Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

chris-said.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 69 posts

Re: Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

#51

Post by daenz »

jnurmine wrote: post #23
daenz wrote: post #2

This reminds me, I've been toying with the idea of starting a github repository for survival and rebuilding society if a major SHTF scenario occurred. It would be crowdsourced and bake-able into an ebook for offline reading. Anybody interested in it as a "Show HN" post?

If such a major SHTF happens that it warrants rebuilding the society and figuring out how to survive, then Github will be down, internet will be a rare occurence and your computer isn't likely to work for very long either. Electronic distribution and consumption of media isn't very resilient if one expects a large-scale SHTF event. For such a scenario, it'd be better to pump out tons of copies as cheap paperback book…

I have a waterproof kindle and a portable solar panel for charging. That's more what I had in mind with an ebook version. It can store more content, easier/lighter for travelling, read at night, and waterproof.

Re: Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

#52

Post by throwaway4aday »

jnurmine wrote: post #23
daenz wrote: post #2

This reminds me, I've been toying with the idea of starting a github repository for survival and rebuilding society if a major SHTF scenario occurred. It would be crowdsourced and bake-able into an ebook for offline reading. Anybody interested in it as a "Show HN" post?

If such a major SHTF happens that it warrants rebuilding the society and figuring out how to survive, then Github will be down, internet will be a rare occurence and your computer isn't likely to work for very long either. Electronic distribution and consumption of media isn't very resilient if one expects a large-scale SHTF event. For such a scenario, it'd be better to pump out tons of copies as cheap paperback book…

An even better plan would be to learn the skills that you would put in that book. The amount of information you can put in a book is only enough for a rough starting point (and that's if the book only has one subject). The practical experience necessary to do these things correctly and efficiently is only really gained by doing them repeatedly.

A further improvement would be to build a small community that practices these skills and tries to be as independent as possible from the current grid. These are all orders of magnitude more complex and difficult than the last but just imagine how much more difficult it would be to bootstrap society in a real SHTF scenario.

Re: Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

#53

Post by dghughes »

Whenever I read about EMP it reminds me of an interesting device called an explosively pumped flux compression generator (EPFCG). It generates an EMP using explosives but the blast is not the goal it's generating a massive electrical current (millions f amps in a microsecond).

From what I can understand an EPFCG needs an explosive-driven ferromagnetic generator (EDFMG). I imagine the EDFMG is used like a fuse or blasting cap for the EPFCG.

I'm not sure of the size of the devices.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1996/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive-driven_ferromagnetic...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre...

Re: Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

#56

Post by jnurmine »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #50
jnurmine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because TCP/IP was made to be robust enough to survive holes in the network topology caused by nuclear bomb devastation, it doesn't really mean that TCP/IP networks would magically keep on working after a large-scale nuclear war. I mean, during a nuclear war, the networks would only need to stay working until a counterattack could be coordinated and launched. After that point, the devastation would be so large p…

I think we can just assume that in a nuclear war or major EMP event the Internet will be one of the first things to go. But this is one of the best uses of a Raspberry Pi. A Pi with an external USB drive and a small display will run off solar battery power, but still have enough storage for a complete Manual for Rebuilding Everything. Add some EMP protection [1] and update the Manual from GitHub once a month or so, a…

Indeed, a Raspberry Pi that could presumably work fine for the short term.

However, I don't think it'd work for the long term given a suitably large catastrophy. This may sound like a No True Scotsman argument so let's just for the sake of argument define "suitably large" as "permanently disrupts the current industry base for things like chip fabrication facilities".

Once the tiny computer and/or its peripherals fail for whatever reason, such as simple wear and tear, that's it -- no new parts will be available for the more advanced components. Spare parts could be scavenged, but even that is a limited resource, and will just push forward the moment when the reference library goes away. At that point it had better be either useless or fully memorized.

So I think books are better for the longer term. Of course, books are brittle too in different ways, but they don't need to be paper books... A book could be printed on Tyvek like some hiking maps are; Tyvek doesn't mind water and can be folded and doesn't rip so easily.

Please note I might be biased since I really love books :)

Re: Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

#57

Post by acidburnNSA »

sabujp wrote: post #55

It seems to me we need massive localized solar and battery investments as a backup.

I think the EMP situation can cause permanent damage to solar panels and batteries, even in off grid configs, though they would indeed help people who are out of the damage zone.

Oh but most wargame EMP scenarios assume full blanketing of the USA with EMPs so no such zone will exist.

Grid resilience is probably more appropriate in this case and is independent of generation technology.

Re: Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

#58

Post by jnurmine »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #52
jnurmine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If such a major SHTF happens that it warrants rebuilding the society and figuring out how to survive, then Github will be down, internet will be a rare occurence and your computer isn't likely to work for very long either. Electronic distribution and consumption of media isn't very resilient if one expects a large-scale SHTF event. For such a scenario, it'd be better to pump out tons of copies as cheap paperback book…

An even better plan would be to learn the skills that you would put in that book. The amount of information you can put in a book is only enough for a rough starting point (and that's if the book only has one subject). The practical experience necessary to do these things correctly and efficiently is only really gained by doing them repeatedly. A further improvement would be to build a small community that practices…

I completely agree with you. Any book would be at best a memory aid or a reference.

One step above the "small community of off-the-grid preppers" would be to come up with ways to make today's societies more resilient to systemic hick-ups, small and large, using either the means available already today or those which are very close in the technology tree.

Doing so would require a lot of decentralization, e.g. by localizing production of electricity and other consumables and making these smaller units more autonomous. Think not big cities with a power plant each, but rather groups of houses sharing solar panels and a wind mill.

Then again, this would probably be a kind of a pipe dream, as decentralization is by definition not completely under centralized control. This creates all kinds of friction. For example, if everyone produced their own electricity locally, what would the power companies do? And what would the state do with the lost tax money? There are plenty of problems like this, and I doubt one can find a win-win situation where the nowadays centralized things would not lose in some way.

Re: Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

#59

Post by Starwatcher2001 »

If this subject interests you, I'd highly recommend the book "Sunfall" by Jim Al-Khalili. It's the physicist's first venture into fiction and is based around the threat of coronal mass ejections and a flipping of the Earths magnetic field. He also weaves hacking, encryption and other science themes into the plot.

As you might expect from a theoretical physicist, it's based on solid science, with a small amount of poetic licence that he describes in the afterword.

It's been described as "The Day After Tomorrow meets Neuromancer". Not sure I'd quite go that far, but it's a damn good read.

Re: Solar storm risk and EMP attacks

#60

Post by Stratoscope »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #15

The chances of an EMP attack Q: I’ve heard a lot from you about how dangerous an EMP attack could be. But how likely is it that anyone will actually try to attack us with an EMP? A: Unlike the EMP Commission, most national security experts view EMP attacks as a second rate threat. While perhaps some small terrorist groups or rogue nations might launch a localized EMP attack that might take out a substation or two, it…

Readable version of your quote:

> The chances of an EMP attack

> Q: I’ve heard a lot from you about how dangerous an EMP attack could be. But how likely is it that anyone will actually try to attack us with an EMP?

> A: Unlike the EMP Commission, most national security experts view EMP attacks as a second rate threat. While perhaps some small terrorist groups or rogue nations might launch a localized EMP attack that might take out a substation or two, it’s unlikely that any country capable of launching a major EMP attack would actually do so.

> Q: Why not?

> A: Because to launch a major EMP attack, a country would need a large nuclear weapon. And if a country was planning on using a large nuclear weapon, it would make more sense — in the morbid logic of war — to conventionally drop it on a city than to launch an EMP attack which would at most cause some brief power disruptions in a few states. As physicist Yousaf Butt put it, “A weapon of mass destruction is preferable to a weapon of mass disruption”.

Post reply on HN