The Sun Also Flares - If we get hit with a once-in-a-century solar storm, we’re history.

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | January 28, 2010 | Clifford D. May

[Don W]

I have 2 vehicles and an old school 7.5 KW generator that still use breaker points and analog carburetors.

(That means impervious to EMP for those in Rio Linda).

Me and mine will be fine.

[gogogodzilla]

Well, then... you’re set.

:-P

[nomad]

Thought it was “If my aunt had balls she`d be my uncle.”?

[hinckley buzzard]

The Amish could (and would) go on pretty much like nothing happened. Might have trouble storing their daily milk crop but that would be about it. And the Older the Order the better off.

[FormerACLUmember]

Bush’s fault.

(Says Obama)

[Freedom4US]

So, have this 1942 Zenith radio, has shortwaves and regular AM. Runs on batteries too, though has to be cobbled because nobody makes them anymore. But if what you say is true there might not be anything to listen to!! Hm.

[editor-surveyor]

EMP is mostly hype. - It would take hundreds of detonations to do any real damage. The intensity of the pulse varies inversely as the cube of the distance (or if the weapon has a large concentrating reflector, as 1/2 the cube of the distance.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

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[Mike Darancette]

Our enemies won't need a vast arsenal to destroy us completely; two or three nuclear weapons would send us back to the 1850s.

They won't get all the Tridents though.

[PresidentFelon]

I did not say the planet was “fragile”. Humans are though.

There have been several near life-extinguishing events on this planet where most species on earth perished. It is naive to think it won't happen again

[PresidentFelon]

sorry, I guess I did say the planet is fragile after re-reading my comments. I Mis-spoke. Human beings are fragile

[Enchante]

I'm not going to take any position on the threat or lack thereof to civilization as we know it, because I simply can't judge what might or might not survive such an EMP.....

but I do find it interesting that the NASA item you linked on super solar flares says it's more like a once in 500 yr. event (for that magnitude) -- although *we* don't know nearly enough to say how often it happens

that NASA web page states that the interval is more like 500 yrs, although *we* can't be sure:

""In the 160-year record of geomagnetic storms, the Carrington event is the biggest." It's possible to delve back even farther in time by examining arctic ice. "Energetic particles leave a record in nitrates in ice cores," he explains. "Here again the Carrington event sticks out as the biggest in 500 years and nearly twice as big as the runner-up." These statistics suggest that Carrington flares are once in a half-millennium events. The statistics are far from solid, however, and Hathaway cautions that we don't understand flares well enough to rule out a repeat in our lifetime."

[edcoil]

No more fragile then any other species. You are correct in that species come and go and in those events where most disappeared - I don’t know of anything they could have done to change it so its best to enjoy the time we are here.

[suthener]

I appreciate what you’re saying, and I agree to some extent. But the scenario that I’m imagining is 500 middle class stock brokers in Times Square three days after the trucks stop running and the lattes aren’t flowing. All the leadership and expertise in the world won’t immediately produce something to eat. And, one other little point of which I’m sure you are aware, there are still plenty of savages out there that we will still have to deal with.

I feel obligated to say this because some people on this forum can’t disucss things logically: this is not a personal attack on you and is put out purely for discussion. I’m not trying to start a pointless flame war. Thanks.

[ansel12]

There will always be the valid (and dramatic) examples of worse case scenarios and inner cities burning and unable to conduct themselves in an intelligent, disciplined, cooperative manner, but the average American in flyover country and the suburbs, will be dealing with a much more civilized, orderly version of state of emergency, and that doesn’t get mentioned enough.

[BIGLOOK]

btt

[aruanan]

No more fragile then [sic] any other species.

Consider the yucca moth and its relationship to the yucca plant and compare the fragility of its existence to, say, that of termites or salmon or quahog clams. Which of these species is the most fragile? Whichever species has the greatest reliance on the most easily disrupted and smallest number of factors essential to its survival is the most fragile species.

[JasonC]

I wish. We had it before there was a dime of research money anywhere, and we had it five times as bad before there was any science to speak of. No, this one is one of those hardy human nature things that conservativism is better than a mere ideology, for acknowledging.

[JasonC]

Yes I doubt it. The military consists of boy scouts who have a motto. Get a life please.

[JasonC]

They are making it up. They always do. And always in the same stupid doom mongering direction.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

- H.L. Mencken