Tinfoil hat conversation? Carrington Event?

[KE9BXE]

People seem to forget that older cars, along with large generators and trucks, still use electrical systems to start the engine, and keep it running. Those systems are likely to be damaged in the mentioned scenarios.

As for the questions about how badly our modern electronic items would be affected; there are a lot of variables. Start with if they are inside a structure or not, and how much deflection does that structure offer? Are the items connected to any external conductors? The difference in various technologies in the items makes some more susceptible to damage. There is no reasonable way to guess.

I was a military EMC tech, and have worked inside military comms sites. We maintained the NEMP hardened cabinets. Even then, the level of concern about the equipment had waned, so that protective equipment was allowed to be removed as it degraded. Hopefully some of that equipment has been replaced/upgraded.

The best prepping advice related to EMP / Coronal Mass Ejections was this: Get a world-class faraday cage and have your $10 multimeters inside of it. If we have a manmade or natural event, everything doesn't break, but lots of stuff can. Having meters to quickly diagnose broken electrical items will result in the fastest recovery time.

I thought that was pretty sound advice that is low-cost and low-effort preparedness.

Another really great idea I heard of but haven't pursued is to get an old ipad and install the whole wikipedia database for offline reading. If your internet is down and something needs fixing, you probably can figure it out with the world's largest encyclopedia.

 

[Falcon9h]

The Carrington Event wiped out US telegraph lines. It took 7 years to repair them. Since it was the 1860s, it was a minor inconvenience at best.

An EMP attack (e.g. blowing up a nuke in the ionosphere) would have a devastating effect on the covered area. Most infrastructure is not EMP resistant. Only about 20% of all financial servers have an EMP protected backup (e.g. you have no money, you can’t prove you ever did). The military takes this threat quite seriously because it would be hard to determine the threat actor so retaliation may not be possible. Their models suggest in an orchastrated attack, tens or hundreds of millions would die in such an impacted region. Major transformers would take a decade to bring back online. No water pumps. No fuel pumps. Cars made after the mid-1970s are busted. Etc.

Interestingly enough, such an attack via nuke would have minimal to no lethal radiation to organic life, nor would it damage any buildings.

Not sure if that’s what you wanted to know, but there ya go.

In the case of a nuke or EMP blasting us back into the stone age, the only prep I'd need would be a vial and syringe of Nembutal. Really, now, who would really want to live in that kind of situation? I'd check out first.

 

[Falcon9h]

If the Carrington Event happened today over the same geographic area, many millions would die. No vehicle made after about 1976 would operate. Substations and major transformers would take a decade to have fabricated, imported, and installed. Rampant fires would be impossible to extinguish. Looting would be rampant as everyone would be on foot and the ability to bring food into an area quickly enough before starvation occurs would be near impossible, death by dehydration or polluted water would occur in the first month. Attempting to evacuate people via train would take months as there would be dead diesel-electric trains blocking all tracks. Clearing highways of cars to provide inroads for relief vehicles would take many weeks. Many fatalities would occur because the population would be unknowing and unaware of where to go and if/when/where help would be coming.

So to my other answer, the Carrington Event part 2 would be the equal devastation as an EMP based weapon.

The reason radios that are protected from EMP are so important is communication. Most communities are resilient and helpful to one another if they can communicate. The biggest threat would be roving bands of starving city-dwellers heading into rural America since there are better odds of survival where there is food and water. Not everyone in that circumstance would ask for help peacefully. The first 2-4 weeks would be the worst timeframe.

An farraday bag/case of reasonable quality is not cheap, $400-$4000. The contents of that bag would have to be practical and immediately deployable to people that matter. Probably of equal import would be multimeters to start diagnosing and fixing broken stuff.

See my previous comment on Nembutal.

 

[W2JGA]

See my previous comment on Nembutal.

Had to Google the drug.
What benefit would this do for you personally?

I've personally wondered why people hoard vast quantities of ammo(I'm speaking in the terms of thousands of rounds) in preparation of a "Red Dawn" event. If **** hits the planetary fan, and your castle is being stormed by hundreds of troops, does one really have the capability to fend off such an attack while reloading magazine after magazine? I'm quite certain, the majority of gun owners do not have every single round stored in magazines. Which brings me to saying this, I always keep it in the back of my head, always save 1 round for thyself.

 

[trentbob]

I haven't been participating in this thread since it got redundant but in the past I have mentioned that having ammo is a good bartering tool.

In exchange for food water and services just a handful of bullets would be good to use as currency to barter.

Also it's good to be armed with enough ammunition so you can protect what you have. Those who aren't armed or run out of ammunition are going to lose whatever they have, it will be stolen from them.😉

 

[KE9BXE]

I haven't been participating in this thread since it got redundant but in the past I have mentioned that having ammo is a good bartering tool.

In exchange for food water and services just a handful of bullets would be good to use as currency to barter.

Also it's good to be armed with enough ammunition so you can protect what you have. Those who aren't armed or run out of ammunition are going to lose whatever they have, it will be stolen from them.😉

For every 1 in a billion "red dawn" scenario that justifies hoarding ammo, I can give you a pile of anecdotes where people I know made 5-6 figures buying ammo in droves when prices were low, selling when there were shortages. $6 boxes of handgun ammo were being sold for $60 a box about 3 years ago.

 

[W2JGA]

For every 1 in a billion "red dawn" scenario that justifies hoarding ammo, I can give you a pile of anecdotes where people I know made 5-6 figures buying ammo in droves when prices were low, selling when there were shortages. $6 boxes of handgun ammo were being sold for $60 a box about 3 years ago.

I used stimulus money to buy ammo before it went through the roof. Then I tried to sell it to SnapOn tool trucks.

 

[trentbob]

For every 1 in a billion "red dawn" scenario that justifies hoarding ammo, I can give you a pile of anecdotes where people I know made 5-6 figures buying ammo in droves when prices were low, selling when there were shortages. $6 boxes of handgun ammo were being sold for $60 a box about 3 years ago.

Yep a little off topic for the Carrington event but if a catastrophe was to happen due to a solar event similar to the Carrington event having a weapon and plenty of ammo would be something that would be beneficial, I don't have tons of ammo because quite frankly it's too heavy but I have enough that I would be able to barter with maybe 10 bullets at a pop.

As has been said in this thread earlier we would have some kind of warning before an event like the Carrington event would happen because of the large amount of sun observers. That would probably be an interesting period of time when it comes to firearms and ammunition sales.

Interestingly enough the largest shortage of ammo and weapons was after November 2008.. lines around the block at every gun store and everybody was sold out. I'll let you figure out why. Not going to get into it.

As I say if we had warning of another Carrington event it certainly would be a fiasco trying to get ammo and weapons. I've got enough but the darn stuff is heavy!

 

[W2JGA]

Survival of the patient, fittest.

 

[AC9KH]

People seem to forget that older cars, along with large generators and trucks, still use electrical systems to start the engine, and keep it running. Those systems are likely to be damaged in the mentioned scenarios.

There's no way you're going to damage starters or starter wiring with an EMP, nor the starting battery. Batteries are not affected by EMP and field strength up to 50kV/m might damage some sensitive electronics, but not all, and definitely not batteries or starter wiring. Back in the early 2000's when computers starting becoming commonplace in cars the U.S. EMP Commission subjected 50 various models to several blasts up to 50kV/m. Only three were affected by it all, and only one was damaged enough that it wouldn't restart.

Things with hundreds or thousands of miles of ungrounded wiring in early telegraph or modern electrical grid systems are easily damaged. But your favorite power tools and most vehicles will continue to work just fine.

Let's not get too carried away with tinfoil hat stuff here.

 

[Falcon9h]

Had to Google the drug.
What benefit would this do for you personally?

I've personally wondered why people hoard vast quantities of ammo(I'm speaking in the terms of thousands of rounds) in preparation of a "Red Dawn" event. If **** hits the planetary fan, and your castle is being stormed by hundreds of troops, does one really have the capability to fend off such an attack while reloading magazine after magazine? I'm quite certain, the majority of gun owners do not have every single round stored in magazines. Which brings me to saying this, I always keep it in the back of my head, always save 1 round for thyself.

Just another way of saving that round. I have no access to firearms (mental health (or lack thereof) history) so I'd be screwed anyway. Just go to sleep instead of starve.

 

[W2JGA]

Just another way of saving that round. I have no access to firearms (mental health (or lack thereof) history) so I'd be screwed anyway. Just go to sleep instead of starve.

I'd presume you would have to take quite a few of them for the full effect.
No little "NASA" pill?

 

[Falcon9h]

I'd presume you would have to take quite a few of them for the full effect.
No little "NASA" pill?

Injection. One and done.

 

[trentbob]

Injection. One and done.

This is actually a great thread for those who have read it from the beginning, the Carrington event was not EMP as much as it was CME.

I don't think vehicles made after 1975 will work, check out the cool pictures of the Volkswagens previously in this thread.

I don't think we will have loss of life on the same scale as some have said. Life would be different.

As far as injecting nebutol as a method of suicide, not something I thought about as for me personally, survival rules, never thought of suicide. But I guess, in addition to protection of what you have, bartering with bullets and hunting for food a firearm would be certainly available for that purpose.

Phenobarbital is more accessible as it is used to supplement anti-convulsions for epileptic patients, things like nebital, short-acting barbiturate for sleep is rarely used anymore and very difficult to get a hold of, especially IV, it has to be constituted with sterile saline from a powder. I guess Brevatol is still used in surgery.

As far as having a major event like the Carrington event in 1859, I think the chances are there but again we would have warning with the vast number of solar observers around the world. Things could be protected, there is some discussion of Faraday cages in the beginning of the thread.