British Government Prepares For Solar Storms 52
judgecorp writes "The British Government has announced its plans to handle solar storms. The idea is to improve the resilience of infrastructure, including satellite communications — which the government says will also be useful against the future possibility of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. From the report: 'National Grid and DECC are building on the work of the Space Environment Impacts Evaluation Group and E3C to analyse the range of impacts of extreme space weather events, with the Carrington Event being adopted as the reasonable worst case. These scientific assessments have enabled National Grid to change the design requirements for its Supergrid transformers, and to increase its reserve holding of transformers. National Grid is currently developing improved monitoring tools with the British Geological Survey (BGS) and installing or reinstalling Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GIC) monitoring devices into its Strategic Asset Management program. The next steps will be for National Grid, in association with BGS and working with E3C, to develop more detailed modelling of severe space weather events including impacts on generator transformers. This will extend and strengthen its analysis on the electricity transmission system completed so far.'"
Re:Paranoid Wankers (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wait. You are busy having fun. My mistake. Carry on.
Re:Paranoid Wankers (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, it's obvious... it doesn't mean it's an less ridiculous. Unless, of course, you look at whose investments are being coddled.
The infrastructure in question; electrical and telecommunications mainly, is incredibly valuable. Especially so in the context of communicating for business and political purposes. Can you imagine what might happen to the momentum of financial transactions in the event that we lose the ability to communicate? Even worse, what would happen to the general population if they lost their ability to be entertained or informed by the propaganda machines of government?
If we were left to our own devices for any great length of time, we might learn real social skills and stop paying attention to the great leaders in the high halls of marketing and advertising. Think of what might happen if we all just learned to get along with each other!
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Or you know, millions may die as infrastructure immediately crumbles.
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I still don't know how an underground can be affected by snow on the surface.
Forget Al quaeda with a nuke, how about a few giant snow machines?!?
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Because quite a lot of the underground network isn't. Many of the lines end up on the surface at some point, and the depots where the trains are kept overnight aren't in underground tunnels. Lines like the Circle and District are often very shallow, and even in central London are open to the sky.
Re:Paranoid Wankers (Score:4, Informative)
I would imagine there'd be more issues about providing food to the populace than "communicating for business and political purposes".
Or do you really think that the grocery stores and such are going to keep right on going with no power for, say, refrigerators?
Having lived through Katrina (I was in the eye of Katrina for a bit), I'm not especially thrilled at the possibility that power distribution might be knocked out over a large part of the world....
We've have telecom failures from solar flares (Score:3)
Back in the 70s, when long-haul telecom cables were still made out of copper instead of fiber, there was a cable that failed due to electromagnetic effects of a solar flare. I don't remember the details well, but I think it was an L4 or L5 cable from Chicago to New York or something about like that; the department I was in at Bell Labs had a few physicists who were studying the results. (And yes, the study was prompted by EMP concerns from the military, as well as general reliability. We also had some pe
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Here's some real information:
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Who has nukes? Why would they use them against the UK?
America: Not as long as the UK keeps blocking Pirate Bay.
UK: Ridiculous even by their standards
France: Okay, maybe. They're still sore about Agincourt.
China: Too risky, US retaliation would vaporize all mammalian life on the planet.
Russia: See China.
India: All trained on Pakistan
Pakistan: All trained on India
North Korea: They can't make them fly up that high.
Rogue operator: "I say, instead of blowing up this one atomic weapon in a major city at rush h
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Guys, nobody has these weapons and if they did they wouldn't waste them on you.
Govt is probably worried about an inside job. Their govt loves their Orwellian CCTV cams. Theres a website who's name I forget of pictures of torched and destroyed UK CCTV cameras. Eventually there comes a point where the best way for the citizens (err I mean human property of the govt) to clear the verminous CCTV cams out of an area is a short range EMP weapon... Combine that with 50% youth unemployment in greater europe, racial tensions, its going to be an exciting time.
Across the pond, in a more civi
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It was speed cameras that got torched.
The problem with using a EMP device to take out CCTV is that it also takes out all the Sky boxes and widescreen TVs tuned to the football making it unlikely that disgruntled citizens would ever consider using one...
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Spending some money to harden the electricity distribution system against a major solar flare isn't such a bad idea when you consider the alternative. Even the relatively minor event in Canada a few years ago took months to put right, now imagine a major city like London or New York if you woke up one morning and there was no power and little hope of getting it restored for months or years because the distribution grid is shot and every country in the world is in the same boat trying to buy up new transform
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If the sun erupts during the Olympics the sun will be declared a terrorist and will be attacked and if captured held at a secret foreign prison.
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"Surface to Air missiles at the Olympics"
Easy enough to steal a smaller aircraft or helo for one determined to use it. Airliners aren't the only "found objects" one may hurl at the ground.
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Surface to Air missiles at the Olympics
So what makes that concern paranoid? They're fairly prevalent and a number of people probably would like to shoot down something at a high profile event like the Olympics.
I think the real issue with EMP weapons is that you'd require a vast amount of energy (like a nuclear explosion above Earth's atmosphere) to generate enough energy over a large enough area to matter (there's supposedly some Cold War EMP bombs based around conventional exposives). Doesn't seem that useful from a risk analysis point of vi
flagship Canadian submarine (Score:2)
Having a submarine as the flagship seems really silly.
The Flagship is where the admiral runs the fleet from. While it has often been the biggest ship in the fleet (or task force) like a carrier or battleship, the main needs are for communication. (and of course room for the admiral and his staff)
A sub is not going to be effective as a flagship since it is underwater and out of contact a lot of the time.
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Perhaps I am being whooshed, but...
A Flagship 'X' is simply the best thing in class 'X'. It's a silly construction, but it's just a synonym for 'Premiere'.
Now, talking about the Flagship Canadian submarine is silly, but that's because all the Canadian submarines outside of the West Edmonton Mall *suck*. We bought them used from the British, and if Canada was not ripped off, then the British are just fortunate to have been able to unload such utter CRAP on Canada for so much money.
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Sorry, I meant lead ship. HMCS Victoria is the lead Victoria-class submarine, as HMCS Halifax is the lead Halifax-class CPF.
As for the subs, well, have you ever owned a British car? (Shit man, I've owned a GERMAN car and it was a fucking junkheap and the parts were impossible to find.)
Most of the money spent has been on labour, which has gone to taxes and thus back to the govt. The rest has been spent on trucks, TVs, mortgages, and other stuff that the workers have bought over the years. I'd guess that
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Well I for one welcome our silly fops. ,where his electromagnetic camel will explode and ruin everyones iPhone.
No one need worry that Akbar and his militant pulsing camel will ride into the Olympics unnoticed
Hey, they held up the sky when Chicken Little was stirring up propaganda.
On a side note, thank you for your military service. The world needs SOMEONE involved to keep a level head and you can bet it won't be anyone of substantial rank ,office or title.
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Thanks for the thanks, but I'm a civilian contractor. I mean, I take it seriously and know that people depend on what I'm doing, not now, but maybe someone's going to press a button 10, 20 years from now, and it has to work.
My contingency plan (Score:1)
Well... I might need some water too, but I promise you, if all electronics fry, my scratched to hell vinyl record will be worth more than your 100 dollar bill. Maybe...
Well, that solves that... (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't forget the radiation shielding from all the paperwork.
Also, they've got cameras everywhere, that'll protect against all threats, right? The sun will not dare have a solar storm if we point CCTV cameras at it.
Re:Well, that solves that... (Score:4, Funny)
Finally! All the tin foil we've been stockpiling and carefully sculpting clothing out of will pay off.
So it looks like it's gonna end up as Geeks vs. Bureaucrats.
Anyone want to lay odds?
Only if it's real Tin (Score:2)
Aluminium foil simply doesn't work as well as real tin foil. That's why studies consistently show that tinfoil hats don't work.
Unless, of course, the Conspiracy has been stockpiling the real stuff for themselves...
Any insight? (Score:1)
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Assuming you mean natural causes there's a way to analyze geologic cores to detect proton events and it was roughly a 1 in 500 year storm.
On the other hand, since we seem to have "500 year floods" every year in the news reports, we should probably be a little worried.
As a ham radio guy I'd like to see a legendary flare just under the permanent damage rating. Point the 6M beam north, fire up the amp, make aurora contact all the way down to Panama or something... Sucks for the HF guys, but I'd have fun, and
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On the other hand, since we seem to have "500 year floods" every year in the news reports, we should probably be a little worried.
No, a 500 year flood means a flood that size only happens every 500 years in that particular location, so you can easily have a 500 year flood on the Ohio river one year and a 500 year flood on the Danube the next.
A 500 year solar flare also means "locally" but in this case "locally" means "where the earth is at that particular point."
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Not that I doubt the word of AC, but you got a source for that? And how many is xxx?
It can always get worse. The trick to these things is not forgetting what your worst case scenario is. People tend to go, "well, we're ok for everything up to Carrington." In retellings, that gets abbreviated to "We don't have to worry about EMP." Then you count on the system to an inappropriate level, and then it goes out.
If it goes long enough, "We don't have to worry about EMP" will become "It will never go down." I've ne
Thank goodness. (Score:1)
For a second.. (Score:2)
I thought this would be having another go at The Sun.
Re:Solar Storms/Flares (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA... (Score:1)
"On the basis of the evidence received, it seems likely that at present only those states with a known nuclear capability would be able to utilise a High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) weapon. However, certain states such as Iran could potentially pose a realistic threat in the future"
Only Iran is mentioned by name in the report, pfff.
So prepare for high profile made-for-tv mini-nuke false flag (about SADM scale i would guess) during the Olympic Games, to be pinned on Iran.
It'll be Nuclear because th
Case Nightmare Green (Score:2)
The Laundry's simply getting prepped for when the stars are right.
Buried in the original article (Score:2)