Size of a solar flare compared to earth.One more way God can lay low a prideful people.
Are you ready for the entire grid to go down simultaneously?
Of course the regime will tell you not to worry because all has been planned for in "Emergency Support Function #13." After all, what do we have to worry about?
They've put the ATF in charge of law enforcement coordination.
11 comments:
God? more likely the simple misfortune of being at the wrong time and place.... we live in interesting times.
Dr.D III
I'm sure it's Bush's fault. But hey, don't worry. By merely winning the nomination of his party, Obama promised us the sea levels will get back to normal. So this whole "sun thing" will be no problem for the mighty teleprompter.
That's a humbling thought...
Well, on the topic of watching the pride / hubris of mankind quickly fall into perspective - I have never known anyone who has experienced a serious storm at sea - craft sliding sideways into the troughs and seeing black walls of water rising thirty feet above on either side - who did not shift into instant introspection and the consideration of both Deity and the possible destinations of one's soul.
Well, I have ONE comforting thought on this.
If we have a solar storm powerful enough to knock out the electrical grid, it will also be powerful enough to knock out military satellites, UAVs, and high speed communications.
In other words, or Gubbment foes will be as blind and as deaf as we are. But we're used to it. They aren't.
B Woodman
III-per
If I can paraphrase Woodman, the bad news is that we'd be on our own. The good news is that we might be left alone.
In the waning days of the last solar cycle maximum, November of 2003, an active sunspot was going around the visible edge of the sun and blasted the largest solar flare observed since the dawn of the space age. It overloaded the sensors on the spacecraft that monitor flares, and was eventually recorded as an X28. If it had happened a few days earlier, the blast would have hit us and the damage would have been extreme.
This same sunspot group a few days earlier set off a flare that caused auroras visible in Georgia and at least into Northern Florida. I think auroras were visible in the Orlando area.
This is like getting hit by a really big meteor. If we sit here long enough, it will happen. It's just a matter of time.
Some high-tech comm will keep working. Things based on optical fiber and buried copper will either keep working or be fixed quickly.
I bet that US hams are back up within days of a major event, even if it's with a model T spark coil and Morse code.
Cheers.
"In other words, or Gubbment foes will be as blind and as deaf as we are. But we're used to it. They aren't."
Cold comfort, friend. Without electricity there will be no drilling or refining of oil, no deliveries of oil, no deliveries of oil-based fertilizer to farms, no transport of crops to processing facilities or from there to the stores, no manufacture of drugs or refrigeration of critical drugs like insulin, no life-support machinery, etc., etc. We will quickly be returned to the early 19th Century, without the tools or knowledge to do so. Probably 90% of us will die of starvation, infection, violence or weather-related problems within a year.
I would strongly advise you to read "One Second After" to get an idea of what it'd be like to live in a world where the electrical grid collapses.
I derive zero comfort from that.
Hm. Well, call me a Pollyanna. But I can't get worked up over solar flares. Total incineration of the Earth (That's what your illustration seemed at first to be warning me about) isn't a contingency I've bothered to prep for. In my last moments of life I'll just curse NASA.
If we're just talking about communication meltdown, I'll sit back and congratulate myself for being totally off-grid. Like B. Woodman said, it'll hurt them more than it'll hurt me.
The book (and recent movie) The Road has something like this scenario as an initiating event. It's not clear what happened, but it obviously takes out the power grid. If something like that happens, the gu'mint will be the least of our concerns. This is something that has been discussed in power company circles for at least a few decades now. Back in the months pre-Y2K I ran across a website run by the Western Area Power Association. An article there mentioned the possiblity of a solar flare taking out enough of the power grid to bring down, in swiftly cascading fashion, a much larger part - or all of it. This would likely require at least 6 months getting back online, due to lack of backup equipment like the large transformers in distribution yards.
A fire took out a large Arizona Public Service (west of Phoenix) transformer back in July 2004. It took over a month to get a replacement shipped in from California and installed.
Those 190 ton beasties don't grow on trees, and if enough of them were taken out at once, then only large cities would be served for the first few months - or years. And that would be under optimal conditions, with no interruption of diesel for transportation, etc.
Multiply the Phoenix situation by a few dozen, or a hundred or more, and that's a recipe for national scale disaster, not to mention what could happen to the rest of the planet's industrialized countries if they are facing the inbound solar flux as it hits the magnetosphere. In that case, undeveloped countries might fare much better than the rest of us.
Hams with solar-charged/battery powered tube rigs will be the new "only ones" - who can talk long distance, that is.
JRM
III
Post a Comment