Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Protecting Data From a Carrington Event?
kactusotp writes "I run a small indie game company, and since source code is kind of our lifeblood, I'm pretty paranoid about backups. Every system has a local copy, servers run from a RAID 5 NAS, we have complete offsite backups, backup to keyrings/mobile phones, and cloud backups in other countries as well. With all the talk about solar flares and other such near-extinction events lately, I've been wondering: is it actually possible to store or protect data in such a way that if such an event occurred, data survives and is recoverable in a useful form? Optical and magnetic media would probably be rendered useless by a large enough solar flare, and storing source code/graphics in paper format would be impractical to recover, so Slashdot, short of building a Faraday cage 100 km below the surface of the Moon, how could you protect data to survive a modern day Carrington event?"
Wow, this is one of the most retarded questions to date and that's saying something for an "Ask Slashdot" question.
...your small indie game company is the least of your worries.
This fool is beyond our help -- he thinks optical media will be toasted, so you can bet he'll just label your antihype as denial or conspiracy misinformation so he can maintain his ludicrous delusion.
I think people should really be designing for a more plausible and real world scenario that happens far more often. The man made scenario known as a court order. Companies like Ontrack do far more business recovering data for court order subpoenas than they do for floods or fires.
Seriously, you can put your data on RAID 6 arrays to mitigate against disk failure. You can back up your data to mitigate against a disaster at a site. You can distribute your data to multiple sites to mitigate your risk from flood or hurricane or similar disaster.
Can you comply with a court order seizure of your data, hand over everything that is required and still operate? If you can do this than you have a pretty good disaster recovery plan. If you can't do this than you don't have a good disaster recovery plan and it's the one disaster than in the real world strikes businesses more often than just about anything else.
Yes, I have been involved with this kind of thing more than once, and you really don't want to mess about a court order.
And even if it didn't...
If it is powerful enough to destroy all your info, wouldn't it stand to reason that *EVERY COMPUTER ON EARTH* would also be destroyed? (Or at least all those in the same hemisphere as yours.)
Your company's entire purpose for existence just vanished at the same time as your company's data.
It's one thing if your company deals with data that has use outside computers (banking information, for example, or engineering blueprints for physical objects,) but when your company just writes software for computers? Yeah. You're going to be looking for a new job anyway.
The optical disks would be unreadable because, presumably, the electronic hardware used to access them would be unusable. Not because the disk itself somewhat melted away.
Let's just get the promotion out of the way.. sigh.. what's the name of your game company and what game did you just release?
Heck just print your code out. You can always retype it back in, just in time for civilization to recover.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If a true "Extinction Event" occurs, no one will be alive to care about your data...
And finally, as the last one was in 2000, and they're due every 500 years, you'll be good for a while.
One presumes that these events are totally random processes and like dice, the fact you rolled two 6s last go has no effect on whether you'll roll two 6s this time.
Assuming that to be true, you could just as easily get one next year as in 500 years.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Here's a hint: If a geomagnetic storm is strong enough to cause sparks to be emitted from near by power, telephone, and telegraph lines, do NOT stick your optical media into those emitted sparks.
If you follow this simple warning, your optical media will be safe from geomagnetic storms.*
* (Protection not guaranteed for rioting, looting, or people acting stupid in response to such a storm. Protection does not apply to high frequency magnetic oscillations, such as near an induction heater. In the event of a geomagnetic storm induced by a magnetar colliding with Earth, your mileage may vary.)
In complete agreement with this, but a bit more elaboration is needed IMHO.
If a full-on Carrington Event irreparably blows the electrical grid, you're going to have a hard time finding something that would compile your source code, let alone having an audience to sell your final products to.
If electricity blew out for a few days, no biggie. On the other hand, something that damned big may well take out power for months, if not years. Same goes for most modern trucks, trains, and ships - specifically their computer-run engine controllers. Without transportation, most cities would see grocery stores run out of food within 3-5 days. Most home have an average of 1 day up to two weeks of food in a given pantry. The military could conceivably step in as most of their vehicles are hardened against frickin' nuclear EMPs, but there are only so many mil-spec vehicles to go around (less in the US, when you consider how many of them are currently in the Mideast right now). Long story short, relief would be haphazard at best, and would certainly not reach anyone who isn't in one of the top 5-10 metro areas of your country.
The rest just comes apart from there.
I'm a sysadmin. I take a rather paranoid approach to DR/BC measures. On the other hand, if something like the sun going apeshit to Carrington levels happened and blew out the infrastructure? Fuck it - I wouldn't even go into work at that point, because we would all have much bigger problems to tackle than a screaming CEO.
I do disagree with parent about relying solely on a "bug-out bag". Unless you live in a dense urban area where you have no other choice? Once you leave home you're a refugee, period. 3 days worth of food will run out pretty quickly, and if panic truly set in, I doubt you'd find much shelter beyond whatever the government might provide.
Long story short? You will save yourself a lot of grief and money by preparing your datacenter/source/whatever for the more common outage causes. Anything beyond the typical stuff (fire, flood, hacking, etc) is likely going to make you question whether or not civilization as we know it will even survive - and I'm fairly sure that you place your family/spouse/kids/etc at a far higher priority than a bunch of source code to a game.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
He probably saw that Nicholos Cage movie two nights ago about a sun EM pulse that "destroyed the ozone layer" and then wiped-out all on mankind in a fiery inferno (even people 1 mile below ground). Hence a massive loss of data.
Of course no EM pulse could destroy the ozone layer, and even if it did it wouldn't matter because it's the *magnetosphere* that protects us from EM events and that was still intact.
Plus even if something did set the world afire with flames, the event would not effect the humans living on the dark side of the earth. The U.S. might be toasted but China, Russia, and most of Europe would still be alive & well. (With their 24 hour news channels talking about the death of the heathen Americans... it was an act of God, Allah, Buddha, whatever.)
Basically this is a ridiculous "Ask Slashdot" arising from too many ridiculous Hollywood terror/fear films.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
First step is to stop listening to the hype. Yes it would be bad for the large power distribution infrastructure but no solar flare is going to erase optical discs that doesn't also wipe out most life on the planet.
The thing that surprised me was that someone who thinks most life on the planet is going to be wiped out is concerned about source code. Who is going to play your games when civilisation is reduced to rubble? You think people fighting over post apocalyptic resources are going to give a shit about some indy game? I am also an indy developer and I thought my delusions of grandeur were about as big as they get. I tell myself I can revolutionise the video gaming paradigm. Even I am not deluded enough to think that my work would have any value whatsoever if the actual species was under threat. Get a copy of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica or the complete works of Albert Einstein, or Nikola Tesla... bury that shit in an airtight metal box 100km beneath the surface of the moon. Indy games... yeah, right.
If the earth's surface becomes equivalent to a *running* microwave...I'd say source code is the least of your worries
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Agree. If it ever gets to the point where we are stripped of our protection from the Sun, then worrying about your code for a project is probably a little 'out of scope' in the scheme of things...
Chances are if you have to worry about that kind of static discharge from objects not connected the power grid or decently strong batteries in such a storm, you won't have to worry about it, or anything else for that matter, ever again.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Then this must be the case. You, sir, are still an indie developer, but he has transcended and "evolved" into the next stage: he is a hipster developer. Sad but true, the indie is the father of the hipster.
So it is that you are wrong to look for reason in that one, for the hipster o/s code goes like this:
reason() { return 0; }
commonSense() { return 0; }
realityCheck() { return 0; }
So whenever we would pause to think something through, to understand something, to get a grip on something, the hipster would already be a step ahead, smiling obliviously on his train of thought, incompetent and unaware of it.
FCKGW 09F9 42
In all seriousness, dude, if an event of that scale occurs, what are you going to recover it to? If the backups in other countries are dead, there's no computers left. At that point, the only useful backsup are printed on paper, and that only because you can use the paper to light a fire to cook dinner over, after you kill it with a sharp stick.
Get over yourself.
Haphazard sure, but I think you actually underestimate how resourceful people would be in that situation.
Take food. Will you be able to pop over to McD's and get a burger and fries for $1.99. No way. Totally dependent on the supply chain. Will your grocery store have Cheerios? Probably not. However there is a lot of food still grown and processed locally. So if you live in corn country that may be all you eat for a month. Maybe you live in peanut land and better hope you don't have an allergy. Plenty of simple diesel farm tractors and old pickups that could be put to use transporting the stuff locally. Guess what, with most cars out of commission there's plenty of gas in your local gas station to power them for a long time as well.
EMP's would not take out many small generators, dirtbikes, gokarts, and other assorted engines which have no electronics. Hand tools and such would still work. The amount of crap Americans have in their garages that goes unused with modern conveniences is huge, and would be put to use. Flash drives and optical disks would be largely unaffected. With a small amount of warning precautions could be taken to protect a lot of assets.
Don't get me wrong, such an event would be hugely disruptive. It would take years for life to return to normal. While the impact would be in different areas, Katrina provides some evidence. Would it be worse because less help could come from further away? Sure. Would it be the end of society as we know it? I don't think so at all.
Keeping his source code safe is easy. Write it to optical, flash, and hard drives. Store all three in a faraday cage enclosure that is grounded. If you want to be crazy paranoid pay one of the vault places that keeps it deep underground in a mine converted to storage. Done and done, doesn't even cost that much. Will anyone care should such an event happen? Doubtful.
The technical discussions are rendered irrelevant by the simple fact that, if such an event occurred as to damage his operation, it would also damage the computers his market needs to run his software. Source code for a game would be worthless in the event of such a calamity so who cares if it's saved?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth