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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."
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?
which is totally what she said
do you mean european or north-african bats?
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?
'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!
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
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?
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.
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.
laden or unladen?
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?
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
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?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
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
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
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).
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
Binladen by very small bins.
"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.
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:
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
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).
George Bush doesn't care about people with electronics!
How about we called it Solargate? Solartanic? Solarpocalypse?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
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.
I am officially gone from
> 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.
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.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
Neurowiz
...as a Republican, am I supposed to believe that scientists understand solar weather or not?
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.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
/. 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.
I know it's almost cliche to make a joke about "not going outside" on
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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.
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.
... taken together, it's a clusterfuck.
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.)
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/
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
I'm a concientious
(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.
What we need is a planetary Faraday Cage!
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
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).
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.
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.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Don't be absurd. You can choose to live above sea level without significant hardship.
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.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
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?
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.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
A simulation or model that does not factor Nicolas Cage into any world periling scenario is incomplete.
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.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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...?
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Was about a mysterious EMP that knocked out all electricity networks and computers in the USA and difficulty of returning to pre-1880 lifestyle.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Strange that the experts disagree with you.
Or perhaps not so strange?
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.
Could get colder, or not. Maybe France gets a new Sun King?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
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.
I think you got that backwards, Son.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
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.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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. :)
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
But... but... government bad! Regulation bad! Insurers good! Private industry good!
Why can't you understand this???
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.
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?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Do i protect my hardware and CPU's?
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.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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.
Which begs the question. Whats the point of insurance?
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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.
...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.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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.
One day planned in advance without power is a disaster. BUT, one month without power is total chaos.
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
D-oh!
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1566312&cid=31318102
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Seriously? Are you the dense, or just being dickish in the guise of ignorance?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's not racist, it's short sighted, there is a difference.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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.
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. ;)
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
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!!!!!!!!
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?
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
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?
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
And do what? Change a bunch of idiotic consumers who are propping up their economy into angry non-consumers with guns?
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.
The transformers in question are huge, industrial pieces of equipment. It takes more than "a dowel and copper wire" to repair them :)
Kythe
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.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
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
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.
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.
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. :)
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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?
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.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
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?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
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.
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?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
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.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
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.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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.
And this is a problem because ... ?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"