Forum: Author Hangout

I'm thinking the impact might be greater than you are suggesting, though the idea that their would be patches where things continue to work is important.

Could depend on what took down the power. In the real world, I seem to remember that a Carrington event would, if it happened today, destroy more transformers than can be replaced, thus making for a very slow and difficult long-term recovery. Also, after Katrina, semi-trucks with supplies were headed for New Orleans but ran out of gas before they got there but in areas where there was no electricity to power the pumps. So, lots of unexpected effects.

Of course, if it is a fantasy novel, then magic might make ALL technology fail. Ilona Andrews did this in the Kate Daniels universe, only with rolling waves of magic that obliterated Tech. Lots of fun.

Ilona Andrews did this in the Kate Daniels universe, only with rolling waves of magic that obliterated Tech. Lots of fun.

I have that whole series.

The magic waves don't obliterate tech. The tech just stops working (except for POTS phones*) during the magic wave. It starts working again, as if nothing had happened, after the magic wave ends.

*At a couple of points in the series it puts forward two "theories" for why the phones work during magic.

1. The magic waves vary in strength. The strength of any given magic wave determines the extent to which tech fails.

2. Magic is fluid.

What people believe affects magic and the magic makes their beliefs affect reality. If enough people believe something strongly enough, the magic will oblige and make it true.

Most people have no idea how the phone system works. The phone system is incredibly reliable. Phones might as well be magic. People believe that the phones will work, so they work even during magic.

Yes, yes, you are right! I was way too casual in my description of the magic system in that series. The random timing of the waves was a fun element.

The random timing of the waves was a fun element.

I can imagine it would be great fun for pilots.

Yup. Society had to learn to do nothing with tech that couldn't be abandoned in an instant. But, also couldn't rely on magic weapons, defenses, transportation. Bad to be in s fight depending on magic armor when tech suddenly is back ascendant and magic is gone!

I can imagine it would be great fun for pilots.

Inland mass transit was dead, because planes and trans failed catastrophically when a magic wave hit.

The had cars with regular engines worked when tech was up and they had cars magic engines that ran on enchanted water. If you had money you could get a dual engine car (gas/magic).

But roads for cars were a problem. The magic erodes modern concrete and asphalt.

So most people had reverted to using horses, mules and oxen for transportation since they worked during both tech and magic.

Most large buildings built with steel and concrete collapsed due to magic erosion.

There was still shipping across the oceans with dual engine ships, but it was risky as parts of the oceans were filled with ship eating monsters.

Phone don't work without electricity

True, but basic POTS phones work without the electric power grid. The telcos don't use grid power for the pots network, they have their own power supply.

Of course, anything that can take out the entire power grid across CONUS will more than likely kill the POTS network power supply as well.

Of course, anything that can take out the entire power grid across CONUS will more than likely kill the POTS network power supply as well.

And this is the real point. The most likely events which could take out most or all of the power grid are one or more EMP attacks or a Carrington Event.

In that case, the lack of AC power is only a small part of the problem.

Certainly, the President will have access to military and amateur radio transmitters to "talk" to the public.

Sure, radio and TV stations have diesel backup generators. But are the transmitters EMP proof?
Not likely, much of this equipment is decades old, and commercial broadcasters aren't going to spend the money to make it EMP resistant.

Even those that are will need working receivers at the other end to be of any use. Are your radio and tv EMP proof? Not likely. Your cell phone? Nope.

So the President will talk, and some people (mostly ham and military operators) will hear him, and try to spread the news by word of mouth. And we all know how well that works.

But at least we won't have to listen to the brain-dead "reporters" endlessly repeating the question of the day supplied by the Soros organization.

There's an upside to everything.

Sure, radio and TV stations have diesel backup generators.

How many have enough fuel on site for more than a few days?

And anything generating the kind of emp needed to take down the national grid would take down the phone network.

Now, a cyber attack that shut down the grid is another possible cause, but if anyone was able to pull that off,they'd be doing nastier shit than just shutting the lights off.

While it may appear counterintuitive, there is something that must be kept in mind here. A solar induced event is not top down, but rather a ground up super charge of the natural telluric currents via induction of solar energies at the poles. This is known as GIC, or ground induced currents.

Top down would be EMP/HEMP. Nothing in that category is natural.

As for cyber attacks, others are better qualified to comment on that one, but I'm given to believe it could be just as nasty as the two previously mentioned problems in its own way.

You made a very important point here that others have missed.

To add (in non-scientific wording):
A natural damaging event is most likely a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) which causes a Geomagnetic Storm (a solar storm like the Carrington event). A big one will take down the grid and damage most transformers beyond repair. It will hit Earth on one side and the power of the flare determines how big an area is affected. If you're disconnected from the grid most of your electronics will remain functioning. A nice thing is that CME's are detectable before they reach Earth. There's a site that provides that information: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov . It also provides a 'weather report' for solar flares. If you bother to keep an eye on it you could disconnect from the grid before it hits and your electronics would most likely survive. On the positive side: it does produce the most amazing light show!

Now EMP is indeed different. You can protect yourself from an EMP event but it will probably be useless since the most likely way for it to occur is a nuclear attack. There will be other 'problems' way beyond a disrupted grid.

There is nothing anyone can do about a flare as it travels at light speed. However, that is a space environment concern as in satellites, space station, etc. The CME as you mentioned, is another story.

One of the mitigating controls mentioned in the FERC reports (among others), was advanced warning could save the majority of the grid if it was acted upon fast enough. Unfortunately, no action has been taken in North America to that end.

Of western powers, the U.K. is furthest along in addressing the concern.
https://www.space.com/21805-solar-storms-electrical-grids-research.html

The rest of Europe and North America have been sitting on their collective hands by comparison.

Then continue beating on the dead horse well AFTERWARDS?

Sadonecrobestiality

Sadonecrobestiality

The Internet offers, from 2013:

"Sadonecrobestiality!

Aureate's picture
Aureate
(to the tune of 'Supercalifragilisticexpealidocius')

If you've started browsing forums to post in a thread
savvy forum-goers must request you use your head;
First please check the last date stamp to see if it is dead.
If it's half a year ago there's no more to be said!~

umm diddle diddle diddle umm diddle aye
umm diddle diddle diddle umm diddle aye"

The Internet offers, from 2013:

I first used the term online in 1996. And repeatedly over the years, more frequently from 2004-2007. Amusing to see that it caught on somewhere else though.

I first used the term online in 1996

My grandfather used the term online in farming from god knows when. They use to use a check-row corn planter that ran off of a wire that had knots spaced apart so that every time the planter hit the knot it would activate and plant a kernel of corn in the field and as you drove across the field you where said to be planting online.

The telephone companies use commercial power to generate the POTS power, and they use generator backup to maintain the network in the event of a power failure. I don't know the details, but the duration of that backup power is determined by the generator's fuel supply, and that supply is limited.

This is true. In the past, they used battery banks to power the phone system, but I have doubts that many do that any more, considering the relative stability of the power grid and the cost of massive batteries.

Back in 2008, Oak Ridge National Laboratory commissioned and directed a study to be performed by Metatech Corporation in California. The subject was EMP/HEMP/Solar effects. In the process, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Energy got involved. The series of reports were known as Ferc-Meta-R-X series where X is the number. The initial publically released information started with 319 if I remember correctly, going through 326. It took a while before the Congress critters clued in just how disturbing the information was, not to mention constituents who were asking questions those congress critters couldn't answer. By 2014, it had been pulled from government servers. A competent searcher can still find copies if the dig though.

By 2017, a much more sanitized version popped up.

Everything you addressed except one was covered an shown to be wishful thinking.

The exception is where you try to claim the ICCP systems are all powered by generators. You are showing your ignorance there.

Here is a decent primer on the subject.

https://www.corrosionpedia.com/2/1368/prevention/cathodic-protection/cathodic-protection-101

Bottom line is this. This society requires electricity to function. There is no scenario where this society remains in place as is without wide spread electric power. Further, anything capable of taking out the entirety of the Grid will be taking out a lot more than just that.

This country no longer has the capacity, personnel, nor industrial base to reboot everything. If something big enough to take out the entirety of the grid occured, it isn't just going to be this country going down. What are the odds of a 25Kv transformer manufacturer supplying America if their home country is hit? For that matter, does the entire world even have the capacity or capability to supply the gear necessary to rebuild just the US grid inside a year? Short answer is no, they don't.

Modern technology, which we require for the function and survivability of this society as is, is layered. The machines required to build the machines that built the alternator in your vehicle are no longer produced. We only produce the last generation. So starting over from ore up isn't realistic. That becomes a salient point the moment foreign supply chains are cut off.

Remember, the original premise was total grid down.

A competent searcher can still find copies if the dig though.

wanna give some clues to those of us who are not competent searchers (but would like to read the reports)?

You can find reference to them still on the ORNL and FERC sites. However, they pulled them so when you click on them, they dead end. Here is an example:

https://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/reliability/cybersecurity/ferc_meta-r-320.pdf

You get a message stating it's being "migrated." Unfortunately it's been migrating for years.

You have to go through secondary sites to get them now. The following is the first in the series, #319.

http://www.futurescience.com/emp/ferc_Meta-R-319.pdf

I have copies of all of them, so I'm not going to chase them for someone else. Meta-R-X (insert number for X) is your best bet for a search string.

Real life, real possibilities. Entire grid goes down, most will be back up in a week. In critical areas it will be up in a day or less.

Except what happened Aug 2003 was regional, not the entire grid. The national/continental power grid is segmented precisely to prevent such events from killing the whole grid. But all of North America is inter-connected to some degree.

A massive event that takes out the entire North American grid and recovery will take weeks to months.

Of course, the gird is robust enough that there are few things that could do this and they are fortunately all very low probability events.

A global even that wipes out all power grids world wide and recover could take generations.

At this point, the only realistic cause would be an X class solar flare or CME. And loss of electric power could be the least of our problems.

And a great many areas are still mostly local.

Local? Meaning not tied to the national grid? Or meaning ability to generate power if national grid goes down? Where would either of those things be true?

Hawaii, Texas, Alaska, most of Idaho. Large parts of LA actually.

Positing some massive event that wipes out the entire national power grid for CONUS, the odds of the local grids for Hawaii, Texas, Alaska, Idaho remaining unaffected are infinitesimal.

Real life, real possibilities. Entire grid goes down, most will be back up in a week. In critical areas it will be up in a day or less.

If that's what helps you sleep at night, then go on believing it.

Real life, real possibilities. Entire grid goes down, most will be back up in a week. In critical areas it will be up in a day or less.

If someone just turns off a switch, yes. An EMP, however, will blow out most of the pole transformers (pole pigs) of which there are millions in the US and we stockpile almost none. New ones will have to come from China. How long do you think that will take?

Edit to add: For this very reason, a couple of transformer manufacturing plants have been opened in the US. Unfortunately, they need electricity (lots of it) to build transformers. How's that going to work?

Of course, a big freaking EMP also means we have been nuked.

Maybe, maybe not:

"If a Carrington Event happened today, the world would likely have to deal with the simultaneous loss of GPS, cellphone reception, and much of the power grid. The global aircraft fleet might have to coordinate an unprecedented mass grounding without satellite guidance. Unguarded electronic infrastructure could fail outright."
...
"The best available estimates suggest a modern Carrington Event would cost humanity $1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year and take another four to 10 years to achieve full recovery. A 2007 NASA estimate found that the damage to the satellite fleet would cost between $30 billion and $70 billion." -- businessinsider.com

You may as well save the effort of replying. You can lay out irrefutable evidence, and some people just could not get past their cognitive dissonance to see the potential.

There are multiple studies on the Carrington event that suggest as bad as it was, it was still just a glancing blow. A direct hit of the same magnitude would be several orders of magnitude more powerful.

The "won't happen here" mentality, is exactly why the country is so unprepared for "when" it does. It's not if, it's when it happens if the law of large numbers is given any credibility.

You all but said it outright. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together would see the same thing I did.

Geee, did I leave the water in the sink running when I was running for my life when a hurricane was approaching?"

As for that, it's a bullshit comparison.

There are in fact ways to mitigate a Carrington or worse event. The ORNL report I mentioned before mentioned several of them.

The problem is people like you making bullshit comparisons to downplay the risk. We watched that live in the run up to Katrina. There was ample evidence in reports from surveys that the levies and pumps could not withstand what was coming. Yet the political sock puppets in the media were used by the politicians to downplay the risk. After the fact, crickets were louder than those sock puppets.

Many disasters could have avoided massive loss of life if the idiots could have gotten past cognitive dissonance.