this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Countless firsthand accounts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have disappeared across the last decade, and it may speak to larger issues with the historical record in the digital age.

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[–] FlyingSquid 38 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Imagine if, in 100 years, there was a massive Carrington Event and most of the world's data was destroyed. How would we piece our history back together?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"The aurora over the Rocky Mountains in the United States was so bright that the glow woke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning."

Lol, this must've been hella confusing.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Luckily, it is possible to shield the power supply from a carrington event at least, and we do have satellites keeping watch. The main issue is making sure all the power infrastructure is actually shielded, which costs money >.<

[–] superduperenigma 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Bro Texas won't even pay to weatherize their power grid and they know cold weather happens every winter.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Can't say you're wrong tbh :p

[–] Cybersteel 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wasn't it because the renewables system broke down

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

No that was the bullshit ercot put out to cover for the fact that fossil fuel production dropped by half or more. Source:

But the majority of the power losses were from gas plants, including 25 gigawatts of capacity that went offline. Coal and nuclear outages cut another 4.5 gigawatts and 1.3 gigawatts respectively, according to the University of Texas at Austin report. Considering that peak demand was about 70 gigawatts, losing about 30 gigawatts from gas, coal and nuclear was a disaster.

Wind energy also performed poorly, starting with ice accumulation that led to some wind farms needing to shut down early in the crisis. Wind power outages peaked at about 9 gigawatts, a number that takes into account wind levels on those days, according to the UT Austin repor

It’s not like wind is blameless, but (the power crisis) wasn’t caused by wind failure,” said Webber. To say otherwise is “at best misleading, at worst an outright lie.”

Natural gas and coal totals 70% of their total generation, and wind was 20%, so losing half of both means fossil fuels was much more impactful.

[–] balder1991 3 points 1 year ago

To be honest this doesn’t make me any more optimistic. I’m sure there are countries that might spend resources on this, but mine 100% won’t. And if the majority of the world is screwed, I guess we can all agree there won’t be any stable place.

This episode of Why Files was really worrying.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty obvious. We build a time machine to go back to 1776. Then, when it malfunctions and sends to 1976 instead we learn the art of The Hustle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We would definitely lose some data but I'm guessing there's a few hundred backups of Wikipedia and the important stuff floating around.

[–] FlyingSquid 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A huge solar storm could wipe out the backups too unless they're stored in a deep vault or something.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Solar storms arent really a risk for small electronics, more so if they aren't connected to the grid. You wouldn't need a deep vault, more like a cupboard.

There is a risk the hard drives wear out before society gets the grid back online and restarts producing hard drives though. We already don't have that many facilities and they would certainly be taken offline, and the knowledge to build those facilities, that might get lost properly when the storm would hit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would it effect optical media like CDs?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Time is more of a concern for CDs. They don't really last that long.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

"All things are made of atoms; little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another."