4 ms·
> Can you imagine how disastrous this would be? People would likely wake up without power, and think little of it at first. "Oh, it's a power outage. Better lig
by seszett 12y ago
> Can you imagine how disastrous this would be? People would likely wake up without power, and think little of it at first. "Oh, it's a power outage. Better light some candles and wait it out." Then hours, days would pass. There would be no internet, television, or even newspapers to report what happened. We would be reduced to hearing the news from Shakespearian harriers!
> I wonder if this would cause mass revolt. What happens when you completely disable modern technology on all of earth? If this is as likely as they say it is, there needs to be some serious research into mitigation strategies not only of the immediate technological effects, but also of the sociological effects.
I really doubt it would be that terrible. It's not like electricity would have completely disappeared for ever (like in this great novel apparently called in English "Ashes, Ashes" [0]).
Important things and urgent things like communication means would quickly be operated by emergency generators, so people would immediately have information through radio (and most of the receptors are battery operated), and probably also TV, although they would probably have to go to the local townhall, hospital, school or whatever place would have a working generator to watch it.
Cars would still work so people could move around, at least while there are refined gasoline reserves, but refineries would probably be one of the first industries to get powered again anyway.
Probably for a good while there would be restrictions on electricity usage, depending on how hard existing plants would have been hit and whether they are fixable or have to be completely rebuilt, but I really don't think it would "destroy life as we know it".
I wonder how nuclear plants would handle this, though.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravage_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravage_(novel)
- worldsayshi 12y ago> I wonder how nuclear plants would handle this, though. Yes, could all those aged reactors deal with large scale grid or component malfunction? Fukishima didn't do too well. FUD: Would we have hundreds of Fukishimas on our hands after such event?
- sp332 12y agoA power plant makes its own power, so the grid going down wouldn't affect it. For other components, nuclear reactors have many failsafes. Fukushima exhausted at least 4 that I know of. Since a CME wouldn't cause physical destruction like the earthquake and tsunami did, there's a much lower chance that all the failsafes will fail at once.
- frede 12y agoA nuclear power plant cannot run at say 10% to just power its own systems after it was separated from the grid. That's why diesel generators and batteries are so important to keep the reactor from melting. It's hard to find a source on this, I apologize. The reason is that it only has large turbines to generate power, and these cannot be operated for arbitrary power output.
- DennisP 12y agoBatteries only last so long. And last time a hurricane took out power in my city, the gas stations quit working. The biggest problem would be high-voltage transformers. They're made mostly be hand, by people who spend several years learning to do it, and we don't have many spares. If they go down continent-wide, we could be without grid power for years. I'm a little less sanguine than you about how well we'd do in that situation. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/a-perfect-storm-of-planetary-proportions http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/a-perfect-s...
- smellf 12y ago> _Cars would still work so people could move around. Any car that was running at the time of the CME would have all of its electronics fried and become inoperable. > at least while there are refined gasoline reserves As another poster hinted at, any gas station in operation at the time of the event would have its pumping equipment fried. Even if the pumps weren't harmed, you still need electricity to run them, so you'll have to wait until the grid comes back up.