Prof. Sam LawlerDec 2

"Even Carrington would be impressed" đŸ˜¬

https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=02&month=12&year=2025

Hopefully we just get "someone should check on our satellites" levels of auroras and not "A bunch of open questions in solar-terrestrial physics are about to be answered"

Show threadCoastalCoastingDec 2

@sundogplanets

There were credible stories of people getting shocked from telegraph lines and such. Quick question, just in case - in today world, what would a Carrington level event do? What would people be well advised to do in such an event?

Show threadARGVMI~1.PIF

@CoastalCoasting

Plug your computers, phone chargers, etc into surge protectors. We already know that a Carrington event will cause a surge on long wires (like power lines and telegraph cables). A surge protector will stop it from damaging your equipment (although it may sacrifice itself in the process).

It may be some time before power becomes available again, but if and when it does, your equipment will be intact and uncooked.

Dec 2 at 11:50pmWeb
Show threadARGVMI~1.PIFDec 2

@CoastalCoasting

Although this may be futile, because the electromagnetic pulse from a Carrington event may destroy your equipment anyway.

I dunno if it will. I don't think anyone ever actually tried to simulate such a situation, because I'm fairly sure that would involve detonating a nuclear bomb and nobody wants to do that. But it theoretically could.

'90s beige-box computers might have survived by virtue of being encased in grounded metal, but modern computers and phones are not…

Show threadARGVMI~1.PIFDec 2

@CoastalCoasting

Another problem is that electronic devices talk to each other mostly over electrical signal cables. So if one of them is taken out by a power surge, the surge will probably propagate through those signal cables to every other connected device, even if the other device is otherwise protected from surges.

Entire networks have been taken out by a lightning strike on a run of Ethernet cable, for example.

Perhaps in the future we'll use optical cables for everything instead…

Show threadARGVMI~1.PIFDec 3

@CoastalCoasting

Some preppers on Reddit had a discussion about this a while back. Might be worth a read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/118dax8/how_to_prepare_for_a_carrington_event/

Show threadnoodleDec 3

@argv_minus_one
Do modern surge protectors work much?

http://dansdata.com/gz039.htm

Power struggle

Show threadARGVMI~1.PIFDec 3

@noodle

Well, that's alarming.

I knew common surge protectors have a limited lifespan because the MOVs can only take so many surges before they permanently fail.

But I was not aware that the things would straight-up lie about whether their MOVs have failed.

Show threadnoodleDec 3
@argv_minus_one In finding this I learnt that Dan Rutter ran a crypto fintech and lost a lot of his own money. He was a great tech journalist and capitalism can get in the bin for this misallocation of resources.