Hi all,
Warning............It's waffle time!
At the start of the year most of us would've looked on suspiciously at anyone claiming the fragility of society.
Hmm? Hindsight is a real kick in the teeth!
We've "escaped" from the real world, filled our time from having to stay home for a bit and judging by the content here on the forum, made barely a mention. OK, we've had a lot more requests for CT callsigns, more CB operators and seen more people aspire to and become Radio Amateurs. CB radio prices went up, especially when new stock ran out.
Perhaps that was a "prepping" thing?......
But you also couldn't get a bicycle for love nor money, flour ran out as people home baked, internet & TV subscriptions demand went through the roof! Were we prepping? Perhaps most of us were just a little bored
Luckily, despite the apparent madness we had our home comforts. (We'll leave the toilet roll fiasco aside for now). We had our electricity and our internet, we could online shop to buy our essentials.....and bicycles, guitars, crafting supplies, cookery books and new sofas to watch all that extra TV we bought. (Who'd have thought TV content would run aground too?!?)
Thank heaven for small mercies eh?
So onto the main point of my latest waffle....what if we'd lost those taken for granted basics?
Take a look at the following link if you may.....
Space Weather - The Carrington Event
Seems events such as mass solar ejections are not the rarity we often think of. If you don't know much about it I'll go into the doom and gloom aspect a little.....but not too much, it's surprisingly enough, a little miserable.
Some of you may have heard about E.M.P. (Electro Magnetic Pulses) and the catastrophic chaos it causes to metallic carrying items.
It's not just a weird science fiction thing or solely the results of a nuclear explosion either. A massive solar ejection event does the same and more.
That's pretty much most of your comfort technology affected or wiped out....from the windings in generators at the power stations to the complicated switching arrangements therein and massive computer reliance to keep the whole thing running. The cables and pylons that distribute the electricity to the consumers, not just you but also the manufacturing and distribution networks that we all rely on.
Most electronic devices will be affected too, especially all those modern devices carrying tiny components, microprocessors and tiny thin little copper tracks to connect them all together. That'll be all of them, not just your phone but also the networks and satellites that support such technology. So even if they manage to "turn the power back on", you may well find the technology that utilised it won't work....no phone, no internet, heck your fridge might not even work!
The ramifications on other technology reliant systems are almost unthinkable too! (Hospital anyone?)
Your radios will undoubtedly be affected, most modern radios carrying the same micro technology with processors, fancy colour screens and pan-adapters. They may well be destroyed, especially with all the cabling and big antennas we hook them up to.
Yeah, someone's gonna mention Valve radios are EMP proof.......not a lot of use if there's no electricity to run it from
'Preppers' may well unravel the tin foil hat they wear to stop government 5G signals from frying their brains and wrap it around their radios instead. The lithium batteries may well be fried with their reliance on additional electronics embedded in them, lead acid batteries will still need to be charged, the charging circuitry and solar panels may well be fried too. Not looking good is it?
We won't be sat around TV's and radios waiting for government updates or them telling us what do do either!
So what's the point of my latest waffle?
We saw a little of what humanity can achieve regardless of technology recently.
We had "clapping" events and other such, all admirable things, all heavily advertised and technology media driven. But, we spoke to our neighbours, for some probably for the first time beyond the polite "Morning" we usually aspire to. We probably spoke to the neighbour of our neighbour, the neighbour across the street and even beyond. We connected....without technology.
If another Carrington event occurs we won't have a choice, the technology may well not be there.
As seen with disaster events around the world people come together, neighbours help each other. We connect and in the human sense not just via wires and radio waves.
When neighbours have to rely on each other we don't care about their background, their ethnicity, their religious or political beliefs. We don't care about their career and salary, what car they drive or how big their TV is. We won't care if they're a CBer or Ham.
We also won't mind one bit when they hand you a glass of milk to quench your thirst but that they can't spell 'pasteurised'
We reap what we sow.
Perhaps it's worth being pleasant to each other......even if there is no disaster event.
All the best, take care and above all, be nice.
Victor
Yesterday at 9:01 pm by 
Subject: Solar Storms & our Fragile Society 
