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Disregard disease – Ebola, Zika and whatever else is
cooking out there. Things like - rising sea levels, global shortages of fresh
water, simmering religious tensions, the potential for wars over mineral
resources and what a higher gold price means. Disregard financial calamity,
malfunctioning governments and lying sleazebag politicians leading us down
the garden path.
Forget about climate change, somebody else can deal with
it. Is it to be inflation, disinflation, deflation or stagflation? Is ‘the
Donald’ going to be the next U.S. president? Or is the hawk, disguised as a
dove Clinton, the next president? Will the Fed speed up its interest rate
increases? Lead in the water, fracking. Ozone depletion, species extinction,
population (out of) control.
The herd’s got other things on its mind. Red necks, who
can pee where, who Blake Sheldon is cheating on with.
Maybe the following will wake the herd up. It’s only the
best reason (other than either Hillary or Donald being president of the
United States) any of us has ever heard for owning some gold and silver
bullion in an easily accessible stash. It’s something so devastating, so
cataclysmic, so life changing, so unstoppable that the only way to survive
the resulting wasteland would be to own precious metals and guns. Something
so indefensible against, something so game changing that I’m talking about
each and everyone one of us on this planet taking a forced trip back in time.
“Extreme solar storms pose a threat to all forms of high-technology.
They begin with an explosion--a "solar flare"—in the magnetic
canopy of a sunspot. X-rays and extreme UV radiation reach Earth at light
speed, ionizing the upper layers of our atmosphere; side-effects of this
"solar EMP" include radio blackouts and GPS navigation errors.
Minutes to hours later, the energetic particles arrive. Moving only
slightly slower than light itself, electrons and protons accelerated by the
blast can electrify satellites and damage their electronics. Then come the
CMEs, billion-ton clouds of magnetized plasma that take a day or more to
cross the Sun-Earth divide.“NASA
Science
Every second, the Sun shoots bursts of charged subatomic particles, in the
form of solar wind, into space at speeds of 1 million miles per hour.
Typically, the solar wind is weak enough that Earth’s magnetic field
deflects most of it, like in the NASA illustration below:
 
However, if an especially powerful barrage heads our way, it could easily
penetrate our magnetic field, fry our electric power systems, and kick us
back into the dark ages – all within a matter of hours.
On July 23 2012, the sun unleashed a massive cloud of plasma. The plasma
cloud, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), comprised a solar storm
thought to be the most powerful in at least 150 years. This plasma
cloud exploded from the sun and headed straight through Earth’s orbit - and missed
us by a week! Yep, if it had happened just a week before the plasma cloud
would have had a catastrophic encounter with Earth’s atmosphere.
“The consequences could be devastating for commerce, transportation,
agriculture and food stocks, fuel and water supplies, human health and
medical facilities, national security, and daily life in general.” Steve
Tracton, Capital Weather Gang
The event on July 23, 2012 was a ‘perfect storm.’ A couple of much smaller
previous solar storms had cleared the way, no interference would have
weakened its power, it was lined up exactly opposite the orientation of
Earth’s protector, our magnetic field. All that power would have had not only
a cleared out path straight at us but would have slammed into us with our
defenses out of alignment to the storm and not giving us anywhere near
maximum protection.
Fortunately, the point of eruption on the sun wasn’t Earth-facing.
“I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever
that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012
eruption happened when it did. If the eruption had occurred only one week
earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.” physicist Daniel
Baker, University of Colorado
According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the cloud could
have knocked out electrical and communication grids causing more than $2
trillion in damage globally. NASA said anything that plugs into a wall socket
or electrical outlet could have been disabled – and since everything we use
is, somewhere along the line of its existence, eventually plugged in…well you
get the idea.
“Geomagnetic storms can induce geo-electric fields in the Earth’s
crust, driving electric currents in long conductors on or near the Earth’s
surface. These induced geo-electric fields present a risk to the reliable
operation of electric power systems and may affect gas and oil pipelines,
railways, and other infrastructures that have long conductive paths.
Ionospheric disturbances can adversely affect radio signals that propagate
through the upper atmosphere, disrupting communication, navigation, and
surveillance capabilities over wide areas on timescales ranging from minutes
to hours.
High-frequency radio signals, which are used for airline, maritime,
and emergency communications, are particularly susceptible to ionospheric
disturbances.
Solar Radio Bursts (SRBs)are radio wave emissions from the sun that
can interfere with radar, communication, and tracking signals.
Upper-atmospheric expansion describes an increase in the temperature
and density of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. This change is driven by solar
activity and can have a direct impact on low-Earth orbit (LEO) spacecraft
that are susceptible to the effects of atmospheric drag. Increased drag
can pull satellites closer to Earth, changing their orbit, decreasing the
lifespan of space assets, and making satellite tracking difficult.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has to
re-identify hundreds of objects and record their new orbits after a large
solar storm event. During the March 1989 storm event, for example, the NASA's
Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) spacecraft was reported to have "dropped as
if it hit a brick wall" due to the increased atmospheric drag.”
Dailymail.co.uk
Maybe we’re without our electrical and communications grids for years –
think about that, think about facing, think about living without electricity
for an extended indefinite period of time. You’ve just been knocked back to a
pre-electric age and your ticket ‘back to the future’ does not have a
departure time/date stamp.
Carrington vs Quebec
Is this science fiction? Perhaps some chicken littleism on my part?
Sorry but no, solar physicists have compared the 2012 storm that
missed us to the Carrington solar storm of September 1859, a storm that
didn’t miss us and was named after Richard Carrington who documented the
event.
A space storm's impact is measured in nano-Teslas (nT) - the lower the
figure, the more powerful the storm. A moderate storm is around -100 nT;
extreme storms log in around -300 nT.
The Carrington solar storm was three times more powerful than the
strongest space storm in modern memory - the one that cut power to an entire
Canadian province, Quebec, in 1989.
“On Friday March 10, 1989 astronomers witnessed a powerful explosion
on the sun. Within minutes, tangled magnetic forces on the sun had released a
billion-ton cloud of gas. It was like the energy of thousands of nuclear
bombs exploding at the same time. The storm cloud rushed out from the sun,
straight towards Earth, at a million miles an hour. The solar flare that
accompanied the outburst immediately caused short-wave radio interference
On the evening of Monday, March 12 the vast cloud of solar plasma (a
gas of electrically charged particles) finally struck Earth's magnetic field.
The violence of this 'geomagnetic storm' caused spectacular 'northern lights'
that could be seen as far south as Florida and Cuba. The magnetic disturbance
was incredibly intense. It actually created electrical currents in the ground
beneath much of North America. Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents
found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than 2
minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power. During the 12-hour blackout
that followed, millions of people suddenly found themselves in dark office
buildings and underground pedestrian tunnels, and in stalled elevators. Most
people woke up to cold homes for breakfast. The blackout also closed schools
and businesses, kept the Montreal Metro shut during the morning rush hour,
and closed Dorval Airport.
The Quebec Blackout was by no means a local event. Some of the U.S.
electrical utilities had their own cliffhanger problems to deal with. New
York Power lost 150 megawatts the moment the Quebec power grid went down. The
New England Power Pool lost 1,410 megawatts at about the same time. Service
to 96 electrical utilities in New England was interrupted while other
reserves of electrical power were brought online. Luckily, the U.S. had the
power to spare at the time…but just barely. Across the United States from
coast to coast, over 200 power grid problems erupted within minutes of the
start of the March 13 storm. Fortunately none of these caused a blackout.
In space, some satellites actually tumbled out of control for several
hours. NASA's TDRS-1 communication satellite recorded over 250 anomalies as
high-energy particles invaded the satellite's sensitive electronics. Even the
Space Shuttle Discovery was having its own mysterious problems. A sensor on
one of the tanks supplying hydrogen to a fuel cell was showing unusually high
pressure readings on March 13. The problem went away just as mysteriously
after the solar storm subsided.
Twenty years later, the March 1989 'Quebec Blackout' has reached
legendary stature, at least among electrical engineers and space scientists.
It is a dramatic example of how solar storms can affect us even here on the
ground. Fortunately, storms as powerful as this are rather rare. It takes
quite a solar wallop to cause anything like the conditions leading up to a
Quebec-style blackout. Typical solar activity 'sunspot' cycles can produce
least two or three large storms, so it really is just a matter of chance
whether one will cause a blackout or not. As it is for hurricanes and
tornadoes, the more we can learn about the sun's 'space weather,' the better
we can prepare for the next storm when it arrives!” Dr. Sten Odenwald,
NASA Astronomer
The 1989 coronal mass ejection that centered on Quebec measured -589 nT.
Carrington’s 1859 solar storm was estimated to have been -1,760 nT.
Some believe the July 23, 2012 ‘perfect storm,’ the one that thankfully
missed, was as powerful as Carrington’s in 1859.
In the 1859 event global telegraph lines sparked and shorted
out, setting fire to telegraph offices in Europe and the U.S. knocking
out the entire existing global communication network.
We’re as completely unprepared, and our much more delicate electronics are
even more exposed and unprotected today then the wiring of our early
communication grid 155 years ago. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to
figure out what would happen to today’s modern electronics if an event of
such magnitude were to hit us again.
“An extreme space weather storm — a solar superstorm — is a
low-probability, high-consequence event that poses severe threats to critical
infrastructures of the modern society. The cost of an extreme space weather
event, if it hits Earth, could reach trillions of dollars with a potential
recovery time of 4-10 years. Therefore, it is paramount to the security and
economic interest of the modern society to understand solar superstorms.”
research physicist Ying D. Liu, China’s State Key Laboratory of Space
Odds
What’s the chances of a Carrington magnitude event hitting us over the
next decade or so? I’m going to leave you with the following…
“In February 2014, physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc.
published a paper in Space Weather entitled "On the probability of
occurrence of extreme space weather events." In it, he analyzed
records of solar storms going back 50+ years. By extrapolating the frequency
of ordinary storms to the extreme, he calculated the odds that a
Carrington-class storm would hit Earth in the next ten years. The answer:
12%.” Pete Riley, Predictive Science, ‘On the probability of occurrence
of extreme space weather events’
Conclusion
Herd I want a divorce, you go live your little doggie like life style - if
you can’t eat it, sleep on it, piss on it or screw it, ignore it. I’m a boy
scout, I believe in being prepared.
Frightening odds, consequences, a little common sense
preparation and precious metals are all on my radar screen. You need to put
them on yours.
Are they?
If not, they should be.
aheadoftheherd.com
Richard lives with his family on a 160 acre ranch in
northern British Columbia. He invests in the resource and biotechnology/pharmaceutical
sectors and is the owner of Aheadoftheherd.com.
Richard’s articles have been published on over 400
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