A solar storm

[zmanzero]

i don't want to be the paranoid doomsday guy, but with the 2012 thing floating around my attention was drawn to the prediction of increased solar activity coming up here soon. so i've been reading up on it.

in 1859 there was a pretty big one - http://www.google.com/webhp?complete...ef8cda26d1a6ec - and that sucker started telegraph poles on fire. something of that magnitude will fry the chips in cars and severely damage the power grid. it will fry computers, cell phones, start fires, hell... anything that you can think of that has chips or requires power would be rendered useless. that's pretty much everything we use in our modern world gone folks. gone.

the last solar maximum activity cycle was strangely quiet. we're due for a walloping. it's a natural thing that's been happening for billions of years, these storms, but we've never noticed any effects until that 1859 one, and then only because our budding technology got stomped.

we're going to have some advanced notice when this one hits because of our satellites and i don't think that any information will be able to be hushed up about it. there's just too many scientists to hush it up. from what i've read it takes about 3 days for the emp to hit the earth but the bigger the storm the faster the emp travels. in 1859 it took about 18 hours.

this is not something that should be casually dismissed along with all of the "end of days" crap that people have been spewing for the last thousand years or so. as certain as there are storms on earth there are storms in space, and we haven't had a hurricane from the sun hit us for quite a while. this will happen. nothing we can do about it.

sooo.... just thought i'd throw this bone in the pot to season the soup while you're burning a fattie and maybe reading this.


oh! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[visiON]

If it will fry my computer I'm going to be soo pissed. And there's nobody to blame it on :\

[GoVegan]

Darn! It seems like not matter what we do, we are all going to die eventually.

[sgreger1]

Yah I think the consensus right now is that some time in early or mid 2013 there is a possibility of a big discharge/solar storm from the sun, and it may fry some (or all) of the electronics on whatever side of the planet happens to be facing the sun at the moment.


In the US especially our grid is very antiquated and out of date, and DEFINITELY not reinforced to protect against EMP attacks or solar storms.



To take this from another angle: I have been reading for months that the GOP plans on hyping up the threat of an EMP attack (likely originating from Iran) as their next scare tactic, and now suddenly I keep hearing more and more shit on the news about solar storms and more and more articles from heritage foundation and the like on talking about of an EMP attack

[visiON]

Yah I think the consensus right now is that some time in early or mid 2013 there is a possibility of a big discharge/solar storm from the sun, and it may fry some (or all) of the electronics on whatever side of the planet happens to be facing the sun at the moment.


In the US especially our grid is very antiquated and out of date, and DEFINITELY not reinforced to protect against EMP attacks or solar storms.



To take this from another angle: I have been reading for months that the GOP plans on hyping up the threat of an EMP attack (likely originating from Iran) as their next scare tactic, and now suddenly I keep hearing more and more shit on the news about solar storms and more and more articles from heritage foundation and the like on talking about of an EMP attack

The Iran must be behind the epic solar storm of 2012!

[sgreger1]

The Iran must be behind the epic solar storm of 2012!

I think that there are members of our congress who, if given the chance, would look you square in the eye and blame a solar storm on iran.

[raptor]

solution: build a giant Faraday cage around the US

[lxskllr]

solution: build a giant Faraday cage around the US

Or build a giant rodent cage around DC. That won't do much for solar storms, but it'll make me feel better :^D

[CoderGuy]

or build a giant rodent cage around dc. That won't do much for solar storms, but it'll make me feel better :^d

+1 ^^ this ^^

[zmanzero]

Or build a giant rodent cage around DC. That won't do much for solar storms, but it'll make me feel better :^D

[WickedKitchen]

I think when this happens and if it directly effects the US we will be properly effed. Most of our large-capacity power grid equipment isn't even made in this country any more. We'll have to get that and the nations that build them will give us trouble if we're not in their good graces. Commerce would nearly stop those in the cities would leave them and I'd assume they'd be fairly hostile. My plan is to have some guns before then. Currently, I don't have the capacity to be self sufficient but I'm stocking up. At best I think I'd be able to last a year with minimal preparation. I'm not even sure I'd stay at my home if society degrades to the point of anarchy.

More than likely that would be an extreme situation. I can see some sort of marshal law being applied, however. The EMP would down so many businesses and there would be exponentially more people needing basic support. Food, shelter, and defense would be the top three priorities for me. There would be no mobile phone, internet, GPS, etc...probably even land lines would be down. I think it would take years to get it all back up and running again. The food situation would be terrible and the inability to fuel our vehicles would only make that worse. I think I would try to work in the food distribution lines initially. Protecting the kids would take center stage and I'd surmise that would be the case for just about everyone else. When desperation sets in that's when humans become very strange.

All of the above is probably a whole lot worse than it's going to be but proper preparation would help me sleep at night.

[RobsanX]

Didn't we have this last year, and it amounted to nothing?

[zmanzero]

i dunno wicked. hell, it could be worse than what you portrayed. no need to find gas for the cars, those suckers are gonna be fried. you would have to bypass the burnt out electronics which the vast majority of people would be in the totally dark about. in the big cities there would be no water or sewage, just people running around trying to get food and crapping in the streets. the cops would turn into people with guns like anyone else who has one, just trying to keep their families alive. if you were on a cruise ship out at sea that cruise would soon become a scene out of hell. planes in flight would become falling explosive objects, forest fires started from shorted transmission lines running through the forests are probable, and who the hell could fight those without proper equipment. remember, helicopters won't fly either. there's the scenario of major pollution of the rivers as cities sewage treatment facilities fail. the religious fanatics are gonna have a field day with this one, false "prophets" gathering the nut cases together and having their roving bands of righteousness. jeeze, the brilliant auroras are going to be one of their big talking points. who the hell is going to organize the burial detail for all the dead in the non functioning hospitals? for that matter, who will organize the burial of the dead from the streets and homes? the aged and infirm will be dying there. gangs would make the hospitals one of their first targets for the drugs, how the hell are the doctors going to even get there through 5 miles of chaotic street life? it's going to boil down to food and water, and people kill for survival. i'm not saying all people are bad, but we all know there's a lot of rotten apples who would take advantage of the darkness coming. of course a lot of people in prison are gonna die there, locked in cages as the guards desert to their families and the supplies never arrive to provide for them. some will escape that fate and roam into innocents lives, taking what they will. modern farming is nonexistent without functioning machinery so there goes the food supply chain. in the nature of a occurrence like this one, some nations will have better survival of infrastructure, a "new world order" will be the consequence of that. national boundaries will revert to geographical and cultural boundaries. the earth's electronic wealth will cease to exist, the wealth that transfers electrons from account to account for the acquirement of material things, a multimillionaire in a hollywood mansion being poorer than the gang in control of a food distribution warehouse.

a lot of pain could be avoided in the aftermath of this storm with just the realization that this is possible and probable.

christ, time to take a shower and get ready to go to austin to buy some "new" clothes for me. the girl is going to pick me up at a little after 10 and drive me over there... woo woo! i HATE driving in big cities.

edit - @rob - bud, whatever happened last year was a fart in a whirlwind compared to what this is.

[sgreger1]

Congress did a study on this, and it said that something like 90% of Americans would be dead within the first year if an EMP or similar event took down the majority of the nations electronics. Water processing plants would break, the water would be tainted, there would be no food, massive civil unrest, no electricity, no refrigeration for food.


The problem is that this isn't the 1900's anymore. During the great depression enough people lived on farms to where they could still eat. Ther aren't many farms here in America anymore, or if they are they are giant corporate farms. The average person would not have a method of obtaining food if a solar storm or EMP attack hits us, nor would they have access to medical services.



It would get real bad real quick, then things would slowly reform themselves after a while. Lots of people talk about stocking up on guns, but we are too quick to forget katrina. The first thing they will do is raid each and every house to collect any firearms, and possesion of a firearm will become an offense punishable likely by death. Anyone hoping to keep firearms has to be willing to hide them, as well as not be caught using one.

[sgreger1]

Didn't we have this last year, and it amounted to nothing?

No, this has not happened since the late 1800's if I recall, and it had some very noticeable effects then. At the time, there wasn't much it could harm, but it did harm everything it could (railroad tracks etc). In today's digital world, it would be like setting off multuple EMP's above the united states.


One thing I havn't heard talked of much is the fact that the damage will only be done on the side of the earth facing the sun at the time. Does anyone know what side of the earth will be facing the sun during this time period? Who will be most heavily effected? \


If the US lost power but everyone else was cool, it would be bad news. If europe or someone lost power, it would be good for the unted states, but we would bankrupt ourselves providing aid to others. I guess that's the difference between america and other nations, we are charitable even when we are broke. During the worst recession in 100 years, we still managed to donate several (I believe hundred) billions of dollars to charity, and even when we ar ebroke, we still give aid to palestine and israel.