[HCARC] Just Missed Earth

[Gary J - N5BAA]

In my opinion, I don’t think that any of us really know what might happen with a Carrington Effect size storm and I really am sure I don’t want to find out.  I place it in the class of disasters like another earthquake on the New Madrid Fault line in the Midwest.  We are about 100 years overdue on that fault that has a pretty strong record of letting loose every hundred years or so.  Last was 1812 and it was a doozey.  West Coast – same thing – they are due.  My brother poo poos all this talk about disaster.  He says what is the chance of any one of them happening??  I respond – what is the chance of NONE of them happening??  Not so good for my money.  Of course, MAN MADE disasters are as likely to occur and that may be worse and no I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT Global Warming.  All Global Warming does is make more farm land available.  Global Cooling on the other hand could lead to a lot of hungry people and hungry Russians and Chinese and hungrier North Koreans = WARS.  The other bad thing about Global Cooling would be all those people moving to Texas saying EH!!!

Gary J
N5BAA

From: SARA SANDSTROM 
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 4:14 PM
To: Gary J - N5BAA 
Cc: hcarc at mailman.qth.net 
Subject: Re: [HCARC] Just Missed Earth

Lets take a look at this in a reasonable light. 



The two real threats of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) are high energy charged particles and a geomagnetic storm.  The high energy charged particles are primarily a threat to inadequately hardened space systems and to astronauts in orbit or on the moon who are also inadequately radiation hardened.  The geomagnetic storm will induce large currents on any long wires, hundreds of miles long.  



Early telegraph was entirely on wires many east west oriented and very long.  Modern comm doesn't have the same problem.  Much current comm traffic goes over fiber optic lines.  I can't imagine a mechanism to induce large currents on fiber optic cables.  The main threat to modern comm systems is through their power line connections.  Our dependence on long copper wires for comm now is zero or very close to it.  The telegraph story doesn't count.  Even comm satellites aren't critical to modern comm.



The power companies have lived through a few fairly big geomagnetic storms in the last few decades.  We can hope they have learned how to protect their equipment with circuit breakers, etc.  By the way, its primarily a power transmission problem and not a generation problem.  



Now, lets get to the real problems.  Hardening the electronics on satellites is expensive and has large weight penalties.  In our society where profit dominates, most commercial organizations haven't devoted the time and money to things that don't have an immediate payoff.  Radiation hardening is a leader in that category.  The power companies really aren't any better.  When there is a large dramatic power outage the power companies will make sure the same problem can't happen again, except, over time as they replace their equipment the protective devices aren't updated and replaced.



So what would a big bad CME really mean to us?  Because of the incompetent short-sighted management of many commercial companies, we will have some power outages.  It could take years to replace large transformers just because it takes that long to manufacture them.  If they were properly protected, we don't have to lose them.  We'll lose Direct TV, DISH Network, satellite internet, nationwide paging,  nationwide radio feeds, etc.  I'm not sure that's a real loss.



Note that this is not a science or engineering problem.  It is an unwillingness of short-sighted and selfish management/leadership to invest in 'hardening' to protect their customers because it hurts their bottom line.  Remember this the next time these people try to tell you how much they are doing for you. 



Kerry 





 



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