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When Space Weather Attacks Earth
Lasrick writes "Brad Plumer details the 1859 solar storm known as the Carrington Event. Pretty fascinating stuff: 'At the time, it was a dazzling display of nature. Yet if the same thing happened today, it would be an utter catastrophe...That's not a lurid sci-fi fantasy. It's a sober new assessment by Lloyd's of London, the world's oldest insurance market. The report notes that even a much smaller solar-induced geomagnetic storm in 1989 left 6 million people in Quebec without power for nine hours.'"
I suppose you've also heard about plague, AIDS and the measles, but if you've never been affected by them, then it must be a lot of made up rubbish, right?
1) Smaller solar flares have affected the grid before. It's not unthinkable that a big one as mentioned in TFA can break a lot more stuff. Stuff that isn't exactly off the shelf in quantity. Might be a rare event, but if we can plan against it, maybe we should? Beats sitting in the dark for weeks.
2) Speaking of Y2K... the reason nothing happened is because companies took action. I've been involved in Y2K work at the time, and while a lot of it was bullshit ("Make sure the coffee machines are Y2K-ready or we're doooooomed"), the power plant and telco I worked for would have been severly affected by Y2K if nothing had been done. Some of that was simply being prepared for any disaster; their systems had never been offline completely (only parts of it), and there was no procedure for a cold restart.
In other words, when doom is called, consultants scramble to grab a piece of the hyped pie, companies take rational stock of their own situation and apply fixes as needed, and the general public scoffs as the event passes as another non-event, because of preparation and planning
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
9 hours no electricity? what a catastrophe. I've done that for 9, 18, 24 or so hours, it was called camping
Depends. If your oxygen concentrator doesn't run for 9 hours or you can't keep your insulin cold for 9 hours, yeah it could be a catastrophe. If you have lederly parents to care for or young children, yes it could be a problem. But if you are just thinking of no light bulbs or tv, yeah, then it probably isn't a big deal. OTOH, no subways, elevators, mass transit, gasoline heating or cooling (depending on the time of the year and your location), no emergency response or telephones to even contact them. Would that be a catastrophe? For some it could very well be.
You sort of missed the point. A full-blown Carrington Event, like in 1859, could result in many months or perhaps a year without electricity. It's relatively easy to sit out a few hours or perhaps a week without power, but I think that you would find it a different story with out power for half a year or year (or tightly rationed power for that period of time). Like, perhaps you wouldn't have a job, and there would be signficant food shortages...