Space Storm!!! Starring Bruce Willis and Will Smith ....
Dr Fisher, 69, said the storm, which will cause Sun to reach temperatures of more than 10,000 F (5500C), occurred only a few times over a person’s life.
Every 22 years the Sun’s magnetic energy cycle peaks while the number of sun spots – or flares – hits a maximum level every 11 years.
Dr Fisher, a Nasa scientist for 20 years, said these two events would combine in 2013 to produce huge levels of radiation.
He said large swathes of the world could face being without power for several months, although he admitted that was unlikely.
A more likely scenario was that large areas, including northern Europe and Britain which have “fragile” power grids, would be without power and access to electronic devices for hours, possibly even days.
He said preparations were similar to those in a hurricane season, where authorities knew a problem was imminent but did not know how serious it would be.
18 comments:
As the solar system crosses the center ground of the galaxy, there may be a brief interruption of power. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Power will be restored when your behavior improves, humans.
Uhm... this would have been a problem twenty years ago. Not today. Today's networks are far more robust and survived the last peak in the sunspot cycle just fine. I expect the only effect will be for those of us who are ham radio operators, who will find the extra insolation of the troposphere to be ideal for enabling "skip" to talk to folks in other countries the old fashioned way, a way that works even when Internet cables get cut :).
-Badtux the Radio Penguin
And here I was digging a bunker....
Hours or days without power? Hmph. Excuse me, but we were without powre for about two weeks after Hurricane Ike... others in the area had it even worse... and frankly, nationwide, no one gave a damn.
Sure, the problem was "local," meaning I could look out the window during the storm itself and watch the blue flash of transformers blowing out no matter which direction I looked. One of them, apparently, was a transformer in what is now my back yard: one of a set of three is visibly brand-new. Yes, it's a local problem when hundreds or thousands of transformers blow... in an area with a population of about 6 million people. Believe me: "local" does not mean "insignificant" when there are millions of people in the locality affected.
Those of you who have been without power for weeks should tell us who have no clue what it is like and how to cope.
If Southern California has a big earthquake, we will go through very similar trials, and it would be good to have an idea what is coming.
Like the woman who figured out to leave a bag of ice cubes frozen in her fridge as she fled a hurricane. If the cubes had melted and reformed into a brick, she would know the food had been compromised even if the fridge's power had come back on and everything looked fine. I would have never thought of that.
If we had an earthquake that damaged our home, took out electricity, gas and water; if things were really destroyed and the roads were still passable, we would leave the area. Otherwise I figure we'd be camping in our backyards and trying to fix our home.
But I'd love to hear how you coped, Steve. The little things: camp stove? Cold beans from cans? Trouble with plumbing? Showers? I remember you talking about it, but don't remember the details.
ellroon, thank goodness I don't remember the details, either; they were pretty unpleasant.
* Ice in the freezer or fridge is good for about two days. All our frozen and refrigerated food was bad... all of it. Forget recovering it; that $200 or $400 or however much you had in the fridge is just gone.
* Canned foods are good for a couple years, maybe three. I need to change ours out now; Stella has a tendency not to want the hassle of storing it, and arguing with her about it gets me nowhere.
* A camp stove may be a good thing to have. We don't, but it might be a good thing to have.
* Portable generators fail when you need them most. A couple weeks ago, when there was a brief threat of tropical weather, people here who have generators fired them up. The local storm tracker AM station (which doubles as the local right-wing nut-job talk station) said that 183 households reported their generators failed. We don't have them; we depend on lots of batteries. (Yeah, I know, that's not environmentally sound... so sue us!)
* Packaged foods last a good while if you don't open them. Dry cereal is pretty dull fare, though.
* Bottled water... WATER, for Dog's sake... goes bad after 2-3 years. Again, I need to replace ours. Again, it's environmentally unsound.
* Don't expect traffic lights to work. Even if the streets are cleared out enough to allow passage, it's dangerous crossing even medium-size intersections.
* Your land-line phone may not work for literally weeks after the storm, earthquake, whatever. Be sure you have a car charger for your cell phone; it may be your only contact with even your local world. Gasoline may be available, if you can get to it, and cell service was surprisingly resilient after Ike.
* Expect to sweat a lot. Just don't even think about getting A/C back quickly; ain't gonna happen.
Good luck. I hope neither of us faces such a catastrophe this year.
Thanks. Have made your comment into a post.
Instead of bottled water, you could build a cistern. Then you have water that keeps forever.
Know how to construct a solar water still. Very helpful.
mahakal, a solar water still may be useful, but if you're thinking "cistern," you clearly don't live in a major industrial area like Houston. With a cistern, you have water that keeps forever... in the same deplorable condition it was in when you collected it. The solar still may be a good idea, though; thanks for the suggestion.
Off to google solar water still....
Solar water stills don't work well. There's a *reason* why lifeboats are equipped with reverse osmosis filters to purify drinking water, not solar water stills. See the Wikipedia article for "solar still" for the gory details, needless to say this has been validated by pretty much every reputable source that's tried solar water stills in practice (as vs. theory).
- Badtux the Survival Penguin
Off to google reverse osmosis water filters....
The things I learn on these here internets!
Can you build a reverse osmosis water filter if civilization broke down? Might be better, but knowing how to construct a solution out of available materials is important.
If you're going to build an actual distillation setup, you're better off with an actual still. Take a regular pressure cooker and take off the little pressure doodad on the top, and insert a cork. Drill a hole through the cork and press-fit the end of a coil of copper tubing into the cork. Dump your salt water into the pressure cooker, close it up, set it on the fire, extend the coil out a little ways and dunk the coil into a washtub of cool(er) salt water (but not the end of it!), collect your distilled water in a bottle at the other end of the coil (it'll get spit out by the steam pressure from time to time). From time to time dump out the salt water and put "fresh" salty water into the pressure cooker and washtub, because it will get concentrated over time and precipitate out in the pressure cooker and the water in the washtub will get warm. This setup uses a lot of fuel and salt water, but it is reliable, unlike the solar still.
But really, we're talking 2 weeks here, not eternity. Simply buying a reverse osmosis filter beforehand is a far better choice. And if you have access to fresh water that can be made potable via simple backpacking filters / chemicals (i.e. that is not contaminated with salts and heavy metals), things are even easier -- they can process gallons of water per day, plenty for survival purposes, with far less effort than either reverse osmosis or distillation (those reverse osmosis survival filters take a *huge* amount of effort to get the tiniest trickle of water out of them).
- Badtux the Backpacking Penguin
Building a whiskey still would be even more efficient. Nobody would care whether they had water or not...
/makes mental note to keep BadTux on speed dial in case of emergencies....
Ellroon, what I just described is a basic reflux still. Drill a hole in the lower part of the washtub, put the other end of the copper tubing through a cork inserted in that hole, and you have a reflux still, albeit one optimized for distilling water, not alcohol :).
A battery-powered drill is a handy tool to have. Everyone should have one, I use mine on a regular basis both for drilling holes and as a somewhat bulky electric screwdriver. Mine is a Makita BDF452HW which is a lightweight 18v drill optimized for that purpose, I understand that since I got this drill the competition has introduced similar products, just make sure anything you get has a lithium-ion battery rather than NiMH battery (the lithium batteries are much lighter and hold their charge much better, NiMH batteries typically self-discharge within a couple of weeks, and a drill with a dead battery when you need it is useless!).
Post a Comment