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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Earth ‘on alert' as sun awakens; Solar storm damage could top 20 Katrinas (Page 2 of 2)

Posted: 9/1/2010 11:40:11 AM EDT

[#1]

Quoted:
so i see the stock market is covered. what happens when a solar flare kills all the airplanes in the sky at any given moment?

It is unlikely to fry most electrical components. You need a long wire to induce enough current to damage the electronics.
It would however temporarily interfere with GPS and radio.

The horizontal components of the GPS mapping would not be affected much, but the vertical would be knocked out.
It would be very difficult for Air Traffic Controlers to stack the airspace and keep track of how high the aricraft are.

Aircraft flying over the arctic would loose radio comms.
High altitude comms would be very spotty. Aircraft would need to drop to low altitude to regain communication.

Posted: 9/1/2010 11:41:01 AM EDT

[#2]

Posted: 9/1/2010 12:57:15 PM EDT

[#3]

Quoted:

Quoted:
I have always believed that the 2012 thing would involve the Sun going OMG WTF BBQ.

Like that movie Knowing with Nick Cage

By far the single most STUPIDEST movie I have EVER seen.

Posted: 9/1/2010 12:59:41 PM EDT

[#4]

Quoted:
Bah!

Global warming is a scientific impossibility that has been programmed into us by liberal scientists.

Yellowstone will NOT blow its top and bury Chicago under two feet of ash.

There are no such things as mega-tsunamis that would cause a 300 foot tall wave to impact the eastern seaboard. Never have been. Again - liberal scientist nonsense.

Asteroid took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago? Prove it - I want to see the YouTube video.

The Earth is totally protected against solar activity. We'll have pretty lights in the sky...nothing more. There have been CME's throughout history, and I never heard the Mayans complain.

All this 'science' crap is really messing up my football season.

Although I am about as anti-liberal as it gets, a lot of this post is pure ignorance for proven science.

Posted: 9/1/2010 1:10:35 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:

Quoted:
I have always believed that the 2012 thing would involve the Sun going OMG WTF BBQ.

Like that movie Knowing with Nick Cage

By far the single most STUPIDEST movie I have EVER seen.

Hehe... yeah what the heck was with that ending....

And it's actually probably more like the movie "2012"... just saying...

Posted: 9/1/2010 2:03:06 PM EDT

[#6]

I have been in telecom for 31 years. We had solar flares back in the early 80's and phone lines randomly had static on them.
In some cases calls actually dropped and dialtone was interrupted.
I know this to be actually true because I saw it with my own eyes.

It is a reality that solar flares can influence telecom and the power grid. Back in those days we were in our infancy with electronics,
most thing were straight electricity.

The question is this: How much influence can it exert?

PCs are shielded by their cases, sure, but they are plugged into the wall.

Induced and/or radiation fields are strange animals. You could physically disconnect a component, but induced power can jump an air gap , sometimes a lot, sometimes not at all.

Predicting what might happen can only be done partially by experimentation, because they don't really know how much power,
what frequency, what voltage, basically what form it will take. To say it would THIS or THAT is a lot of guesswork.

I will go out on a limb and say if it's severe enough to blow transformers on the power grid,
then it's severe enough to start fires (a lot of them) and you can probably kiss a certain amount of other electronic devices good bye, depending on what they are, and how they are configured.

Look up 'faraday cage'.

Posted: 9/19/2010 2:04:32 PM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:

Quoted:

so i see the stock market is covered. what happens when a solar flare kills all the airplanes in the sky at any given moment?

It is unlikely to fry most electrical components. You need a long wire to induce enough current to damage the electronics.

It would however temporarily interfere with GPS and radio.

The horizontal components of the GPS mapping would not be affected much, but the vertical would be knocked out.

It would be very difficult for Air Traffic Controlers to stack the airspace and keep track of how high the aricraft are.

Aircraft flying over the arctic would loose radio comms.

High altitude comms would be very spotty. Aircraft would need to drop to low altitude to regain communication.

We haven't had a storm on the magnitude of the 1859 Carrington Event in the modern age.

On September 1–2, 1859, the largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae were seen around the world, most notably over the Caribbean; also noteworthy were those over the Rocky Mountains that were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.^{[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_event#cite_note-Odenwald-2][3][/url]}

Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed.^{[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_event#cite_note-3][4][/url]}
Telegraph pylons threw sparks and telegraph paper spontaneously caught
fire. Some telegraph systems appeared to continue to send and receive
messages despite having been disconnected from their power supplies.

Carrington Event

I think this is the most likely candidate for a nationwide SHTF moment.

Posted: 9/19/2010 2:28:35 PM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:
Good. Maybe the ham radio bands will come back.

Yea it would be cool if all 3 ham radio operators left worldwide could use their equipment again...

Posted: 9/19/2010 3:14:08 PM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Obviously people love to blow things out of proportion to get a rise out of the masses, but....

I'm one of the government egg-heads who war games this stuff. We are taking this one seriously.
This is what you call a Low Frequency / High Consequence event. The chances of it occuring are pretty low.

There have been massive CME's prior to society going high tech. The last really big one was in 1859. The only electrical infrastructure we had at that time was a telegraph system (15 years old). It shut down the telegraph system and started fires at the offices.

Fast forward to 1989. Ontario suffered a complete black out due to a much smaller CME. Only one transformer blew (NJ). If we experienced one on the scale of the 1859 CME, it could damage/destroy hundreds of transformers. Depending on the specifications, transformers can take up to 3 years to build. Parts of the grid would be down for a very long time. Even one on the scale of the 1921 CME could zap 350 transformers in North America.

The 3rd world would hardly notice. Our society would grind to a halt.

Perhaps it isn't such a bad time for me to prioritize a very small and modest Solar, battery, inverter system for critical gear.

Man, I work on computers all day and every day and if the Internet was down for a week to a month and we could not communicate with clients or pass documents via FTP/E-mail, etc I would be out of a job!

If that happens, LOTS of people will be out of work and there will be no internet, TV, cable, cell phones and maybe even regular phones. Not having a job will be the least of your worries.

Posted: 9/19/2010 3:22:38 PM EDT

[#10]

Quoted:

Quoted:
so i see the stock market is covered. what happens when a solar flare kills all the airplanes in the sky at any given moment?

It is unlikely to fry most electrical components. You need a long wire to induce enough current to damage the electronics.
It would however temporarily interfere with GPS and radio.

The horizontal components of the GPS mapping would not be affected much, but the vertical would be knocked out.
It would be very difficult for Air Traffic Controlers to stack the airspace and keep track of how high the aricraft are.

Aircraft flying over the arctic would loose radio comms.
High altitude comms would be very spotty. Aircraft would need to drop to low altitude to regain communication.

GPS works by triangulation on multiple satellites. There is no horizontal component or vertical component.

ATC doesn't use GPS for aircraft altitude stacking. They use a radio to tell the pilots what altitude to be at. They use mode C of the transponder with ground based radar to verify it. Pilots use a barometric altimeter. absolutely nothing to do with GPS.

High altitude comm is the same as low altitude comm. Since UHF and VHF work on line of sight, the higher an aircraft is, the longer the line of sight to a ground or airborne radio. Dropping to a low altitude would limit radio range, not increase it. the radio used is exactly the same.

What is it that you say you do again?

Posted: 9/19/2010 5:15:34 PM EDT

[#11]

Quoted:

Quoted:
20 Katrinas? So... like one MASSIVE oil leak?

Worse...It could be 911 times a thousand!!!

you mean, 911,000????

dear God!

It will be 911 times 2356

My god, thats . . . I dont even know what that is!!!!

Posted: 9/20/2010 9:20:36 AM EDT

[#12]

Quoted:
We actually had a massive solar storm hit us just last month (I posted on it here), and no one on earth noticed anything...

Your definition of " MASSIVE " is different than mine.
No one on Earth noticed YOUR version of "massive solar storm"
They DID have one back in the 1850's that was noticeable, and may have qualified as " Massive", but they had no internet at the time, so it was not possible to blow it all out of proportion, and announce the end of days, " we're all gonna die and the grid goes down return to the stone ages" nonsense.

Posted: 9/20/2010 9:34:29 AM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:

Quoted:
We actually had a massive solar storm hit us just last month (I posted on it here), and no one on earth noticed anything...

Your definition of " MASSIVE " is different than mine.
No one on Earth noticed YOUR version of "massive solar storm"
They DID have one back in the 1850's that was noticeable, and may have qualified as " Massive", but they had no internet at the time, so it was not possible to blow it all out of proportion, and announce the end of days, " we're all gonna die and the grid goes down return to the stone ages" nonsense.

I understand the reason to not go all TEOTWAWKI but jesus man who took the jelly out your doughnut?

Posted: 9/20/2010 9:38:24 AM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:
This could be worse than Y2K.

Which means the next day you can buy generators and cases of mountain house for half price off craigslist!

Posted: 9/20/2010 12:33:05 PM EDT

[#15]

20 Katrinas in a row? or at the same time???

There's a huge difference in what caliber one should select...

Posted: 10/19/2010 2:51:24 AM EDT

[#16]

fizzle

Posted: 10/19/2010 4:07:09 AM EDT

[#17]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Bah!

Global warming is a scientific impossibility that has been programmed into us by liberal scientists.

Yellowstone will NOT blow its top and bury Chicago under two feet of ash.

There are no such things as mega-tsunamis that would cause a 300 foot tall wave to impact the eastern seaboard. Never have been. Again - liberal scientist nonsense.

Asteroid took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago? Prove it - I want to see the YouTube video.

The Earth is totally protected against solar activity. We'll have pretty lights in the sky...nothing more. There have been CME's throughout history, and I never heard the Mayans complain.

All this 'science' crap is really messing up my football season.

Although I am about as anti-liberal as it gets, a lot of this post is pure ignorance for proven science.

Actually, it's pure sarcasm. But then, you haven't read the entire thread, or you'd know that I'd already explained that.

Read first....then post.

Posted: 10/19/2010 6:30:31 AM EDT

[#18]

Quoted:

Quoted:
We actually had a massive solar storm hit us just last month (I posted on it here), and no one on earth noticed anything...

Your definition of " MASSIVE " is different than mine.
No one on Earth noticed YOUR version of "massive solar storm"
They DID have one back in the 1850's that was noticeable, and may have qualified as " Massive", but they had no internet at the time, so it was not possible to blow it all out of proportion, and announce the end of days, " we're all gonna die and the grid goes down return to the stone ages" nonsense.

If a storm like the one in the 1850s happened now it would completely wreck our grid. It would be more like Lights Out or One Second After than the stone age. Sure we'd recover but it would be years before things got back to "life as normal".

Posted: 10/19/2010 6:32:50 AM EDT

[#19]

I survived it due to the propper wearing of my tinfoil hat!

Posted: 10/19/2010 9:07:00 AM EDT

[#20]

Quoted:

"Space weather forecasting is still in its infancy".

This is why I have too take a "grain of salt" with this. Not saying it can't happen, but....

Posted: 10/19/2010 9:39:17 AM EDT

[#21]

So.. if nothing happens in the next 3-5 years can we politely tell all the global doom scientist to STFU????.. Work on advancing or world technologies and quit making shit up.. This is almost as bad a Nostradamus and the bible code crap..

Posted: 10/19/2010 8:21:11 PM EDT

[#22]

Quoted:

So.. if nothing happens in the next 3-5 years can we politely tell all the global doom scientist to STFU????.. Work on advancing or world technologies and quit making shit up.. This is almost as bad a Nostradamus and the bible code crap..

Working on that.

Oh wait, you said doomer scientists.

Posted: 10/20/2010 7:58:52 AM EDT

[#23]

Kind of like the people living below sea level in New Orleans. They have lived there their whole lives and they never got flooded out, those wacky people predicting a Cat 4 storm could wreck the city are just crazy...

Oh wait –––– @@

Just because we have not experienced some things in our lives doesn't mean we don't need to consider the possibilities. Our electrical grids and technology are based on an environment that may not always be steady and I sure am not going to predict one way or the other what could happen. Just try to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Posted: 10/20/2010 8:05:22 AM EDT

[#24]

This is SF.

We are prepared for anything. Civil unrest, natural and man made disasters, all bow to how awesome we are !

Break out the emergency supply of SPF150 suntan lotion and let's get to it !

Posted: 10/20/2010 8:23:15 AM EDT

[#25]

Okay, who is in the market for nonconductive electrically shielded Car and Motorcycle covers!?!?

Posted: 10/20/2010 9:00:07 AM EDT

[#26]

Assuming there was warning, unplug everything in your home to include the breakers. Same goes with your car and generator. Hopefully, making everything dad would limit the damage. After that, check for fires in the walls and if you're GTG, restart your systems with the generator. One thing to consider (which is the same if there was a food shortage) is that having power and a working car will draw alot of attention to you. If you're anywhere but the country, the neighbors will figure out pretty quickly that your systems are functioning.

Posted: 10/26/2010 11:55:08 AM EDT

[#27]

Currently unplugged.

Posted: 10/26/2010 1:19:35 PM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:
Currently unplugged.

Serious Dr. Keigan ??
Have you presently unplugged devices for static/pulse protection?
Elaborate, please........
.
.
.
............................................. Current conditions appear nominal:
Recent activity
The geomagnetic field was quiet to unsettled on October 25. Solar wind speed ranged between 548 and 662 km/s, under the influence of a high speed stream from CH426.

Solar flux measured at 20h UTC on 2.8 GHz was 86.2 (up 3.0 over the last solar rotation). The planetary A index was 6 (STAR Ap - based on the mean of three hour interval ap indices: 5.9). Three hour interval K indices: 21112131 (planetary), 11222122 (Boulder).

The background x-ray flux is at the class B2 level.

At midnight UTC the visible solar disk had 5 spotted regions.

Region 11113 was quiet and stable and is rotating over the northwest limb.
Region 11115 was quiet and stable.
Region 11117 developed and has M class flare potential. Opposite polarity spots are poorly separated in the trailing spot section. Flare: C2.3 at 22:12 UTC.
Region 11119 developed early in the day, then decayed.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs)
October 23-25: No obviously Earth directed CMEs were seen in LASCO or STEREO images.

Coronal holes
Coronal hole history (since late October 2002)
Compare today's report to the situation one solar rotation ago: 28 days ago 27 days ago 26 days ago

No obvious coronal holes are currently in or near Earth facing positions.

Posted: 10/26/2010 1:27:26 PM EDT

[#29]

Quoted:

Quoted:
So.. if nothing happens in the next 3-5 years can we politely tell all the global doom scientist to STFU????.. Work on advancing or world technologies and quit making shit up.. This is almost as bad a Nostradamus and the bible code crap..

Working on that.

Oh wait, you said doomer scientists.

So, your reasoning is like, since the Russians never invaded or Y2k never happened, that therefore, that means that, its like totally unthinkable that, you would like, never need to do anything to ummm, prepare for anything like, out of the ordinary.

The shit hits the fan for someone, somewhere, every day of the year and has been since mother fucking time began.

Oh and guess what? The real sonaofabitch of it is, that event that does happen, it tends to be that thing you never even thought of and it happens at the worst possible time.

Posted: 10/26/2010 1:31:05 PM EDT

[#30]

Quoted:
Kind of like the people living below sea level in New Orleans. They have lived there their whole lives and they never got flooded out, those wacky people predicting a Cat 4 storm could wreck the city are just crazy...

Oh wait –––– @@

Just because we have not experienced some things in our lives doesn't mean we don't need to consider the possibilities. Our electrical grids and technology are based on an environment that may not always be steady and I sure am not going to predict one way or the other what could happen. Just try to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

no dude, thats fucking stupid. Cancel all your insurances and take the batteries out of your smoke detectors.

You have Sherrick's promise that nothing bad ever happens.

Posted: 10/26/2010 1:52:47 PM EDT

[#31]

Isn't there a serious risk, if outdoors, of gamma radiation poisoning during a CME?

AC

Posted: 10/26/2010 4:27:36 PM EDT

[#32]

Responding on an iPhone sucks.

FP, 1117 had me concerned, scrambled in with junk from kids at web bots has me on edge - add in concern of 37% layoff at work and it becomes hard to smile - working through it - all good fun!!

Posted: 10/26/2010 4:46:41 PM EDT

[#33]

Well time to break it to the wife that life as we know it is about to end and the one thing that could really help our chance of survival is the purchase of another rifle and a few thousand rounds of ammo, and maybe a pistol or two, and a spare rifle...........

Posted: 10/26/2010 4:50:51 PM EDT

[#34]

Quoted:

Quoted:

Currently unplugged.

Serious Dr. Keigan ??

Have you presently unplugged devices for static/pulse protection?

Elaborate, please........

I guess because induced currents are directly proportional to the length of the conductor, and power lines are really, really long....

Posted: 10/26/2010 5:46:14 PM EDT

[#35]

Oh NOES!

Posted: 10/26/2010 8:56:00 PM EDT

[#36]

Quoted:

Quoted:
so i see the stock market is covered. what happens when a solar flare kills all the airplanes in the sky at any given moment?

It is unlikely to fry most electrical components. You need a long wire to induce enough current to damage the electronics.
It would however temporarily interfere with GPS and radio.

The horizontal components of the GPS mapping would not be affected much, but the vertical would be knocked out.
It would be very difficult for Air Traffic Controlers to stack the airspace and keep track of how high the aricraft are.

Aircraft flying over the arctic would loose radio comms.
High altitude comms would be very spotty. Aircraft would need to drop to low altitude to regain communication.

GPS works by triangulation on multiple satellites. There is no horizontal component or vertical component.

ATC doesn't use GPS for aircraft altitude stacking. They use a radio to tell the pilots what altitude to be at. They use mode C of the transponder with ground based radar to verify it. Pilots use a barometric altimeter. absolutely nothing to do with GPS.

High altitude comm is the same as low altitude comm. Since UHF and VHF work on line of sight, the higher an aircraft is, the longer the line of sight to a ground or airborne radio. Dropping to a low altitude would limit radio range, not increase it. the radio used is exactly the same.

What is it that you say you do again?

don't forget Mode-S from secondary radar and ADS-B, which is heavily dependent on satellite, as well as ground-stations.

several countries are already using ADS-B, the U.S. is currently on a timetable to deploy it.
IMHO, ADS-B is a better system than current technologies, but in the event of solar activity, we can most certainly guarantee loss of comm and data.
I hope that we don't put all of our eggs in one basket, and maintain redundant, legacy systems

Posted: 10/26/2010 9:07:22 PM EDT

[#37]

I just still can't get worried about this one. Overblown, IMHO. I still prep anyway, but I'm just not seeing the magic on this one.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Earth ‘on alert' as sun awakens; Solar storm damage could top 20 Katrinas (Page 2 of 2)

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