
Did a Solar Storm Detonate Deep Sea Mines During the Vietnam War? - leephillips
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/did-huge-solar-storm-detonate-mines-during-vietnam-war-180970771/?platform=hootsuite
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coconut_crab
Vietnam formed a task force called GK1 to research how to safely detonate
those mines during the war. According to them the mines at Hòn La were
detonated due to lightning stroke nearby.

Source: all 11 members of GK1 were from my university. I still remember the
first day at school and they were talking about how they provided engineering
effort for the war (bazooka clone, sea mines clearance, 2nd Mig pilot to
downed a B52 etc..) but I'm sure some of them are just propaganda.

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jfim
> In the United States, sparks burst out of telegraph equipment, sometimes
> starting fires.

> Should such an event happen today—when our lives our so intricately linked
> to technology—the results could be catastrophic, causing mass power losses
> and disruptions to GPS and satellite communications.

I wonder what would be affected if this was to happen today. Would it only be
power distribution, or telecoms as well?

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knowaveragejoe
Aren't electronics today more sturdy from am EM perspective than their
counterparts in the 60s and 70s? Not that a strong solar flare couldn't cause
problems regardless.

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Arubis
If they're specced to be (military, aerospace), sure. But the move from vacuum
tubes to transistors, for all its incredible advantages, made everything a lot
more EM vulnerable.

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taneq
Curious if it set off mines underwater but had no effect on the planes flying
above the area. You’d think they would at least have noticed some unusual
radio interference.

(My partner just pointed out that it was probably Bruce the Shark that’s set
them off. :P )

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saagarjha
The planes were probably too small and far away to set off the detectors.

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morder
I think then statement was "wouldn't the planes have detected the solar storm"
vs "wouldn't the planes have set them off"

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trhway
to avoid such mines ships are de-magnetized. I never though heard of "over-
pulse-magnetizing/etc." of de-mining ships (or even say low&slow flying
planes) as a way to trigger those mines from a safe distance - a de-mining
approach that the solar flare triggered explosions suggest.

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philcrump
Towing a magnetic field generator behind a boat or aircraft is a common
minesweeping technique. The generator is usually mounted on a floating 'sled'
to maximise depth capability, but aircraft-mounted degaussing coils were used
in minesweeping by the British in WWII.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minesweeping](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minesweeping)

