Gallery: What A Giant Solar Eruption Would Do To Earth

The 1859 Carrington event comes to mind. Newspapers could be read at night by the light of the Borealis which extended to the tropics. Telegraph operators were shocked, some were burned, etc. Maybe a 2012 disaster isn't so farfetched.

Well ya know, all goes black big brother would be screwed.

No more listening in on your phone conversations, reading your email, getting your twitter feeds, no more warentless GPS tracking.

OMG no more Wallstreet trading/coruption! No more ATM fees and credit card interest rates....

Actually, doesn't sound too bad. ;)

I don't see how transporting diesel fuel would be a problem. Couldn't the trucks just fill the tank with their own payload?

Why couldn't they just shield all of the transformers and other electrical equipment with Faraday cages? You would think that would be a cost effective way to prevent this from happening.

The crop circle makers are predicting a CME event. The reason I believe this to important is that a poison is expected to be activated . That is what 2012/13 is all about.A cme activated poison called wormwood. Wormwood attacks the heart.
Fortunately an antidote has been provided. Should prove interesting if they know what they are talking about. Or a joke.

RE: @BillyBlackhawk The trucks that transport diesel and other motor fuels have electronic ignition and injection timing control circuits which would be fried in the event of a catastrophic CME or terrorist EMP event.

Also, the electrical pumping equipment to get the fuel out of storage depots would be fried, as well.

Only a very old diesel, one that has mechanical injector timing and distribution, would function after an event.

All modern cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, appliances, and equipment would no longer function until repaired. And with no transportation, it could take quite a long time to get spare parts to repair anything.

@Shadow_mt Energy companies will not spend the money it would take to protect their systems until such a CME or EMP event actually takes most or all of their equipment out.

They know the risk and are willing to gamble the lives of 300 million Americans on the false hope that such an event will not occur in the immediate future.

The U.S. War College has determined the probablilities of such a CME or EMP event happening and it would scare the heck out of folks if they understood how likely it is to occur within the next few years.

But then, most folks would rather bury their head in the sand than to actually take measures to protect themselves from catastrophy.

Hurricane Katrina was a good example. Just multiply the devestation by 100,000 and the length of recovery by about 20 years and you have the picture.

wnettles For those interested in just what your government has been aware of for quite some time now, you can go to the link, www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf

This is the report that was given to Congress to assist them in deciding how to prepare for and deal with such a catastrophic event. It also is packed with information from some of the best minds in their fields as to the effects of such an event and the mitigation of damage to our national infrastructure.

Anyone who is interested in the survival of our nation and our people, should consider this report required reading. A scary, but, truthful report to our national representatives. I hope that they have the guts to do what it is going to take to make our nation less vulnerable to this sort of thing.

This problem is continuously overstated.

Regarding the comment above about Faraday cages around the transformers. It's not necessary and would not solve the problem. If a transformer was unconnected to the grid, a CME would not affect it.

The problem arises with a DC current that is induced in long transmission lines that typically run from east to west. The underlying makeup of the earth's crust is also a factor.

The transmission system is monitored 24x7 and has protection systems in place to protect the transformers and other devices that exist on the grid. In a CME event as described for Canada, the protection worked and disconnected. People were without power for many hours, but that is survivable.

Restoration of power for a large area takes awhile and the larger the outage area, the longer it takes. But, the system is designed to protect itself by disconnecting and then be restored.

The scenarios described where the transformers all are destroyed are not realistic, a majority of the protection systems would have to fail or be overridden by the operators, and that won't happen.

This article in error when it says that it takes years to build a transformer. It doesn't. The manufacturing capacity to rebuild many many transformers would take years, but again, that is not a realistic scenario.

It will be 911 times 2356.

Brankin,

Thx for your informative and believable input. I was getting more and more depressed reading everybody else statements.