Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

[vt]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

Here's some scientific evidence to calm the community:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/

And it would only cost $100 million to protect us!

http://www.infowars.com/preventing-a...prove-the-fix/

[BadJuju]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

I like Russian roulette. Let's take our chances.

[c1ue]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

Canned food and ample water could be the new gold:

Here's the important line in that article:

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee.

Always nice when a law professor comments on electrical phenomena.

I'm not saying there would be no impact - almost certainly there would be some. But to say that it would cause an Apocalype...hmm, not at all clear.

Florida supposedly has 10 lightning strikes per square kilometer per year. As Florida has about 140,000 square kilometers of land, that 1.4 million lightning strikes every year.

How many hit the power grid? Not zero, certainly.

Of course a CME induced current would affect the entire grid in an area - while not the entire Earth would be affected, certainly larger than any handful or bushel of lightning strikes - at the same time it is doubtful the induced current is higher than the 10,000 or 100,000 amps a single lightning strike can put out.

All in all, I'd like to see some numbers before breathless comments about being sent back to the pre-electricity age.

[flintlock]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

How much of the world was electrified back then? They weren't prepared for anything except the backwards way they lived back then. I envy them as much as they probably envied cave men.

Yep. It probably wouldn't be so bad except there are a LOT more people on the earth today. That would be a huge problem. They could barely feed themselves back then.

[flintlock]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

My...everyone is so joyously positive! And to think that this problem scared the living daylights out of me years ago...and it still hasn't happened. If I focused on that 'what if' mentality, I'd have died already from the fear induced stress level.

Still...it is nice that Congress is at least thinking about backstopping our hardware against a lightening strike, or whatever. And I have a large Faraday box to put my back-up devices in once I can afford to buy them, and am planning a windmill powered water supply (wind to mechanical kind). That, and my few months of food, and my limited ammo, however, will not protect me from a populace gone crazy with lack of everything! If YHVH decides to swipe the earth with a devastatingly massive solar flare, it just means He's putting off Armegeddon for a while as well, which, in watching the Middle East had already begun to make we wonder!

Such wonderful, practical and positive matters....hmmm....I think I will focus on today, and go out and smell the roses. They need deadheading anyway.

Yes, think of it as one big camping trip, with a chance to get back to nature.

[davidstvz]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

A well aimed solar flare can definitely fry elements of the power grid that are costly to replace, but how much area is one really likely to cover at one time? If it only takes out 10% of the country then we'd be relatively fine. The people in that 10% are going to have a shitty time until the lights come back on certainly, but with the resources of the other 90% (and the world) they'd survive just fine.

[LorenS]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

You can't send the US back to the 19th Century. We're not the same people, we don't have the same infrastructure.

Whatever a solar flare does it won't cause time travel, and it would take years for TV brain rot to fade.

[reggie]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century ]

Best damn thing that could ever happen to humanity, at least when one takes a long term view.

[raja]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

The USA Today article did not purport to be a scientific article, yet contained links to NASA and other scientific sites, so it makes little difference that it was authored by a lawyer.

I was introduced to the potential of a catastrophic solar flare by a TV show either on PBS or the History Channel. Thanks for bringing it up, as some of the links in the article have furthered my understanding.

Another flare is coming sooner or later, but whether one wants to prepare for it is a matter of personal taste . . . .

"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.

Since I am already prepared for TEOTWAWKI brought on by global economic collapse or other disasters, I was curious to see what additional steps I would need to take to avoid effects of a solar flare.

There seem to be three main concerns regards a solar flare catastrophe:

1) Disruption of vital services: food, water, electricity, commerce, etc.

2) The aggressive actions of humans affected by the disruption of their vital services.

3) Nuclear meltdowns.

. . . . well-known physicist Michio Kaku and other members of the American Physical Society asked Congress to appropriate $100 million to harden the country’s electrical grid against solar flares.
Congress refused.
Kaku explains that a solar flare like the one that hit the U.S. in 1859 would – in the current era of nuclear power and electric refrigeration – cause Armageddon.
Not only could such a flare bring on multiple Fukushima type accidents, but it could well cause food riots nationwide.
Kaku explains that relief came in for people hit by disasters like Katrina or Sandy from the “outside”. But a large solar flare could knock out a lot of the power nationwide. So – as people’s food spoils due to lack of refrigeration – emergency workers from other areas would be too preoccupied with their own local crisis to help. There would, in short, be no “cavalry” to the rescue in much of the country.

and . . .

If an extreme GMD were to cause widespread grid collapse (which it most certainly will), in as little as one or two hours after each nuclear reactor facility’s backup generators either fail to start, or run out of fuel, the reactor cores will start to melt down. After a few days without electricity to run the cooling system pumps, the water bath covering the spent fuel rods stored in “spent-fuel ponds” will boil away, allowing the stored fuel rods to melt down and burn[2]. Since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) currently mandates that only one week’s supply of backup generator fuel needs to be stored at each reactor site, it is likely that, after we witness the spectacular nighttime celestial light show from the next extreme GMD, we will have about one week in which to prepare ourselves for Armageddon.

I live on self-sufficient farm with solar power, and have means of self-defense.
I am even prepared for a nuclear event. Although I'm still researching the subject, what seems to be the case is that most of the radiation would go away in several days, so as long as one could avoid fallout for that short period -- and keep it away from food sources -- it should be survivable. There's the nuclear winter effect, but it's likely that warring countries would selectively target, so the number of missiles may not be enough to trigger global winter.

But what about a solar flare catastrophe? What can I do?
I found some relevant info:

To be sure, the size of the signal from this process is not large, but systems connected to long lines (e.g., power lines, telephone wires, and tracking wire antennas) are at risk because of the large size of the induced current. The additive effects of the MHD-EMP can cause damage to unprotected civilian and military systems that depend on or use long-line cables. Small, isolated, systems tend to be unaffected.

and . . . .

Protecting electrical equipment is simple if it can be unplugged from AC outlets, phone systems, or long antennas. But that assumes that you won't be using it when the EMP strikes. That isn't all that practical and—if a nuclear war were drawn out or an attack occurred in waves spread over hours or days— you'd have to either risk damage to equipment or do without it until things had settled down for sure.

So no need to put all my electrical equipment in Faraday cages.
The question then remains, will I know when it's time to unplug from the grid and fire up my stand alone solar power grid?

The Carrington solar flare event occurred at 11:23 AM . . . .
Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.

So the effects of the flare hit the Earth about 20 hours later.

No wonder NASA and other space agencies around the world have made the study and prediction of flares a priority. Right now a fleet of spacecraft is monitoring the sun, gathering data on flares big and small that may eventually reveal what triggers the explosions.

Hopefully, the government will tell us when to unplug . . . .

Here is a helpful link:
http://www.infowars.com/preventing-a...prove-the-fix/
It's Alex Jones, who seems to be seriously ADHD, but still has good info.

Finally, let me take this opportunity to point out once again how badly the iTulip website sucks with regard to indentation. See above for what it does. Spacing before and after indenting sometimes disappears. I've complained many times before -- it would be nice if they would fix it . . . but maybe it's beyond their ability.

[c1ue]

Re: Solar Flare Could Send Us Back To The 19th Century

Well, here are some numbers:

1) Electromagnetic strength of the Carrington Effect (various estimates):

http://www.earthmagazine.org/article...rrington-event

Various studies have estimated the disturbance index of the Carrington Event at approximately minus 1,600 to minus 1,760 nanoteslas

2) Strength of the Earth's magnetic field:

http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-notes.html

Johnston Island in 1962 (Starfish Prime detonation point):	28,800 nT (30 degrees)
Kazakhstan in 1962 (Tests #184, #187, #195 detonation points):	44,400 to 49,400 nT (66 degrees)
200 kilometers over Omaha, Nebraska (Central U.S.A., 2009):	49,302 nT (69 degrees)
200 kilometers over Paris, France (2009):	43,752 nT (64 degrees)
200 kilometers over Berlin, Germany (2009):	45,165 nT (67.5 degrees)
200 kilometers over Seoul, S. Korea (2009):	45,790 nT (53.5 degrees)
200 kilometers over Melbourne, Australia (2009):	54,419 nT (68.8 degrees)
200 kilometers over Bangalore, India (2009):	36,967 nT (12.8 degrees)

3) Strength of a nuclear induced EMP:

http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-notes.html

If the United States W49 warhead used for the Starfish Prime test had been used in Soviet Test 184, the E3 component would have been more than 5000 nT/min in the region of the power plant fire in Kazakhstan.

Note that the nuclear EMP - the number mentioned is for a test in Kazakhstan, but unclear what the distance was between the power plant in question and the test. For nuclear weapons, the EMP strength falls off rapidly from ground/air zero.

The above article goes on and on about how a much weaker storm caused a power grid failure in Quebec, but does not make any reference to just how common such storms are.

Net-net - if the Carrington effect is a fraction of nuclear weapons EMP, I'd say worrying about that risk should be far, far lower than worrying about an air explosion of a nuclear weapon in the wrong spot.

I also note that there are ways to shield transformers from this type of effect; if in fact these transformers are so vulnerable and have had large numbers of failures in the past due to inherently defective architecture (as opposed to, say, a poor install), it would seem odd that grid operators would not install safety measures. All that would be needed would be a Faraday cage, plus a DC current trip switch.