Geomagnetic solars storms

pugwash

pugwash

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Lots of sparks and fancy lights over the northern hemisphere last week when solar flares blasted us with magnetic rays of some sort, but no damage as far as I know. Two previous ones however blacked out most of Quebec and shut down the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Others early last century melted copper transmission wires and set piles of papers in telegraph offices on fire. In this era of massive electrification and computerisation the potential dangers are exceptional. A story in the New York Times this week warned of immense risk. And the next big geomagnetic storm is due in 2012.

Does anybody know what steps are taken in UK to protect hospitals, transport, water supplies, electricity and everything else from damage? Are surge protectors fitted to transmission lines and transformers?

I met a noted scientist last week who has gone camping in Wales with his four grown-up children to discuss stockpiling food and setting up a CB communication system between themselves for the time when all telephones, power stations and computers are blacked out. Does he have a point?

How can we best protect ourselves? Should we bother? Please discuss.
 
This is a well anticipated risk, and most commercial operators such as banks, energy companies and stores have contingency plans in place. It 's quite difficult and expensive (and risky) to run the sort of exercise which actually simulates a major comms downtime caused by a solar flare. That said, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that we shall lose mains power, and that means no fuel pumps, fading cellphones, problems with emergency generators with say 2 days fuel only for stores (not that stores are going remain locked up anyway !).

I think your post emphasises what has been discussed on another thread: that it is important to have a personal / family plan in place.

I'd start by trying to understand what a civil reversion is likely to be, and how it might impact you. Setting up comms plans, so that you have a list of family contacts with you, in the car, at home, etc.; and perhaps a pre-agreed meeting place if all else fails.

Neighbours are important, as much for sharing skills as being able to share information and 'sentry' duty if it's serious.

Emergency supplies - water, food, meds, torches, generator.... as far as you want to go.

Perceived wisdom is that some parts of the country might degenerate pretty quickly as people rationalise options to provide greatest benefit to themselves; other parts might adopt a more co-operative strategy.



I'm of the clear opinion that cities and towns are not the places to find yourself if society starts to crumble. The UK has been unable to spend money on preparing the civilian community in recent years, as well as it did in the time of the Cold War.


There are a number of Armageddon websites, many with decent check lists.

The best site I recommend is the American Red Cross

http://www.redcross.org/portal/site...110VgnVCM1000003481a10aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default

who have freely available and very functional leaflets on a wide range of scenarios and survival skills.

Lots of others around for specialists.


Yes, do something: start by talking and by understanding that we do not live in a safe and wholly resilient society. Ask yourself what you would do if you lost all power and water for 1 day, 2 days, 5 days at home. How long can you exist without a visit to the shops ?
 
Just such a scenario - complete comms and electricity supply failure, over several days, due to extreme solar flare activity - was run as an exercise recently by my county's Emergency Planning people. It had, of course, several objectives - one of which was getting people in villages thinking about being able to help themselves with the sort of inconveniences our grandparents - and most hill farmers even today - perceived as normal.

I'm afraid my bunch of Parish Councillors treated it as wholly unrealistic, and 'poo-poo'd the whole concept. They missed the point.

....it is important to have a personal / family plan in place.
Click to expand...

"Who ya gonna call? How ya gonna call?"
Click to expand...

Should it happen for real, they'll be on the 'back of the drag curve' in learning to cope. They'll be on their own....

:cool:
 
Thought it was only me that had a "last of the few people left alive on earth" type fantasy, thought I was being a bit weird, had it since I was very young and have given it much thought over the years.

One of the reasons I moved out of the West Yorkshire Conurbation was because of possible food shortages / disasters, although to say it was any more than a passing consideration would be labouring the point.

Solar storms powerful enough to knock out power networks and comms landlines will also take out satellites, cell phone towers and render communication in the radio wave spectrum useless.

Forget talking to each other (private citizen) over long distances then, other than by light/ smoke signals and carrier pigeon (which may not be able to navigate).

I have a small suitcase generator in the shed with 5 gallons or so of fuel, a machine inlet on the house wall and an emergency socket next to the CH boiler that I can run the gennie, plug the boiler in and so have heat and hot water.
Great, but what if the gas supply fails? And it will.

I have camping gaz stoves and a dozen or so canisters that I used to use on the boat, so I will be able to heat things up for a while.

We also have several cooler bags that we use to take supplies to the boat for frozen stuff to be taken out of the freezer.

I also have an air rifle for small game.

All my ponderings and plottings over the years led me to realise that unless I was a millionaire with land and built and designed my own underground survival shelter with power, food, sanitation and air filtration systems (already done many times in my head lack of dosh precludes any practical application.), that you cannot plan for survival in any practical way for more than a week or so.

Even with a shelter and stores, it is not viable to remain closed up for more than a couple of months and will be VERY uncomfortable. Damp, Mildew and Mold everywhere, sanitation failing, power systems low on fuel, sanitation and clean drinking water becoming a real problem, air filtration systems badly contaminated and dangerous to maintain (nuclear or bio scenario). Skin rashes from poor hygiene (sorry folks, forget having regular washes, you cannot afford the resources :)).

You get out of your shelter after two months to find a landscape totally altered, dead lying in the street, dogs feeding on corpses, disease rampant, rats and insects everywhere. Your house and village plundered by mobs of rampaging locusts with titles such as Barrister, Bank Manager, School Teacher.

Forget the youth gang culture taking over, they may fight, but will ultimately die. They cannot do a thing without technology and will be taken out by an ex car mechanic detonating an home made pipe bomb.

No, best not to plan anything over a couple of weeks without civilisation, after that, all bets are off.
 
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Interesting thread, if all you can stock pile for is a couple of weeks, then a yacht may be better equipped than the average family home in a city. Afterall with a full tank of diesel and some solar/wind your half way there. Most of use keep a couple of cylinders of gas on board so hot food available by raiding the house and taking the lot with you.

Your also more likely to be able to start a small yacht engine. Wouldn't like to try and start a modern car engine with all the electronics on board if the force of a solar flare took out power stations and comms across the country.

An air rifle, lots of tins of food in the house, rotated regularly and water in cans is probably all you could do with a sensible budget, for a short term.

The yacht also gives you transport and perhaps safety by anchoring off. Suggest we plan to meet at H+48hrs on Brambles bank to decide the shape of the new world order.

Pete
 
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"Even with a shelter and stores, it is not viable to remain closed up for more than a couple of months and will be VERY uncomfortable. Damp, Mildew and Mold everywhere, sanitation failing, power systems low on fuel, sanitation and clean drinking water becoming a real problem, air filtration systems badly contaminated and dangerous to maintain (nuclear or bio scenario). Skin rashes from poor hygiene (sorry folks, forget having regular washes, you cannot afford the resources )."
Click to expand...

Sounds exactly like the sailing I've been accustomed to all my days. So that's all right, then....:D

( Thinks - how do you BBQ a whole sheep on the pushpit? )

:D
 
Just an observation. I was talking to an American friend in Houston and he stated out the blue that there is a lot of failure happening in the USA right now. A lot of people losing everything. Basically due to funding lifestyles that they cant afford. His main point was that he doubted if the US Government was fully aware of how wide spread this was and how angry people were getting. This conversation moved on to Armageddon banter and he stated that its quite a regular discussion topic, the feeling of impending doom. His family have an small holding, not worked, but still in his family and he was glad of it, as it would be somewhere to go.

Are we collectively experiencing a foreboding warning? Or is it all just Hollywood, poor financial planning and instant communication?

Perhaps our Armageddon will be a breakdown of what we take for granted over a noticeable time period. Not a couple of hundred years, à la Roman Empire, but just a few years.

There certainly appears to be a lot of it about at the moment! I think Sarabande it was you who stated on the other thread that it is recognising the signs early that mattered.

How do you make a pipe bomb then?
 
Were All Doomed.......

I bet Morrisons will be out of Fray Bentos pies by this time tomorrow..........:D:D

Hope IPC have got a generator to keep the Forum going............:D:D


.
 
NY Times story

This has prompted such an interesting response i thought I'd post the NY Times story that got me thinking about it. The point is that this is not an idle threat. Not a meteor collision one day in the future kind of thing. It's scheduled for this time next year and we know that previous events of this sort have been enormous even without a microchip society.
For myself and family it's interesting to speculate whether our 30-ft boat on the Beaulieu would be any good. For a week or two maybe then overturning rocks for crabs and shrimps and maybe the odd bass, but the diesel and fresh water would soon run out, even if we could get there from London with microchips frazzled and the M3 a carpark. Sarabande's thoughts were welcome but I wonder how much the authorities have really prepared for this eventuality with gigantic surge preventers on the national grid. Not much, I bet. Lady C's experience is revealing.

I think the best use of the boat might be to sail to a brown-skin girl sort of place that wouldn't have been much affected -- Bora Bora anyone?

Story follows --

Despite warnings that New Orleans was unprepared for a severe hit by a hurricane, America was blindsided by Hurricane Katrina, a once-in-a-lifetime storm that made landfall five years ago this month. We are similarly unready for another potential natural disaster: solar storms, bursts of gas on the sun's surface that release tremendous energy pulses.
Occasionally, a large solar storm can rain energy down on the earth, overpowering electrical grids. About once a century, a giant pulse can knock out worldwide power systems for months or even years. It's been 90 years since the last super storm, but scientists say we are on the verge of another period of high solar activity.
This isn't science fiction. Though less frequent than large hurricanes, significant storms have hit earth several times over the last 150 years, most notably in 1859 and 1921. Those occurred before the development of the modern power grid; recovering from a storm that size today would cost up to US$2 trillion a year for several years.
Storms don't have to be big to do damage. In March 1989 two smaller solar blasts shut down most of the grid in Quebec, leaving millions of customers without power for nine hours. Another storm, in 2003, caused a blackout in Sweden and fried 14 high-voltage transformers in South Africa.
The South African experience was particularly telling - the storm was relatively weak, but by damaging transformers it put parts of the country off-line for months. That's because high-voltage transformers, which handle enormous amounts of electricity, are the most sensitive part of a grid; a strong electromagnetic pulse can easily fuse their copper wiring, damaging them beyond repair.
Even worse, transformers are hard to replace. They weigh up to 100 tons, so they can't be easily moved from the factories in Europe and Asia where most of them are made; right now, there's already a three-year waiting list for new ones.
Without aggressive preparation, we run the risk of a disaster magnitudes greater than Hurricane Katrina. Little or no electricity means little or no telecommunications, refrigeration, clean water or fuel. Basic law enforcement and national security could be compromised.
Fortunately, there are several defenses against solar storms. The most important are grid-level surge suppressors, which are essentially giant versions of the devices we use at home to protect computers. There are some 5,000 vulnerable transformers in North America; at $50,000 for each suppressor, we could protect the grid for about $250 million. Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow the White House to require utilities to put grid-protection measures in place, then recoup the costs from customers. Unfortunately, the companion bill in the Senate contains no such provision.
It's not a lost cause, though; lawmakers can still insert the grid-protection language during conference.
If they don't, there could be trouble soon: the next period of heavy solar activity will be in late 2012. Having gone unprepared for one recent natural disaster, we would make a grave mistake not to get ready for the next.
Lawrence E. Joseph is the author of "Aftermath: A Guide to Preparing for and Surviving Apocalypse 2012." This commentary originally appeared in The New York Tim
 
pugwash said:
For myself and family it's interesting to speculate whether our 30-ft boat on the Beaulieu would be any good. For a week or two maybe then overturning rocks for crabs and shrimps and maybe the odd bass, but the diesel and fresh water would soon run out, even if we could get there from London with microchips frazzled and the M3 a carpark.
Click to expand...

What is wrong with walking from London to your boat? Be nice going over the South Downs. It would take about 4-5 days.

And surely you can boil and drink the water in the river and there is plenty of venison to chomp on from the New Forest.

Beaulieu sounds like an ideal destination. :)
 
Our local butcher (Exmoor) has run various courses on DIY carcase preparation, to show smallholders and other interested parties how to butcher a sheep.

Get together with some friends and speak with your own butcher. They are a fiercely proud bunch of skilled people and an hour at one of these classes is a lot of fun and, by golly, it makes you realise how difficult it is to prepare meat properly without waste.
 
BlowingOldBoots said:
Just an observation. I was talking to an American friend in Houston and he stated out the blue that there is a lot of failure happening in the USA right now. A lot of people losing everything. Basically due to funding lifestyles that they cant afford. His main point was that he doubted if the US Government was fully aware of how wide spread this was and how angry people were getting. This conversation moved on to Armageddon banter and he stated that its quite a regular discussion topic, the feeling of impending doom. His family have an small holding, not worked, but still in his family and he was glad of it, as it would be somewhere to go.

Are we collectively experiencing a foreboding warning? Or is it all just Hollywood, poor financial planning and instant communication?

Perhaps our Armageddon will be a breakdown of what we take for granted over a noticeable time period. Not a couple of hundred years, à la Roman Empire, but just a few years.

There certainly appears to be a lot of it about at the moment! I think Sarabande it was you who stated on the other thread that it is recognising the signs early that mattered.

How do you make a pipe bomb then?
Click to expand...
Pipe thingy? NuLabour stopped that when they banned the sale of sodium chlorate weedkiller, the staple we used as kids to make bigger bangs!
Wilbur Smith in one of his books, did a passable bash at getting one of his heros to make gun powder. He used a place where hyenas p issed to get the oxygen carrier chemical, charcoal is easy, sulphur a little more difficult (in South Africa?)
Stu
PS whats the odds of being picked up talking about b o m bs by our super snoopers ?
 
lies, damned lies & journalistic licence

Journalists aren't happy unless they are scaring people with sensationalist lies.

Well, 'lies' is a bit extreme...careful use of weasel words like 'might', 'may'& 'could' allow them to trot out their rubbish without having to face up to the innaccuracies. No wonder less & less people believe what they have to say...but of course it's all about 'the impression'.

The Sun's output varies over a ,roughly, 11 year cycle. The last maximum was in 2001...do you remember any terrible disasters caused by solar storms?

The next maximum is forecast to be in May 2013, and is likely to be the weakest maximum since 1928. Not quite such a 'good story' for the press...
 
it's not just the 11 year solar cycle, there are other cyclical events, and there has been some unusual activity.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/10mar_stormwarning/

The 1989 solar flare (associated with 11 yr one) did knock out a large chunk of Canadian HV infrastructure

Coronal Mass Ejections are quite frightening and a lot less predictable at the moment, which is why so many satellites are studying the sun.
 
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