A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

Post by Izkata » Tue, May 11, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #67

codeulike wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the often cited problem is that if a national electricity grid goes down, its a very long and complex job to get them back up again, especially if transformers are damaged.

If there's no damage, it doesn't take that long. We had a blackout in 2009 in which the national grid of two countries (Itaipu is shared between Brazil and Paraguay) went down; I'm looking at the official report right now, and it took less than half a day to restore nearly all of the system for this country. Of course, if there's damage beyond the redundancies, it can take much longer; see for instance the recent bla…

Post by madia_leva » Tue, May 11, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

SyzygistSix wrote: post #92

jjeaff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only makes sense to have protection if you are going to have enough protection to fend off all 20 million of those zombies.

That is what community is for. I would imagine an armed community would be in a better situation than an unarmed community or unarmed individuals.

Post by vmception » Tue, May 11, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

podgaj wrote: post #51

vmception wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are missing that: a) an immediate steep drop in difficult will allow the network to resolve transactions without loads of power, and the few nodes online will still comprise the network. some networks have much longer difficulty adjustment periods and they will be debilitated for months as blocks will not come, other networks have much shorter adjustment periods and will generate new blocks in minutes b) that tra…

It’s delusions like this that lead me to believe cryptocurrency is a cult.

Post by vmception » Tue, May 11, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #126

vmception wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that they'll use it for easier reference value and an option, yes if its easier for you, just imagine that its for the monocle wearing investment bankers that still want to offer intangible services and settlement over a network

I feel like you and I have wildly different expectations of societal collapse scenarios.

Post by anonuser123456 » Tue, May 11, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

notabee wrote: post #120

anonuser123456 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nightmare scenario is a follows; You get a really large solar storm and no one notices it, so all of the high voltage grid transformers are connected to the grid. The currents induced by the grid burn out these transformers and they have to be replaced before power can flow again. But these are very large, long lead time items that we don’t leave just laying around. And now you need hundreds of them, but the supp…

I would like to submit Texas' recent near grid collapse due to cold weather as exhibit A to prove that knowing about a potential problem for over a decade does not mean that a bunch of disparate private entities will do their due diligence to prevent disaster.