11–20 of 52 posts
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_25 Relevant article about the current solar cycle, which nears its maximum and is unusually intense, apparently.
And I’m an optimist. But bear with me.
We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supplies would last.
Because when I say power, I mean all the power, everywhere, forever. This is what happens if a ginormous solar storm hits us for more than a few minutes.
Everything is gone forever. All transformers are blown. All electronics are fried. All satellites are gone. All terrestrial communications is gone. People can’t start engines. We can’t pump petrol. We can’t pump water.
And crucially, we can’t fix anything. Because without transformers, nobody knows how to build new transformers.
So we’ve built this society that can’t function without these things. I mean we got a bad flu and people lost their shit looting toilet paper. Imagine what happens when there’s no power.
If your family is more than 200 miles away you never, ever see them again.
This only has to happen at some point in the next 200 years and humanity is back in the Victorian era. Except we all kill each other and we’ve lost all the basic skills, so it’s worse than that.
And we’re not special. We’re just a bunch of genes on an ordinary planet. I don’t see why this wouldn’t happen to every species everywhere.
Anyway. Speculation of course. But if I was a cosmic gambler, I’d go all-in on this sort of thing. It just seems obvious.
This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…
Sure, that's possible. Long powerlines are affected.
"... All electronics are fried."
What? All? How could that happen due to solar activity? My guess is that even the worst event would leave a ton of working electronics. I don't think mostly anything happens to our cars or laptops, for example.
This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…
This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…
Other places (from Europe downhill to places such as Syria and Iraq) had really bad stuff happening, and it is known that people are quite resilient. Not only the humanity does not "kill each other", the cities mostly stay intact.
This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…
This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…
One Second After is a 2009 novel by American writer William R. Forstchen. The novel deals with an unexpected electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States as it affects the people living in and around the small American town of Black Mountain, North Carolina.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_25 Relevant article about the current solar cycle, which nears its maximum and is unusually intense, apparently.
Will be interesting to see the effect on global temperatures when this SC is finished, especially if we get a prolonged quiet period afterwards. Might provide a proverbial cold shower for climate scientists.
Why?
This sort of thing has been weighing on my mind of late. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is why the stars aren’t full of spaceships. And I’m an optimist. But bear with me. We are at the point where we, as a society/species, are utterly dependent on technology. I live in the centre of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and if the power went out tomorrow, I’m not sure how long the food supp…
I feel like you've forgotten that books exist. Literally anywhere with a university is going to have a heap of books documenting how to rebuild modern technological society from scratch.