Posted on 08/21/2015 12:33:45 PM PDT by Kartographer
“What I wonder is how man fires would break out. During the Carrington Event a number of Telegrapher offices caught fire. Now every house and building is wired to the grid.”
Those were different times then - and different systems (telegraph offices) Today there would not be so many in buildings from such a solar storm. There are multiple nested protection systems from grid to any building that prevent it. However, there are documented cases during a geomagnetic storm peak (far less severe than a Carrington event) of a major transformer going from normal operations to flaming wreckage in 90 seconds in Quebec.
Fair enough. But REAL preppers would also be aware of the Carrington event of November 1866. At least the ones from Wyoming.
My maternal grandfather was a senior engineer with Western Electric/Bell Labs, and as a young electrical engineer [circa 1915] was personally acquainted with Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, Nicola Tesla and other pioneers of the electrical/telecommunications industries. I learned about the history of the Carrington Event at a very young age, and I can tell you: the stories about the nightmares it caused for railroad telegraphers and signal lines maintainers are legendary.
I want to know more about this. Where should I look?
Up.
[Sorry! Couldn't resist.]
You might then get a chuckle out of another bit of Wyoming history old and recent: When America's silent film industry was in its infancy the Charge of the Light Brigade, directed by J. Searle Dawley and starring Benjamin Wilson, Richard Neill and James Gordon was shot in 1912 near Cheyenne at Pole Mountain and the Terry Ranch south of Cheyenne. The production used the U.S. 9th Cavalry [and it's Black Buffalo Soldiers] from Ft. D.A. Russell [now F.E. Warren AFB] as mounted extras.
More recently: The 1997 science fiction film Starship Troopers used Hell's Half Acre, located about 40 miles west of Casper on US 20/26, as the hellish giant bug-infested planet Klendathu. I suspect that CGI animation was used to produce the giant bug extras, but you never know: the makeup crew may have repurposed a few of the local bison.
Oh, and Smile when you say that, pardner.
And yet they film Longmire just up the road in right here in New Mexico. ;-)
Just wait until we finish our Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett epic to be shot at hole-in-the-Wall....
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.