11–20 of 133 posts
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13429...
It would be interesting to model the way different societies would deal with such an event. Some presumably would have a run on toilet paper and other essentials. Other societies might ration resources on a need basis.
The current weakening of Earth's Geomagnetic field (Geomagnetic Excursion) would leave Earth relatively unprotected from a CME as well. Weakened Geomagnetic Fields seem to be correlated to mass extinction/evolution events. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13429...
It would be interesting to model the way different societies would deal with such an event. Some presumably would have a run on toilet paper and other essentials. Other societies might ration resources on a need basis.
The 3rd world would be fine, the first world would fall apart. Just a few weeks without power is enough to bring the USA down onto it's knees.
I'd rather have fibre on the ground for a lot of reasons, but if enough people moved to LEO orbit sats, and then huge numbers of them get affected by reduced magnetosphere protection, the compounding problems here are huge.
I am not an astrophysicist, but I don't see any reason to doubt the study's conclusions. But isn't the more pressing question the probability of such a CME hitting the Earth? The sun is not small, and CMEs could be ejected away from it in any direction, I would think relatively few of them hit any of the planets?
Instead it's much closer to a Gaussian distribution centered on the ecliptic.
It would be interesting to model the way different societies would deal with such an event. Some presumably would have a run on toilet paper and other essentials. Other societies might ration resources on a need basis.
This is a preppers fantasy, not reality. Engines and generators would not suddenly stop working. Any electronics inside even a lightly shielded building (or even just a grounded metal case) would survive. It would suck for a short time - but only a short time.
However, that's where I wonder about the "shouldn't" part. Wouldn't a large CME like this cause excessive power surges, which modern electronics don't respond well to? i.e. nearby lightning strikes can kill a computer or microwave even if you've got a circuit breaker, so wouldn't the grid suddenly having a massive surge go through it still be a cause for concern? Or are we talking voltage/amp levels below that of a lightning strike?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 3rd world would be fine, the first world would fall apart. Just a few weeks without power is enough to bring the USA down onto it's knees.
I think major cities would fall apart but I can speak from experience that the where I grew up in the deep south would fare just fine. Still lots of old world knowledge left to keep local farms and towns running. Of course it would be the stone age but a lot of people live for it there.
Distribution is also easier in the cities due to population density.
In general there's a fiction pushed by people who live in lower density areas that somehow they're tougher or more caring or something - that for some reason everyone in cities is just waiting for a moment to suddenly slaughter each other. It doesn't happen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The loss of satellites does not imply power outages and it especially does not imply no running water. I'm not saying it wouldn't be disruptive, but people seem to have a fetish for disaster. Society is resilient, and life would return to near-normal within weeks, if not days, I predict.
I never implied that the loss of satellite = loss of power and water. I'm just saying that even a smaller solar flare (Compared to the Carrington event) cause large disturbances. Look at the 1989 that left Quebec and millions without power for 9 hours. Now imagine an entire country/continent losing power almost simultaneously.