The Underappreciated Risks of Severe Space Weather 361
circletimessquare notes a New Scientist piece calling attention to a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, which attempts to raise awareness of the dangers of severe solar electromagnetic storms. "In 1859, amateur astronomer Richard Carrington noticed 'two patches of intensely bright and white light' near some sunspots. At the same time, Victorian era magnetometers went off the charts, stunning auroras were being viewed at the equator, and telegraph networks were disrupted — sparks flew from terminals and ignited telegraph paper on fire. It became known as the Carrington event, and the National Academy of Sciences worries about the impact of another such event today and the lack of awareness among officials. It would induce un-designed-for voltages in all high-voltage, long-distance power lines, and destroy transformers, as Quebec learned in 1989. Without electricity, water would stop flowing from the tap, gasoline would stop being pumped, and health care would cease after the emergency generators gave up the ghost after 72 hours. Replacing all of the transformers would take months, if not years. The paradox would be that underdeveloped countries would fare better than developed ones. Our only warning system is a satellite called the Advanced Composition Explorer, in solar orbit between the Sun and the Earth. It is 11 years old and past its planned lifespan. It might give us as much as 15 minutes of warning, and transformers might be able to be disconnected in time. But currently no country has such a contingency plan."
Another good reason. (Score:3, Interesting)
Doomsday situation (Score:4, Interesting)
Like many others here, I don't prescribe to these doomsday scenarios that get rolled onto center stage every so often.
I remember when the northeast US had a power outage that lasted a few days just a few years back. It was no where near as dramatic or dire as this summary suggests the situation could be. I still had water and gas in Ohio.
Pacemakers? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a cyborg (literally, if technically) I have to wonder what such a solar electrical storm would do to implanted electronic medical devices, such as my pacemaker. Any knowledgeable insights? If this [medtronic.com] shuts down, I'm history in seconds.
Survivalism != isolationism (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time a major TEOTWAWKI event was looming (Y2K), I described the threat to my father in great detail. His response: [shrug] "I'll throw another log on the fire and go back to my book." True enough, my folks' lives are pervaded by self-sufficiency, including extensive wood heat, well water and homegrown food. Society shuts down, they just spend a few minutes adjusting and carry on.
But ... you wouldn't guess that at a glance. They have elegantly integrated the survivalist mindset with modern conveniences, enjoying everything technology has to offer without worries of what to do if the grid shuts down indefinitely. Everything has a low-tech backup, preparations for self-sufficiency are ongoing and already in use.
You can live a "survivalist" lifestyle, and still be fully "wired". The two ways of life are not diametrically opposed.
I call bullshit... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit, FUD and fearmongering...
In a case of a large scale power-system breakdown you don't go and try to bring it all back up all at once.
And you sure as hell don't sit on your ass crying, mourning the end of civilization and your X-box points.
Instead, teams of experienced technicians (you know... all those people with the various degrees in electrical engineering) start fixing the grid so that they can have parts of it running as soon as possible.
1 transformer, 2 transformers, 3 transformers, 4...
You lack the parts? Pillage the dead transformers. There is a PRETTY good chance you can take 2 or 3 dead ones and have 1 working in under 24 hours.
Fix the ones that CAN be fixed, leave the completely messed up ones for later replacement.
Don't have enough power to power the entire town cause the nation-wide system is down? DON'T.
Give one half of town 12 hours of power and then turn them off for the next 12 hours while the other half gets their 12 hours. Or 8. Or 6.
Hell... During the war (I'm from Bosnia) people used to steal cooling oil from the transformers (you can run chainsaws for cutting wood, and even cars on that stuff), artillery shells would explode next to them drilling them up with shrapnel, even the local power-plant got hit couple of times so bad that technicians had to take it off line to patch the pipes in the cooling towers.
Let me tell you... you get used to 4 hours of electricity per day (or less) VERY fast.
You leave the lights on to wake you up when it comes on.
Charge the batteries, cook, wash clothes, heat up the boiler and then go about your business waiting for better times.
Re:Don't forget the asteroids. (Score:2, Interesting)
Doesn't the tendency of an event recurring increase with the passage of time?
California hasn't had an earthquake recently, the chance is getting better ever day.
Earth hasn't been struck by a cataclysmic asteroid recently, the chance is getting better every day.
I'm not paranoid in any way. I'm just "actively observing." ;)
Re:Don't forget the asteroids. (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in the midwest... and while the recent power outage [cbsnews.com] was pretty widespread, it wasn't so deep an effect on our lives that we were scavenging the streets for food or killing anyone that looked like they wanted our food.
Honestly, the power going out is never as detrimental as many people would like to proclaim. Worst case scenario, it happens in the winter or they can't get generators to the water pumping stations.
Life goes on.
Re:Don't forget the asteroids. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it is entirely a question of odds. Meteor showers happen on a regular--one might even say constant--basis. We have one data point for these damaging solar flares. You cannot draw meaningful conclusions of frequency from one event.
I can't imagine the cost of replacing or modifying every transformer in the grid would be remotely bearable. If it is possible to add this feature to upcoming installations at a marginal increase in cost, that would be prudent.
Unless it can be proven (unlikely) that these events will be regular enough to warrant replacing existing infrastructure, it should not be done. If this hasn't happened for more than 100 years, we can probably get away with fixing things if and when they break.
Prevention sounds easy... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm just a physicist, but wouldn't installing large inductors DC shorting power lines to ground prevent this disaster, essentially making the grid a high pass filter? Make them sufficiently large so that the scale time is >> 1/60 seconds, and the DC will pass harmlessly to the ground while the AC doesn't even see the short.
Food security is a measurable risk (Score:3, Interesting)
The excellent BBC documentary series Connections [wikipedia.org] begins with the scenario of a prolonged power grid failure, and traces the consequences in NYC.
Food becomes the major issue fairly quickly, due to the just-in-time economy of the cities. After a month, people are getting fairly desperate, and flooding out into the countryside, where considerable social churn ensues.
How many of you have two months worth of food on hand? Few things skew human behaviour more quickly than hunger.
Food security is the basis of sound social planning, and the weak point of any large city.
Exactly (Score:2, Interesting)
A hundred bucks locally to me would get you a 50 lb sack of rice, similar some sort of quantity beans. Another hundred would buy a lot of canned food on sale. Water is critical though, relying on that tap for the only source is real iffy. Here we have our own well, plus stored water in a few water barrels, plus a local stream and quite large pond. To go with this good quality water filters, in our case, berkeys. And yes, rotate the stock. The saying we use is "store what you eat, eat what you store".
I've been into this sort of thing ever since the cuban missile crisis and then a few years later a whopper big snowstorm that shut everything down for more than two weeks where I was. And when I mean shutdown, even the largest snowplows got bogged down, 4 feet of snow in 24 hours, then drifting for a few days. And very few snowmobiles back then either. It makes an impression on you what happens once normal supply is borked.
Re:Don't forget the asteroids. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok Mr. sun, bring it on. I can network _and_ blacksmith. :D
-ellie
Some confusion in definitions (Score:3, Interesting)
I think instead of neolithic, which refers to the late stone age and the rise of farming, you meant the paleolithic. Humans are biologically adapted to the paleolithic, I suggest, since it's 99% of our history.
One marker of the onset of farming is the increased average workload. That's the loss of eden: when the hunting is good, the weather cooperative, the food is plentiful and life is easy. Farming depletes bioproductivity, through deforestation and loss of topsoil and displacing wildlife; constant labour is the trade-off for year-round food security.
Longevity estimates of paleolithic life are skewed by risks. If one survived birth (or giving birth), occasional famine (remember longevity's links to low calories), smilodons, malaria or worms or massive infection, being poked by competitors' spears, and genetic diseases, then chances were you were one tough, clever piece of meat, and lasted as long as we do. Certainly the typical diet was healthier in some respects, just not as reliable.
Re:Don't forget the asteroids. (Score:3, Interesting)
Try reading the article. We wouldn't be just losing a few transformers, we'd be losing all of them (of a certain, critical type). There aren't enough spares to replace all of them at once so we couldn't quickly get the grid back up.
Unlike asteroids, this seems like a very solvable problem from a technical point of view but very difficult from a political one. The solution would be to replace the aging early warning satellite (ACE) with at least two satellites designed specifically to detect a storm like this. Procedures would have to be put in place to pass this warning to power companies around the world extremely quickly because it would take about as much time for them to disconnect their transformers as the warning allows (15 minutes).
This wouldn't require replacing the transformers around the world but simply putting up a couple of satellites and improving communication between the satellite operators (probably NASA) and the power companies. While this would cost some money, it wouldn't cost nearly as much as other low frequency disaster mitigation projects (like dikes to protect New Orleans from cat 5 storms) and would be potentially very effective.
Frankly I'd be all in favor of putting satellites like this up. While this wouldn't solve the problem of existing satellites in orbit that could potentially get fried by a storm like this it could greatly aid power companies in preventing potentially devastating infrastructure damage.
To me this is an ideal use of NASA's resources, using a portion of their budget to help prevent potentially enormously expensive damage to equipment around the world and potentially saving many lives in the process.