4 ms·
If you knew it was coming and had a few minutes to prepare, would putting your HDDs and SSDs in a Faraday cage protect them from damage during such an event?
by cobbzilla 8y ago
If you knew it was coming and had a few minutes to prepare, would putting your HDDs and SSDs in a Faraday cage protect them from damage during such an event?
- megous 8y agoWouldn't disconneting from the grid/any other longer cables be enough?
- cobbzilla 8y agoI don’t think you need to be on the grid. A sufficiently large CME would induce currents in any unshielded electrical device. Kind of like an EMP bomb would break most cars by destroying the starter motor.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoTangenital, but your comment reminded me of a Top Gear episode where a car acted as a Faraday cage. Perhaps putting any vulnerable electronics inside your car would be sufficient?
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoOr a biscuit tin or other metal box. Or a fridge. Or a freezer. Cars are very leaky Faraday cages. If they weren't, you wouldn't be able to use your phone inside one. Because of the glass apertures, they can only provide protection from very, very long radio wavelengths - MF, LF, and VLF, all much longer than FM/VHF/UHF/microwave. They'll also (probably) protect you from direct lightning hits, because the discharge passes through the conductive skin and won't usually take a detour through any occupants. Flare events won't affect your phone anyway. Deliberate EMP might, but EMP would quite likely to be a precursor to nuclear war, so keeping your phone working might not be your absolute top priority.
- megous 8y agoYes, but those voltages/currents may be negligible. You can find some numbers online from the past events, like 4V/km of a power grid. That would not kill anything I have at home.
- cobbzilla 8y agoInteresting. Getting quantitative is a great way to put things in perspective. I would love to know that "unplug your stuff" is enough to save it from CME damage. How extreme would a CME have to be for it to "fry" things that are not connected to any power source, like a disconnected, powered-off computer? Is it even possible?
- lenticular 8y agoIt would be extreme enough that the earth would be sterilized of life due to radiation from the solar event, so your electronics won't be a big deal in comparison. The good news is that this won't ever happen. Induction is going to be more or less proportional to the area enclosed by a conductor, which essentially means long transmission lines are the things to worry about. And this is length scales on the order of 10^5 or 10^6 meters, versus 10^-1 meters for your devices.
- int_19h 8y agoNo. CME will only induce currents that are large enough to be noticed (much less damage anything) in very large conductors. You don't need to Faraday cage anything that you own, unless you own parts of the power grid.
- carbocation 8y agoIf so, would a microwave have the appropriate shielding?
- Phlarp 8y agoFreezer is probably better.
- carbocation 8y agoThanks. I hope to never need this information, but I appreciate being able to think it through in advance.
- Phlarp 8y agoI don't actually know this to be 100% true, I base this off the fact that my iphone (and android) still has plenty of reception in my microwave but is entirely cut off when in my freezer. This behavior could be inconsistent across microwaves and freezers and blocking radio communication may not be a suitable proxy for blocking a CME that would be many orders of magnitude more powerful.
- Evidlo 8y agoThese devices are way too small to be damaged by CME.