Narrowly Missed EMP/Solar Flair?

[npgunner]

Late again.:) There was a thread when the book came out. The book is fiction... like the Ninja Turtles :)

Ninja Turtles are fiction?

Clearly he hasn't spent enough time in the sewers or at local pizza joints ...

[TMF]

Late again.:) There was a thread when the book came out. The book is fiction... like the Ninja Turtles :)

Ninja, please!

[Erik88]

Not saying a disaster can't happen. Just saying that total destruction isn't possible. 

 

What makes you say this? What do you know about the grid that makes you feel this way? I'm not saying you're wrong, just curious what you know that makes you feel this way.(seriously, educate me because I'm curious).

 

Everything I've read indicates our power grid is decades overdue for repair and upgrades and much more fragile than people realize. Hell, look at how much work our bridges and highways need.

 

While One Second After is definitely a work of fiction the results of an EMP or massive solar flare would most likely be devastating.

[mikegideon]

What makes you say this? What do you know about the grid that makes you feel this way? I'm not saying you're wrong, just curious what you know that makes you feel this way.(seriously, educate me because I'm curious).

 

Everything I've read indicates our power grid is decades overdue for repair and upgrades and much more fragile than people realize. Hell, look at how much work our bridges and highways need.

 

While One Second After is definitely a work of fiction the results of an EMP or massive solar flare would most likely be devastating.

 

I read an electrical book once.

[TrickyNicky]

I read an electrical book once.

Did you plug it in, or did it run on batteries?

[TMF]

Did you plug it in, or did it run on batteries?

Ziiiinnngggg!

[mikegideon]

Did you plug it in, or did it run on batteries?

 

Sorry. I was giving Erika some shit for asking me to explain it when I already did. He's been practicing his sped reading again :)

[Dolomite_supafly]

we have had massive power outages before and survived.  Sandy comes to mind, as well as the rolling blackouts and brownouts a few years ago, and other such.   People manage ok without power for couple of weeks at the least.   Of all that could happen, mass power outages would be nothing like an actual food shortage or disease or nuke or something drastic.

 

The biggest cost of all those brown and blackout outs was all the babies that were born 9 months later. I remember seeing an article that births significantly increased in the time period 9 months after the major NE blackout that lasted a day or two.

 

If power goes down for a week, month or longer I am probably going to be ok. As far as the mobs coming to loot my house they have years worth of looting before they reach me and even then they will be driven back. Me and a few neighbors have spoke of the plans. If things get that bad we will drop a few trees across the road to prevent access. Then we will pretend like there is nothing beyond those trees.

 

People are going to survive, we always do. But it will be those who already rely on others to survive who are going to have the hardest time. As TMF said the time when people are going to become aggressive is when they think they are going to starve but still have the energy to fight for other's supplies. Even when people are so starved they can barely move there is still a readily available food source to them because when people start dying from starvation others will use it as a food source.

 

But long before people starve because of lack of food they are probably going to die of dehydration or from diseases. Disease or illness associated with consuming contaminated water, contaminated food or from poor sanitation will cause massive deaths relatively quickly. It will happen long before people begin to think they are starving. People will become very sick and because they will have diarrhea  they will crap pretty much anywhere they go and they are increasing everyone else's exposure to disease when they do. Go look at Rowanda when they had widespread disease. People became infected with bacterial diarrhea and because they were crapping EVERYWHERE it served to infect even more. People were literally falling over and dying as they waited for aid. I think widespread disease will be the biggest cause of deaths after a major disaster that lasts longer than a few weeks.

[Guest nra37922]

Why nobody ever really has enough ammo.   Doesn't hurt to have some ammo for calibers you don't own on hand.

[Erik88]

Sorry. I was giving Erika some #### for asking me to explain it when I already did. He's been practicing his sped reading again :)

 

 

I'm not sure you can compare an isolated lightning strike to an EMP. I've seen lightning strike a transformer while cruising down I-4 and the damn thing sparked like crazy and the street lights went out.

 

If a storm rolls through and knocks out power to a city supplies are brought in from elsewhere to repair everything. The idea behind the EMP is that everything is fried(including vehicles) so there won't be help any time soon.

 

Again, I'm not an expert but you seem pretty positive it's a non-issue so I was just curious why. I hope you are right.

[mikegideon]

I'm not sure you can compare an isolated lightning strike to an EMP. I've seen lightning strike a transformer while cruising down I-4 and the damn thing sparked like crazy and the street lights went out.

 

If a storm rolls through and knocks out power to a city supplies are brought in from elsewhere to repair everything. The idea behind the EMP is that everything is fried(including vehicles) so there won't be help any time soon.

 

Again, I'm not an expert but you seem pretty positive it's a non-issue so I was just curious why. I hope you are right.

 

I'm not saying the whole thing may not go down. I'm saying that destruction of of all the big components in the system is unlikely. Big transformers are hard to kill, especially if they have external protection, like fuses and arc gaps. Ionized gas in the upper atmosphere (aurora) doesn't mean anything. Outages of very low energy systems, like telegraph doesn't mean anything. It takes LOTS of energy to melt a 6" copper bar (wild example), especially if it's protected by a fuse.

 

So, IF there's a big enough electromagnetic  field present to INDUCE enough current to cause overloads in the grid, then most damage is going to happen to the overload circuits, not the components they protect. Most fuses in the power grid, AFIK, are resettable high voltage types. They turn loose and swing down. They are reset by just shoving them back into place.

 

Again, the whole thing COULD go down, and cold restarting large parts of grid isn't trivial. Every light bulb, motor, and transformer at the consumer end has an inrush current. That current can be big enough to trip even more fuses. Have you ever seen the power come on after an outage, and then go right back out? That was either a cold start issue, or a fault that hasn't been cleared. The biggest eastern seaboard blackout was slow to recover because of cold start issues.

 

So, even though the whole grid could go down, and could take a LOT of time to get it back, it's not the same as melting it to the ground, and certainly not the end of society. Hurricane katrina barreling thru the pine belt, and ripping a bunch of wires off poles was much uglier. Smaller geography, but much uglier.

[Clod Stomper]

That is encouraging. Now I'm asking this as a person who has little knowledge of the power grid. What about the computer systems that control the power grid? What if THEY get fried by an EMP or solar flare?

Will

[mikegideon]

That is encouraging. Now I'm asking this as a person who has little knowledge of the power grid. What about the computer systems that control the power grid? What if THEY get fried by an EMP or solar flare?

Will

 

It will probably run without them, even if they have to patch stuff around, do manual phase syncs, etc. Bear in mind that all the electronics won't be destroyed either. I'm not a power grid guy. I just work with a lot of high power stuff, and have worked with those folks a lot over the years. One of my specialties is electromagnetic fields though. Been dealing with it my whole adult life.

[Oh Shoot]

I'm not saying the whole thing may not go down. I'm saying that destruction of of all the big components in the system is unlikely. Big transformers are hard to kill, especially if they have external protection, like fuses and arc gaps. Ionized gas in the upper atmosphere (aurora) doesn't mean anything. Outages of very low energy systems, like telegraph doesn't mean anything. It takes LOTS of energy to melt a 6" copper bar (wild example), especially if it's protected by a fuse.

 

So, IF there's a big enough electromagnetic  field present to INDUCE enough current to cause overloads in the grid, then most damage is going to happen to the overload circuits, not the components they protect. Most fuses in the power grid, AFIK, are resettable high voltage types. They turn loose and swing down. They are reset by just shoving them back into place.

 

I've often read that all the normal protections of breakers and fuses are pretty much negated by a nuclear generated EMP, that it is so quick as to have already done the dirty before they trip.

 

Here's how Forstchen himself describes it in lay language:

 

"WOULDN”T CIRCUIT BREAKERS AND SURGE PROTECTORS STOP IT?

 

            This is where the effect of EMP starts to get complex.    All electricity travels, of course, at the speed of light.    The circuit breakers that are built into our electrical system or the ones you buy to plug your own computer in to, are designed to “read’ the flow of current.    If it suddenly exceeds a certain level, the breaker snaps and takes you off line, thus protecting everything beyond it.    More than a few of us have found out that when you buy a cheap surge protector for ten or twenty bucks sure it will snap off, but the surge has already passed through and fried your expensive pla sma television or new computer.    Unlike a lightning strike, or other power surge, an EMP surge is “front loaded.”   Meaning it doesn’t do a build up for a couple of mirco-seconds, allowing enough time for the circuit breaker to “read” that trouble is on the way and shut down.    It comes instead like a wall of energy, without any advance wave building up as a warning.   It therefore slams through nearly all commercial and even military surge protectors already in place, and is past the “safety barrier” and into the delicate electronics before the system has time to react."

 

???

 

- OS

[mikegideon]

He's leaving a lot of components out of the model. He's just talking about a fast pulse, like lightening. There is no such thing as an infinately fast risetime in most electronic circuits because of stray reactances. Those stray reactances act as low past filters, and round off that sharp edge. Who am I to spoil the canning party. I ain't gonna discuss the fourier transform on TGO :)

[TMF]

It will probably run without them, even if they have to patch stuff around, do manual phase syncs, etc. Bear in mind that all the electronics won't be destroyed either. I'm not a power grid guy. I just work with a lot of high power stuff, and have worked with those folks a lot over the years. One of my specialties is electromagnetic fields though. Been dealing with it my whole adult life.

 

Well, I remember when I was young when our house was struck by lightning, and our TV and VCR was fried.  Would not the same thing happen from an EMP for devices that are plugged into an outlet that gets surged? 

[mikegideon]

Well, I remember when I was young when our house was struck by lightning, and our TV and VCR was fried.  Would not the same thing happen from an EMP for devices that are plugged into an outlet that gets surged? 

 

Maybe. It depends on lots of things. That strike didn't kill your toaster, all the clocks, and your favorite cat. An EMP will most likely break a lot of stuff. It just won't break everything. I've had damage to electronics into the tens of thousands, and would have been a lot more if we hadn't fixed a lot of it. Still, even with major hits like that, the facilities continued to run. They were just wounded.

[TMF]

 and your favorite cat.

 

No such thing.

 

This is why I was curious about the 1859 event, since they're talking about how that was melting wires, from what I assume was an overload of electrons.  I would think something like that screaming down power lines would zap most things attached, especially if it was turned on.  And, correct me if I'm wrong, I figured that electronics most effected would be ones with itty bitty circuit boards and such that can't take the juice, but would likely be fine so long as they weren't connected to power or switched on.  I dunno, I'm only familiar enough with electronics to fix my kid's toy car when he smashes it into something too hard.

[Oh Shoot]

...  And, correct me if I'm wrong, I figured that electronics most effected would be ones with itty bitty circuit boards and such that can't take the juice, but would likely be fine so long as they weren't connected to power or switched on.  I dunno, I'm only familiar enough with electronics to fix my kid's toy car when he smashes it into something too hard.

 

EMP of sufficient intensity would affect any circuit, no need for it to be plugged it. Anything that uses a computer chip could be affected. That's why contemporary vehicles would be at risk.

 

- OS

Edited August 5, 2013 by Oh Shoot

[mikegideon]

EMP of sufficient intensity would affect any circuit, no need for it to be plugged it. Anything that uses a computer chip could be affected. That's why contemporary vehicles would be at risk.

 

- OS

 

...and a big enough fart will derail a train. The devil is in the details.

[TMF]

EMP of sufficient intensity would affect any circuit, no need for it to be plugged it. Anything that uses a computer chip could be affected. That's why contemporary vehicles would be at risk.

 

- OS

 

I guess what I was referring to was the electrons from an EMP being carried through power lines.  Based on what I gathered from the interwebz concerning an event like this it seemed like the consensus from smart talking people was that this would not have any effect on electronics unless they were plugged in on a line that surged.

 

As for an EMP from a nulcear device, who knows?  I guess there are nuclear devices designed specifically for that purpose, but would it really kill all electronics the way described in One Second After?  When was the last time we conducted a nuke test? 

[mikegideon]

Electromagnetic Pulse... EMP. It is an electromagnetic field, sort of like a radio wave. It's called a pulse because of it's rapid onset, and short duration. Since it's JUST a magnetic field, the math behind it's behavior is very well defined. When you put a wire in a magnetic field, the field will induce a voltage across that wire. The amount of voltage will be determined by the strength of the magnetic field AND the length of the wire. It gets a lot more complex when the wire is hooked to something. A pulse is not a radio wave, but it is. If you look at the pulse in the frequency domain, it's made up of many different frequencies.

 

Different frequencies move from point a to point b in different ways, and those factors are complex. But, there's one fundamental mathematical relationship that applies to ALL frequencies. As you move away from the source of the electromagnetic field, the strength of that field varies inversely with the square of the distance. In other words, if you double the distance, the field strength decreases by a factor of 4. This is plain ole physics, and happens no matter what. It is the baseline, and any frequency dependent decay of the field happens in addition to the inverse distance law.

 

Most semiconductor devices (chips) are low voltage devices. It doesn't take much excess voltage to make them fail. A lot of those devices can be killed by static electricity, and static control measures are common in electronic assembly areas. Once they're in their circuits, it's a whole nuther ball game. They will survive for decades. In fact, when a piece of gear like a computer reaches its end of life, it ain't because of the chips.

 

Speaking of computers, they are all shielded from electromagnetic fields. All the wires entering and leaving the box have some filtering on them. They didn't do that because some guy wrote a book. They did it to meet FCC minimum interference requirements. Just like the way a wall attenuates sound, that shielding and filtering kinda works both ways. That nice sharp edge that OhShoot was talking about isn't going to be there on the other side of that wall.

 

Now, the changing shape of the pulse will also work against you. In a lot of cases, the filtering can stretch the length of the pulse so it can kill devices the old fashioned way. Every point in every circuit is going to react a little differently. Some electronics are gonna get killed. The point I've been trying to make... a LOT won't. It's like throwing a turd into a fan. You just don't know where the freckles are gonna land. You just know that there will be some freckles. 

Edited August 5, 2013 by mikegideon

[TMF]

You just don't know where the freckles are gonna land. You just know that there will be some freckles.

Ha, thanks for putting it into terms that is understandable to a wider audience.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

He's leaving a lot of components out of the model. He's just talking about a fast pulse, like lightening. There is no such thing as an infinately fast risetime in most electronic circuits because of stray reactances. Those stray reactances act as low past filters, and round off that sharp edge. Who am I to spoil the canning party. I ain't gonna discuss the fourier transform on TGO :)

 

Tain't nuttin wrong with getting into the Gibbs phenomenon. :)

 

The original posted article--  http://washingtonexaminer.com/massive-solar-flare-narrowly-misses-earth-emp-disaster-barely-avoided/article/2533727

 

Pry, Cooper, and former CIA Director James Woolsey have been recently demanding that Washington prepare the nation's electric grid for an EMP, either from the sun or an enemy's nuclear bomb. They want the 2,000-3,000 transformers in the grid protected with a high-tech metal box and spares ready to rebuild the system.

 

Sounds like they are mainly concerned with protecting the few big guys and not all the pole pigs and substations. Like replacing zillions of pole pigs would be any easier a task than a "few" big guys. :) Dunno nothin about it. They claim as few as 20 of the big guys could put us out of biz, and there ain't many of them in the pipeline.

 

Mebbe them fellas know something, or mebbe they just own the company that sells the referenced high-tech metal boxes?

[mikegideon]

Tain't nuttin wrong with getting into the Gibbs phenomenon. :)

 

The original posted article--  http://washingtonexaminer.com/massive-solar-flare-narrowly-misses-earth-emp-disaster-barely-avoided/article/2533727

 

 

Sounds like they are mainly concerned with protecting the few big guys and not all the pole pigs and substations. Like replacing zillions of pole pigs would be any easier a task than a "few" big guys. :) Dunno nothin about it. They claim as few as 20 of the big guys could put us out of biz, and there ain't many of them in the pipeline.

 

Mebbe them fellas know something, or mebbe they just own the company that sells the referenced high-tech metal boxes?

 

Is there any real engineering to back it up, or is it just more DC fart gas? You know, the gov'ment used to have an EMP generator for testing stuff. A physicist friend of mine actually saw it up close. Have they ever made one of the big boys fail in a real test?