this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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The thing is, we don't know how viable this is in the long term.
For all we know, every 200 years the Earth is hit by a major EMP sunspot event that will fry our cellpones, cell towers, and satellites.
This isn't just speculative. In 1859 a major solar storm took down most of the electronic communication of that time. Back then, that meant telegraph communication. The first major telegraph message had been sent only 15 years before, so world-wide communications didn't suffer too much.
If we had a major storm now, the winners would be those countries and institutions that still retained paper-based communications and information management systems. The losers would be everyone dependent on electronics communications.
That is not true. Paper-based information storage is significantly more unreliable and volatile than electronic storage. Geomagnetic storms of such intensity as the Carrington Event would certainly cause power outages and other inconvenience, sure, but modern integrated circuits based on field-effect transistors would likely be entirely unaffected, and most integrated circuitry is hardened anyway and especially high-density VLSI devices like flagship smartphones that use 5nm manufacturing processes are protected against so many special cases and quantum phenomena like electromigration that a geomagnetic storm would appear to be a very minor problem. Solid-state storage drives are also very reliable in extreme scenarios and most would likely retain their data in the case of a major solar flare. And much data is still saved on optical storage media like DVD, and these are absolutely immune to geomagnetic storms and EMPs. The only thing we really should worry about is our power grid, but we won't lose any significant quantity of data and definitely not such that is integral to the functioning of our technology and society. And Faraday's cage still exists, so a lot of militaries and institutions will probably have made arrangements that make sure their devices are not compromised.
You are correct that there are many devices and plenty of examples of infrastructure that is hardened against such things- but it's just plain wrong to assume it wont be a major problem- Multiple studies have found the damage caused by a solar storm equivalent to the 1859 example would cause trillions of dollars of damage and a lot infrastructure would be down across most of the 1st world for at least months if not years.
It would probably also trigger a lot of violent outbursts from populations around the world, probably a lot of mostly peaceful and fiery looting, riots etc.
Source on the first world countries being down for years?
https://youtu.be/oHHSSJDJ4oo?t=343 This is the video I was remembering, it has sources in the description if you want further reading- and it says 4-10 years, which is insane to think about.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/oHHSSJDJ4oo?t=343
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Agreed, a black start of the entire grid is a huge ordeal. In the situation everyone is without power, people will have to work together to keep society going enough to let those people who will be doing that black start do the work. (Transportation, food, housing, etc.) But as we've seen with the relatively simple coronavirus actions, people are selfish and many will use the situation to try and get a leg up on everyone else.
Sadly, in this modern era the fabric of society & the ties that bind us all are weaker than they've ever been imo-
Perhaps if we were all a bit more civil and selfless and more self sufficient I could see communities coming together to survive a situation like this relatively unscathed, however in this age where everyone's at everyone else's throats over tweets from years ago and trying to ruin people's lives over benign opinions via getting them fired, swatted or what have you- my faith in such a scenario that lacks massive upheaval and violent looting, murder and worse... is near 0.