Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday September 14 2017, @08:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the living-off-the-grid dept.

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?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Demena on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:34AM (11 children)

    by Demena (5637) on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:34AM (#567738)

    All the air-traffic control nonsense? That can run on manual for a long time, because that's what happens when it goes down today, whether that's Windows Update or an EMP attack. A bit of disruption, some emergency radio kit, and you're back in business.

    Nope, nope, nope. No radio, no electricity... You are talking a very local EMP burst. Yes, air traffic control worries would not be a worry but only because there would be nothing flying. (lol. DO you really expect someone to land a 747 from a signaller using paddles in the runway?)

    Internet routers? Private commercial gear. You gonna EMP every datacentre it passes through when everybody's home kit is totalled anyway?
    Telecoms? Mostly based on those same Internet routers nowadays.
    Looting, fuel pumps, etc... just what happens when there's a hurricane, let alone a nationwide-EMP attack. It rarely turns into anything serious in any country with an operational military.

    Nope, nope, nope. There'll not be a functioning or operational police force let alone military.

    Let's spend hundreds of billions to give ourselves a national tin-foil hat so we can get on the net in case someone detonates a nuclear bomb above the US. That's not really a sensible priority.
    And EMP from natural events are not limited to any one country, are pretty much undefendable for the same reasons, fleeting, and low-level.

    I am not suggesting a solution but you don't realise the magnitude of the problem. People will have a problem even telling what the time is? How many still have mechanical watches? Endless amounts on money wiped out. How many companies could survive just losing the receivables ledger? Have a very good and adequately shielded bug out bag. You will need it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:04PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:04PM (#567748)

    (lol. DO you really expect someone to land a 747 from a signaller using paddles in the runway?)

    So I get there were ILS infrastructure on Hudson river?

    • (Score: 1) by Demena on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:09PM (4 children)

      by Demena (5637) on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:09PM (#567749)

      Stop being silly. Would you get on a plane if it were going to crash land in the Hudson as a regular practice? Could you afford the fare if an aeroplane were a use only once item?

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:16PM (3 children)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:16PM (#567876) Journal

        A total continent-wide loss of electricity due to geomagnetic storm hopefully won't be a regular event.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 1) by Demena on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:36PM (2 children)

          by Demena (5637) on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:36PM (#568135)

          The point is not the loss but the ability to recover. You don't think stuff will work again, just like that, after the event do you? After the event where are you going to get your next watt from when all the generators are burnt out and you have lost the capability to build more. How do you rebuild with no manufacturing capacity remaining?

          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 15 2017, @06:40AM (1 child)

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday September 15 2017, @06:40AM (#568328) Journal

            My post was about the claim that the planes already in the air would not be able to land.

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 2) by Demena on Friday September 15 2017, @07:35AM

              by Demena (5637) on Friday September 15 2017, @07:35AM (#568335)

              Was not my claim. I claim there wouldn't be a functioning system left. I am not sure of the percentage of fly-by-wire aircraft but those would just be totalled. I am pretty sure almost any aircraft except some Chinese and Russian military aircraft would drop out of the sky. Aircraft without much electronics would still work.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:37PM (4 children)

    by mechanicjay (7) <reversethis-{gro ... a} {yajcinahcem}> on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:37PM (#567908) Homepage Journal

    DO you really expect someone to land a 747 from a signaller using paddles in the runway?

    Yup...more or less: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider [wikipedia.org]

    --
    My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
    • (Score: 1) by Demena on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:42PM (3 children)

      by Demena (5637) on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:42PM (#568137)

      No comparison. It still had its electronics I assume. Isn't a 767 a fly-by-wire aircraft? Without power it would be dead in the air.

      • (Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:39PM (2 children)

        by mechanicjay (7) <reversethis-{gro ... a} {yajcinahcem}> on Thursday September 21 2017, @05:39PM (#571280) Homepage Journal
        If you'd bother to actually read the article I'd linked, it explains that a 767 uses hydraulics to manipulate the flight control surfaces. At loss of engine power, all instruments went dead and the ram-air turbine automatically deployed to provide hydraulic pressure for flight control.
        --
        My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
        • (Score: 2) by Demena on Tuesday September 26 2017, @02:25AM (1 child)

          by Demena (5637) on Tuesday September 26 2017, @02:25AM (#572899)

          Point of this? It is irrelevant to what I said. If ypu consider that n economic model then you are just crazy. You are waffling irrelevantly to yourself only.