Understanding the Sun's impact on a changing Earth

[David-Audrey]

     While the most likely disaster we face are fire and a massive earthquakes in our area, I'm one that includes a healthy concern about our Sun causing us serious harm.

      Late last month, a HUGE solar flare erupted (think equivalent of a Category 12 hurricane for  size reference).  Luckily, this eruption was not aimed at earth.  But...the fact that this eruption took place as we approach the lowest part of the Solar Cycle proves we are at some level of risk no matter what part of the cycle we are in.  The eruption has been estimated as being somewhere between a X-20 and X-29 strength. 

Note:  Solar eruptions are (like hurricanes) measured according to an algorithmic scale. The scale goes from A-...the lowest to B-, C-, M- and finally the big boys...the X- level.  Like hurricanes a X-1 is 10 times larger than a M-1.   Also note that there are generally conflicting estimates of the Carrington Event - The huge solar eruption in 1859...but most agree is was in the X-30 range.

     While Prepping is personal to everyone and most will not agree with my being concerned, there is a large body of facts to support some level of concern and reason to be knowledgeable about the Sun and it's power for harm.

     I just found the below link and offer it to those that would like to learn about both the Earth's rapidly diminishing ability to handle the Sun's eruptions and also about the Sun's power.

     Regardless of your interest, I suggest you take the time to view the video.  It's based on fact and proven science.

     I, for one, will continue to treat the Sun as a threat I want to be as prepared for as I can be.

     The link...  https://youtu.be/VVgUZv9ccyQ
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[TWP]

Can you recommend specific preps for a CME?

I realize that many of our preps will address multiple kinds of events, but is there anything we should do for this specific kind of threat?

I'll point out that prepping for a made-made (EMP) event has good overlap on a CME event.  Faraday cages for electronic / electric gear, alternate tools which will not be affected by either event, shielded shelter and, of course, adequate food and water stockpile.

We should be thankful that a CME is (usually) observed well in advance and warnings are posted for those who listen to them.

What else can we do to prep for CME's?

[230gr]

Like EMP, except more powerful and widespread, could mean decades of grid down survival. It could take generations to restore big transformers, not only to assemble the scarce parts but to rebuild the RR lines needed to move these monstrosities to hydroelectric sites etc.
 

If Earth’s magnetic field disappeared, all of life would be in serious danger.  Cosmic rays would bombard our bodies and could even damage our DNA, increasing worldwide risk of cancer and other illnesses.  We would need to stay under shelter as much as possible.

[TWP]

I am not aware of claims that the earths magnetic field would be "removed".  It would certainly by affected during the storm, but my understanding is that it is generated by electric currents flowing in the earths core.  While these are partly driven by external magnetic and electric forces, my understanding is that they are expected to return to a level close to pre-storm levels.

A CME can be expected to push our protective fields away, during the collision time (days).  That will allow higher radiation levels on the ground.  The ozone layer in the upper atmosphere will be changed also, perhaps even enhanced (a good thing).  That ozone lay is a trap for much of the radiation hitting the earth every day.

Another factor to remember is that CME's (and man-made EMPs) have the most impact on the side of planet facing the oncoming storm (or nearest the nuclear blast in the case of EMPs).  The opposite side of the planet will feel minimal impact.

In the case of man-made EMP, unless there are multiple detonations over most of the planet, there will be surviving technology.

My comments above are the reasons why I have a very hard time accepting the scare-mongering which is being used by some (not all) reports and "research"...

Yes, some areas of the planet will be heavily impacted and yes, recovery will still take years.  But we are not talking about the sun going nova.  We are not talking about a planet wide holocaust.

I am trying to introduce some degree of sense into the fear tactics being used by "main stream news" and by supposed "scientists" who have an agenda which they want to push.  Question Authority!  It was true in the 60's and remain true today.

No, it would not be a minor event, but neither (IMIO) will it be as bad as is being shown in the media.

So, learn how to prep for the after effects.  What will it take to both survive and live after this kind of event?

I suspect that the larger problem will be dealing with the survivors who are NOT prepped...  Remember that CMEs and EMPs don't directly kill living creatures.  It is the loss of services upon which we have become dependent which does the real damage.

[WolfBrother]

Don't know about the media.

From http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/

During the Carrington Event, northern lights were reported as far south as Cuba and Honolulu, while southern lights were seen as far north as Santiago, Chile. (See pictures of auroras generated by the Valentine's Day solar flare.) The flares were so powerful that "people in the northeastern U.S. could read newspaper print just from the light of the aurora," Daniel Baker, of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, said at a geophysics meeting last December. In addition, the geomagnetic disturbances were strong enough that U.S. telegraph operators reported sparks leaping from their equipment—some bad enough to set fires, said Ed Cliver, a space physicist at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1859, such reports were mostly curiosities. But if something similar happened today, the world's high-tech infrastructure could grind to a halt."What's at stake," the Space Weather Prediction Center's Bogdan said, "are the advanced technologies that underlie virtually every aspect of our lives."

As a kid, sometimes during thunderstorms there'd be one or more big blinks in power.  Lightning induced magnetics.
One particular storm the lightening induced magnetics went the other way, a number of folks lost TV's and a couple of homes caught fire. (early 1960's)

IF we're on the CME side of a similar one to the Carrington event, I suspect that the induce magnetics would screw us up pretty good.  Especially electronics.  Due to that, some planes might fall out of the sky, some cars/trucks wreck due to loss of control, some controls on the Grid will fail - which will probably cause huge grid shutdowns.  Electronics in hospitals will fail, so IV pumps will fail, cardiac monitors won't - people will die.
Will a bunch survive initially?  Yup - will the situation devolve to a Golden Horde escape? Stands a good chance.
Where will we be in general? For the most part pre-1900's.

 

[230gr]

not aware of claims that the earth's magnetic field would be "removed". It would certainly by affected during the storm,

The earth's magnetic field has been weakening for decades and the decay has little to do with CMEas I understand it. It may have a connection to the Sun overpowering electromagnetic field and the way electric currents flow in the earth's core. 


Whatever is driving the polar drifting and weakening of earth's magnetic field and likely to go to zero as the actual magnetic pole shift commences. Every several hundred thousand years or so, the magnetic field has flipped. North has pointed south, and vice versa. When the field flips it also tends to become very weak and puts life at risk the major concern is how long this vulnerability lasts. Years, Decades?   

[Jerry D Young]

There is definitely a great deal of incorrect information everywhere on EMP, HEMP, CME, and solar flares.

Since this thread is about CME I will stick to those types of events. First, very often a solar flare is shown as an illustration in context with a CME. They are two different events. A solar flare can send streams of energy at nearly the speed of light. That energy, which will begin to arrive in approximately 8 to 9 minutes after it leaves the sun, and will continue for the time the flare lasts, unless the sun passes the point that the flare is traveling. The energy release usually only lasts a few minutes. So the event is short lived. But the energy can be very intense, creating problems for satellites, and occasionally the power grid that is under the flare.

A CME, on the other hand, is, as the name states, an ejection of coronal mass from the sun. As it is a mass, it does not travel anywhere near the speed of light. It is moving fast though, and can reach earth's orbit in the matter of just a few days, with the larger and more powerful CMEs travelling the fastest and reach earth's orbit the quickest.

And I am saying reaching earth's orbit for a reason. Because it does take many hours for the mass to reach the orbit, the direction in which the CME leaves the sun is important. If it happens to eject toward the earth, the earth will be well past the point where the mass crosses the orbit. Only if the ejection is on a trajectory that is leading the earth will it impact the earth when the two reach the same point in space at the same time. Since the CME might last for up to hours, it could impact much of the earth as the earth rotates while in the path of the CME.

Okay, that gets a CME to earth. A CME does, in fact, create an EMP. However, it is not the same as a nuclear induced EMP. Especially a HEMP. While the energy in a CME does excite the electrons in the upper atmosphere, there is not the extremely intense effect that creates the E1 part of an EMP. There is a bit, but not much. There is a bit of E2 component, as well. But the largest problem is the huge, longer lasting E3 part of the pulse.

The E3 component is much longer lasting in the first place, even from a nuclear EMP device, lasting on the order of a couple to several seconds. Add in the fact that a CME, unlike nuclear EMP or HEMP devices, which are an immediate action, over in a fraction of a second that creates a seconds long E3 component of an EMP, the CME will be a continuous event that could last for several hours, creating and maintaining an E3 component all that time. So, instead of a few seconds of activity, it could be minutes or even hours of energy pouring into earth's atmosphere, being picked up and carried by pretty much anything metallic that is linear in shape. Including power lines.

Things not connected to a power line will not be affected much, unless they have a truly long conductor that can pick up the energy directly. The amount of energy that will be induced into power lines will be enough, if it is a large CME on the order approaching that of the Carrington Event or larger, to destroy the actual lines, not just things attached to them. But that will take long enough for most of the things attached to be affected to some degree, up to being destroyed, as well.

Since the majority of computers in use will be attached to a power line, most of them will go down. Vehicles with computers should not be affected except under extremely unlikely circumstances. Radios not connected to the grid might or might not be affected, depending on the length of the antenna, and the severity of the CME. Not likely, but not impossible.

That brings us to the preps for a CME. This assumes, of course, that a really big one hits us. Since the primary effect is going to be the loss of the electrical grid, there will be a vast number of effects resulting from that loss. Pretty much the entire infrastructure of modern society will come to an end, or at least a halt. Even some physical components of the infrastructure will be destroyed due to other effects. Highways would still exist, for example. But they can be damaged or blocked by vehicles that run out of fuel, or damaged if fuel leaks catch fire and burn.

The main thing though, will be the failure of pumps. Pumps that provide water, remove sewage, fill fuel tanks. Since these things can happen for other reasons, most preppers have plans in place to deal with them.

And since the loss of electrical power is one of the things most preppers have made provisions to deal with, that should already be covered.

There really are not any very specific preps for CMEs that are not already a part of preps for other things.

The CME could affect the magnetosphere, distorting it for a short period. It is not likely to destroy it. But, because the magnetosphere is weakening now due to factors within the earth, if the CME happens at a time when the magnetosphere is already extremely weak, the amount of energy reaching the earth could be much higher that it would be right now. Or would have been in the past.

And not only would a CME of any size be worse due to a weakened magnetosphere, so would the effects of a solar flare. And simply the normal levels of radiation coming from the sun and other space based objects, exposure to hard radiation, as well as various UV bands could result in not only serious sunburns, eye problems, future cancers, but the loss of crops and food animals.

If the magnetosphere continues to weaken, as it seems to be doing, a future CME of significant strength and duration, could result in enough destruction to result in a post apocalyptic world situation. Certainly not an absolute, but when it comes to preps for a CME, your basic PAW preps just might be needed, and thus should be considered.

Just my opinion.

[WolfBrother]

WB edited to specific:

The earth's magnetic field has been weakening for decades and the decay has little to do with CMEas I understand it. It may have a connection to the Sun overpowering electromagnetic field and the way electric currents flow in the earth's core. 


Whatever is driving the polar drifting and weakening of earth's magnetic field and likely to go to zero as the actual magnetic pole shift commences. Every several hundred thousand years or so, the magnetic field has flipped. North has pointed south, and vice versa. When the field flips it also tends to become very weak and puts life at risk the major concern is how long this vulnerability lasts. Years, Decades?

I did some study on this a while back.
IIRC based on lava flows brought up from the ocean, the earth had done pole shifts every 200,000 years or so.  However, the last one happened 6 to 7 hundred thousand years ago.


What is not known is how long a shift takes. It’s neen documented that the magnetic field has been weakening for the past 160 years and that the magnetic North pole has been moving st an increasingly faster rate.   Do we could or could not be in or at the beginning or not at all on a pole shift.


The magnetosphere, North, South poles, all that comes about because of the hot iron core spinning on the inside of the earth.


If it seems that I have a lot of info that does not have a lot of definits, yup, you’re right. The is not a lot of hard proven science about this.

[David-Audrey]

Don’t know how many have actually had the time to view the video, but it makes a good, logical and fact-based case for our Earth being less and less able to defend us against large CME’s.

I’m NOT saying we are all in jeopardy today, tomorrow or next week.  What I’m saying is that, yes, while there is a VERY slight chance of serious potential harm that quickly, I’m more worried about the potential for bad things in 3 years, 5…10.  Now, in that time frame, I’m really beginning to become uncomfortable.

The Video has not explained why (as it has several times during the Earth’s history) the magnetic poles are in the process of reversing.  I do, personally, believe that this reversal process is driving the VERY rapid deterioration of the Earth’s ability to protect us from the Sun and it’s CME’s.  This process, again, in my opinion, is dramatically weakening our level of protection.

The video graphically illustrates that the magnetosphere is losing a full 5% of its strength per decade.  Not too long ago that decline was 5% a century.  But the 5% per decade is not a straight-line decline.  The rate of decline is accelerating rapidly.  Just as the poles speed of travel away from their traditional areas is accelerating.

Another aspect of my worry is a growing body of science that indicates that the increased radiation for Coronal Holes, CME’s, etc. is already having a measurable effect on our bodies, minds, moods, hearts, and more. 

Bottom line, I’m worried about CME’s, but also the entirety of the Sun’s ability to harm us...and at a level that is growing month after month.
Again, I urge everyone to view the video so you can make your own evaluations and understand the good and bad that the Sun represents to us and the Earth.

WOULD LOVE SOMEONE'S COMMENTS ABOUT THE VIDEO.

[TWP]

David-Autdrey,  Yes, I watched the video...  21+ minutes

Let me preface this with an explanation of my views (as an ex-teacher) on video as medium of teaching:

Video is low on my scale of useful sources of information.  The primary reason is that it is not possible to vet the stream of statements from the voice actors and flashed images.  With written text, I can pause and do a deeper probe into each statement.  This is not possible in video format.

A secondary reason for my low ranking of video news is that it is frequently (noted in this video) a compressed version of someone else's research.  In essence, it is designed to overwhelm the viewer with a series of warning messages and alarming statements.  I'll draw your attention to to the known method of using a calm, reassuring tone of voice while presenting statements which are meant to push the "buttons" of viewers.

You and I can have two responses to this, either passively accept the information as truth or reject the entire body of information.  As children of the Television / Video era, we have been trained toward the passive response.  At my age, many of us remember the "talking heads" of television news...  This has been noted for many years and even generated a set of comedy takeoffs on the "art form" of news delivery.

Ok, end of preface, take off your tinfoil hat.

About the actual content of the video, I have NOT had nearly enough time to dig into the sources given at the end of the video.  I would need to download the video and replay the last minutes just to get all of the online links offered.  I probably won't do this due to bandwidth limitations on my internet connection.  And I have a pretty fast connection.

I do recall the reference to spaceweather.com, of which I was already aware.  "Encyclopedic" is a good description of the size of their content.  I am, right now, undecided as to whether I want to devote the time to analyzing the volume of information posted on that site... and that is only one of the several references given in the video.

Please don't take this as blanket negation of the video content.  I am NOT able to assume it to be bunk.  I simply haven't been able to do the analysis necessary to make a value judgment.

No, I'm not willing to simply take the video authors' word on their claims.  Get back to me in several months time and I may (maybe, perhaps) have a more informed opinion on those claims.

All of the above being said, and noting that as preppers we chose to act rather than wait, what can we do to address this possible threat?  First, we (you) need to analyze the nature of the threat and what kind of effects to expect.  Then you can propose counter measures for those effects.

I'll start with a preliminary list of effects, NOT in any particular order of likelihood:

1)  Loss of electric power.
2)  Loss of fast transportation
3)  Possible weather changes (not verified)
4)  Possible higher solar and non-solar radiation.
5)  Loss of manufacturing and agriculture capability

Several other effects may occur as a result of the first five.  All of those have been presented to us by various sources of prepper planning analyses.  We know about the side-effects to the primary effects.

Since we cannot (right now) deflect a CME / solar storm from hitting the earth, let's address how to respond (and prep) to these side-effect threats.

No, heavier tinfoil is not on my list of responses.  Having a deep shelter might be more appropriate.

Having shielded (Faraday cage) backups for electric and electronic equipment.

Stockpile of food, water and "tools" (read between the lines here).

Library of useful information for post-event rebuilding of Everything.

Personal skill sets.  No you really can't know everything, so: be a part of a group with other skills.

 What else?

[230gr]

The magnetosphere, North, South poles, all that comes about because of the hot iron core spinning on the inside of the earth.

1.   The deep mantle flows and ebbs around the core which affects the core spin.
2.   The sun, the overwhelming magnetic influence in our solar system, has its own short, long and very long cycles which can and do interact with the earth’s magnetic cycles.

Another aspect of my worry is a growing body of science that indicates that the increased radiation for Coronal Holes, CME’s, etc. is already having a measurable effect on our bodies, minds, moods, hearts, and more. 

I have heard speculation that there is an effect on the human brain and the body’s electrical system. There has been a lot of strange, violent behavior the does not make any sense. Seems to be many people cannot control their anger and outburst over very trivial incidences. Sun influence seem more likely than a CIA plot?     

[WolfBrother]

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All of the above being said, and noting that as preppers we chose to act rather than wait, what can we do to address this possible threat?  First, we (you) need to analyze the nature of the threat and what kind of effects to expect.  Then you can propose counter measures for those effects.

I'll start with a preliminary list of effects, NOT in any particular order of likelihood:

1)  Loss of electric power.
2)  Loss of fast transportation
3)  Possible weather changes (not verified)
4)  Possible higher solar and non-solar radiation.
5)  Loss of manufacturing and agriculture capability

Several other effects may occur as a result of the first five.  All of those have been presented to us by various sources of prepper planning analyses.  We know about the side-effects to the primary effects.

Since we cannot (right now) deflect a CME / solar storm from hitting the earth, let's address how to respond (and prep) to these side-effect threats.

No, heavier tinfoil is not on my list of responses.  Having a deep shelter might be more appropriate.

Having shielded (Faraday cage) backups for electric and electronic equipment.

Stockpile of food, water and "tools" (read between the lines here).

Library of useful information for post-event rebuilding of Everything.

Personal skill sets.  No you really can't know everything, so: be a part of a group with other skills.

 What else?

Jerry D. is the guy who will have the what else list.

The fact is, an EMP attack or a CME will knock us back to the pre-1900's, for how long? Who knows.  I suspect the PTBe emphasis will be to do the big population centers first.

Having shelter and a non-electric/non-fuel way to plant/cook etc will become very important.

[230gr]

Having shelter and a non-electric/non-fuel way to plant/cook etc will become very important.

I think that the takeaway is long term preps are going to be needed beyond 90 days and, very possibly, for several years.

[Jerry D Young]

Okay. I have rewritten a couple of older articles to include more specific information for EMP, HEMP, solar flare, and CME prepping. I still need to work on it, so feel free to make suggestions. Some of it I posted above, but it was not very well structured. It is part of the re-write.

There are several things, so I am using attachments for all of it.

Just my opinion. Actually, a whole bunch of my opinions.

[TWP]

...
Just my opinion. Actually, a whole bunch of my opinions.

Having an opinion means you're still alive, I call that a good thing.

I'll need to read through your documents before offering any suggestions, thanks!