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If we are serious about addressing these risks however, the cost of hardening only critical electrical infrastructure that we can't turn off, like hospitals, AT
by jimmcslim 11y ago
If we are serious about addressing these risks however, the cost of hardening only critical electrical infrastructure that we can't turn off, like hospitals, ATC, nuclear power plant control systems, should be a lot less than hardening everything.
- nmrm2 11y agoBut a poster above pointed out we (US, via Congress) aren't even willing to spend ~$3B hardening the power grid. That seems like a pretty low ball number; I'd imagine shielding just the things you mentioned would cost at least that much.
- slg 11y agoValid point. Although if I'm a hospital administrator and give X dollars for disaster preparedness I would spend that money on something that has a higher likelihood of saving lives than solar storm preparedness. That is the problem with these incredibly rare but highly destructive events. Do you spend $1 million to definitely save 10 lives or do you spend that $1 million on something which has the 0.01% chance of saving 100,000 lives?
- mullen 11y agoNuclear power plants have a safety mode. Airplanes can be landed and turned off. ATC can be turned off after the planes have landed. Hospitals would be tricky because some electronic devices do not a manual labor replacement and I think there would be deaths related to a forced blackout. The only thing that I could think of off the top of my mind would be satellites and ships at sea. I will admit, it would be a rough couple of days afterwards as we figured out what survived and what did not. But I don't think it would be catastrophic.