Can you really call yourself a prepper if you don’t have a faraday cage with a spare laptop inside?
(The intersection of doomerism and tech is amusingly cyberpunk sometimes.)
Actually, what’s the most useful way you’d prepare for a worldwide grid outage? This isn’t that, but sometimes I wonder if a future CME might be as catastrophic as some say.
"The Threat of a Solar Superstorm Is Growing—And We’re Not Ready" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-threat-of-a-s...
Discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40196820
Humanity is good in sweeping problems under the rug and not preparing to various threats.
Also good at response. Ozone situation was fixed and now we actually track the asteroids.
Kind of tired of hearing this. Citing one initiative from 50 years ago is the definition of cherry picking, I'm sorry. The trend is that humans are incapable of long term global initiatives. I'm sure some game theory guy could prove it.
Strong disagree. When there is sufficient political will complex policies can and will be enacted. What is missing in climate action is not some psychological deficiency of our species, it’s lack of strong enough political consensus.
”We can’t do this” is both inaccurate and harmfull. I believe ”We are not currently fixing this” and ”there is a need for stronger political alignment” are the more accurate descriptions of the current malaise.
it’s lack of strong enough political consensus
But this _is_ the psychological deficiency of our species.
No, the fact people can have different opinions is a richness. The point of political activity is to align these opinions.
Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Climate change is a liberal hoax to steal money from you. Jesus is coming soon and will rapture us into heaven. Antifa wants to burn down your city. Gays are destroying family values. Women should be forced to have children if they got pregnant. Taxes are theft. The US should let Russia take Ukraine. The earth is 2000 years old. Weed should be illegal. More guns will solve crime. Elementary schools are radicalizing children telling them they should be gay and teaching them white people are evil.
As long as these beliefs are allowed to be mainstream we are 100% fucked.
Agreed, but: The words “are allowed to be” are doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Who allows these beliefs to be mainstream? Does anybody have the power to not allow it? The thing, is, we cannot get rid of those beliefs by force – and arguably, we should not even if we could – so where does that leave us? Reason does not seem to help. It is hard to avoid a feeling of despair. But we cannot allow ourselves the luxury.
The general public. People that have these beliefs need to be ridiculed and called out. But in the US, that's not polite and you're not supposed to talk about politics. Meanwhile, "both sides" news shows continue to give airtime to lies and nonsense from charlatans. Our entire news and political culture is infested with pure horseshit.
If the outcome of the process of consolidating different opinions (politics) conflicts with the existence of the human species, and the human species has only itself to blame for emergently designing a political process with this faulty outcome, than it's the psychological deficiency of the human species which causes its extinction.
Yes, opinions about which foods people prefer. Not “opinions” on the factuality of scientific knowledge (which is a large part of what feeds into discord at the political level— avoidably so).
The rich culture of climate denial will be our undoing.
The trend is that humans are incapable of long term global initiatives
Doesn't this sort of assertion leave no room for the possibility of learning to do so?
No, trends can be broken.
Though the constant doomerism one encounters when they speculate about breaking such trends can discourage anyone from thinking it’s worth pursuing.
Then why is there a global supply chain and global agriculture systems and internet
Gall's Law speaks to this:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.
Gall uses the web as an example.
Sounds like Gall's own invented horseshit with not much proof to it. Albeit believable.
We also solved Peak Oil, Acid Rain and saved the whales.
We neither have a plan to fix the existing ozone hole and nor do we have a way for preventing an asteroid collision (assuming we are lucky enough that the theoretical asteroid that hits us is one of the subset of asteroids we can actually track)
So no, neither of those problems are even remotely fixed. We’ve just done the bare minimum to check the “we’ve reacted to a crisis” box.
We do have a way of redirecting an asteroid.
The problem is that we won't learn about it early enough for our current level of technology to do anything about it.
We'd need 2 fully-operational Starship launches or 4 SLS launches or 10 Delta IV Heavy launches with 25 years notice to redirect an asteroid like Bennu.
Now obviously 2 is better than 4 is better than 10. But the 25 years notice is a big problem. The momentum change you need to deliver the later it gets is so much larger.
Ozone situation was fixed...
Ozone is still hole'ing[1]. The hole is no longer growing, sure, but that's a far fetch from "fixed".
[1] - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220321-what-happened-to...
The current ozone situation is very bad and worsening.
Ozone is not fixed because I will still get extremely burnt in the sun here in Australia. Asteroids is not fixed because what happens when one super massive one is coming straight for us?
Are we not prepared though? Given other posts in this thread it seems to me that the effects are all calculated, expected and accounted for.
I mean if it's strong enough to fry off-grid electronics then it's a different matter entirely, but consumer electronics has some protections against that, right?
I mean if it's strong enough to fry off-grid electronics then it's a different matter entirely
Last big storm in 2003 did damage grid level transformers. They also don’t just have those lying around and they’re quite expensive so it’s particularly devastating.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/fin...
but consumer electronics has some protections against that, right?
Much more complicated to answer, but no consumer electronics aren’t safe. Also not much use if the communication systems and electrical grid are down
In the past consumer electronics came in metal boxes that were earthed, I sure those will be fine. But these days everything's made out of plastic and not grounded.
resources are limited. You cannot prepare for all the threats in the world.
Nobody says about all threats, but there are many, just like CMEs, that are literally thrown to our face.
What problems?
That’s the spirit!
Also excels at destroying the cassandras if you will.
I'd like to see an actual investigation of the effects on (computing) hardware like processors and memory. Can these be damaged/interfered with irreversibly? Measurements and actionable information.
The K-index for this is an 8 which is one less than an extreme G5 geomagnetic storm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-index). I haven't been able to find it, so I'm curious what the Carrington event K-index was?
This paper estimates Kp = (8.4±0.8). Because the scale is logarithmic, the difference between 8 and 9.2 is obviously quite extreme.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/asna.2022007...
I'm sure there are articles discussing the point, but I wonder why citizen-facing scales don't use more linear representations for things.
Because citizens aren't expected to need to know the scale. They are only expected to follow the guidance their governments issue.
I like the response, seems very astute of an observation.
Interpreting this in the worse light possible… in other words, gate keeping.
I think a lot more people could understand and be mature in a lot more things if artificial and archaic barriers weren’t erected. I think not trusting the public is a recipe for an obscure elite ruling class. Sure, not a whole lot of people will get it but at least be open about it.
Then again, maybe there is a benefit to using that particular scale and I’ve been poisoned by my generational ills.
Not trying to be argumentative.
If I hazarded a guess it’s the second reason right?
That's a reason to not use Latin; but when it comes to numbers and scales… I was surprised to discover that other people are themselves often surprised when they learn that a billion is a thousand times larger than a million.
Which is itself a relatively recent standardisation. Up to the '70's, a billion could beat thousand million or million million depending on where you were.
Which standardization? The world is still very much split between the long and short scale (and other systems)
There's no artificial barriers being errected here by deciding to say "8" instead of writing out 8 zeros.
Obvious answer: compare 10000000 vs 7. Which is easier to understand?
I was taught logarithmic scales in middle school. If every concept needs to be dumbed down to a pre-middle school level for maximum accessibility (to minimize gatekeeping), you're going to end up with a public who literally can't comprehend the things they're being told because they stopped learning before middle school.
Linear scales usually don't have an intuitive upper limit that people can understand ("is 10000 bad?").
Citizen-facing scales should optimally go from 0 (no concern) to 10 (either world-shattering event or highest value ever observed). Due to the nature of how many natural disasters scale in impact on humans, this will often result in an logarithmic scale.
Excellent point about linear, but sometimes log_10 accelerates pointlessly fast. log_2 might be more reasonable.
As an enthusiastic amateur photographer I'm a big fan of log_2 scales. Photography is full of them, most settings follow it and photographers call them "stops". One stop more is twice the light. People don't even think about logarithmic scales but it's very easy to intuit what going up and down the log_2 scales will result in.
Good scale, I like it.
Because many things are logarithmic in nature. Take for example sound. The decibel scale is logarithmic and it makes perfect sense.
Logarithmic scales are not that exotic. "Damages going in the 6-digits" is a common thing to say and people do understand.
SWPC is now showing this storm as a G5 with a K-index of 9: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
I wonder what the margin of error is, as it just dropped again
That puts us .2 (logarithmically) under the known upper bound for the Carrington event (from above in the thread)
Mother of god.
Yikes
Implications!
- Power systems: Possible widespread voltage control problems and some protective systems will mistakenly trip out key assets from the grid.
- Spacecraft operations: May experience surface charging and tracking problems, corrections may be needed for orientation problems.
- Other systems: Induced pipeline currents affect preventive measures, HF radio propagation sporadic, satellite navigation degraded for hours, low-frequency radio navigation disrupted, and aurora has been seen as low as Alabama and northern California (typically 45° geomagnetic lat.).
Uuuuh I have a flight today 8pm CT . What will this mean for airplanes?
Nothing consequential for a single flight. Even crew really don't have to worry about it until it gets to very high levels, according to the NOAA scales
Do you have a source for this? My friend was asking about this.
FWIW I'm an aircraft mechanic and the only complaint I've ever heard related to solar storms was that the HF radio stopped working. Which isn't a radio thats going to be used or even installed on a typical airliner.
Although it could also disrupt satellite communication causing some delays in flight planning and aircraft/crew turnaround.
For a fun anecdote, when the HF radio fault was reported we weren't aware of the troubles in the ionosphere. After a few hours of troubleshooting on the system and not finding any problems I flippantly remarked that it must've been a solar flare because the radios perfect. 15 minutes later I was reading the news and saw the headline.
HF is installed on many airliners, it's mandatory for the North Atlantic routes between the US and Europe. Still checked every flight as a backup to satellite position reporting (which is relatively new)
You can look at the current activity charts and extrapolate from the particle flux, but it's likely going to be below 1mSv for a 6 hour flight. The XKCD radiation chart provides the most sensible comparison for most people I think:
As a comparison, a typical flight might only have a dose of 40uSv, so like 25 normal flights. But still many people take many more trips than that.
This did his the highest recordable levels. G5 "Extreme". See "Estimated Planetary K index", here: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aviation-community-das...
According to the SWPC[0], the "SPACE WEATHER CONDITIONS" section displays the pertinent information: as of 5/10/2024 at 6:00 CST, the "24-Hour Observed Maximums" list "R3 S2 G4". The "Latest Observed" section shows "R1 S1 G4".
According to NOAA Space Weather Scales [1], the effects of those events, their levels, and the corresponding hazards (including biological risks for the "S" category) are listed.
It is unclear to me what "high-flying" and "high latitudes" mean in these cases, and I would think that they would depend on the severity and location of the space weather event.
[0] https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/space-weather-enthusia...
[1] https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/NOAAsca...
In general, not related to this event, anything over FL410 (roughly 41,000ft) and closer to the pole than 70 degrees latitude would be considered high altitude and high latitude in the aviation world.
Above FL410 is rare, except for business jets that can cruise that high. It comes with extra requirements on oxygen masks etc.
Polar routes are not that rare, but depend on certification how far away from a suitable airport you can go.
Is it a Boeing?
Interesting thought… keep the receipt either way, in case it becomes relevant as part of a class action in 30 years!
Yeah, there's usually no ill effects reported even from pretty strong ones, but lights in Stockholm, Sweden (which is itself pretty far south for an aurora in the first place) were reported to flicker earlier this evening. That's pretty remarkable.
Not just Stockholm. They also flickered where I live, some two hours away from Stockholm,
There is a whole Reddit thread about this, many people noticed some flickering at 9PM.
https://old.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/1cozkpa/blinkade_di...
We had an intermittent power outage in central Asia, around 21:30-22:00 in Stockholm time. It is like thousands miles away.
But we have a weak grid anyway, so it might be unrelated.
It's funny. Had one halogen lamp flicker around 9pm but even though I knew about the eminent events, my first thoughts were 'power failure or lamp at end of life?'
I'm not sure if Sweden has similar data, but on one of the UK grid data sites [0] it shows large fluctuations in demand and gas generation supply in the late evening hours. However it's easy to say "that looks odd" while being naive on anything else going on with the grid such as planned maintenance, demands or other issues.
I wonder if pulsar based navigation is affected (probably not)
PJM (the US east coast power grid) has issued a warning:
104202 Warning
Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning
05.10.2024 13:48
PJM-RTO
A Geomagnetic Disturbance Warning has been issued for 13:48 on 05.10.2024
through 21:00 on 05.10.2024. A GMD warning of K8 or greater is in effect
for this period.
This is a warning only. No actions are listed yet.
If anyone else was looking for the source of this, it's here:
Fascinating, if anyone has info on other grids that share these types of alerts, pease link!
PJM is still at "warning". No alerts or actions are listed. If problems were expected, there would be alerts and preparatory actions.
PJM mentions that they turn off guest access if the site overloads. So please don't over-use this link.
Minor update: the warning has been extended another 16 hours, but downgraded from K8 to K7.
PJIM is at 'Action' now:
' A Geomagnetic Disturbance Action has been issued as of 22:15 on 05.10.2024 to protect the power system from damage or disruptions due to increased geomagnetic activity.'
Not good.
PJM has a plan. Geo-Magnetic Disturbance (GMD) Operating Plan (EOP-010-1)[1] Usage of some specific transmission lines has to be kept below certain values. Right now, this is a low-load period late at night without bad weather, so there are no additional actions ordered. The system load is probably within the more restrictive limits just because it's late night. If problems develop, you'll see more actions in there. Watch morning load take-up tomorrow.
There's a press release, too.[2]
If you really want to understand this, start at page 32 of this training PowerPoint.[3] In 1989, PJM had a blackout because of this, and that's thoroughly discussed in the training materials. Geography matters. PJM has transmission lines running in the same direction as a mountain range with igneous rock. So "ground" isn't as conductive as is desirable. During a geomagnetic disturbance event, ground voltage at different points can differ. This causes problems with wye-wound transformers grounded at the center of the wye. They get some induced DC current, which can partially saturate the magnetics and heat up transformers.
There's a control room running this in Valley Forge, PA. (And a second control room in an undisclosed location.)
(Incidentally, this has absolutely nothing to do with electromagnetic pulse problems. EMP has a rise time of nanoseconds. GMD has a rise time in minutes. Unless you have a really long wire (many kilometers) with a potential to ground, this doesn't affect much.)
[1] https://pjm.com/directory/manuals/m13/index.html#Sections/38...
[2] https://insidelines.pjm.com/pjm-issues-geomagnetic-disturban...
[3] https://www.pjm.com/-/media/training/nerc-certifications/tra...
Weather has been good today in the region - low heating and cooling load, and it's a weekend; demand is comfortably low (currently about 72.5GW with a forecasted peak of 77, vs an actual peak of 85GW yesterday). Should keep things pretty boring across PJM.
It's a good thing this didn't happen in July/August.
(For folks around here, the pjm now app is a nice way to grab current power demand/tie flows/alerts)
PJM ended the GMD action at 05.11.2024 12:00 EDT. The PJM manual says that GMD actions are ended after three hours with no problems. There were no additional actions required to deal with the problem. They'd show in that list as "Conservative operations", "Pre-emergency load management reduction action", "Curtailment of non-essential building load", or even "Emergency load dump action".
K-index is at 8.67 right now, down from 9. (9 is currently the maximum reportable K value.)
ercot (texas): https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/notices
miso (midcontinent): https://www.misoenergy.org/markets-and-operations/notificati...
ieso (canada/ontario): https://www.ieso.ca/Sector-Participants/RSS-Feeds/Day-0-Advi...
CAISO (California):
https://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/NoticeLog...
https://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/NoticeArc...
Nothing reported just yet ...
Ercot seems to put some geo restrictions on their page. I've been blocked from viewing. I'm in Australia. When I put on my US VPN, it works.
ISO New England: https://www.iso-ne.com/event-details?eventId=155085
That server is down. I hope we didn’t break it by too many requests.
I don't think it's just "us". A lot of people are seeking answers right now
This chart of the real-time K-index is pretty interesting: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/planetary-k-index#:~:text....
I found this after looking up what "A GMD warning of K7 or greater" means.
Thanks for that link!!! I didn't know there was a dedicated page for the K index :) haha
That's explain why my laptop yesterday abruptly shut down twice.
I don't know if it's related but my phone's screen was flickering earlier.
That’s highly unlikely to have a CME as a root cause unless it was connected to long distance transmission lines.
CMEs tend not to affect small electronics on their own.
I think there's a bit of misconceptions that it's only long distance transmission lines that are affected. There's a lot of things that are affected. I guess the misunderstanding is understandable due to the famous "long distance lines catching on fire" occurrence during the Carrington event.
It was my understanding that radiation levels at Earths surface are still very low unless you had some kind of amplifying collector (ie - large antenna).
Devices at high altitudes and space are subjected to CME events quite often, and usually don't have many side effects other than degraded RF signal propagation.
What effects might you see at ground level in a normal microprocessor device? More bit flips than normal?
I was also expecting my satellite internet to degrade during the last CME that made the news (apologies - can’t remember the date), but it kept chugging along as if nothing had happened.
You make a great point about the resilience of certain tech during solar events. Most everyday electronics are shielded enough to handle minor solar disturbances, but the intense conditions of multiple X-class flares and a KP-9 geomagnetic storm like we're discussing can push beyond the usual scenarios.
Storms like this one flood the Earth's magnetosphere with energetic particles, increasing geomagnetic currents that can affect both large-scale and local infrastructure. This might lead to unusual behavior in ground-level electronics, such as increased bit flips, clock shifts, or even unexpected resets in sensitive systems.
As for satellites, their advanced shielding often keeps them running smoothly, which likely explains why your internet service didn't get borked. But during extreme events like now, disruptions to satellite functions and GPS signals will occur, as these systems face direct exposure to the storm's impact. Most likely spare capacity rerouted to supply your link during the impact.
I think it's interesting that secondary particles formed when these high-energy solar particles smash into atmospheric molecules also make their way down to us. These include muons and neutrons—particles that, while generally harmless, can penetrate deep into the atmosphere and occasionally impact ground-level electronics, adding another layer of interaction during severe solar events.
There's also the way that alterations to the flux of EM fields induced locally by the larger currents fluxing in the global electric circuit can cause glitches in microelectronics. And how the fluxing of current in the Earth's magnetosphere causes electron and other charged particle release from the ground. All of these things are amped up now and can contribute.
This whole interaction of solar activity / space weather with our technology is a dynamic area of study—there's always more to learn about how these cosmic and solar stuff affect our ground based or Earth based tech. Hahaha! :)
This was really interesting!
What about COTS hardware on the ISS? I haven’t heard of major failures with things like their laptops.
Thanks! :) Haha! I think the ISS hull uses classified shielding to provide some kind of advanced protection. But it's expensive and based on materials science activated with electric fields. I think they also have some detection system to detect and correct single-event effects. Just info tho, I don't have an article source for this haha! :)
Even then astronnauts may be advised to not use some devices during specific solar weather, or to move to safer parts of the craft hahaha! :)
Regarding some more general info you might be interested in:
- https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200001591/downloads/20...
- https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20180002659/downloads/20...
I think it’s worth mentioning here COTS hardware is also very resilient (things like ZFS without ECC excluded) to radiation these days.
Here’s a video of a GoPro riding through an electron beam: https://youtu.be/Uf4Ux4SlyT4?si=6z6626hrdXhvZ2x_
There are lots of bad things happening while it’s in the middle of the beam, but it appears to function normally after completing the pass.
That is good to mention!
My telegraph has been smoking up all night!
I disconnected the battery and was still able to make reliable contact!
SWPC says we haven't had a G4 storm since 2003 :o
I wonder how Starlink is going to fare...
Not very well. They will absolutely lose sats this weekend.
How bad will it be, I'm 100% dependent on SL (as is everyone else in my neighborhood).
You’ll all get a chance to go play outside :)
They say they have't lost any so far.
Why do you think this?
There was a G4 storm less than two months ago: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/noaa-satellites-detect-seve...
oop, i guess i confused g4 and g5
Good news! It has been upgraded to G5.
My G5 is still running ;)
Is there any danger of people flying in planes during this time? Will there be any radiation exposure?
It's a magnetic field, no? Is there any particular radioactive component? I'd be more worried about the acute effect on the plane's electronics, the whole point is they disrupt electrical systems.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation
According to noaa there was an S2 Solar Radiations Storm and in the description for S2 it says:
Biological: Passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to elevated radiation risk.
But the scale goes up to S5 and it the radiation will be higher for Austronauts, and for high flying aircrafts there is always a "may" attached.
I don't know the numbers on actual dose for something like this, but I'd expect that it's "elevated radiation risk" in much the same way that getting a CT is. If you get scanned 10,000 times, there's a pretty good chance you'll die from cancer, but mostly it's just a slight statistical increase in your odds.
Charged particles moving fast are ionizing radiation too. I wouldn't expect a ton to get through atmo though.
Boeing: "When you fly our planes, you agree that Coronal Mass Ejections may occur at any time and we are not liable for sudden door losses"
I assume you just clicked "Agree" like the rest of us?
Want to know this a well...
I read some time ago that normal routes are fine but if possible people should avoid polar routes. Then again I think airlines nowadays track these exposures and adjust routes.
Should I disconnect my computer from the grid at this point?
(I'm using a UPS with built-in power surge protection but I'd rather not test it in prod.)
If you really want to be safe: put it in a cardboard box, wrap the cardboard box in air tight aluminum foil or a metal container, and then put the whole thing in another cardboard box to prevent any grounds or shorts.
That seems pretty excessive, IIRC if there's not a really long linear length of wire involved (e.g. power lines) then things are probably fine.
Why would long lengths of coiled wire not be affected?
For the same reason that a crumpled up ball of wire is a bad antenna.
To induce an appreciable current, the magnetic field has to act on a wave-compatible portion of the conductor. The length and alignment of the wire has to resonate with the direction and length of the wave.
This would better prepare them for an Air Burst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_burst
CMEs do not directly affect electronics. Charged particles simply do not reach the surface.
They instead distort the geomagnetic field, and the changing magnetic field induces voltage. But the Earth's magnetic field is pretty weak, so the voltage becomes significant only for very large circuits. Such as transmission lines or old-style telegraph lines.
This is a misconception. The geomagnetic disruption temporarily weakens the earth's magnetic field effectively allowing more charged particles to penetrate the upper atmosphere, and even right down to surface. This upper atmosphere penetration is what causes auroras in fact: the charged solar particles imparting energy to atmospheric gases and compounds through impact, that they re-emit that energy as beautiful light when they return to baseline / ground state. Also Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic energy and particles too, and the weakened shield during CME also allows some of that to penetrate deeper.
Also, the global electric circuit is affected by CMEs which affects all electric systems on the planet, to some degree.
While it's true that Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field shield the surface from most direct particle impacts, the main effect of CMEs come instead from their effect on the electromagnetics of Earth.
For example, these disturbances can induce currents in the Earth itself and even in biological systems, which are sensitive to electromagnetic changes.
This can affect everything from power grids to navigation systems and even animal migration patterns. So, while individual electronic devices might not be directly fried by a CME, they can still be affected by the impact, as well as the broader electrical and biological systems on Earth.
To put it another way: while these particles themselves may not reach the surface, their effects certainly do. The interaction of these particles with the Earth's magnetic field can lead to geomagnetic storms and disturbances that indirectly affect the surface through induced currents, as previously mentioned. These interactions can influence electrical grids and even have subtler effects on biological systems. Thus, the primary impact of CMEs at the surface comes from the electromagnetic fluctuations they cause, rather than from direct contact with the charged particles.
A science presenter mentioned that the sunspots were supposed visible without magnification using eclipse glasses.
I tried and didn’t see anything.
You made need glasses. Like, regular ones, on top of the eclipse glasses.
I couldn’t see it either, but didn’t have my glasses with me. My wife and daughter could see the big spot behind these CMEs immediately.
I see one right now near the bottom limb (observing from North America). It's been slowly moving to right the last few days as the sun rotates. I'm using cheap eclipse glasses.
That's the one that's been popping.
Just confirmed
They are definitely visible! Got to see them this afternoon — very cool.
Here in Stockholm, Sweden had some power flickering and UPS triggering at home and several friend's place a few minutes ago.
Shame it's going to be always bright outside tonight :(
I've seen the flickering as well, but surely it's not CME-related?
After all, it's already evening.
It takes a while for a solar storm to reach earth. It travels slower than light. But I don't know what caused the flickering in Stockholm.
It happened while the G4-G5 onset triggered, on the initial hit timing wise for local time.
Other people in the wider area saw similar issues, but mostly were local. Usually power is very stable.
Ah, yes, I know this of course, and I somehow temporarily imagined some kind of madness where the earth's sunny side is permanently pointing towards the sun.
The sky is falling!
Seriously, though, I am not knowledgeable enough about these CMEs and how they compare to the past ones. Are there any good historical analyses?
This is the first G4 watch since 2005: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/severe-geomagnetic-storm-stil...
Not saying anything about the current storm, but a storm as strong as the Carrington Event[1] would make modern day life on Earth pretty unpleasant. Some of the potential impacts are documented in Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event [2] https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/12507/severe-space...
My understanding is bigger than normal, but a lot smaller than storms that have caused grid issues.
While the photos of the auroras which have been circulating are certainly impressive, this has got me thinking about the Carrington Event [1], as well as a possible future event of equal or greater magnitude.
I'm not an electronics expert, but I'm guessing that the reason we're so vulnerable to such an event today is because our infrastructure was originally built without such an event in mind, and now the upgrade cost is prohibitively expensive. But hypothetically, if a sufficiently-damaging coronal mass ejection occurred, such that we were forced to rebuild Earth's electronics infrastructure and electrical grids from scratch, what design changes would we make the 2nd time around? For example:
-adding built-in shielding to protect against electromagnetic interference
-implementing redundancy in critical systems to maintain functionality
-adding early warning systems so that we can take preventative measures like shutting down vulnerable systems
-building a more decentralized electrical grid with smaller, interconnected systems to limit the extent of disruptions
Would taking these steps be sufficient to protect us from major CMEs, or would it be like throwing pebbles at a giant?
There is no worry with electronics and Carrington Event or high-altitude EMP. The wavelengths are too long and electronics are too small. The main risk is induced current in long wires. I read article recently that long-distance fiber optic cables are vulnerable even under the sea.
My understanding is that it is fairly easy to protect the electrical grid from solar storms. It requires adding grounding at all of the vulnerable equipment. My impression is that the cables won't be hurt but the transformers can be destroyed. It sounds feasible to do but requires the government to regulate the utilities and provide money.
That would be a lot cheaper than implementing distributed grids. It is much more efficient to put lots of solar panels in sunny areas than enough panels and batteries in each house.
We have early warning system. This notice is from space weather tracking that detects flares and predicts if and when they will hit Earth. I don't know if anyone is thinking about how to decide and shut down the grid temporarily, but it should be something they are thinking about.
As you say, carrington events are likely only to damage grids - however miyake events are so intense that cosmic rays penetrate deep into the atmosphere, and cosmic rays can cause electronics to have a very bad time indeed.
But hypothetically, if a sufficiently-damaging coronal mass ejection occurred, such that we were forced to rebuild Earth's electronics infrastructure and electrical grids from scratch, what design changes would we make the 2nd time around?
I'd guess the goal would be to get things going again as fast as possible so no, I doubt there would be much time & effort put into some of the points you mention, at least in the short term. Decentralization might come not so much by design in an event like that, but out of necessity.
Relevant YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGlGCIiyZE
This guy has done solar weather reports every morning for years at this point.
My preference is for Dr Skov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXia20jA4tI
12% chance of global EMP sounds pretty high, no?
He's correct on some stuff but I stopped watching after he got debunked for showing random research papers + misinterpreting most of them. https://youtu.be/3fTLZTEE7mU
I wonder how much it would cost to harden the US power grid against another Carrington Event, such that "only" thousands of people would die, instead of millions.
Under the guise of protecting the grid from an EMP attack, it would seem well worth it. I’ve seen estimates shared here, but drawing a blank at the moment. Seemed dirt cheap, relatively speaking.
I also recall seeing estimates posted on HN one time, but can’t find the source. I seem to remember $500m ish. ‘Cheap’ insurance relatively speaking.
Thank you, that was the number I was remembering as well, but it seemed so crazy low I didn't want to repeat it. Even a dysfunctional U.S. Congress should be able to cough up that much money.
I don't even get out of bed for anything less than a Carrington Event.
I got out of bed (here in London) for this one and managed to see the aurora for the first time!
This winter has been abyssmal for auroras in north Sweden. Usually we get to see them pretty often but this year it was either cloudy or snowstorm every time. And now it's too bright in the night, the sun never properly sets. Sigh. Happy for you though, it's a very beautiful experience!
WWV 15 mhz is way down in Chicagoland at 19:03z. 10 mhz extremely faint.
D-Layer absorption is way up.
Google News: You will see the northern lights tonight!
HN: CME imminent, We're all gonna die!
Not really. In my experience HN is (and I guess many groups are) surprisingly cognitively biased against considering the risk, mostly the vibe is denialism. However, that seems to be way less true today than it has been in the past. This is great! When I'm seeing people seriously face the idea of preparing, or the consequences and risk, I feel safer because I know that there are going to be a lot of other people who want to take responsibility.
But the denialism makes sense if you don't want "existential angst" or "ontological shock" to inject into your worldview, and just want to get on with the day to day. It entirely makes sense because of how scary it is to consider given the total dependence of almost everybody on the systems that would be wiped out by a global outage.
If you intend to survive such without solely relying on luck you need to take a different approach, tho. That's okay, not everyone needs to have the same mindset, especially in "peace time". And most people will catch up pretty quickly in "war time", although for some the delay will be fatal, unavoidably.
The denialism and minimization is quite endearing (in a totally non patronizing way) such as:
- "usually no ill effects reported even from pretty strong ones"
- "resources are limited. You cannot prepare for all the threats in the world."
- "we can just fix the risk by putting counter satellites at L1 or L2 lagrange points"
Although the mood today is waay more curious and studious. Actually it's a very good response today I think, a lot of people are discussing things seriously and posting articles about the risks of a major storm.
I think 7 X-class flares in a row (space of 48 hours right?) shows just how little we really know or understand, or can scientifically predict (tho others may have better luck using different methods haha! :)) about the sun. :)
I'm wondering what the effect would be if we had astronauts on the moon, or on the way to mars.
There was an episode about this in For All Mankind though I have no idea how reality based it was. They depicted it more or less like radiation poisoning.
"Coronal mass ejection" would be such a great band name
Are these type of events problematic for putting nuclear weapons in space or is it just fine and you could never get accidental detonations or even just large amounts of uranium burning up in the atmosphere because military satellites are shielded so well!?
In a word, no. There is no risk of an "accidental detonation" caused by a magnetic storm, and there wouldn't be one even if you put the warhead upstream the bow shock directly in the path of the CME.
On the other hand, if a LEO satellite's electronics get fried, sooner or later it will burn up in the atmosphere since it cannot maneuver anymore, and if it carries a load of weapons-grade uranium it's going to be a somewhat unpleasant event, as you imagine.
- "Most of Europe is glowing pink under the aurora" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40324179
Latest https://xkcd.com/2930/ (Google Solar Cycle)
I am ready
NASA warns us about CMEs, but doesn't bother to say what kind of zombies to expect? How does that help anyone?
There was a really good article in a February issue of the New Yorker about solar storms:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/what-a-major-s...
You can see the effects of the CME on the HF amateur radio bands.
This live map (https://g7vrd.co.uk/wspr/IO81) would usually be full of worldwide contacts being reported by WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter), but the solar flares have closed down the bands quite considerably.
The map is centred on Maidenhead grid square IO81, but you can change it to wherever you are: https://www.whatsmylocator.co.uk/
This will also cause problems with aircraft, as they use HF when they're out of sight of land.
Charge the ion storm shields and put backup reactors on standby. We need all of the energy we can get to weather this.
I have seen largscale increase in ECC correction operations on memory sticks in my datacenter during strong solar activity in the past. Can anyone comment on seeing this? Thx!
In 1989, transmission lines in Quebec were affected by a geomagnetic storm, bringing down the whole grid in Quebec, and the US grid in the Northeast.
As always when something happens on the sky, the weather in the northern Poland is not cooperating :<
Was raining here in the Northeastern US so didn't get to see the auroras, but definitely got to see the lights in my house flickering and woke up to an inbox full of "Your UPS has entered battery mode. Your UPS has returned to AC mode." messages.
I have to say wow! I am on Vancouver Island here in Canada and I picked up my daughter last night from a friend and she starts showing me these pictures of the sky and she saw the northern lights display! We never see them down this low. The sky looked amazing with colors of purple and a slight pink color. I always thought they were a green themed color but wow she was lucky to catch that. I of course didn’t see any of it :(
Ignoring unrealistic preparations for most of us (such as bunkers and whatever else), an adequate supply of food and water to handle disruptions to logistics for a realistic amount of time must surely be the lowest hanging fruit (e.g. a month?). This is fairly trivial if you aim for things like rice and pasta, and if the grid goes down for longer than a month a lot of us are dying regardless of how we prepare.
The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family?
I guess we could just start building walls of unopened water bottles in our basement…
(In my teens I saw a family friend had a bag full of food supplies. I asked someone if that was a prep bag, and they said yes. I thought they were a bit weird. Now I’ve come full circle browsing Amazon for cheap doomsday food.)
I used to be a logistics officer for an Infantry battalion.
Most of the comments down thread underestimate water consumption. Depending on the climate, you'll want the following daily quantities [1]:
- 2-3 gallons for drinking
- 1.5 gallons for hygiene (can skip for a while)
- 0.5 gallons for food prep
The planning factor for military operations was 8 gallons per person per day. Water is heavy—8 pounds per gallon—and acquiring, storing, and moving it is a large effort.
[1] https://cascom.army.mil/g_staff/g3/TTD/Products/QM-How-to-Ha...
It never occurred to me that people needed this spelled out, but I guess it's simpler in most of the world where 1L = 1kg.
I don't think you can blame inch-pounds for this one- even though we rationally know it is heavier than most materials we don't "think of" water as heavy because modern society gives us the luxury of seldom having to handle more than a thirty minute or so supply of it at once.
I wasn't actually commenting on the "heavy" part but the "8 pounds per gallon" part. I can do these conversions on demand but, besides never being the native way I think personally, there are simply more numeric conversions you have to do when you use this system whether or not it's native to you.
then again, anyone with a garden or balcony that has to be watered with a watering can can [sic] attest to how heavy a little bit of water is. If you have a small 100m² garden and it rains a modest 1mm (per m² that is) that's 1L/m² equivalent to 1kg/m² or 100kg total mass of water. When it has rained 1mm people call it "three drops of rain" and they will have to water their plants anyway. That's already 10 cans @ 10L each to lug around.
The other kind of people who know about the weight of waters are people with campers / trailers and people with fish tanks in their apartments. The maximum allowable size for a fish tank in the middle of the room is not that much.
It's just as simple, frankly. A gallon is four quarts, each of which is two pounds of water. A quart is two pints: and a pint's a pound, the world round (Yes, most of us are aware of the irony of that couplet).
These are all things which are generally known to Americans. But HN has an international audience, for whom "gallon" is presumably somewhat vague.
It's easy in gallons and pounds, too, if the correct gallon is used: 10 pounds per imperial gallon of water, by definition.
The average person needs far less than 65lbs (30kg) of water per day, which is a third of the average male weight in the US.
By medical standards humans need more like 8lbs (under 4l) per day for men and 6lbs (under 3l) for women. Less if your rationing and not exerting yourself.
OP’s factoring includes washing, food prep, all that other stuff.
1.5 a day for washing is hilariously wasteful. Use some wet wipes for crying out loud!
How do you wash your clothes and dishes with wet wipes?
Also you need to clean your home - you don't want to get sick in a catastrophe scenario.
1.28gal for toilet flushing the most efficient toilets. 1.6gal for normal and it can be worse for older ones.
I was on a hike that recommended 1 gallon to complete it for 5 miles round trip.
I’m sure there is a method to the madness of 8 gallons per person that isn’t easy to see. There is a lot of rounding up with the military also.
The normal amount in disaster preparedness is 1gal per person per day. The problem with the larger amounts is that people see they need huge amounts and don't do anything. Better to get started storing 5-7 gal for each person.
The way to allow for extras is to store water for a longer length of time. If recommended value is two weeks, and it is in my area, then a month is a good buffer.
8 ga of water per person per day is completely insane in disaster scenario. 2-3ga for drinking a day? Medical professionals recommend less than 1 for a normal person.
I’d you’re not doing anything. But if you’re doing physical effort then you’ll need to drink a lot more that 2–3L a day.
Keep in mind military operations generally aren't supposed to be disaster scenarios. And someone marching 10+ miles a day in full kit, possibly through heavy terrain or while under fire, is probably going to sweat a lot more than a normal person.
Backpacking water filters aren’t all that expensive and work fine with most water sources. Wouldn’t produce enough to shower in but certainly enough that you could survive in a disaster.
I've got an assortment of backpacking/camping water filters, but don't live especially near a water source, so my days would revolve around walks to the nearest creek. (2 km away) A cargo bike would help a lot there.
If the municipal water is still functional but non-potable, a LifeStraw Max gets you effectively unlimited water on-demand for most sources of contamination.
You could collect rainwater, but realistically water outages are usually not "the taps are dry", but rather "the water treatment plant failed so we can't guarantee the water is safe to drink."
This happened literally last month in the region where I live, and yes "the taps are dry" is exactly what happened.
The water treatment plant staff detected high levels of toluene in the river which feeds the plant, so as a preventive measure, they shut down the whole thing. It took several days until they managed to get the toluene levels in the river low enough that adding activated charcoal to the water intake could get rid of the rest. In the meantime, there was no water being pumped into the system, and once your building's water tank ran dry (the size varies depending on the building), there was no water anymore (unless you hired a water truck to bring water from a nearby city).
And that's not even the first time this kind of thing happened around here. A couple of years ago, another water treatment plant in the same region (fed by a different river) had trouble due to high levels of geosmin in the river, and they also had to shut down for a while. The result was the same, taps running dry once the building water tanks get empty.
Not to mention that pumping water needs lots of electric power. Not only at the water treatment plant, but several other places in the system need to move water against gravity, or increase its pressure.
That seems to be pretty optimistic with respect to geography.
Consider: "The pumps aren't working and there's nothing left up inside the local water-tower."
Then you'd have to travel to get any appreciable amount of water before even starting to filter it.
I do collect rainwater! (In the summer months, at least.) Have a system cobbled together based on bluebarrelsystems.com
Though disaster preparedness and water efficiency are a bit at odds. For the former I'd want to keep all my barrels mostly full, but for the latter I want to keep them empty enough that rainfall events aren't overflowing them and wasting water.
I would probably want a Gravi-stil as relying on filter mediums has a built-in expiration date (or # of gallons).
Sure, but even with my regular water usage, the LifeStraw Max filters would last me over a year, and it works via water pressure. There isn't really any disaster scenario where I'm remaining in my home and need to purify water via burning wood.
distillation allows separation of water from not water.
mud or damp vegetation can be a water source.
I wouldn't think backpacking water filters would help much in for getting water from rivers / ponds in an urban/suburban environment? They'd take care of particulate matter and microbes but I doubt they'd do much for chemical contaminants.
Also, most filters can filter bacteria and cysts, but can't filter out viruses. Many say viruses are not an issue in the backcountry (but I still use purifying tablets), but if you're taking water from a suburban stream during a disaster, I'd definitely want to make sure I'm not ingesting whatever viruses the guy upstream deposited when he used the stream as a toilet.
Viruses do not survive in the open air well because they don't have a hybernation mechanism as opposed to bacteria
Walmart sells 5 gallon water totes for $15. that is essentially 5 days for one person. We have a few on hand (family of 4 plus dog) and every six months or so, I empty them, clean them, and re-fill them. Also, there are gravity filters that work great if you have things like creeks near you.. Berkey Filters are pretty good for filtering out contaminants, as well as 2-bag gravity filters that are really popular with backpackers because you can fill the dirty bag up, hang from a tree, and do other things while the clean bag fills.. (not an endorsement, but their pictures show nicely how they work) https://www.platy.com/filtration/gravityworks-water-filter-s...
If there is no AC, and you are exerting yourself a lot (no car or transportation is down, more work to prepare food, even having to take a dump outside), 5 gallons is barely enough for one person to drink per day. You'll be sweating a lot more in those conditions.
Another example is food in winter months. During a disaster, even with winter gear, your houee may not be heated. If it is -20C inside, your body will need more calories.
If you're having to go outside to cook, to expel waste, and maybe even to go find snow to melt for water, you're going to need 3x your caloric intake.
You have to plan for worst case usage per day, not best.
I drink may be two liters of water per day. Unless Google lies to me, 5 gallons is almost 20 liters which would be enough for 3 weeks for me with rationing.
OK, no. If you're running a marathon, in hot weather, you're at maybe a liter per hour. Unless you plan to run 20h marathons and the sun never sets, 5 gallon is well beyond drinking needs.
And unless you're able to exert yourself at that level at all, this isn't the "worst case", this is pure fantasy.
And if you're preparing for -20C in your house, I recommend investing in insulation, not more calories stored away. (I also question 3x, the figures I've seen point to 2x, with exertion somewhat counteracting cold)
If you drink ~19 litres (5 US gallons?) of water every day you will not survive long. That’s about an order of magnitude more than is recommended under normal non-strenuous conditions.
I'll second Berkey Filters. While a full Berkey setup may seem expensive, the filters themselves and not the housing is the important part.
You can also use the filters with alternative housings that are far cheaper if aesthetics aren’t a concern. I’ve seen people use food safe 5 gallon buckets for example. It’s much cheaper and works just as well in emergency situations. You do need to be careful about light penetration of the translucent bucket wall.
Another cool thing is that you can make (in a pinch, I wouldn’t recommend this over berkey filters) filters from the same type of bulkheads berkey uses attached to home-made ceramic filters. They work remarkably well in emergencies and are trivial to make if you’ve got clay and a hot fire. There’s definitely trial and error involved for getting perfect seals, and some advanced DIYers I’ve seen used glazing to create a more easily sealed rim which can have a plastic tube jammed into it for a friction fit, which then attaches to the inner part of the bulkhead.
Totally unnecessary if civilization is working but awesome if things go sideways and you’re out of filters. There might be better methods too, I haven’t looked into it for years.
I've got one of these in my garage. It provides a lot of piece of mind knowing water is solved for. I not a "prepper" by any means, but, realistically I need water every day or I will die. Spending a few hundred to ensure I don't die from dehydration during a natural disaster seems worth it.
https://www.surewatertanks.com/collections/products/products...
The genius move I heard of was to throw a few 5-gal jugs of water up in your attic (!!!). It's relatively shelf-stable, standardized size, and "in case of emergency" you can even use it as a gravity-flowed spout to fill smaller containers below.
I've taken to trying to have a minimal set of 4 one liter steel water bottles hung in the closet (grab + go) all the time. So convenient to be able to "just grab some water" on the way out the door, and is the start of a solid emergency prep station.
If it's kept in plastic containers, it's probably only good for a year or so before enough stuff leaches into the water that it'll last off and funky. The time period decreases significantly if your attic gets hot (like a lot of them do).
I want my regular drinking water to be as free of microplastics as possible, but is contamination from plastic containers dangerous enough to be of any concern during an emergency situation?
In that kind of emergency, I'd probably be satisfied with safe-but-distasteful as opposed to unavailable.
If one is going to do that, I'd strongly recommend putting them in some kind of basin that can hold the water if it escapes from the jugs, or sturdier containers, or both.
At least in the US, water jugs are generally very flimsy. An attic is likely to have wide temperature variations throughout the year, and leaky water jugs up there could cause some expensive damage.
Yeah we had plastic jugs in our cool basement leak all over the concrete floor — I can’t imagine the disaster that would be to have plastic jugs in my 140F attic with resultant leaking down from the ceiling
You already have the equipment for that. Your existing hot water heater stores enough drinking water for a month at least, probably more if you ration carefully.
we got the smaller 42 gallon one, and.. with two people and a pet... it might last a couple weeks tops, I'd think, if we rationed (~2-3 gallons per day?)
I don't think I've ever drunk two gallons in a day in my whole life. Sedentary survival needs in reasonable climates are maybe a third of that.
Go hiking in 35 degree weather on Mallorca, you'll easily exceed that.
But that's not really disaster-relevant, no.
I've got a 1000 litre / 250-ish US gallon rainwater collection tank. While I wouldn't want to start there for drinking water, it would do for quite a while if I boil it.
We do get power failures, so it's mostly been for some garden watering, and being able to flush our toilets during an outage. We're on a well, and the pump needs 220v. I suppose I could get a better generator too, ours only does 120v.
You can just use a transformer to re-create the 240 for your pump if the power/load is otherwise fine
Especially as an autotransformer it's pretty cheap (should be about 50$).
That's true! It hasn't been a huge issue, we tend to mitigate basically by filling some pots with water when a storm is coming. (Usual outages happen in high winds, we have overhead lines and many trees.)
Dig a well.
You have to have the right kind of ground to drill with this. I think lots of gravel and rocks won’t work well. Never used it myself but was considering it in the past.
https://www.drillawell.com/complete-kit
The cheapest way is to find some cheap, food-safe container(s). Put it into your basement and change out the water every 3-6 months.
55 gallon rain barrels can often be found subsidized and therefore cheap.
Keep a bunch of camping iodine drops around and you are set.
One option is to do what quick-service restaurants (e.g., Subway) do for chips, cookies, drinks, etc.: keep a hefty supply of product on hand, but consume it first-in-first-out (FIFO, like a queue). During times of stability (when supplies are available), add new supplies to the "back" while you consume from the "front".
A bag of pool shock and how to use it safely to treat water is fairly easy and cheap.
storing large quantities of water is not trivial maintenence.
its better to be able to sanitize required quantities on demand.
High water tinned foods will help a lot.
Have the local water delivery company drop off 5 jugs a year
Live near a lake, stream, etc. and enough firewood to boil water.
Also a small camping stove with a couple of gas cartridges to ensure you can cook your rice and pasta.
Or with an adapter hose you can connect a standard propane tank. If you get the right connector bits, you can use propane with either a dual-burner Coleman-like stove, or with a minimal Jetboil-like backpacking stove.
With a different adapter one can refill camping canisters from a standard propane tank. One "usually" gets away with refilling empty canisters, but these aren't legal for transport in an automobile. Presumably with reason, as in the odds aren't as good as skydiving. I recommend the DOT approved:
Flame King Refillable 1LB Empty Propane Cylinder Tank
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MM3GCVO/
It offers some nuanced controls e.g. to avoid overfilling.
I'm really curious where that presumption comes from. There are tens of thousands of things that are prohibited due to saftyism.
If you understand pressure Regulators and can hook up a BBQ, [is it really] more risky than skydiving
Edit: Switched a safety assertion to a question
I'm not entirely clear on what your question is, but reused single-use propane canisters are lesser for three reasons.
1. The propane they are manufactured with is carefully dried, but propane out of bulk tanks is not. The single use tanks have thinner walls with less corrosion protection because the high-end propane doesn't need it.
2. The safety over-pressure valve on those tanks has similar design constraints and may corrode shut with un-dried propane. Sometimes people damage those valves while refilling.
3. It's easy to overfill those little tanks such that high temperatures can cause over-pressure problems. Due to (1) and (2) the built-in safety measures for refillable tanks cannot be assumed.
I was questioning the idea that having a refilled tank in your car is more dangerous than skydiving. I think it is fair to presume it has some non-zero risk.
I was questioning if that risk is meaningful, or if it is like a prop 65 warning on every building you enter, and most products you purchase.
Googling around I was able to find 1 death associated with refilling a DOT-39 container [1], which is scary shit. However, it seems to be caused by a poor coupling, refilling inside, with an ignition source. This could have happened with any container including a certified refillable one.
https://lni.wa.gov/safety-health/safety-research/files/2016/...
Yeah I looked into those, but in practice it seemed easier to just get a 5lb propane tank for camping that I get refilled at the same place I fill my 20lb tanks. (Plus I'm not clear about the legality of the Flame King ones in Canada, with the result that there aren't any reputable sellers.)
If I really need to go light I'm carrying isobutane canisters or using an alcohol stove.
Keep some oats, you can eat them raw.
That’s an interesting point, I hadn’t considered that.
It should be noted for other readers, that it’s processed oats that have been treated with steaming and an extended heat treatment that are safe to eat as is. That said, “overnight oatmeal” is still not recommended.
The steaming and heating steps allow oats to be shaped, modifies the flavor, kills the many possible pathogens present (like ecoli and salmonella) and deactivates enzymes that would cause spoilage.
Truly raw grains should not be eaten. For example in the US the biggest danger of food poisoning from eating raw cookie dough, typically comes from the flour not the eggs. Incidentally, simply baking flour does not render it safe until moisture is added: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2021/04/Home-kitchen-heat-treated...
I should also add that things like dry kidney beans contain toxins that need to be soaked and heated to boiling for a sufficient amount of time to destroy, otherwise even just a few can cause severe intestinal distress.
Good points, hadn't thought of contamination at that level.
Incidentally, simply baking flour does not render it safe until moisture is added: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2021/04/Home-kitchen-heat-treated...
That's not what the cited article says. Instead, it says:
“But it’s not that simple in flour because Salmonella is more heat resistant when moisture is low. We still need more research data to confirm how hot you’d have to get the flour or how long you’d have to hold it at that temperature to make the flour safe to eat.”
You said "baking does not render flour safe". The article says we still need more research about "165 degrees", and does not even say baking flour at 165 degrees is unsafe. In other words, it could render it safe, we just don't apparently know.
In Oregon, after some severe forest fires, ice storms that shut down whole towns, and the possibility of a Cascadia Subduction Zone event (ie, ~9.0 earthquake) They recommend keeping supplies for 2 weeks to allow time for local areas to get regular supplies of food, water, etc. https://www.oregon.gov/oem/hazardsprep/pages/2-weeks-ready.a...
The problem with that advice is that anyone who could bring you supplies is also suffering from the same problems you are.
Nothing is perfect,but 2 weeks is better than 0 weeks, and enough for a wide array of circumstances
Homes being prepared also dramatically reduces the need for distributed aid to these people. That could mean that labour to restore minimal infrastructure is more available. Feeding people in situations like that takes immense effort.
For a world affecting CME, it might take a month but a 9.0 magnitude earthquake is not going to destroy the entire world, so you don't need a years worth of food before help arrives. we're talking about a little extra bit of water and food, not an underground bunker. Help from outside the affected area will be coming.
Also trash bags to shit in. Put it in your toilet, close the lid on it, boom you can shit in the comfort of your bathroom in a relatively sanitary way.
I guess that's one upside of living off of city water / sanitation. In my circumstance I wouldn't have a change of living due to well water pump being easily run from solar collected electricity. It would only have to run the pump a few times a day to keep the well bladder tank primed. Same thing for the mound system as the pump only needs to run a few times a day during normal operations. This could just be run once at the end of the day to bring the final holding tank down to a normal level.
I'm in the same boat, and have a lot of power failures. So when I replaced my tank, I made sure I went for a 80gal size / 40 gal badder. I also upped my pressure from 30/50 to 50/80, so that I have more pressure in there regardless.
But I've noticed a disturbing trend. A lot of people now have "continuous" pump/tank setups. A little pressure tank the size of a 20lb BBQ propane tank, just to allow for pressure stabilization, and a weaker pump. I guess cost is the motivator.
Sad, really.
If you are in the US, the best preparation you can have is to be able to relocate during an emergency. Do not get stuck in Katrina so to speak. Having transport to other parts of the country is the best bet.
Not sure if and how modern cars with all their electronics might be affected. Also maybe have some paper maps and a compass somewhere (and know how to use them!) and don’t purely rely on GPS.
This. When trying to make provisions for even modest disruptions, you quickly realize how herculean a task it is to be truly prepared. Unless you're already a self-sustaining farmer with a well/water source and other resources or (ideally) billionare-bunker capable, you can see how prepper-ism becomes a lifestyle beyond prepping for a relatively short period.
Making a choice between living life as it currently is and being prepared to survive indefinitely is a hard fork in the road.
My prep kit is my camping gear
- water purification/iodide tablets - Sawyer mini (life straw works too) to filter the water - rations - camping stove, white gas, waterproof matches, lighter - I may or may not have a firearm and may or may not bring it when me and my non-white partner go camping in eastern Washington/forks .... - Tanked water heater for potable water - fire extinguisher (granted I leave that in the car when camping) - poop bucket - solar panel+back up battery, assuming they survive any issues with the storm. I'm hoping a townhouse has enough barriers to protect against radiation given I keep the camping gear in the basement
I should probably print out some maps of things like resoviors, ports, and other critical infra/services in my area at some point.
Be on a government payroll and have the skills necessary to repair the damage.
Or load on ammunition, and be ready for your neighbor to go cannibalistic within 3 months...
Try days, not months. Especially in densely populated areas.
You do realize humanity has had countless famines before right? I grant you, a few of them brought out a regrettable side of humanity but by and large people come together during times of hardship, they don't tear each other apart. I feel like only those who've never felt hunger could contemplate such a savage reaction.
And I hope you realize China had multiple famines with cannibalistic events as recent as 1959: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
I hope you realize that about a million people died during the Irish great famine with almost no events of cannibalism. Suggesting that it's a normal occurrence during famine is very insulting to the character of those that survived those famines while still upholding basic human decency.
Irish person here: the “almost no” is being disputed by more recent scholarship/research. And was even featured in a documentary from the national broadcaster a few years ago.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/role-of-s...
I hope you realize that these events are notable because they are unusual and not because they are the rule.
This entire thread is about preparation for the unusual, not the rule. Considering the human response to significant adversity is not out of line here.
It's an understatement to say that only "a few" famines have brought out a regrettable side of humanity. The situation is very similar to a war. Remember that the rate of violent death was much higher before agriculture and farming were invented. A breakdown of infrastructure would bring us closer to our natural condition from those times. Accepting that doesn't require anyone to be a misanthropist or a cynic about human value.
The government has done studies showing that the vast majority of the population would be dead not long after a sustained nationwide power outage. All it takes is people missing a few meals before the fun starts.
Do you have a link to the study?
I had to dig around but I think this the one I remember. There are two other reports linked in the comments.
https://old.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/11tblpp/found_it_...
Thanks! This is the doc I found the "90 percent of our population is dead" quote from, which is asserted indirectly:
https://irp.fas.org/congress/2008_hr/emp.pdf
It's referring to a fictional story in that quote, but the scientist says that 90% is accurate for the real world if that scenario were to happen. Pretty chilling.
This is an interesting read. I noticed also that Roscoe Bartlett, the rep running that hearing, moved entirely off the grid after retirement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Bartlett#Personal_life
He was born in 1926, he grew up "of the grid" and likely spent most of his early life mostly off grid.
It's not especially noteworthy .. to those of us that also grew up away from large connected services - you have your own sewerage, generators, mail, drive | walk to town to pick things up.
Currently I'm "mostly" off grid - I have internet connection, a well, leach drains, solar + wind (electric) + wind (mechanical mill), etc and live in a rural community with a lot of people older than 60 who also grew up off grid.
Days. After the soviet union fell in Armenia there was no supply of food the first days. Also no gasoline nothing. The first day people were normal. Second day people started stealing. Third day all birds and rats were shot for food. Luckely soon food became a normal thing again. But chaos is quickly there. I believe even quicker in rich western countries. Most men and women cant survive on their own for a week.
You can survive with no food for a week. And you can use water from toilet tank for this week.
Most people have a weeks worth of food in their house. Unless they are people who don't cook.
It is easy to make that longer by keeping extras of stable food they normally eat. I like to keep extras of everything I use regularly. Which really helped during the pandemic.
While I agree, I think many apartment dwellers have less storage. Home owners tend to have more, just due to that extra space.
But the other factor is, some people literally only eat pre-made food, which often a large portion consists of frozen things. I've been in some homes, mostly single people, which have no flour, rice, oats, etc. No real raw materials, such as eggs or butter. No canned food. Maybe a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread, and a package of processed meat in the fridge.
The rest are frozen things like prepared chicken wings, and so on.
What I wonder is, what are the percentages of people in these situations?
20%?
Tangentially, that's a reason not to use any "cleaning" additives in your toilet water tank, since you are rendering some emergency water undrinkable.
Part of what makes me take prepping seriously is that the majority of payments are electronic now and there is no failover as far as I'm aware. In ~2015 I saw a power outage briefly take down the payment processsor at a grocery store. despite having cash I could not check out.
If something like that happens but sustained long enough to cause a mob to loot the store (which the media would of course amplify), it wouldn't be long before there was widespread panic.
It's not the CME itself that terrifies me, but the knock-on effects.
It's really too bad we didn't have a major CME in the 90's. That was the perfect time for a good lesson in redundancy and why you can't and shouldn't jettison "the old ways" so quickly. Perhaps its not too late now, but the pain will be considerably higher. Earth lucked out in so many ways, but a CME spanking in the 1990's is asking for too much I guess.
That's just the anthropic principle for you: If we'd have been any less lucky, we wouldn't be here to write about it :)
I think you miss the point s/he's making: back in the 90's we were much less reliant on computers than today, much more cash based. It would have been a wake-up call, today it would be a calamity.
The 90s were not that long ago, we should restore and document and know the old cash-based ways while we still have those experts and those workers with us. Great thread and reminder about these things.
I would like to think that the servers that run ACH networks, IBM mainframes that actually store your account balance, etc are shielded from CME and even an EMP.
But the vulnerable side then becomes the power grid and Internet backbone. Part of a resilient disaster plan would be to allow ACH and other payment traffic to take priority if we were relegated to a low bandwidth connection. If we cannot transfer money, we will collapse, plain as that, once panic over food security sets in.
An EE friend said that we do not have enough transformers to replace if a critical number of them fried. Substation level components could be a huge bottleneck if we had another Carrington event.
I know for a fact at least one insurance company’s IBM aix mainframes are in an underground emp proof (faraday cage which connects through the door) vault.
In which no one follows the protocols, so someone ran an extension cord into the cage, because some supervisor couldn't charge his phone in there.
Or something similar.
That was one of the big problems in Puerto Rico in 2017 - all the credit/debit card systems were out and almost nobody had money.
Best way to prep is strong community connections around you. Community is resiliency.
LOL we saw how that played out with COVID. 1/2 your "community" is going to deny the disaster and deliberately worsen it. 1/2 (with some overlap) is going to go from grocery store to grocery store buying all the necessities to resell them later.
EDIT: Wow, I know HN wears rose-colored glasses when looking at the past, but come on, people. We didn't hallucinate the antimaskers, antivaxxers, and thousands of protestors deliberately ignoring stay-at-home. I worked with a health official who had her home picketed because she dared to involve herself in health policy. It's only been a few years and y'all are in denial already.
That was actually more of a demonstration of the utter lack of community in our society, among other things.
That's the point. In many respects, community life is just a polite facade.
I think both sides of this thread agree that most of us (in the US at least) don’t have a robust community in the “community resilience” sense.
The only disagreement I think is in the definition of community. We could either say that community is just, like, our extended circle of acquaintances; we’ve all got one and it isn’t very robust against disasters. Or we could say that a resilient community is some deeper thing on which people can lean in a disaster, but which needs to be carefully tended to, and most of us lack.
The latter is, I think, what the original poster meant.
Yes, that was what I was going for. If you consider your community to be only the likeminded, cooperative people you know and associate with and rely on for help, then of course "your community" is great. I was talking about the greater community: the full population of your town, neighborhood and/or surrounding neighborhoods, and I'd estimate (depending on where in the country) a good 50% showed their counterproductive, selfish, belligerent side during COVID. Since we collectively haven't learned anything from our mistakes, I would expect the same behavior during the next disaster.
I think it is not just a matter of what you consider your community. The comment was suggesting building that community of reliable and likeminded people. It takes work, it is part of the “prep.” I certainly haven’t done it. But of course the suggestion must be to build the good type of community.
I see. I thought you were refuting the advice that having community is a major factor in resiliency - you were actually saying, "lol good luck having community in the modern world." Which... yeah : /
that's the parents point though
this
I don't think anyone's denying that American society doesn't create strong communities, I think they are advocating to work towards creating one around you.
I didn't have either of those issues in my community, I'm sorry yours had those issues. In ours we formed bubbles, shared food, cooked meals together, and played an absolutely stunning volume of retro multiplayer games. Covid was awful but I think I'll always fondly remember some of those nights.
In a real disaster, there won’t be any buying or selling
I lived in a small condo complex during the early pandemic (~30 units, around 100 people total including kids) and COVID brought everyone together -- people sharing food/supplies (even elusive toilet paper), offering to make grocery runs for those that can't go themselves, one lady sewed enough homemade masks for everyone using her curtains.
I'd rarely met the neighbors before then, but COVID really brought everyone together.
Though I lived in a pretty liberal and well educated area, not many anti-vaxxers around where I lived.
I don't know about you, but my community came together in those moments. When TP was hard to buy, we shared among ourselves. When members in our community discovered they had issues that prevented them from taking the vaccine safely, we went back to masking when meeting to keep them safe. And so on and so on.
I think maybe you're thinking of a different definition of "community connections" than the parent poster. It's not _literally everyone around you,_ but the people around you that you trust and support and who will support you. Get as many of those as you can, as high quality as you can.
It's beneficial even if the world _doesn't_ go to shit, too! =)
Maybe that is what you get when you replace social obligation with money and apps. That kind of existence was common in America and increased during covid. And it is a terrible model for situations where people actually need each other in a reciprocal way.
Just be aware that what looks like a strong community can quickly turn into something else once the sh* hits the fan...
Practice makes perfect. Highly recommend finding your local food not bombs cohort or visiting one in a nearby city and then starting your own back home.
Community resiliency is a natural instinct it seems. Rebecca solnit's "paradise built in hell" is a fascinating read on the subject.
Now I’ve volunteered with a local FNB group so I’m not trying to be mean but…
What would a group that gets cheap and or throwaway groceries and feeds homeless do in a Fit-Hits-The-Shan or End-of-World scenario?
You’d have to hope some heavily agricultural minded types would be friendly to you and your labor potential.
I'm not sure if you've read some of FNB's materials they set out at those events, but they should have reading out that defines the mission clearly as one not of charity, but of teaching people to be interdependent within their communities rather than on central governments. FNB is above all else a peaceful anarchist resistance movement.
Primarily volunteering with them creates two things that are basically the most important things in any emergency:
1. Knowledge of who to talk to and where to go when shit hits the fan
2. Established practices of organization
If community resources are scarce, and you have a FNB cohort in the community, you have a group of people with lots of practice stretching out food, preparing it, and redistributing it to many people. Again I recommend solnit, she wrote about this exact thing happening in one of SF's earliest devastating earthquakes.
The other upside is when the State turns up to fuck your community efforts up (like they did in SF, or Louisiana after Katrina) you also have a group with established methods of peaceful resistance. They probably already have clout with the local State enforcement group: the SFPD have gotten to the point where it's basically impossible to get them to harass FNB because of years of softening individual officers to the cause.
Edit: I see now you mean, practically speaking, what actions could they take.
Well in a place like NYC I have no idea. Probably there would be huge issues with famine. Realistically the first thing everyone should do is get the fuck out of that city lmao.
I don't know if SF would be so bad. There's also groups like Food Not Lawns trying to get people into growing their own food. If their efforts continue to be successful we can have closer to home food supply chains. As for convincing people to share, for some reason that isn't all that hard. When capitalism and its disincentives fall away, it seems people revert to our basic evolutionary advantage of social bonding and organization.
Not to mention all the dry goods stashed in stores throughout the city can be stretched pretty far by the people who have practice at it. If FNB minded folks can redistribute from the stores quickly enough they might even be able to get to the meat and etc to turn into jerky etc - hopefully they'd abandon veganism in an actual emergency. Knowing them, probably not lol. But if I'm there that's what I'm doing.
Others have written on the plight of cities in anarchy, and I don't think it's quite so doom and gloom. "Conquest of Bread" was the OG and I think it still holds up.
FWIW, this is light years away from the impression that Food Not Bombs people and activism has left on me over a couple decades of occasional, incidental contact.
The "end of the world" could be a local phenomenon. I like my headcanon that in Mad Max it's just Australia that's fucked, the rest of the world is fine.
If there are functional societies elsewhere in the world, then help in the form of food could be on its way. The question is, will it be distributed efficiently to the people who need it? Something like Food Not Bombs could respond quite effectively to such a situation.
I have a 50kw generac tied into my house with a 1000 gallon propane tank.
I don't understand what 50 kW could possibly be needed for.
Part of the electricity bill here in Flanders is based on monthly power peak. I charge an EV at home, and by setting up the charging station to take into account consumption data from the meter, I have no problem staying below 7 kW. Okay, that's averaged over 15 minute time slots, but even the connection for my house is only rated 13.8 kW!
In the US we have single-phase (split-phase) 120/240v 200A service drops for houses, 48kW. Houses over 3,000 square feet with electric heating, electric ovens, electric water heaters, and electric air conditioning can push 150A peak demand, and a 200A service drop is not much more expensive for the utility than a 100A service drop. Most houses in my state have gas water heaters and furnaces so 200A is overkill for most people in my state.
A 7kW 240V single-phase load draws (7000/240) 29.1A
IIRC most of Europe gets 230V or 400V three-phase power for houses, so here’s both calculations.
A 7kW 230V three-phase load draws (7000/(230*1.732) 17.57A
A 7kW 400V three-phase load draws (7000/(400*1.732) 10.1A
The reasoning behind a 50kW for a house in the US is (probably a 48kW) generator is you can fully back up your 200A service (240V times 200A = 48kW) and not split out the generator loads into a subpanel.
Older houses in the US might have a 100A service, I’ve even seen 60A house services.
P.S. 1.732 is sqrt(3)
Not needing a sub-panel is almost certainly the reason.
The North American residential electrical code limits how many circuits you can put onto a generator based on the circuit capacity, not the expected use. You aren't allowed to pinky swear that you won't run your electric oven and dry laundry at the same time. It doesn't matter that your generator will just trip its breaker or die.
So if you want to have most of your house on a permanently wired standby generator you need to wildly oversize that generator such that it can entirely replace utility power.
Alternatively, you put in load shed devices. They're basically fancy self-resetting circuit breakers that trip when the generator begins to be under too much load. They all trip at the same time and then come back up in a pre-determined sequence.
Startup spikes; AIUI anything with a motor will initially sink way more power than you expect it to use, then settle to a more reasonable level. So you need to overspec a generator to handle that without a brownout.
I think that's it, anyways; this is not my strong suit.
I have 2 wells, irrigation, a big shop and a smallish house. I live on the eastern crest of the North Cascades mountains in Washington State US and it can be -30c in the winter and 40c in the summer. Heat pump system with wood backup for the house and woodstove in the shop. When looking at the costs to put in the genset the difference to go big was de minimus.
What will you do once the propane runs out? Solar (and battery) is the way to go.
Not OP, but I use solar and H8-size AGM batteries as primary with a backup diesel generator that I've converted to run on wood gas (and occasionally coal gas). Added a triple stage water filter to the gasifier last year to keep the tar and creosote down. The generator is an old clunker but it's easy to disassemble, which made it an ideal candidate for tinkering and the eventual retrofit.
Please tell me you have a youtube channel or blog on that thing.
That's when the shooting starts. Let's hope it never gets that bad.
Not very useful for much of the year at high latitudes though. If you're off-grid, you basically need wood to heat your home, and if you clear the snow off your panels you can get enough juice to keep your phones charged.
One less obvious CME prep suggestion that I have heard is to prepare for extensive forest fires.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18291443/
Interesting, what's the proposed mechanism for CMEs causing fires? I unfortunately can't access the paper text.
Current is _generated_ in static lengths of wire. At any point the voltage exceeds the design, it arcs. Current passing through imperfect conductors are heating elements.
Both sparks from shorts and excess heating of conductors are possible ignition points.
n.b. I have not look at the paper.
The paper's a bit hard to read but I don't think it suggests a mechanism, or that the correlation between CMEs and forest fires is statistically significant for that matter. If you email me (address in profile) I can send you a copy.
It does seem plausible that you could get fires as a result of electrical sparks off of long conductors (transmission and communication wires, pipelines, fences), such as with the Carrington event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren...).
* Have a well stocked pantry. Costco business centers sell large bags of rice, beans, etc. very cheap. It just doesn't hurt to have some of these things on hand and use them.
* Have solar installed on your home. Have some spare disconnected inverters, maybe even a couple of uninstalled panels.
* Grow some of your own food in a garden.
* Have good relationships with some of your neighbors.
* Know how to do stuff yourself, have some tools and building materials in your garage
* Have a bicycle
* Have a method to purify water
None of these things are bad ideas anyway. Just don't be absolutely reliant on just-in-time purchasing of life necessities and know enough to be able to figure stuff out on your own. More or less just go on an overnight backpacking trip once in a while without buying prepackaged everything and you'll be pretty good.
This will get you a handful extra meals, assuming the ideal case where everything was fully grown, harvested, and preserved before the incident. It's one thing to have a village harvest & jam cycle for the seasons, it's another to need to be prepared for the situation to change overnight, all alone and with only a home garden to work with.
You're better off using the money, time, energy, etc. to buy provisions that are immediately and near-permanently useful without the variability, climate sensitivity, and labor intensity of gardening.
You would be surprised how much you can grow in a small space. But also small additions of fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and greens to your long term stores of rice, beans, and preserved foods can go a long way towards making those foods more pleasant and making up for some of the nutrients which are either not present or destroyed by preservation processes. In situations of major food shortages even a little bit goes a very long way.
And also, gardening is a high quality activity for you and your family at any time. It feels good eating a little bit of what you've grown, and there are lots of things that are either not possible or rather expensive to buy but simple to grow.
In a lot of places you can get permission to have your own water well. You may not even need to filter it.
World wide grid outage prep? Assuming transformers out continent wide? That's very bad imo. One of the hardest to prepare for. Cities will be impossible.
A year of food stored and a really good place to hide from the hordes that want it. Very difficult imo.
A continent-wide transformer blowout would pretty much be the end of modern civilization, as far as I've read. The capacity of both spares and teams capable of swapping them is orders of magnitude too low to do it in time to prevent large-scale collapse of interlinked systems.
restarting a dead grid is the blackest of magic.
Not joking, I have LTO tapes in an ammo can.
What on earth is on them?
decade's worth of data hoarding
Read One Second After by William R. Forstchen. It's probably the most accurate description of what may happen.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4922079-one-second-after
I really like that book but it is still highly unrealistic, since the grid going out != every small electronic circuit being fried. I'm not really clear on the issues with EMPs vs CMEs, but CMEs at least aren't going to induce dangerous voltages on a 5 foot long conductor routed inside a piece of metal (car). For sure not inside a cell phone or wristwatch.
It's more about tripping out the grid, or sensitive inadequately-protected grid-connected electronics. Even then, the short will likely happen in the input stage of the power conversion, where repairs with salvage parts are not infeasible.
What use is a spare laptop in a faraday cage if I can't brag about having one on this site?
Depends, does it run arch?
Clothing, weapons, some tools, some survivial books. And muscles and brains. And last but not least. Gold and silver. Because that will become the only money.
Last part is a trope but human societies around the world use different things as money, including counterfeit notes in Somali http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2013/03/orphaned-currency-odd-c...
In fact I doubt gold/silver becomes money because it’s generally too rare and inconvenient (hard to cut the gold bar without tools even if you have one). Realistically people will just keep using cash.
You're more likely to experience a weekslong power outage by living in Texas in midwinter than by a CME.
Of course if you're in Texas in midwinter when a CME happens, you are well and truly screwed.
? Just put on some sweaters?
You don't need a Faraday cage for CME, just EMP.
Have some water, food which doesn’t require cooking, and a weapon.
Put gas in your car. Impacts are likely to be regional, one town might loose power and another not. Be ready to move if needed.
I'm curious what a realistic estimate of service loss even is. We had pretty close to this happen three years ago in Texas and only had about two hours of electricity a day for two weeks. That was more than enough to make it barely a disaster, even though we lost all vehicular services and could not shop or receive deliveries for that entire time. We still had water service, which does not seem to universally rely upon long-range electrical grids being consistently up.
Simply surviving something like this, provided you can rely on the grid coming back eventually, is mostly just hunkering down. The water requirements here are referring to what is needed to sustain activity. I was also a logistics officer for a combined arms battalion and the water needs of an infantryman fighting a war are quite a bit greater than a family hunkering down in their house. Drink whatever non-perishable liquid you have, slowly, and it will take at least a week before you dehydrate. If you're not already anorexic or some kind of extreme endurance athlete, it's going to take most people at least a month to starve. You won't have a pleasant existence, but as long as you stay in place and don't try to do anything, you can easily stay alive without much.
If you're talking true Walking Dead level post-apocalypse LARPing civilization is gone and not coming back, stored supplies do nothing but delay the inevitable. You need to learn how to live off the land and probably fight for it. Look at people taking shits in the street that Hacker News hates so much and see what they do to survive without working utilities and access to grocery stores. Eat trash. Drink rainwater. Stay out of sight as much as possible and look insane and dangerous when you're not out of sight.
According to pop culture, a closet full of old sports equipment will be indispensable. Goalie masks etc.
Just reminding that you don't need a Faraday cage to protect against giant coronal mass ejections. You just need to unplug from the grid.
Even the grid is probably fine if it's unplugged from transmission.
It's the same as asking: how would you prepare if you were to travel back in time to 600 CE?
You need to be self-sufficient. You cannot rely on money for at least 18 months. You need to be somewhere with access to water, shelter and food. And not that many people. The only safe bet is to have an off grid 'bunker' or holiday home that you could ride out the global chaos for 2 years.
Worldwide grid outage is pretty low likelihood but if it happens everyone will be reminded of the worst aspects of human nature, and the cruel indifference of nature pretty fast.
Also, gasoline.
Shotgun and a big canvas bag.
>Can you really call yourself a prepper if you don’t have a faraday cage with a spare laptop inside?
What do you call someone who puts their tablet and phone in the microwave? Preppy?
With limited resources you have to choose: are you trying to prepare to keep life ~normal for a brief period waiting on a recovery or rescue, or are you trying to prepare for survival in a drastically less resourced world.
These are very different things.
I would also like to know any practical answers to your question. My assumption is that there would be widespread panic, and I'm not sure how I would go about dealing with that other than waiting it out.