Could a Solar Superstorm Someday Trigger an 'Internet Apocalypse'? (msn.com) 107
"Black Swan events are hard-to-predict rare events that can significantly alter the course of our lives," begins a 2021 paper by a computer science professor at the University of California.
Now the Washington Post revisits that exploration of the possibility that "magnetic fields unleashed by a solar superstorm rip through Earth's magnetosphere, sending currents surging through human infrastructure." A widespread internet outage could, indeed, be brought on by a strong solar storm hitting Earth — a rare but very real event that has not yet happened in the digital age, experts say. When a solar storm known as the Carrington Event struck in 1859, telegraph lines sparked, operators were electrocuted and the northern lights descended to latitudes as low as Jamaica. A 1989 solar storm took out the Quebec power grid for hours. And in 2012, a storm just missed Earth.
As the sun, which has roughly 11-year cycles, enters a particularly active period known as the "solar maximum" in 2025, some are worried our interconnected world is not prepared.
Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a computer science professor at University of California at Irvine whose paper "Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse" has played a role in popularizing the term, started thinking about internet resilience when the coronavirus began to spread, and she realized how unprepared we were for a pandemic. Research on widespread internet failure was scant. "We've never experienced one of the extreme case events, and we don't know how our infrastructure would respond to it," Jyothi said. "Our failure testing doesn't even include such scenarios."
She notes that a severe solar storm is likely to affect large-scale infrastructure such as submarine communication cables, which could interrupt long-distance connectivity. If you have not lost power, you might have access to, say, a government website hosted locally, but reaching bigger websites, which could have data stored all over the place, might not be possible. The northern latitudes are also especially vulnerable to solar storms, and that's where a lot of internet infrastructure is concentrated. "This is not taken into account in our infrastructure deployment today at all," she said. Such outages could last for months, depending on the scale and how long it takes to repair the damage. The economic impact of just one day of lost connectivity in the United States alone is estimated to be more than $11 billion, according to the internet watcher NetBlocks.
Still, Jyothi says she has felt bad for using the term "internet apocalypse" in her paper. There's not much ordinary people can do to prepare for such a phenomenon; it falls on governments and companies. And the paper "just got too much attention," she said.
"Astrophysicists estimate the likelihood of a solar storm of sufficient strength to cause catastrophic disruption occurring within the next decade to be 1.6 to 12%," the paper concludes. (It also notes that the U.S. has a higher risk for a disconnection than Asia.)
"Paying attention to this threat and planning defenses against it, like our preliminary effort in this paper, is critical for the long-term resilience of the Internet."
Now the Washington Post revisits that exploration of the possibility that "magnetic fields unleashed by a solar superstorm rip through Earth's magnetosphere, sending currents surging through human infrastructure." A widespread internet outage could, indeed, be brought on by a strong solar storm hitting Earth — a rare but very real event that has not yet happened in the digital age, experts say. When a solar storm known as the Carrington Event struck in 1859, telegraph lines sparked, operators were electrocuted and the northern lights descended to latitudes as low as Jamaica. A 1989 solar storm took out the Quebec power grid for hours. And in 2012, a storm just missed Earth.
As the sun, which has roughly 11-year cycles, enters a particularly active period known as the "solar maximum" in 2025, some are worried our interconnected world is not prepared.
Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a computer science professor at University of California at Irvine whose paper "Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse" has played a role in popularizing the term, started thinking about internet resilience when the coronavirus began to spread, and she realized how unprepared we were for a pandemic. Research on widespread internet failure was scant. "We've never experienced one of the extreme case events, and we don't know how our infrastructure would respond to it," Jyothi said. "Our failure testing doesn't even include such scenarios."
She notes that a severe solar storm is likely to affect large-scale infrastructure such as submarine communication cables, which could interrupt long-distance connectivity. If you have not lost power, you might have access to, say, a government website hosted locally, but reaching bigger websites, which could have data stored all over the place, might not be possible. The northern latitudes are also especially vulnerable to solar storms, and that's where a lot of internet infrastructure is concentrated. "This is not taken into account in our infrastructure deployment today at all," she said. Such outages could last for months, depending on the scale and how long it takes to repair the damage. The economic impact of just one day of lost connectivity in the United States alone is estimated to be more than $11 billion, according to the internet watcher NetBlocks.
Still, Jyothi says she has felt bad for using the term "internet apocalypse" in her paper. There's not much ordinary people can do to prepare for such a phenomenon; it falls on governments and companies. And the paper "just got too much attention," she said.
"Astrophysicists estimate the likelihood of a solar storm of sufficient strength to cause catastrophic disruption occurring within the next decade to be 1.6 to 12%," the paper concludes. (It also notes that the U.S. has a higher risk for a disconnection than Asia.)
"Paying attention to this threat and planning defenses against it, like our preliminary effort in this paper, is critical for the long-term resilience of the Internet."
Fiber (Score:5, Informative)
Before someone claims that fiber optics would be unaffected, I'll point out that the optical amplifiers [wikipedia.org] used in long fiber runs are electrically powered.
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Those optical amplifiers have to be fed with a power source. And usually that means a 'copper' line runs alongside the fiber or may even be part of the same cable, at least for the long ones between backbone nodes.
Re:Fiber (Score:4, Informative)
Radio doesn't work underwater. Know why? The conductive saltwater absorbs the EM radiation and disperses it to ground. The systems that input power to the cables at the landing stations could be impacted, but the EM radiation simply can't reach the cables themselves.
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You're right about that, but what good are the cables themselves when all of the equipment at both ends has been fried? As the most expensive part it's convenient they won't be damaged, but how quickly will that hardware be replaced when so much other hardware has to be replaced too?
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Will it be damaged? Faraday cages are proof against solar storms too.
Your laptop, your phone, your television, your computer with the glass window, those won't fare so well. The well grounded equipment in steel cases will do okay.
When I was the lead engineer for an ISP, we had a lightning strike about 100 yards from the main computer room. The little plastic router serving a neighbor was fried. Current fed back up the ethernet cable crashed our router. Then we rebooted it and it was fine. How you encase the
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Are you planning on putting the entire electrical grid in a Faraday cage? Surge suppressors can only do so much.
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Surge suppressors can only do so much.
They don't have to do much. Their job is to shunt the overvoltage through a _short circuit_ which does two things:
1. Briefly deadens the voltage entering the equipment
2. Causes a brief but large over-current on the circuit that trips the circuit breaker.
Once the breaker trips, the entire circuit is de-energized. Except for whatever the solar storm can induce in short in-building wiring. Which is not much, even in a massive storm.
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Had a lightning strike just outside the computer room at the ISP where I worked 20 years ago. Had a plastic-cased router at a neighboring office supplying Internet from about a 100 foot run of ethernet over to our steel-encased and properly grounded core router.
Plastic cased router? Dead. Fried.
Steel cased router? Crashed. Fine on reboot. Even the ethernet port was okay.
Been there. Done that.
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It depends a bit on the frequency.
A flare or EMP could go pretty deep.
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Solar storms aren't like a tall wave but more like a tsunami: a slow but long and steady rise of field strength followed by long steady decline of field strength. The magnetic component is the problem, because shielding against it is difficult and expensive and usually not done for long distance wires.
Good logical induction there. Sometimes you have to think out of the box, perpendicular to the current idea.
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Very low frequency waves can penetrate to about 100M. Extremely low frequency waves (3-30 hz) can penetrate to the depth that cables generally sit. But if you have enough power at those frequencies hitting the planet to induce damaging currents on the power bar for an undersea cable, you've already lost every scrap of technology above ground anyway.
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I check "Electromagnetic absorption by water" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and water only has weak absorption in the blue visible light (418 nm -> absorption length 227 m). Already at the edge of the visible range, absorption length is small, with 14.5 cm at 200 nm and 900 nm. According to https://www.nuclear-power.com/... [nuclear-power.com] water is commonly used in gamma ray shielding and the absorption length of gamma rays in water is 4.15 cm for 100 keV rays to 7.15 cm for 500 keV rays. From which I infer that at
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Errata: The absorption coefficient is 2 to the power of the number above. At the bottom of the 3 meter deep Olympic pool, the gamma rays are absorbed by a factor of 2^41 to 2^72.
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Errata: The absorption coefficient is 2 to the power of the number above. At the bottom of the 3 meter deep Olympic pool, the gamma rays are absorbed by a factor of 2^41 to 2^72.
What is the relevance of gamma rays? Do you think gamma rays can ionize water or something?
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Radio doesn't work underwater.
It only works for about an hour+45 minutes, at which point the submersible implodes. Either that, or you don't get the launch codes from the Very Low Frequency radio and there's a shipboard crisis resulting in nuclear Armageddon. Never mind the Internet melting down, saltwater is a bitch and will be the death of us all!
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The problem however is not EM radiation.
But the compression of the Earth's magnetic field.
When the field bounces back, it induces high currents in wires.
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A severe solar storm would create a lot of power outages and damaged electronics so I'd expect long downtimes and I'd feel sorry for anyone depending entirely on the cloud.
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Re:Fiber (Score:4, Informative)
Well, it is hard to measure previous events excepting when big enough to affect things like C14 and Beryllium-10 and it quite possible that only events over a certain threshold make it through the Earths magnetic shield.
Here's a list, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] sparse before 1582 (actually later) with some in the past leaving evidence pointing to huge storms such as the 774-775 C14 spike, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and of course the Carrington event in the telegraph era, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you look at the list, there has been quite a few events in the 20-21st centuries, when measuring became better, clustered at solar maximums. Most too small to affect the Earth's surface much, though the 1989 storm took out Quebec's Hydro network.
There's also been quite a few large events that missed the Earth.
In sum, most events are stopped by the Earths magnetic field and only manifest as auroras visible quite a ways south and they are fairly regular, though dependent on the solar cycles, some of which are stronger then others.
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I'm always surprised the Miyake Events are not more talked about. If one hits us, we will be wishing for a Carrington Event.
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Yes, they seem to be the ultimate in solar flares. Perhaps too scary, as well not much to be done about them besides hoping one doesn't happen.
Re:Fiber (Score:5, Interesting)
>"A severe solar storm would create a lot of power outages and damaged electronics so I'd expect long downtimes and I'd feel sorry for anyone depending entirely on the cloud"
Not just cloud- since all the local infrastructure could be destroyed, as well. Worse- the equipment need to FIX all the damaged infrastructure could be toast.
Worst case is we are all teleported back to the pre-industrialized age for a very long time. Of course, that would require a hugely bad event, there are all kinds of far-lesser events which are much more probable. But even those can be extremely disruptive. Just small events can ripple disaster through the lean machine.
So what do we do? Few places are going to be willing to pay all the extra money to harden the running systems and have enough "disconnected spares" around to get things back up.
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While there is a lot of equipment topside, most of any network (power, water, gas, phone, TV, fiber-optic) is buried below the frost line in the ground in the Netherlands. 60 centimeter to 1 meter usually. So it has to be a pretty severe solar storm to mess everything up. Still, the above ground equipment will likely need repair. Even though most of that equipment is shielded and grounded.
Now that I'm living in South-America, with everything above ground, I expect the same level of storm will bring back th
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I agree. But, to refresh my memory I looked up details on a Carrington event. For no other reason than I found it interesting, I share some of that:
"
The following conversation occurred between two operators of the American telegraph line between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, on the night of 2 September 1859 and reported in the Boston Evening Traveler:
Boston operator (to Portland operator): "Please cut off your battery [power source] entirely for fifteen minutes."
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"Back during WWII, GIs would make crystal radios out of little more than razor blades and pencils. It wouldn't be possible if everything "went digital" and analog radio ceased to exist."
For some reason I'm reminded about Xenophon's words when finding the old city of Ur, and the fascination of who these people could be who could build things better than in Xenophon's own time.
Consequences extend quite a ways (Score:5, Informative)
Banking, paychecks, social service payments, etc.: electronic and via network.
Industry: all manner of automation.
Transport: massively computerized and data-centric
Just-in-time inventory (ex. grocery stores): depends on transport as well, but managing this adequately requires a lot of data manipulation. Your typical cash register is talking to the inventory system as you check out.
Medicine: all manner of equipment, data management
Navigation: GPS gone; older methods (ex. LORAN) have been shut down and rendered non-restartable
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To be fair regarding JIT ordering for a grocery store, employees still go behind the automatic ordering computer and increase the size of the order. In fact, that's something I do nearly every work day. The computer is getting much better then it use to be, but if the checker takes shortcuts or we have theft, the inventory gets corrupted. Part of my every day job is to make these corrections and supplement the computer written order.
Of course, if a large event happened, we would have no way to actually tran
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We used to have a self-powered communications network that has survived one or more large events. But people don't use landlines any more.
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Everyone should be prepared for ANY disasters including natural.
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Most high voltage distribution systems are giant loops with the conductors in a consistent orientation to the slow varying magnetic field.
On some STP it would induce effectively fuck all, the loop area is small and the twisting means every little loop has opposite effect. Even if it's not twisted, the loop area is still tiny, OVP and surge protectors can likely take care of it without any damage.
Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
a severe solar storm is likely to affect large-scale infrastructure such as submarine communication cables
Here's the point where you can stop reading. Submarine communication cables are fiber optic. They're not affected by em radiation. They do carry power for the repeaters, but for the same reason radio doesn't work underwater, they'd be unaffected by even a Carrington event: the conductive salt water absorbs EM radiation and disperses it to ground.
Every scrap of technology above ground would be fried to a crisp before the submarine cables will be impacted by a solar superstorm.
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Indeed. I would be more concerned about my modem blowing up or my phone's battery catching fire while in my pocket.
Of course, the loss of large scale digital infrastructure would be catastrophic enough to worry about. But if there is a 12% chance of a freak solar storm, that's 12% chance of my phone incinerating my balls.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Your phone doesn't have a long enough antenna to build up a charge. The stuff at risk of damage is the stuff that's attached to very long metal wires without anything to mitigate the flow. For everything else you're talking about needing a reboot because the unusual EM field glitched some zeroes into ones causing a software crash.
Computers that can't boot and run stably for the duration of the storm is certainly a problem. But the article's author clearly doesn't have an handle on the character of that problem.
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Interesting. I never truly knew the mechanics behind it. Only believed that electronics would get fried with a strong enough wave.
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Informative)
>"Interesting. I never truly knew the mechanics behind it. Only believed that electronics would get fried with a strong enough wave."
I think that comes from the fact that a side-effect of things like long power and communications cables that get these surges are CONNECTED to a lot of our small electronics at the edge. Even if they would fare well in a stand-alone state, they are more at risk when connected. For example, those nice conduit of electrons (power, CATV, phone) coming into your house can very much potentially fry the things connected to them- the routers, modems, DVRs, TV's, switches, computers, HVAC controllers, etc. So you are not only left with a power and communications system in shambles, but a lot of the end-point equipment ruined as well.
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Yes to fiber. Caveat the AC power. Not as much warning as you might think. The solar winds don't move at light speed but they travel pretty darn fast.
The main things you can do are:
1. Install a whole-house surge suppressor. DIY they're under $100. That has a high probability of tripping the main circuit breaker before damaging voltages can harm your equipment.
2. Don't buy a computer case with a fancy window on the side. Use a steel case with ventilation grills and keep it plugged in so that it remains groun
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So in other words, phones connected to a USB cable(maybe a long one needed?) can get fried before a phone in your pocket fries.
Good to know.
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It may not be that simple (Score:2)
These cables carry power for the electronics clusters that serve to regenerate the optical signals once they have become attenuated. Optical cables can't transfer signals the kinds of distances that undersea connections often involve without such regeneration (a quick web search says 60-70 km between repeaters.) The regeneration hardware itself might be vulnerable, depending on just how much care was taken in their d
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These cables carry power for the electronics clusters that serve to regenerate the optical signals once they have become attenuated. Optical cables can't transfer signals the kinds of distances that undersea connections often involve without such regeneration (a quick web search says 60-70 km between repeaters.) The regeneration hardware itself might be vulnerable, depending on just how much care was taken in their design. It seems possible that strong magnetic fields might succeed in inducing voltages over the long conductors carrying power along the cables.
The cables are grounded at regular intervals through a big honkin layer of steel distributed throughout the entirety of the cable. WTF do people think is going to be induced on the sea floor beyond that? You can't build up current without shunting to earth and whatever step potential exists it's in fucking salt water. The optical amps are already surge protected and designed for constant current operation.
While there is a long history of over selling various EMP threats this one takes the cake as the lea
Physics: laws you can't break (Score:2)
Certainly you can. We do it all the time by applying a magnetic field across a conductor. In fact, that's exactly how a transformer (isolated coil-to-coil) works. One coil generates a moving magnetic field, the other coil carries induced electron flow (current) from that magnetic field, without any electrical connection or ground of any type; the secondary of the unit closes the induced current loop within whatever it is connected to in a highly isolated m
The internet will be back up quickly (Score:2)
Re:The internet will be back up quickly (Score:5, Informative)
The solar storms in question can last several hours, during which any inadequately shielded computer will crash as the em radiation randomly glitches zeros into ones. Unfortunately, there are a surprising number of complex systems composing the Internet which are unable to undergo a cold reboot because over time their authors introduced circular dependencies.
Here's a common one: the DNS master can't boot without working DNS resolvers. The DNS resolvers won't activate with stale records; they have to update from the DNS master first. Deadlock.
Facebook had an outage like this not too long ago. With everything else in the world still working right, it took their engineers the better part of a day to work around the problem and get the system back online.
Re:The internet will be back up quickly (Score:5, Informative)
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>"Network engineers who can build "the internet" from scratch, with hosts files if necessary, exist all over the world. It won't be back instantly and as fast and complete as you're used to, but basic connectivity won't take weeks or months."
I think that entirely depends on how much permanent physical damage occurs to equipment during such an event. If you have a bunch of burned-out or bricked equipment, that can't just be recovered but must be replaced, things would look quite different. And that is w
Re:The internet will be back up quickly (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's a common one: the DNS master can't boot without working DNS resolvers. The DNS resolvers won't activate with stale records; they have to update from the DNS master first. Deadlock.
No such dependencies exist. DNS servers store local zone list for roots. The root zones contain local databases of glue from which they respond to requests.
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The root zones are run on anycast servers that don't announce their addresses until their software decides they're up to date. I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
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The root zones are run on anycast servers that don't announce their addresses until their software decides they're up to date.
Root servers are managed by different operators some of which don't even use anycast. Root zone is quite small and changes take weeks to get approved. Each TLD has its own servers and infrastructure for providing glue for its domains.
I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
For all I know there are operators who run name servers that literally won't even boot the operating system the name servers run on without DNS.
Perhaps some operators pulled a Facebook and would get hopelessly locked out of their own datacenters and be unable to manually ente
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The DNS resolvers won't activate with stale records; they have to update from the DNS master first. Deadlock.
Facebook had an outage like this not too long ago.
It the world hardly noticed because of how quickly it was resolved. Here's the thing: This information isn't known only to you. There are very smart people all over the world who can work around a calamity really quickly. You discussed something that software "wont" do. I think I with limited programming experience can work around this with a quick compile from a slightly modified source, but I'm not running the world. People far smarter than me would have this issue resolved in minutes / hours and DNS up a
let it fail (Score:5, Funny)
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" And just think of what you'll do with all your extra spare time."
Not get paid?
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We'll replace it with a network based on muons or neutrinos or gravity waves and lasers...
How about blackjack and hookers?
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Let it burn. We'll replace it with a network based on muons or neutrinos or gravity waves and lasers (no sharks). The author of the paper shouldn't feel that bad. One global network's apocalypse will bring a new age in telecommunications. And just think of what you'll do with all your extra spare time.
A day without the Internet is like a day without sunshine...or Creimer & swaztiki posts on /. for that matter. /sarcasm
it's stupid to think you know better. (Score:1)
Oh yeah (Score:2)
"Could a Solar Superstorm Someday Trigger an 'Internet Apocalypse'?"
I sure hope so.
Well we now have fibre and underground cabling (Score:5, Informative)
Power lines could still be affected, but when it comes to communications there are two important changes since the day of telegraphy:
1. Telegraph formed large circuit loops. The worst ones even used the ground as a return, but even later ones had 2 separate wires with a distance of many centimetres. That causes them to essentially act as a huge coil with one winding. That easily picks up changes in the magnetic fields. To prevent this, we now use "twisted pair" and other forms cabling which do 2 things. First the wires are close together, making the area between them as small as possible, second they are twisted so, giving a more or less uniform spacial distribution of the magnetic field, the effects will cancel out.
2. Most of the long distance telecommunications is now done via fibre optic cables, which by themselves have no problem with electromagnetic fields. Amplification is typically done in sheds along their path. Since those are fairly small, effects on them should also be small.
3. Most communications lines, and even many power lines, are now under ground. Both soil and sea-water are good at making the currents, induced by changes in the magnetic field, divert through them instead of the cable. The skin effect also is beneficial here.
So yes, "solar superstorms" can affect the power grid, but much of the points brought forward regarding our telecommunications infrastructure are just fear mongering.
There's also EMP weapons (Score:1)
that our enemies or rogue groups could use against us. I wonder how much overlap there is in the protection for each.
Internet least of our worries (Score:4, Informative)
This will probably fry transformers and satellites. So large regions will be without power and communication for months, maybe years. Plus many modern vehicles will not be able to start. I suspect EVs will probably be in worse shape.
We can still get by without the internet for a bit, other items, I doubt it.
Re:Internet least of our worries (Score:4, Informative)
Supply chain goes away and with it, food.
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Civilization is only 3 hot meals away from anarchy.
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Shocked (Score:2)
>"operators were electrocuted"
No. Shocked, probably. But I could find no evidence of electrocution. I found only this:
"In Washington, D.C., telegraph operator Frederick W. Royce was severely shocked as his forehead grazed a ground wire."
That is not death by electricity (or it likely would have been mentioned).
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electrocuted means injured or killed
HTH, HAND
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>"electrocuted means injured or killed"
Using the word to refer to only injury is common, but not correct. I doubt anyone would think "execution" (where the term arose) would mean just injury. Perhaps most electric shocks can cause injury, even minor injury that the victim barely even notices. Calling a non-fatal shock an "electrocution" is just sensationalistic (something the media does so well).
Recent definitions to the contrary are just explanations of more recent corruption (typically labeled "inf
"Flare" by Zelazny and Thomas (Score:3)
For a carefully research and dramatic fictional treatment, read "Flare" by Roger Zelazny and Thomas T. Thomas.
Shades of Y2K (Score:2)
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Remember how one guy coughed on his soup in china, and the rest of the world started fighting over toilet paper in malls? Granted, an internet-fueled panic won't happen without an internet online, but if security systems and ATMs go down, you can count on everyone to wreak some havoc.
Not a humanity-ending event. But certainly a "memorable" one.
Re:Shades of Y2K (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Granted, an internet-fueled panic won't happen without an internet online, but if security systems and ATMs go down, you can count on everyone to wreak some havoc."
Yeah, I love it when people don't think down the paths of ripples. "Oh we still have cash!' Do we? Seems like few people do, and can't get any now. And even if you had it, where are you going to spend that cash? If you can travel to the store, since the gas stations and traffic lights are bonkers, and find a store that is open, since there are few people who can get there to open it, their registers and POS might not work. And even if they did work, the inventory is quickly depleted (remember "just in time") and not replenished because the systems that order things are out of communication. And even if THAT were not down, the highly sophisticated network needed for shipping things by carriers might be. We haven't even gotten to the topic of the production of things yet... There are so many potential points of failure in the wildly interconnected modern world that it doesn't need much to make it fall apart.
Scary stuff.
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As much as they have resilience and capability, they have ignorance and hubris. The latter is what would lead someone to declare that an unprecedented event "simply would be" a certain way without even studying the possibilities in detail.
In the absence of more detail, I give the person willing to involve themself in such a study the benefit of the doubt, based on that alone.
Not Like AI Likely Will (Score:2)
Carrington 2: Electric Boogaloo (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure a second Carrington Event will cause many young people and probably a significant fraction of the dumber older adults to take their own lives in much the same fashion as the Wall Street crash of 1929. No one wants to think in terms of reverting to "pre-Internet society" which is silly and stupid but here we are. That's people being people. In any case, I can think of more than a dozen people who freak out if their Spotify or Pandora play lists won't load. I can totally imagine the cognitive dissonance that's going to rain down when (not if) one day the internet ceases to be, even for a couple of hours. Some people's brains will lock up, "preppers" will scramble for their bunkers, it won't take long for people to realize that all financial transactions have ceased, gas is unavailable, and electricity (may or) may not be available for hours or days. The terror and the societal break-down will be swift and terrifying. Don't believe me? Then you didn't experience the immediate aftermath of September 11th, 2001, where a couple of localized attacks on the east coast in the morning sent gas prices soaring in fly-over country by mid-afternoon and there was genuine fear of financial ruin by 5:00pm. Black the whole world out all at once and I'm dead certain that people will start shooting at each other without remorse.
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If enough electrical substations get blown, then power in some places could be out for months or years.
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Must be because I was in California during 9/11/2001 but it seemed like a REALLY nice week in customer service land. All the customers were to busy being shocked to yell at anyone. It was fucking great. Outside of that, it wasn't really anything I cared about as a west coaster.
As that squad member said "Some people did something." Then we decided to spend the next 18 years punishing the Middle East.
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P.S. The terrorist most certainly won given how quickly the US government moved to take some civil liberties away from us. For our safety they said.
Submarine Cables are Looking at This Upside Down (Score:3)
A next Carrington Event, which is by no means the worst that could happen, is going to fry a lot to communications infrastructure but good, including but not limited to the Internet, but looking a submarine cables is looking where the least problems are to be expected.
All communications satellites are going to be fried. Yep, all of them. Satnav systems (GPS, etc.) also. None of them are hardened against a Carrington level storm, and they will all have to be replace by launching new ones. So put up those 100,000 Starlink and Starlink competitor networks, and they will vanish is a blast of high energy protons. Look at a decade to put stuff back into orbit to replace what was lost.
On the ground all kinds of communications infrastructure (power regulation and control infrastructure too) will be fried globally and it will take quite a while fixing things and putting it back together. The submarine cables will be find, but the stuff they are attached to will not be.
We observed a Carrington level coronal mass ejection (CME) in 2012, we just weren't in its path, and in this surprisingly active solar cycle there is evidence of a similar one this year that was outside of direct view from Earth. These things happen and one day we will be in the path again.
BTW, did you know that on August 4, 1972 half of all the naval mines that had been dropped in North Vietnamese waters by the U.S., 4000 of them, exploded all at once? They had dropped 8,000 - half of them fuzed for pressure wave activation, and half as magnetic mines. The magnetic mines all exploded when a solar magnetic storm hit Earth.
Wouldn't the power outages be worse? (Score:3)
But only temporarily (Score:2)
Reason: people have learned from the 1989 solar storms that knocked out power in Quebec. As such, especially now with satellites that can detect quickly the start of a major coronal mass ejection, we have enough time to temporarily disconnect our electrical and Internet grids to avoid the type of issues that happened during the Carrington event in 1859. Yes, we may be temporarily without power and Internet, but at least out networks will function after the storm passes.
Bleah (Score:2)
Only in a modern sense. (Score:2)
Short answer: NO. Long answer: (Score:2)
A Carrington Level Event (CLE) would fry about 2/3rds of our satellite fleet, that includes GEO and LEO satellites used for data transmission as well as MEO satellites used for time sincronization (GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, etc) (sychronization is very important for wireless communications).
A CLE would also fry between 1/3rd and 2/3rds of the satellite control infrastructure (depending on what parts of the earth are facing the sun when it hits), as well as the same proportion of cooper external plant and the s
Not really (Score:2)
Reasonable hardware will survive. Th max this can do is a temporary outage.
Internet outage, pffft. How about the power grid? (Score:1)
VLF bubble (Score:2)
That might not happen if our powerful VLF radio transmissions can protect us from such an eventuality.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g... [nasa.gov]
A somewhat related question (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
How will we order Pizza? (Score:2)
The world will die from hunger!
Internet snow day (Score:1)
Big solar event coming. Radio blackouts possible (Score:3)
https://www.spaceweatherlive.c... [spaceweatherlive.com]
Near Miss (Score:2)
https://science.nasa.gov/scien... [nasa.gov]
At my work we are reliant on GPS so I brought up what would happen if GPS went down. No one took it at all seriously.