

Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012 - jamessun
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/

======
chatmasta
I wish the article spent some time discussing how we can defend against the
effects of storms like this. It mentions a 12% chance of getting hit by one in
the next 10 years (and I assume that percentage is much higher for a
probability space of the next 50 or 100), but makes no mention of potential
mitigation strategies.

Can you imagine how disastrous this would be? People would likely wake up
without power, and think little of it at first. "Oh, it's a power outage.
Better light some candles and wait it out." Then hours, days would pass. There
would be no internet, television, or even newspapers to report what happened.
We would be reduced to hearing the news from Shakespearian harriers!

I wonder if this would cause mass revolt. What happens when you completely
disable modern technology on all of earth? If this is as likely as they say it
is, there needs to be some serious research into mitigation strategies not
only of the immediate technological effects, but also of the sociological
effects.

Edit: maybe not all of earth, as the NASA page compares this to a localized
blackout in Quebec. Can anyone comment on the geographical range of damage?

~~~
eli
I attended a lecture about this a few years back. NOAA has a satellite system
to warn us about large solar flares... but it's old and severely underfunded.
Which is somewhat surprising, because that 20 minute heads up is the
difference between GPS satellites and electric grid components being safely
taken offline vs permanently damaged.

~~~
patcon
Yeah, when I started getting involved in web operations tools, and realizing
all the levels of redundancy that the big players like Google and Netflix
have, it really got me thinking about our hydro and communications infrasture.

For instance, Netflix has it's chaos monkey, than randomly kills servers and
availability zones and generally wreaks havoc. They set it loose, and learn to
keep things operating. I really thinkg it would be a responsible societal
effort to introduce chaos monkeys into our archaic infrastructure outside
digital.

And as for that underfunded satellite, it's sitting in the sweet spot between
the gravitation tug of the earth and sun called the L1 langrangian point,
where it takes no effort to keep it exactly in place. But we really need more
drills to learned whether the hydro/comm infrastructure on one hemisphere of
the earth can actually shut everything down in 20 minutes, day or night.

~~~
tedsanders
The spirit of the idea is good, but it would not work well for hardware. With
software, if something breaks, you restart the servers. With hardware, if
something breaks, you have to buy a new one. Throwing chaos monkeys to see
which transformers blow up would end up quite expensive. :)

~~~
omegant
Then at least simulations on how it affects electric grids coyld help quite a
bit. Are this simulations taking place?

~~~
eneveu
I interned at Areva T&D in 2006 (now Alstom Grid). While I was not working on
that specific project, I remember they had a very powerful EMS (Energy
Management System), which let them simulate incidents (e.g. "what happens if
these power lines are destroyed").

Doing a quick search, this seems to be called a "dispatcher training
simulator":
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatcher_training_simulator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatcher_training_simulator)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_management_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_management_system)

[http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Automa...](http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Automation/NMS/e-terraplatform%203.0%20trans_gene.pdf)

[http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Automa...](http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Automation/NMS/NMS%20HiRES%20Brochure/e-terrasimulator%20Brochure%20GB.pdf)

------
js2
Other than the breathless headline, WaPo adds nothing to the original
reporting. Suggest to change the link to [http://science.nasa.gov/science-
news/science-at-nasa/2014/23...](http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-
at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/) and use that article's title (“Near Miss: The
Solar Superstorm of July 2012”).

~~~
webXL
I agree. Although reading some of the comments on WaPo makes me happy to be on
HN.

~~~
ryan_j_naughton
I couldn't agree more.

Reading the comments on wapo wherein individuals ridiculed the NASA report as
pseudoscience and compared it to global warming (as deniers) utterly depressed
me.

Then I read the HN comments where there is an evidence driven debate over the
extent of the possible impact of such an event (generally concluding utter
catastrophe), and my hope is restored.

------
codezero
I previously did research forecasting solar storms.

original comment: Highly unlikely, they compare it to the Carrington storm of
1859, which didn't destroy any life (or even life as we know it), so even if
it were more powerful, it probably wouldn't have destroyed all life. It may
have interfered with a lot of satellites and communications systems though.

edit: Any damage from a Carrington level event would likely have been
localized and temporary. For life as we know it to be destroyed, it would be
irrecoverable or permanent, which is why I am arguing against the statement
"life as we know it would be destroyed."

Many satellites are exposed to the open solar wind all the time, and ones in
low Earth orbit, though shielded to some degree by the magnetosphere are
designed to deal with large solar flares either by baffling sensitive
instruments or shutting down temporarily (some may even change their orbit).

~~~
eli
National Academy of Science predicted a Carrington-level storm would inflict
$1 to $2 trillion in damages to infrastructure and take four to ten years to
recover from.

I don't know what "life as we know it" means, but it would be a _significant_
disaster.

~~~
codezero
I imagine that would be an extreme upper bound. But yes, it would cause
damage, economically and possibly damage communications. We'd recover and I
don't think it will take 10 years. We're continually reducing the costs of
launches which is a huge factor in the monetary damages (potentially relaunch
all communication satellites).

We'd be out billions of dollars in spy satellites too so maybe we'd triage on
what we decide is important to launch after such an event.

~~~
pyre
One significant detail that has been mentioned in these discussions has been
the provisioning of new transformers. Apparently power companies don't keep a
huge backup supply of them, and they take a lot to build. If every transformer
in a metropolitan area exploded all at once, then we'd be in quite the pickle.
Add that up with every transformer on a single hemisphere exploding at once,
and it becomes a little more grim.

------
ddeck
For those interested in an in-depth analysis of the risk, Lloyd's insurance
produced a detailed report last year looking at this issue:

 _Solar Storm Risk to the North American Electric Grid [PDF]_

[http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk...](http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk%20reports/solar%20storm%20risk%20to%20the%20north%20american%20electric%20grid.pdf)

Summary here:

[http://www.lloyds.com/news-and-insight/news-and-
features/env...](http://www.lloyds.com/news-and-insight/news-and-
features/environment/environment-2013/us-east-coast-at-high-risk-from-solar-
storms)

Some key points:

 _Weighted by population, the highest risk of storm-induced power outages in
the US is along the Atlantic corridor between Washington D.C. and New York
City._

 _The total U.S. population at risk of extended power outage from a
Carrington-level [estimated to occur every ~150 years] storm is between 20-40
million, with durations of 16 days to 1-2 years._

The wide variation of expected duration is is dependent on the number of
transformers destroyed:

 _If spares are readily available, the total transportation and setup time for
a large power transformer can range from a few weeks to months depending on
distance and logistical issues. If new transformers need to be ordered, the
lead-time is estimated to be between 5-12 months for domestic suppliers, and
6-12 months for international suppliers._

~~~
ogrisel
I am wondering: if the large power transformers are the most critical asset,
wouldn't it make sense to try to protect them in Faraday cages capable of
sustaining high levels of current without melting down? The cost of such cages
are likely to be much much smaller than the cost of power outage lasting
months or years for millions of people.

~~~
ars
That would not help. It's the wires attached to the transformer that get the
current surge, not the transformer itself.

Plus a Faraday cage would not do anything anyway, the frequency is too low.

~~~
ogrisel
> That would not help. It's the wires attached to the transformer that get the
> current surge, not the transformer itself.

Wouldn't it possible to add automated circuit breakers in case of high current
surge then?

> Plus a Faraday cage would not do anything anyway, the frequency is too low.

Low frequency means long wave length, no? I thought that the Faraday cage
holes needed to be smaller than the wave length for it to work.

~~~
ars
> Wouldn't it possible to add automated circuit breakers in case of high
> current surge then?

Yes, but a circuit breaker at the voltages and/or power levels involved is not
a simple device. They don't have them (due to cost and complexity), and there
is a lot of criticism that they don't.

> Low frequency means long wave length, no? I thought that the Faraday cage
> holes needed to be smaller than the wave length for it to work.

It's both. If the holes are too large then small waves can go right in, but if
the wavelength is very large the wave doesn't even notice the cage is there.

A Faraday cage works by picking up and distributing the EMF on all sides of
the cage, so the field inside is canceled out. But if the wavelength is too
large the cage can not pick up the EMF, and the EMF is present inside the
cage. (However with a wave that large is not clear it would do anything to
devices inside. The nice long wires of the power grid are perfect for it
though.)

~~~
ogrisel
Thanks for the clarifications.

------
quarterwave
In II-1-5 [1] we learn that magnetism is a relativistic effect whose strength
is v^2/c^2. This ratio is a very small number for the electron drift
velocities associated with typical currents in copper wires, yet we perceive
magnetic forces because positive and negative electric charges in the wire are
balanced to better than v^2/c^2.

Can anyone indicate how + and - charges are distributed in a CME? Are there
strong electric fields due to local charge imbalances? For the magnetic field,
it's tempting to say that the drift velocity of charges in a CME is high (as
much as 0.001c) but then wouldn't charges of both polarities be moving with
that (average) speed? Perhaps there is some initial motion when the charges
are ejected from the sun?

[1]
[http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_01.html#Ch1-S5](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_01.html#Ch1-S5)

------
vecter
Thank God we live in a 3 dimensional space, where things rarely collide
because the space is so "big" compared lower dimensions [0].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk#Higher_dimensions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk#Higher_dimensions)

~~~
exo762
And yet:

> There is a 12 percent chance of a Carrington-type event on Earth in the next
> 10 years

------
mseebach
From the linked NASA article:

> _"... knock modern civilization back to the 18th century ..."_

and later:

> _" According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total
> economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs
> of a Hurricane Katrina."_

Is that figure for the US, or the world? Also, while that's a lot of money,
it's not "knock modern civilization back to the 18th century"-money. So which
one is it? Neither the NASA or WaPo article seems to give a clear answer.

~~~
ars
It would have wiped out the power grid, no power to anyone for months. (Unless
you had a generator and fuel.)

Although we would fix it. Assuming current levels of production it would take
years to fully repair, but I assume after a disaster we would massively
increase the rate of production and it wouldn't be as bad as some make out.

Poorer counties, and those without a manufacturing base, would be in much much
worse shape though.

~~~
ddeck
_> but I assume after a disaster we would massively increase the rate of
production and it wouldn't be as bad as some make out_

Unfortunately it's not so easy. A number of the raw materials have quite
limited supply and even after production, transportation is very time
consuming.

Transportation can be shorted by producing locally, but in 2010, only 15% of
large power transformers (>60 MVA) deployed in the US were supplied by
domestic producers[1] (although domestic production capacity is increasing):

 _LPTs require a long lead time, and transporting them can be challenging. The
average lead time for an LPT is between five and 16 months; however, the lead
time can extend beyond 20 months if there are any supply disruptions or delays
with the supplies, raw materials, or key parts. Its large size and weight can
further complicate the procurement process, because an LPT requires special
arrangements and special rail cars for transport._ [1]

For more than you ever wanted to know on the subject, see the following:

[1]
[http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdat...](http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdate-040914.pdf)

~~~
marvin
I don't think it would really be this dire if push came to shove. A whole
country without transformers and lacking ability to import them would be like
a war effort. It would certainly be a huge disaster, but it wouldn't be
cataclysmic. People would come out of their regular job roles and work with
rebuilding.

If you read up about e.g. the crazy efforts that went on during World War II,
this would be a good example of how focused a large economy can be in times of
crisis. Of course there would be less time available to make the next
Instagram, but it would probably have some positive side effects too.

------
ajarmst
Sounds like there's a bit of "no one ever got fired/pilloried for claiming
that things were going to be worse than they turned out to be!" going on. I
remember a lot of that going around in 1995-99. Study the issue, advocate for
mitigation strategies, by all means. But let's dial back the "WE'RE ALL GOING
TO DIE LIKE LEMMINGS" a bit, hmmm?

~~~
codezero
This is true, it's also reflected in weather reports where there is a bias to
forecast rain. Nobody is mad that they brought an umbrella.

------
herendin
As the event lasted only 4 hours, does that mean it would have had different
levels of effect on different regions of the planet? Countries on the far side
would be better shielded.

~~~
ars
I don't see mention of 4 hours, but presumably that's how long it took to
either erupt or transit through empty space.

If it hit the earth it would have slowed down and stayed longer.

The charged particles interacting with the magnetic field of the earth would
have produced a planet wide EMP (larger than even a nuke could do). The
charged particles would have induced electric current in any large wire and
would have acted on the whole planet.

~~~
pyre
> I don't see mention of 4 hours, but presumably that's how long it took to
> either erupt or transit through empty space.

It took only 4 hours to get from the Sun to Earth, but then it 'slows down'
and hangs about?

------
theaeolist
“This double-CME traveled through a region of space that had been cleared out
by yet another CME four days earlier,” NASA says. ” As a result, the storm
clouds were not decelerated as much as usual by their transit through the
interplanetary medium.”

Just curious, what exactly was cleared out? I thought the interplanetary
medium is just empty space.

~~~
Qantourisc
There are no absolutes in physics (well rarely any naturally curring anyway),
space still has stuff in it. Even if it's just a small rock every kilo meter,
that's still a lot of rocks. 149,597,870 rocks to be exact. (Assuming the
number isn't wrong.)

What was exactly cleared out I don't know though.

------
nwenzel
If the power was out for a period of months, if the internet, cable tv,
phones, and all electronic communication were down so on day 2, you only knew
that the power was out and you couldn't reach anybody, what would you need to
do to survive?

Wait it out seems somewhat optimistic. No refrigeration means any fresh food
would spoil pretty quickly. Better hope that garden can be scaled up.

Clean water would become an issue first though. I don't know where the nearest
lake or stream is. Though I imagine several days away on foot.

Assuming you made it that long protection would become an issue. You'd want to
be sure you had good relationships with your with your neighbors.

It really doesn't take much to get pretty far down the doomsdayer path I
guess.

Lesson learned... optimize for happiness everyday.

~~~
zorbo
> Clean water would become an issue first though. I don't know where the
> nearest lake or stream is

Under your feet. :)

~~~
nextw33k
You are so right, it amazes me that people are focusing on getting guns rather
than teaching people to dig a well (few days effort, less if others are
helping) or plant crops.

Has Minecraft taught this generation nothing? ;-)

------
nardi
> These plasma clouds, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), compromised a
> solar storm thought to be the most powerful in at least 150 years.

Tsk, Washington Post. I think you mean "comprised."

------
lifeformed
How predictable are these storm events?

~~~
codezero
There are different factors that make some things predictable and some not.
Many models use the solar rotation as a baseline, so some structure that was
there in one rotation will likely be there in the next one (this is similar to
persistence modeling in climate).

Sudden, large CMEs are not necessarily predictable, but they may be to some
degree, most of the solar wind modeling efforts are aimed at determining the
time of arrival of a structure on the Sun at Earth (or whether it will arrive)
rather than determining if such a structure will happen or not, though as I
said, there are some ways to make educated guesses.

Once you think a CME will be Earth directed, the important factors are how
strong it is (magnetic field and proton density) and how soon it will arrive.
Steady solar wind takes about four days to make the journey but huge solar
flares may take less than 24 hours, all told, this is still plenty of time for
most satellite operators to prepare their satellites by baffling them or
taking other precautionary measures.

------
carsonreinke
Could some explain technically what happens to transformers with a solar
storm? Can they not be repaired in some manner?

~~~
gone35
It's not 100% clear yet and there might be other factors ( _eg_ gas leakages
or harmonic-induced damages to relays), but it seems the main effect is rapid
internal heating caused by stray magnetic flux leakages from the saturated
core [1,2]. Hot spots beyond a certain threshold end up severely damaging
internal components, rendering the transformer inoperable --or at best sharply
reducing its operating lifetime [3]. Repairs in these cases pretty much entail
retrofitting the whole damn thing, so the months-long disruption is all the
same either way.

[1] [http://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-
act/reliabilit...](http://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-
act/reliability/cybersecurity/ferc_meta-r-319.pdf)

[2]
[http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/spaceweather.pdf](http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/spaceweather.pdf)

[3]
[http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk...](http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/lloyds/reports/emerging%20risk%20reports/solar%20storm%20risk%20to%20the%20north%20american%20electric%20grid.pdf)

------
halfcat
What happens to everyone's net worth if power goes away for months or years?
If I have, say, $1M in the bank (I don't), and the power returns after 2-3
years, do I still have money?

------
kjs3
I really need to get busy building that Faraday cage in the basement.

~~~
ars
I know you are joking, but to take you seriously for a moment, a Faraday cage
would not help at all.

A Faraday cage only shields against high frequency fields, but a CME is a very
low frequency event. You need mu-metal, and huge amounts of it.

Plus it would knock out the power grid, so all the gear in your basement
wouldn't be all that useful.

~~~
skaevola
Can you explain the frequency dependence of the Faraday cage? The only time I
can think of them being ineffective is against waves which are above the
plasma frequency of the metal the cage is made of.

~~~
ars
If the wavelength of the EMF is larger than the size of the entire cage it
will go through the cage like it wasn't there.

(Although it would also have a hard time affecting the small items inside.)

A Faraday cage also can not shield against a static, or slowly changing
magnetic field.

------
easyname
people interested in regular updated on solar flare can look into this youtube
channel :
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTiL1q9YbrVam5nP2xzFTWQ)

------
junto
Could such an event be powerful enough to flip the Earth's polarity?

------
graycat
Let's see: Say that one of these storms arrives at a _point_ in time. Then
over time, these storms form a _stochastic point process_.

Now it should be fairly clear intuitively that at least roughly increments,
that is, arrivals of points, are stationary in time and independent.

Presto: It follows that the stochastic point process is a Poisson process
about which we know a lot.

So, we'd like the _arrival rate_ of this Poisson process, say, in arrivals per
year. Okay, we can get a good estimate just by dividing the number of arrivals
we have observed over the number of years we have been observing. Then with
this estimate of the arrival rate, we can calculate the probability of an
arrival in, say, the next 10 years.

Since, when was it, 18?? or some such, we've actually had no arrivals at all
that hit Earth, the arrival rate is low and the chances of an arrival in the
next 10 years is low.

Relax! Good news, right? I mean, the sky is not really falling this time after
all!

~~~
mturmon
Bad news for this model: it's not stationary, due to the 11-year solar cycle,
and to other behaviors at longer time scales superimposed on the cycle.

But if you average out over at least the solar cycle, you could come up with a
rate of superstorms per-cycle. There have been about 15 cycles since the 1859
superstorm, which would mean that perhaps you expect ~ 1 chance in 15 of such
a storm in the coming cycle.

~~~
graycat
Of course what I mentioned is also called the 'axiomatic' derivation of the
Poisson process. In part it's nice because it starts with 'qualitative'
assumptions and ends up with the full algebra of the process and its
distribution and independence of times between arrivals.

Details are in E. Cinlar, 'Introduction to Stochastic Processes' in his
chapter on the Poisson process. There he also touches on the non-stationary
case, and what he has may (I'm in hurry this morning) be equivalent to your
"average out over ... the cycle".

Since a finite sum of independent Poisson processes is a Poisson process, your
1 in 15 over the next cycle may be equivalent to 1 in 2014 - 1859 years over
the next year.

I do the same for asteroids: We have a good ballpark estimate of the rate of
killer asteroids, and the rate is low enough to f'get about it.

~~~
mturmon
Yes, you described a case ("homogeneous P.P.") where the intensity, lambda, is
constant over time. In the inhomogeneous P.P., there is a time-varying rate,
lambda(t). The derivation of the properties in the inhomogeneous case is
almost the same because the key property is independent increments.

When you add up the number of catastrophic events over an 11-year cycle, you
get a sequence of "numbers of catastrophic CMEs"

    
    
      N1, N2, ..., Nk
    

each of which is Poisson with intensity

    
    
      \int_{cycle} lambda(t) dt    [*]
    

If you ignore the larger-than-a-cycle variations in intensity, this integral
is the same for each cycle. So the N's above are iid Poisson with some common
parameter lambda_0, say.

Observing the N's for many cycles would allow you to estimate lambda_0. That's
pretty much where the 1 in 15 comes from (indeed, lambda_0 is so low that
there are only 0 or 1 events per cycle, so "estimation" is trivial).

The "easy" problem is that, even averaging over a cycle, the activity ([*]
above) is not constant, e.g. this graph of sunspot numbers vs. time:

[http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/files/2012/07/su...](http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/files/2012/07/sunspotnumbers.jpg)

The "hard" problem is that the counts are not, in real life, independent, even
across weeks-to-months time scales. This would invalidate the Poisson model at
the ground level (see the talk referenced by @gone35 above).

There are reasons (e.g., Maunder minimum, see the plot above) to believe that
the counts are also not independent at the decadal time scale.

Lack of independence would be a huge problem for any Poisson model. You'd have
to go up to a doubly stochastic process, for example, in which lambda(t) is
itself a random process.

~~~
graycat
You are guilty of letting a lot of really messy data ruin some really nice
theory!

So, with assumptions of stationary and independent increments, the Maunder
minimum shown in the graph would have probability less than zip and zilch of
happening in which case we would reject the assumptions.

You also are analyzing sun spots while the OP is talking about dangerous CMEs.
It's been a while since I studied sun spots: You are saying that a sun spot is
just a small case of a CME? Or is a dangerous CME not just a big sun spot but
a different animal?

~~~
mturmon
CMEs are associated with large or magnetically-complex sunspots.

Simple sunspots are bipolar, they have a N and a S region with field lines
arching up connecting one to the other.

Complex sunspots are multipolar, and the field lines therefore cross in weird
ways (in the 3D solar plasma). They can change configurations suddenly,
releasing a lot of energy as the magnetic field lines re-arrange to a lower-
energy configuration.

This magnetic reconnection is what drives CMEs (roughly speaking).

------
sidcool
It was in 2012. Too close for comfort.

------
staunch
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_slippers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_slippers)

------
myth_buster
Warning: Click-bait title.

------
gravity13
Bad title jamessun.

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

------
yawz
I absolutely hate these exaggerated headlines!!!

------
dba7dba
Would the solar storm affect only the side of the Earth facing the Sun or the
entire Earth?

Thanks in advance.

------
lotsofmangos
A big steel box full of batteries and solar panels kept mothballed in the
basement sounds like it might be a good idea.

------
spartanatreyu
bullshit headline

------
jrockway
I guess "destroyed life as we know it" is awfully literal. It means that "life
as we know it" is "electricty costs 22 cents a kilowatt hour and GPS exists".

Yes, the power grid could have blown up. We would have then paid more for
electricity. (It's unclear to me if the effect is global, or Earth shields the
nighttime side from the impact.)

Satellites would probably stop working. So air traffic would have to use
VOR/NDB/DME instead of GPS. Ships would use LORAN. Weather forecasters would
use radar instead of satellite (a problem during hurricane season).

This headline makes me angry. It's not like we would have been instantly
vaporized. Some stuff would be less convenient until we rebuilt it. That's it.

~~~
pdonis
_> We would have then paid more for electricity_

With the current power grid structure in most developed countries, this would
not be an option: some components (such as large transformers) in the current
grid would be destroyed by a large CME event and it would take years to
replace enough of them to restore the grid.

 _> Ships would use LORAN._

That would be difficult since LORAN doesn't exist any more; it was taken off
line years ago when GPS became widely available.

 _> Some stuff would be less convenient until we rebuilt it._

As things stand currently, some stuff would not _exist_ until we rebuilt it.

I certainly think we could _get_ to a point where a large CME event would only
be an inconvenience. But doing that will require redesigning significant parts
of our infrastructure to be much more decentralized, and having plans in place
to replace key components quickly. We are not at that point now.

~~~
jrockway
I assume we would just use generators in the meantime. Yes, this is expensive.
Very expensive.

~~~
pdonis
It's not just expensive, it's impossible. There isn't enough fuel for all
those generators, even if enough of them could be built.

~~~
jrockway
The point is that the price will move to reduce demand to some level that's
sustainable. That probably means critical infrastructure.

~~~
pdonis
Which means most people will not be "paying more for electricity"; they will
be _without_ electricity, because generators are only affordable (which really
means "available", since the steep price rise is just the market's way of
rationing a very scarce resource, as you say) for critical infrastructure.

------
lcusack
So basically the Mayans would have been right?

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bprater
"21 December 2012" was the proposed date of the Mayan Apocalypse. So the end
of the world would have been a few month early.

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angersock
Should've used NTP or PTP.

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stretchwithme
The state of California spent $500 million on the bike path for the new
eastern span of the SF bay bridge. And probably significantly less preparing
for threats like this one.

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orthecreedence
Yes, that $500M could have been spent encasing every power line, transformer,
and appliance in SF in 2 inches of lead.

