The Truth About Solar Storms 91
StartsWithABang (3485481) writes On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran a story about a very large solar flare two years ago that missed Earth, but not by too much. From a scientific point of view, what is it that happens when a solar flare interacts with Earth, and what are the potential dangers to both humans and humanities infrastructure? A very good overview, complete with what you can do — as both an individual and a power company — to minimize the risk and the damage when the big one comes. Unlike asteroids, these events happen every few centuries, and in our age of electronics, would now create a legitimate disaster.
Re:One of many... (Score:2, Insightful)
The extent to which humanity relies on central infrastructure and stability makes me very happy, because it means that there are a few critical points of failure which allow society to be broken down and rebuilt if it becomes intolerably oppressive. However, that people can do so little for themselves means they'd also fear very much for this to happen, so they'll probably put up with a lot of boot-licking before they finally decide they've had enough.
I've lived on a remote Scottish island with private everything supply, and I'm a ham, and frankly I look at utility infrastructure from water to Internet and feel underwhelmed. We whine about centralised planning "not working" because we're still stuck in opposition to the long-dead USSR, but in fact it does work providing nothing major puts a spanner in the works and special interests don't take over. A problem which could be considered technically - how to most efficiently allocate resources while at the same time not leaving tens of millions of people to die if things fuck up majorly - is instead tackled ideologically.