5 ms·

Sooner or later we're going to get plastered by a direct coronal mass ejection. Backup to nickel while you still can: https://longnow.org/ideas/very-long-term-

Sooner or later we're going to get plastered by a direct coronal mass ejection. Backup to nickel while you still can: https://longnow.org/ideas/very-long-term-backup/ https://longnow.org/ideas/very-long-term-backup/ There was a near miss in 2012. These things are not than uncommon, on a century-scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event We had a miss in 2012: https://youtu.be/sg3NAdOYp8Q https://youtu.be/sg3NAdOYp8Q

blibble 4y ago
"Paper, it turns out, is a very reliable backup medium for information." finally my backup strategy of tens of thousands of pages of dot matrix printing on continuous feed paper has been validated
- samstave 4y ago
  In 1998 we had a super security conscious CTO. He had me come in each morning and go over the logs for the servers on our VOIP product - which fed to a line-printer (dot matrix) in real-time and would spit out a ton of paper. (as much as I hated this, I love the sound of dot-matrix printers) I had to go through the logs with a highlighter and highlight out anything suspicious... This was the mid-late 90s and we were one of the few companies to have already adoped Linux to production at that time. Some of our employees were the authors of H.323 and some other protocols - and flourished out to all sorts of your streaming techs today.
- jfk13 4y ago
  Hah, reminds me of when my university account was going to be closed down (this would've been in the early 80s), and I had some files I wanted to preserve. So one evening, I sent them to the card punch, and then lugged the resulting boxes home on my bicycle. (At this point, I've no idea what eventually became of those boxes, though...)
theamk 4y ago
> Estimates of the storm strength (Dst) range from −0.80 to −1.75 µT. So.. less than Earth's ambient magnetic field? While low power, long distance lines (like telegraph or POTS) would be in trouble, and maaaybe some network cards would burn our due to long Ethernet wires, storage devices and many computers would be fine. If you are super worried, seal some hard drives in food tins - the frequency is pretty low so it doesn't even have to be fully airtight.
- version_five 4y ago
  > the frequency is pretty low so it doesn't even have to be fully airtight Am I thinking about this the wrong way? Low frequency will penetrate more easily, high frequency will be blocked. Did you mean high?
  - lisper 4y ago
    No, the GP got it right. High-frequency = short wavelengths, which can squeeze through small gaps in metal more easily than long wavelengths. (Visible light is an extreme example of this.)
    - version_five 4y ago
      Right, I wasn't thinking about it this way, and I probably wouldn't for the purpose of blocking EM. In principle, low frequency penetrates better but as you say high frequency can get into things more (but doesn't necessarily). Of course I didn't actually look up what frequencies we're talking about- low and high can mean a lot of different things
theamk 4y ago
So I've become interested enough to try to figure out how bad would it be today. Apparently the electrical fires were from GIE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren... ), which are "measured in V/km".. but how big were they? After some searching I found this PDF presentation: "Geomagnetic Storms and the US Power Grid" https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/finalBoulderPresentation042611%20%281%29.pdf https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/fin... , which says: "GIC are Quasi DC currents" and "Moderate Storm - Electric Field at Earth’s Surface 1-5 V/km / Largest recorded 20 V/km" and Let's assume 10x worse than largest recorded, 200 V / km.. not sure if this is physically possible but probably a worst case. A high-voltage transmission lines would be in danger, as presentation said. Not only because of overvoltage, but also because this is injecting DC into lines designed for AC only. A 10 km old-style telephone or telegraph line would get 2000 volt on it... this would definitely burn the equipment or set it on fire. What about my house? The AC comes in from nearest distribution transformer ("pole pig"). The nominal output is 110V RMS (155V peak), and let's say there is ~0.6 miles (1 km) from it to my house. This will be 355V peak arriving, equivalent to 251V RMS. My appliances and lights (which were turned on) are likely gone... but many computers might survive, as modern power supplies are often rated "90-240V" for european usage (and they don't care about AC/DC mix either). And of course if you had any surge protectors in your extension cords, they'd protect your devices -- they were designed exactly for situations like those. What about my local network? There are less then 100 meters of distance, so 20V induced voltage.. and common Ethernet is rated for 2000V, so this is going to be fine. What about USB cords, low-voltage power cords, etc...? Well, those are shielded / have two wires right next to each other, so they would normally be unaffected. But let's say you had a bad ground connector or incompletely plugged in device, so you have a loop. In this case, 2 meter (6ft) cable would have 0.4 volts. That's within tolerances of most ICs, they'd be fine. What about unplugged device? Your 18" laptop will develop 0.08 volts in the worst case. Most of the modern ICs run in 0-1V range, so they won't burn up (but might have some glitches if device is working). Your antennas (WIFI and 3G) would also develop extremely low voltage so they would be fine as well. TL/DR: country-wide systems (power grid, old telegraph) is in trouble. City-wide might or might not survive. Anything smaller than a house is fine. If you are worried about second Carrington, get water, food and generator, and get some surge protectors.
ivraatiems 4y ago
It's a small point, but, from the article: > Today, any information stored only on a floppy disk is essentially gone. That's totally untrue. You can buy a USB floppy drive on Amazon for $20, and a pack of disks for another $20. I have two 1990s-era Power Macintosh machines with floppy drives sitting on my desk right now, they both work, as do the floppy drives. And I was able to access some ~15-year-old floppies just a couple of years ago with no trouble.
- chrononaut 4y ago
  Yeah, I just accessed data from many ~38 year old floppies just the other day without issue. Now, do I put any faith in the reality of being able access any of it the following week? Not really.
  - devnullbrain 4y ago
    Old SD cards are similar. They may appear to have all the data you stored on them but actually trying to read that data will kill them.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  I use 3.5" floppies that are 40 years old or so pretty much every day. There isn't really a way to replace them.
  - slackdog 4y ago
    I got some data off ~35 year old 5.25" floppies recently. I didn't have high hopes since these floppies are floppy, but they held up well and didn't give me trouble.
  - ivraatiems 4y ago
    What about them makes you unable to buy replacements? Are they some specific brand or design?
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
Uehreka 4y ago
Based on that article, it doesn’t sound like “Backup to nickel” is advice that the average or even hobbyist consumer can follow.
irusensei 4y ago
Optical media not an option? I mean... those are basically microscopic punch cards aren't they? I've seen some 100GB writable blue rays being sold at reasonable prices.

blibble 4y ago

"Paper, it turns out, is a very reliable backup medium for information." finally my backup strategy of tens of thousands of pages of dot matrix printing on continuous feed paper has been validated

samstave 4y ago
In 1998 we had a super security conscious CTO. He had me come in each morning and go over the logs for the servers on our VOIP product - which fed to a line-printer (dot matrix) in real-time and would spit out a ton of paper. (as much as I hated this, I love the sound of dot-matrix printers) I had to go through the logs with a highlighter and highlight out anything suspicious... This was the mid-late 90s and we were one of the few companies to have already adoped Linux to production at that time. Some of our employees were the authors of H.323 and some other protocols - and flourished out to all sorts of your streaming techs today.
jfk13 4y ago
Hah, reminds me of when my university account was going to be closed down (this would've been in the early 80s), and I had some files I wanted to preserve. So one evening, I sent them to the card punch, and then lugged the resulting boxes home on my bicycle. (At this point, I've no idea what eventually became of those boxes, though...)

theamk 4y ago

> Estimates of the storm strength (Dst) range from −0.80 to −1.75 µT. So.. less than Earth's ambient magnetic field? While low power, long distance lines (like telegraph or POTS) would be in trouble, and maaaybe some network cards would burn our due to long Ethernet wires, storage devices and many computers would be fine. If you are super worried, seal some hard drives in food tins - the frequency is pretty low so it doesn't even have to be fully airtight.

version_five 4y ago
> the frequency is pretty low so it doesn't even have to be fully airtight Am I thinking about this the wrong way? Low frequency will penetrate more easily, high frequency will be blocked. Did you mean high?
- lisper 4y ago
  No, the GP got it right. High-frequency = short wavelengths, which can squeeze through small gaps in metal more easily than long wavelengths. (Visible light is an extreme example of this.)
  - version_five 4y ago
    Right, I wasn't thinking about it this way, and I probably wouldn't for the purpose of blocking EM. In principle, low frequency penetrates better but as you say high frequency can get into things more (but doesn't necessarily). Of course I didn't actually look up what frequencies we're talking about- low and high can mean a lot of different things

theamk 4y ago

So I've become interested enough to try to figure out how bad would it be today. Apparently the electrical fires were from GIE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren... ), which are "measured in V/km".. but how big were they? After some searching I found this PDF presentation: "Geomagnetic Storms and the US Power Grid" https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/finalBoulderPresentation042611%20%281%29.pdf https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/fin... , which says: "GIC are Quasi DC currents" and "Moderate Storm - Electric Field at Earth’s Surface 1-5 V/km / Largest recorded 20 V/km" and Let's assume 10x worse than largest recorded, 200 V / km.. not sure if this is physically possible but probably a worst case. A high-voltage transmission lines would be in danger, as presentation said. Not only because of overvoltage, but also because this is injecting DC into lines designed for AC only. A 10 km old-style telephone or telegraph line would get 2000 volt on it... this would definitely burn the equipment or set it on fire. What about my house? The AC comes in from nearest distribution transformer ("pole pig"). The nominal output is 110V RMS (155V peak), and let's say there is ~0.6 miles (1 km) from it to my house. This will be 355V peak arriving, equivalent to 251V RMS. My appliances and lights (which were turned on) are likely gone... but many computers might survive, as modern power supplies are often rated "90-240V" for european usage (and they don't care about AC/DC mix either). And of course if you had any surge protectors in your extension cords, they'd protect your devices -- they were designed exactly for situations like those. What about my local network? There are less then 100 meters of distance, so 20V induced voltage.. and common Ethernet is rated for 2000V, so this is going to be fine. What about USB cords, low-voltage power cords, etc...? Well, those are shielded / have two wires right next to each other, so they would normally be unaffected. But let's say you had a bad ground connector or incompletely plugged in device, so you have a loop. In this case, 2 meter (6ft) cable would have 0.4 volts. That's within tolerances of most ICs, they'd be fine. What about unplugged device? Your 18" laptop will develop 0.08 volts in the worst case. Most of the modern ICs run in 0-1V range, so they won't burn up (but might have some glitches if device is working). Your antennas (WIFI and 3G) would also develop extremely low voltage so they would be fine as well. TL/DR: country-wide systems (power grid, old telegraph) is in trouble. City-wide might or might not survive. Anything smaller than a house is fine. If you are worried about second Carrington, get water, food and generator, and get some surge protectors.

ivraatiems 4y ago

It's a small point, but, from the article: > Today, any information stored only on a floppy disk is essentially gone. That's totally untrue. You can buy a USB floppy drive on Amazon for $20, and a pack of disks for another $20. I have two 1990s-era Power Macintosh machines with floppy drives sitting on my desk right now, they both work, as do the floppy drives. And I was able to access some ~15-year-old floppies just a couple of years ago with no trouble.

chrononaut 4y ago
Yeah, I just accessed data from many ~38 year old floppies just the other day without issue. Now, do I put any faith in the reality of being able access any of it the following week? Not really.
- devnullbrain 4y ago
  Old SD cards are similar. They may appear to have all the data you stored on them but actually trying to read that data will kill them.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
I use 3.5" floppies that are 40 years old or so pretty much every day. There isn't really a way to replace them.
- slackdog 4y ago
  I got some data off ~35 year old 5.25" floppies recently. I didn't have high hopes since these floppies are floppy, but they held up well and didn't give me trouble.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  What about them makes you unable to buy replacements? Are they some specific brand or design?
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago

Uehreka 4y ago

Based on that article, it doesn’t sound like “Backup to nickel” is advice that the average or even hobbyist consumer can follow.

irusensei 4y ago

Optical media not an option? I mean... those are basically microscopic punch cards aren't they? I've seen some 100GB writable blue rays being sold at reasonable prices.