We Are Not Prepared
Ignoring Civilization-Ending Disasters: Part 1 — Lights Out
We Are Not Prepared
Ignoring Civilization-Ending Disasters: Part 1 — Lights Out
For as long as anyone can remember, reliable, cheap electricity
has been taken for granted in the United States.
— Alex Berenson
We go about our days assuming the comforts we’ve built will always be there. Flip a switch, and the lights come on. Turn a knob, and clean water flows. Step outside, and food is waiting at the grocery store. Hop in a car or bus, and we’re off to wherever we need to go. With a phone or computer, information is at our fingertips. These conveniences have become so ingrained in our lives that it’s hard to imagine a time—just 100 years ago—when most of these things didn’t exist.
We trust others to fix what breaks and rely on countless systems to maintain our comfort and security. With our technology and ingenuity, we believe we can solve almost anything. Many look to governments and corporations to address the world’s most pressing issues, assuming they’re on top of things. But are they really? Are they so consumed by power, profits, and biases that they fail to see—or choose to ignore—the civilization-ending disasters looming on the horizon?
This series explores the critical issues we continue to overlook at our own peril.
Imagine you have been without power for a few weeks. In your house, there are no lights, television, computer, air conditioning, or heat. The perishable food in your now dark refrigerator was eaten or spoiled long ago. Your cell phone still has a trickle of power you have been saving, but there has been nothing to connect to—no calls, texts, or Internet.
It’s night, and you and your family sit in the dark with a few flickering candles casting eerie dancing silhouettes on the room surfaces. Food and water are running low, and you think about what to do next. Last week, you made a trip to get supplies from the grocery store a few miles down the road. You came back with nothing. The store had been broken into, and the shelves had been picked clean. On the way back, you abandoned your car a few miles away from home because it ran out of gas. Gas station pumps stopped working long ago, and most of the buried gas stores at the service stations have been siphoned away by desperate people.
Many people are huddling in their homes as armed groups increasingly break into houses, looking for food, water, and anything else they can use. You clutch a baseball bat, contemplating that you may soon have to use it to protect your family and dwindling supplies. You look at the despondent faces of your loved ones as they sit quietly, buried in their own thoughts and fears.
Only a short eternity ago, life was beautiful. Then, in the blink of an eye, the power went off, and with it, everything you had taken for granted. The night the power went out, the sky was filled with a brilliant red aurora. Then, it seemed beautiful and amazing. Now, it just feels like a curse on the entire planet. Without power, you have no idea what is happening anywhere else in the world. You are left wondering and guessing as to what has transpired. You’ve never felt this alone before in your life. Blind. Isolated. Abandoned.
Early on, most people believed the power would quickly be restored as it had always been. But that faith slowly faded and died, shifting into this absolute nightmare. You hear loud voices approaching the house, which snaps you out of your thoughts. Your hand tightens on your meager weapon as a dread you’ve never felt before fills your entire being.
Electricity is something we take for granted as part of our everyday reality. We flip a switch, and what would have seemed like magic a century or so ago creates the miracle of light. Electricity powers our phones, computers, televisions, refrigerators, and most of our modern life. It is the lifeblood that pumps through our entire contemporary world. That lifeblood comprises a stream of electrons delivered to our homes and businesses through the arteries of a massive electrical grid. For generations, this grid has almost always been there to loyally transport energy from power plants, where it is generated, to our electronic devices on demand.
The electric grid is a complex and vital system and one of the most impressive engineering feats of the human race. The grid is an electricity transmission system made up of a massive number of interconnected groups of power lines and associated equipment for moving high-voltage electrical energy from the power-supplying utilities to their customers. The electricity is generated from coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, and other sources. There are 19,000 individual generators at about 7,000 power plants that make up the United States electrical grid, the largest machine in the world. The generated electrical power is distributed over 642,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 6.3 million miles of distribution lines, which could stretch over 14 times to the moon and back.[1] Electric power grids are amazingly complicated and intricate systems consisting of many millions of interdependent turbines, conductors, transmission lines, insulators, switches, and people.[2] This secure and reliable delivery of electricity is the cornerstone of modern society.
The various technologies that supply electricity and the ever-changing demand are continually monitored and managed by grid operators to ensure everything runs smoothly. Because electricity is not stored but instead is constantly being generated and used, it is the job of the grid operators to ensure that there’s not too much or too little electricity on the grid at any given time. As power demand changes over the day, electric grid operators must match electric supply to this demand in real time. If supply and demand are not correctly matched, power quality will suffer, causing issues like flickering lights and brownouts.[3]
From the 1950s to the 1980s, significant power outages averaged fewer than five per year. But as the grid has grown, the number of outages has increased. In 2007, there were 76, and in 2011, there were more than 300.[4] In the summer of 2003, a power line came in contact with a tree limb, starting a cascading chain reaction that eventually brought down some 100 power plants. This affected more than 55 million people in eight U.S. states and Ontario.[5] It took at least six hours and as long as two days to return electric service to the affected areas. A 2013 study estimated that the blackout caused approximately 90 excess deaths in New York City alone.[6] Yet these disturbances are infrequent with this modern marvel essentially working day and night, keeping the lights on and our machines running.
Reliable electricity is paramount because, unlike the previous decades and centuries before electricity became commonplace, our modern societies depend entirely on this power source for our complex high-tech systems. Moreover, humankind is increasingly more technology-reliant all the time. While this scientific and engineering miracle provides us with the luxuries of modern life that we have come to expect, there is an ominous menace that could bring this all to an abrupt and devastating halt.
Looking up at the sky, we see the sun. It provides the Earth with light and warmth that makes life possible. Like electricity, we don’t often pay attention to our solar benefactor, but day after day, year after year, century after century, the bright yellow orb radiantly glows in a seemingly perfectly constant fashion. The sun is an average yellow star that accounts for over 99% of the solar system's mass. It is an immense spinning ball of scorching gas and plasma made mostly of hydrogen and helium atoms. Nuclear reactions provide the sun’s energy source, producing 100 billion one-megaton hydrogen bombs worth of energy every second.[7] The sun’s enormous size is what gives it its relative stability. However, the sun is not as unwavering as it may appear.
The surface of the sun writhes and dances. Far from the still, whitish-yellow disk it appears to be from the ground, the sun sports twisting, towering loops and swirling cyclones that reach into the solar upper atmosphere, the million-degree corona [outermost part of the atmosphere of a star]... the sun is a giant magnetic star, made of material that moves in concert with the laws of electromagnetism.[8]
The Sun is made of positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons in a state of matter called plasma. Plasma is a super-heated ionized gas consisting of approximately equal numbers of these positively charged ions and electrons. The characteristics of plasma are significantly different enough from a gas that plasma is considered a distinct fourth state of matter. This vast sphere of plasma rotates more quickly at its equator than at its poles, and these different rotation rates can cause the sun’s magnetic fields to become twisted and tangled. These tangled magnetic field lines can produce powerful localized magnetic fields, resulting in incredibly powerful energy occurrences.[9]
Solar flares are the most violent events on the surface of the sun. They occur when the energy stored in the sun’s magnetic field is suddenly released or converted from magnetic energy into heat and motion energy, potentially slamming into the Earth approximately 8 minutes after they occur. Solar flares are classified into 3 categories, with X-class flares being the highest category that can trigger worldwide radio blackouts and radiation storms in the upper atmosphere. These X-class flares have been rated from 1 to 9. An X2 flare is twice as powerful as an X1, and an X9 is nine times as powerful as an X1.
There are flares more than 10 times the power of an X1, so X-class flares can go higher than 9. The most powerful flare measured with modern methods was in 2003, during the last solar maximum, and it was so powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it. The sensors cut out at X28.[10]
The Space Weather Prediction Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has also categorized these storms on a scale of G1 to G5.[11] Although our planet is shielded by a vast, invisible magnetic field, large storms can penetrate it and wreak havoc. G4 (severe) and G5 (extreme) would have the most significant impact on electrical grid operations. While a G4 storm would cause some protective systems to perhaps mistakenly trip, a G5 storm could cause transformer damage and blackouts.
A Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) is a discharge of materials from the sun’s corona. A CME is a giant billion-ton bubble of plasma that escapes the sun’s gravitational field and travels through space at about one million miles an hour, which can hit the Earth in about 2 to 4 days.[12] When CMEs impact our planet, it temporarily deforms the Earth’s magnetic field, inducing sizeable electrical ground currents in the Earth. This event is also known as a geomagnetic storm.[13]
The largest known recorded geomagnetic storm, the Carrington Event, occurred from August 27 to September 6, 1859. At its height, a deep crimson-red aurora was described as so bright that even at 1:00 a.m., it was possible to read a newspaper without any other source of light.[14] Modern analysis of the Carrington event indicates it was approximately an X42-X45 class solar flare[15],[16], meaning it was over 40 times more powerful than an X1-class solar flare.
This solar event occurred just before electricity came into use some 20 years later, with the creation of the light bulb by Thomas Edison, Lewis Latimer, and others.[17] However, at that time, a relatively new technology was being used: the telegraph. The telegraph worked by transmitting electrical signals over wires strung along with poles between stations. Many of the world’s telegraph lines were severely affected during the storm.
Brilliant sparks were drawn from the telegraph wires… a spark of fire jumped from the forehead of a telegraph operator when his forehead touched a ground wire… a flame of fire burned through a dozen thicknesses of paper; the paper was set on fire and produced considerable smoke… some of the telegraph operators received severe shocks when they touched the telegraph wires.[18]
During a solar flare, a massive amount of energy is liberated. The plasma released during a CME connects with the Earth’s magnetosphere, causing it to temporarily warp its magnetic field, changing the direction of compass needles and inducing large electrical ground currents in the Earth. A geomagnetically-induced current (GIC) is caused by Earth’s magnetic field variations, producing currents in transmission lines that can damage transformers and other electrical equipment. While massive solar events are not frequent, they can trigger enormous failures across large parts of the electric grid when they occur.
When magnetic fields move in the vicinity of a conductor such as a wire, a geomagnetically induced current is produced in the conductor. This happens on a ground scale during geomagnetic storms (the same mechanism also influences telephone/telegraph lines) on all transmission lines. Power companies which operate long transmission lines (many kilometers in length) are thus subject to damage by this effect. The (nearly direct) currents induced in these lines from geomagnetic storms are harmful to electrical transmission equipment, especially generators and transformer-since they induce core saturation, constraining their performance (as well as tripping various safety devices), and causes coils and cores to heat up. This heat can disable or destroy them, even inducing a chain reaction that can blow transformers throughout the system.[19]
Sunspots are regions of the sun where the relative temperature is low and where the magnetic field is powerful. The number of sunspots has been shown to increase and decrease over time in an approximately 11-year cycle, although the cycle can be as short as 8 years and as long as 14 years.[20] A comparison of the solar cycle to geomagnetic storms shows they can occur at any time during that cycle and, therefore, pose a near-continuous threat, not just when there are many sunspots, as once thought.[21] In the fall of 2017, powerful flares, including an X9.3 on September 6, occurred while the sun was entering a solar minimum, which is supposed to be the quiet part of the sun’s 11-year cycle.[22]
A solar storm as big as the Carrington event hasn’t struck the Earth since then, although there have been smaller ones. On March 13th, 1989, a severe geomagnetic storm caused the Hydro-Québec power grid to collapse as equipment protection relays tripped in a cascading sequence of events. With significant economic loss, six million people were left without power for nine hours. The storm even caused auroras to be seen all the way to Texas.[23]
In May 1921, an extreme solar storm, approximately ten times as strong as the 1989 storm, hit the Earth.[24] Also known as the Railroad Storm, the storm caused auroras to be seen over Europe and the Eastern United States for several evenings. A 1921 New York Times article noted the event.
The sunspot which caused a brilliant aurora borealis on Saturday night and the worst electrical disturbance in memory on the telegraph systems was credited with an unprecedented thing at 7:04 o’clock yesterday morning, when the entire signal and switching system of the New York Central Railroad below 125th Street was put out of operation, followed by a fire in the control tower at Fifty-seventh Street and Park Avenue.[25]
Most of the East Coast experienced a communication blackout in the wake of the solar storm. A telegraph operator stated that his switchboard burst into flames, engulfing the entire building. The solar storm impacted telephone, telegraph, and cable traffic throughout Europe.[26] This storm hit when the electrical grid and communications were in their infancy, so it did not significantly impact the newly forming technological world. The New York Times article also reported a large solar storm that hit the Earth on September 25, 1909.
Its effects were spread pretty well over the earth. It was observed as far south from the North Pole as Northern Italy, and as far north from the South Pole as Australia and South Africa.[27]
With technological advancements, the electrical grid is actually more vulnerable than when the 1989 solar storm caused the grid to fail, throwing millions into darkness. The most significant vulnerabilities are found within transformers and transmission lines because the higher the voltage rating of a network, the lower its resistance to geomagnetic-induced currents. High-voltage networks have increased from 100-200 kV [Kilovolt] during the 1950s to today’s 345-765-kV extra-high voltage threshold.[28] The high voltage grid has expanded by almost a factor of 10 during this time, and complexity has increased.[29] This has made today’s sprawling, high-voltage power grids more susceptible to space weather impacts than ever before.
Much of the grid also consists of decaying and outdated infrastructure. Many major components, including transmissions, distributors, generators, and transformers, are over 25 years old and undergo minor repairs to keep them functioning.[30] In New England, 25% of electricity generation is over four decades old and must be replaced or kept running with costly upgrades.[31] A power plant built during the rapid expansion of the power sector after World War II is 50 years old or older and likely needs to be replaced. The decaying energy infrastructure of the United States was only given a D+ by the American Society of Civil Engineers and would cost almost $5 trillion to replace.[32]
Some parts of the U.S. electric grid predate the turn of the 20th century. Most T&D [transmission and distribution] lines were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s with a 50-year life expectancy, and were not originally engineered to meet today’s demand, nor severe weather events... the lower 48 states’ power grid is at full capacity, with many lines operating well beyond their design... Often a single line cannot be taken out of service to perform maintenance as it will overload other interconnected lines in operation... As a result of aging infrastructure, severe weather events, and attacks and vandalism, in 2015 Americans experienced a reported 3,571 total outages... [33]
High-voltage transformers are a vulnerable portion of the grid due to their size, the complexity of their manufacturing, and the lack of production in the United States.[34] Replacements must be manufactured overseas with a 12 to 15-month lead-time to replace damaged parts or update older components. Typically, only a handful of transformers of this size are purchased for U.S. locations on an annual basis. During an extreme solar event that damages large portions of the grid, the global demand for transformer replacements could vastly outstrip the world’s capability to manufacture and supply replacements.
Transformers of this size class (600MVA+) [Mega Volt Amp] are large and expensive devices to replace. Operators of facilities such as these generally do not have spares readily available. In the best of cases, a large operator of a number of plants may have one or two un-energized spare transformers that could be re-located to one of many plants that they operate over a region. If no transformer is readily available, the delivery time on a newly manufactured unit typically runs to approximately 12 months or longer. Even with a readily available spare, the process of removing the old transformer, disassembling, shipping, assembling, and installing the spare transformer is a process with a timeline of a few weeks or longer.[35]
Up to 15 months are required to manufacture and test the equipment. Then, the equipment needs to be transported to the site and put into service. Because of the size and weight of these transformers, they can only be transported by ocean vessels, taking several weeks. Once the transformer arrives, even under ideal circumstances, it may take a week or more to transport a transformer, even a short distance, using special trailers. Special heavy lift cranes are also needed to move these transformers. Once on site, the installation process can take several days. From all these steps, it is easy to see that restoration of the grid could easily take years if numerous transformers need to be replaced.
Even with advanced warning, utilities are limited in their ability to quickly harden the grid in advance of a geomagnetic storm. Many researchers have predicted that if a geomagnetic storm at the level of the Carrington Event were to occur, it could take up to ten years to recover and could cost between $1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year alone. Physicist Ying Liu of China’s State Key Laboratory of Space Weather stated that,
An extreme space weather storm – a solar superstorm – is a low-probability, high-consequence event that poses severe threats to critical infrastructures of the modern society. The cost of an extreme space weather event, if it hits Earth, could reach trillions of dollars with a potential recovery time of 4-10 years.[36]
While a severe solar storm is a low-probability event, it can potentially damage large portions of the power grid with a ripple effect on almost every aspect of modern society.
Impacts would be felt on interdependent infrastructures, with, for example, potable water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in about 12-24 hours; and immediate or eventual loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, transportation, fuel resupply, and so on… the effects on these interdependent infrastructures could persist for multiple years, with a potential for significant societal impacts and with economic costs that could be measurable in the several-trillion dollars- per-year range.[37]
Jon Wellinghoff, who served as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2009 to 2013, noted,
Once your electricity is out, your gasoline is out, because you can’t pump the gas anymore. All your transportation’s out, all of your financial transactions are out, of course because there’s no electronics.[38]
Because of the collapse of almost every aspect of modern life, Peter Vincent Pry, Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, dreadfully predicted that if the U.S. power grid were to go down from a solar storm, or a similar pulse generated from a nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere, that approximately 90% of the population would die.
Natural EMP [Electromagnetic Pulse] from a geomagnetic super-storm, like the 1859 Carrington Event or 1921 Railroad Storm, and nuclear EMP attack from terrorists or rogue states, as practiced by North Korea during the nuclear crisis of 2013, are both existential threats that could kill 9 of 10 Americans through starvation, disease, and societal collapse.[39]
United States Representative Trent Frank of Arizona testified before the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies that explored the effects of an EMP. He declared that,
The thing that people don’t realize is it’s the length of the blackout that begins to make it dangerous. Everybody thinks, ‘Oh, well we’ll go outside and we’ll build a campfire and we’ll have a nice evening at home, we’ll break out the candles, it’ll be nice.’ A couple of days like that is okay. A week like that might be okay. But you start looking at two or three months, you start looking at a very dangerous and unthinkable scenario in a society that is as dependent on electric supply as we are.[40]
Even without an extreme solar storm, much of the electric transmission and distribution lines were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s, with a 50-year life expectancy nearing or exceeding this lifespan. Many of the high-voltage transmission lines in the lower 48 states’ power grids are at maximum capacity. With aging equipment, capacity bottlenecks, increased demand, and increasing storm and climate impacts, Americans will likely experience longer and more frequent power interruptions.[41] In addition, natural disasters, such as earthquakes, could take down a large portion of the national power structure. For example, a colossal magnitude earthquake on the west coast of the United States of over 9.0 on the Richter scale and a possible ensuing tsunami[42] could destroy California’s entire energy system.[43]
In July 2012, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections hit where the Earth had been just nine days earlier.[44] The strength of the storm was, in all respects, at least as strong as the 1859 Carrington event, according to Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado. If the timing was different, the event could have been catastrophic to the electrical grid, as well as knocking out satellites. Baker noted, “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces.”[45]
Some people believe these massive X25+ solar flares to be somewhat rare, with an estimate that they happen once every 30 to 150 years.[46] However, physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science estimated a 12% chance of being hit with an extreme solar event every ten years.[47] Riley noted that he was surprised that his analysis showed that the odds were so high and observed that “it is a sobering figure.” This means there is just slightly over a 1 in 100 chance that we could experience a civilization-extinguishing event every year. Because of the limited data on these storms, scientists can’t know how often these events hit the Earth. The Earth may experience a massive game-changing X event tomorrow or many years from now. But what is certain is that eventually, one will hit.
Geomagnetic storms can develop almost instantaneously over large geographic areas and produce significant collateral damage to critical systems. Many warnings from concerned scientists say that electromagnetic space storms from the sun may wipe out telephone lines and television signals, cause bank accounts to disappear, cripple aircraft navigation systems, and leave cities without power supplies for months or years. The devastation caused by a large geomagnetic storm can be extensive as old and decaying power grids grow in vulnerability to disturbances from the space environment.
The general awareness of geomagnetic storms and their inherently more threatening impacts is much less appreciated than more familiar hazards such as earthquakes and hurricanes. Whether we like it or not, all major critical infrastructure providers are interconnected and interdependent. If the grid goes down, everything further down in the supply chain goes down. Every single facet of modern human life would be brought to a grinding halt by domino effects that span well past the electric sector.
In an instant, society could evaporate, and it would be like being seized in a global time machine that transports the world back to how life was in the 1800s. The Carrington event occurred in America’s horse-and-buggy era when a solar storm of this magnitude did not really matter. Today’s society is completely unprepared to live in a 19th-century environment. Our forefathers’ skills had been long forgotten, replaced by a primarily electronics-dependent or modern-world-centric education. Because of our complete reliance on technology and general lack of knowledge of how to live without it, we would be in a substantially worse situation than those who lived before our modern electrical era. Because we know these extreme solar events occur reasonably frequently, it’s not a question of if a massive solar flare will obliterate the backbone of the modern world, but when.
You know that this isn’t science fiction but an all too grotesque reality. The loud voices approaching your door dissolve into the background as it’s overshadowed by the terrifying noise of someone smashing through the front door of your dimly lit house. Your family whimpers in horror. Your white-knuckled hands clamp down on your bat as perspiration drips off your forehead. You think it’s a terrible dream. It must be you cry to yourself, but you know it isn’t.
[1] QER Quadrennial Energy Review) Report: Energy Transmission, Storage, and Distribution Infrastructure, April 2015, p. 3-4.
[2] Seth Blumsack, “How complexity science can help keep the lights on,” Christian Science Monitor, March 2, 2017, http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Complexity/2017/0302/How-complexity-science-can-help-keep-the-lights-on
[3] “Electricity storage can smooth out moment-to-moment variations in electricity demand,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, May 22, 2012, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=6370
[4] “Aging And Unstable, The Nation's Electrical Grid Is The Weakest Link” NPR, August 22, 2016, http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=490932307
[5] Seth Blumsack, “How complexity science can help keep the lights on,” Christian Science Monitor, March 2, 2017, http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Complexity/2017/0302/How-complexity-science-can-help-keep-the-lights-on
[6] Steve Reilly, and Ryan Sabalow, “Power grid security fears surge since 2003 blackout,” USA Today, March 24, 2015, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/03/24/power-grid-security-solutions-and-ideas-arose-after-2003-blackout/24892721
[7] “The Sun,” Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Development (NICADD), http://nicadd.niu.edu/~macc/162/class_5b.pdf
[8] “NASA: Understanding the Magnetic Sun”, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), January 29, 2016, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/understanding-the-magnetic-sun
[9] Magnetic Field Lines Tangle as Sun Rotates, The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Center for Science Education, https://scied.ucar.edu/magnetic-field-lines-tangle-sun-rotates
[10] “Solar Flares: What Does It Take to Be X-Class?” NASA, August 9, 2011, https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/X-class-flares.html
[11] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Scales, http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation
[12] Coronal Mass Ejection Prediction Page, Montana State University, http://solar.physics.montana.edu/press/faq.html
[13] K.M. Omatola, and I.C. Okeme, “Impacts of solar storms on energy and communications technologies,” Archives of Applied Science Research, 2012, vol. 4, issue 4, pp. 1825-1832.
[14] Anthony L. Peratt, Physics of the Plasma, Second Edition, 2015, Springer, p. 355.
[15] Ellen Clarke, et al., “An estimation of the Carrington flare magnitude from solar flare effects (sfe) in the geomagnetic records,” RAS National Astronomy Meeting, Glasgow, Scotland, April 2010
[16] Juan José Curto, Josep Castell, and Ferran Del Moral, “Sfe: waiting for the big one,” Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate, 2016, vol. 6, DOI: 10.1051/swsc/2016018
[17] Lewis H. Latimer, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), http://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/lewis-h-latimer
[18] “Magnetic Storms and 'Earth-Currents,” Proceedings of the British Meteorological Society, Vol I. 1861, November 20, to 1863, June 17, p. 76.
[19] K.M. Omatola, and I.C. Okeme, “Impacts of solar storms on energy and communications technologies,” Archives of Applied Science Research, 2012, vol. 4, issue 4, p. 1829.
[20] “Solar Cycle Primer”, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/solarcycle-primer.html
[21] John Kappenman, “Geomagnetic Storms and Their Impacts on the U.S. Power Grid,” Metatech Corporation, January 2010
[22]Doris Elin, “Monster Solar Flare Marks 7th Powerful Sun Storm in 7 Days,” space.com, September 11, 2017, https://www.space.com/38115-sun-monster-solar-flares-seven-days.html
[23] K.M. Omatola, and I.C. Okeme, “Impacts of solar storms on energy and communications technologies,” Archives of Applied Science Research, 2012, vol. 4, issue 4, p. 1829.
[24] John Kappenman, “Geomagnetic Storms and Their Impacts on the U.S. Power Grid,” Metatech Corporation, January 2010
[25] “Sunspot credited with rail tie-up,” New York Times, May 16, 1921, p. 2.
[26] Greg White, “A solar event that already happened in 1921 will kill 280 million Americans when it happens again… NASA says it’s inevitable,” Newstarget, February 29, 2016, http://www.newstarget.com/2016-02-29-a-solar-event-that-already-happened-in-1921-will-kill-280-million-americans-when-it-happens-again-nasa-says-its-inevitable.html
[27] “Sunspot credited with rail tie-up,” New York Times, May 16, 1921, p. 2.
[28] Securing the U.S. Electrical Grid, The Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, 2014, p. 70.
[29] John Kappenman, “Geomagnetic Storms and Their Impacts on the U.S. Power Grid,” Metatech Corporation, January 2010
[30] Securing the U.S. Electrical Grid, The Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, 2014, p. 50.
[31] Jay Lindsay, “25% of New England power generators are more than 40 years old,” Bangor Daily News, October 6, 2011, http://bangordailynews.com/2011/10/06/business/25-of-new-england-power-generators-are-more-than-40-years-old
[32] Joshua D. Rhodes, “The outdated US electric grid is going to cost $5 trillion to replace,” Business Insider, March 16, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/replacing-us-electrical-grid-cost-2017-3
[33] 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, American Society of Civil Engineers, 2017.
[34] Securing the U.S. Electrical Grid, The Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, 2014
[35] John Kappenman, “Geomagnetic Storms and Their Impacts on the U.S. Power Grid,” Metatech Corporation, January 2010
[36] Brid-Aine Parnell, “Massive Solar Superstorm Narrowly Missed Blasting The Earth Back Into The Dark Ages,” Forbes, March 19, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridaineparnell/2014/03/19/massive-solar-superstorm-narrowly-missed-blasting-the-earth-back-into-the-dark-ages
[37] Severe space weather events – understanding societal and economic impacts, 2008, National Research Council, The National Academies Press, p. 77.
[38] David Graham, “When the Lights Go Out,” The Atlantic, September 9, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/how-safe-is-the-us-electrical-grid-really/402640
[39] Elizabeth Harrington, “Hearing: Electric Grid Vulnerable to EMP Witness: Could kill 9 in 10 Americans,” Washington Free Beacon, May 8, 2014, http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hearing-electric-grid-vulnerable-to-emp
[40] Elizabeth Harrington, "Hearing: Electric Grid Vulnerable to EMP Witness: Could kill 9 in 10 Americans," Washington Free Beacon, May 8, 2014, http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hearing-electric-grid-vulnerable-to-emp
[41] 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, American Society of Civil Engineers, 2017.
[42] Kathryn Schulz, “The Really Big One - An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when,” The New Yorker, July 20, 2015.
[43] Jessica Leader, “Will The Next Natural Disaster Doom The Nation’s Energy Grid?” Huffington Post, July 14, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-leader/will-the-next-natural-disaster_b_10972780.html
[44] Brid-Aine Parnell, “Massive Solar Superstorm Narrowly Missed Blasting The Earth Back Into The Dark Ages,” Forbes, March 19, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bridaineparnell/2014/03/19/massive-solar-superstorm-narrowly-missed-blasting-the-earth-back-into-the-dark-ages
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I chuckle about the supposed dangers of infectious disease virology, but not this subject. This discussion is one of, if not the most pressing issue we need to be discussing, debating, demanding action on. Thanks for sharing.
Western NC is experiencing some of this in real time.