Prepare for the lights going out

[MillCreek]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/the-2-trillion-economic-risk-you-havent-heard-about/

A Carrington event occurring in a highly electrified technological society.  That will be a bad day.

[Fly320s]

Of course they had to squeeze in a paragraph about global warming. 

[Tallpine]

Of course they had to squeeze in a paragraph about global warming. 

Think of all the carbon that will be produced by burning wood and buffalo chips 

[Sindawe]

We're doomed.

I've known about CMEs for a long time, and the potential impact they could have on our civilization.  Yet every time I mention such an event to co-workers (across 10 years of biotech work and 14 in IT) I always get a 'deer in the headlights' response.  From people who's livelihood depends on stable, reliable electrical power to keep the servers running and are paid to consider all possible threats and responses to disasters.

Maybe I'm just a Doom-monger who thinks about this kind of stuff for fun.  I felt that way last weekend when I scared the pants off the taxi driver giving him a crash course on hemorrhagic and the Ebola outbreak in Africa that he knew nothing of.

[French G.]

We're doomed.

I've known about CMEs for a long time, and the potential impact they could have on our civilization.  Yet every time I mention such an event to co-workers (across 10 years of biotech work and 14 in IT) I always get a 'deer in the headlights' response.  From people who's livelihood depends on stable, reliable electrical power to keep the servers running and are paid to consider all possible threats and responses to disasters.

Maybe I'm just a Doom-monger who thinks about this kind of stuff for fun.  I felt that way last weekend when I scared the pants off the taxi driver giving him a crash course on hemorrhagic and the Ebola outbreak in Africa that he knew nothing of.

You mean you found the world's last cab driver who was not from an area of the world passingly familiar with all the bleed until you die diseases? Should have captured that one for research.

[drewtam]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought CME and other solar electrical storms are most significant to long wire runs (power lines, etc).
Doesn't this imply that all the local onsite generators are more robust to this kind of event.

[vaskidmark]

I have always been under the imptression that a CME was just Momma Nature's version of the sort of EMP that newkyoular war would produce, except much bigger.

In either case I'm figuring we get blown back to the 10th Century until someone remembers how to reproduce the 18th/19th Centuries.

stay safe.

[zahc]

As with most scenarios like this, even short term problems become deadly fast because our society has grown so dependent on certain technologies. As my dad used to say when he was a truck driver, "if the trucks ever stop running people gonna get hungry, not in weeks but the very next day". Same sentiment applies to grid power and other things. So what if you can fix it all in a month or two...that's not fast enough.

[Tallpine]

As with most scenarios like this, even short term problems become deadly fast because our society has grown so dependent on certain technologies. As my dad used to say when he was a truck driver, "if the trucks ever stop running people gonna get hungry, not in weeks but the very next day". Same sentiment applies to grid power and other things. So what if you can fix it all in a month or two...that's not fast enough.

We would be miserable (no hot showers and cooking beans on the woodstove or an open fire) but we could survive until our emergency food supply ran out.

On the up side, there would be no electric/phone bills to pay and we'd get lots of exercise pumping water by hand.

[Ben]

As with most scenarios like this, even short term problems become deadly fast because our society has grown so dependent on certain technologies. As my dad used to say when he was a truck driver, "if the trucks ever stop running people gonna get hungry, not in weeks but the very next day". Same sentiment applies to grid power and other things. So what if you can fix it all in a month or two...that's not fast enough.

Not to mention the ships that bring the stuff for the trucks to transport. Even if you got trucks and ships running again, it's likely countries that were sending us goods and foodstuffs would want to hold on to those for their own people, at least for a while, so trucks would have little to transport, considering how much we rely on imports.

[drewtam]

So the reason I asked my probing question, is because NG pipeline and frac etc is mostly powered by local on site large diesel and dual fuel generators/industrial engines. (by large I mean, V12 58L to V20 97.6L size engine). Hospitals and server farms all have the same kind of backup power generation on site. The hospitals are a bit more hardened against various disasters. My boss has a picture of some of these generators being lifted into the WTC for backup power as retrofit/upgrade. Server farms are huge customers of these big backup, instant startup power supplies.

Of course, this is all based on the assumption that more typical CME disaster (not worst possible case), wouldn't really affect these power supplies because the relatively short wire lengths wouldn't get the induction issues that a large network and transformer system would have. If this holds true, the tractors, trains, trucks, and barges would be equally resistant to failure. The power companies, telephone/cellphone, and cable equipment would be blown, but other pieces of the backbone of civilization might come out ok.