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From the linked NASA article: > "... knock modern civilization back to the 18th century ..." and later: > "According to a study by the National Academy of Sc

From the linked NASA article: > "... knock modern civilization back to the 18th century ..." and later: > "According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina." Is that figure for the US, or the world? Also, while that's a lot of money, it's not "knock modern civilization back to the 18th century"-money. So which one is it? Neither the NASA or WaPo article seems to give a clear answer.

ars 12y ago
It would have wiped out the power grid, no power to anyone for months. (Unless you had a generator and fuel.) Although we would fix it. Assuming current levels of production it would take years to fully repair, but I assume after a disaster we would massively increase the rate of production and it wouldn't be as bad as some make out. Poorer counties, and those without a manufacturing base, would be in much much worse shape though.
- chatmasta 12y ago
  The power grid where? In every country? Or just one/a few?
  - ars 12y ago
    Probably every country.
    - chatmasta 12y ago
      So why was the 1989 storm localized? Just because it was much smaller? Do those metrics for measuring the six did the storm correspond to geographic spread?
      - ars 12y ago
        It was not localized (It affected both the US and the UK), but rather Canada was uniquely sensitive to it because of the very long transmission wires and that there is no conductive soil to earth the power. These days everyone is "uniquely" sensitive to it.
- mseebach 12y ago
  The article suggests that we'd get up to a day of warning. Would it be practical to physically disconnect transformers and other equipment from the grid to protect against damage? Also, how exposed are subterranean power wires?
  - ars 12y ago
    You would have to shut down the power grid of the whole world for 2 days. That would feel like the apocalypse if it happened. It could certainly be done in time, but doubt you could convince people it was real. There would be a ton of deaths, so it's not something to do lightly.
    - mseebach 12y ago
      I must admit that I have a pretty high degree of confidence that if the director of NASA briefs the president that this is happening (which he will know with a very high degree of certainty), such a shutdown would be effected - and similar for pretty much every other civilized country on the planet. Any deaths that would happen from shutting down the power grid would happen anyway, but this would allow for mitigation strategies to be put into place. Hospitals already have emergency generators, so it not like they're strangers to the concept. Also, the 2003 northeastern blackout affected 55 million persons for up to two days and only ten fatalities were attributed to the outage. Anyway, this seems like a good thing to have a contingency plan written up for. The NASA article suggest there isn't, but that just might be that they don't know about it - they wouldn't be responsible for executing it anyway.
      - politician 12y ago
        It seems much more likely that the grids around critical infrastructure would be taken offline, but major metropolitan areas would be left connected. In a TEOWAWKI scenario, we would expect a government to prioritize its military capacity ahead of the comfort of the civilian population. Also, the riot and crime risk would heavily weigh against any actions to take cities offline, not to mention the PR nightmare of being wrong.
- vacri 12y ago
  No power grid = lots of difficulty getting fuel into vehicles = much less transport availability = very, very serious problems for modern societies. Reduced transport capacity isn't just reduced ability for people to get to work - it's also reduced ability to distribute food. You'd also have people panic-buying at supermarkets and hardware stores - but without the ability to electronically transfer money... you've got a lot of public panic to contend with. Food riots, crime skyrocketing. Lots of ugly stuff would happen before you would be able to do much manufacturing to recover (and most manufacturing these days needs a lot of power...)
  - cylinder714 12y ago
    It would also mean that many people with chronic diseases--people you all likely know, yes?--would die because supplies of medicines would dry up rapidly, existing stocks of some drugs would spoil (insulin requires refrigeration), and further production would be offline for months or years. So yes, I'm concerned. To the naysayers here, don't your jobs require access to electricity? How's your Node startup going to survive months or years without power? (No elevator pitches if the elevators aren't working!)
- kamaal 12y ago
  >>I assume after a disaster we would massively increase the rate of production There is a chicken-egg problem here. You can't massively increase production because, you don't have enough energy to do that. And that is because your existing infrastructure is fried. For a few months/years at least you will have to bootstrap a lot of transformers to increase supply to produce more transformers. And only when you break even on a good enough energy you will go back to the normal. However note, in order to increase production you also need to mine quickly for you don't really have energy. So there are a lot of sub dependencies. But by any measure lack of energy for a such a long time, would have already set back world economy to way back in the past.
  - ars 12y ago
    > You can't massively increase production because, you don't have enough energy to do that. That's not really true. The grid might be down, but this isn't a SciFi story - regular generators will still work just fine. The larger generators the power the grid will also still be there and working fine - so just figure out a way to jury rig a connection to one.
- ddeck 12y ago
  >but I assume after a disaster we would massively increase the rate of production and it wouldn't be as bad as some make out Unfortunately it's not so easy. A number of the raw materials have quite limited supply and even after production, transportation is very time consuming. Transportation can be shorted by producing locally, but in 2010, only 15% of large power transformers (>60 MVA) deployed in the US were supplied by domestic producers[1] (although domestic production capacity is increasing): LPTs require a long lead time, and transporting them can be challenging. The average lead time for an LPT is between five and 16 months; however, the lead time can extend beyond 20 months if there are any supply disruptions or delays with the supplies, raw materials, or key parts. Its large size and weight can further complicate the procurement process, because an LPT requires special arrangements and special rail cars for transport.[1] For more than you ever wanted to know on the subject, see the following: [1] http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdate-040914.pdf http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdat...
  - ars 12y ago
    > raw materials have quite limited supply The high quality (i.e. efficient) version (electrical steel) has limited supply, but if you didn't care about that, and just wanted something to work now, there is much more supply. All the other materials are common and widely available. > Its large size and weight can further complicate I would expect the military to step in with some heavy lift vehicles. All of what you say is for normal times, but in an emergency (i.e. cost is no object) we could do things a LOT faster.
  - marvin 12y ago
    I don't think it would really be this dire if push came to shove. A whole country without transformers and lacking ability to import them would be like a war effort. It would certainly be a huge disaster, but it wouldn't be cataclysmic. People would come out of their regular job roles and work with rebuilding. If you read up about e.g. the crazy efforts that went on during World War II, this would be a good example of how focused a large economy can be in times of crisis. Of course there would be less time available to make the next Instagram, but it would probably have some positive side effects too.
grecy 12y ago
> Is that figure for the US, or the world? Given it's the National Academy of Sciences (not International), given how inward facing the US usually is and given that it's only 20 times greater than Hurricane Katrina, I'm thinking it's only the figure for the US. Of course, if the US happened to be facing away from the sun when it happened (night), based on other comments here I'm assuming the damage would be much less severe.

ars 12y ago

It would have wiped out the power grid, no power to anyone for months. (Unless you had a generator and fuel.) Although we would fix it. Assuming current levels of production it would take years to fully repair, but I assume after a disaster we would massively increase the rate of production and it wouldn't be as bad as some make out. Poorer counties, and those without a manufacturing base, would be in much much worse shape though.

chatmasta 12y ago
The power grid where? In every country? Or just one/a few?
- ars 12y ago
  Probably every country.
  - chatmasta 12y ago
    So why was the 1989 storm localized? Just because it was much smaller? Do those metrics for measuring the six did the storm correspond to geographic spread?
    - ars 12y ago
      It was not localized (It affected both the US and the UK), but rather Canada was uniquely sensitive to it because of the very long transmission wires and that there is no conductive soil to earth the power. These days everyone is "uniquely" sensitive to it.
mseebach 12y ago
The article suggests that we'd get up to a day of warning. Would it be practical to physically disconnect transformers and other equipment from the grid to protect against damage? Also, how exposed are subterranean power wires?
- ars 12y ago
  You would have to shut down the power grid of the whole world for 2 days. That would feel like the apocalypse if it happened. It could certainly be done in time, but doubt you could convince people it was real. There would be a ton of deaths, so it's not something to do lightly.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    I must admit that I have a pretty high degree of confidence that if the director of NASA briefs the president that this is happening (which he will know with a very high degree of certainty), such a shutdown would be effected - and similar for pretty much every other civilized country on the planet. Any deaths that would happen from shutting down the power grid would happen anyway, but this would allow for mitigation strategies to be put into place. Hospitals already have emergency generators, so it not like they're strangers to the concept. Also, the 2003 northeastern blackout affected 55 million persons for up to two days and only ten fatalities were attributed to the outage. Anyway, this seems like a good thing to have a contingency plan written up for. The NASA article suggest there isn't, but that just might be that they don't know about it - they wouldn't be responsible for executing it anyway.
    - politician 12y ago
      It seems much more likely that the grids around critical infrastructure would be taken offline, but major metropolitan areas would be left connected. In a TEOWAWKI scenario, we would expect a government to prioritize its military capacity ahead of the comfort of the civilian population. Also, the riot and crime risk would heavily weigh against any actions to take cities offline, not to mention the PR nightmare of being wrong.
vacri 12y ago
No power grid = lots of difficulty getting fuel into vehicles = much less transport availability = very, very serious problems for modern societies. Reduced transport capacity isn't just reduced ability for people to get to work - it's also reduced ability to distribute food. You'd also have people panic-buying at supermarkets and hardware stores - but without the ability to electronically transfer money... you've got a lot of public panic to contend with. Food riots, crime skyrocketing. Lots of ugly stuff would happen before you would be able to do much manufacturing to recover (and most manufacturing these days needs a lot of power...)
- cylinder714 12y ago
  It would also mean that many people with chronic diseases--people you all likely know, yes?--would die because supplies of medicines would dry up rapidly, existing stocks of some drugs would spoil (insulin requires refrigeration), and further production would be offline for months or years. So yes, I'm concerned. To the naysayers here, don't your jobs require access to electricity? How's your Node startup going to survive months or years without power? (No elevator pitches if the elevators aren't working!)
kamaal 12y ago
>>I assume after a disaster we would massively increase the rate of production There is a chicken-egg problem here. You can't massively increase production because, you don't have enough energy to do that. And that is because your existing infrastructure is fried. For a few months/years at least you will have to bootstrap a lot of transformers to increase supply to produce more transformers. And only when you break even on a good enough energy you will go back to the normal. However note, in order to increase production you also need to mine quickly for you don't really have energy. So there are a lot of sub dependencies. But by any measure lack of energy for a such a long time, would have already set back world economy to way back in the past.
- ars 12y ago
  > You can't massively increase production because, you don't have enough energy to do that. That's not really true. The grid might be down, but this isn't a SciFi story - regular generators will still work just fine. The larger generators the power the grid will also still be there and working fine - so just figure out a way to jury rig a connection to one.
ddeck 12y ago
>but I assume after a disaster we would massively increase the rate of production and it wouldn't be as bad as some make out Unfortunately it's not so easy. A number of the raw materials have quite limited supply and even after production, transportation is very time consuming. Transportation can be shorted by producing locally, but in 2010, only 15% of large power transformers (>60 MVA) deployed in the US were supplied by domestic producers[1] (although domestic production capacity is increasing): LPTs require a long lead time, and transporting them can be challenging. The average lead time for an LPT is between five and 16 months; however, the lead time can extend beyond 20 months if there are any supply disruptions or delays with the supplies, raw materials, or key parts. Its large size and weight can further complicate the procurement process, because an LPT requires special arrangements and special rail cars for transport.[1] For more than you ever wanted to know on the subject, see the following: [1] http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdate-040914.pdf http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdat...
- ars 12y ago
  > raw materials have quite limited supply The high quality (i.e. efficient) version (electrical steel) has limited supply, but if you didn't care about that, and just wanted something to work now, there is much more supply. All the other materials are common and widely available. > Its large size and weight can further complicate I would expect the military to step in with some heavy lift vehicles. All of what you say is for normal times, but in an emergency (i.e. cost is no object) we could do things a LOT faster.
- marvin 12y ago
  I don't think it would really be this dire if push came to shove. A whole country without transformers and lacking ability to import them would be like a war effort. It would certainly be a huge disaster, but it wouldn't be cataclysmic. People would come out of their regular job roles and work with rebuilding. If you read up about e.g. the crazy efforts that went on during World War II, this would be a good example of how focused a large economy can be in times of crisis. Of course there would be less time available to make the next Instagram, but it would probably have some positive side effects too.

grecy 12y ago

> Is that figure for the US, or the world? Given it's the National Academy of Sciences (not International), given how inward facing the US usually is and given that it's only 20 times greater than Hurricane Katrina, I'm thinking it's only the figure for the US. Of course, if the US happened to be facing away from the sun when it happened (night), based on other comments here I'm assuming the damage would be much less severe.