# Sun's Plasma Balls Could Wipe Out Human Civilization



## MSMH (Sep 8, 2009)

Excerpt:


> (NaturalNews) Natural fluctuations in the sun's atmosphere could cause it to fire a giant plasma ball at Earth, shutting down the planet's electric grids and leading to widespread social collapse, according to a report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS).


http://www.naturalnews.com/027217_civilization_water_human_civilization.html

Alternative energy is a "must!"


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## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

Interesting read.

Now and again some one starts a thread about "What if......a EMF were to happen"
Any thing man made absolutely pails compared to what the SUN could/would do . .if. . .

The best way to survive that would be for you to have a Big stash of goodies in the cave that your living in.


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## byexample (Aug 28, 2009)

I'm not sure that alternative energy in the modern sense would be that helpful. A strong enough solar / magnetic event could very well fry unshielded equipment that relies on transistors... and that's just about everything from cars to solar charge controllers to your microwave.

I think the only sure way to insulate one's self and family from this sort of potential disaster is being prepared to live a 19th century lifestyle... or keeping spare power system components in some sort of shielded vault.

This is one of those what if scenarios that I've always found rather fascinating... would be quite a different world if we didn't have access to electricity on a large scale. Our modern society would without doubt completely collapse upon itself... our complete dependence upon electricity makes us very vulnerable to natural and un-natural electromagnetic pulses.

The Sun right now is in one of it's quiet periods... but it's expected to move back into one of it's active periods sometime starting in 2011. There's actually a solar weather service that you can subscribe to at noaa.gov where they put out forecasts and solar event alerts.

Thanks for the link to the article.


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

I think there are more likely SHTF situations than the sun hauking a loogie at us.


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## Guest (Oct 13, 2009)

I put the direct hit from a Coronal Mass Ejection into a fairly low category of probability so it's not something I lose sleep over except for the rare lurid dream.

But it's not in the "not possible" category by a long shot.

A repeat of the Carrington Event that occurred in the mid-nineteenth century might well drive global civilization to its knees. Could get to be pretty ugly as the full extent of the follow-on cascade failures revealed themselves. The electromagnetic pulse would only be the begining, not the end of our problems.

A similar event of a lesser intensity happened in the nineteen twenties I think. Some eletrical grid back then, but not much and what there was would have been fairly robust.

The next predicted solar maximum is supposed to reach its peak in May of 2013 and is expected to be the strongest in fifty years. Now the most I expect we'll get out of that is the rare chance to see the aurora borealis way further south than it normally is. Possibly even as far south as Florida. Maybe.

But if the Earth was to have a direct hit from a Coronal Mass Ejection that would be the time I think it most likely to happen. Fairly unlikely from what I understand, but then so is winning the Power Ball.

.....Alan.


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## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

I'll put my money on us getting hit by a killer asteroid before the sun hits us with a plasma luggie strong enough to kill us.

Any takers?


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## byexample (Aug 28, 2009)

Hmmm. Tempting wager.

I'll bet you one Leghorn rooster and two cute kittens that we get smacked around by the Sun before getting wiped out by a killer asteroid. Note: comets don't count.


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## MSMH (Sep 8, 2009)

byexample said:


> Hmmm. Tempting wager.
> 
> I'll bet you one Leghorn rooster and two cute kittens that we get smacked around by the Sun before getting wiped out by a killer asteroid. Note: comets don't count.


:rotfl:

I am wondering if "offensive" weapons are being developed, in order to knock out our power grids, by unfriendly nations.

Thanks for the web address for noaa.gov.


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## Explorer (Dec 2, 2003)

A.T. Hagan said:


> I put the direct hit from a Coronal Mass Ejection into a fairly low category of probability so it's not something I lose sleep over except for the rare lurid dream.
> 
> But it's not in the "not possible" category by a long shot.
> 
> ...


Winning Power Ball is probably more likely. The Sun is big and the Earth very small. A hit, while possible, is extremely long odds.


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2009)

Explorer said:


> Winning Power Ball is probably more likely. The Sun is big and the Earth very small. A hit, while possible, is extremely long odds.


 You could be right. I don't know how to quantify it. But I will say one big direct hit and one lesser hit in less than two hundred years tells me it's not impossible. I'd say it's in the category of major volcanic eruption probability.

.....Alan.


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## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

byexample

Looks like you just might have lucked out

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-asteroid8-2009oct08,0,3012588.story


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## byexample (Aug 28, 2009)

A.T. Hagan said:


> You could be right. I don't know how to quantify it. But I will say one big direct hit and one lesser hit in less than two hundred years tells me it's not impossible. I'd say it's in the category of major volcanic eruption probability.
> 
> .....Alan.


I have to say that I entirely agree. We may be small... but solar ejections could be huge. You could easily kill a gnat with a flame thrower... even though the gnat is tiny.

And as Alan points out... we have evidence this has happened several times in the last couple hundred years. Compare that to the impact that's thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs... that's a 1 in a million year kind of event.

As far as the question regarding development of offensive weapons that could have this effect... they already exist. I'm sure I've read somewhere that EMP weapons were likely used during the invasion of Iraq. I even saw an overview on how to build an EMP bomb in Scientific American or some similar magazine some years back. The point of the article was that it isn't that hard to do.

And there are other ways to create huge EMPs... namely detonating a large nuclear bomb high up in the atmosphere. I read another article once that detailed that an enemy could detonate a single high-yield nuclear device in the upper atmosphere above the US and likely take out most of our technology in one smack.

In this day and age... regardless of the source... and large EMP would be devastating.


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## Guest (Oct 14, 2009)

Non-nuclear EMP is limited to very small areas and even then at least in the open sources I've been able to access how effective it is seems to be open to question.

Nuclear EMP is a threat for sure, but the "one nuke over the U.S." thing is for megaton class fusion weapons that have to be put there by a fair sized rocket. There are only a handful of nations that have both the nuclear ability and the space launch technology to pull it off. It won't be a surprise (to the likes of NORAD) as to who did it. Anything larger than a golf ball in orbit is tracked. We'll know who put it there.

Coronal Mass Ejections are a wild card. As I said before I don't lose sleep over them, but they have happened before and will happen again in the future. How badly we will be hurt if and when a big one hits us squarely I cannot say. The evidence to date suggests it's going to be bad if we get another Carrington Event. Might not happen in our life times though or those of our children. 

.....Alan.


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## Explorer (Dec 2, 2003)

> And there are other ways to create huge EMPs... namely detonating a large nuclear bomb high up in the atmosphere. I read another article once that detailed that an enemy could detonate a single high-yield nuclear device in the upper atmosphere above the US and likely take out most of our technology in one smack.


Alan is correct in that it must be a fusion weapon. The size required has come down drastically in the last 30 years or so. Then in excess of 50 MT now it is thought 1 MT at about 300 miles up would do it.


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## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

If ya talk nice to me I'll let ya know about another cave . . close to mine.


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## Ken Scharabok (May 11, 2002)

See if your local library can get you a loaner copy of _One Second After_. Don't remember author off hand. Released fairly recently.

Aftermath of EMP blasts over the U.S.


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## MSMH (Sep 8, 2009)

Ken Scharabok said:


> See if your local library can get you a loaner copy of _One Second After_. Don't remember author off hand. Released fairly recently.
> 
> Aftermath of EMP blasts over the U.S.


Thanks! I just requested it at my library. I'm third on the "hold" list. I am looking forward to reading it.


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## byexample (Aug 28, 2009)

Thanks for posting info on this book. Think I'll try to get a copy.


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## featherbottoms (May 28, 2005)

I have just finished reading _Straight to You_ by David Moody. It's about the sun dying, the pulses it emits during that death, and what happens to the people. It's not something I'd care to reread.


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## rileyjo (Feb 14, 2005)

I found this interesting article on the problems of solar flare and the electrical grid. The grid toppled like a series of dominoes about 5 years ago and 50 million people lost power for 3 days. Lucky for us, it was August and everyone just BBq'd and ate all the ice cream in their fridges. I wonder if anything has been done since to reduce the overlapping of the power grid systems.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/21jan_severespaceweather.htm


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## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

I know that an emp or flare or covington event.... basically a bad day for electronics... will render useless anything electronic (transistors)...

But, what will it do to solar panels themselves???

I could see twenty years, after teotw, a world full of solar panels, but no controllers or batteries. I figure I could play some music (portables in a faraday cage) or watch a dvd while the sun was shining.


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## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

Theres a very good chance that all the diodes in a module would be smoked . . . . . 
The voltage spike (s) would play h*ll with all the down stream electronics . . . . . . .

Not a pretty picture...........


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## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

Another thought . . . . . . .I shudder to think what those plasma 'goodies' could\would do to the *BIG* 765-kv and345-kv transmission lines. . . wow . . . . 
Me thinks I'd prefer to keep a healthy distance from those . .and of course the *power stations* on the ends of those lines...........

talk about fire works . .wow


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## damoc (Jul 14, 2007)

i think lead acid batteries will be available long after solar panels have bit the
dust because the lead is recycleable and it wont take long for some clueey
person to start building/recycling them like they used to i think i could do it if i had to.

a thought on total loss of semiconducters

possible generators/alternators could be rigged to produce only half sine wave instead of full then all you would need is capacitance to smooth
the wave and use it to charge battery banks.



just a thought anybody got an opinion?


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## MSMH (Sep 8, 2009)

Just finished *One Second After*. Good book. Thank you, Ken, for recommending it. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack is a real possibility in the USA. Some persons say that it is inevitable.


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## DYngbld (Jun 16, 2009)

Get a good surge suppressor. 

At best you would get a 8 minute warning, of a plasma burst from the sun. I agree the EMP could wipe out most electronics, good shielding would help. I think I might build a Faraday cage, if I had a lot of electronic controlled generation equipment.


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## Ken Scharabok (May 11, 2002)

From what I understand even the absolutely best surge suppressor won't stop an EMP surge from going through it.

Recall reading years ago a debate about EMP starting out a nuclear war. Seems you don't want to send all of your first strike rockets at the same time, with a couple of them being EMP, in that the EMP would likely wipe out their electronics as well. Sending EMPs first alerts your enemy more are coming, giving them time to get off a strike wave of their own.

In _One Second After_ author implies three SCUD-like missiles were filed from converted freighters, which then quickly sank with all hands aboard. Again, from my understanding, using only three over the US they would have to be quite high and quite large. Sort of like trying to fire off a Minuteman from a ship.

Maybe 30-40 years ago the Air Force conducted an experiment in which a Minuteman was rolled out of the back of a C-141, stabilized with a parachute and then fired off. It actually worked. If you want to get rid of the plane rig it with a device which would sense the weight loss, then trigger explosives a couple of minutes later.

Even if terrorist were to take over a silo missile complex they would still have to reprogram them. Submarine? From what I understand the missiles in them are reprogrammed and the crew does not have access to it. And what would terrorist have to gain from it?


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## DYngbld (Jun 16, 2009)

Yes, a surge suppressor would be useless, it was sarcastic. Good shielding however would do wonders, I doubt I could build enough shielding to protect my equipment from a solar blast. My house is well grounded, as is the radio equipment, but I suspect lightning would take me out of service. I unplug stuff when the weather gets questionable. 

A submarine brings up another thought, would a submerged sub be safe from an EMP blast? I would think it might be, depending on how deep it was at the time.


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## Ken Scharabok (May 11, 2002)

If this is a rapid event wouldn't it depend on which side of the Earth was facing the sun at that moment? Sort of like Russian rulette each day. Best scenerio would be the middle of the Pacific Ocean facing the sun at that particular moment. (Sorry about that HI.)


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