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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

This is a preppers fantasy, not reality. Engines and generators would not suddenly stop working. Any electronics inside even a lightly shielded building (or even just a grounded metal case) would survive. It would suck for a short time - but only a short time.

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Isn’t the big concern around transformers? Every time this topic (or EMPs) comes up, the concern is raised that there are effectively no spare transformers (relative on a global scale) available and that building new ones takes years.

It's certainly a significant problem, and one that would cause some intense short-term pain, AND one that we should just bite the trivial cost and make a spare set somewhere for, but......

It would take years in normal times. In a crisis like this, you'd see resources allocated to transformers on the scale of (perhaps greater than) that allocated to COVID-19 vaccines and PPE, and that time scale would almost certainly be dramatically reduced.

After what Texas experienced, a dramatic reduction hardly seems sufficient.

>After what Texas experienced

What are you referring to?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

I have wondered about this. From my understanding the reason main power lines etc are affected is that the long cables turn into an antenna of sorts which allows induction to occur from the CMe. So things like small electronics etc shouldn't be affected.

However, that's where I wonder about the "shouldn't" part. Wouldn't a large CME like this cause excessive power surges, which modern electronics don't respond well to? i.e. nearby lightning strikes can kill a computer or microwave even if you've got a circuit breaker, so wouldn't the grid suddenly having a massive surge go through it still be a cause for concern? Or are we talking voltage/amp levels below that of a lightning strike?

You need a better ground and surge protector if nearby lightening strikes are frying your electronics. I would assume an EMP/CME event would also be covered so long as it doesn’t surpass the rating of your protector (assuming whole house suppressor or battery backup, your wimpy surge protector strip probably won’t survive)

How about the effect on all the satellites? I think th Carrington event size one would be catastrophic in the modern day. Imagine large urban areas going losing power for days or weeks. No electricity and no running water. Pretty scary stuff.

The loss of satellites does not imply power outages and it especially does not imply no running water.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be disruptive, but people seem to have a fetish for disaster. Society is resilient, and life would return to near-normal within weeks, if not days, I predict.

I never implied that the loss of satellite = loss of power and water. I'm just saying that even a smaller solar flare (Compared to the Carrington event) cause large disturbances. Look at the 1989 that left Quebec and millions without power for 9 hours. Now imagine an entire country/continent losing power almost simultaneously.

If the grid goes down nationwide for any length of time it's worse than any event in the last two hundred years. Spent nuclear fuel pool failure is one thing to consider.

Not directly, no. But the water plants do require electricity to pump/filter/sanitize water to fill their reservoirs. A prolonged outage will cause the clean-water reservoirs to drain empty.

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