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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

> Says Baker, "we need to be prepared."

There isn't anything we can really do other than put together protocols to handle the effects of the storm, yeah? Like... we can't re-engineer our power systems to resist being taken out by this, can we? Likely wouldn't be cost effective, I imagine.

BTW, its not mentioned in the article, but are the effects temporary or permanant? I imagine the GPS errors are temporary but it also mentions that it can take out power grids... will it just be a short, forced shutdown for a few hours (rimworld players: I'm wondering if its just like the "solar flare" event).

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The voltage induced in power lines would destroy lots of things connected to them and would require replacement of trillions of dollars of equipment. So it would be permanent in the sense that you couldn’t fix all that equipment by turning it off and then on again.

I heard an expert say that the whole thing could be avoided by simply adding grounding wires to power lines. They kind of already do this for lightning — a grounding rod is shorted by a special material that becomes conductive at high voltage. The high voltage is “dumped” to earth. Put enough of those on power lines and the excess voltage might never reach sensitive equipment down stream.

Part of preparation should include making our system less reliant on a centralized power grid. Shorten food supply lines. Everyone who can should be growing whatever they can in whatever dirt they have. Maybe drill more wells. If the power is out, globally, for even just a few months I’m guessing a very large percentage of the population of developed nations will die.

Better solar science is another thing that can be done. Investing in better ways of forecasting problematic solar events. We do some of that today but much is in its infancy.

There have been discussions for years about EMP-proofing the U.S. grid, which would also protect against this (to whatever degree, I’m not qualified to speculate). I seem to recall it’s surprisingly affordable; there was an article about it on HN last year as I recall.

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