A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare • Hacker News Board

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#111

Post by jointpdf » Tue, May 11, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #75

medstrom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone not in the know, the ecliptic is the plane of the Earth's and most planets' orbit.

Is there any reason for that - gravitational forces from the planets perhaps?

I believe it is the fact that the solar system was once a spinning ball of gas and dust, and the spinning motion caused the cloud to flatten out into the protoplanetary disk. Like flattening a ball of pizza dough by spinning it in the air.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoplanetary_disk

https://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/astrocourses/ast201/o...

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#112

Post by agency » Tue, May 11, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

anonymouse008 wrote: post #105

brodouevencode wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. We got pretty lucky (all things considered) with this particular strain. It could have been much, much worse.

I’m continually shocked at how little people appreciate just how lucky we were with this recent pandemic.

Yeah can you imagine if it affected young people in the way Spanish flu did? I honestly think we’d be lucky if our civilization didn’t collapse in the face of something like that, given how this version went down.

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#113

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 11, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #74

madia_leva wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also disrupt food, drinking water and sweage. And all transportation, so even fuel would not be available. Without clean water and sanitation at home cities would be death traps. People living on an area with rivers and wild animals could do a bit better. Unless they are at reach of people walking out of the cities. Think about a zombie apocalypse, but with starving people by the hundreds of thousands. Starv…

It makes sense to keep food and water, only if you also have protection. I mean a weapon. Because those 20 million zombies are coming.

[deleted]

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#114

Post by brodouevencode » Tue, May 11, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

orthoxerox wrote: post #53

throwawaysea wrote: post #40

Depending solely on electricity is a bad idea. In a past weather event that lead to a power loss for nearly two weeks, everyone I knew was thankful to have piped natural gas. I am not sure I trust electric cars and fully electric homes to be sufficiently redundant.

I wonder if the gas pipeline with all its pumping stations is completely self-powered or it is dependent on the power grid.

For residential, a propane powered generator would be helpful.

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#115

Post by triclops200 » Tue, May 11, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

philjohn wrote: post #75

medstrom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone not in the know, the ecliptic is the plane of the Earth's and most planets' orbit.

Is there any reason for that - gravitational forces from the planets perhaps?

When the solar system formed, the gas cloud collapsed along the shortest axis first into a spinning disc and then formed the planets and sun. This naturally aligns the largest bodies in most systems along the astral axis.

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#116

Post by rthomas6 » Tue, May 11, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

This makes me think about Taleb's fragile vs robust vs antifragile systems with relation to the power grid.

Is a nation-sized power grid even a good idea anymore? If most places were powered by a local cooperative solar + wind + storage system, it would be less efficient, but wouldn't it also be a lot more robust against a CME, and also everything else? Individual systems would go down all the time, but overall the system as a whole would never be able to be taken down by pretty much anything.

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#117

Post by count » Tue, May 11, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

huachimingo wrote: post #71

ben_w wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more we depend on automation, the more vulnerable we are to power failure. Consider grocery shopping: what fraction of sales are online? What fraction in-store are card-based? Do the tills work offline, and if not, how fast can the cashiers work by hand? Does the store request resupply either automatically or via a manager looking at a spreadsheet, and if so, can the manager manage that without computer assistanc…

If everything falls like a house of cards in such scenario, does it mean that we are over-dependent on electricity? Im not a ludite but I would say thats better to have a plan B in such case.

Are we over dependent on running water?

How about shelter from the elements?

What's the plan B for that? These are foundational capabilities of 'civilization'. We can protect them, and take actions to be able to quickly restore, but 'plan B' isn't really in the cards.

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#118

Post by MockObject » Tue, May 11, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #85

weagle05 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too would be interested to view these models. Coming from a rural background, people in my hometown still have gardens and hunt/fish. We're one, maybe two, generations removed from people producing most of their own food. I don't see how cities deal when they can't refrigerate food and the supply chain is interrupted.

> I don't see how cities deal when they can't refrigerate food and the supply chain is interrupted. A large majority of people, including all but the youngest children in the developed world are healthy enough to survive just fine on zero calories for a week as long as they have clean water. You wouldn’t have zero calories and that’s probably enough time to start milling animal feed corn and processing other animal f…

Americans eating animal feed corn in the cities? I must be missing something here. I don't think I've ever seen animal feed corn in my life.

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#119

Post by briantakita » Tue, May 11, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

anonuser123456 wrote: post #97

smeej wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.S., there was a study, with results published by the EMP Commission, indicating that as many as 90% of people could die within a year as a result of a pulse event hitting the electrical grid.[0] I don't know if the same extends to other places, but once distribution and sanitation systems break down, which are heavily dependent on electricity, it'll become pretty clear very quickly just how ill-equipped we a…

And EMP is a totally different phenomena. With EMP you have the prospect of burning out microelectronics. That doesn’t happen with a solar storm.

We have not experienced a large solar storm since the Carrington Event, before the electric grid. There have been larger solar storms than the Carrington Event in the past. Note that there are other factors such as being in the direct path of the blast, the Phi angle, the Geomagnetic field strength, etc.

I don't see how you can say with confidence "That doesn't happen with a solar storm". We have only had the electric grid for a short period of time & have not been keeping detailed records for very long either.

Re: A “perfect coronal mass ejection” could be a nightmare

#120

Post by notabee » Tue, May 11, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

anonuser123456 wrote: post #93

zupa-hu wrote: post #50

I don't really get the "nightmare" consequences. Sure, some electric systems will go down / maybe burn down. But few people will die, right? When I saw nightmare in the title, I expected something like humanity will be wiped out, or maybe just 90% of us. Can somebody clarify?

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.