52 ms·

How prepared are we for the next giant solar flare?

181 points by firebaze 6y ago

mfer 6y ago
> “a CME the size of the 1859 Carrington Event would, if not prepared for, effectively level the power grid of the United States... CME refers to coronal mass ejections[1]. The 1859 Carrington Event is a case where one of these happened[2]. The US power grid is susceptible to some real damage from one of these. It would take a long time to fix. The US, at least, isn't prepared. [1] https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/coronal-mass-ejections https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/coronal-mass-ejections [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Part of the power grid in the USA isn’t even prepared for a chilly week, as we just found out. First rule of infrastructure funding: Don’t actually spend it on infrastructure. Just pocket it as profits and when things fall apart, say we never could have seen this coming or prepared. Isn’t that what everyone does when a bridge falls down, a gas line explodes, or an oil pipe leaks?
  - dctoedt 6y ago
    > First rule of infrastructure funding: Don’t actually spend it on infrastructure. Just pocket it as profits and when things fall apart, say we never could have seen this coming or prepared. And the corollary: After things fall apart, ask for a taxpayer bailout.
    - harry8 6y ago
      Still no big anti-corruption coalition. Some of that money will be spent to buy the politicians with lobbying, campaign contributions, media focus on tribal culture wars. The anti-corruption view that has massive support gets none of that and gets nowhere, at least yet.
      - auslegung 6y ago
        I think this video will encourage you. Well actually maybe it will discourage you, but the follow up video will encourage you :D Corruption is Legal in America: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        This is because most people think that Congress/institutions as a whole are dirty, but ask them about their congressperson and support shoots up significantly. If we can’t analyze our own choices as potentially contributing to the system, including not voting (which is more of an endorsement of whatever happens rather than a denial of approval), then we cannot move forward.
        20after4 6y ago
        Not voting is most certainly not an endorsement of whatever happens. That’s ridiculous.
        bobthepanda 6y ago
        Is it not? The US doesn't require minimum turnout for elections, so not voting just amplifies the power of the people who actually vote. It is in effect a tacit endorsement, unless you're trying to effect legal or regime change in addition to not voting. As far as "my vote doesn't matter", this is quite silly considering how the last two elections featured electoral votes won by ever thinner margins, and that even at the presidential level with the highest turnout most people don't vote, to say nothing of state local elections, primaries, etc. https://i.redd.it/p0z5srsw7py51.png https://i.redd.it/p0z5srsw7py51.png
        coolgeek 6y ago
        You're right that it's not an endorsement. But it's functionally equivalent
    - mmmBacon 6y ago
      Corollary to the corollary: After taxpayer bailout, raise rates to cover costs associated with new infrastructure.
king_magic 6y ago
My god, Forbes ads are so obnoxious.
- vertis 6y ago
  Forbes has ads?
  - covermydonkey 6y ago
    I have quite the adblocking setup for my network and browser. Every now and then I get a glimpse of what the bulk of humanity has to endure on websites. I can't believe the difference. Those of us who enjoy an ad free Internet experience a completely different Internet lifestyle.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  Yeah. I'm on a tablet - about 60% of the horizontal space is lost to padding and ads/whitespace, and after a minute of reading a video moves in bottom-left with no close button, scooping up 25% of the screen. Effectively, only 30% (!) of the surface are used for displaying content. What an utter disgrace. And the data volume that is wasted for all of this nonsense... There's a reason why mobile ads are so much more expensive - it is extremely hard to block them. Chrome and AOSP webkit don't support any kind of adblocking plugins, and editing /etc/hosts requires rooting (which gets ever harder and harder) or weird VPN/fake VPN solutions that have their own massive security and battery life implications.
  - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    There is the possibility to block them via a pihole. I never tried it myself so I do not know about the effectiveness and false positives.
    - jfim 6y ago
      Pihole works pretty well. I have it set up on a VPN, and the difference between regular internet and no ads internet on mobile is pretty impressive. As a bonus, it blocks ads in native apps too.
hikerclimber 6y ago
hopefully not. I hope this happens this year so the U.S. power grid gets knocked out.
intrepidhero 6y ago
GIC[0] is a pretty interesting risk factor but popular reporting on it is not great. The posted article has some interesting history on the Carrington event and good details on what CMEs are but falls down on when talking about the risk to the power system. Example: "The power grids of most countries would be completely and effectively leveled. The top way to mitigate the effects of such a flare would be through increased grounding, so that the large currents that would otherwise flow through grid wires would instead flow directly into the Earth. Every time power companies attempt to do this, however, what winds up happening instead is that the conducting substance used for grounding (such as copper) is stolen for its material value." Power grids would not be "completely leveled". And "grounding" is not the issue (although yeah, copper theft is a thing). Source[1] states that Hydro-Quebec tripped for over current on long transmission lines. This has nothing to do with inadequate grounding and the solution was to increase the over current settings because the system could handle the induced current. The system was restored in 9 hours. Another event[2] listed resulted in "disturbances" across a large geographic area: a voltage collapse and unusual power flow but not outages. If the induced current was much higher the system would trip off to protect itself while the GIC lasted. This could take a while to recover from if it was a wide spread outage but we're not talking a civilization ending event like headlines suggest. What power companies are most concerned about are damaged transformers. Replacement transformers (at transmission levels anyway) are very expensive and have months to years long lead time so if a few get damaged restoration could take a very long time. But we have literature[3][4] that tells us what transformer designs are susceptible to overheating due to GIC. TLDR: Most modern transformers will be fine. What I'm more concerned about are satellites. I don't know how many satellites would be disabled and are at risk of collision. That sounds bad. What critical things rely on satellite infrastructure? GPS seems like a big one. Power systems use GPS timing, in some cases to enable differential current protection. But usually these systems will default to impedance protection on a loss of GPS signal and at any rate the industry is probably moving to terrestrial time sources because of the risk of GPS spoofing anyway. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_August_1972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_August_1972 [3] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6281595 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6281595 [4] https://www.pes-psrc.org/kb/published/reports/GIC%20Presentation%20at%20PSRC%2005%2014%202014.pdf https://www.pes-psrc.org/kb/published/reports/GIC%20Presenta... Source: I have worked on GIC monitoring systems at a major transmission company. But the opinions expressed are my own, etc, etc.
watertom 6y ago
How prepared are we for any large scale natural event? Not prepared at all. It's costs money to be prepared for things that might not ever happen. No CEO ever got fired for choosing profits, no CEO ever will get fired for choosing profits.
- nullserver 6y ago
  What would life look like if we tried to be 100% prepared for all contingencies? Probably similar to people living in a cave and refusing to leave it out of fear. Rebuilding after disasters is a tried and true method.
  - projectileboy 6y ago
    That approach was not incredibly effective in New Orleans in 2005.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      It's not incredibly effective for the disasters that happen, no. It still may be the right approach, though. There are many possible disasters. Being prepared for all of them takes all your time and resources - more than all, in fact. We don't have enough time and resources to prepare for all possible disasters. So we put more effort into preparing for the most likely ones, and sometimes one of the less likely ones gets us. Note that there are more "less likely" scenarios than there are "more likely" ones. Also note that, after a disaster has occurred, it suddenly seems very probable, which makes it look like we mis-evaluated which risks were likely. On the other hand, sometimes we really do mis-evaluate or under-prepare. It's hard, in advance, to get the balance right. And even if we did, after a disaster we say "yeah, should have seen that one coming".
      - the_gastropod 6y ago
        Using Texas as an example again: 10 years ago, 1M+ Texans lost power due to unusually cold temperatures. Last week, the same thing happened. This wasn't some unpredictable event. It just wasn't considered sufficiently profitable to prepare.
benibela 6y ago
I just made a backup of my files on DVD for that But I do not think it worked. It did burn for 20 minutes and the DVD changed its color, but then the laptop reports the DVD is still empty
- GnarfGnarf 6y ago
  Before backing up, generate an MD5 checksum file for all the files you are backing up. Then verify the backup by re-calculating and comparing the checksums on the DVD. This way you can verify the disk at any point in the future.
  - mjevans 6y ago
    Or store PAR2 repair files with the data as well.
    - benibela 6y ago
      Or these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25902030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25902030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25805548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25805548
  - benibela 6y ago
    But there are no checksums from the DVD, because there are no files on the DVD I have actually tried it multiple times over six hours, and now I have burned three DVDs without files on them
calebm 6y ago
I believe this is one of the most likely large-scale doomsday scenarios for our time. "One second after" is a good fiction book on the topic.
- lgats 6y ago
  great book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After
- exhilaration 6y ago
  I picked up a series on Audible with the same theme called Trackers, mostly because it was 33 hours of audio for a single credit: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Trackers-Series-Box-Set-Audiobook/1982605332 https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Trackers-Series-Box-Set-Audio... It's not going to win the Nobel Prize in Literature but it was interesting, made you think about how quickly society might fall apart after an EMP attack.
boringg 6y ago
How about for the next Tunguska event?
- meepmorp 6y ago
  Most of the earth’s surface is still unpopulated, we’re probably fine assuming the same blast size. Even over a population center, it’s a local problem. Otoh, there’s a lot of risk from human factors, especially if over a city. With the right placement and timing, it could trigger a nuclear exchange.
  - avaldeso 6y ago
    > Even over a population center, it’s a local problem. Local? An impact in any large city with financial or industrial hubs would have global scale effects. NYC, Tokio, Shenzhen, London, Beijing, Shanghai. Throw a rock at any of those and the world will devolve into chaos.
    - meepmorp 6y ago
      Yeah, but most cities aren't global commerce centers, and the ones that are take up relatively little area compared to the total planet. We could lose most of the cities on earth with largely local impact. NYC would be a problem, but what about Buffalo? Even most national capitals aren't that important globally.
- vkou 6y ago
  The best way to prepare for that is to go outside, and enjoy the sunshine. You'll either be killed in the immediate blast, or, far more likely, not have your life be impacted at all.
- elihu 6y ago
  I think about 95% of preparing for Tunguska-type events is to be able to see it coming before it hits, so you can get out of the way or hunker down. I'm not sure where we are on that front in general, but the collapse of Arecibo means we've lost our most powerful terrestrial asteroid-tracking radar system. http://www.naic.edu/ao/scientist-user-portal/planetary-sciences http://www.naic.edu/ao/scientist-user-portal/planetary-scien... It's also worth noting that there's a reasonably good chance that we might prevent one or more future Tunguska events by spotting asteroids not right before the collide, but much earlier when they're on a trajectory that will eventually collide with Earth years or centuries in the future.
dml2135 6y ago
How would one go about protecting their own personal backups from something like this? Would a hard-drive be fine if it is just not plugged in at the time? Or would it need to be stored in some sort of faraday cage?
- lrem 6y ago
  A safe in the cellar, under the 4 weeks worth of food and water reserve, seems about right.
- monkeynotes 6y ago
  Faraday cages around anything electronic that you care about. Honestly though, your digital media is going to be the last thing you are going to care about as you are starving to death with no water, heat, power, and armed people roaming the streets looking to take all your provisions. Your faraday or powered down devices also won't prevent them getting destroyed in a neighbourhood going up in fire either.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  I think it would be safe. In the Carrington event the damage was caused by currents induced in long wires. Of course we have a lot more long wires now so the problems would be correspondingly larger. I suspect that more damage would be caused by secondary effects than the direct effect of the induced currents. Some power lines would trip out and this would add extra load to other circuits which would trip out even if not affected by the direct effects of coronal mass ejection. In a poorly designed or poorly maintained power distribution system this will cause a cascade of failure that can disable power supplies and communications over a huge area. This sort of cascading failure happened in the US North East in 2003, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003. See https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0902magnetic-storm-disrupts-telegraphy-carrington-event/ https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0902magnetic-storm-disrupts-te... for some first hand comments.
- jaycroft 6y ago
  The danger from CMEs comes from very very large scale current loops (thousands of miles in perimeter, hundreds of square miles in enclosed area). The issue is a slowly varying but intense change in magnetic flux. We're not talking even as strong as the earth's magnetic field, but over a large encircled area you can get one hell of an EMF. This is bad for power lines. This can also be bad for thousand foot tall AM radio towers and their conductive guywires. This is not a problem for your cell phone. Your hard drive, even if it is legacy spinning metal in a live laptop disconnected from your wall power will not notice any more than it will notice you setting your credit card down on the palm rest, from some basic order of magnitude on the change in dB/dt.
monkeynotes 6y ago
The idea of the internet being completely crippled, submarine cables fried, data centers zapped, backup power gone, is terrifying in itself. Almost every supply chain depends on modern communications. Everything we do is so embedded and dependent on technology losing power would just be scratching the surface of numerous catastrophic disasters. Nuclear power station meltdowns... oof.
- hollerith 6y ago
  >submarine cables fried All submarine cables laid down in the last 20 years use fiber-optics, which isn't susceptible to solar flares like copper cables are.
  - lgats 6y ago
    many submarine cables have powered repeaters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable#Optical_telecommunications_cables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable... Repeaters are powered by a constant direct current passed down the conductor near the centre of the cable, so all repeaters in a cable are in series. Power feed equipment is installed at the terminal stations. Typically both ends share the current generation with one end providing a positive voltage and the other a negative voltage. A virtual earth point exists roughly halfway along the cable under normal operation. The amplifiers or repeaters derive their power from the potential difference across them. The voltage passed down the cable is often anywhere from 3000 to 15,000VDC at a current of up to 1,100mA, with the current increasing with decreasing voltage; the current at 10,000VDC is up to 1,650mA. Hence the total amount of power sent into the cable is often up to 16.5kW.
    - hollerith 6y ago
      Thank you for that. So, contrary to my first comment, a strong enough solar flare will probably destroy the submarine cables -- unless the sea water shields them.
    - conk 6y ago
      Would a solar flare induce enough current/voltage on these cable to actually cause a problem? Also by their nature of being under an ocean of conductive salt water wouldn’t there be some form of grounding providing protection?
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- deleted 6y ago
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snug 6y ago
There is a show on Apple TV+ called "For all mankind," (without spoiling) the latest season has a solar flare event, wonder if this is what prompted this article. Anyways, it's a really great show and recommend anyone watch it if they are interested in the space race to the moon.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  I'm only a few episodes in and I'm really impressed so far. It's probably the best show that no one I know has actually watched. I really enjoy how it feels almost like a documentary at times, but there's still suspense because you don't know which outcomes will diverge from what happened in our reality.
  - Austin_Conlon 6y ago
    > It's probably the best show that no one I know has actually watched. I feel the same way about other shows on the platform like Servant and Ted Lasso. Apple TV+ is clearly an underdog in streaming, but the quality is high.
    - snug 6y ago
      Exactly! Apple TV+ is a sleeping giant. So hooked on Servant. Ted Lasso is one of the best Sitcoms (if that's what this is called) in a long time. Also don't forget about "See", which I laughed at, at first, but it's actually really good. Defending Jacob, Palmer (movie), and The Morning Show (which I still need to start)
- andymal 6y ago
  Check out the movie too! It's a documentary of a bunch of the Apollo missions. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097372/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097372/
  - snug 6y ago
    I think these might be based on two different sorties. The show on Apple TV is fictional/alt history
hiimtroymclure 6y ago
Are we ever prepared for anything?
JabavuAdams 6y ago
Are there studies or technical resources on what kinds of E and B fields, as well as other radiation to expect at the Earth's surface due to a CME? I'd like to take a quantitative approach to evaluating and designing mitigations.
macintux 6y ago
Disclaimer: this is all far outside my wheelhouse. But IIRC, the task of preparing our grid for another Carrington Event isn’t all that dissimilar from protecting it against an EMP attack, and last I read it was remarkably cheap. Certainly dramatically cheaper than the F-35 program. I seem to recall it was so cheap Congress could practically pay for it with change found in the couch.
- wrycoder 6y ago
  If that's the case, why doesn't Congress pass enabling legislation for DOE regulations that would require the power industry to provide the necessary protection and spares within a defined time frame?
- tchock23 6y ago
  I seem to recall reading it was around $500 million to do in the US, but can’t find where I read that. If true, that seems like a tiny amount for insurance against something like this.
  - macintux 6y ago
    That's the price tag I've seen before as well, which seems like the kind of investment that should have been made a decade ago. I didn't have the stomach to read more about it, but someone in the DOE(?) in the last administration came up with a plan to improve the grid, but because some portion of that story involved renewable energy (thus lessening the need for coal) it was dropped like a hot potato. (I could have some portion of that wrong; I simply get too depressed reading about that cesspool.)
nosmokewhereiam 6y ago
Cool solar activity dashboard: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/electric-power-community-dashboard https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/electric-power-communi... "Space Cyberspace Weatherman" really is a possible future job more and more.
rpcope1 6y ago
Maybe of interest in this thread, there is some current regulation in the U.S. for handling GMDs that might be induced by a CME, called TPL-007. Power operators have to start collecting data, like magnetic field data, to plan and understand how GICs may affect their grid. The hope is that in the event of another major event like Carrington, power operators would be given enough time to react before damage is done, and avoid the largest consequences. Disclosure: I work for one of the major providers for GMD/GIC solutions: Computational Physics, Inc.
- mrhyyyyde 6y ago
  Could you do me (and others) a favor and not speak in acronyms, not meaning to sound combative, just the 2 seconds of someone passing over your comment they're likely to gloss over whatever you said because of the time it would take to search into the terms and find the correct ones. Thank you!
  - Cederfjard 6y ago
    I had already went and done the search when I saw this comment. I think GMD is Geomagnetic Disturbance, and GIC Geomagnetically Induced Current.
  - randmeerkat 6y ago
    Or if you do speak in acronyms, please define them in parenthesis if they’re being used for the first time in the thread.
gorgoiler 6y ago
I heard on the radio that it’s number 4 on the UK government’s list of things to worry about. Sorry to be data free; it was an interesting factoid though.
- polycaster 6y ago
  Do you happen to remember number 1 to 3?
  - elihu 6y ago
    I'm going to take an uneducated wild guess that the others are nuclear war, climate change, and pandemics.
- Mvandenbergh 6y ago
  I don't know about ranking but: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/644968/UK_National_Risk_Register_2017.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... page 35 it is on the national risk register. Here is the preparedness strategy (from 2015): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/449593/BIS-15-457-space-weather-preparedness-strategy.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... The GB network tends to have relatively short lines and has used a GIC resistant transformer design since the 1990s so would probably only lose 1% or so of its transformers in a Carrington event. Three phase transformers with five limb cores are particularly vulnerable and have not been installed since 1997 on the GB grid.
PicassoCTs 6y ago
> How Prepared Are We for the Next Giant Solar Flare? As well prepared as we were for the Next Big pandemic. We even have a whole ideological system to shirk responsibility and run unchecked into disaster. Every nation on this planet should by now have a 3 year basic food reserve, to buffer against failing harvests due to global warming weather events/changes. Its currently difficult to setup, costs too much, we already did it during the cold-war and yet, soon as the wall fell, it was all slashed and cut. I blame the retirement of politicians who remembered how starvation feels. First real long-term drought with aquifer failings or a cold-burst pre-harvest, will hit us like a hammer. Nothing like mass-starvation, to re-calibrate political priorities. There is no awareness that the strategic reserve exists only in name now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_grain_reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_grain_reserve Basically is a price control tool, where over-production is shipped of as aid. What it not is - is a reserve. Interesting paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237409034_Strategic_Grain_Reserves_In_an_Era_of_Volatility https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237409034_Strategic...
- hollerith 6y ago
  Do you have an explanation for why there has never been a famine so far in the 231-year history of the US?
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lawrence_Island_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lawrence_Island_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
    - bmmayer1 6y ago
      The St. Lawrence Island famine is interesting -- though a very small incident that seems more due to extreme geographical isolation than anything else. The word "famine" doesn't appear once in the 5000+ word article on the Dust Bowl; and, we know it wasn't really a famine. Poverty-inducing, for sure, but mass starvation is an entirely different type of disaster that is almost always man-made by bad economic policy or war, which I believe is what OP's point was.
dfee 6y ago
I thought the URL was funny, “/sites/startswithabang” and peered in. There is one author, and here’s his site: https://www.startswithabang.com/ https://www.startswithabang.com/ So is Forbes more or less a blog distribution platform now, like Medium or Substack?
jimnotgym 6y ago
I personally have made no preparation at all. Should I?
williesleg 6y ago
I'm still scared of the fresh water shortage. Don't confuse me.
GnarfGnarf 6y ago
The best preparation is a wood stove, a couple of months' wood supply, and a root cellar. The best place is in a rural area.
- whatbutwhy 6y ago
  How do you plan on getting food?
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    Once you move to the countryside, producing food in small quantities is relatively easy, provided you have the time and resources. The hard part is staying alive until it's time to harvest. The key is to have food stores that will last for months, and skills to repair and maintain equipment etc.
  - GnarfGnarf 6y ago
    No problem: I'm surrounded by thousands of acres managed by people who can grow food easier and cheaper than me. I can buy a pickup truck of #2 cull carrots for $20 in October. There are mountains of carrots, turnips, beets, parsnips, potatoes etc. left in the fields in the fall, not to mention tons of apples in the orchards. Of course I pay the farmer, but to him it's gravy: we both cut out the middle man for our mutual benefit. You would not believe how little of what you pay at the supermarket, winds up in the farmer's pocket. Pick'em yourself, stock your root cellar, and you don't have to go to the store for vegetables until summer.
TeeMassive 6y ago
I remember this talk by William Radasky: Threats to the Electrical Grid from EMP and Solar Storms https://youtu.be/xhL_uMqYg2s https://youtu.be/xhL_uMqYg2s Very interesting. To answer the question, no.
teslaberry 6y ago
corona!!!
mikewarot 6y ago
The real preparation to protect the power grid is fairly simple. A> Someone has to be authorized to shut down the grid, and willing to do so with no consideration of politics, nor profit, in the hours before the proton flux hits the earth. B> Everyone has to obey those instructions despite the politics that will inevitably happen as the bean counters attempt to eek out the last drop of profit and push things too far. C> The Black Start plans that grid operators have, which would restart the grid from everything off, to a fully functional network, have to survive contact with reality. The Carrington event cause high voltage discharges in telegraph systems. The power grid handles lightning strokes all the time, way more voltage and current all at once. The real danger is the large low voltage DC currents, the could cause the iron in the core of transformers to become saturated, after which they will stop working as transformers, and simply become very large heaters as there is suddenly no inductance to stop the flow of current through their primary windings. If the system is off, the currents can flow, and no damage will occur. TL;DR - if the grid is OFF, it is safe... and someone has to have the authority to make that decision with some lead time to allow it to happen in an orderly manner.
ablekh 6y ago
I have recalled related post[1] and relevant NH discussion[2] from 2020. Also just ran across another recent related article [3] and its Reddit discussion [4]. [1] https://chris-said.io/2020/06/18/everything-ive-learned-about-solar-storm-risk-and-emp-attacks https://chris-said.io/2020/06/18/everything-ive-learned-abou... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580362 [3] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sun-solar-storms-earth-havoc-space-weather-forecasts https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sun-solar-storms-earth-h... [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/lt7tnd/solar_storms_can_wreak_havoc_we_need_better_space https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/lt7tnd/solar_storms_...

181 points by firebaze 6y ago

mfer 6y ago

> “a CME the size of the 1859 Carrington Event would, if not prepared for, effectively level the power grid of the United States... CME refers to coronal mass ejections[1]. The 1859 Carrington Event is a case where one of these happened[2]. The US power grid is susceptible to some real damage from one of these. It would take a long time to fix. The US, at least, isn't prepared. [1] https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/coronal-mass-ejections https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/coronal-mass-ejections [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

ryandrake 6y ago
Part of the power grid in the USA isn’t even prepared for a chilly week, as we just found out. First rule of infrastructure funding: Don’t actually spend it on infrastructure. Just pocket it as profits and when things fall apart, say we never could have seen this coming or prepared. Isn’t that what everyone does when a bridge falls down, a gas line explodes, or an oil pipe leaks?
- dctoedt 6y ago
  > First rule of infrastructure funding: Don’t actually spend it on infrastructure. Just pocket it as profits and when things fall apart, say we never could have seen this coming or prepared. And the corollary: After things fall apart, ask for a taxpayer bailout.
  - harry8 6y ago
    Still no big anti-corruption coalition. Some of that money will be spent to buy the politicians with lobbying, campaign contributions, media focus on tribal culture wars. The anti-corruption view that has massive support gets none of that and gets nowhere, at least yet.
    - auslegung 6y ago
      I think this video will encourage you. Well actually maybe it will discourage you, but the follow up video will encourage you :D Corruption is Legal in America: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      This is because most people think that Congress/institutions as a whole are dirty, but ask them about their congressperson and support shoots up significantly. If we can’t analyze our own choices as potentially contributing to the system, including not voting (which is more of an endorsement of whatever happens rather than a denial of approval), then we cannot move forward.
      - 20after4 6y ago
        Not voting is most certainly not an endorsement of whatever happens. That’s ridiculous.
        bobthepanda 6y ago
        Is it not? The US doesn't require minimum turnout for elections, so not voting just amplifies the power of the people who actually vote. It is in effect a tacit endorsement, unless you're trying to effect legal or regime change in addition to not voting. As far as "my vote doesn't matter", this is quite silly considering how the last two elections featured electoral votes won by ever thinner margins, and that even at the presidential level with the highest turnout most people don't vote, to say nothing of state local elections, primaries, etc. https://i.redd.it/p0z5srsw7py51.png https://i.redd.it/p0z5srsw7py51.png
        coolgeek 6y ago
        You're right that it's not an endorsement. But it's functionally equivalent
  - mmmBacon 6y ago
    Corollary to the corollary: After taxpayer bailout, raise rates to cover costs associated with new infrastructure.

king_magic 6y ago

My god, Forbes ads are so obnoxious.

vertis 6y ago
Forbes has ads?
- covermydonkey 6y ago
  I have quite the adblocking setup for my network and browser. Every now and then I get a glimpse of what the bulk of humanity has to endure on websites. I can't believe the difference. Those of us who enjoy an ad free Internet experience a completely different Internet lifestyle.
mschuster91 6y ago
Yeah. I'm on a tablet - about 60% of the horizontal space is lost to padding and ads/whitespace, and after a minute of reading a video moves in bottom-left with no close button, scooping up 25% of the screen. Effectively, only 30% (!) of the surface are used for displaying content. What an utter disgrace. And the data volume that is wasted for all of this nonsense... There's a reason why mobile ads are so much more expensive - it is extremely hard to block them. Chrome and AOSP webkit don't support any kind of adblocking plugins, and editing /etc/hosts requires rooting (which gets ever harder and harder) or weird VPN/fake VPN solutions that have their own massive security and battery life implications.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  There is the possibility to block them via a pihole. I never tried it myself so I do not know about the effectiveness and false positives.
  - jfim 6y ago
    Pihole works pretty well. I have it set up on a VPN, and the difference between regular internet and no ads internet on mobile is pretty impressive. As a bonus, it blocks ads in native apps too.

hikerclimber 6y ago

hopefully not. I hope this happens this year so the U.S. power grid gets knocked out.

intrepidhero 6y ago

GIC[0] is a pretty interesting risk factor but popular reporting on it is not great. The posted article has some interesting history on the Carrington event and good details on what CMEs are but falls down on when talking about the risk to the power system. Example: "The power grids of most countries would be completely and effectively leveled. The top way to mitigate the effects of such a flare would be through increased grounding, so that the large currents that would otherwise flow through grid wires would instead flow directly into the Earth. Every time power companies attempt to do this, however, what winds up happening instead is that the conducting substance used for grounding (such as copper) is stolen for its material value." Power grids would not be "completely leveled". And "grounding" is not the issue (although yeah, copper theft is a thing). Source[1] states that Hydro-Quebec tripped for over current on long transmission lines. This has nothing to do with inadequate grounding and the solution was to increase the over current settings because the system could handle the induced current. The system was restored in 9 hours. Another event[2] listed resulted in "disturbances" across a large geographic area: a voltage collapse and unusual power flow but not outages. If the induced current was much higher the system would trip off to protect itself while the GIC lasted. This could take a while to recover from if it was a wide spread outage but we're not talking a civilization ending event like headlines suggest. What power companies are most concerned about are damaged transformers. Replacement transformers (at transmission levels anyway) are very expensive and have months to years long lead time so if a few get damaged restoration could take a very long time. But we have literature[3][4] that tells us what transformer designs are susceptible to overheating due to GIC. TLDR: Most modern transformers will be fine. What I'm more concerned about are satellites. I don't know how many satellites would be disabled and are at risk of collision. That sounds bad. What critical things rely on satellite infrastructure? GPS seems like a big one. Power systems use GPS timing, in some cases to enable differential current protection. But usually these systems will default to impedance protection on a loss of GPS signal and at any rate the industry is probably moving to terrestrial time sources because of the risk of GPS spoofing anyway. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_August_1972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_August_1972 [3] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6281595 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6281595 [4] https://www.pes-psrc.org/kb/published/reports/GIC%20Presentation%20at%20PSRC%2005%2014%202014.pdf https://www.pes-psrc.org/kb/published/reports/GIC%20Presenta... Source: I have worked on GIC monitoring systems at a major transmission company. But the opinions expressed are my own, etc, etc.

watertom 6y ago

How prepared are we for any large scale natural event? Not prepared at all. It's costs money to be prepared for things that might not ever happen. No CEO ever got fired for choosing profits, no CEO ever will get fired for choosing profits.

nullserver 6y ago
What would life look like if we tried to be 100% prepared for all contingencies? Probably similar to people living in a cave and refusing to leave it out of fear. Rebuilding after disasters is a tried and true method.
- projectileboy 6y ago
  That approach was not incredibly effective in New Orleans in 2005.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    It's not incredibly effective for the disasters that happen, no. It still may be the right approach, though. There are many possible disasters. Being prepared for all of them takes all your time and resources - more than all, in fact. We don't have enough time and resources to prepare for all possible disasters. So we put more effort into preparing for the most likely ones, and sometimes one of the less likely ones gets us. Note that there are more "less likely" scenarios than there are "more likely" ones. Also note that, after a disaster has occurred, it suddenly seems very probable, which makes it look like we mis-evaluated which risks were likely. On the other hand, sometimes we really do mis-evaluate or under-prepare. It's hard, in advance, to get the balance right. And even if we did, after a disaster we say "yeah, should have seen that one coming".
    - the_gastropod 6y ago
      Using Texas as an example again: 10 years ago, 1M+ Texans lost power due to unusually cold temperatures. Last week, the same thing happened. This wasn't some unpredictable event. It just wasn't considered sufficiently profitable to prepare.

benibela 6y ago

I just made a backup of my files on DVD for that But I do not think it worked. It did burn for 20 minutes and the DVD changed its color, but then the laptop reports the DVD is still empty

GnarfGnarf 6y ago
Before backing up, generate an MD5 checksum file for all the files you are backing up. Then verify the backup by re-calculating and comparing the checksums on the DVD. This way you can verify the disk at any point in the future.
- mjevans 6y ago
  Or store PAR2 repair files with the data as well.
  - benibela 6y ago
    Or these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25902030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25902030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25805548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25805548
- benibela 6y ago
  But there are no checksums from the DVD, because there are no files on the DVD I have actually tried it multiple times over six hours, and now I have burned three DVDs without files on them

calebm 6y ago

I believe this is one of the most likely large-scale doomsday scenarios for our time. "One second after" is a good fiction book on the topic.

lgats 6y ago
great book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After
exhilaration 6y ago
I picked up a series on Audible with the same theme called Trackers, mostly because it was 33 hours of audio for a single credit: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Trackers-Series-Box-Set-Audiobook/1982605332 https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Trackers-Series-Box-Set-Audio... It's not going to win the Nobel Prize in Literature but it was interesting, made you think about how quickly society might fall apart after an EMP attack.

boringg 6y ago

How about for the next Tunguska event?

meepmorp 6y ago
Most of the earth’s surface is still unpopulated, we’re probably fine assuming the same blast size. Even over a population center, it’s a local problem. Otoh, there’s a lot of risk from human factors, especially if over a city. With the right placement and timing, it could trigger a nuclear exchange.
- avaldeso 6y ago
  > Even over a population center, it’s a local problem. Local? An impact in any large city with financial or industrial hubs would have global scale effects. NYC, Tokio, Shenzhen, London, Beijing, Shanghai. Throw a rock at any of those and the world will devolve into chaos.
  - meepmorp 6y ago
    Yeah, but most cities aren't global commerce centers, and the ones that are take up relatively little area compared to the total planet. We could lose most of the cities on earth with largely local impact. NYC would be a problem, but what about Buffalo? Even most national capitals aren't that important globally.
vkou 6y ago
The best way to prepare for that is to go outside, and enjoy the sunshine. You'll either be killed in the immediate blast, or, far more likely, not have your life be impacted at all.
elihu 6y ago
I think about 95% of preparing for Tunguska-type events is to be able to see it coming before it hits, so you can get out of the way or hunker down. I'm not sure where we are on that front in general, but the collapse of Arecibo means we've lost our most powerful terrestrial asteroid-tracking radar system. http://www.naic.edu/ao/scientist-user-portal/planetary-sciences http://www.naic.edu/ao/scientist-user-portal/planetary-scien... It's also worth noting that there's a reasonably good chance that we might prevent one or more future Tunguska events by spotting asteroids not right before the collide, but much earlier when they're on a trajectory that will eventually collide with Earth years or centuries in the future.

dml2135 6y ago

How would one go about protecting their own personal backups from something like this? Would a hard-drive be fine if it is just not plugged in at the time? Or would it need to be stored in some sort of faraday cage?

lrem 6y ago
A safe in the cellar, under the 4 weeks worth of food and water reserve, seems about right.
monkeynotes 6y ago
Faraday cages around anything electronic that you care about. Honestly though, your digital media is going to be the last thing you are going to care about as you are starving to death with no water, heat, power, and armed people roaming the streets looking to take all your provisions. Your faraday or powered down devices also won't prevent them getting destroyed in a neighbourhood going up in fire either.
kwhitefoot 6y ago
I think it would be safe. In the Carrington event the damage was caused by currents induced in long wires. Of course we have a lot more long wires now so the problems would be correspondingly larger. I suspect that more damage would be caused by secondary effects than the direct effect of the induced currents. Some power lines would trip out and this would add extra load to other circuits which would trip out even if not affected by the direct effects of coronal mass ejection. In a poorly designed or poorly maintained power distribution system this will cause a cascade of failure that can disable power supplies and communications over a huge area. This sort of cascading failure happened in the US North East in 2003, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003. See https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0902magnetic-storm-disrupts-telegraphy-carrington-event/ https://www.wired.com/2011/09/0902magnetic-storm-disrupts-te... for some first hand comments.
jaycroft 6y ago
The danger from CMEs comes from very very large scale current loops (thousands of miles in perimeter, hundreds of square miles in enclosed area). The issue is a slowly varying but intense change in magnetic flux. We're not talking even as strong as the earth's magnetic field, but over a large encircled area you can get one hell of an EMF. This is bad for power lines. This can also be bad for thousand foot tall AM radio towers and their conductive guywires. This is not a problem for your cell phone. Your hard drive, even if it is legacy spinning metal in a live laptop disconnected from your wall power will not notice any more than it will notice you setting your credit card down on the palm rest, from some basic order of magnitude on the change in dB/dt.

monkeynotes 6y ago

The idea of the internet being completely crippled, submarine cables fried, data centers zapped, backup power gone, is terrifying in itself. Almost every supply chain depends on modern communications. Everything we do is so embedded and dependent on technology losing power would just be scratching the surface of numerous catastrophic disasters. Nuclear power station meltdowns... oof.

hollerith 6y ago
>submarine cables fried All submarine cables laid down in the last 20 years use fiber-optics, which isn't susceptible to solar flares like copper cables are.
- lgats 6y ago
  many submarine cables have powered repeaters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable#Optical_telecommunications_cables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable... Repeaters are powered by a constant direct current passed down the conductor near the centre of the cable, so all repeaters in a cable are in series. Power feed equipment is installed at the terminal stations. Typically both ends share the current generation with one end providing a positive voltage and the other a negative voltage. A virtual earth point exists roughly halfway along the cable under normal operation. The amplifiers or repeaters derive their power from the potential difference across them. The voltage passed down the cable is often anywhere from 3000 to 15,000VDC at a current of up to 1,100mA, with the current increasing with decreasing voltage; the current at 10,000VDC is up to 1,650mA. Hence the total amount of power sent into the cable is often up to 16.5kW.
  - hollerith 6y ago
    Thank you for that. So, contrary to my first comment, a strong enough solar flare will probably destroy the submarine cables -- unless the sea water shields them.
  - conk 6y ago
    Would a solar flare induce enough current/voltage on these cable to actually cause a problem? Also by their nature of being under an ocean of conductive salt water wouldn’t there be some form of grounding providing protection?

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snug 6y ago

There is a show on Apple TV+ called "For all mankind," (without spoiling) the latest season has a solar flare event, wonder if this is what prompted this article. Anyways, it's a really great show and recommend anyone watch it if they are interested in the space race to the moon.

Rebelgecko 6y ago
I'm only a few episodes in and I'm really impressed so far. It's probably the best show that no one I know has actually watched. I really enjoy how it feels almost like a documentary at times, but there's still suspense because you don't know which outcomes will diverge from what happened in our reality.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  > It's probably the best show that no one I know has actually watched. I feel the same way about other shows on the platform like Servant and Ted Lasso. Apple TV+ is clearly an underdog in streaming, but the quality is high.
  - snug 6y ago
    Exactly! Apple TV+ is a sleeping giant. So hooked on Servant. Ted Lasso is one of the best Sitcoms (if that's what this is called) in a long time. Also don't forget about "See", which I laughed at, at first, but it's actually really good. Defending Jacob, Palmer (movie), and The Morning Show (which I still need to start)
andymal 6y ago
Check out the movie too! It's a documentary of a bunch of the Apollo missions. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097372/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097372/
- snug 6y ago
  I think these might be based on two different sorties. The show on Apple TV is fictional/alt history

hiimtroymclure 6y ago

Are we ever prepared for anything?

JabavuAdams 6y ago

Are there studies or technical resources on what kinds of E and B fields, as well as other radiation to expect at the Earth's surface due to a CME? I'd like to take a quantitative approach to evaluating and designing mitigations.

macintux 6y ago

Disclaimer: this is all far outside my wheelhouse. But IIRC, the task of preparing our grid for another Carrington Event isn’t all that dissimilar from protecting it against an EMP attack, and last I read it was remarkably cheap. Certainly dramatically cheaper than the F-35 program. I seem to recall it was so cheap Congress could practically pay for it with change found in the couch.

wrycoder 6y ago
If that's the case, why doesn't Congress pass enabling legislation for DOE regulations that would require the power industry to provide the necessary protection and spares within a defined time frame?
tchock23 6y ago
I seem to recall reading it was around $500 million to do in the US, but can’t find where I read that. If true, that seems like a tiny amount for insurance against something like this.
- macintux 6y ago
  That's the price tag I've seen before as well, which seems like the kind of investment that should have been made a decade ago. I didn't have the stomach to read more about it, but someone in the DOE(?) in the last administration came up with a plan to improve the grid, but because some portion of that story involved renewable energy (thus lessening the need for coal) it was dropped like a hot potato. (I could have some portion of that wrong; I simply get too depressed reading about that cesspool.)

nosmokewhereiam 6y ago

Cool solar activity dashboard: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/electric-power-community-dashboard https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/electric-power-communi... "Space Cyberspace Weatherman" really is a possible future job more and more.

rpcope1 6y ago

Maybe of interest in this thread, there is some current regulation in the U.S. for handling GMDs that might be induced by a CME, called TPL-007. Power operators have to start collecting data, like magnetic field data, to plan and understand how GICs may affect their grid. The hope is that in the event of another major event like Carrington, power operators would be given enough time to react before damage is done, and avoid the largest consequences. Disclosure: I work for one of the major providers for GMD/GIC solutions: Computational Physics, Inc.

mrhyyyyde 6y ago
Could you do me (and others) a favor and not speak in acronyms, not meaning to sound combative, just the 2 seconds of someone passing over your comment they're likely to gloss over whatever you said because of the time it would take to search into the terms and find the correct ones. Thank you!
- Cederfjard 6y ago
  I had already went and done the search when I saw this comment. I think GMD is Geomagnetic Disturbance, and GIC Geomagnetically Induced Current.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  Or if you do speak in acronyms, please define them in parenthesis if they’re being used for the first time in the thread.

gorgoiler 6y ago

I heard on the radio that it’s number 4 on the UK government’s list of things to worry about. Sorry to be data free; it was an interesting factoid though.

polycaster 6y ago
Do you happen to remember number 1 to 3?
- elihu 6y ago
  I'm going to take an uneducated wild guess that the others are nuclear war, climate change, and pandemics.
Mvandenbergh 6y ago
I don't know about ranking but: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/644968/UK_National_Risk_Register_2017.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... page 35 it is on the national risk register. Here is the preparedness strategy (from 2015): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/449593/BIS-15-457-space-weather-preparedness-strategy.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... The GB network tends to have relatively short lines and has used a GIC resistant transformer design since the 1990s so would probably only lose 1% or so of its transformers in a Carrington event. Three phase transformers with five limb cores are particularly vulnerable and have not been installed since 1997 on the GB grid.

PicassoCTs 6y ago

> How Prepared Are We for the Next Giant Solar Flare? As well prepared as we were for the Next Big pandemic. We even have a whole ideological system to shirk responsibility and run unchecked into disaster. Every nation on this planet should by now have a 3 year basic food reserve, to buffer against failing harvests due to global warming weather events/changes. Its currently difficult to setup, costs too much, we already did it during the cold-war and yet, soon as the wall fell, it was all slashed and cut. I blame the retirement of politicians who remembered how starvation feels. First real long-term drought with aquifer failings or a cold-burst pre-harvest, will hit us like a hammer. Nothing like mass-starvation, to re-calibrate political priorities. There is no awareness that the strategic reserve exists only in name now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_grain_reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_grain_reserve Basically is a price control tool, where over-production is shipped of as aid. What it not is - is a reserve. Interesting paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237409034_Strategic_Grain_Reserves_In_an_Era_of_Volatility https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237409034_Strategic...

hollerith 6y ago
Do you have an explanation for why there has never been a famine so far in the 231-year history of the US?
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lawrence_Island_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lawrence_Island_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
  - bmmayer1 6y ago
    The St. Lawrence Island famine is interesting -- though a very small incident that seems more due to extreme geographical isolation than anything else. The word "famine" doesn't appear once in the 5000+ word article on the Dust Bowl; and, we know it wasn't really a famine. Poverty-inducing, for sure, but mass starvation is an entirely different type of disaster that is almost always man-made by bad economic policy or war, which I believe is what OP's point was.

dfee 6y ago

I thought the URL was funny, “/sites/startswithabang” and peered in. There is one author, and here’s his site: https://www.startswithabang.com/ https://www.startswithabang.com/ So is Forbes more or less a blog distribution platform now, like Medium or Substack?

jimnotgym 6y ago

I personally have made no preparation at all. Should I?

williesleg 6y ago

I'm still scared of the fresh water shortage. Don't confuse me.

GnarfGnarf 6y ago

The best preparation is a wood stove, a couple of months' wood supply, and a root cellar. The best place is in a rural area.

whatbutwhy 6y ago
How do you plan on getting food?
- fogihujy 6y ago
  Once you move to the countryside, producing food in small quantities is relatively easy, provided you have the time and resources. The hard part is staying alive until it's time to harvest. The key is to have food stores that will last for months, and skills to repair and maintain equipment etc.
- GnarfGnarf 6y ago
  No problem: I'm surrounded by thousands of acres managed by people who can grow food easier and cheaper than me. I can buy a pickup truck of #2 cull carrots for $20 in October. There are mountains of carrots, turnips, beets, parsnips, potatoes etc. left in the fields in the fall, not to mention tons of apples in the orchards. Of course I pay the farmer, but to him it's gravy: we both cut out the middle man for our mutual benefit. You would not believe how little of what you pay at the supermarket, winds up in the farmer's pocket. Pick'em yourself, stock your root cellar, and you don't have to go to the store for vegetables until summer.

TeeMassive 6y ago

I remember this talk by William Radasky: Threats to the Electrical Grid from EMP and Solar Storms https://youtu.be/xhL_uMqYg2s https://youtu.be/xhL_uMqYg2s Very interesting. To answer the question, no.

teslaberry 6y ago

corona!!!

mikewarot 6y ago

The real preparation to protect the power grid is fairly simple. A> Someone has to be authorized to shut down the grid, and willing to do so with no consideration of politics, nor profit, in the hours before the proton flux hits the earth. B> Everyone has to obey those instructions despite the politics that will inevitably happen as the bean counters attempt to eek out the last drop of profit and push things too far. C> The Black Start plans that grid operators have, which would restart the grid from everything off, to a fully functional network, have to survive contact with reality. The Carrington event cause high voltage discharges in telegraph systems. The power grid handles lightning strokes all the time, way more voltage and current all at once. The real danger is the large low voltage DC currents, the could cause the iron in the core of transformers to become saturated, after which they will stop working as transformers, and simply become very large heaters as there is suddenly no inductance to stop the flow of current through their primary windings. If the system is off, the currents can flow, and no damage will occur. TL;DR - if the grid is OFF, it is safe... and someone has to have the authority to make that decision with some lead time to allow it to happen in an orderly manner.

ablekh 6y ago

I have recalled related post[1] and relevant NH discussion[2] from 2020. Also just ran across another recent related article [3] and its Reddit discussion [4]. [1] https://chris-said.io/2020/06/18/everything-ive-learned-about-solar-storm-risk-and-emp-attacks https://chris-said.io/2020/06/18/everything-ive-learned-abou... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580362 [3] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sun-solar-storms-earth-havoc-space-weather-forecasts https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sun-solar-storms-earth-h... [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/lt7tnd/solar_storms_can_wreak_havoc_we_need_better_space https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/lt7tnd/solar_storms_...