Earth Dodged Massive Solar Storm In 2012

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Earth Dodged Massive Blast From the Sun and this is the link click here!

Yikes! 12% chance of it happening again in 10 years.

Strange her heard about narrowly dodging the apocalypse in 2012...

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would be devastating beyond imagination because we are so dependent on our technology for survival. The problem could be successfully addressed by taking the measures to harden our power grid. But our government, by and large, doesn't seem to feel it's a high priority. Currently there is legislation (The SHIELD Act) which has passed the House and is now being reviewed by a subcommittee. Sadly, I suspect it will meet the fate of all the other bills that were introduced to deal with this important issue.

Such a storm knocked out the Canadian power grid a number of years ago. Nowadays we are very vulnerable to solar flares / storms. If a major one hits us nowadays it will likely cause substantial damage to satellites knocking out everything from GPS to television, internet and telephone communications, not to mention all the other scientific research satellites and military satellites.

Just stumbled on this article which gives more details:

It would make a cracking good movie. Everyone's cell phone quits working, and they all crawl under their beds to cry.

I read a book last year entitled, "One Second After," about the aftermath of an EMP attack -- scary stuff! Perhaps if they made that into a movie it would raise enough public awareness about this issue to force our government to take it more seriously. I'm not someone who worries about apocalyptic scenarios all that much, but having researched the topic thoroughly, I believe action needs to be taken to avoid a major catastrophe. The cost would would nothing compared to the unnecessary wars the U.S. has waged over the past 13 years.

An article in IEEE Spectrum magazine covered this some time ago, specifically the threat to any country's grid system.

As I recall, one of the ideas suggested was to ground the iron core of transformers used to convert voltages at various parts of the system. Again, as I recall, another big problem is that for at least the United States we do not have the manufacturing capability to replace all the power transformers that would be damaged, nor are there enough spare transformers in waiting. Another suggestion by the author of the article would be to do that, the government pay to build spares, which would have the side effect of adding capacity.

Concerning electronics, for military products there are ways to reduce and eliminate the damage caused by a nuclear blast. I would assume that these methods could apply to this as well, and applied to consumer electronics, or automotive electronics. Basically, you don't want a low impedance path from the two rails of a power supply. You assume that all semiconductors become a short for some duration of time and estimate what damage occurs, then try to alleviate by design change. The solution to improve survivability is often as simple as inserting resistors in various locations, but at the cost of decreased efficiency - we would increase power consumption, pollution, and greenhouse gases by this move.

The same article in IEEE noted that around 1858 a sunspot cycle caused all sorts of issues with the telegraph system.

If action is going to be taken, it's going to have to be like the action that's been taken on our teetering economy-- One person, one family, one household at a time.

People think I'm insane. My father-in-law called it OCD, my hubby calls it PTSD or says it's an autism thing that I should really do something about...

Whatever. It's going to be too late when we are sitting unarmed, in the dark, without an Internet to look instructions up on, and I'm saying "I told you so" by oil lamp light waiting for the (armed) neighbors to show up, kill us, and take what I've put by. Then they're all going to be looking at me saying, "Why didn't you have us ready for this??" And I'm going to say, "I tried."

Hubby grew up in the Fort Myers 'burbs, where guns were for criminals to kill people with. He's completely and utterly uncomfortable with them.

Ironically, his mother (who was so anti-gun that she didn't even allow toy ones) now wants a CCW. I guess the criminals got too numerous for her). She's moving in next week. Maybe she'll help me change his mind.

Eventually we will be down to tallow candles, I guess. Or beeswax. But not until the lamp oil runs out. I'm discussing immediate aftermate, and I've put up quite a bit. Also you know what they say about paraffin candles-- "buy 'em cheap, stack 'em deep."

I caught a "Going Out of Business" sale at a close-out store several years ago. I bought 'em for 25 cents a box, and filled three Sterilite boxes. Now I pick them up here and there to replenish the supply, and concentrate on putting up lamp oil (so much nicer).

Guess if I were REALLY smart, I'd have a solar array, batteries, inverter, and all the rest of it tucked in a Faraday box somewhere-- yeah, WAY out-of-bounds.

They think I'm crazy and that I make no compromises as-is. I guess that's because I don't talk about half the stuff I think about, or bring up half of the things I'd LIKE to do.