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The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

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Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#41

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Turskarama wrote: post #13
dskrepps wrote: post #9

I've wondered for a while. Lots of people seem to think a Carrington Event will simply fry all small electronics and make everything stop working, but from my understanding all it'll actually do is cause power surges in long transmission lines and disrupt wireless signals. Apparently telegraph lines sparked and shocked people. So what effect will that actually have now? Will a massive power surge go through my house…

The big risk is a bunch of transformers blow up, essentially taking the grid down. Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the advantage of the grid... this would likely set civilization back pretty far, a new dark age is far from impossible.

Sooo.... widespread rooftop solar would probably help the resilience of at least domestic power?

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#42

Post by jron »

api wrote: post #32
dividedbyzero wrote: post #28

As far as Carrington-like events are concerned I believe consensus is that most equipment and electronics would be fine, satellites would take damage, radio communication would be out, the electrical grid would go down and be hard to restart, but at least the most important grid transformers would be protected and survive the event, as would cars, computers and machinery. Would a Miyazake event change that meaningful…

If they are many times larger it sounds like they could be more like an EMP from a thermonuclear bomb. Looks like they happen on average every few thousand years. We really should be looking at how we recover from such an event, and whether we can do things in the design of power grids to minimize damage. If there were humans living on the Moon or Mars these seem like they could be even more fatal unless they were li…

I think this is the key takeaway for me at least. If we don't blow ourselves up first, the sun will basically blast us into the stone-age every 6000 years at best or 200 years at worst.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#43

Post by bigyax »

A 1 percent chance of happening in the next decade. It's the inevitability of it that's most terrifying, society will fundamentally collapse, there's no way we could prepare for how rapidly our lives would be changed, and absolutely nothing we can do to to stop it.

Only hope is that for when it happens it's far enough down the road for technology to have adapted to bring enough resiliency and/or redundancy into the grid such that we are not so completely vulnerable

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#44

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #31
piva00 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would lead to the collapse of modern society until/if we manage to rebuild it. Nothing in the modern world works without electronics and computers.

I think you'd be surprised to see how quickly people adapt - I mean, big parts of the world do just fine without electronics and computers. The biggest risk would be the water supply, followed by infrastructure - think grocery store deliveries. And these have / are already happening, so contingency plans are already there, or should be made. Water supplies have been failing in a lot of places due to droughts, heatwav…

Well, one of the big issues is just in time logistics.

India and lots of other countries have a lot of local agriculture and would probably be fine. The US and other countries highly reliant on centralized agricultural production and transportation? Uhoh.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#45

Post by xrd »

dskrepps wrote: post #9

I've wondered for a while. Lots of people seem to think a Carrington Event will simply fry all small electronics and make everything stop working, but from my understanding all it'll actually do is cause power surges in long transmission lines and disrupt wireless signals. Apparently telegraph lines sparked and shocked people. So what effect will that actually have now? Will a massive power surge go through my house…

After reading your summary, I'm thinking this might be the only way to get my kids to take a break from their iPads for a few days. That is terrifying and exciting at the same time.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#46

Post by lxgr »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #41
Turskarama wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big risk is a bunch of transformers blow up, essentially taking the grid down. Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the advantage of the grid... this would likely set civilization back pretty far, a new dark age is far from impossible.

Sooo.... widespread rooftop solar would probably help the resilience of at least domestic power?

Can common rooftop solar setups actually deliver power locally with the grid being down? I would imagine them taking at least frequency synchronization from the grid, and probably also not faring too well without the grid to compensate for variable output when a cloud passes over them etc.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#47

Post by lxgr »

arrowsmith wrote: post #39
rwmj wrote: post #11

> Astronauts would undoubtedly receive lethal doses of radiation, and even people on board airplanes could encounter dangerous levels. It sounds like a more immediate problem would be that all aircraft and spacecraft electronic systems would fail permanently? They wouldn't need to worry about the radiation doses.

Don't modern passenger jets have some kind of failsafe way they could still be controlled and landed safely if the electronics fail? I would assume they do. But then I know nothing whatsoever about aircraft safety and am only speculating.

Modern fly-by-wire systems often don’t have a mechanic backup, and even for mechanically controlled ones (like the B737) I wouldn’t be too sure if they’d fare that well without any electronic controls.

But it’s not a given that an event of this type would even disrupt electronics not connected to the power grid. Even the longest possible line in an airplane is only on the order of a couple of meters, compared to thousands of kilometers for power and communication lines.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#48

Post by LeonB »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #30
Turskarama wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is there are very few transformers in a disassembled state ready to go. Solar panels would be fine, but they're effectively useless without the ability to deliver power. Covid was enough to create an international backlog of transformers, and that was with a normal rate of attrition.

Exactly this. Lets say there were a few transformers that did survive. The parts to make new transformers are manufactured all over the place. So you would need to transport the 'working' transformers where they are needed to get power back to each plant that manufactures some singular component that goes into a new transformer. AND Transport them, when gas stations in-between are all also without power. The global s…

The essay is “I, Pencil”

It’s a rollicking good read. Here it is in pdf form:

https://fee.org/media/14940/read-i-pencil.pdf

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#49

Post by LeonB »

dwighttk wrote: post #36
dan_mctree wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not nearly enough transformers in reserve to properly rebuild the grid and you can't always just drop in and replace either. New transformers are also not currently able to be produced fast, and having society collapse around you probably wouldn't help while trying to increase their production rate. If we'd lose most transformers, it could be many months or years before large regions could see their power bac…

are uninstalled transformers even safe?

Provided they’re not connected to lengths of conducting material, they ought to be ok.

Hard to be certain though, as transformers are more than meets the eye.

Re: The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines

#50

Post by lxgr »

nicoburns wrote: post #40
api wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are many times larger it sounds like they could be more like an EMP from a thermonuclear bomb. Looks like they happen on average every few thousand years. We really should be looking at how we recover from such an event, and whether we can do things in the design of power grids to minimize damage. If there were humans living on the Moon or Mars these seem like they could be even more fatal unless they were li…

Electricity is used widely by organic life: it’s a key mechanism by which nerves and neurons function.

Yes, but these mechanisms aren’t really electric currents in relatively long metal conductors, which are what’s vulnerable to an EMP.

That’s why humans are ok with spending some time in an MRI, while microprocessors wouldn’t be.

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