EMP/Solar flare defence

[Anonymous No.8681905]

Hello /sci/ I'm visiting over from /k/ where the topic of EMPs arose specifically one caused by a solar flare.

Now I'm aware that a solar flare would throw out one hell of a lot of highly charged EM radiation. I'm just curious as to how a person could protect their home from those sorts of levels (which I'm guessing would be greater than any man made EMP).

A few primary questions are:
>If a home is self sufficient I.e. producing it's own electricity how would you best protect things like the solar panels or wind turbines?
>Would it be possible to build a faraday cage into the house? Such as building it into the basement?
>Would individual electronic devices need to be protected or would things like radios simply need to be unplugged? Does same apply to devices that are not plugged in?
>How much potential damage could a solar flare EMP do to the planet considering the small one in the 1800 caused substantial and we were less dependant on tech then?

[Anonymous No.8681913]

>>8681905
You can't really protect your house short of rebuilding all your electronics from the ground up. If we had something like the Carrington event, most of your gizmos would break.

A low cost compromise would just be to
a) make sure you have generators(a big event would probably knock out power globally for several months)
b) a good grounding strategy for your house
c) stick to older electronics. 1950/1960s tube tech is fairly resilient to EMP. Generally, the older you go the more robust to EMI.

You could cage your basement, but for what purpose? By the time you get there the event would be over.

As to maximum damage. Power grid almost certainly. Because there would be a global shortage and the lead time on transformers is several months under good conditions, countries that haven't stockpiled them would probably have a wait 6 months or even years before they can restore their grid.

With respect to other electronics. It is a crap shoot. It depends on the particular EMI characteristics of the storm(which can be quite variable) and the happenstance of the design. (some commercial designs end up EMI resilient by blind luck) But I'd say a decent fraction of all electronics would break if we had a big storm.

[Anonymous No.8681918]

>>8681913
The idea of caging the basement was so that you could store equipment in the basement without fear of it getting fried. That way you couldn't have to move it.

>Generators
Would the EMP not knock them out as well? Or would they have to be caged. Could a couple of small ones be theoretically stored in a caged basement?

>Grounding strategy
What would be a good grounding strategy!

[Anonymous No.8681934]

>>8681918
Yeah, storing equipment in a cage could work. Simple things like old school generators are more resilient, but storing them in a cage is not a bad idea.

A good grounding strategy would be to make sure you have a ground at all. Verify that it is actually connected(to the literal ground) and working. Verify that the wiring is sufficient gauge that it won't just melt if you get a big induced current. Make sure any electronics that you care about are on that ground. (also your faraday cage)

If your house has two prong connectors, you'll need to replace a lot of your wiring. You should also make sure you have a top tier fuse and circuit breaker setup.

The primary mechanism that a storm damages electronics is an induced current from a magnetic resonance which creates a power surge.(which can come in through the electrical grid or just form directly in the circuits of your electronics)

Bad grounds generally come from loop topologies or from poor maintenance.

[Anonymous No.8681941]

>>8681905
So we know that lesser solar flares happen anything fro weekly to several a day, depending on where we are in the cycle, and they range from not having any effect at all to slightly messing up the satellite TV reception.

But what do we know, if anything, about frequency of a big "knock out the power grid and fry all the computers" type event?

The Carrington event is unique in our experience, and I imagine it is not easy to determine probabilities based on one data point -- but rare we looking ta something like the "Yellowstone caldera is about to blow and kill us all" stuff here. in terms of likelihood of happening anytime soon?

[Anonymous No.8681951]

>>8681941
We had a near miss only a couple of years ago, NASA predicts that we can expect a big one within the next ten years.

[Anonymous No.8681955]

>>8681941
There was a smaller event that knocked out canada's power grid in 1989
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm

But they're not really like yellowstone once in every million years events. There is a lot of research on the topic and they've probably happened more than just Carrington. It is hard to get precise, but there are accounts in the historical record of the aurora coming down to the equator which is generally an indication of a whopping big storm.

[Anonymous No.8681956]

>>8681934
Interesting, what would you suggest would be the most resilient wiring/grounding metals and gauge to use?

In all honesty I'm fucked if it happens now. But ive recently bought some land and I'm planning on building my home from the ground up so as many protective means I can build into I feel the better.

[Anonymous No.8681961]

>>8681955
So there are some "warning signs" such as an Aurora from the increased charge in the atmosphere?

[Anonymous No.8681967]

>>8681956
>Interesting, what would you suggest would be the most resilient wiring/grounding metals and gauge to use?

That is outside my area. You might just want to ask a house electrician what is the best stuff he'll install for you.

>>8681961
Normally the aurora happens at the same time or after the main impact. But people read historical accounts of astronomers and what have you. At the time the astronomer might not have known what it was, but today a researcher can look at it and say "holy shit that sounds like a big fucking storm" then they'll look through other writing, diaries etc on the same day and see if they can get more detail from other accounts.

In terms of warning NASA does have heliophysics satellites that can spot a CME with a little bit of warning. Maybe a few days.

I think the thing is that most people don't regularly follow NASA CME bulletins.

[Anonymous No.8681969]

>>8681967
Coolio I'll speak to a sparky about that.

How would one go about following CAME bulletins?

I guess really it depends on how fast the material is ejected from the sun, I imagine it could be anywhere between a few minutes/hours to a few days.

[Anonymous No.8681974]

>>8681969

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/alerts-watches-and-warnings

I wouldn't put a huge amount of faith in this. They say space weather is 10-20 years behind terrestrial weather and think about how badly they missed the boat on El Nino last year.

[Anonymous No.8682000]

>>8681974
I'll keep that in mind however I guess some potential warning is better than no warning.

[Anonymous No.8682053]

>>8681905
solar flares aren't gonna do shit. They are only going to damage things like big transformers connected to long powerlines. There is a good chance you wouldn't need any protection.

Oh and FYI, the entire solar storm threat can be mitigated by installing some big ass resistors at these transformers

[Anonymous No.8682077]

>>8682053
Why is then then, that a lot of the NASA reports say otherwise?

[Anonymous No.8683208]

>>8681905
I'm thinking the sats would take the brunt of the damage.
It would be a nightmare on earth if most of them were lost.