Posted on 07/31/2013 12:02:01 PM PDT by Kartographer
Yeah, I saw that one - that article also perpetuated the misconception that Solar Flares will blow up electronics.
“But in 1989 a smaller flare wiped out Hydro Quebec’s grid, leaving many Canadians without power for an extended period. “
“extended period” that outage lasted 9 hours.
“I’ve read a number of analyses that claim major transformers are at risk from both a Carrington event as well as EMP attack.”
What you say is correct. They are vulnerable to both. I never said they weren’t vulnerable - I said a solar flare will not damage electronics.
However, we now have lots of warning when a solar flare is headed our way, unlike in 1989. We can react and respond like we have never been able to before. GIC mitigation must still be (and is being) pursued.
However, even a Carrington Event or greater is unlikely to completely destroy the grid as has been advocated on thread.
BTW, my 1991 Kawasaki 100 still has non-transistorized ignition (works like a charm, points and all). I think they finally went to CDI in about 2000.
I was driving at the time it happened. Luckily I kept control of the truck, and put it on the shoulder to avoid a wreck.
Afterwards, I had to extract the seat from my butt, but otherwise all’s well...
I got 22,397,550 miles in 14 days
Orbital path length is (93,000,000 * 2 * π) = 584,336,233 Miles per year, or (584,336,233/365.25) = 1,599,825 Miles per day or (1,599,825/24) = 66,659 miles per hour which is our orbital velocity.
Diameter of Earth is 7,926 miles so (22,397,550/7926) or the "near miss" was equivalent to about 2,825 Earth Diameters. Close enough for government work!
Regards,
GtG
When you consider the distance what’s a few hundred miles one way or another? ;-)
I’m passionate about the subject, and I try to call out misconceptions on the issue when I see them in no uncertain terms - I unloaded on you inappropriately and I apologize.
You do good work, keep it up and don’t get discouraged by assholes, even when they are me.
Tissue warning.
Better luck next time.
Heck it was during bam bams watch, unless it furthers his goal of destroying america’s govt and replacing it with communism it didnt happen.
22.7 million miles based on an even 14 days.
www.survivalblog.com has some information on makes models. He mostly recommends cars from about 1980 or earlier as I recall but thats only a guess.
Pretty much anything that doesn’t have electronic ignition or a computer. Numerous articles will explain which parts are at risk.
In a society as dependent upon electronics as ours is, I'm not really sure what the government could actually do.
Maybe they could run the worlds biggest ground wire to the moon!
Don't you remember the scientific tests experts did of trucks/cars/ambulances when they bombarded them with electromagnetic pulses? Those were performed for the Commission on EMPs the government did in 2008 or 2009?
I know both of you read that - have you dumped scientific evidence and gone back to no cars will run crap and an EMP from a solar flare and an attack are the same?
Do you want that article put back on here for the truth or is it okay for people to freak out with wrong information. I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.
Cars will run whether it is a solar flare EMP or an attack EMP.
I watched that long meeting those three men had.
Henry Cooper, who lead strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union under President Reagan, and who now heads High Frontier, a group pushing for missile defense.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry has served on the staffs of the EMP Commission, the Strategic Posture Commission, the Commission on the New Strategic Posture of the U.S., the House Armed Services Committee and the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security for the Congressional Caucus on EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) that endeavors to carry on the work of the EMP Commission. He is also the Director of the United States Nuclear Strategy Forum, an advisory body to Congress on policies to counter weapons of mass destruction.
Cooper and Woolsey got their “scientific” information from the fiction book, One Second After, both of them talked about it. They also don't know the difference between the effect of a solar flare and an EMP attack.
However, Dr. Peter Fry was on the Commission and he knows the truth. He didn't correct these other two. Fry knows cars will run. The experts tested those vehicles for Fry and the others on that commission. I'm sure Fry didn't want to embarrass the other two men because they were so wrong.
Briefly, so I don't post the whole thing again, an EMP from a solar flare goes in a straight line from the sun and we will know where it is going to hit. It goes directly into the electric grid. If you have a device plugged into the wall, it's fried. If it not plugged into the wall, it's fine. Cars will run. During the test, a few cars stopped running and started again when turned on. On the ambulance, a computer stopped and started again when turned on (it wasn't plugged into the grid). Everything directly fed/connected by the grid will be fried. It's called straight line damage.
An EMP attack damage is regional. The region it explodes over is affected and takes out power. The height of the explosion also determines how far away it will damage. It's more an umbrella damage and not a straight line damage. If one happens over the west coast, at some distance the damage stops and it never gets to the east coast. The cars tests were specifically done to see the damage in this case. None happened except for a brief stop for some and they started again. Cars will run.
RFEngineer, you seem to know more about this than others.
Anything plugged in to the power grid.
Half the people in this country would be dead in 2-3 months in the case of a Carrington-scale event. The uncivilized regions of the world, like africa, the middle east, and pockets of asia and central america would do OK.
In the case of an event like this, i would do everything within my power to make sure that not a single politician lived to reproduce.
Thank you, darlin’. I needed that. I might have to pull that off in hard-copy for the library.
Here in Tampa a squirrel chewed through a power cable and left 600,000 people without water for two days.
Excuse me if I don’t have a lot of faith in the resiliency of our infrastructure.
“Briefly, so I don’t post the whole thing again, an EMP from a solar flare goes in a straight line from the sun and we will know where it is going to hit. It goes directly into the electric grid. If you have a device plugged into the wall, it’s fried.”
Thanks for the compliment, but please let me correct something here:
The EMP from a solar flare is caused by charged particles traveling at a high rate of speed hitting the geomagnetic field and displacing it. when a magnetic field is displaced, it generates a voltage in wires that directly cross that magnetic field.
So your assertion that anything plugged in will be “fried” is incorrect.
Let’s put it to scale: A Nuclear EMP E-1 pulse electric field may rise to 50,000V/m (that’s volts per METER) from 5kHz to 1000MHz
A solar flare of Carrington class may rise to 30 V/km (that’s volts per KILOMETER). so this is why electronics (say a TV) will be unaffected - there is simply not enough induced voltage from a solar flare to impact it. However, let’s say you’ve got a power line that is 1000km long - that will create a DC offset in a transformer of 30,000 Volts - High voltage transformers are linear devices, and highly optimized. An offset of 30,000 volts will saturate the transformer every half-cycle. what happens to the energy in saturation? It dumps to heat. the heat, if not dissipated, quickly builds up and may melt windings or boil off cooling oil. Eventually (even quickly) go “boom”.
Also, during the saturation condition, harmonics are created on the grid - this will cause grid instability - it COULD cause transient voltages in places (but surge protection devices that are standard these days can easily deal with this). Chances are, all plugged in electronics will be just fine in a solar flare.
So a solar flare cannot damage electronics directly. There may be failure modes where transient voltages could be propagated that may damage electronics if there are no surge protection devices in your transformer, meter, main service panel, or on a power strip.....if you are that unlucky, it COULD happen - but is unlikely to be widespread.
Now lets talk about the EMP commission testing on cars.
You are correct in your reading of the report. What is not known is how actually representative of an EMP pulse the test range they used was. the true answer is we simply do not know how vulnerable our elecctronics are to an EMP - but......we DO know that semiconductors are trending to faster processors, which are dimensionally smaller, that means that over time electronics become more vulnerable to a nuclear EMP event.
Anyway.....that’s out there for discussion.
“A solar flare of Carrington class may rise to 30 V/km (that’s volts per KILOMETER)”
I meant to add that the frequency content of a solar flare EMP is on the order of Hz, not kHz or MHz, or GHz.
“Excuse me if I don’t have a lot of faith in the resiliency of our infrastructure.”
you are wise to be concerned about squirrels, Solar flares, and nuclear EMP events.
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