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posted by martyb on Saturday November 10 2018, @01:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the need-more-fiber-optics dept.

Recently declassified documents suggest that in August 1972, a massive, high-velocity coronal mass ejection caused many sea mines to detonate unexpectedly. A new look is taken at the incident, taking into account more of what is known about the solar activity at the time.

The extreme space weather events of early August 1972 had significant impact on the US Navy, which have not been widely reported. These effects, long buried in the Vietnam War archives, add credence to the severity of the storm: a nearly instantaneous, unintended detonation of dozens of sea mines south of Hai Phong, North Vietnam on 4 August 1972. This event occurred near the end of the Vietnam War. The US Navy attributed the dramatic event to 'magnetic perturbations of solar storms.' In researching these events we determined that the widespread electric‐ and communication‐ grid disturbances that plagued North America and the disturbances in Southeast Asia late on 4 August likely resulted from propagation of major eruptive activity from the Sun to the Earth. The activity fits the description of a Carrington‐class storm minus the low latitude aurora reported in 1859. We provide insight into the solar, geophysical and military circumstances of this extraordinary situation. In our view this storm deserves a scientific revisit as a grand challenge for the space weather community, as it provides space‐age terrestrial observations of what was likely a Carrington‐class storm.

Given that nearly everything is almost fully dependent on electronics and those same electronics are connected to several large networks of copper wire which will act as antennas, what will we do now to mitigate the damage so we are more ready when a similar event occurs again?

From
Space Weather : On the Little‐Known Consequences of the 4 August 1972 Ultra‐Fast Coronal Mass Ejecta: Facts, Commentary and Call to Action
Science Alert : A Solar Storm Detonated Dozens of US Sea Mines, Declassified Navy Documents Reveal


Original Submission

Related Stories

President Signs Executive Order to Strengthen Infrastructure from EMP Attack 82 comments

In what could potentially be one of the most, or least, significant actions of his term in office, President Trump Tuesday signed an Executive Order requiring federal agencies to strengthen critical infrastructure against ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP) attacks.

EMPs occur for a variety of natural and man-made reasons including, most notably, Nuclear Explosions and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), either of which could potentially take out entire sections of the country's electrical grid and other infrastructure and capabilities, requiring require years or decades to recover from.

Members and supporters of the decommissioned US Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse have long warned of the possibility of an EMP attack, with some individuals, such as Peter Pry, who previously led the congressional EMP commission, asserting that an EMP attack on America could kill off 90% of the US population.

This is because a man-made EMP has the advantage of being highly asymmetrical. A small country able to pull one off would cause potentially massive disruption to a large tech dependent country such as the United States.

Past EMP related coverage here, here and here


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by RandomFactor on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:30PM (2 children)

    by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:30PM (#760345) Journal

    There's a lot of information out there on protecting your devices against EMPs and Carrington class CME events. Basically all variations on building Faraday cages and sticking stuff inside.
    I've watched a few out of idle curiosity, but it's really hard to get motivated to go to that much expense and effort.
    Same with stockpiling food and water.
     
    I'm just too damned cheap and lazy to be a proper survivalist.

    --
    В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:42PM

      by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:42PM (#760379) Homepage Journal

      I've seen a lot of people do a lot of talking about EMP proofing their stuff and never seen anyone test it ever with the exception of the US Government.

      How about some of those people build an explosively pumped flux compression generator [wikipedia.org] then we can see if putting a consumer radio inside a metal trashcan, putting the lid on it, electrically tying the lid to the body, then grounding it actually works.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @07:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @07:18PM (#760460)

      tin cookie jars and metal tool-boxes are fine places to keep your usb-sticks and backup-drives in.
      drop in some dead-tree info about yourself and future historians will thank you :)

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by KilroySmith on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:40PM (15 children)

    by KilroySmith (2113) on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:40PM (#760347)

    Well, having lived through it, 1972 wasn't the dark ages. In the US, the country was wired for electricity (all those "large networks of copper wire"), and served by a small handful of large regional grids. Telephone networks were exclusively copper (another "large network of copper"). Every house in the US had a electronic TV, along with other bits of a nascent electronics revolution, none of which were as electrically robust as modern electronics.

    Today, the electric grids are more interconnected - but their lightning / EMP protection networks are much more robust than 50 years ago. The copper telephone network is essentially dead, and what's left has mostly moved to non-conducting optical fiber for everything but the last mile. Cable TV is ubiquitous now - but once again is based on fiber backbones even though the last mile may still be copper (or may be RF in the case of satellite TV). The Internet logically wires everyone together - but is heavily wireless at this point. Even the wired networks that exist in homes / offices (Cat 5 / 6 UTP) are nearly immune to coupling this kind of interference, although it's not clear that the device connections are well protected against high common mode voltages coming in.

    The world of 1972 was a much better reflection of today's world than the world of 1859; and civilization didn't end in 1972. In the modern world, you may lose a few of your iThings, but I don't expect the end of civilization to occur as a result of a CME.

    • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:57PM (12 children)

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @02:57PM (#760349) Journal

      The technology and infrastructure has changed so far beyond what was in use 40 years ago that the fact we survived the pulse back then is not relevant to the current situation.

      The copper phone networks are sure on their way out but the old electro-mechanical phones of 1972 but they were also fairly resilent in respect to voltage surges. Today's 5V or 3.3V phones, if you have them, are quite sensitive. Every thing else seems to be connected to Ethernet and that's still copper and that usually goes throughout whole buildings if not also much of each business park or university, even with the advent of glass fiber. It'd be interesting to try to guess how many more miles / km of copper we have now than back then. But whether it is more or less, it's still a lot and can pick up a lot of charge in the right conditions. USB cables count too.

      Cars and other vehicles are filled with essential components that won't tolerate a small surge either, maxing out at 3.3V DC or 5V DC.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
      • (Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:39PM (3 children)

        by KilroySmith (2113) on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:39PM (#760354)

        So how much energy can be coupled into a 1m USB cable? Or into an unconnected cellphone? How robust is the ESD protection on the pin of a modern IC, compared with a 1970's vintage IC? How good are 100Base-T and 1000Base-T transceivers at rejecting common-mode voltages on the order of several kV? How about the ports on your average Cisco 24-port switch?

        If you don't have at least a reasonable guess on the answers to those questions, you're letting someone drive you with fear.

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:48PM (2 children)

          by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:48PM (#760384) Homepage Journal

          How robust is the ESD protection on the pin of a modern IC, compared with a 1970's vintage IC?

          Really good in fact. Any ESD used to be a death sentence in the 70s but I've personally accidentally sent 1/2" long lightning bolts from my fingers into everything from a $1 microcontroller chip to a $5,000 sun raid card through my early career starting in the late 90s. I've never ruined anything with ESD. I do follow proper precaution when I can now especially with expensive computer gear but i've never personally had a failure despite my best attempts.

          • (Score: 5, Interesting) by KilroySmith on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:44PM (1 child)

            by KilroySmith (2113) on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:44PM (#760412)

            I've been in factories in Taiwan and China building modern laptops. It's entertaining to go by the ESD prototype test stations, where there's a person sitting there zapping every available pin on every available port 10 times in a row with an ESD gun set at 15 KV (about a 1" spark). Zap, Zap, Zap. It really gives you a much better feel for the robustness of modern electronics.

            • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:18AM

              by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:18AM (#760570) Journal

              That sounds much better than a while back when just touching the leads could kill the devices even if the discharge was too small to be felt. I'm quite glad there has been improvement in that area. I do still see a lot of 3.3V devices that will burnout if provided overvoltage, so the question would still be where the vulnerable equipment is being used and how pervasive it is. However, caution is different from fear. There is potential for fear mongering here while at the same time potential to avoid an unnecessary mess. It's very much about presentation and dialog I suppose.

              --
              Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
      • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:02PM (5 children)

        by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:02PM (#760363)

        Cars and other vehicles are filled with essential components that won't tolerate a small surge either, maxing out at 3.3V DC or 5V DC.

        Cars have terrible electrical systems compared to other environments. Pretty much anything design to go into a car is already built like a brick shithouse in expectation that the electrical system is going to be noisy and somewhat unpredictable. Not to mention the whole "EMP kills all the modern cars" meme is a great plot device, but it's also pure fiction.

        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:27PM (4 children)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:27PM (#760436) Journal

          Also I think most cars are still made of steel, which gives a great Faraday cage.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:15AM

            by dry (223) on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:15AM (#760568) Journal

            One of the Only places at home I get cell reception is in my truck, in a cubby hole under the dash. That ungrounded metal cage works great as an antenna.

          • (Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Monday November 12 2018, @03:54AM (2 children)

            by KilroySmith (2113) on Monday November 12 2018, @03:54AM (#760800)

            With those gigantic glass windows, it's not a Faraday cage, and probably has essentially zero affect on incoming RF.

            • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 12 2018, @06:40AM (1 child)

              by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday November 12 2018, @06:40AM (#760823) Journal

              I don't know about your car, but in the cars I know there are no windows into the engine bay.

              --
              The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
              • (Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Monday November 12 2018, @03:58PM

                by KilroySmith (2113) on Monday November 12 2018, @03:58PM (#760941)

                True - but the entire bottom of the engine compartment is open, along with the seams between the hood and fenders, as well as the cooling openings at the front. It's better than nothing, but not much, and might protect the ECU somewhat.

                Unfortunately, the body computer (which controls unlocking the doors, communications with the key, etc) tend to be in the passenger compartment, which does have the gigantic windows...

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:52PM (1 child)

        by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:52PM (#760450) Homepage Journal

        FEMA actually tested standard consumer and light duty commercial vehicles for EMP sensitivity so they could estimate the number of vehicles that would be available after a major EMP event like a nuclear bombing.

        They found that 50% of modern vehicles would not start after being hit with their EMP generator. They considered the 50% failure rate to be rather good and acceptable.

        The EMP sensitivity of the vehicles is drastically reduced by the fact that all car electronics requires extreme filtering already and that the vehicle body itself helps act as a Faraday cage.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Tuesday November 13 2018, @03:31AM

          by toddestan (4982) on Tuesday November 13 2018, @03:31AM (#761141)

          The study I'm aware of showed most cars and trucks are pretty resilient against EMP damage. If the vehicle was not running, there was no damage at all. If the vehicle was running, the EMP blast might cause the vehicle to stop running (requiring the engine be restarted) or cause some other electrical glitches that wouldn't render the car undrivable. Only a couple of vehicles tested were damaged to the point where they needed repair. Meanwhile, there were several vehicles that were completely unaffected.

          Source: http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf [empcommission.org] (see page 115)

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:45PM

      by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:45PM (#760382) Homepage Journal

      although it's not clear that the device connections are well protected against high common mode voltages coming in.

      The average consumer network gear I think has no protection against common mode at all. Ethernet signaling is balanced and should be using double-ended signaling across the cable but most if not all consumer (not sure about enterprise and commercial) grade network gear lacks a balun on the physical interface and is not using double-ended signaling internally.

      I know this because 100mbit network gear has harmonics right inside the ham radio 2 meter band around 145 mhz and it is extremely annoying. I have to put chokes on the cables to stop them from acting as antennas because of the unbalanced energy transfer. Those bastards.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:47PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:47PM (#760415)

      one would think, that a downed 20kV grid "wire" is not a problem if ripped down by a back-hoe.
      but just taking a step (on earth) creates a voltage difference between your left leg and your right leg and will kill you if you leave the back-hoe.
      the only "safe" way is to move in hops.
      i suppose with a gigantic "spot source" (a non-zero singularity?) in the sky it becomes the reason why a open-wire will test for a voltage difference between the ends ...

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:56PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @03:56PM (#760360) Journal

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074285/ [imdb.com]

    Carrie did it!

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:12PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:12PM (#760394) Journal

      In reality, I had a REALLY bad case of the shits for a while then.

      Butterfly and snowball effect.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:35PM (2 children)

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:35PM (#760376) Homepage Journal

    Given that nearly everything is almost fully dependent on electronics and those same electronics are connected to several large networks of copper wire which will act as antennas, what will we do now to mitigate the damage so we are more ready when a similar event occurs again?

    This is not a new problem and the solutions to it are known now. Also space weather causes other problems besides things on the surface of the earth. Expect a major space weather event to degrade communication and other satellites and to impact a great deal of things for us entirely unrelated to wires on the ground.

    Equipment does not have to be negatively influenced by stray energy like this. The properties of the system (the device and it's wires) that make it sensitive to space weather are similar and overlap with those that make them sensitive to EMP. Protection from both cosmic energy and EMP is achievable but it is extremely expensive. Consumers nearly universally would not pay the premium for this protection. Industry generally will not elect on their own to pay for it either; some industry may have that as a strict requirement though. The military is the most likely place to find this kind of protection but not even all of their gear will do it.

    The "people in charge" made a decision and consumers go along with it. That decision was the cost of protecting against this outweighs the benefit of that protection for nearly all use cases. That'll be fine until something major happens and people die. I don't know if that is going to happen with the next major event or not.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:03PM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:03PM (#760388) Journal

      I've a whole plant full of equipment. Some of that equipment uses 50 year old technology, while we have (in some cases) almost identical equipment sitting next to it, that uses state of the art electronics.

      When we have a power fluctuation, it's the modern stuff that crashes first. In days gone by, I could visually see the lights flicker - sometimes they would be out for half a second to maybe even a second. I would walk the plant, checking on things, and maybe one or two items would be down. Today, the power fluctuation may be so momentary that I can't even see it. But, half of our equipment will crash. My first clue that something happened is listening to the alarms from the chiller and the air compressor. Once those raucous alarms start blaring, the various machines chime in with their more musical tones. The old stuff never even notices.

      • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:24PM

        by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:24PM (#760400) Homepage Journal

        I bet a voltage sag on one of the many or the main oscillator puts it into a condition it can't ever get back from.

        That equipment should have watchdogs on it that cause them to go through the initial power on sequence again if it is that delicate.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:52PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:52PM (#760419)

    so the light emitted by the sun takes 8 min to reach earth. the sun is massive and the earth is tiny.
    the earth has a pretty solid magnetic field.
    the pretty pictures we see how solar winds deform earths magnetic field might be exaggerated and too artistic?
    but how do solar event LINGER in the solar system? my limited knowledge tells me that nothing else this close to the sun has any meaningful magnetic field ... so the earth MIGHT have a influence on the sun (in reverse?)
    the electron is not as tiny compared to the nucleus as earth is to the sun but might a solar disturbance actually feel if it's "disturbing" towards earth or just empty space?

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:33PM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday November 10 2018, @06:33PM (#760441) Journal

      The disturbance is through the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that is emitted by the sun. And being charged, they interact with the magnetic field of the earth. The magnetic fields of the sun certainly are negligible at the earth, but they affect the solar wind, which then disturbs the earth magnetic field.

      The earth doesn't emit charged particles, neither towards the sun nor otherwise, and therefore it won't affect the sun.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @07:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @07:29PM (#760463)

      sunspots certainly 'feel' that they are looking at earth - as more sun-spots enter than leave the earth-facing side of sol. Suspicious0bservers/youtube had a page from a 100+yo study/book in their vids just yesterday(?); CMEs (up to half lightspeed) also seem to not be in arbitrary directions. Lingering happens cause its all a plasma/electric system, as we're discovering.

      not that knowing any of this will help us if/as we get hit and loose our babel-tech.

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday November 10 2018, @11:49PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @11:49PM (#760518) Homepage Journal

      The time delay is important. We can see the sun as it was a mere nine minutes ago. But it takes a lot longer for a coronal mass ejection to get here. So a chance of seeing them coming and can take precautions such a shutting down and disconnecting the parts of our infrastructure at risk. We'll be offline for a while, but much of it will be intact afterward.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Saturday November 10 2018, @11:28PM (5 children)

    by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @11:28PM (#760515) Journal

    that it takes out my laptop or cellphone. Yeah, those things suck, but I actually remember a time before such things existed. We could mostly make due, although it would admittedly be funny as hell watching the latest generation try to read an actual *map*
     
    The larger problem is that it takes out the electrical grid completely, blowing transformers by the hundreds. Recovery would take decades (those transformers can take a couple of years to build in normal times.)
    .
    There's a nice writeup here showing some storm scenarios and areas at risk of grid collapse https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/finalBoulderPresentation042611%20%281%29.pdf [noaa.gov]
    .
    .
    .
    Looking around a bit for CME's that actually noticeably affected the Earth, there isn't a perfect list (or Google has downranked out of existence for being too static), but this is what i gathered up from a number of sources:
    .
    1859 (Carrington) Telegraphs keep working when unplugged.
    1882 Telegraphs and telephones disrupted
    1921 Damage to telegraph systems in Northern and Southern hemespheres and undersea cables (they had those in the 20s?). Interestingly radio reception improved due to ionosphere activation.
    1972 Blew up mines during the war
    1989 Powergrid in Quebec taken out, Canadian stock market trading stopped, astronauts eyes feel burning sensation
    2003 (The Halloween Storms) satellites damaged, spacecraft/instruments had to be shut down temporarily, power outage in Sweden, transformers destroyed in S. Africa.
    2012 (extreme storm near miss...)
    2014 (largely mitigated by Earth's magnetic field, nice light show)

    Ballpark this is about one significant Earth affecting CME every 25 years. Carrington was 10x > than the 1989 event which took out power in North Eastern North America, which is the most recent one of significance.
    We'll call Carrington class a once a century solar storm.

    --
    В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @02:17AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @02:17AM (#760547)

      they had those in the 20s?

      There were already undersea cables in the mid-19th century. There was a cable connecting Great Britain to the continent in 1851, and the first cable connecting Britain to North America was laid in 1866. (I recommend Arthur C. Clarke’s How the World Was One as a readable history of the early work in establishing worldwide telegraph communications, among other things.)

      • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Sunday November 11 2018, @03:32PM

        by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 11 2018, @03:32PM (#760649) Journal

        Thanks, I'll check it out.

        --
        В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
    • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:27AM (2 children)

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:27AM (#760573) Journal

      The larger problem is that it takes out the electrical grid completely, blowing transformers by the hundreds. Recovery would take decades (those transformers can take a couple of years to build in normal times.)

      It depends on the country and if they have a grid robust enough to be able to bootstrap if it all goes down at once. From what I read, many require live adjacent networks to online or they cannot be brought back up. So recovery of just the electricity from major failure would take centuries, if ever. The just-in-time nature of the supply chain in regards to food means it is quite brittle. Water is a little more robust in many places but that just means violent, angry, hungry people going after eachother if the supply of food is disrupted sufficiently.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:31AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:31AM (#760609)

        "centuries"? really? it was built from scratch less than a century ago! what is wrong with you?

        • (Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Sunday November 11 2018, @10:12AM

          by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 11 2018, @10:12AM (#760611) Journal

          "centuries"? really? it was built from scratch less than a century ago! what is wrong with you?

          If a whole continent goes down, it will take a concerted effort from the population of the remaining continents (assuming there are any) to wipe out the remaining bands of rabble and colonize. Even if they want to help them rebuilt there are still the bands of rabble to content with.

          If electricity were out for a full week in your region, just how well would any aspect of your society hold together? Water? Sanitation? Food? Other infrastructure? How well will the populace react to the abscence of it all? I'm guessing that their reaction woud be 'uncivilized'.

          If all continents go down simultaneously, then it's game over. We've pulled up that ladder after us. There is no way to roll back to an earlier stage such as agrarian or hunter-gatherer. Even if there were, which resources can be rebuilt from nothing?

          --
          Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
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