Posted on 08/21/2015 12:33:45 PM PDT by Kartographer
It’s hard to overstate just how much this would uproot our lives. The lights would of course go out, as would the internet, and any device that draws current from the wall. In places with electronically-controlled municipal water supplies — like most modern cities — toilets and sewage treatment systems would stop working. Heating and air conditioning would fail. Perishable food and medication would be lost. ATMs would be useless. Gas pumps would go offline. And so forth.
GPS technology would also be knocked out. Said Grunman, “The GPS system depends on the very precise timing of a course of signals between two points, like a spacecraft and your phone. If you dump a bunch of energetic particles into the atmosphere, that effects your GPS. Which is sobering when you consider the replacement of old aircraft landing technology with GPS.”
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
Toast?
What would happen? A whole lot of speculation would finally be actually tested and likely found to be a bunch of panic over nothing.
Oh, and some minor inconvenience for a day or two.
Or maybe something spectacular. Then again, the random chance of something spectacular happening at any moment from somewhere more than a light minute away is always there.
I had a guy on a thread not long ago making all kinds of pronouncements as to the non-effects of such sun activities and he claimed his expertise came from having operated a ham radio and his experiences with sun spots activity. When I ask him about the Carrington event not only did he not know what it was, but claim as it happened long before his time it had no bearing on the discussion and because I did know what it was I became ‘The Professor’.
Your opinion, please, Kartographer. In either 2003 or 2004 (forget which- Fall, anyway), there was a solar flare that exceeded X40. Either the Carrington event was even greater than this or our electrical systems have been hardened enough to withstand a lot more.
Which do you think (or some of both) or was electric utility just so unsophisticated that it wasn’t so unusual that it happened?
If you read the article it is talked about and explained.
Tell him that the portion of the book where the main character was whipping together the boys/girls militia, I couldn’t help think of the renegade students at The Citadel that started the war of northern aggression all by themselves practically. Silly rogue cadets. Cost them their lives.
Or the entire east coast of Florida?
Texas has it’s own electrical grid so maybe it was not included in the study or (I hope) Texas’ transformers are protected.
Solar storms at the Carrington level and stronger are not rare. When they hit the earth they affect the ground enough to leave evidence behind. Based on this we have been able to identify multiple similar events prior to the Carrington event, some of them even stronger.
The need to protect against this has been publicized over and over. There seems to be no scientific dispute about the threat, and that the consequences would be quite severe.
A small number of politicians have done some public hand wringing about it, but so far nothing has been done.
I have no idea if we will be hit by another Carrington Event or not, My goal when I post such is to make people realize just how much our modern society relies of electrical power. Rather it EMP, a Carrington Event, hackers, or saboteurs, all of which have capacity to bring our electrical gird to its knees. As be pointed out by myself and many others our capacity to replaces most of the largest of transformers is very limited and spares of these are almost non-existent. A major event caused by any of this things could leave vast swaths of the country without electrical power for months and months. That means no clean water, not sewage treatment and so on and so on...
Ping me when the internet goes down ping
“It’s hard to overstate just how much this would uproot our lives. The lights would of course go out, as would the internet, and any device that draws current from the wall. In places with electronically-controlled municipal water supplies — like most modern cities — toilets and sewage treatment systems would stop working. Heating and air conditioning would fail. Perishable food and medication would be lost. ATMs would be useless. Gas pumps would go offline. And so forth.”
“It would be like the Walking Dead.”
More like “The Road” from 2009.
Screw the internet. The lives lost will be from:
Toilets and sewage treatment systems and water treatment plants not working. It wasn’t that long ago water borne diseases killed many and it would happen fairly quickly again without those plants.
The article says that the typical CME takes several days to reach earth, and the superstorm observed in 1859 took 17.6 hours. In either event, there would be at least some warning time. Question: if electronic equipment was turned off, would it be ok? If so, that would be an interesting scenario: a big solar storm is coming, and the challenge would be to power down as much as possible to ride it out.
As often is the case, these articles confuse effects of a “High-Altitude Nuclear EMP” with those of a Solar/Geomagnetic Storm.
No electronics will fail as a result of a Solar Storm. If you have a backup generator at a facility (or at home) even if unprotected - it will work. A solid majority of power plants are likely to be able to provide some power at least regionally (islanded) immediately following a Solar Storm - re-integration of a unified grid may take a while depending on severity - so be ready for brownouts, rolling blackouts for a while.
This is a likely worst case scenario where 24 hours notice is given but no power transmission operators take any action to mitigate potential damage.
It’s not insignificant, but this isn’t “return to the stone-age” stuff.
“Question: if electronic equipment was turned off, would it be ok?”
In a solar storm electronic equipment will not be impacted by the storm itself. So your equipment can be on, or it can be off, plugged in, not plugged in, it makes no difference.
The power may go out, but that is it.
“How’s that possible?”
Texas is too far south for significant Geomagnetic Storm damage to occur
How could we be protected from this, what would have to be done?
thx, I did not know that. Also Texas has it’s own grid. That means that Texas will not go down if the other two national grids go down. For example, Fla might not have transformer hurt but if the east coast grid goes down Fla goes with it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.