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On March 13th, 1989 a surge of energy from the sun, from a "coronal mass ejection", had a startling impact on Canada. Within 92 seconds, the resulting geomagnetic storm took down Quebec's electricity grid for nine hours. It could have been worse. On July 23rd 2012 particles from a much larger solar ejection blew across the orbital path of Earth, missing it by days. Had it hit America, the resulting geomagnetic storm would have destroyed perhaps a quarter of high-voltage transformers, according to Storm Analysis Consultants in Duluth, Minnesota. Future geomagnetic storms are inevitable.
And that is not the only threat to the grid. A transformer-wrecking electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would be produced by a nuclear bomb, designed to maximise its yield of gamma rays, if detonated high up, be it tethered to a big cluster of weather balloons or carried on a satellite or missile.
[...] After the surge, telecom switches and internet routers are dead. Air-traffic control is down. Within a day, some shoppers in supermarkets turn to looting (many, unable to use credit and debit cards, cannot pay even if they wanted to). After two days, market shelves are bare. On the third day, backup diesel generators begin to sputter out. Though fuel cannot be pumped, siphoning from vehicles, authorised by martial law, keeps most prisons, police stations and hospitals running for another week.
[...] Yet not much is being done. Barack Obama ordered EMP protection for White House systems, but FERC, the utilities regulator, has not required EMP-proofing. Nor has the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pushed for a solution or even included EMP in official planning scenarios. (The Pentagon should handle that, DHS officials say; the Pentagon notes that civilian infrastructure is the DHS's responsibility.) As for exactly what safeguards are or are not needed, the utilities themselves are best equipped to decide, says Brandon Wales, the DHS's head of infrastructure analysis.
But the utilities' industry group, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), argues that, because EMP is a matter of national security, it is the government's job. NERC may anyway be in no rush. It took a decade to devise a vegetation-management plan after, in 2003, an Ohio power line sagged into branches and cut power to 50m north-easterners at a cost of roughly $6bn. NERC has repeatedly and successfully lobbied Congress to prevent legislation that would require EMP-proofing. That is something America, and the world, could one day regret.
Is a widespread blackout the end of the world?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:56AM (4 children)
P.S. I just thought: Air traffic control: I'd be more worried about the planes themselves. Pretty sure they'd come down hard and fast in the case of an EMP attack and then taking off again won't really be an issue even if you did land properly. Pretty sure it'd just be an immediate grounding of all aircraft until they've been checked.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:29PM
They'll be as fine as the ability of their pilots to navigate without radio links - the wavelength of geomagnetic storms are much too large to affect their electronics. But radio transmission will be noisy as hell and their electronics (even if functional) won't be able to "see" the GPS system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:46PM (1 child)
Best way to protect hardware from EMP is to have short conductors (shorter than 1 KM) and/or be really well shielded (like inside nearly a tin can) and/or be really well grounded such that the protection gear can do its thing and none of the voltages get high.
There's a type of disaster / prepper pr0n where all the stuff most likely to fail keeps working like AM radio stations and sometimes telephones, but the stuff most likely to survive like trains, planes and automobiles all stop magic wand style. Oh another good one is pacemakers stopping LOL. Oh they'll stop alright when the battery runs down, but till then...
Can you think of a better possible way to shield a sensitive electronic ckt than to put it in a "small" tin can up in the air where there's miles of air between it and the sparkable ground and for weight reasons everything inside is being replaced by fiber at a feverish pace?
The real killer is going to be looter bands roving around so nobody going to go to work which means more looter bands if they want to eat which means ... etc etc.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday September 15 2017, @02:22AM
Eat the looter bands. Problem solved!!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:58PM
Planes get hit my lightning all the time. That one hell of a EM pulse from a 20,000,000+V spark, yet, they fly. If an EM pulse kills planes, radiation would probably vaporize it anyway, so the problem is moot.