EMP event... the potential to end life as we know it


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HEARING: ELECTRIC GRID VULNERABLE TO EMP

Witness: Could kill 9 in 10 Americans


Experts on Capitol Hill Thursday warned that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack aimed at the nation’s electrical grid could leave the majority of Americans dead.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hearing-electric-grid-vulnerable-to-emp/



No tweeting, no texting, no facebook, no GPS, no cell phones, no internet, no computers, no credit cards, no banking, no electricity, no water, no sewer, no gasoline, no cars, no food...

...what would you do?


Greg

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Read a book, play my guitar, play with my dogs, learn how to cook, read a cookbook, play with my cat, argue with family over food, watch family leave for new utopia, read the back of my shampoo bottles, watch my dogs waste away, learn how to cook my dogs, start new social networking service, watch new social networking service fail without electricity, riot, read my own mind, build shrine out of dog bones, worship shrine, watch days go by, watch electricity go back on, thank dog god, realize I ate my own dogs, browse Facebook.

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HEARING: ELECTRIC GRID VULNERABLE TO EMP

Witness: Could kill 9 in 10 Americans

Experts on Capitol Hill Thursday warned that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack aimed at the nation’s electrical grid could leave the majority of Americans dead.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hearing-electric-grid-vulnerable-to-emp/

No tweeting, no texting, no facebook, no GPS, no cell phones, no internet, no computers, no credit cards, no banking, no electricity, no water, no sewer, no gasoline, no cars, no food...

...what would you do?

Greg

How did we ever survive those -millenia- without computers, credit cards, banking, electricity.

Water can be fed by gravity and pumped by steam engine. Sewers are gravity fed.

Mankind managed to go 200,000 w.o. gasoline and we always managed to get food. It is called growing crops and keeping herds.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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By the way, it happened in 1859. Somehow we survived.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

Also been there-done that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse#Starfish_Prime

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The show, "Revolution" with the premise of no electricity has been cancelled. A few shows ago, they got the steam railroads up and running again. The first thing to happen if we had no electricity would be starvation.

I am back from Lancaster, Pennsylvania where we saw Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and during the trip it was nice to see the Amish in their buggies. I imagine horse power would become the norm.

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Virtually the only emp we have to worry about is -natural emp- which will be cause by Coronal Mass Ejections. Yes, they do get big enough to take down entire electrical networks. Their effect is devastating but temporary and if a major nation does get hit by one the electrical networks will be designed to go down fast and clean so there will be no wide spread destruction of transformers.

Now that we have transistor based micro electronic switching we can go back to long haul D.C. power transmission. We only need A.C. locally to step up and step down voltages. So the new network grids will be even more sturdy against CME ejection

events. There will also be a lot of backup transformer equipment kept safe under Faraday Cages to quickly restore any power grids and provide temporary power boosts.

We can never fully escape CME produced electrical events but we can keep the follow on circumstances manageable.

One of these days when we have learned to penetrate to the mantle at reasonable cost we can see to it that all electric power generation is -local-. In short we won't need the grids as much.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Kyle writes:

Read a book, play my guitar, play with my dogs...

So far, so good... :smile:

learn how to cook

Oh, oh... with what? No electricity, no natural gas. Markets already completely looted in a day. No food. No water.

Greg

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Bob writes:

How did we ever survive those -millennia- without computers, credit cards, banking, electricity.

Who are you trying to kid, Bob? :laugh:

Most people today have already degenerated into pathetically weak helpless whining little babies who can't even survive without their health insurance nipple to suck on, let alone their prescription drugs. An EMP event nixes both.

Face facts.

Things are far more fragile than they used to be,

because people are far less than they used to be.

America is just a giant Wall-E cruise ship...

machine+3.jpg

Greg

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The show, "Revolution" with the premise of no electricity has been cancelled. A few shows ago, they got the steam railroads up and running again. The first thing to happen if we had no electricity would be starvation.

I am back from Lancaster, Pennsylvania where we saw Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and during the trip it was nice to see the Amish in their buggies. I imagine horse power would become the norm.

Good. That show was just awful.

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Kyle writes:

Read a book, play my guitar, play with my dogs...

So far, so good... :smile:

learn how to cook

Oh, oh... with what? No electricity, no natural gas. Markets already completely looted in a day. No food. No water.

Greg

Never cooked over an open fire?

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Kyle writes:

Never cooked over an open fire?

Sure. :smile:

I built a rocket stove out of a few cinderblocks for less than ten bucks.

IMG_7878_zps4bd73b06.jpg

It can cook a meal just by burning twigs. For portable cooking I also use a Silverfire. (This is my only pic.)

IMG_7844_zpseb9b5e5b.jpg

Found a pic of the whole stove.

sf-silver-fire-survivor-rocket-stove.jpg

It's highly efficient and uses heated secondary air for more complete combustion with a minimum amount of fuel.

Greg

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Bob writes:

How did we ever survive those -millennia- without computers, credit cards, banking, electricity.

Who are you trying to kid, Bob? :laugh:

Most people today have already degenerated into pathetically weak helpless whining little babies who can't even survive without their health insurance nipple to suck on, let alone their prescription drugs. An EMP event nixes both.

Face facts.

Things are far more fragile than they used to be,

because people are far less than they used to be.

America is just a giant Wall-E cruise ship...

machine+3.jpg

Greg

I simply allude to historical fact. Many weakling will be put off if deprived of their toys, but many will adapt and live without them.

You manage to do without many toys I assume. Why would you suppose your are one of only few folks who can survive?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Kyle writes:

Read a book, play my guitar, play with my dogs...

So far, so good... :smile:

learn how to cook

Oh, oh... with what? No electricity, no natural gas. Markets already completely looted in a day. No food. No water.

Greg

There are those who will hunt, make fire and boil the water the nearby stream for cooking and drinking. There will be sufficient survivors but survivors who in a fairly short time can restore much of what is lost. A CME event is a point event. It does not keep on destroying, as did for instance the Siberian Traps, a set of volcanic eruptions that lasted a million years. The CME follow on will not destroy knowledge which is in peoples heads and down in ink on paper which will survive nicely, thank you.

If Europe Civilization could survive the dark ages and triumph over them then the follow damages from a super CME should not degrade life for more than a generation or two. We will survive and come back even stronger.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Bob writes:

I simply allude to historical fact. Many weakling will be put off if deprived of their toys, but many will adapt and live without them.

Some will to be sure.

I'm referring to just one representative example of what happens when the healthcare insurance nipple gets ripped out of the mouths of helpless dependent "babies".

You manage to do without many toys I assume.

It's not difficult. It's just a personal choice.

Why would you suppose your are one of only few folks who can survive?

Survival is never guaranteed for anyone because we all are going to die from something...

...but I do take the story of Noah seriously. :wink:

Greg

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Vaguely related, but this conversation brings to my mind a prolific series of novels by the late John D. MacDonald, who's protagonist lived on a house boat in Fort Lauderdale. Travis McGee,an intelligent individualist, eccentric action man, and society drop-out, who resisted owning a credit card, and anything of a bureaucratic nature. When his cache of cash on the boat would run low he would take on a single P.I. assignment usually involving a gorgeous woman and a lot of money. Whatever money he recovered, the deal was he'd take half. Superb books, I think set in the 70's and 80's, with the most memorably vicious psychos in fiction.

(MacDonald wrote the non-McGee novel 'Cape Fear', made into a great movie).

Anyhow. That sort of life always seemed to represent for me the perfect freedom from society, while living in it. Any country where someone like a Travis McGee could live, enjoy and operate beneath the radar, free of society's mores and government interference, seemed to me the most ideally moral society and government.

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Anyhow. That sort of life always seemed to represent for me the perfect freedom from society, while living in it. Any country where someone like a Travis could live, enjoy and operate beneath the radar, free of society's mores and government interference, seemed to me the most ideally moral society and government.

It did not represent freedom from society perfect or otherwise. he still had to buy his stuff from vendors.

You want to be free from society? Then grow your own food, Make your own clothes. Build or find your own dwelling. Take on the task of self defense 100 percent and depend on no one. Are you sick? Then treat and cure yourself. Do you have appendicitis? Then remove your own appendix. Etc. Etc. Etc. Self sufficiency is a bullshit delusion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Survival is never guaranteed for anyone because we all are going to die from something...

...but I do take the story of Noah seriously. :wink:

Greg

It is just a story.

Hobbes pointed out that the solitary life is nasty, brutish and short. He was right. Humans do best when they live in communities where labor can be specialize and defense collectivized. Individual heroes do not win wars. Successful armies do.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Anyhow. That sort of life always seemed to represent for me the perfect freedom from society, while living in it. Any country where someone like a Travis could live, enjoy and operate beneath the radar, free of society's mores and government interference, seemed to me the most ideally moral society and government.

It did not represent freedom from society perfect or otherwise. he still had to buy his stuff from vendors.

You want to be free from society? Then grow your own food, Make your own clothes. Build or find your own dwelling. Take on the task of self defense 100 percent and depend on no one. Are you sick? Then treat and cure yourself. Do you have appendicitis? Then remove your own appendix. Etc. Etc. Etc. Self sufficiency is a bullshit delusion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I don't agree with your all-exclusive idea of freedom, from society (or government).

To be free, IS to be able to select whichever aspects of society suit one's needs and wants. While avoiding whatever doesn't.

Does society exist 'for' you - or do you exist 'for' society, and failing which, must you remove yourself totally? in essence.

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To be free, IS to be able to select whichever aspects of society suit one's needs and wants. While avoiding whatever doesn't.

Does society exist 'for' you - or do you exist 'for' society, and failing which, must you remove yourself totally? in essence.

You have described shopping around which is not freedom from society or detachment from society nor is it total independence.

Society exists. I was born into a society and learned to live in that society. There is no "for". One lives according to what he knows and according to the nature of the world in which he finds himself.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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To be free, IS to be able to select whichever aspects of society suit one's needs and wants. While avoiding whatever doesn't.

Does society exist 'for' you - or do you exist 'for' society, and failing which, must you remove yourself totally? in essence.

You have described shopping around which is not freedom from society or detachment from society nor is it total independence.

Society exists. I was born into a society and learned to live in that society. There is no "for". One lives according to what he knows and according to the nature of the world in which he finds himself.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes, and "the nature of the world in which he finds himself" might not be what is required by the nature of man.

In other words, a society of obligation and duty - in which he must start 'paying back' as soon as he's able.

The extent of "detachment" and independence should be his to choose. Or else, it most definitely is "for".

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To be free, IS to be able to select whichever aspects of society suit one's needs and wants. While avoiding whatever doesn't.

Does society exist 'for' you - or do you exist 'for' society, and failing which, must you remove yourself totally? in essence.

To be free is to be unconstrained by anything except the physical laws of nature.

The minute social and/or moral constraints are introduced one is not longer entirely free.

Virtually all of us are constrained to some extent by moral or social forces.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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You have a public life, you have a private life. As long as you behave yourself in public (respect others rights to peaceful voluntary interaction) your private life should be as inviolably private as you choose to make it. Common courtesy and respect of others rights is no more a constraint on our freedom than gravity and the necessity to not jump off a cliff is a restraint on our freedom to fly. Or the fact that I can't simply imagine some point on the earth and teleport myself there instantly with my mind is a restraint on my freedom, unless your definition of freedom is so broad as to render it useless.

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To be free, IS to be able to select whichever aspects of society suit one's needs and wants. While avoiding whatever doesn't.

Does society exist 'for' you - or do you exist 'for' society, and failing which, must you remove yourself totally? in essence.

To be free is to be unconstrained by anything except the physical laws of nature.

The minute social and/or moral constraints are introduced one is not longer entirely free.

Virtually all of us are constrained to some extent by moral or social forces.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The first two sentences, agreed whole-heartedly.

The third is disconnected.

Why? By whose standards? This implies society is what it is, and cannot ever be different..Nor should be.

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Bob writes:

It is just a story.

it's a story with a moral. That's the real value of any story... a lesson we can learn from it. It's a template of the process of civilization's moral degeneration and the consequences set into motion when an overwhelming majority of people become evil.

"The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination and intention of all human thinking was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved at heart. So the Lord said, I will destroy, blot out, and wipe away mankind, whom I have created from the face of the ground not only man, but the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air for it grieves Me and makes Me regretful that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. This is the history of the generations of Noah. Noah was a just and righteous man, blameless in his evil generation; Noah walked in habitual fellowship with God."

Don't be foolish enough to think for a moment it couldn't happen again. That process is already well under way right now. American society is rotting away from the inside out as we speak.

Hobbes pointed out that the solitary life is nasty, brutish and short.

No one said anything about a solitary life. It's stupid to try to run away from the world. That solves nothing because you only take yourself and all your problems with you.

It's learning how to live IN this world just as it is... but without being OF this world. That is, not taking your behavioral cues from the immorality around you, but instead responding to the objective common sense of what's right inside of yourself by building an ark. :wink:

Greg

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"

Don't be foolish enough to think for a moment it couldn't happen again. That process is already well under way right now. American society is rotting away from the inside out as we speak.

To which I respond: Every gret nation and empire has rotted away in the fullness of time. And the U.S. is only 5 percent of the world's population. There are many other places where interesting things arfe happenikng.

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