Solar Storm

Perennial Perils of the Solar System

milhayser — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:54:25 +0000

Perennial Perils of the Solar System

On February 15th, Asteroid 2012 DA14 came hurtling between us and our satellites, twelve times nearer than the Moon, so close that it was visible through binoculars from certain parts of the globe. Greg Laden writes, "This asteroid is not going to hit the earth now or during any of the next few decades, but eventually it may well do so." On Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel writes that the Sun's 11-year Solar Cycle peaks in 2013, meaning we can look forward to a year filled with solar flares. Even when these are spewed towards Earth, our magnetic field protects us from irradiation. But solar storms can wreak havoc with electrical systems, and Ethan says "if an ultra-massive, fast-moving coronal mass ejection ever heads directly towards Earth, you are literally taking your life into your hands if you do not shut down and unplug all of your electronic devices." As from an asteroid, serious consequences from a solar storm are only a matter of time.

For more on the asteroid that did hit Earth on February 15th, please see the homepage at scienceblogs.com.

milhayser Fri, 02/15/2013 - 15:54

The Solar Storm of a Lifetime

esiegel — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:38:27 +0000

The Solar Storm of a Lifetime

"Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus." -Alexander Graham Bell

Imagine a beautiful, clear day. The Sun is shining, the skies are clear, and you couldn't ask for a nicer day.

All of a sudden, the Sun itself appears to brighten, just for a brief amount of time, like it released an extra burst of energy. That night, some 17 hours later, the most spectacular auroral display ever brightens the night in a way you never imagined.

Image credit: Jónína Óskarsdóttir.

Workers across the United States awaken at 1 AM, because the sky is as bright as the dawn. Aurorae illuminate the skies as far south as the caribbean, beneath the Tropic of Cancer. And long, electricity-carrying wires spark, start fires and even operate and send signals when there's no electricity!

Image credit: Captain Electric blog, via http://thecaptainelectric.com/.

This isn't a science-fiction scenario; this is history.

This is what a catastrophic Solar Storm looks like, and this actually occurred exactly as described in 1859.

Image credit: Shahrin Ahmad, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The way this actually happens is that the Sun, rather than being this constant ball of nuclear fire in the sky, has an active surface, complete with an intricate magnetic structure, temperature variations, and occasional flares and mass ejections.

Image credit: NASA / GSFC / SDO.

For reasons we don't completely understand, the Sun's activity levels ebb and peak on an 11-year timescale known as the Solar Cycle, and 2013 is expected to be the peak year of our current cycle. This means we're more likely to see larger numbers of flares, as well as stronger-than-average flares, this year.

Image credit: Hathaway / NASA / GSFC.

Typically (but not always), these flares pose no danger to anything here on Earth, for a variety of reasons.

Image credit: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

1.) Most solar flares are not directed anywhere near the Earth. Space is a big place, and even at our relatively close distance of 93 million miles (or 150 million km) from the Sun, that's a long way away. Even though most sunspots occur near the solar equator, more than 95% of flares and ejections, when they occur, never impact our planet at all.

But sometimes, they do.

Image credit: NASA.

2.) Most flares are too small, too slow, and sub-optimally aligned to get past the Earth's magnetic field. Our magnetic field is awesome! Sure, it might be less than 1 Gauss at the surface (or 0.0001 Tesla, for you mks sticklers out there), barely enough to deflect your compass needles towards the magnetic poles. But the field extends far into space, and the matter ejected are almost exclusively charged particles, which typically move at speeds of only a million miles an hour.

These particles are bent by our magnetic field (as are all charged particles moving through a magnetic field) and will mostly be deflected away from the Earth. The ones that are bent into the Earth will crash into our upper atmosphere; this is the cause of nearly all auroral events.

Image credit: NASA / ISS expedition crew 23.

3.) Out atmosphere is sufficiently thick to prevent these charged particles from irradiating us. Even if the flare moves quickly (or at about five million miles-per-hour), is huge (containing billions of tons of matter), and is aimed directly at us, the charged particles will never make it through our atmosphere, down to the surface. Unless you're in space (for some reason) at the time, you won't receive any more radiation than you normally would, and there is no biological risk.

But there is one real risk, and it's a consequence of our physical laws of electromagnetism.

Image credit: NASA.

A charged particle is bent as it moves through a magnetic field because of the connection between electricity and magnetism. But that same connection means that a change in electric currents -- which are made by the motion of charged particles -- create changing magnetic fields. And if you have a changing magnetic field either around a wire or through a loop or coil of wire, you will generate electric currents!

So while there may not be a danger to you, there is a huge danger to electronics, ranging from automobiles to transformers to -- most frighteningly of all -- the entire power grid! That's the real danger of a solar storm: an event similar to the 1859 Carrington event could cause anywhere between an estimated $1-to-$2 trillion of damage.

Image credit: NASA.

With the space weather satellites we have up now, we would have about a half-day's warning to shut down our power stations and voluntarily shut off the grid in the event of such a flare. These things can not be predicted, and neither can their interaction with the interplanetary-and-Earth's magnetic field, so you must never listen to fear-mongers who tell you a catastrophic solar flare is imminent; we can only be prepared to react when one is detected.

Ideally, we'd be able to either upgrade the grid or to simply install a sufficient amount of electrical grounding, but practically, the first option is a long-term project that no one is working on, and the second one is continuously thwarted by thievery of copper wire.

Image credit: Michael Maloney / San Francisco Chronicle.

(Yes, that's you, Billy Riggins!) People will risk their lives -- and many lose them to electrocution in the process -- to steal the one thing that could protect them from power surges.

There's no need to be afraid of these things, but you do need to be prepared. If an ultra-massive, fast-moving coronal mass ejection ever heads directly towards Earth, you are literally taking your life into your hands if you do not shut down and unplug all of your electronic devices -- and your power companies deliberately black out your neighborhood -- until the storm passes.

That's the only way we have of safely dealing with things now. But you should also keep in mind that these are once-in-a-century events, and only every five centuries (on average) do we get an event like we did in 1859. So be aware, be informed, and know how to deal with it if it happens, but don't lose any sleep over it!

Instead, your best bet is -- when applicable -- to go outside and enjoy the auroral show!

Image credit: Bud Kuenzli.

And if the "catastrophic" flare happens, be smart, and let others know -- calmly and rationally -- what they should do to protect themselves and their property. It's nothing to be afraid of as long as you know what to do!

esiegel Wed, 01/30/2013 - 12:38

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Coronal Mass Ejection

Would killing the power to my house at the meter work, or is the actual house wiring the issue? I'd rather flip one big ass breaker than try to actually unplug everything I own. Good article, Ethan, as always!

I looked into the effect of geomagnetic storms on the power distribution system a while back and the impression I got is that the problem is mostly with long haul transmission lines. The voltages are on the order of volts/kilometer so house wiring is far too short to develop dangerous or even significant voltages.

The problem is that the storm induces a low frequency current which compared to 60Hz is effectively DC. DC currents do not get along well at all with transformers. The transformers overheat and burn out.

The cure turns out to be to insert DC blocking capacitors between the transmission lines and transformers. Some systems have done this but most haven't.

www.ornl.gov/sci/ees/etsd/pes/pubs/ferc_Meta-R-319.pdf

@Ethan: I'm not an MKS stickler, but I am a units stickler :-) If you're going to spell out the names, do not capitalize them: the Earth's geomagnetic field is about 1 gauss at the surface (or 0.0001 tesla). If you abbreviate the units, the abbreviations are capitalized (1 G = 1e-4 T).

All I know is we're headed back into Solar Max again - it means the E layers will be all nice and ionized for HF communications goodness!

Perhaps an even worse consequence, beyond a disturbance in the power grid, would be destruction of the GPS system and communications satellites. I have no direct knowledge, but the satellites would appear to be in a particularly vulnerable position. Is there any protection built in?
Also - I am a physician and the consequences of cutting power to a hospital, even planned, for any time will be very severe, and life threatening.
You may be the best salesman for home generators.

The issue frying circuits is not mainly the problem in the home. Yes.. you'll loose your TV, but all the industry grade switches and surge protectors in your cities power grid will be blown. In other words the whole area, state, continent is without power. And even if you had spare ones for all.. it would still take months to fix all of them if not years for all the damage to the grid. You're looking at midevil times for half the planet.. not good.

@2: I could be wrong in all of this, but I believe the problem has to do with more than just voltage. A CME produces DC, in circuits designed for AC. Moreover, I think most surge and circuit protection is designed around very short (millisecond) events; this will be an event lasting several orders of magnitude longer, so even though the voltage is low, the total energy delivered to the system is going to be much higher (than a regular surge).

Question is really is this solar storm this year going to really happen Iv read alot on this since summer 2012 and Im getting a mixed vibe about it Nasa says it will be a passing storm and will not even affect are systems it will just be like a passing cloud, then lots of other web sites says its going to be a big storm with black outs and power failures,and its going to happen around May 2013 or Summer 2013. So who do we belive ? Nasa say no panic 20 other web sites say Panic and this site Iv just read say prepair now and be ready what is the truth really, I feel its going to be another fake doomsday prediction and we wont see nothing just all this rubbish hype online.

You may be the best salesman for home generators.

Even here, there is a problem. For generators that run on gasoline or diesel, you need to refuel every so often. The gas pumps you are counting on to replenish your fuel supply depend on electricity and therefore won't be working either. (I've seen a photograph from after the 1938 hurricane of a gas station that rigged a bicycle chain to pump gas, but I don't think that can be done with modern gas pumps.) That also means that most vehicles will be unable to continue running after a few days (this is why you should fill your gas tank before the severe weather hits, even if you plan to ride out the hurricane at home). Therefore systems that depend on delivering propane to your house will also collapse. I don't know for sure whether natural gas services will be disrupted, but if they depend on electric powered pumps, they will go down too.

The reason this is generally not a problem in severe weather events is because even when such events cause weeks-long power outages, the entire grid doesn't collapse. Within a couple of days of the event, power will have been restored to at least some gas stations in the vicinity, so you can keep your generator supplied with fuel until the repair crews bring your neighborhood back on line. Even in the worst events, there will likely still be power in some part of your county. A Carrington-level geomagnetic storm would affect a much wider area (as happened in 1989 when a strong geomagnetic storm knocked out power for the entire province of Quebec), and if it takes more than a few transformer replacements to get the backbone running, it may be days to weeks before you can resupply your fuel (most of Quebec was back on line within nine hours after the 1989 event). Your generator probably can't stay up that long.

Dave w. @1,

The reason you'll want to unplug everything you own is because the transmission lines that feed your house will have incredibly large DC (one-way) currents induced in them.

Even if the power company cuts the power entirely, unless they physically sever the line to your home, you can experience incredible surges in those lines that can fry your wiring, your electronics, your surge protectors, and anything else that's hooked up.

Imagine what would happen to your electronics if your power lines got struck by lightning; that's a fairly good analogy. So yes, if this once-in-500-years even happens, you will want to go through the hassle of unplugging everything you own. Because it's a lot better than having to replace it.

Generator I would buy would be propane/natural gas dual source. Something has to generate the energy to pressurize the gas line, I would have to think it would be electricity.
I think I would turn of the house's main power. There are certain important things (furnace, AC) that have no plug and I would like to preserve them as well.
I have seen a few long term power outages in our area (columbus) and we are not equipped at all to handle this. In particular, in winter, if a large proportion of the town is down, people will die. There is no capacity to heat the majority of our homes.

After a little more thought - this would be global. There would severe disruptions to supply chains. People will be starving. This will put pressure on governments to supply the people, and they will likely look next door, in many cases. This could start a number of wars. But of course, most of the war machines wouldn't work.
I wonder if building Faraday cages around the electrical generation buildings would be protective enough. I imagine it would depend on the intensity of the event.

I wonder if building Faraday cages around the electrical generation buildings would be protective enough.

It's not the generation buildings that are the problem, it's the transmission lines. You're effectively dealing with an antenna thousands of kilometers long. The James Bay station is about 1000 km north of Montreal. In the continental US, there are three grid networks which cover the east, the west, and Texas. The eastern grid covers from Maine south to Florida and west to eastern Montana.

There are measures you can take to mitigate the problem. After the 1989 blackout, Hydro Quebec took those measures with their power lines, and I think other Canadian electricity companies have done so as well. Most US electric companies have not.

The idea that these events may be predictable with any sort of precision is unscientific, at the very least. The statement "... these are once-in-a-century events, and only every five centuries (on average) do we get an event like we did in 1859..." might perhaps be true, but it tells us nothing about the actual occurrence of the events. A coin may show heads 50% of the time, on average, but that does not mean that it cannot land on tails 4 times in a row. So too here - an event happening, on average, once in a century, (over what measured duration, pray tell?) could easily occur twice in a 50 year period without disturbing the long-term averages.

Excellent article, better comments. (I engineered 68 power plants, and uncounted distribution systems.) The potential destruction will be induced in long runs of ungrounded conductors. Whatever they are connected to is vulnerable to being destroyed. Disconnection is the solution, get off the grid.

The problem with distributed personal generation is tankage, long time fossil fuel supply, days or weeks worth of prime fuel. If the grid collapses, the distribution of all fuels will be severely curtailed. Emergency solar , if protected, will provide communication & computing energy, but not power a home.

This is the "same" problem has a high altitude H bomb pulse, EMP (much different time frame). The solution to both is shielding and grounding, a most difficult problem.

IMHO grid stability, not climate change, is the greatest threat to our society. Our grid is junk status. Masses will die if it collapses.

Maybe it will take a disaster on the order of the 1859 flare to bring about the political will to upgrade our country's ancient power grid.

It usually takes disaster for Americans to wake up to reality.

It usually takes disaster for Americans to wake up to reality.

Congress is aware. DHS is aware. NASA is very aware. There is very little incentive to spend money on it, particularly in this fiscal climate.

So you're right about the politcial will thing, but 'wake up' gives the wrong impression. Our reps are awake to the threat. Spending a lot of money on it is just political death.

And don't expect much to change after we get hit with a CME either. Sure, there will be a flurry of new standards passed and such, but normal monied interests and reelection issues and all of that will quickly come back in force. If you don't believe me, consider that the nation is currently rebuilding the levee system to withstand category 3 storms after getting hit with a category 4 hurricane.

One question I haven't seen anyone ask about this: How does this sort of event affect individuals with implanted electronic medical devices (i.e., pacemakers, cochlear implants, etc.)? Should we just say goodbye to grandparents because their pacemakers are toast or would this be unlikely to harm them?

underground power lines? Might be enough protection for them but the main above ground lines will be the problem.
Well our energy grid is in need of a major overhaul and this would be a good kick start to jobs. But DC doesn't have the will.

Underground power lines won't protect from induced currents. It might allow more shielding than you can string from a power line, though.

On the political issue... Our reps are aware of the problem of solar flares.

Just like they were aware of the problems of the levies in New Orleans.

Just like they were aware of the problems with the seawall in Galveston.

Oh well.

Cb- understand- thanks for the info. Politically we are a reactive nation because that;s when everyone gets upset. Unfortunately, a massive nationwide power outage lasting weeks will cause chaos and violence. I see we have all of 20 comments. That is the problem. Awareness is not widespread, however, Lindsey Lohan's latest problems are.

ablay- Interesting question. I don't think it is the same as an EMP which can fry electronics, but I;m not an expert in this, despite my EE degree. Some with more knowledge can respond. If shielding would work, I;m not sure medicare would pay.

Implanted electronics are safe. Their daily exposure to changing magnetic fields is much greater than that from a geomagnetic storm. Just moving around in the Earth's normal 25 to 65 microTesla field is far far worse than a bad 2,000 nano-Tesla/min geomagnetic storm. In other words, it will do nothing.

Transmission lines are also too small. The voltage generated via direct magnetic induction is less than 1mv/km. The problem is from connecting a long low resistance wire to two points on the ground at different voltages.

Key question: can we count on government and the mainstream media to issue a warning of an impending significant event?

I have no problem with unplugging everything for a couple of days: in California we can call that a "household earthquake drill" and put up with a little inconvenience while we eat MREs or canned food, and read books by flashlight after coming in from watching the nifty aurorae. (Don't forget to store enough clean water: two gallons per person per day.)

What bugs me though is the prospect of not getting any kind of warning, because the media don't want to "cause a panic."

BTW, landline telephone lines (real ones, analog loop to the central office, not the newer types of combined phone/broadband/video services delivered via cable TV, which depend on the AC power grid and will fail along with cellphones) have over-voltage discharge devices in the station protectors where the wiring enters the building. So go out and get an inexpensive "2500 set" (USA) or "GPO 746" (UK) at the flea market, neither of which depend on grid power, and plug it into your landline phone jack, and that takes care of that.

What I'd also suggest is for folks who are concerned about staying on the internet, buy a small basic solar setup with enough capacity to power their laptops and broadband devices (e.g. DSL modem or cablemodem, and router). One small solar panel and a battery and inverter should be sufficient for those essentials plus a small LED light for task lighting. During the day you can prop up the solar panel next to your house and let it charge up the battery. Contact any good local solar contractor in your area to design this and sell you the components all pre-wired and connectorized for use.

Well, very enlightening...being I work for a huge power company in the field...& needless to say if they have a plan for such a thing..non of us field workers have heard it yet..LOL lets hope it don't happen...as I am sure this is the stance most power companies are taking...wth one would think they would try to have a plan in place...just in case??????

Oh,,, & all u people...turning off the mains in your homes will not help the power gird...although if you hear in time it may save some of your own electronic appliances...

Ha! Eric Lund...wth kind of barrier could one build around a substation to prevent harm & It would not matter...if it hits...it will be one major fault that will trip the National/internation grid.....but lucky for us...It most likely will not happen

oh,,, & G if the whole power grid goes down...ur solar panel will not help you with ur cell phone or any other electronic new age device...LOL

"although if you hear in time it may save some of your own electronic appliances…"

well, yes, this is why it's being advised to be done, babs.

With the recent USA storm one USA nuclear power plant today is running on its stand by generators reliant on resupply of their fuel tanks. If the national grid goes out so does all fuel supply including pumps at the local fuel depot, distribution and refining. No fuel then all your nuke power plants will do Fukushimas. Not a nice thought.

We all know that this is bound to happen again eventually, but now there is so much technology to prepare us for a catastrophic event such as this one. Now you can turn on the weather and forecasters will tell you when there's going to be a meteor shower. Just the other day I turned on the radio and I heard them talking about how this solar flare would arise soon. I think as long as you unplug your computer at night and turn off your cell phone things should turn out fine. Personally, I believe we're overreacting. If you stay on top of research and are responsible with appliances, then everything will be alright. However, this is science and it's inevitable. We just have to learn how to accept nature in a world of technology.

Along with the post above, thanks to articles like these we are now more prepared for the eventual solar storm. With how connected we all are I think that enough people would be informed of a storm in enough time to turn off and unplug they're electrical devices. However as this article points out http://www.inquisitr.com/412870/noaa-scientists-on-high-alert-massive-s… one of the more likely consequences would be we may be without satellites for an extended period of time if they could not be shut off in time. If in fact the satellites do go down it would be interesting to see how society reacts. I would think that especially with today's technology we would be fine, but there is always that chance that something could go very wrong.

In many cases history always finds a way to repeat itself. Though with the world being much more technologically advanced it helps us but can also hurt us. It is great that we will be able to be warned that this is going to happen. But, it will be interesting to see the whole to have to completely shut down to prevent a lot of damage. We have to think about more than just the pretty lights we are going to be able to see. Can the world handle being completely shut down. More importantly can our own country be able to handle this. The stock market was only down for a few seconds and we are still facing the side effects from that. This may be a bigger concern then we think.

There are a lot of new commenters from Morgantown, WV. I'm curious, is there a project in one of the courses at WVU that brought you here?

I think that people are overreacting about the solar storm. With all the technology today, it is possible for scientists to know when a disturbance will be happening. This makes it easier for people to have a warning ahead of time. But sometimes, electronics fail us and won't tell us the proper time when the storm will hit. So all we can really do is be as prepared as we can because we never know the exact time something is going to happen.

As stated in the blog, the possibility of an event like a solar storm occurring in my lifetime is slim to none, but I find it very interesting how the preparation for the storm could be so simple but yet almost impossible. Turning off an electronic device is mind-numbingly simple, but trying to get the entire population of the world to turn off their electronic devices would be nearly impossible. It is also interesting that the last solar storm was in 1859 when there was not a GPS satellite in orbit. Does that mean that the storm did no damage (since there was not exactly an abundance of electronic devices) and was only observed as an "auroral show?" Anyway, it is very interesting to think about phenomena like solar systems even if they are not exactly threatening at the present moment.

Something like this possible event has not happened since 1859, and according to the article the sun goes through this phase of hyperactivity every 11 years. Seeing as we made it through the last century with a lot of technology (maybe not as much as we rely on today) without any problems I think we need not worry. If we have a half-day's warning that is more than enough time with our modern day media, and social media for that matter, to get it around to as many people as possible to unplug all electronics for a period of 12-48 hours. As soon as this warning goes out, the electric compannies will indubitably turn of all their transformers as quickly as possible regardless of customer knowledge of the imminent danger. Obviously this will come with some troubles to the entire world economy and create many problems in big cities as well as small towns, however these issues do not compare to what would happen if a warning would not get out. With all this being said, hopefully the earth does miss one of these potential monster solar storms, and makes it through upcoming 11 year cycles as well. I think if we can make it through just a few more, our technology and power systems will so sophisticated they will be able to defend themselves.

I agree, but we all need to realize that adding Solar on their property is an purchase that should increase the actual valuation of their home if / when they decide to sell. With the environment the way it is going we are not able to underestimate any product or service that supplies free energy at no cost to both the shopper and more notably the environment!

Is there a potential advantage to getting a direct hit with a solar storm? All that free energy pouring forth... with new materials being engineered I can imagine a technology that is able to absorb and safely store the energy so that the power may be then utilised at low cost. I'm reminded that the chinese script for 'crisis' is the same for 'opportunity'.

Question:
Do solar storms damage solar panels?

Answer: No.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/13/when-space-w…
"sober new assessment by Lloyd’s of London"

To Ethan Siegel: I am looking to find the original source of an image you use in this blog.
It's the large image detailing possible damage on Earth resulting from a solar storm. It's just under a half of the way down the page in the above web-link and is below the phrase: "But there is one real risk, and it’s a consequence of our physical laws of electromagnetism."
It's exactly what I need, but I want to make sure that I reference it correctly. Could you give me the original link to it?

The place I got the image from was simply from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and the only credit I've seen ascribed to it is "NASA."

However, all NASA images are in the public domain, and so although you should double check, I believe you are in the clear to use it for pretty much any purposes you like.

Thought Experiment on Extended Electric Disruption

sastyk — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:13:04 +0000

Thought Experiment on Extended Electric Disruption

Well, I guess I timed that last piece reasonably well ;-), no? As you may have noticed, I am at present typing this on the internet, rather than carving it into a stone tablet (actually I'd probably just use a pen and a piece of paper, but stone tablet does sound more apocalyptic), so the latest solar storm wasn't a big deal. Still, it does seem like because there are so many fun things that could take out electricity for an extended period - let's call it widespread outages for months, anyway - that it does seem to be worth talking about. So let's talk.

What do you imagine such an outage in your area would look like? What are you doing to be better prepared to deal with such a thing - personally or at the community level? What would really long term life without power look like for you? What kind of advance response would be most helpful from your community?

Sharon

sastyk Thu, 03/08/2012 - 09:13

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Any kind of 2 month grid based collapse would lead to a major state of emergency in central Scotland. It is densely populated, almost no houses are self sufficient in anything that requires electricity, which includes their gas central heating. All fuel used to commute would end up diverted into generators, and although hospitals and suchlike have them, not many others do.

So we'd probably need some aid from elsewhere to have a hope of getting better. I've enough meths to run a stove for 2 or 3 meals and wood and charcoal for 3 or 4 more, not to mention batteries for a week or two of torch use, but apart from that would be screwed.

Essentially there's nothing i personally could do.
Sure, I could spend a couple of hundred pounds on a generator, but then where would I store enough fuel for it to be much use or actually guarantee fuel later? Also I'm on the first floor...

communications would be a big problem -- back to walking down the road to visit friends on the chance that they're in. Even if we had a solar charger for our phones (must get) that would be unlikely to help as the system at large may well be down.

I think commerce would be the biggest problem -- paying with plastic or withdrawing money from an ATM wouldn't be possible, we'd be a cash only economy for the duration, a major challenge when most people only carry small change. People's pay wouldn't come through and rent / mortgages etc... wouldn't go out.

A lot of perishable food would perish unless supermarkets and wholesalers have back up power supplies. Most folks would loose the week or two's worth of stuff in the freezer, half of them because they threw it out rather than knowing it was still ok for a few days.

depending on the time of year we would be both cold and dark. water would still be on as it doesn't need electricity at a domestic level, but ... pumps and water treatment on a city wide scale do need electricity, so I think water supply would falter if the power was out for long enough.

Sharon -

Since that last post of yours it's been a question that's been on the brain, and I worry whether, at least in the U.S., it's something we can even reasonably plan for (if the outage were to last more than a couple of weeks).

Most of the U.S. population gets water from a tap, supplied by a municipal water system that's pumped with electricity. During major earthquakes here in California we've had full utility (power, gas, water) outages, but usually for no more than a couple of weeks, and usually not widespread. With few persistent and plentiful sources of fresh water near population centers, I'm not sure people in many parts of the country have any backup options. (Near the coast I suppose it'd be possible to manually desalinate, but that's not easy to do at scale.) People in rural areas or regions near freshwater might be better off, though filtration would still be an issue.

Water seems like it might be the key bottleneck resource during an extended electricity disruption, and so it'd be of value to make water systems resilient to this kind of predicament (both by shielding them as appropriate, and ensuring that a backup means of pumping and purifying exists).

Folks around here would cope. Because we're really rural. My county has one stoplight in it- no kidding.

Plenty of small towns; but plenty of farms, too. Enough dairy that a lot of farmers already own pretty substantial emergency generators; if you're milking 500 cows, and the grid goes down, you really can't afford not to have a PTO driven generator ready to tack onto the John Deere.

So lots of fairly mobile 15-50KW diesel generators. Emergencies would get handled. But- Rochester, MN, with almost 200,000 people is not that far away. It would be a lot harder there. The Mayo hospitals have diesel backup, I think. But. Lots of diesel.

On the central coast of Oregon one would be in fair shape for a little while assuming one has prepared already for our inevitable tsunami. I have water and food for a month or so and the weather here is mild enough that keeping warm would not be much of an issue and of course keeping cool is never a problem. Long term like a major grid collapse would be bad for most everyone but we have potable water in streams nearby and there is always seafood. I suspect that there would be a crowd show up eventually depending on the time of year and the coast would be an obvious destination for refugees.

After the tornadoes last year, many gas stations and businesses have generators now. Some chain businesses (particularly Publix) had good business disaster recovery plans and were able to stay open or reopened quickly. The main roads were mostly clear, we had adequate water supplies and the weather was mild. Remote sites such as Facebook and Twitter were up, so those of us with smartphones could keep in touch with official updates and news and share it with others. An extended power outage was an inconvenience under those circumstances. The gas tankers and ice trucks and semis of food rolled in and other than the rationing at some businesses, it was no big deal.

However, if we lost water in much of the city, the roads were impassable or the outage was much larger, things could have gotten tough. Once the gas stops arriving, there are no generators, and that doesn't take long; only about a day or less. The weather doesn't get severe enough here to seriously harm a healthy adult with shelter, but for some an extended heat or cold wave could prove deadly.

For here, safe water is really the major limiting factor. I can keep myself and a couple others in drinking water for a very very long time -- indefinitely if there is no major drought -- but most can't.

I could probably hold my own without any outside utilities or assistance for a year, assuming the zombies and medical emergencies don't come. It might not be a pleasant year (and I would smell awful), but I'd make it. By then, I would hope that some social reorganization would have taken place. The local government is pretty effective in a crunch, so I think we'd have a way to be informed. But with so many people completely unprepared it could get very, very ugly.

Transportation and communications would be the biggest things here in rural BC.

Depends on how long an outage lasts. A week would be ok, 2-3 weeks strenuous, over a month difficult and then down hill from there.

Some people would get by with hauling water, some food stored, wood stoves.

Best way to prepare: start talking about difficulties, build community, convince people to store enough food to last at least a few weeks.

Our area was actually cut off a few days (all passes & airport closed). Food disappeared off shelves quickly, but now everyone has forgotten...

My "community" is Brooklyn, so we're talking a LOT of people.

We do know the people in our neighborhood, thanks in large part to our community garden, and I'm sure in case of emergency we'd be working with those people on solutions to various things. My husband works with the food pantry of the local Catholic church, which is another good real-life (as opposed to online) way of organizing people.

We have a gravity-fed water system, thank goodness, although of course individual apartment buildings have pumps that run on electricity - a point that was brought home very vividly when we had the blackout back in 2003. We lived on the 12th floor at that point and had to carry a bucket of water from our neighbor's place downstairs up all those stairs (no elevators, of course!). Suboptimal, to say the least.

We have a landline phone that doesn't rely on electricity, something that is becoming more and more rare these days, with cable companies providing phone service and all those portable handsets with batteries. We learned that lesson in 2003 too.

And I just got a sun oven for cooking, since we have a back yard that gets some sun and it would be very hard to cook in our windowless kitchen without electricity.

But those are at best bandaid measures to deal with a situation that would relatively quickly get unlivable if the entire city lost power for an extended period of time. I think we would just need to leave the city entirely, and I guess where we would go would depend on how widespread the outages were.

Before we had electricity, we had coal oil lamps, cooked and heated with wood, and had a windmill on a well. We had shelves of canned food from the garden, and cured meat in the smokehouse.

Thinking about this as I was driving to pick up my pizza, it occurred to me that the most important service in an extended outage would be radio. Starting immediately after the power went out there would be rumors of war, ghetto uprisings, plague, and alien invasion. Unless there was at least one radio station going to say what was going on, what the state of the relief effort was, and where to go for water, it could get pretty apocalyptic.

I think season, size and if the length of outage is predictable is going to matter a LOT. If this were to happen in winter here in Central PA there would be a massive exodus with many people getting as far south/towards friends/family as they could on what gas they have.

However, there is a sizable Amish population and a decent number of people with woodstoves (though the outdoor ones that need electricity to pump hot water are becoming more popular). I'd ballpark it and say 5 to 10% of the homes in the area would be able to heat without electricity. We get enough rain/snow that buckets under downspouts and boiling over indoor/outdoor fires would probably keep anyone from going thirsty.

I think I could manage in place, heating with wood and living off pantry/greenhouse, as long as the zombie horde doesn't clean me out.

I keep a patch of Jerusalem artichokes as a low maintenance emergency starch/carb source that looks pretty in the fall when the flowers are out. It wouldn't be fun, but those alone could probably get me through a winter.

We haven't been actively planning for an outage, but it turns out we have some of the bases covered. Our rainwater system feeds the house and could work reasonably well without the pump, just with gravity feed. We have a solar oven that we use regularly, a wood stove, gas cooktop, lots of windup flashlights and a windup radio. We just got a solar PV system but it's grid-tied and I don't think it would work in an outage.
As far as our community (a town in central Texas of 45,000) goes, we're not so well prepared. Especially if it hit in summer, there would be lots of misery and possibly deaths due to lack of air-conditioning. I've tried bringing up the subject of preparedness, but most people can't get their brains around the possibility of no electricity.

@jerah - Your POTS phone service does rely on electricity. It just does rely on *your* electricity. It gets it's power from the copper line that ultimately is getting power from the phone company. When their backup batteries and generators run out, your phone line won't work either.

On the plus side, POTS is a very low power system. In terms of communication systems power bang for the buck, if I were the emergency manager in a long term power crisis, I would prioritize resources for it.

Generator fuel is going to be a bottleneck. Without electricity, you can't pump gas, and any supplies you might have on hand will run out in a few days. This will be a major problem if it happens in winter (I'm in NH), because what little fuel would be available will be diverted to generators for hospitals and the like, rather than being available for heating (most homes in New England heat with oil furnaces). And since I live within 20 miles of a nuclear power plant (Seabrook), I'd have to worry about whether they can keep their cooling system running.

We have had three incidents in three years where more than 40% of electric customers in the state have lost power. But in these cases the issue was weather related (ice, strong wind, or snow causing tree limbs to fall on power lines), and the generating capacity was largely unaffected.

I've seen a photo of a gas station after the 1938 hurricane where somebody rigged a bicycle chain for pumping gas, but I don't know whether modern fuel pumps can be rigged thus (my guess is no).

Adding to what Nicole said, POTS phone service usually isn't even all copper wire back to the phone company's district office, unlike years ago. They have installed local wiring cabinets in most neighborhoods now where the simple, low-powered, copper wires are converted to optical cable by powered electronics known as DLC's or digital loop carriers. These wiring cabinets have battery backup and can go so many hours to a few days, relaying the optical signals back to the office in the center of town where the generators and larger battery backups are, but the outlying DLC cabinets have no generator. In a long power outage, of a few days to a week, they will die.

For that matter, the newer cable TV-based, Internet phone services from companies like Comcast also have distributed repeater-router boxes in the neighborhoods that also have battery backups but no serious generator. In addition to neighborhood repeaters requiring power, Verion's FIOS system, which brings fiber optics to the home, installs a bridge-converter unit in the customer's premises (my sister has one) and it too has a battery backup that has proven good for a day or so at best. Actually, Comcast's phone modems at the premises level also have a small battery for backup, but again, it's all good for a few days at best and all of these systems are only good until the weakest battery in the chain back to the company office, dies.

True POTS, with its copper wires straight to the company phone office where the big batteries and generators are, is basically a thing of the past behind the scenes, even if the customer still has simple, former Western Electric/Bell System handset, with a real bell ringer.

It was for this reason, we dumped the simple, old phone system to save money, with little regret for emergency performance a couple of years ago.

Eric, my guess would be no, but I think a lot of gas stations still have a rather simple hatch opening into the gas tanks below. Somebody could then drop a hose into the gas and operate one of the crank hand pumps that are so common on the back of small trucks, used at construction sites, to pump gas and diesel into small construction equipment.

Measurement of the fuel, for payment purposes, wouldn't be as accurate perhaps, but in an emergency situation, would probably still be doable.

Hmmm- our area is very rural. Most of us heat with woodstoves- so no electric needed there. Our family & neighborhood (we live in a small intentional community that was off grid until about 7 yrs ago) has solar panels and all gas appliances. We have a hand pump well as back up for our well with electic pump. BUT- we do run a freezer to store meat and summer's berries (I could can them if I needed to though).

Long term though- with out a reliable re-supply source for propane, we would not be able to get it. We currently store ours in the biggest tank we could get from the gas company for home use. For a good part of the year in upstate NY, it is plenty cold outside to not need refrigeration for most things.

Our family's biggest problem would be that one of our children relies on electric run medical equipment to survive and monitor his condition. Our solar panels could run that equipment, but in a long term electric disaster- I'm pretty sure that our supplies of medical items needed (medicines and equipment items) would run out and not be re-supplied (since manufacturers would not be making them), and unfortunatly, our child could not live very long without them. Not that I like to think about it, but the rest of our family could adapt to loss of electric- we have chickens and rabbits, and a basement full of home canned food and friendships with many local farmers who still do things by hand and by horse- BUT our medically needy child would not make it without the ameneties of our current world.

Folks; regarding the vulnerability of phone systems- I'll repeat my recommendation (rarely heard elsewhere) that you quickly invest in a set of top quality and power GMRS "walkie-talkie" radios, with rechargeable batteries. And if you can afford it- buy a few more to distribute to neighbors, now or then.

If you have any kind of generating capacity, keeping them running is very cheap, and the way of keeping in touch incredibly important. Legally, they require a "license", which is automatic; in reality, 97.0952% of users never bother with the license, and it is never enforced.

Sharon- do you have some yet? :-)

I have a solar powered battery charger; it works quite well provided you have a sunny spot. While rechargeable batteries don't last forever, this is one item that is accessible for even the most urban dwellers in the smallest apartments.

The discussion of gas pumps reminds me of driving across the country a few years ago. I lot of gas stations in "flyover country" had very old pumps. No charge slot and no fancy buttons. The non-ethanol pump at the gas station I use sometimes is almost as antique.

My friend who is a doctor lives around the corner from me. She is required to keep a land-line. Her copper wire has not yet been replaced as one of the 7 telephone exchanges in the city is a block away. They've just never run out different lines to our neighborhood. Usually they're digging holes to run fiber way way out but connect it to the telephone exchange on our corner.

We talk to those guys when they come dig. :D They're always very nice.

Preparedness: we'd be screwed in the winter as our gas fueled heat is electronic controls. Water will be ok as soon as I install rainbarrels this spring. Food, some from the garden stockpiled. Not enough for everyone under my roof for an extended timeperiod. It would be tough.

I am almost more fascinated with the psychological changes we'll see. Patterns of behaviour changing, depression, etc. That will be fascinating to watch.

I'd like to know what happens to my aunt's toxic relationship where they ignore eachother and watch TV instead of fixing things. Will it spin apart? Will things be confronted and dealt with? Will it bring them together in a real partnership? I worry about what happens to people and children with major stressors like this and so few cultural or historical experiences to draw upon.

How do you convince people that a chamber pot is a good idea or a compost toilet the only option when the three other toilets in the house don't flush anymore? That will be a fun conversation with my renters! How do you say these are the new rules if we are to survive this? What social mechanisms come into play to enforce those new rules?

I'd like to see a game where we come up with individual scenarios on this and how we'd help keep disease down, water intake up, food intake up, communication clear etc. etc.

@20c,

Please! We wanted to talk about the really, big, "important" stuff like how long the phones will continue to run, not all that other stuff like adjusting to little or no plumbing, having to entertain ones' self w/o electronics, shorter daylight, and so on.

(sarcasm now turned off :-) )

In truth, given that I work with at-risk kids in a treatment center (for now anyhow), everything you mentioned was front and center in my mind. It's just that it's a huge topic.

At my work place, we have a large, propane-fired generator for the main residence, so for the first week or so, we're okay. After that, problems arise and given that nearly all my clients and coworkers are city-apartment-raised folk, there will be much adjustment needed.

At least the large propane tank buys us a week of preparation time (both physical and mental.) I would plan too on turning the generator off from time to time, if I knew that we were looking at weeks and months of outages, to ease my residential treatment community's transition to the inevitable no-power situation.

Many of my coworkers would not be able to get to work, once gasoline shortages became common place. I'll be doing 100+ hour weeks.

Then too, given that disinterest and budget cuts have largely gutted the large agricultural program that I had tried to get started there (I'm running a garden and orchard on strictly my own volunteer time now, as there is no willingness or money to have the agency do it, even though we have marketing materials out there, touting our large garden and advertising that we grow much of our own food - a blatant fiction), and given that the breakdown in our behavior management program there has resulted in a quintupling of police and ambulance calls to our facility, absolutely killing our previously good relationship with neighbors and the town, an extended power outage would be an even bigger problem than it would have been, say 3 years ago as said breakdown has noticeably cut into the goodwill extended to our facility by the local community (to say nothing of donations, which have also been significantly impacted as I understand it.)

We do have a decent pond onsite for water, that, we a decent filtering system, such as a Berkey, would be potable (though I'd have to lend the program mine, since they haven't seen fit to invest in one.)

If the town water system were to go down - a possibility given that it's well water, electrically pumped, with town propane-powered backup generation, I'd be digging some outhouses pretty quickly I guess.

As cynical as I sound, people will toughen up and adjust and they'll most probably be all the better for it.

c: good thinking! Excellent questions; mostly with good scary answers. :-)

Rather than a game- I have been suggesting (and getting no traction) for at least a year, having "neighborhood drills". For a week.

It would be difficult, but somewhere there is a neighborhood that would say "yes" to this. Every time a "challenge" comes up, the topic of "I'm on board, but my hubby won't" - or kids won't, etc., leaps to the fore. Ah, but what if they just had no choice? Which is exactly what the reality is; every time a tornado zips by, or the floods last summer- etc.

There are few folks left who don't know it CAN happen- to them. Do we have fire drills, to prepare? Of course. How about getting your neighbors to agree to run a week long drill; and get some of these questions answered- and some of the unknowns exposed? Tell the kids "we've just been attacked by alien Sasquatches- and they destroyed our local power substation. " And have the power actually turned off to the neighborhood, for a week.

I think you could count on good press coverage. And we'd learn a lot. Hey you guys... do it!!

on the subject of living without flushing toilets. Residents of Christchurch in NZ had months without sewerage due to last years earthquake. This led to a proliferation of pit toilets "long drops" in NZ english at the bottom of peoples gardens. See these http://www.showusyourlongdrop.co.nz/

Here in Las Vegas we are 30 miles from Lake Mead, the largest freshwater reservoir in the US, but we are uphill from it. I suppose the Water District can start pumping the heck out of our municipal wells using diesel power and instituting some serious rationing to keep water flowing. Otherwise, perhaps trucking water in from the lake will have to be done. As for me, I would rig up a solar sill on the 15,000 gallon pool in the backyard and show my neighbors how to do the same. In any case, it would be pretty dicey here in the desert southwest.

Short-term cooking ability, but not longterm, although handy husband would probably figure something out. No heat. In summer, no water, unless there was a couple months' worth stored in rainbarrels. No way to get to work once the gas runs out. No way to do work even if could get there; it's all computer, these days. Frightening thoughts. And with that subduction zone quake possibility hanging over us, highly relevant ones.

Hrm. Alien sasquatches. (I'm visualizing zucchini hail for some strange reason and the composting situation gets out of hand quickly). :D (my city allotted compost bin limit is quickly reached)

I keep coming back around to the psychological question because I was raised with an indoor composting toilet and I was raised with (insert x that does not meet mainstream america's view of the world) and the reactions I get from people when they find out it's like I'm a leper or something to be pitied. So I wonder how they'd manage to wrap their heads around it if need be. I don't currently live that way as I'm in the city now and married and etc. etc. (And I had the most wonderful childhood with great stories of adventure that my cohorts cannot begin to match. I pity them most days.)

I begin to wonder if the disaster or damage scenario is something that doesn't happen overnight and there are stockpiles how long you try to live the old way with a flush toilet etc. before you ration water before you make the necessary changes.

I have doubts I could talk my neighborhood into such a drill although I am going to start asking around if anyone else thinks about these things.

Since I read _One Second After_ by William R. Forstchen (a post-EMP novel), I have thought about the consequences of grid crash in my little town and have done a bit of investigation.

Our local municipal water is pumped from two wells to a water tower. Water then flows by gravity to the houses. There's a diesel generator for the pumps as a backup. There's no backup for the generator. I'm thinking wind power might be a worthwhile option here for this essential service.

Our sewer system has several "lift stations" that pump sewage uphill to several lagoons. The stations don't have any power backup that I know of. If the pumps stop working, I imagine the system would overflow at the lift stations if people continued to use the system. Something to investigate further. Again, it would be worthwhile to establish wind power for this service, although it probably takes quite a bit of power.

We have quite a few prisons in the immediate area. I don't know what would happen to them in case of a grid crash. If the inmates escaped, that would not be a good thing. Fire and police protection would be hampered by lack of fuel, though I feel sure the police would organize themselves on horseback over time. Forest fires would be an even greater danger than they are now.

We have a bunch of radio stations in town. Whether they have any backup plans for power is something to investigate.

Otherwise it's fairly rural here and far away from cities of any size. Wood-burning stoves are quite prevalent and we have plenty of water. Though there was a fairly diverse food farming economy here a century ago, most farms in the area grow hay now as it is more profitable. Regulation put the cheese factories out of business (something to do with class A milk versus class B.) There are still a few dairies and sheep farms. It is doubtful that we have a lot of food stored in homes or as a community. Hunting and fishing skills are quite widespread. Transportation by water would be an option.

Deer camp is an annual ritual here and extended families are prevalent, so I think most people in the area would adapt fairly quickly to rougher circumstances. People would miss Facebook and ESPN though -- LOL!

We have a diesel generator and can run it on our homebrew biodiesel. We have some of that stored, but it would get very hard to make more if we run out of inputs. Probably we could keep generator use to a minimum though - I can cook on the woodstove ( though it is way too small to heat this leaky old farmhouse). I have rain barrels and live In an area that will provide us with plenty of water almost year round. Boiling for purification is energy intensive, though. Id like to make a charcoal filter system that can filter larger quantities, like a barrel. We have dynamo radios and dynamo lanterns. We have a solar cell phone charger, and the phones will keep us connected to the Internet as long as they are charged. I'm not too worried about food - between my animals and my food storage we should be ok for quite a while, plus I know a fair amount about foraging and this is an abundant area three seasons a year. Heat worries me. Getting food for the animals would worry me if it were winter.

We've had some experience of this in Christchurch over the last year or so with the earthquakes knocking out more than 50% of the infrastructure. At least 6 power outages that I can remember, no running water or working sewage for a couple of weeks in our area - and we're the lucky ones, some people went months without these services, or still don't have them back after a year. Got drinking water stored for a week - after that, I now know where the nearest publicly accessible wells are. Not sure how they work but they don't seem to need pumps. We'd use up all the bread, milk and cereal first, and then we'd use a little gas burner and enough gas stored to cook for a week or so. There's at least a month's worth of canned food that could be eaten cold if we had to. We also have the Thermette (volcano stove) that can boil 2 liters of water in a few minutes on a twig fire. It's not so good for cooking though, just warming food up. Got a log burner for internal heating and we usually have a season's worth of wood stored, but it's not set up for cooking - clean air regulations make it difficult to install an actual woodstove. The main problems I've found during outages is that while we have numerous flashlights, solar & crank powered we could do with better light sources to light a whole room rather than just a small area. Because of the ongoing quakes, candles are too dangerous to use. And all our emergency cooking methods need to be used outside, which is not always a great option in winter or at night. If I can get some sort of small Dutch oven it probably could be used in our logburner indoors, but I've already found this campfire cookery does take some practice :)

We put a hand pump on the well, and that can hook by hose to the pressure tank in the basement. If one person pumps, the other can run around the house flushing toilets, filling cisterns, washing dishes, etc. It's potable, too, though we also have a Berkey for backup and lots of surface water sources within 1/4 mile.

The fireplace insert heats much better with a little electricity to blow the air into the room, but a good hot fire will throw enough heat to take the edge off.

The insert can warm food on the mantle, but isn't great for cooking. We have a portable butane stove and maybe 10 hours of fuel on hand, plus a solar oven and a very rickety rocket stove and lots of brush to fuel it.

Solar Joos charger for small electronics, and a few battery and/or crank-powered lights. Candles. A bazillion matches.

Root cellar is full of potatoes, beets, 'bagas, kraut, and squash, but is only useful Sept-April. Enough canned and dehydrated food for a week or two, plus beans, grains, etc. for many more weeks if cooking can be worked out.

So our immediate household is pretty set, aside from boredom and worry. I am much more concerned about the rest of the community. We'd open the well for neighborhood use from dawn to dusk, but what about the 100,000 people in the city 10 miles from us?

The first thing that comes to mind is lights. We have water covered especially in the summer/spring/fall. Our other issue would be electric fencing. We will be working to put in full fences/woven wire? in the next year or two. We have animals trained well enough to keep them in place for the moment. And so far we only have an issue with that in the winter when the snow weighs down the high tensil electric wire.
We have heat and cooking covered. Travel hasn't been discussed.

great points...and because I live in a disaster-prone area (RTP, Raleigh, NC) we've done three 'short' no power stints in the last two decades. 8, 6 and 9 days, due to hurricanes, ice storms and 22" snowfalls. We survived by eating what we had in the fridge/freezer (I canned a bunch of previously-frozen stuff after the hurricane on our gas stove. The house was already hot as hell, why not make jam?) We lost power in those situations, but not water or gas. Land-line phones kept working. These weren't giant outages for the times specified, just outages in my little, tucked-away downtown neighborhood due to fallen trees, etc. I agree that radio will be CRITICAL in a disaster to keep folks informed. If the outages are very widespread there would be no reason to travel/leave. If the outage is localized, travel would be advised.
My worries? My child who takes a daily and absolutely needed medicine. How would we get it? We stockpile it a bit now, during hurricane season, but insurance won't let us get more than 90 days worth. Second worry-food and water in this part of the US where it can be hot and dry. With a whole town in need of water the local creek will be scooped dry...those rain barrels won't hold us for months, even with a pit toilet. We grow some of our own food, but here in Raleigh the farms that surround the city are a day's walk, minimum. Will we pool together with our neighbors and bike out there to pick up our CSA? Third worry-elderly parents far, far away who won't/can't care for themselves.