Timothy Birdnow

Here is an article about the dangers of another Carrington Event. The Carrington Event was a Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME, that occured in 1859. Carrington blew out most of the planet's electronics at the time - which consisted of telegraph lines and whatnot. Now, in the age of microchips, conputers, and cell phones, our entire infrastructure would collapse in moments.

The author of the article spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the economic damage, and he even says that a "we would probably still be picking up the pieces" had the Earth been hit by a big CME back in 2012. I fear he doesn't understand the magnitude of this; there would be no pieces to pick up. A Carrington Event would be like a major Electromagnetic Pulse attack by a nuclear power on us, except it wouldn't just hit the U.S. The entire daylight side of the planet would be hit, and there would be considerable spillate into the night side as well as the plasma moved along the lines of magnetic force of the Earth's magnetic field. The Moon could offer some protection, but not very much. This would also take down all of the satellites, so international communications would be kaput.

Power would go down everywhere. Even if some was restored via generators and whatnot there would be nothing to use the power for since everything now has microelectronics and they would all be blown. A few old relics would still function; cars built before 1980 and whatnot, but there would be nothing to use them for that would be of any help except to a few individuals. Nobody would be getting a crop in because farm equipment wouuldn't run. No water would be punmped. No gasoline would be moving through the country. The great machine that is the United States would grind to a half, with no way to coordinate any sort of activity.

Civil society would break down almost immediately.

This is not some unhinged survivalist fantasy but rather a real danger. Read the novel One Second After to get a sense of it, only now forget the cavalry coming a year later. There won't be any cavalry.

Oh, there may be some surviving things; submarines at sea would do well, and a few naval ships may be hardened and can use nuclear power. Military bases will be able to maintain order on base as long as the food holds out, but there will be little food and the soldiers will soon figure out that they can get first dibs, leading to rebellions by the survivors. I fear the military would eventually mutiny. There would be no point in staying disciplined in a world that has completely collapsed. (Read Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for more on that.)

What are the chances of another Carrington? Pretty good, but even better for a smaller event, which could still be catastrophic. It may not take the whole world down but it could take, say, the United States down. That alone would be a worldwide catastrophe. See here and here for more on this.

Any way you slice it, living the Roadwarrior life is not pleasant. We really should be making preparations. But humans have a tremendous capacity for self delusion, and we won't cross that bridge until we fall off of it. Too bad.

I wonder how future historians (and there will be some after such an event) will write this up? Our civilizational epitaph will probably be written with little regret.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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