Two Weeks Ago - The United States And Possibly The World Narrowly Escaped Solar Flare That Would Of - Polidicks

[QUOTE=FunnyBunny;41668595]Solar flares move at the speed of light. There is no current way to predict them.[/QUOTE] That's pretty much irrelevant, though. A solar flare doesn't do shit by itself, but it produces a coronal mass ejection, a wave of plasma that affects the earth's magnetosphere and causes all this trouble. It can take several days for a CME to reach the earth, depending on speed and distance.

We really should start taking cosmic threats more seriously as a planet. We're too smart as a species to get killed off by something we knew we could prevent but didn't.

[QUOTE=OvB;41669905]We really should start taking cosmic threats more seriously as a planet. We're too smart as a species to get killed off by something we knew we could prevent but didn't.[/QUOTE] A popular hypothesis to explain that the universe isn't crowded with life is that it's essentially a giant shooting gallery. Stars exploding and shit, sending waves of radiation and plasma everywhere, scorching and sterilizing planets down to the atom. We've just been lucky to have avoided it for all this time.

[QUOTE=xxncxx;41668659]Well, you got about 8 minutes.[/QUOTE] That's how long they take to get here but also how long it takes to see them. There's no warning. When we're hit we're hit by something that came out of the sun 8 minutes ago but that doesn't mean we see them 8 minutes ahead of time.

[QUOTE=Cheshire_cat;41668729]On a random note, what would happen to the world's nuclear power plants if an EMP hit the Earth? I know it wouldn't spontaneously cause a meltdown, but the plant's water coolant systems would probably be knocked offline. If that happened, the nuclear fuel would overheat and cause a meltdown, correct?[/QUOTE] I thought reactors are designed with failsafes for scenarios like that. Remembering Fukushima though, wasn't the problem with the cooling failsafes not working? [quote]"There had been a near miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us," said Peter Vincent Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission from 2001-2008. He was referring to the 1859 EMP named after astronomer Richard Carrington that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America.[/quote] The phrase "Carrington-class" immediately reminded me of SCP things.

If something happened to our world-wide electrician, such as a massive EMP, then we have to go back and re-acquire electricity all over again maybe. If we can't drive our cars and trucks, we be using horses and donkeys again and be using caravan wagons.

[QUOTE=KorJax;41669672]Billions could easily die. You have to remember the majority of the population on earth lives in an urban environment, where you're not going magically just be able to easily draft people into farming or anything (which takes time anyways), and all perishable foods will be gone within the first couple of weeks and the non-perishables will need to be strictly rationed (especially since you know... production of such foods isn't going to be happening for a while seeing as everything is fried). But this is all assuming that as soon as an EMP event happens, the government (local) will be able to instantly respond and start some kind of action-plan to keep order. No such thing is currently in place, so none of the above would happen at all if the event happens right now. And god forbid you live in a backwater area, poor area, or a developing country like china (unless you live in the rural areas).[/quote] You are saying that BILLIONS will die. There are about 7 billion humans in the world. You are implying that the EMP will fry our electronics AND our brains at the same time. People will flee to the countryside to farm as best as they can. Millions will die, sure, but it would be [I]extremely[/I] unlikely for the death toll to get to the one billion mark. [quote]Disease is more major than you think. The biggest threat is water. How are you going to get access to clean water, when the the reservoir that cleans the water for you requires electricity to operate? The moment an EMP hits, you have maybe a day or two before all the water in the plumbing system will no longer be clean to drink or bathe in. You can't boil it without a gas stove, which is a limited resource, and most people don't have access to it.[/quote] We no longer live in the Middle Ages. We know what causes our diseases. Even if we lack proper medications, we know how to treat them, how to minimize the risk. And you can't boil water without gas stoves? We have lighters, we have matches! What, you don't know how to make a fire on your own without matches? Start or find one, and keep it alive. Is not hard. [quote]The biggest thing is simply a lack of being able to get yourself to areas that are safe from rioting/chaos/looting, and get yourself around in general. If you get sick or an injury, all the collective medical knowledge in your city won't mean jack shit if you can't get to anyone, get to any drugs (which are no longer being produced), and the hospitals sure as hell wont be operating anymore.[/quote] You are implying that any law enforcement agencies, or that fellow survivors, won't attempt to restore peace, or to set safe zones for survivors. You are implying that doctors depend on buildings to treat patients. Granted, the buildings may no longer be safe to use, but we can still move equipment around. Hell, the military is going to save a lot of lifes, seeing as how they're trained to keep people alive in terrible enviroment conditions AND lacking resources. [quote]Of course strong societies have existed before current technology, but those societies didn't depend on them to function like they do now. What do you think will happen when suddenly everything turns off, your phone no longer works, all the lights stop working and you can't drive anywhere? That suddenly everyone and everything will magically start riding on horses, you'll break out your oil lamp, and wave to milk man as he delivers your milk? You won't be able to do a damn thing but sit in your home, and hope nobody tries to loot you, or go looting yourself to give yourself an edge in the long haul.[/quote] You underestimate our survival instinct. Some people are going to lock themselves up and don't come up for some weeks. But people won't be sitting at home, waiting for the TV to come back alive. Our new enviroment will force us to go out, band together and improvise. That's how we survived in Africa, back when we were a bunch of monkeys that depended on fruits and animals killed by other animals. We have the knowledge, we have the means, we have the numbers AND we have the need to survive once more. [quote]And by my last statement, I'm talking mostly about the companies you see operating now. None of them will somehow "stay in business" for 2 years of darkness, a lot of industries (like games!) would basically become irrelevant until the rebuilding (which might take years) and re-establishing of the economy starts back up again. People who survived and are entrepreneur types will be able to step in on this clean slate and have their own companies/businesses/financial means. Its very unlikely that all the same companies and brands and everything will be the same as it was before and after.[/QUOTE] You say that like that's a bad thing. Nothing is eternal.

Unless it's a very, very intense EMP, most equipment would actually survive, the reason they worry about things like power lines and phone lines is that they're often very long strands of metal, and they act like antennas (When the US set off a nuclear bomb in orbit, it affected streetlights in Hawaii, because the angle meant to pulse travelled down them, if it was directly above them it only would have passed through ~2cm of metal and went into the Earth) We wouldn't be "sent back to the stone age" or whatever, we'd just be without power for a while until they repaired the grid (in localised areas). Edit: Remember that we've been hit by CME caused EMPs before, they've taken out satellites (Like communications satellites) and power grids, but that's about it.

[QUOTE=Overwatch 7;41668112]I'm not afraid to say it; the prospect of an EMP event whether from natural or man-made causes frightens me. We've come to a point where our society as is simply cannot function without this infrastructure.[/QUOTE] Speak for yourself but i'm a country boy and live on a farm, I get that you're saying that most people would be pretty fucked without power and such. Although yeah it would get pretty boring without electric devices such as my beloved computer, I could very well make it by easily. When you know how to grow and can your own food and have land to do it on and you know how to hunt, that puts you ahead in the event that something like this were to happen. Moral of the story is, if you have land even just a back yard, if you don't already know how to do so, you should learn how to grow and can food because it very well may save your life 1 day.

What a shame.

It's pretty scary thinking that one of the suns farts could wipe out our civilization overnight.

[QUOTE=KorJax;41668841]EMP protecting anything is pretty pointless TBH Your battery will run out making your EMP-protected devices about as useful as a brick after a week or two, with no way to charge them.[/QUOTE] I have to disagree with you on that one. If power grids could be reestablished or replaced at any time within a couple of years, having non-fried electronics to hook up to the new and/or fixed grids would be a good thing. It'd certainly help get normal society as we know it back up-and-running much faster on a city/government level than if we had to rebuild most of our electronic goods. However, if the power weren't coming back up anytime soon (meaning, within the lifespan of you and/or your electronic stuff), then it wouldn't matter much and you'd be right to consider the EMP-proof items worthless.

If it indeed was this "narrow" and devastating. Why didn't we hear anything from NASA's heliophysics department? Something tells me NASA knew all along that this thing would miss us. And this website is just talking about what would happen if such a flare hit us.

The sun gives us life and it can take it away And it demands sacrifice

[QUOTE=ultra_bright;41670165]It's pretty scary thinking that one of the suns farts could wipe out our civilization overnight.[/QUOTE] For a while.

[QUOTE=Zeke129;41670278]The sun gives us life and it can take it away And it demands sacrifice[/QUOTE] We must sacrifice Garry to the Sun, it is the only way.

[QUOTE=acer8;41670130]Speak for yourself but i'm a country boy and live on a farm, I get that you're saying that most people would be pretty fucked without power and such. Although yeah it would get pretty boring without electric devices such as my beloved computer, I could very well make it by easily. When you know how to grow and can your own food and have land to do it on and you know how to hunt, that puts you ahead in the event that something like this were to happen. Moral of the story is, if you have land even just a back yard, if you don't already know how to do so, you should learn how to grow and can food because it very well may save your life 1 day.[/QUOTE] Golden Horde Theory would love to have a chat with you. If you are within 50 miles of a 20,000+ population town, you'll be most likely be raided and killed by parties of survivors who plan on living out the apocalypse by looting and killing anyone who may have supplies. Sorta the reason why most "survivalist" are batshit about owning weapons, knowing how to make traps, and knowing how to hide their supplies.

[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;41670393]Golden Horde Theory would love to have a chat with you. If you are within 50 miles of a 20,000+ population town, you'll be most likely be raided and killed by parties of survivors who plan on living out the apocalypse by looting and killing anyone who may have supplies. Sorta the reason why most "survivalist" are batshit about owning weapons, knowing how to make traps, and knowing how to hide their supplies.[/QUOTE] I live in a town with a population of 2000 and we are a very tight knit community, we help each other when needed and not to mention I have like 15 family members who live within 4 miles of my location and 2 other completely reliable families with at least 15 people each. We have all been brought up knowing how to use firearms and for my family at least each person owns multiple weapons. Yeah there might be attempts at raiding what we have and we would probably have casualties but we sure as hell wouldn't go down without a fight.

[QUOTE=Maloof?;41668750] It would really suck if you were one of those people with an electro-mechanical rectum[/QUOTE] Seriously though, imagine people with pacemakers. They probably wouldn't survive an EMP.

[QUOTE=Banhfunbags;41668094]Is it really not possible to predict when these things will happen?[/QUOTE] You're basically trying to predict when one of the magnetic field lines of the sun is going to snap in our direction. So yeah it's pretty tough.

[QUOTE=katbug;41668250]The solution to this; build a faraday cage and keep a backup radio, cell phone, and other essential electronics in it (including a GPS)[/QUOTE] a gps would be completely useless, considering the first thing to go would be the sattelites.

Well that would have sucked seeing as my summer vacations started 2 weeks ago. "Yay vacations!" *end of civilization as we know it*

And again the apocalypse [b]didn't happen[/b]! Jesus fucking christ I could be shooting raiders already why am I never lucky fuck this

[QUOTE=acer8;41670898]I live in a town with a population of 2000 and we are a very tight knit community, we help each other when needed and not to mention I have like 15 family members who live within 4 miles of my location and 2 other completely reliable families with at least 15 people each. We have all been brought up knowing how to use firearms and for my family at least each person owns multiple weapons. Yeah there might be attempts at raiding what we have and we would probably have casualties but we sure as hell wouldn't go down without a fight.[/QUOTE] You are only tight knit because right now there is no reason not to be, when there is a food shortage and your farm is just sitting there the people you consider "tight knit" will start acting very differently. With both sides armed, there will be plenty of blood shed.

Sling shot our virgins into the sun. It's the only way to sate its burning rage.

How would the general population be informed about whats just happened in the event of a solar flare hitting earth? No radio, TV or cars to go street to street blasting out "stay calm"

[QUOTE=Why485;41668561] No more lights at night time. I know this sounds like an obvious thing, but it gets [I]dark[/I] at night. Normally when you turn the lights off on your house, there's still ambient light from streetlights, other houses, etc. No more. When it becomes night time, there are no sources of light other than the moon. This is not a good feeling. Not a good feeling at all. [/QUOTE] This isn't just normal dark, this is [I]advanced [/I]dark.

I've got to ask, what's stopping us from merely making new electronic equipment from scratch after an EMP?

[QUOTE=Paramud;41671706]I've got to ask, what's stopping us from merely making new electronic equipment from scratch after an EMP?[/QUOTE] probably the fact that [B]nothing works[/B]

[QUOTE=DarkKrystal;41671714]probably the fact that [B]nothing works[/B][/QUOTE] How did we make electronic equipment before we had electronic equipment, then?