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?"

Comments

Don't panic!

[jmorris42]

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. It isn't going to erase hard drives that aren't destroyed by the power events that happen in the first few minutes. So a copy in your safe will still be readable. Remember, the safe is metal and entirely enclosed. In other words it is a Faraday Cage. I really don't know how flash memory will react to a strong electro-magnetic field but my money on it also surviving so long as it isn't connected to anything when the balloon goes up. Kinda hard to induce much of a voltage across nanoscale features. And these observations also apply to an EMP attack.

It things really get bad you might have trouble finding a working system to connect that backup to and electricity to start it up with but if it gets that bad you won't be worrying about the source code to some damned game, you will be worried about God, Gold and Guns at that point.

While making those elaborate plans to protect your data you might also want to take a few precautions to ensure you are there to need that data when the dust settles. Do you have a bug out bag? Is it fresh? Do you have an escape plan? Odds are that if you are an indie game dev you live in one of the hives where venture capital can be found and everyone there is toast within days; the trucks stop rolling when the gas pumps stop working, the shelves empty and canibalism begins. Do you have a destination in mind? Do you have a few days of survival supplies stashed to allow you a chance to get to it?

Re:Don't panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Don't panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct about flash memory not being particularly vulnerable to EM. I work in data sterilization and modern degaussers that are used by a lot of government agencies to nuke their hard drives are completely ineffective on solid-state drives.

Re:Don't panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia, a storm of this magnitude happens only once every 500 years or so.

Since one just happened about a hundred years back, the question is largely irrelevant.

While you're reading Wikipedia, look up "Gambler's fallacy". The fact that such an event occurred relatively recently has no effect on the probability that will happen in the near future.

Re:Don't panic!

[rgbrenner]

aluminum substrate to write on

No. that's not right at all. The aluminum is only used as a reflective layer. A CDR/DVDR is:

1. printed label/printable surface
2. aluminum
3. dye
4. clear plastic substrate

On a blank disc the laser goes through the dye and is reflected by the aluminum.

When the laser writes to the disc, it (basically) burns the dye.

When the burnt area is read by the laser, it is not reflected back by the aluminum. (so now you have 1s and 0s)

Re:Don't panic!

[Internetuser1248]

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.

Re:Don't panic!

[flyingsquid]

TRANSCRIPT: EMERGENCY STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BY ALL NEWS AGENCIES AND EMERGENCY BROADCAST CHANNELS. "My fellow Americans. I stand before you as President to tell you that at 12:03 AM Eastern Time, a massive asteroid over ten miles in diameter impacted the coast of the North Sea at a speed of over 50,000 miles per hour. This asteroid caused a blast equivalent to over one million of our most powerful H-bombs. At least 100 million souls were killed by the shockwave, but even as we speak, a mile-high tsunami is sweeping across Europe, drowning thousands of years of civilization in the blink of an eye. Molten debris is now being sent hurtling towards us in suborbital trajectories, and will soon ignite wildfires across the globe. Any of you who are unfortunate enough to survive the coming inferno will face an earth that has become a ruined hellscape. With ash blotting out the skies, all crops and plants will wither and die, and the unlucky survivors of civilization will descend into an orgy of cannibalism as they desperately try to consume their friends and families to survive the freezing snows and darkness of our Apocalypse. But I have saved the worst news, the most bitter tidings, for last.

"For with the destruction of Finland, the source code for 'Angry Birds Rio' has been lost to us. Forever. I ask that you now observe a moment of silence. [chokes back tears]. Perhaps we could have carried on otherwise. Perhaps we could have found the will to carry on. The United States as we knew it would never have survived this catastrophe, but perhaps we could have saved the species, and rebuilt something from the ashes. But not now. With the loss of Angry Birds Rio, all hope has been extinguished. There is simply no reason to carry on living. Even if we could save the species, what would be the point? And so I have decided that, with our remaining resources, the American Government will distribute cyanide capsules to help ease your passing. I will now commit suicide live on camera, to demonstrate to you the proper way to consume the cyanide poison capsule. God have mercy on our souls."

Re:Don't panic!

[DJRumpy]

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...

Re:Don't panic!

[korgitser]

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.

Re:Don't panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can arrange for 30 days of potable water...

Can't all water be put in pots?

Least of your worries

[hairykrishna]

The only mechanism I can think of which would case a solar flare to render optical disks unreadable would be radiation damage. A solar flare which delivered that kind of dose would likely wipe out all life on earth so you probably wouldn't be worrying about your backups.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Punch Cards.

How about something more plausible

[onyxruby]

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.

How to stop Carrington events

[maroberts]

how could you protect data to survive a modern day Carrington event?

Ban reruns of Dynasty on TV?

Pray, Mr. Babbage...

[Samantha Wright]

To paraphrase:

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if the surface of the Earth is fried by a solar flare and all computers are rendered inoperable, how can one protect a video game?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a need.

OK, I'll Bite

[carpwall]

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?

Re:Dumbass...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It's a bummer your post was modded down. You bring up a good point, it's really hard to get past this guy's warped sense of priorities.

I propose a do-over. How about instead of asking how to protect his video game in the event of global catastrophe, how about just a discussion of how we (as a society I mean) bank a few things so that if that event does come it doesn't turn out as bad as what happened in Dark Angel? For example, what if the US Gov't built a vault somewhere that could supposedly survive this even and stored a few computers with tons of data about history, technology, maybe a backup of Wikipedia, etc?

Well my idea may be dumb but I have to say a discussion about that would be way more interesting to me.