D: We were literally told by insurance companies that they were not going to pay because then they wouldn't have enough money to cover the next disaster.

Re:Since when?

[confused one]

I agree -- I think we're on the same page. It would be weeks before everything was back to some sense of "normal". It might take months to replace all the damaged infrastructure; but, there's enough redundancy and overlap to keep most things running.

Re:Since when?

[Nadaka]

I most certainly was there. I never saw any of what you describe. My family lost two fully insured homes, neither ever got paid for.

Re:Since when?

[delt0r]

What happened to the breakers...We are not talking about a totally borked transformer!

The grids went down (in the US) because the breakers protected all the transformers and other expensive equipment. Other grids around the world are in fact better maintained... but still have breakers.

When did i suggested it was a friken train set. We are talking national level emergency here. There are lots of options, including but not limited to fixing a chuck of infrastructure that's not badly damaged.

Re:Since when?

[tgd]

Strange that the experts disagree with you.

Or perhaps not so strange?

Re:Since when?

[rhsanborn]

Blackouts in a local area is a completely different animal from widespread blackouts. Planes will not fly unless they keep those generators fueled so air traffic controllers can guide them. That will be very difficult when the fuel trucks are delivering their fuel to hospitals, and other essential infrastructure, all of which will be difficult to reach with no traffic signals, doubly difficult with most of the gas stations offline because they too don't have power. People can't pay for things because we all use credit cards for everything. These are all things that can be handled by areas outside the affected blackout zone in limited blackout situations (Think of the Northeast US blackout of a few years ago). When more than half the power grid goes offline, expect a certain amount of chaos. We are completely dependent on the computers and electrical infrastructure we all take for granted right now.

Re:Since when?

[Waffle Iron]

When did i suggested it was a friken train set.

When you said "Just rewind it!" like you could stick the core on your dad's drill press and give it a spin.

Like I pointed out, the wires won't be reusable. More wire will have to be found, national emergency or not.

Re:Since when?

[delt0r]

I was basing this on reports I have read by some experts. Admittedly one was referring to nuclear induced EMP blackouts. But the mechanism is the same. I can't find the reference right now.

As for the level of disaster. Its not like it doesn't happen. Its not going to kill everyone and the experts *do* say that. You know not having the internet/phone etc for a few weeks is not the end, though I can understand why some my feel this way.

Re:Since when?

[natehoy]

Since when did solar flares change tides and throw debries around to cause massive flooding, and random destruction.

They don't. They only take out services. Over VERY large areas, for long periods of time. Your house is safe, but it'll be cold and dark and no one will answer the phone at Dominos.

With Katrina, there was some warning, and there were safe areas 50 miles away that still had power, water, food, and communications. People could be evacuated to those areas. Katrina was a big problem over a small area, and people survived by moving short distances to areas that had services.

A solar geomagnetic storm could be a smaller problem over a much larger area. Imagine the power going out at every house north of the Mason Dixon line in the US and up into Canada. Where do you send people? Nowhere. You tell them to stay the hell home. But what are they going to eat and drink, and how will they stay warm?

The important thing is that power, water, heat, telephone, Internet, and even radio communications (including aviation navigation and shortwave) could all go away at once, and some or all of them might be out for an extended period of time. It could literally take months to restore services to some areas. And this could potentially be on a continental scale. Additionally, an X-Class geomagnetic storm can damage unshielded electronics. Your PC, cell phone, modem, etc may or may not work even if power and Internet come back. Your car may not function even if fuel is readily available. Your backup generator may not start. They may all need expensive repairs, and you'll have to wait a while because everyone else will be in the same situation.

There's no need for panic, of course, but TFA doesn't mention panic. It mentions preparedness. I think it's perfectly prudent to prepare in much the same way as you would for a hurricane or major snowstorm, because you may suffer from the same lack of readily available food, water, and heat. Except something like this cannot be predicted, so you have to be prepared all the time. Oh, and you don't need plywood, unless you plan on burning it for heat. :)

This is more of a city problem, because city services might go away in a hurry, and a dense population means more immediate dependence on common resources that will go away. The water will run out in the first week, if not sooner. Food before that, probably, but people can get by without food for a few days.

More rural folks have wells we can dip for safe drinking water, campstoves with lots of fuel we can use for cooking, and heaters that don't depend on electricity but are designed to be used safely indoors. This will be an annoyance, little more. We get power outages and major snowstorms all the time, and we don't really need to go anywhere for a while if things get bad - we'll just hunker down and start rationing out the food we canned away or put in the deep freezer.

It's simple. Take your dwelling (apartment, house, condo, whatever). Play a mental game where you have to depend ONLY on whatever you have on your property for one month. If that doesn't concern you, you're probably good, as long as your neighbors have gone through the same mental exercise OR you are better armed than they are. :)

Re:Since when?

[Abcd1234]

But... but... government bad! Regulation bad! Insurers good! Private industry good!

Why can't you understand this???

Re:Since when?

[delt0r]

When the city i was in had blackouts guess how much the traffic suffered? None. There were *less* accidents etc. Traffic based infrastructure was largely unaffected. Most gas stations pulled the base cover off the pumps and hand pumped the gas (That was where i was working part time at the time). We had the OMG disaster that the ice-creams melted. But milk etc was fine since it was delivered every day. They delivered less to avoid wastage. The hospitals had enough fuel for 3 months, and even provided the local grid. I could go on.

I'm not saying it won't be disruptive. What i am saying is its not a OMG we going to all die lets panic situation. Its quite manageable if people keep their heads on straight.

Re:Since when?

[flaming error]

Yes, I can. I can also choose to live outside tornado alley, or away from the San Andreas fault, or inside a gated community.

But it's naive to think everybody in America has the same options as the average slashdotter. Many of the people who "chose" not to leave NOLA in the time leading up to Katrina couldn't. Some didn't have money for bus tickets, or a way to transport a bed-ridden family member. Disregard them if it lets you sleep better, but those are facts.

People don't "choose" to live in trailer parks or crime-ridden neighborhoods or their car purely out of foolishness; people with less money have fewer options. Blame them for their "choices" if you want, but if they could afford a safer place they'd choose it.

In any natural disaster, the poor will be disproportionately affected. It's just a market reality.

Re:Since when?

[delt0r]

Which begs the question. Whats the point of insurance?

Re:Since when?

[rhsanborn]

I lived in a suburb of Detroit during the rolling blackout in the northeast. Drives that would normally take 10 minutes took hours, there were lines at the gas stations, people who didn't have cash on hand were scrambling to borrow money because they couldn't get money from the ATM, etc.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. Let me just tell my boss I'm quitting and don't need that paycheck anymore. Or wait, not being able to pay rent or buy food is probably a reasonably significant hardship for most people. And for someone living paycheck to paycheck, moving isn't exactly cheap.

Re:Since when?

[jimbolauski]

It's not to hard to take them to court if you had flood insurance you would be covered you just may have to fight for it.

Re:Since when?

[lastchance_000]

If you live in a colder climate, it might be better to just buy the generator. Burning those stock certificates will only keep you warm for a short while.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probabaly an HO3 or similar form which insures your home against all perils except flood and terrorism.

Those are seperate.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not going to kill everyone and the experts *do* say that.

However, I'm fairly sure that they would agree that a significant number of deaths are realistically possible (I RTFA but probably because it is NPR they didn't play-up that angle) in a scenario where over half of the N. America's and Europe's respective power grids are knocked-out for a week. I'm basing this one the fact that most modern hospitals (at least in N. America) only have two or three days worth of fuel for their emergency generators. Therefore anyone who requires life-support, including those that are conscious but need respirators, are just unlucky enough to need dialysis that week, require medicines or other substances (like blood and plasma) that must be refrigerated, etc... That's not even counting the potential increase in deaths and property damage due to accidents and crime caused by the chaos even small and temporary breakdowns in social order.

I'm not saying there is going to be total anarchy everywhere, or even anywhere, but if there is you shouldn't base your thinking off of even the largest black-outs in the last few decades. In all of those, the protection equipment wasn't exposed to induced currents far beyond it's design specs. In the type of solar storm that TFA is about, it could be almost an order of magnitude higher than anything the modern power grid has experienced. Another key difference is that there were large areas of N. America and Europe that were totally unaffected, that can be a calming thought that if necessary resources and people (including people with military training and weaponry) can be had relatively quickly. In the worst case scenario, an approximately once a century solar storm it will be the unaffected areas, and not the affected areas, that will be the minority in the first world.

So in summation, no one should start panicking now but there are probably many things we, both individually and a society, should do to better prepare ourselves for a huge solar.

Re:Since when?

[geekoid]

Seriously? Are you the dense, or just being dickish in the guise of ignorance?

Re:Since when?

[geekoid]

It's not racist, it's short sighted, there is a difference.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

In any natural disaster, the poor will be disproportionately affected. It's just a market reality.

It doesn't have to be. But then offcourse you need a safety net for them , and that costs money.

Re:Since when?

[soulsteal]

Insurance comapnies had seen this before with Hurricane Betsy in New Orleans and Hurricane Camille in South Mississippi. They knew that huge-ass storms could come through and level the places and they knew the value of all the property. They relied on the out that Federal Flood insuance gives them on their policies. Except that when Katrina came through, it brought more water than Camille or Betsy ever did, so people got flooded who were living higher than the 500-year floodplain.

It was just a giant mess, but it wasn't helped that everyone involved made bad choices. I say this as a native of Biloxi, MS.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that happens during the winter, you're talking a LOT of people freezing to death.

That's so TERRIBLE, I wonder how the old folks did without electricity. I know, maybe we should burn things like...those logs of wood that are outside my house.

Re:Since when?

[HeckRuler]

Then why the hell did they use the word "Katrina". It is a female name. It was assigned to a hurricane. That hurricane hit a city. There was flooding. People chose to blame the president of the nation in which this city resided for some reason.

I am failing to see the connection. The name "Katrina" is not a noun referring to a disaster. Of all the disasters humanity has faced, this is not a good one to draw parallels with solar flares. If you want an alternative, how about "solar radiation blackout". Cause that's the worry right? Losing electrical power? We have a term for that, USE IT. Stop making up new shit just to sound edgy.

Re:Since when?

[Chris Burke]

It's simple. Take your dwelling (apartment, house, condo, whatever). Play a mental game where you have to depend ONLY on whatever you have on your property for one month. If that doesn't concern you, you're probably good, as long as your neighbors have gone through the same mental exercise OR you are better armed than they are. :)

Alternatively, you're probably good if all of your neighbors have played this mental game and aren't concerned, AND you're better armed than they are. ;)

Re:Since when?

[natehoy]

Good point.

Seriously, you wonder why survival nutters always arm themselves so well? It usually has little to do with an invasion of foreigners. In the event of the [insert disaster here] apocalypse they are always expecting, they fully expect to have to defend their resources from people who have not prepared.

In "Caves of Steel", Asimov talks of urbanization in terms of resource dependence. He conjectures the buildup of cities to the point where mere hours of interruption of any single service can cause death on a significant scale. We're nowhere near there yet, but I wonder how many people truly grasp just how utterly dependent the residents of a large city are on a continuous flow of goods and services, and how devastating an interruption to that flow would be.

New Orleans has a population of 1.2 million and a density of 2,500 people per square mile. The remaining unaffected population of the United States took days to get resources down to the population, most of whom had been evacuated to areas unaffected by the storm, and continued helping out for months. Supplies were trucked in from unaffected cities, of which there were plenty nearby.

New York City has a population of over 8 million with a population density of 27,000 people per square mile.

How many days would elapse between a meltdown of the power system across a small portion of the Eastern seaboard and the first death in New York? How fast would that death toll escalate?

Re:Since when?

[natehoy]

Continuing with that conjecture, how long would it be before city folk started a mass exodus from the city, into the country where resources are somewhat less scarce but nowhere near plentiful enough to sustain an incoming population that large?

Maine, my home state, has about 1.3 million people. If half the people from the urban area surrounding Boston came north due to resource shortages, our population would triple. Unless all of them are rugged survivalists, they are going to want clean water and food somehow, and chances are we'll be as out of power as they are.

This is why preparedness is just as vital in the city, and I would argue even more so. Our population is too great to be sustained directly from the land. We, as a society, have become dependent on energy-intensive factory farming and water treatment just to sustain our population density overall. If people have to leave the cities temporarily to find water, where are they going to find it? How are they going to get it without fouling it?

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like people with no bread to eat could choose to eat cake.

Re:Since when?

[Rick17JJ]

A hidden underground room somewhere on the property, might come in handy in such a disaster. A family could then hide there with their food, water and other supplies. As someone who has only very limited experience with firearms, I would personally favor having a good hiding place for myself instead.

To avoid giving the location away by the sound of a ventilation fan, perhaps some kind of natural air flow through the hidden underground shelter could be used instead. The air inlets could be concealed by piles of rocks and a few bushes or something. In some climates no heating would be needed, everyone could just put on layers of clothes or climb into sleeping bags if needed. Camouflaged peepholes between the rocks could be used to keep an eye on strangers or neighbors wandering by.

A hand-crank operated radio connected to a hidden antenna could be used to get news of what is happening. Even better, a peddle powered Freeplay FreeCharge Weza portable energy source would provide just enough power to operate some ham radio equipment if the transmitting power was not turned up too high. Perhaps the antenna for an HF radio could be disguised as a flagpole or something. The smaller antenna needed for a 2-meter radio would be even easier to hide. If the radio equipment had been disconnected from antennas and power, before the event, it would most likely not have been damaged by the power surges.

Another alternative might be to have several buried caches of caned or canned dried food and possibly water hidden within a few miles walking distance. In that case, if a large group of heavily armed looters stole everything from your house, you could just go dig up one of your buried caches of food and other supplies. The secret caches of buried food should probably be bear and rodent proof. Some thought might also be given to the possibility of someone with a metal detector accidentally running across your buried cans.

Canned dried grains and beans are fairly inexpensive and together can provide complete protein (since each source of protein is missing one amino acid, but not the same one). Other foods could be stashed away as well (but my knowledge about survival food is quite limited). It would probably be best to not allow anyone to smell charcoal, wood or lighter fluid as you are cooking your meals.

If the hiding somewhere strategy was not used, then a group of several adequately supplied neighbors and relatives banding together with the strength of larger numbers would be another possible strategy. They could be like a temporary little tribe, standing together against the dangers they are facing.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the polar hemispheres are pointed towards the sun (relatively) for months at a time.

Re:Since when?

[HeckRuler]

This is the sort of level-headed post the fear-mongering journalists need to get through their head before they type anything at all. Of course there is all sorts of shit that could cause similar occurrences. Pretty much anything that would kick out the legs of our hideously fragile power grid. Which could range from overconfident/corner-cutting transmition salesmen and suicidal squirrels to full-blown military offensives. At point, sure, it's important how it all happened, but the end results are all the same. How many boyscouts are out there? Be prepared.

Re:Since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually had coverage for the specific losses you incurred, and the insurance company didn't pay out, you should sue them. You have a contract, you paid your premiums, and now the insurer is legally required to pay your valid claims, and you can use the civil court to compel their compliance if they are not inclined to offer it freely.

Obviously since your claims are valid there's not reason to spend 20 minutes finding a lawyer who will work on contingency to recover the hundreds of thousands of dollars you're owed. That wouldn't make any sense at all.

It's sad that you didn't have the coverage you needed, or that you didn't understand the coverage you were buying, but if you want to say bad things about insurance companies there's no need to make up implausible lies.

Re:Since when?

[natehoy]

Suicidal squirrels, fortunately, only cut out small portions of the power grid. Usually one minor transformer. In return for your inconvenience at losing the power for a few hours until the power company can get out to replace it, you get a pre-cooked ready-to-eat meal.

You'd have to have a large number of kamikaze tree rats being zapped in a very carefully though-out pattern in order to take out a single major transformer, and several major transformers to have a grid-wide problem.

And squirrels just ain't that smart. :)

Re:Since when?

[Nadaka]

It did not take 20 minutes to find a lawyer. Tens of thousands of people were ripped off by the insurance companies. My family spent days just trying to get a phone call through to a lawyers office. Every single lawyer they managed to get ahold of for weeks was simply booked. By the time a lawyer was willing to actually take they case several months later, my family had run out of money just trying to survive and the bank had repossessed the houses. The lawyer advised them that we no longer had a case because we no longer owned the property, it was up to the bank to sort things out.

I don't care how implausible you find it. Its not a lie. Fuck off and die.

Re:Since when?

[BranMan]

You may hate them because they make money, but they got killed on Katrina, almost all lost significantly more than anticipated.

Well, it was a catastrophic event, by definition. So, if the insurance companies got soaked, but not bankrupted, then I'd say it all worked as it should. If the insurance companies run into something cataclysmic and then don't even bat an eye, then I'd say we were all paying them WAY too much. I certainly won't lose a lot of sleep over them having 1 or 2 years with negative balance sheets. To be a little callus, that's the business they went into - deal with it.

Re:Since when?

[kf6auf]

Sure you can pick one bad thing and say to live away from it, but can you avoid everything? How many places are above sea level (and will be in thirty years), away from major fault lines, outside tornado alley, isn't a desert but doesn't get fathoms of snow, outside of West-Nile Virus / malaria areas, away from volcanoes, near to a decent job, have a decent school system, and have a reasonable cost of living? I'm sure there are more factors, but I haven't looked to buy a house yet.

Re:Since when?

[metamatic]

But it's naive to think everybody in America has the same options as the average slashdotter.

How many average Slashdotters live in the San Francisco Bay area?

I'm sure when the big one hits, we'll be telling all those Google employees how stupid they were, right?

Re:Since when?

[sjames]

Yeah, they can just look it up on the internet....OOOPs, Oh yeah! Well, they can just call someone and ..... Oh Yeah! Finally, what do you mean you can't just insulate them with saran wrap?

Re:Since when?

[AlamedaStone]

Just like people with no bread to eat could choose to eat cake.

I fear sometimes that the chill I feel when I hear this phrase is prophetic.

Re:Since when?

[Ihmhi]

Sucks that you got water damage, truly, but IMO the government insuring people who are daft enough to build in flood-prone areas is sheer madness.

That's like getting bullet insurance from Uncle Sam because you build a house downrange from a gun club. Why encourage such incredibly stupid behavior?

Re:Since when?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Sucks that you got water damage, truly, but IMO the government insuring people who are daft enough to build in flood-prone areas is sheer madness.

Let's see. There have been two floods in the last half century that got water into my house.

The last one, Katrina, only got water into the house because the Jefferson Parish President panicked and shut down the pumping stations when he shouldn't have.

The first one was in the 60's, before the Federal Flood Insurance program.

So that particular program has had a payout on my house exactly once. And wouldn't have had that one if Brousard had had any sense.

So I'm not seeing where we're all that flood-prone.

Now, this is not to suggest that I think the Feds should do flood insurance. Nonetheless, someone figured he could buy a bunch of votes a long time ago by doing this.

Note, for the record, that when the program was authorized we had an overwhelmingly Democratic House, a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate, and a Democrat in the White House.

Re:Since when?

[Tycho]

Keep in mind that only if a nuclear weapon is detonated in the stratosphere, the EMP effects become important, but this means that no damage will be caused on the ground by that nuclear weapon. A nuclear weapon detonated on the ground or close to ground level will have EMP effect in a small area, but the effects of the blast wave, radiation, and heat from the explosion will likely destroy or collapse any unhardened structures and their contents. Any survivors would be badly injured and in an area that was still radioactive and more concerned about leaving the area and receiving medical care. Those survivors with the highest radiation exposure levels would be dead in a few days anyway. With this in mind, the EMP effects are of negligible concern in ground level detonations.

Re:Since when?

[Xiroth]

Err, nooo, the big difference is that densely populated Asia is not far enough north to be affected by this. Russia would be knocked out, Mongolia and Kazakhstan would be knocked out, and if it was a really, really bad storm, it might reach Beijing (but to be that bad it'd need to make it well into northern California). But most of China and all of southern and south-east Asia would be fine. Equally, Africa is pretty much immune - only Chile, Argentina, New Zealand's south island and the Australian state Tasmania would be affected in the southern hemisphere (well, along with the researchers at the Antarctic bases, obviously). Meanwhile, half of Europe's population and a fair chunk of the US's would be hit by this. Those densely populated places are where things would get really nasty.

Re:Since when?

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Africa? Immune? I think you're making a lot of optimistic assumptions. You seem to think that this event would be short, singular and not intense enough to affect the equatorial regions, as opposed to multiple events extended over the course of days or weeks that may well extend all the way to the equator.

Even if only Europe, the America's, Australia and countries nearer the poles were knocked out, do you really think this would be without consequence? Shipping? Finance? Defense? Would you like to be living in Taiwan or the Middle East if this happened?

Re:Since when?

[couchslug]

Every adult in NOLA had a lifetime to work to escape or to prepare for disaster. Gulf hurricanes are no surprise, and there is no reason except sentiment ("I love my slum!") to cling to the vulnerable parts of New Orleans.

"but if they could afford a safer place they'd choose it."

Don't underestimate denial and stupidity. Most of the folks on the bottom of society aren't there by accident.

Re:Since when?

[unitron]

Gulf hurricanes are no surprise...

Perhaps not, but what New Orleans suffered from was failure of the levees due to the Army Corps of Engineers. Go over to HuffingtonPost and look at Harry Shearer's previous posts on the subject.

Re:Since when?

[Ihmhi]

Well, New Orleans actually made a concerted effort to fight back against the flooding, as it were. Sure, the system was horribly outdated and whatnot.

The real bad ones are the places like right near beaches where houses get flooded out every ~10 years or something like that. No pumps, no dams, no drainoffs... your house gets flooded, the government cuts you a check, and you rebuild in the same damn spot. It's lunacy.

Re:Since when?

[RockDoctor]

The key problem about the flare is the rate of production of transformers -- it would be literally months before much of the northern part of the US and Canada got power back.

And this is a problem because ... ?

Re:The exercise was a waste of money

[Anonymous Coward]

do you mean european or north-african bats?

How would this affect our data?

[jameson]

I would expect CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs to be reasonably safe (though any reading devices might be temporarily disabled or permanently damaged.) But what about HDDs? Are they sufficiently shielded against this?

Yes, losing power is a serious issue that will cost lives and losing GPS etc. would be very bad, too. But more and more of our cultural and scientific achievements are stored primarily on magnetic drives that may or may not be suitably shielded. How much at risk are those data, or should I invest in lead shielding for my backup storage drive?

Re:How would this affect our data?

[jibjibjib]

Solar storms will have a big effect on long wires (e.g power grids, or telegraph in the 1859 storm) and radio communications, but not so much on individual pieces of equipment. Your computer and HDDs will still keep working, assuming you can get power for them.

Re:How would this affect our data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the tinfoil hat. You don't want your brain erased too.

Re:How would this affect our data?

[vlm]

Your computer and HDDs will still keep working, assuming you can get power for them.

Plus or minus power surges on connected, powered up equipment.

More accurately, everything on the shelves at your local computer store will be OK. Stuff thats plugged into a power outlet (ATX supplies never turn completely off), or has a long cable attached (ethernet?) maybe not so good.

Re:How would this affect our data?

[confused one]

That's what power filters and a (good quality) UPS are for.

Re:How would this affect our data?

[drinkypoo]

Previously, solar storms have fried transformers. The transformers in home devices also contain long wires. What prevents these smaller transformers from being burned out by solar activity?

Re:How would this affect our data?

[geekoid]

Err. no. They will pretty much melt, and possible melt your motherboard as electricity arcs down the plug.

Electricity jumped from one point to another and in fact jumped from the telegraphs to other ground source causing fires in some locations.

Re:How would this affect our data?

[profplump]

You need cross-section to induce a current, so it's not a "long wire" if you keep it spooled up in a 2" box. The transformers are damaged because they're connected to miles-long conductors, not because they contain a lot of tightly-wound wire.

Re:How would this affect our data?

[drinkypoo]

You need cross-section to induce a current,

I am put in mind of the common ignition coil.

that's bad! Really bad!

[sammyF70]

'basically took out' most of the commercial satellites that transmit telephone conversations, TV shows, and huge amounts of data we depend on in our daily lives.

No phone sex, no Big Brother and no pr0n feeds? OMG! We're doomed!

Re:that's bad! Really bad!

[Anonymous Coward]

True, although I think your first problems will be no water (no power for pumps), no food (many people aren't going to be able to cook or refrigerate food), and no distribution systems (can't truck in food when there is no way to get fuel for said trucks). Oh, yeah - and even if there were stores willing to open with no power and selling canned and packaged food that didn't need refrigeration (by hand, no cash registers), you probably couldn't afford them because you have no money without your ATM card working. Worry about the pr0n later.

Re:that's bad! Really bad!

[sammyF70]

tell that to the guy who included "TV-Shows" in the list of things we'll be missing

Re:that's bad! Really bad!

[Anonymous Coward]

True, although I think your first problems will be no water (no power for pumps), ... Worry about the pr0n later.

But it's possible to last for hours without water!

And the people in southern Latitudes?

[spxZA]

Do we not have any power transmission systems? Or just donkeys running on treadmills attached to dynamos? How will the such a solar storm affect our donkeys?

Re:And the people in southern Latitudes?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sun would have to reverse the polarity of its radiation in order to affect the southern hemisphere. Everyone knows everything runs backwards down there. Duh.

Re:And the people in southern Latitudes?

[spxZA]

Oh, great...So we have to wait for an asteroid to destroy New York, release the virus and infect the world just so that we can surf pr0n during and after solar storms?

Re:And the people in southern Latitudes?

[demonlapin]

Move to Texas; they keep their electrical grid separate from the rest of the country's, and they're too far south to get the full brunt of the storm.

Re:And the people in southern Latitudes?

[iroll]

I'm pretty sure it's assuming the event occurs during Nothern Latitude Summer, so it's safe to assume that during Southern Summer you'd be on the receiving end of the fun. Your distance from the equator is also important.

Re:And the people in southern Latitudes?

[burymore]

Dude! I think you've solved it!

Re:The exercise was a waste of money

[spxZA]

laden or unladen?

Pacemakers?

[dazedNconfuzed]

As a genuine cyborg, my first concern about such "electrical storm/attack" fears & warnings is their impact on pacemakers and other life-sustaining electronic devices.

Anyone have meaningful commentary thereon?

Re:Pacemakers?

[tagno25]

There would be almost no impact. The solar Storm would affect long pieces of conductive material 20+ meters in length.

Re:Pacemakers?

[rjiy]

Maybe you could get into a car for electrical shielding? You'd still need sufficient advance warning though.

Re:Pacemakers?

[Bakkster]

The only possible effect I can think of are with the inductive coils on cochlear implants (and possibly other implants). It would depend on the number of coils on the receiver as to the effect, and could range from severe noise and inability to hear (likely) to painful volume or electric shocks (less likely).

Re:Pacemakers?

[Hurricane78]

Do the windows not void the shielding? (Dunno the wavelength.)

Re:Pacemakers?

[FTWinston]

Only those that require recharging from mains electricity will be in danger... for those in this category, I would suggest investing in an execise bike and an energetic minion, and hooking the bike up to a dynamo to charge yourself.

Re:Pacemakers?

[idontgno]

Good point. The presence of Windows guarantees bad results.

Oh wait, we're not talking operating systems?

Re:Pacemakers?

[Hurricane78]

I would not exactly make my life dependent on some comments on Slashdot, if you know what I mean. ;)
Everyone here thinks he’s an expert.

I’d ask someone (in private!) who actually earns money with getting your question right. :)

Re:Pacemakers?

[hasdikarlsam]

The shielding is directional. Windows would have little effect if the sun is right above you, though you should probably try to get in the back seat.

Just try to stay in the EM shadow of something conductive. Yes, the radiation will "bend" around shielding in an attempt to get at you (EM is almost malevolent in that way, but it's just normal low-frequency wave action), but even if that happens you'll still have blocked *most* of it.

Re:Pacemakers?

[MikePikeFL]

You need to ground the vehicle for it to have a chance to dissipate anything. Something like a chain wrapped around the frame, and touching "wet earth". Not a guarantee but better than nothing.

Re:Pacemakers?

[noidentity]

As a genuine cyborg, my first concern about such "electrical storm/attack" fears & warnings is their impact on pacemakers and other life-sustaining electronic devices.

There would be almost no impact. The solar Storm would affect long pieces of conductive material 20+ meters in length.

Does that include really big 20+ meter pacemakers, though?

Re:Pacemakers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Figured I might as well post some of my information sources in case it proves helpful:

http://www.endtimesreport.com/EMP.html

Wouldn't mind discussion on this here either. Still not quite sure the effects on unplugged electronics (like radios, flashlights, walkie talkies, generators, 60's style 6V vehicles with little electronics... etc.). Guess there is the "worst case analysis" aka 1859 vs 1989 size storms.

Re:Pacemakers?

[Hurricane78]

Hey, that would affect my steel penis, you insensitive clod!

Governments won't do squat to prevent it.

[denis-The-menace]

We can't convince them of the dangers of asteroid collisions so how the FSCK are they going to believe about this.

They didn't believe about the dangers of Solar storms in 1989 so why would they buy it now?
http://www.google.ca/search?q=hydro+quebec+solar+blackout

Re:Governments won't do squat to prevent it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one vote we send our most attractive astronauts on a mission to land on the sun, plant a nuclear warhead miles beneath its surface, and destroy it.

Seriously, though: Prevent it? This is like preventing a hurricane, or a tsunami, or an earthquake. All you can do is try to be prepared and hope you covered all bases.

Re:Governments won't do squat to prevent it.

[Abcd1234]

We can't convince them of the dangers of asteroid collisions so how the FSCK are they going to believe about this.

Well, there is one major difference: Montreal proved that this kind of thing can happen, and will happen again, whereas we've yet to see a major city devastated by a meteor impact.

Re:Governments won't do squat to prevent it.

[natehoy]

So don't depend on your government.

Your house will be intact if a geomagnetic storm hits. You just need to make sure you are able to survive the zombie apocalypse that will surely follow.

Umm, sorry, did I say that? Ignore it. I have no knowledge of an impending zombie apocalypse. Nor am I planning on being a zombie. Trust me.

You'll just need to make sure you have enough food, water, and heat to get by for a few weeks in case of a temporary collapse of services.

Oh, and canned brains. Keep lots of those handy. Don't ask why, just do it.

Katrina?

[vlm]

What does a solar flare have to do with Katrina?

Katrina was just another boring hurricane, like all the others that hit the southern US every year, with the following exceptions:

1) It hit one of the most corrupt cities in the entire country, with the possible exception of Chicago and NYC, so none of the disaster "preparations" worked because the upper class criminals siphoned off all the funds.

2) Everyone left the coastal cities except the lower class criminals and the folks so dumb that they lived underneath sea level but "couldn't" leave.

So what does that have to do with a solar flare? It would affect entire hemispheres not just one corrupt city. Nowhere to evac to anyway.

It would probably resemble the great NYC power outage more so than any weather phenomena.

Re:Katrina?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. So what city do you live in. How can you imply New Orleans is one of the most corrupt cities in the entire country? What evidence do you have? Statements like these are just absurd at best, as they are just repeating things you heard from the media. New Orleans is as corrupt as any other city in the country. Memphis, Atlanta, youu name it there are crooks in positions of authority stealiong the people's money. And while there where many people that did stay, the majority of the city and area did evacute, in spite of all the "disaster preporations not working because thethe upper class criminals siphoned off all the funds" (even is that true). The major disaster from Katrina was that it took the government so long to respond after the storm hit to help those that were stuck.

The living underneath sea level line is old also. Every area in the country is succesptible to some sort of natural disaster. Be it hurricanes, tornadoes, earth quakes , mud slides, snow storms etc. So are we not supposed to live in any of those areas?

Re:Katrina?

[Culture20]

The major disaster from Katrina was that it took the government[s - city, state, and federal -] so long to respond after the storm hit to help those that were stuck.

FTFY

The living underneath sea level line is old also. Every area in the country is succesptible to some sort of natural disaster. Be it hurricanes, tornadoes, earth quakes , mud slides, snow storms etc. So are we not supposed to live in any of those areas?

With the possible exception of mud slides, none of the above are human engineered disasters (unless you count choosing where to live). Living under sea level, you're doomed to flooding at some point, and since it took human engineering to live under sea level, it was (and still is) entirely preventable. Katrina was made so dangerous _because_ of the poor city design. New Orleans is like Galloping Gertie (Tacoma Narrows Bridge), except it's Too Big To Fail (TM).

I for one ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would welcome a society without electricity. If only that didn't mean that I would freeze to death in my apartment...

Re:The exercise was a waste of money

[M8e]

Binladen by very small bins.

This current solar cycle

[mikesd81]

actually was originally forecasted to be a bad one and cause some serious problems and peak between 2010 and 2015. Now it's been forecasted to be milder and actually cause cooler seasons.

Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Updated May 2009
2012-13: NOAA predicts solar cycle 24 ”weakest since 1928” with $1 trillion damages in worst case. From second article:

“A new active period of Earth-threatening solar storms will be the weakest since 1928 and its peak is still four years away, after a slow start last December, predicts an international panel of experts led by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. Even so, Earth could get hit by a devastating solar storm at any time, with potential damages from the most severe level of storm exceeding $1 trillion.”

Um, no.

[dtmos]

You're mixing up two effects. You're correct that the direct EM radiation would affect largely only the sunlit portion of the Earth. However, the "second punch" of these events is the large burst of protons that arrives the next day -- it's the solar wind, but several orders of magnitude larger than usual.

These protons are affected by the geomagnetic field, and (to simplify a lot) rain down in large regions generally centered around the magnetic poles (cf. the auroral ovals), where they induce very large currents in long conductors like power lines, leading to general power failures that could not be easily repaired.

This wouldn't be your garden-variety blackout -- it would require physical replacement of massive equipment for which there are no spares readily available -- at least not in the quantities needed. Large numbers of people -- entire provinces and states in North America, and likely entire nations in northern Europe -- would be without power for months while new equipment was manufactured and installed. This would lead to mass migrations out of these areas, which would lead to social disruption and significant loss of life as critical systems, whose backup generators and other emergency systems were not designed for such an extended outage, failed.

I was in south Florida for Hurricane Wilma, and I can report to you that the social structure of the region almost broke down during the week or two the region was without electricity -- and this was a natural disaster, albeit a severe one, that people understood and had largely prepared for. Power was restored relatively quickly then, because (a) the causes, downed power lines, were easy to find and repair, and (b) there was a massive influx of utility workers from the rest of the country to help out. In a solar flare scenario, the cause would be much harder to fix, and there would be a much larger affected area (and, consequently, a much smaller unaffected area from which to draw support).

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Power companies have put in place these amazing things called "breakers" that are there to make sure big expensive things like transformers don't get damaged.

Why? This has happened before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm

Do you honestly believe power companies don't protect their multi billion dollar investments?

As the North eastern power blackout has shown, the grid will go down before critical infrastructure is damaged.

Re:Um, no.

[ElectricTurtle]

Because of course nothing could ever be more powerful than that event. Never mind that this is a phenomenon we've only been able to observe for little over a century and a half, which is a nanosecond compared to the age of the sun. We don't really know where the uppermost end of the scale is with regard to this phenomenon. For all we know, the sun could punch us with an event two or three times stronger than previously recorded scenarios and we'd never see it coming, much less have designed equipment to survive those parameters.

Re:Um, no.

[Abcd1234]

Do you honestly believe power companies don't protect their multi billion dollar investments?

Probably not well, no. See, what you describe is long-term disaster planning, and it's the kind of thing the corporations that own that infrastructure aren't terribly good at. Unless they can see this disaster coming in the next quarter, frankly, the won't do much about it.

Really, one need to only look back at the NYC blackout, or the rolling brownouts in California, to see how effective corporate thinking is in the realm of long-term infrastructure maintenance and upkeep.

Re:Um, no.

[delt0r]

Breakers protect against far more than just a solar flare. Why your house probably even has some. The blackouts where in fact caused in part by the breakers, protecting equipment from very serious damage.

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you honestly believe power companies don't protect their multi billion dollar investments?

Probably not well, no.

This is my first ever AC post, because my /. user name would allow you to determine who I'm talking about...

I would agree with "Probably not well". I have worked for several years in IT for major financial institutions. One has a large data centre with a back-up facility ~50 miles away. It is common knowledge, within that institution, that if the primary centre were to suffer catastrophic failure (e.g. a plane landing on it) the backup site would take several days to be fully operational, could not replicate every function of the primary site and an unknown number of transactions (minutes, hours or days worth) would be lost. This is a financial institution that handles a fair percentage of a major western european country's banking transactions - salary payments, mortgage payments, credit card transactions, etc.

It was truly frightening how poor their DR capability was, but there was just no apetite to put it right. For any major new project there was a DR element, but always poorly implemented.

I know it's a different industry, with different issues, but I doubt that power companies are significantly different to utility companies when you get down to it.

This is, IMO, scary.

Re:Um, no.

[radtea]

For all we know, the sun could punch us with an event two or three times stronger than previously recorded scenarios and we'd never see it coming, much less have designed equipment to survive those parameters.

Apparently you don't understand what circuit breakers do. The larger the event, the more likely they are to trip. Not all of them will, because hardware fails sometimes, but the comparison with the 2003 overload is apt. The hysteria we're seeing here is being generated by the assumption that long power lines will continue to be connected to transformers while everything overloads, despite the known placement of devices specifically designed to prevent such overloading.

And you're saying, "Yeah, but what about an even BIGGER overload than the one in 2003 that is known to have tripped the breakers correctly!" Well, like I said, to first order: the bigger the overload, the more likely the breakers will trip.

Re:Um, no.

[ElectricTurtle]

Even if the breakers trip, the transformers are still huge long coils of wire, and those will be inductively harmed. You fail to realize this is not a wholly in-line threat like a surge. This is an enveloping EM radiation pulse that induces charges in long wires. It doesn't matter if those wires are stretched out on poles or wound up in a transformer, they're still long, they still will be inductively charged. Breaking the links between transmission lines and transformers may mitigate damage, but it will not stop damage.

Re:Um, no.

[geekoid]

Except the electricity could arc passed the circuit breakers. Just like they arced past telegraph switches. In fact, it almost certainly would considering the short distance they would need to jump.

Circuit breakers were not designed for this, on to disrupt the electricity during normal operation.
Circuit Breakers are NOT INSTANTANEOUS.

PLUS the wiring in the house would also be effected by this event.

Maybe YOU might want to think a bit more before telling other people what the do or do not understand.

trying working on a high voltage multi phase power system for a while.

Re:Um, no.

[Kythe]

Breakers have their limits, depending on design and what hits them. Most main home breakers can't even stop a direct lightning strike, for example: http://llss.mrsellc.com/

Re:Um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have a whole day's notice before the really nasty bit gets here, couldn't I spend that day disconnecting my expensive, vital equipment from the long conductors? I understand that would cut power, but don't you think people would rather have one, planned day (albeit not with much notice, but enough that we won't have people stuck in elevators/etc.) without power rather an unplanned, country-wide outage that last months?

Re:Um, no.

[peragrin]

It can if you upgraded it properly. about $50 at your local electrical supply house. They may or may not have them in stock depending on area.

However the fuses at the poles should take the worst of it and they are a lot harder to bypass.

Re:Um, no.

[MadUndergrad]

That's not how induction works. Solar storm causes a powerful magnetic field via the fast-moving protons in the solar wind. The magnetic field can induce a current in a conductor.

A perpendicular magnetic field to a loop will cause a current in proportion to the rate of change of that field and the area of the loop. A straight conductor will experience no current.

So when the breakers trip, the runs will all be approximately straight along long distances, which is the only domain this matters in.

Katrina? Really?

[AP31R0N]

George Bush doesn't care about people with electronics!

How about we called it Solargate? Solartanic? Solarpocalypse?

ISS Residents

[Neurowiz]

I was curious to see if they did any projection on whether the ISS is shielded enough for a storm of that scale. This article from 2005 (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/27jan_solarflares.htm) seems to indicate ISS is heavily shielded. There was nothing in the OP's articles that indicated if the modeled storm would be strong enough to cause serious radiation damage to the residents.

Re:ISS Residents

[confused one]

They're also orbiting inside the Earth's magnetic field. So... They receive some protection from that.

Re:ISS Residents

[fast turtle]

This would be at least a Category 8 Flare - meaning No the ISS is not sheilded sufficiently to protect the astronauts from it. Keep in mind that some of the shielding that the ISS uses is provided by the Earth's Magetic field as the station is in LEO (low earth orbit) which is the reason it completes its orbit is 91 minutes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

I forget...

[tooyoung]

...as a Republican, am I supposed to believe that scientists understand solar weather or not?

Re:I forget...

[Bardwick]

I'm a Rebublican, and here to help. If there is Federal/World policy to be made because of the results, be wary. I'm a fairly honest person, but if someone walked up to me and said, "We want to use your credentials to lend credibility to this rediculous speculation, but we'll give you $10,000,000." I'm in...

Re:Katrina? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, I thought 0bama was president now.

What is a Katrina?

[Culture20]

Is it like an Andrew? Because I hate Andrews. (Andys are okay, but Andrews really get my goat. Andes are right out.)
I didn't even read the summary because the title is stupid.

Re:What is a Katrina?

[need4mospd]

A Katrina is a storm that hates black people.

Re:What is a Katrina?

[Culture20]

A Katrina is a storm that hates black people.

I know Storm is a mutant and all, but she does know she's black, right?

the solar disruption works via induction

[circletimessquare]

that is, a moving magnetic field inducing an electric current on a length of conductive material, usually a metal wire

so unless your pacemaker features a lead which extends a couple of yards outside your chest, you'll be fine

the problem is when the induction causes the transformers at the ends of high tensions wires to blow, with no replacement available

So what?

[L4t3r4lu5]

A couple of months without electricity? I'll grab my camping stuff from the loft. Shelter, fire, water, food, in that order. I can get that within walking distance of my home, and I don't mean from a store.

I know it's almost cliche to make a joke about "not going outside" on /. but I'm sure the people who can't fend for themselves will be able to get a job aiding the repair in exchange for their vital requirements.

Re:So what?

[RoTNCoRE]

A couple of months without electricity? I'll grab my camping stuff from the loft. Shelter, fire, water, food, in that order. I can get that within walking distance of my home, and I don't mean from a store. I know it's almost cliche to make a joke about "not going outside" on /. but I'm sure the people who can't fend for themselves will be able to get a job aiding the repair in exchange for their vital requirements.

You have a couple months of food available to you? Kudos...look out for the other millions of people without that convenience coming to take what you claim as yours. Did Haitians all get jobs in the recovery? I mean, they're right next to an ocean filled with fish!

Re:So what?

[natehoy]

It's not a matter of ability, it's a matter of population density. If you have access to enough food and water to live for several months and are reasonably assured there is no meaningful competition for those resources, you'll be fine.

In more rural areas, this is a non-issue. I live on 3 acres of land that include a dug well I can dip from, and I'm used to power outages and have 550 gallons of Kerosene for my furnace that can also be used to keep my KeroSun going for the better part of a year. My house water pipes are designed to be drained to keep them from freezing in an extended outage. I have a deep freeze full of food (I'd have to cook it as it thaws and preserve it that way), and lots of canned vegetables and fruit in the basement. I could probably get through an entire winter in reasonable comfort.

In a microapartment in the middle of the city, dependent on electricity for heat and city lines for water, something like this could turn into a big problem, really fast. They are currently being sustained by water that is treated and pumped to them. If power goes out, so do the treatment plants and the pumps. So you have to find untreated but safe water, and get it to them or them to it.

And keep in mind, power outages caused by geomagnetic storms can be continental in scale, and the damage can take weeks or months to repair. It's not likely, but it is possible, and this article is about a not-unrealistic worst case scenario. So you aren't going to be able to depend on much of anything.

How do you get fresh water every day to a city of 5 million people when there isn't electricity available for 500 miles in any direction? An 18-wheeler can haul about 8000 gallons of water. Assuming each person is limited to 2 quarts a day of water, you need over 300 trips per day. How do you distribute it? Can you sustain that for months? If you can't, where do you evacuate them all to? Is there enough water to sustain them? Is it safe, or does it need to be treated or boiled? Do they know how to get it without fouling it?

Now, say this happens in January. How do you keep them warm?

This article is about preparedness. Your house is fine, no need to grab the tent. Just be prepared for no electricity and no water for a month or so, and food may be hard to come by. Encourage your neighbors to do the same, or arm yourself. No big deal.

Re:So what?

[ChrisMaple]

Water flows downhill, and most cities are located on the coast. The problem is distributing enough bleach to make it safe to drink. The more serious problems are heat and food. Heat can be solved to some extent by getting large numbers of people into small places and relying on body heat. Food is the difficult item if the transportation system can't recover adequately in a couple of weeks, and I have no solution for that.

Re:So what?

[Hurricane78]

You seem to assume, that people are immobile passive units.
If I have no water in my city apartment, I’ll go to where I get water.
Same thing with everything else.

And really, I only need to bring heat, water and food to my apartment.
I’ll go to the nearest lake or quarry pond, and get me some.
If it’s not drinkable, I’ll go buy all water treatment pills that I can find. Or build me a solar distillation device, which is very easy.
Food: If it’s winter, your fridge will be outside, in a hole in the ground. Simple and effective. I’ll go to the nearest farmer (yes, might be a bit of a drive, but worth it), buy me a cow, kill it, cut it into pieces, and put in in my underground fridge.
Heat/cooking: That’s what fire is for. Or an electric stove driven by a large solar panel. Might be cheaper in case of anarchy. ;)

Security/money: I will earn money by helping others to survive. Thereby also getting them on my side in case of anarchy around my home. Maybe I’d start to organize a little community.

See, it’s doable. Don’t have to be a zombie, waiting and wishing for help. Or not knowing how to help yourself. (Those will be selected to die by nature, like it’s supposed to work.)

Re:So what?

[natehoy]

Right, so you and 9,999,999 other people will go to the local camping store and ask for water purification tablets, and they'll run out with 9,999,000 people left.

the carrington effect

[circletimessquare]

the problem is when the induction causes the transformers at the ends of high tensions wires to blow, with no replacement available

you can build circuit breakers into such transformers, but a cost-benefit-risk analysis hasn't sided yet on the side of caution, even though the cost is not great. and no, we don't have a ready supply of the right transformers sitting around

paradoxically, the poorest nations of the world will do fine, because they are less dependent on electricty and electronics, and are closer to the equator. while the electricity and electronics dependent northern hemisphere will experience severe long lasting societal shocks, involving the mass disruption of the internet, other communications, and all the vital uses the northern hemisphere has built into their electrical grid

so we're all screwed when (not if) the next carrington effect is observed, out of simple laziness and complacency. we have had plenty warning, and we have freely chosen not to protect ourselves from this threat with a simple low cost circuit breaker style set up

http://passingstrangeness.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/the-carrington-flare/

On September 2nd, 1859, the Earth went mad. Auroras lit up the sky over Australia, Japan, Colorado, and even as close to the equator as Venezuela. The worldwide telegraph system, which had gone from a laboratory curiosity to the wonder of the age in the previous twenty years, went haywire--sparking operators, scorching paper tapes, and mysteriously still transmitting messages between Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Maine although the batteries that ran the system had been disconnected out of self-defense. At Kew Gardens in London, a set of magnetometers designed to study the Earth's magnetic field started showing "disturbances of unusual violence and very wide extent" on August 27th; by September 2nd they were literally off the charts. No-one knew what was going on, with one possible exception. ...

So equipped, Carrington was in a good position to catch an odd sight on September 1st, 1859 at 11:18 in the morning (if that seems peculiarly exact, bear in mind that the likeliest people to have precise chronometers at the time were ship's masters and astronomers). He was engaged in his usual observation schedule, projecting the Sun onto a large darkened piece of glass and measuring sunspot positions. In particular he'd been interested in an enormous sunspot cluster north of the solar equator which had appeared on August 26th. It was large enough to be of interest to astronomers world-wide, so there is at least one photograph of it--if you're trying to match it up with the chart above, remember that images in reflecting telescopes are inverted top to bottom.

He happened to be looking at the cluster when four bright points of light suddenly appeared from within it. He took a moment to check that the full strength of the Sun hadn't somehow managed to come through some hole in his equipment then, satisfied that it was actually happening on the solar surface itself, called for someone to come confirm what he was seeing. As Carrington himself put it, then "on returning within 60 seconds, [he] was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled". It disappeared entirely within a few minutes.

Re:the carrington effect

[delt0r]

I have never seen a big transformer without a breaker. So OK I only worked with the utility for 2 years, but still. A breaker does a lot more than protect against a solar storm.

Re:the carrington effect

[geekoid]

Except the poorest nation depend on the rich nations to survive.

Also, the global effects will be determined by how long the event lasts.

You maybe only loose the equipment on the side of the earth facing th sun.
In the episode you quote Boston wasn't effected during the first hit, and they where able to take precautions to prevent many of the issues. You might even have time to shut down all the remaining power generation plant. This would help mitigate to problem. People with home power generation, likie solar, would be screwed as would building that didn't shut off their back up power systems.

Re:the carrington effect

[ChrisMaple]

August 26 to September 1. That's 6 days for people to figure out that trouble might be coming, and broadcast to the general public that "we're going to shut down the electric system for a couple of days to prevent general destruction." If the disaster comes, the Electric Companies that shut down, disconnected their transformers, and survived, will be heroes. If the disaster doesn't come, they'll look like fools and be subject to a lot of criticism. Tough choice. A way to make accurate predictions would help, as would the ability to shut down quickly.

As bad as a nuclear war

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Really. It wouldn't be months before we got the power back on. It might be years. It takes electricity to communicate, move goods by train, get oil and coal from point a to point b. I don't think anyone has really thought through just how devastating this would be.

Re:As bad as a nuclear war

[BetterSense]

Agreed, especially since, as mentioned above, fixing the electrical grid and winding the millions of transformers required to do so would be effectively stalled, ironically, due to the failure of the power grid. Transformer factories use electricity too.

Re:As bad as a nuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone has really thought through just how devastating this would be.

The article and this slashdot discussion demonstratively proves you wrong. You should think before you post.

Re:As bad as a nuclear war

[geekoid]

Why would this damage transformers that are sitting on shelves?

Re:As bad as a nuclear war

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would this damage transformers that are sitting on shelves?

There wouldn't be damage to transformers not attached to external wires. However, there aren't many of the larger transformers (i.e. the type used at power plants and substations) "sitting on the shelves". In those types of transformers a single unit can range in size from a port-a-john to a single-car detached garage and are many, many times heavier. Thus it is too expensive and cumbersome for the manufacturers or power companies to keep a meaningful amount of spares in stock. Power companies may already have a significant number of the more common trash-can-sized transformers you see on telephone poles. Yet, that doesn't help much if all the substations in a given region are inoperable!

Re:As bad as a nuclear war

[jeff4747]

Transformers have long lengths of wires in them. Current will be induced in the transformer, whether it is attached to the power grid or not.

Re:As bad as a nuclear war

[profplump]

Transformers do contain a lot of wire. But they don't encompass a lot of cross-sectional area, so there's not a lot of induction happening. They're also typically stored in metal housings, which would help mitigate any induction with the actual windings.

Why not a a solar tsunami?

[Dyne09]

Americans are so weird. Why does any disaster have to be Katrina, especially when there is no comparison to the scope or nature of Katrina. And what was that quip about "leaving millions of people in northern latitudes without power"? Does the rest of the world not count? While the realities of a danger like this are something to take a good look at, I find the dialogue to be western centric and kind of out of touch. Oh noes! My data is not available to me!!!1 What about places where lack of electricity is all it takes to cripple a water purification system or a hospital?

Re:Why not a a solar tsunami?

[oneiros27]

Because the term's already been used for specific types of waves reflected through the sun:

I have reason to believe that this anonymous message in "STEREO Satellites Spot Solar Flare Tsunami" was posted by Joe Gurman, the Project Scientist for NASA's STEREO mission. (and for TRACE, and US Project Scientist for SOHO, and the head of the Solar Data Analysis Center) :

• http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1457042&cid=30239620

Re:Why not a a solar tsunami?

[natehoy]

Why does any disaster have to be Katrina, especially when there is no comparison to the scope or nature of Katrina.

Because they are comparing the effects, not the scope or nature. Katrina caused a lack of food and water for an urban population. The cause will be different, but the same lack will be present.

I find the dialogue to be western centric and kind of out of touch

It's a study by the American government on the effects of a geomagnetic storm hitting the United States on the American electric grid. How would do you expect it NOT to be American-centric? America doesn't run the electric grid in your country, and your electric grid is probably different from ours. If you want relevant data for your grid, you'll need to do it with relevant local data. Have your government ask for a copy of this study. I'm sure the Americans will gladly offer it up if your country is friendly and asks nicely. Then your country can use it as the basis for your own analysis and study. Then it can be as [insert your country name here]-centric as you need it to be.

Honestly, the challenges are going to be different, so the study has to be done bearing in mind the specific geographic challenges.

Oh noes! My data is not available to me!!

Electricity will be gone, which means for a significant portion of the population of America potable water will be gone. Large cities everywhere are utterly dependent on electricity for basic services due to extreme population density, and in some cities the body count clock starts ticking within a few days of power loss. The higher the population density, the more interdependent people are.

What about places where lack of electricity is all it takes to cripple a water purification system or a hospital?

As in New York City? Boston? Los Angeles?

Honestly, this study is relatively useless outside America and maybe Europe. And some areas in Europe might have even been smart and put circuit breakers in their transformers. America sure as hell didn't, and that means our entire mains grid is now at risk due to geomagnetic interference. Those transformers have to be replaced one by one, and there is one of them for each and every house in my area. Plus there are some HUGE ones at power substations that supply entire towns. The power company keeps a supply of all their various types of transformers them because they do burn out and go BOOM, but they might have 5-10% of what they'd need if every one of them toasts out across the entire grid. It'll take time to make the rest.

Subsaharan Africa doesn't have as sophisticated a power grid, power tends to be generated more locally, so a water purification system in Africa is probably not going to suffer from any ill effect due to the collapse of a power grid. Not to mention most rural areas haven't built up the dependence on electricity. Their response will be markedly different than, say, New York City, or Boston. Especially in the winter when people will freeze to death in a few days if they aren't prepared. You can't leave the high-rise and start a fire, and if you can the other 4,999,999 people around you will all have the same need, and you'll run out of fuel in a couple of days, even if you treat the library and Central Park as fuel sources.

289540682618920354812781123456789

[Quiet_Desperation]

A simulation or model that does not factor Nicolas Cage into any world periling scenario is incomplete.

your false complacency s worse than false alarmism

[circletimessquare]

nobody is going to be rewinding transformers like macgyver. that's a serious buttload of skilled work, with equipment and supplies that is not easily at hand

furthermore, the canada disruption you are referring to is tiny in comparison to a carrington effect-level event. it won't be days at most, but weeks at a minimum. we simply haven't invested in the transformers protection or backup or the transformer repair skill/ capacity

and no one is saying people will just be sitting around twiddling their thumbs. in fact, some will be emphatically looting. and the police cruisers will soon run out of gas since most stations use electric gas pumps. nevermind that after the generators die in a few days/ hours, communications will be down across radio, television, and internet, so the police, and the population, will be left to guess what is going on and when everything will be back to normal. throw in a little hysteria, and you can imagine the results in major cities

people WILL freeze to death, simply because they will NOT just sit around, but panic and venture out in the cold out of complete ignorance and fright

do you consider me alarmist? out of intellectual honesty, i will say it is possible i am straying too far into alarmism in my comments

however, to whatever degree i am straying into alarmism, you are straying much further and much more dangerously into complacency on this issue, that is for sure. in other words, your complacency here is far more dangerous than my alarmism

Re:your false complacency s worse than false alarm

[delt0r]

I'm really glad i don't live in your country... Having been in a few natural disasters, and even persistent blackouts. I can say people don't behave like that where i live. I was hoping the US type news stores were blowing it out of proportion.

Any excuse to be an asshole eh.

And if you really don't have power for months. Why the frak wouldn't repair some transformers...?

Crosstalk over shortwave frequencies

[TheHawke]

The articles regarding multiple stations going over each other are intriguing. While propagation of radio varies depending on how the ionosphere reacts with sol, the question is could solar interference cause radio waves to change wavelengths? Meaning that 1440 ABC AM's broadcasts be shifted enough to interfere with 1400 or even 1350?

No, it would end the world as you know it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be more like the northeast blackout of 2003 as opposed to Katrina

They point out that not just power plants, but transformers could be destroyed. Imagine that to get your power back on someone has to replace a transformer on the pole down the street from your house. No problem, but think how long it's going to take to replace them in every neighborhood in the country - with relatively zero inventory (compared to the number damaged) - with no power to the factory that makes them - with everyone running out of fuel to transport them - and the drivers unable to find food. Widespread damage to the local grid on a global scale could kill a LOT of people.

scifi novel "One Second After"

[peter303]

Was about a mysterious EMP that knocked out all electricity networks and computers in the USA and difficulty of returning to pre-1880 lifestyle.

Re:scifi novel "One Second After"

[cojsl]

"One Second After" was a great, if very sad, book. After reading it, I asked a few friends in law enforcement and EMS if they had plans for this type of emergency- no cell phones, no radios, no vehicles. To quote one response "Ahh, yeah, we haven't prepped for that. Every man for themselves."

Re:scifi novel "One Second After"

[CKW]

I really liked "Dies the Fire", by S.M. Stirling. In it some of the constants of nature change - and even combustion is affected - no more electricity, gunpowder, explosives, or combustion engines, etc. (Although I think they could perhaps make gunpowder out of former-explosives, but so far as I've read in the ensuing series they haven't hit on that idea yet)

A bit more survivalist and post-apocalyptic semi-fantasy in nature, but I suppose most such books are.

Re:scifi novel "One Second After"

[Krimsen]

[What] about a mysterious EMP that knocked out all electricity networks and computers in the USA and difficulty of returning to pre-1880 lifestyle.

This is covered in this ForeignPolicy.com post: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/17/the_boogeyman_bomb

i see

[circletimessquare]

only americans are guilty of and prone to simple human weaknesses, like hysteria

"i can say people don't behave like that where i live"

i'm glad that you are ethnocentric. this blindness would perhaps be a wonderful way to describe your nationality, if i were to ascribe to this sort of prejudice, which i don't. but you do. and if this is how you inform your assumed sense of superiority, who am i to judge? after all, i'm just an asshole american

"And if you really don't have power for months. Why the frak wouldn't repair some transformers"

i'm glad your dad showed you how to wrap copper wire and build a rudimentary radio when you were seven years old. based on the vast technological and engineering and organizational acumen this experience invested you with as to declare the repair of thousands of power station transformers at the same time without functional communication or electricity source, please do us the favor of contacting your local power authority and instructing them as to how easy it is to do

but thank you for correcting me: i can see that your problem isn't a false sense of complacency. it is instead a smug sense of condescension and superiority, combined with simple ignorance of the factors involved

Re:i see

[delt0r]

Sorry, by US news story... I don't mean US news only about the US. I mean US news media... in particular I was Referring to the recent earth quake... not in America.

But in all seriousness. I have been in this situation twice. Everyone pulled together, not apart. And though huge amounts of property and money was lost. We all carried on just fine.

Also I think you are over estimating the importance of electricity. It really isn't the end of the world not having power for a bit. Hell some rural areas a reliable grid is a joke.

Re:i see

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm glad that you are ethnocentric. this blindness would perhaps be a wonderful way to describe your nationality, if i were to ascribe to this sort of prejudice, which i don't. but you do. and if this is how you inform your assumed sense of superiority, who am i to judge? after all, i'm just an asshole american

"And if you really don't have power for months. Why the frak wouldn't repair some transformers"

Yes, you really are an asshole American, if your posts are anything to go by. And no, not everyone in the world is the same. If you think that, then you are the one that needs to rethink your opinions on humanity. Arrogant fuck.

Re:Causality or coincidence?

[conureman]

Could get colder, or not. Maybe France gets a new Sun King?

Re:Causality or coincidence?

[hoboroadie]

I think you got that backwards, Son.

Re:your false complacency s worse than false alarm

[BetterSense]

nobody is going to be rewinding transformers like macgyver. that's a serious buttload of skilled work, with equipment and supplies that is not easily at hand

Keep in mind also that the transformer-winding factories will themselves be out of power. I'm sure transformers aren't made in caves using elves and magical power. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario but I imagine that making transformers also requires electricity. So whatever the transformer-production capacity is now, consider that the production capacity after a transformer-pwning solar storm would be much, much lower. Which means it take much, much longer to re-transformer our whole power grid than you might think at first.

but that's exactly my point

[circletimessquare]

third world/ rural areas would do fine: they are used to no power, and their lives have been set up to function just fine without power

but an entire modern large city? the entire northern hemisphere? without power on the scale of weeks?

you can't possibly be trying to honestly compare the occasional power outages of some sleepy prairie town that is used to it, to a weeks long power outage in a modern major city

nevermind the entire northern hemisphere. you honestly can't imagine that the scale, length of time, and various dependencies we have taken for granted in modern life in a modern city on electricity has meaning that renders your complacency completely wrong on the topic?

Re:but that's exactly my point

[delt0r]

And at that massive scale I think you completely underestimate just what we are capable of.

Also its not going to be everything. Breakers do protect against this sort of thing, and hell some transformers are not even at risk (DC isolation). We really won't need to replace everything. Well not from any report I have ever read on the matter.

BUt how

[leuk_he]

Do i protect my hardware and CPU's?

Re:BUt how

[eleuthero]

sheath your house in ten feet of dirt covered by a really large lead dental exam blanket?

Re:BUt how

[eleuthero]

cover your house in 10 feet of dirt and a really large lead dental exam blanket?

Re:BUt how

[conureman]

Wouldn't that be redundant?

Re:BUt how

[eleuthero]

redundancy is somewhat good in situations involving computer components

Re:BUt how

[conureman]

I was actually trying to set up some lame joke regarding the redundancy of your restated post, but I was defeated by the filter. Sorry. Anyway, a few feet of soil would provide useful protection for some lead shielding. I like it. I am actually more concerned about Gamma-Ray bursts, but don't think I'll do too much to prepare for that.

Re:BUt how

[eleuthero]

The "living roof" products available in many cities now would fit part of this bill... only the max is usually only a couple of feet of dirt and requires major restructuring.

Re:your false complacency s worse than false alarm

[Abstrackt]

...communications will be down across radio, television, and internet, so the police, and the population, will be left to guess what is going on and when everything will be back to normal....

Minor nitpick: I'm guessing you're not familiar with ARES. All you need for radio communication is a transmitter and a receiver, and both can be powered by batteries. I have a handheld unit that has a range of approximately 80-100 miles and can be recharged with a solar cell and I have a base station that can contact people across the entire planet under the right conditions (solar activity actually helps) and can also be battery operated.

While communications may be a little slower they wouldn't shut down completely. You might just be stuck asking your neighbor for updates or meeting everyone at the town hall instead of reading about it online.

my point is

[circletimessquare]

you are extremely complacent on the issue, and this complacency is dangerous

"at that massive scale I think you completely underestimate just what we are capable of"

what? we hold hands and sing kumbaya and use our magical karma to telekinetically rewind blown transformers? what are we capable of exactly in a major urban area descending into confusion, hysteria, and chaos?

sure, plenty, the MAJORITY will ride out the extended period of no electricity just fine. i'm not painting you a picture of armageddeon itself, i'm painting a picture for you of significant societal deterioration across the northern hemisphere for weeks. only a minority will suffer, but the size of that minority will be significant, will include mass casualties due to a number of effects, and that should genuinely concern you

"Breakers do protect against this sort of thing"

but we DON'T HAVE THEM. because some power company blanched at the cost when considering the threat is too small

but yes, all we have to do is invest in the breakers. so why don't we? BECAUSE OF THE FALSE COMPLACENCY YOU SPOUT

so just admit your complacency on the issue is false. maybe you don't have to be as alarmed as i am, but you most certainly should be much more alarmed at the prospect of a carrington effect than you are now

Re:my point is

[delt0r]

I worked with utility for 2 years. Everything had a friken breaker on it.

Re:my point is

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked with utility for 2 years. Everything had a friken breaker on it.

I have a degree in Electrical Engineering. Every insulator, included air and total vacuum, has a friken dielectric strength which intern means there is a maximum voltage it can withstand before breakdown voltage. Given a sufficiently energetic geomagnetic storm, even the most robust high-voltage circuit breakers might as well not be there!

Re:my point is

[Kythe]

I also have degrees (Bachelors and Masters) in Electrical Engineering. While I didn't specialize in power electrical systems, we certainly were exposed to them. I agree with the poster above. One does not simply "rewind" the transformers in question as one would change brake pads; nor would the existing breakers address the problem in many cases.

Disruptions of the type and scale being discussed are a very serious problem, and the solutions being thrown around above won't cut it at this point.

Re:my point is

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not a high frequency em pulse. Its a very very low frequency one. It looks like DC to the grid, and thats where there problems start (note its not very high volage compared to high tension lines anyway). The grid is not designed for DC, and the core in the transformers saturate causing local heating. However you do end up with unbalanced current and that should trip most breakers. Also the voltages are not all that high, even for 1000km lines. And yes you need that kind of length to have any effect.

breakers with a stand off voltage of 1MV or more are not uncommon once the arc is blown out.

But perhaps this is an illustration of the problem. You clearly have no idea of how a geomagnetic storm affects a grid. So its unlikely that many are suggesting even zero cost things that would help.

Sounds Scary!!! Is this as bad as carbon dioxide?!

[Phizzle]

How much extra money should I give up in taxes and how many more personal freedoms should I relinquish before my government will make me feel safe?!?!?!?

agreed

[circletimessquare]

there will be plenty of jury rigged communication solutions that will make up for the failure of mass media. ham radio hobbyists will become the backbone of society. however, in the meantime, and even during, due to simple issues concerning lack of community and lack of trust, and flat out fearmongering and hysteria, all sorts of insane rumors will spread, people will act unwisely on these falsehoods, and tragedy will result, time and again, in a number of places

the majority will ride the extended hemisphere-wide power outage just fine. but significant social deterioration, resulting in mass casualties, is inevitable and worrisome. its not armageddeon, but its an unacceptable amount of suffering and needless death

all because some power company bean counters blanche at the cost of the breakers

Re:agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

and flat out fearmongering and hysteria, all sorts of insane rumors will spread...

You mean from people like you?

all because some power company bean counters blanche at the cost of the breakers.

In one of your other posts you claim breakers won't make a difference. In other that we don't have any, and yet another that the breakers we have are the wrong kind. In fact all of your posts contradict each other to some extent, as do your links.

What about turning the power off before hand...

[need4mospd]

Is there any way that shutting down all the power plants for that day would help avoid the equipment frying?

One day planned in advance without power is a disaster. BUT, one month without power is total chaos.

Re:What about turning the power off before hand...

[natehoy]

Yes and no. You can limit damage that way, but there will still be damage.

And if American companies didn't have the stomach to put circuit breakers in their transformers, what makes you think we'll have the stomach to turn off the US power grid for a day at a time each time a major X-Class geomagnetic storm is expected? We don't even do a really great job at evacuating people from a single city when a hurricane is about to strike.

Does it take them out

[geekoid]

permanently or just until the storm passes?

I remember when satellite news cast were just starting and sometime Sun activity would take them down, bit only for 30-60 seconds.

Re:Does it take them out

[natehoy]

Satellites would probably come online shortly after the storm passed, depending on the severity of the storm. A high X-Class solar flare could cause damage to a satellite, we just haven't experienced one of those since 1921 and satellites were not much of a concern then. :)

The power grid would probably be down for the count. The geomagetic storm would cause transformers to overload and burn out, which would overload other transformers nearby exacerbating the effects of the storm. You'd potentially end up with simultaneous cascade failures across many of the independent grids, and significant damage to the linkage between the grids. The Northeast power outage was caused by a minor overload in a single transmission line, and the system didn't suffer from a lot of damage, it just took a while to restart the entire grid due to its complexity. We haven't really improved things since then, so losing a good number of transformers means we'd have to replace a lot of them, THEN deal with restarting each grid. Parts of each grid might stay up as isolated pockets, and parts would come up slowly, but full restoration of power within each grid could take months. Restoration of the interlinks between grids could take even longer, so areas like Southern California could go back to browouts for an extended period.

Heck, we can go a week or two until full restoration during major snowstorms here in New England. And that's an isolated series of small power outages where the underlying grid is stable.

Could another country take advantage of USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this happened to hit the USA, it would be like a nuke EMP first-strike. I wonder if another country like China or even a smaller country might take advantage of the USA's loss of infrastructure to attack it?

Re:Could another country take advantage of USA?

[natehoy]

First off, military equipment is generally heavily shielded and almost always locally powered. The military might be bringing a lot of its resources to bear helping out US citizens, but that means you'll have a lot of armed and trained soldiers handy if/when someone did something like that. And we'll have lots of carriers near shore helping with recovery efforts, so there'll be no lack of hardware to use. Any conventional invasion is going to be met with more resistance, not less.

Second, how many countries have the capability to engage a war against a large superpower on their own soil? One with a heavily armed local populace?

Assuming they succeed, what do they think they will gain? Resources? We sell them cheaply already. Factories? Closed down. Control over the population? Good luck with that. Did you miss the "armed population" bit? Combine armaments with an already extant xenophobia, you're going to have a mess on your hands. Look what the US did to our own citizens of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbor.

And nothing stops the nukes from being ready. We can reach out and touch every spot on the planet. We're the only nation that has ever demonstrated a willingness to actually use 'em. Coincidentally, against the aforementioned nation that tried attacking us on our soil. If enough military resources have to be diverted from saving citizens from the disaster to repelling an invasion, we'll just cut off the enemies supply lines. At the source. With big boom. BIG boom.

Re:Could another country take advantage of USA?

[lotho brandybuck]

And do what? Change a bunch of idiotic consumers who are propping up their economy into angry non-consumers with guns?

Re:Causality or coincidence?

[conureman]

D-oh!

no, you're uneducated on the issue

[circletimessquare]

http://spaceweather.gc.ca/se-pow-eng.php

there are breakers all over the electrical system, but everything in the system is calculated to protect from a lightning strike or equipment failure, NOT the entire network beginning to hum from a massive alien magnetic field frying all wires at the same time. the transformers in question are simply not protected from a carrington effect spike. they CAN be, but the cost associated with that is poopooed, and so they now sit, today, naked and unprotected and ready to be fried by the sun

Re:no, you're uneducated on the issue

[triffid_98]

I'm not sure how you can protect a transformer from a spike like this except by via lots and lots of EM shielding. It is inherently a couple of long pieces of wire. You can protect downstream components, but the transformers themselves are probably going to fry.

In other news, unlike in the 1920's, lots and lots of things have transformers in them and are at least theoretically vulnerable. Your car, your computer, your television, etc. Hemisphere wide EMP = win?

there are breakers all over the electrical system, but everything in the system is calculated to protect from a lightning strike or equipment failure, NOT the entire network beginning to hum from a massive alien magnetic field frying all wires at the same time. the transformers in question are simply not protected from a carrington effect spike. they CAN be, but the cost associated with that is poopooed, and so they now sit, today, naked and unprotected and ready to be fried by the sun

its not that simple

[circletimessquare]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1566312&cid=31318102

Re:your false complacency s worse than false alarm

[geekoid]

You're right uit eill be bad, but lets think about some of your comments.

Rewinding transformers take coper wire, a dowel, and patience. It's not easy but crude systems could be put inplace.
Also, there is equipment sitting on shelves.

I think the police and nation guard can figure out that a hand pump will get them fuel. Most HAM operators I know have solar rigs. So crude communication will be available to prioritized personnel.

depending on the length of the even, half the world may only have minimal effects.

Key to survival will be organizing your immediate community.

Time to buy a bloom box

[MobyDisk]

I knew I should have bought a Bloom Box! I'd be happily playing Assasin's Creed 2 while everyone else panics in terror!

> DRM Error... unable to connect to server.

NOOOoooooooo!!!!!!!!

Re:your false complacency s worse than false alarm

[Kythe]

The transformers in question are huge, industrial pieces of equipment. It takes more than "a dowel and copper wire" to repair them :)

Seeking the unique/insightful

[dazedNconfuzed]

I did, I'm just looking to mine /. for anything unique or insightful not otherwise obvious to those on my ask-first list.

FWIW: My cardiologist did go thru a long list of things to avoid. Earphones dangling center-of-chest or in left shirt pocket, car repairs near the alternator or other induction areas, etc., pretty much anything causing a strong rotating electromagnetic field ... when he got to "chain saws" he started chuckling at the humor of guessing what would kill me first: lack of pulse, or blood loss from falling face-first into a still-running chainsaw.

Radio interview with author of "One Second After"

[Boawk]

Here you can find a 2-hour interview with William Forstchen, the author of "One Second After". Good info on societal breakdown issues related to an EMP pulse. http://www.850koa.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=217732&article=5800699

no communication worse than no power?

[peter303]

Geezers like myself are into TV and radio while youngsters are addicted to their tweetBook networks. All could go silent for months in a solar superstorm.

Re:no communication worse than no power?

[LandGator]

Not me; I have my own interwebs on 160m - 70cm with e-mail gateways. It's called ham radio.

a film maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

in the mean time, I think it could be a fantastic science fiction movie.

Read the Summary People!

[BranMan]

Am I the only one that read the summary??? When we lose all our satellites, it says that A DAY LATER it may cause huge simultaneous blackouts by overloading the grid. Well, guess what, when we lose the satellites we just - wait for it - are you ready? - shut down the grid. Leave it off for a day, 2 days, however long it takes for the flare to subside. Give people a little warning, everyone is ready for it, and we have minimal disruption. What's the problem People?

The Day the Machines Stopped

[ChrisMaple]

1965, Christopher Anvil. More severe than a one-time event that kills electrical devices, "The Day the Machines Stopped" posits a world in which all materials become weaker and electrical systems can never be restored.

An EMP event, after all, does not mean that the system can't be rebuilt.

There was an "and" statement in there.

[HeckRuler]

Unless someone oversold a transmission line and the power routed around the busted minor transformer goes over it.

There was a rolling blackout from the east coast up to Chicago due to that exact scenario back in the 90's.