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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?


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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:20PM (3 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:20PM (#567882) Journal

    I don't think there were millions of Cro-Magnon men who had to be fed.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:05PM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:05PM (#567975)

    There were a lot of them. But they were raised from day one in areas and lifestyles that matched the tech of the day.

    An EMP near Vegas in summer would cause 99.9% of the population to die.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:53PM (1 child)

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday September 14 2017, @07:53PM (#568044) Journal

      An EMP near Vegas in summer would cause 99.9% of the population to die.

      Only if there were no one in California or Utah who could hop in a car and go get them out. For everyone else, there's long pig [urbandictionary.com].

      --
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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:16PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:16PM (#569035)

        Sir, I have obtained for myself a quantity of long pig, and I am writing to you to request a copy of your plans for turning said long pig into a functioning air conditioning unit. Please reply ASAP.