| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
GridEx II, Solar Max, And the Carrington Effect
amateur astrologer Richard Carrington ascended into the private
observatory attached to his country estate outside of London. After
cranking open the dome’s shutter to reveal the clear blue sky, he
pointed his brass telescope toward the sun and began to sketch a cluster
of enormous dark spots that freckled its surface. Suddenly, Carrington
spotted what he described as “two patches of intensely bright and white
light” erupting from the sunspots. Five minutes later the fireballs
vanished, but within hours their impact would be felt across the globe.
That night, telegraph communications around the world began to fail;
there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph machines, shocking
operators and setting papers ablaze. All over the planet, colorful
auroras illuminated the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds
began to chirp and laborers started their daily chores, believing the
sun had begun rising. Some thought the end of the world was at hand, but
Carrington’s naked eyes had spotted the true cause for the bizarre
happenings: a massive solar flare with the energy of 10 billion atomic
bombs. The flare spewed electrified gas and subatomic particles toward
Earth, and the resulting geomagnetic storm—dubbed the “Carrington
Event”—was the largest on record to have struck the planet. Ice core
samples have determined that the Carrington Event was twice as big as
any other solar storm in the last 500 years.
What would be the impact of a similar storm today? According to a 2008
report from the National Academy of Sciences, it could cause “extensive
social and economic disruptions” due to its impact on power grids,
satellite communications and GPS systems. The potential price tag?
Between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.”
◆
by Tara Dodrill
“A reversal in the Sun’s polarity has led to an increase in solar
activity, and in the past two weeks, nearly 30 solar flares have
occurred. Several months ago scientists agreed that the magnetic field
around the Sun was in the process of a “polarity reversal,” according to
an Accuweather report. The process normally occurs when the Sun
approaches the peak of its solar cycle. The potential for an
Earth-directed X-class solar flare to take down America’s antiquated and
overly-taxed power grid is significant. Infrastructure frailties are
not a glitzy topic; they are far too mundane for mainstream media to
venture away from the latest political scandal to discuss, but they are
nevertheless important.
solar cycle 24. An excerpt from the latest Accuweather solar flare
report reads: “With the sun recently completing what is expected to be
the most active period in solar cycle 24, we have to ask ourselves if
the reversal of the poles had something to do with this dramatic uptick
in solar active. In the last 10 days or so, there have been at least a
dozen M-class flares and 3 X-class flares. Our experts hypothesize that
when the poles are in the process of reversing, the magnetic fields of
the sun become twisted. This configuration leads to more openings in the
chronosphere which causes more sunspots and other solar activity, such
as solar flares and coronal mass ejections.”
An increase in solar flares near the peak of the 11-year Sun cycle
shouldn’t but thought of as unusual, but since this solar maximum has
been “noticeably mellow” scientists are taking note of the uptick in
activity. The Sun remained unusually quiet over the summer months,
prompting surprise among NOAA and NASA weather experts when multiple
M-class and X-class solar flares began occurring on October 23. X-class
flares are the most powerful solar storms. The majority of the solar
flares originated from sunspot AR1884. That section is near the center
of the sun and currently facing towards Earth.
Scientists have only been able to view, track, and understand solar
flares for about the last 20 years. The most powerful known
earth-directed solar flare occurred during 1859 and is known as the
Carrington Event. Telegraph lines, the most advanced technology at the
time, burst into flames. If such a powerful event occurred today, life
as we know it in America would cease for quite a long time. The United
States does not manufacture the transformers necessary to bring the
power grid back online. The Lights Out Saga movie trilogy, produced by
Travis Fox, very accurately details how quickly the country would falter
and how many lives would be lost, after such a catastrophic natural
disaster. National Geographic’s American Blackout also examined an
America without electricity. The American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE) gave the power grid a D+
grade during a report to the government about the health of various
forms of infrastructure earlier this year.
As previously reported, the first ever nationwide power grid drill
(GridX II) will take place on November 13 and 14. Such a massive
endeavor, along with news coverage about what the host of federal
agencies will be doing during the drill, should be making headlines
across the country – but barely any information has been shared or
published about it.”
on “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory and discussed the inevitable
possibility of the Earth being hit by a massive solar flare that would
cripple the county’s power supplies and spark food riots within days. If
a Carrington Event happens, it will knock out power to 400 nuclear
power plants, causing them to melt down, as they point out in this
video. We need to shut them all down before they all melt down and
explode. Dr. Kaku and a group of physicists went to Congress and asked
for money to start working on preventing this mega disaster, but the
current anti science members of Congress laughed at them and did not
even give them one cent. They said it would never happen.”
by Bob Livingston
“On Nov. 13-14, America’s major electricity generating companies along
with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and government agencies in
Canada and Mexico will conduct a drill to test system responses to
cyberattacks and physical attacks on the North American electrical grid
that cause its widespread failure. The drill is called GridEx II, and it moves the threat of a total
electrical blackout that sends the country back into the 19th century
from the stuff of science fiction and/or tinfoil hattery to the
mainstream. According to The New York Times, the drill is designed to practice for a crisis unlike anything the real grid has ever seen, and
more than 150 companies and organizations have signed up to participate.
“This is different from a hurricane that hits X, Y and Z counties in the
Southeast and they have a loss of power for three or four days,” said
the official in charge of the drill, Brian M. Harrell of the North
American Electric Reliability Corporation, known as NERC. “We really
want to go beyond that.”
One goal of the drill is to explore how governments would react as the
loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities. Should the grid collapse, those with medical conditions requiring
machines to keep them alive or stable could be in trouble quickly, but
most people could easily survive without power for two or three days.
It’s not unusual for major storms to knock out power for that long. But
longer-term power outages turn into desperate situations as water and
food run low and/or generators run out of fuel. Google Hurricane Katrina
and Superstorm Sandy to see how some people fared during long-term
localized outages.
A nationwide outage would quickly become catastrophic. Communications
would be down; water and sewer wouldn’t function; the supply chain would
stop, causing grocery shelves to be rendered bare within hours; and the
banking system would crash. Government services, often overwhelmed with
localized outages, would be completely inadequate. Within days, the weak and infirm would be dead from dehydration. Those
living hand-to-mouth or subsisting on government handouts would become
desperate, and rioting and looting would become rampant. Look to recent
food stamp riots and headlines following Black Friday shopping madness
incidents for a look at how quickly people turn into animals when they
feel they are being deprived or unfairly treated over even the most
trivial of things. If the grid stays down for weeks or longer, civilization as we
understand it will break down completely as more people become thirsty,
hungry and increasingly desperate.
Government functionaries and electric company talking heads have said
for many years that the electrical grid is vulnerable to terrorist
attack. One of the GridEx II scenarios has a person breaking into a
substation as if to steal copper but instead uploading a virus that
shuts down the system. But the grid is also in danger from an
electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon attack or even solar flares. Experts say a Carrington-class major solar flare event would fry the
entire electrical grid. A Carrington-class ejection is a reference to
the 1859 EMP that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America.”
- http://planet.infowars.com/
- http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/
Source: http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2013/11/gridex-ii-solar-max-and-carrington.html
