I thought the title above was mildly alarming. The story is more than that. Have you heard about the solar flares expected next year? According to the Jan. 23rd issue of The Week (my favorite magazine), "scientists are warning that we're due for a major solar storm that could knock out power to hundreds of millions of people, disrupt modern communication systems, and plunge the world into chaos." The last time that such massive flares occurred, in 1859, telegraph wires melted al over the country, causing multiple fires. Obviously, we stand to be more seriously affected by power surges that could melt transformers and "cause blackouts and computer shutdowns for as many as 130 million Americans."

DWill: Your posts are full of gloom today! I think you need a counter balance. Do you know any cheerful or hopeful poems? How about whimsy?

Saffron wrote:DWill: Your posts are full of gloom today! I think you need a counter balance. Do you know any cheerful or hopeful poems? How about whimsy?

Yeah, sure, I have a good response...not sure you will like it. I might have even posted it on the late, lamented "Shropshire Lad" thread. I'll make it a Poem for the Moment.

Do you have a link for this story?

I saw something about this on the Science channel. A giant solar flare can totally knock out those big electrical transformers. They can't be repaired. They have to be totally replaced and they are expensive and take time to build. Now imagine that happening on a global scale. I think it was said it would probably take a wealthy industrialized nation about 10 years to fully recover. Obviously poorer countries would less able. I lived without electricity for 2 weeks after Hurricane Andrew. I don't even think emergency generators at hospitals would last very long. Chaos, looting, emergency services strained to the breaking point.

There is one way to avoid this though and it's not pretty either... you would have to intentionally shut down all electrical grids before the solar flare hits. This pretty much amounts to the same chaos as above, but it would be temporary and you might be able to salvage the transformers.

It looks like the article DWill references is for subscription only, but here are a couple of articles from NASA.

I'm not an astrophysicist, and don't pretend to know about these things, but it has been my understanding that solar flares are very unpredictable. So what makes us so sure the next batch is going to be so bad? The first article explains why some scientists think the next round is going to be a very active one -- probably the most active season of solar flares since 1958:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006 ... arning.htm

The second article discusses the solar flare of 1859, describing it as a "once-in-a-millennium event" (then again, how would we know?). It doesn't mention any telegraph wires melting, but does say that the flares induced currents in the wires so that operators could send messages even after disconnecting batteries:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008 ... nflare.htm

Grim wrote:Do you have a link for this story?

Sorry, Grim. I tried, but only the current issue of The Week is available online, and this article was from the Jan. 23rd issue.