[kaivi]

I've always been hearing that solar flares and the resulting geomagnetic storms pose danger to hard drives and electronics. Is there any truth to it?

Recently I've been building a server room, and naturally a question of EM insulation came up. If I were to protect my servers from this, I needed to wrap the room in a grounded mesh with holes of λ in diameter. What wavelengths am I protecting against? I couldn't find an answer online, perhaps because there isn't a mechanism which could flip bits or otherwise cause potential difference across my electronics, after a coronal ejecta reaches Earth. I can imagine how charged solar wind can interact with our atmosphere and cause voltage on long stretches of cable like telegraph or electricity lines, and consumers have surge protectors for this in multiple parts of the grid.

Is there something that I've missed?

[rrock]

Bit flips from cosmic rays. Earth’s magnetic field helps to shield us, but is disrupted now. I work with a CCD camera in a sub basement lab. On a normal day we see a stray cosmic ray every couple of minutes (as a hot pixel). On a day like today, might be every couple of seconds.

[tivert]

>> I've always been hearing that solar flares and the resulting geomagnetic storms pose danger to hard drives and electronics. Is there any truth to it?

> Bit flips from cosmic rays.

I don't think that's it. IIRC, if a geomagnetic storm/coronal mass ejection is big enough, it can cause certain effects that are similar to an EMP. What the OP is talking about sounds like a distorted version of that danger: a nuclear EMP could directly fry microelectronics, a solar storm is a kind of EMP (solar EMP), but is missing most of the effects that could directly damage microelectronics, and many people conflate the two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Types

[cronix]

Yes, but during the Carrington Event, electrical wires became overloaded and blowing out equipment attached to "the grid."

I've had a computer blow out (sparks, smoke and everything) due to a power surge when the main power went out and then back on, rapidly.

So while the "direct" causes might be different between EMP and CME, the end results are basically the same. I could only imagine what our current (very power sensitive) electronics would do in that scenario.

From the wikipedia Carrington Event you posted:

> Because of the geomagnetically induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks.[22] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.

[tivert]

> I've had a computer blow out (sparks, smoke and everything) due to a power surge when the main power went out and then back on, rapidly.

> So while the "direct" causes might be different between EMP and CME, the end results are basically the same.

Not necessarily. My understanding is a CME solar EMP would take out grid-connected devices (via power surges over the grid), but leave most unconnected devices unharmed (e.g. laptops running on battery), but a nuclear EMP would take out both.

[cronix]

But it would also likely take out the grid itself. If all of the massive power cables strewn all over, connected to very large expensive power station transformers, become overloaded at the same time from a CME, I don't predict good things for those transformers and a lot of other things. The laptop would not be able to be recharged without solar or something. It takes a long time (1-2 years is my understanding) to get one single transformer at a power station, under ideal conditions. They are basically made to order, and backlogged.

[cshimmin]

True, but the hot pixels you see in the CCD isn't from bit flips. Rather the CCD is properly doing its job of collecting electrons. It's just that spurious electrons are being produced by the cosmic rays' ionization trail (as opposed to photoelectron in normal operation).

[anamexis]

What's the difference? Aren't bit flips also just spurious electrons being produced by the cosmic rays' ionization trail?

[akiselev]

It’s an excitation of the sensor. It may be interpreted somewhat like a bit flip when converted to an image, but it’s normal for image sensors to experience a lot of noise, going back to the days of film. It may just be eliminated by the denoising algorithm like most spurious electrons/photons.

[godelski]

Bitflip is when a high energy particle changes the state of a memory address or signal in a wire.

Hot pixels are when the CCD (camera sensor) achieves its max level and becomes bright. Pixel overloaded (should also result in spillover).

Difference is really just what part of the system receives the energy. For example, you can overload a pixel with a laser, but you also should get spillover. Bit flips tend to be more localized, affecting only one part. In reality, the difference doesn't matter too much, as long as we're keeping our discussion to cosmic events. But also note that images experience a lot of (non-gaussian) noise and plenty of this is from cosmic excitation as well as from other natural and man made sources. Just the levels are a lot lower and unlikely to result in a bitflip (which is a pretty high energy event).

[cshimmin]

Pretty much this. But the point is that a bitflip would be like, your CCD was supposed to read out value 0b00000 = 0 but due to cosmic ray interference, it read out 0b10000 = 16 instead.

Instead, what's happening in GGP's experiment is that actual electrons, created in the bulk of the active silicon region by a passing cosmic ray, are getting detected by the CCD, and it will (correctly) read out some value between 00000 and 11111, depending on how many electrons it saw. In principle you can actually make a histogram of these readout values and observe the Bethe-Bloch distribution of energy loss for ionizing particles through the (very thin) bulk of silicon! On the other hand, random bit flips (which are much rarer!) would just give you a random distribution of the numbers {00000, 00001, 00010, 00100, 01000, 10000}.

[ortusdux]

I like to put "Cosmic ray flipped a bit" into bug reports.

[throwaway894345]

I used to work as a contractor for John Deere and one of the engineers there would capriciously insist on adding runtime consistency checks in code review because "you never know if lightning might strike or a cosmic ray flips a bit in RAM". This was not for any life-or-death software, it was for the infotainment stuff which was already insanely buggy beginning with the Bosch radio we had sourced and carrying into the ambiguous protocol John Deere designed to speak with the radio and the application code the lowest-bidder contractors wrote before hiring me to fix it (lightning strikes and cosmic rays were the least of their worries).

So the radio would fail to connect to many bluetooth devices at the time (because Bosch), the application had no way of telling what state the radio (that it was meant to speak to) was in (because of the faulty protocol), and the application was riddled with other bugs (because lowest-bidder contractors), but by god it was safe from lightning and cosmic rays (except not really because they could just as easily alter the program as the state the program was operating on).

[MichaelZuo]

I don't get the example, it sounds flat out better then doing nothing otherwise.

[throwaway894345]

Well, the alternative was to invest the time into the many glaring concrete bugs rather than hypothetical 'cosmic ray' bit flips. I don't have a fundamental problem with runtime consistency checks if there's some compelling concern and a clear up-front policy for when/where to add them (as opposed to dealing with the whims of a capricious code reviewer).

[westmeal]

We all have those anal coworkers

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I remember hearing about this (not sure if there's a better article; this is literally the first one I found): https://www.thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-h....

The story goes that Mario 64 speedrunner accidentally triggered a glitch which was thought to require that a particular value is "true" (Mario is touching a ceiling) which was not in this case. The following glitch hunt had many people concluding that the most likely thing that happened was a bit-flip via cosmic radiation which caused the exact distance change which could have otherwise been caused by a different but similar glitch.

[dilyevsky]

There was a famous story how Google couldn’t produce a working index for months because they used non ecc memory for their servers. This was like 20 years ago.

[exitb]

That’s cool, is that some sort of specialized equipment, or could that observation be replicated by an amateur with a RAW-capable camera?

[csdvrx]

Put a lid on. Continuously take pictures. Look for deltas in the pixel values

[_joel]

Would make an interesting increase in RNG entropy ;)

[tudorw]

annoying, but kind of awesome :)

[mannykannot]

I'm nowhere near an expert, but the only mechanism that I have heard of for them causing damage is through inducing large currents in long power transmission lines (and, formerly, long telegraph and telephone lines.) I would guess that the risk to electronic devices themselves is less than from a nearby thunderstorm, and that measures to protect from damage via lightning's effects on your external power supply would also be adequate protection from geomagnetic storms.

[bob1029]

This is my understanding as well. The length/scale of the conductive element is directly proportional to how much danger is involved.

The modern power grid has lots of places where it can trip nearly instantaneously upon adverse conditions. Assuming we can automatically trip any segments of transmission, I think most of the damage could be isolated. Long conductors that aren't connected to anything can't cause any damage beyond the lines themselves.

I don't think transformers and generators sitting in storage are going to feel much of anything.

[f5ve]

I can't answer your question directly. But a while back I did study up on the 100-year solar flare (i.e. the equivalent of the 100-year flood). I was curious exactly how bad this would be for society.

As I recall it would be bad and do a lot of damage in the short term. Lots of things, especially in communications, would obviously be damaged and very expensive to fix. But hard drives would mostly be ok and therefore the most crucial pillars of society would emerge intact.

[cout]

What about SSDs?

[ceejayoz]

Day-to-day ones aren't really worth worrying about.

Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event would probably make quite a mess, of the nature where individual server rooms are probably a secondary consideration.

[Lapalux]

Wow!

Telegraphs

Because of the geomagnetically induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks.[22] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[23] Some operators were able to continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.[24][25] The following conversation occurred between two operators of the American telegraph line between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, on the night of 2 September 1859 and reported in the Boston Evening Traveler:

    Boston operator (to Portland operator): "Please cut off your battery [power source] entirely for fifteen minutes."

    Portland operator: "Will do so. It is now disconnected."

    Boston: "Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?"

    Portland: "Better than with our batteries on. – Current comes and goes gradually."

    Boston: "My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble."

    Portland: "Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?"

    Boston: "Yes. Go ahead."

The conversation was carried on for around two hours using no battery power at all and working solely with the current induced by the aurora, the first time on record that more than a word or two was transmitted in such manner.[26]

[post-it]

It's neat that both telegraph operators seemed to immediately know what was going on and why. Professionals with good debugging skills.

[mensetmanusman]

It’s so professional it seems more like a dialog between operators in a Star Trek fleet.

[yamtaddle]

I often stumble on mundane interactions or writing from the past (usually the 19th or the first half of the 20th century) and legitimately wonder if the "society is gradually crumbling, we're going backwards as a culture" people are actually onto something.

[toss1]

Awesome! Very cool to see those professionals show such casual deep knowledge of their systems.

Makes me think it would be very cool if the aurora at this level were constant or at least consistent. We'd have effectively unlimited clean and easy power...

[mensetmanusman]

‘Unlimited’, but actually harvesting the rotating iron core’s angular momentum until it stopped and the earth was destroyed :D

[toss1]

Yes!

Question, 'tho — to what extent is the geomagnetic field necessary, adding, or diminishing the effect?

For sure, as the charged particles arrive, their paths are being bent by the magnetic field, so stealing energy from the core.

But to what extent are we 'harvesting' that energy?

Seems the flares would still create a gradient across dozens or hundreds of miles of wire even without the core and our geomagnetic field.

If the field is enhancing or multiplying that effect, then we can certainly be said to be harvesting that energy. But, if it is neutral or diminishing the induced currents, it seems just like a side effect.

Also makes me wonder how much energy is there, and how long solar flares would take to deplete it...

[Steltek]

Given this is early Morse code, I wonder if these question-answer bits are actually Q-codes being exchanged rather than those exact words being transmitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_code#All_services_(QRA%E2%80...

[maxerickson]

Checking the dates, no.

Carrington Event was in 1859, the first Q codes in the early 1900s.

[shireboy]

What a great anecdote. Makes me think of Tesla’s (the person not the company) vision of wireless power distribution through the air. Can’t we just put a big tesla coil in orbit and beam that down to power today’s “telegraph”

[marcosdumay]

Well, since you evidently never played SimCity 2000...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

This is not a new idea, and we can do much better than powering a distributed network.

[godelski]

> Recently I've been building a server room, and naturally a question of EM insulation came up. If I were to protect my servers from this, I needed to wrap the room in a grounded mesh with holes of λ in diameter. What wavelengths am I protecting against?

I used to build space radiation shields. I'll give you three answers.

What you should do:

Throw up a few sheets of metalized mylar or some aluminum foil. Make sure everything (including the foil) is electrically isolated and grounded. Be more worried about the grid more than the air. Don't let the grid kill your components, because it WILL be overloaded.

You want to be very secure:

Do the above, but be in a concrete building. Better if under ground. Idk, add some chicken-wire or other mesh? Don't ground to the grid, ground to the ground (use a grounding rod and bury it deep).

The overkill (an explanation):

Ground based radiation shields tend to be different than space based as you don't care about weight on earth. How to stop radiation? Mass. Even still, the two follow a pattern: layers of differing material. Plastics (sometimes doped with boron, titanium, or other materials) are good insulation and protect well against neutrons (not much of a worry for you unless we're talking nuclear weapons), but you'll still want some because these are layered with conductors (copper or aluminum). Conductors pick up charged particles (the majority of radiation).

There is a lot of confusion about radiation and it took me awhile to actually learn this. People will talk about attenuation distances and {alpha,beta,neutron}-cross-sections, but if we're talking about high energy particles, then a lot of this doesn't actually matter. Mass does. So don't worry about optimizing materials or any of that, just put mass in the way. Reading told me one thing but testing and simulation told me another thing. These cross-sections and attenuation depths are mostly for lower energy particles (like you'd find in a reactor). Your mass doesn't have to include any metal, but that will help because the biggest component is that you'll want some grounding. Also, use ECC memory and other such server grade components.

[korse]

You haven't missed too much. The cosmic ray bit-flip guys have a point, but that is very hard to shield against and probably won't kill your servers. See this paper for a deeper dive. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

In regards to the Faraday cage (grounded mesh), assuming you have a very good path to ground and a sufficiently robust mesh material, you are shielding against any emissions with a wavelength larger than λ. You will have better results versus wavelengths that are much larger however. If you want a deeper dive on that, you can actually read Faraday, or Wikipedia or just ask your search engine about a basic dipole antennae and work up from there.

Many computer components are somewhat shielded/tolerant of standard levels of RF interference in the environment so you might not even need to bother (depending on application). Normally (in my experience) you see problems arise with sensors, digital control lines and some human interface devices in very noisy environments (industrial facilities with a lot of high power variable speed electric motors).

Regarding aperture size λ, figure out what source of RF you're most concerned about, determine the range of wavelengths emitted, concentrate on the most powerful bands and then make your aperture smaller than that. Examples are 'the sun', cosmic rays, north korean nukes, the welding robots on the other side of the wall etc.

Finally, if you're going to shield, don't half ass it or you waste money. Gaps around doors, or anywhere you poke cable through a wall can cause problems if not handled correctly.

[dallyo]

Maybe look at material about EMP weapon effects, I imagine it's probably the same kind of risks. I think solar flare risk is overblown though.

[crashingintoyou]

> I think solar flare risk is overblown though.

What you'll find on the insurance side of thing is this sort of claim from Lloyds of London (https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the...):

> A Carrington-level, extreme geomagnetic storm is almost inevitable in the future. While the probability of an extreme storm occurring is relatively low at any given time, it is almost inevitable that one will occur eventually. Historical auroral records suggest a return period of 50 years for Quebec-level storms and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event that occurred 154 years ago.

If anything I think the solar flare risk is understated.

[captainbland]

> 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event that occurred 154 years ago.

Wow. I knew this was a possibility but I didn't know we were overdue. Echoes of COVID a bit as a "once in a hundred years pandemic".

Looking forward to the space mandated holiday to be honest.

[godshatter]

The document posted gives a range from 100 to 250 years, but I'd like to see some more scientific estimates.

I'm more worried about electrical lines shorting out transformers than I am about the world's data being erased all in one go. The Carrington event showed large amounts of current generated on long telegraph lines. Data is protected by error checking and surge protectors. Electrical lines are protected by old transformers that like to catch on fire when they short out.

[throwway120385]

If it happens during fire season we may not be able to stop the resulting fires from burning the entire west coast of the US.

[__MatrixMan__]

We have a lot more wires lying around than they did in 1859, so that's a lot more induced current than they had to deal with. They probably had all of the fires out within a day or two--I'm not sure we'd be so lucky.

I wonder if we have enough replacement parts on hand to recover after an event like that. Given our labyrinthine supply chains, if it becomes a manufacturing bottleneck it could take years to retool.

In a morbid way though, I'm also looking forward to the holiday. I'm really curious to see what changes we make while the lights and cameras and payment systems are offline.

[yamtaddle]

The first episode of Connections—"The Trigger Effect"—plus times I've read here and other places that the destruction of a lot of critical power infrastructure in a big chunk of just the US could leave power off for weeks before replacements can be procured, even with the whole rest of the world functioning fine, make me... pessimistic that we'll do very well, in such a situation.

No clue what sort of plans major governments have for it. Hopefully they have some. We're incredibly dependent on electricity—the point of that Connections episode was largely that human history is a series of events in which we take on some critical new technology, it permits a huge boom in productivity/population/whatever, and from then on, we're flat-out dependent on it to avoid disaster—and that, now (for 1978 values of "now"), electricity has become one of those things that we have to have or most of us will die.

[dylan604]

If the power was out in large swaths of urban areas, then a lot more people would suddenly be able to see the night sky. A similar thing happened in parts of the LA area after the '91 Northridge earthquake.

[bobwaycott]

I believe you mean ‘94. That was a fun one. ;)

[dallyo]

Well it's a very hypothetical black swan type situation. I don't think it's a sensible use of resources to prepare for a badly understood phenomenon with uncertain probability. If and when it happens things will get fixed, and we will learn from the experience.

That document is a very interesting read though, thank you. I don't fully trust insurers though - it's in their interest to create a feeling of risk.

[toss1]

>>If and when it happens things will get fixed

Yes, but the timing of those fixes could be an enormous problem

From what I've read, a large part of the problem will be burnt-out transformers all over the grid, from the major stations down to the street-level. Replacing any one of those is only a job of a few hours, when you have one available. The problem is that fabricating them takes a long time, and there is nowhere near enough inventory to replace the numbers that would fry in a Carrington-like event (or an EMP attack). It could take YEARS to replace them, during which time the economy is pretty much back to the 1800s, but with 2000s-level population to feed.

The estimates to create a stockpile of transformers so that they could be replaced in weeks-to months range around $500 million. It would give the nation a huge strategic economic advantage to be able to fully recover on a timescale of double-digit weeks instead of years. But, since the problem is so un-sexy that it is never brought up (the last infrastructure bill would have been a good time to do so).

Even if we could individually have power with rooftop solar+battery (also sufficiently protected), it'd be hard to thrive with the entire transport web broken (no grid electricity to pump gasoline/diesel, etc.).

Still, I want to know how vulnerable is rooftop solar, and what it would take to protect it (and prevent an event from burning down the house). Any experts have some pointers?

[CamperBob2]

Geomagnetic effects happen on scales measured in tens or hundreds of miles/km. There is no particular threat to rooftop solar unless the event is on a scale comparable to a nearby EMP burst from a nuke attack. In which case you probably aren't too concerned about your solar installation as a first order priority.

It also isn't correct to assume that the grid is wholly unprotected. Substations have extensive protection in the form of interrupters. We will lose power in a Carrington scenario, potentially for days, but there won't be an apocalypse of exploding transformers. If that happens, nobody is going to care too much about charging their Teslas. They will be too busy fending off hordes of radioactive zombies.

[dallyo]

Well, I hope you are wrong :) I imagine that most transformers etc are somewhat over-engineered. I mean, they get destroyed by things like lightening strikes, but are we talking about the same energy levels? I really have no idea.

You make a good point about rooftop solar+battery. Perhaps an event like this would make us more open to decentralised energy production.

Regarding how vulnerable solar panels are - in my limited understanding the problem comes from things that will induct electrical currents from EM, so basically anything with long wires (transmission lines and transformers etc.) So I would guess that semiconductors like solar panels would not be damaged directly. I'd also like to hear from any experts though.

[kwhitefoot]

> create a stockpile of transformers

At least one electricity network on the west coast of Norway already does this to cope with the inevitable damage caused by seasonal thunderstorms.

[crashingintoyou]

> it's a very hypothetical black swan type situation. I don't think it's a sensible use of resources to prepare for a badly understood phenomenon with uncertain probability.

That really depends on how much you'd need to spend I think to prep.

There was a US commission evaluating the threat of an EMP attack (http://www.empcommission.org/docs/empc_exec_rpt.pdf) which seems to suggest that radiation-hardening transformers for such an event would also seem likely to protect them from failing due to geomagnetic storms.

The additional cost for radiation hardening:

> New units can be EMP-hardened for a very small fraction of the cost of the non-hardened item, e.g., 1% to 3% of cost, if hardening is done at the time the unit is designed and manufactured. In contrast, retrofitting existing functional components is potentially an order of magnitude more expensive and shouldbe done only for critical system units.

For that sort of overhead I think that it's justifiable to require it of new transformers at least.

[chaxor]

It's important to pilots or frequent flyers. There is substantial evidence of increased probability of getting tumors as pilots. One of the most well understood mechanisms for this phenomenon is the time at high altitude (although there are of course a few others similar to still using leaded fuel for small planes, etc - but these aren't as clear for DNA damage specifically).

So it certainly does matter, but there are different risks that each demographic takes.

[ianburrell]

With EMP, it is important to distinguish between short-range and long-range. Short-range EMP can damage electronics but is primarily caused by nearby nuclear blast which tends to be bigger problem than the EMP. It can also be caused by conventional explosive devices but those cover small area.

Long-range EMP is caused by nuclear blast at high altitude. It induces currents is long conductors but doesn't touch electronics. The main effect is knocking out power over large areas. It has very similar effects to large solar flare.

[TheAceOfHearts]

Solar flare risk is underestimated since it's not something we've previously experienced in full force. Based on conversations I've had with electrical engineers that work for a national power company, they don't have any measures in place to protect us from solar flares bringing down the full power grid.

A sufficiently powerful solar flare event would probably lead to millions of deaths, as I understand it.

[codethief]

> […] bringing down the full power grid. A sufficiently powerful solar flare event would probably lead to millions of deaths

Wait, how did we go from "bringing down the full power grid" to "millions of deaths" so quickly?

[yamtaddle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcOb3Dilzjc

Connections, episode 1, "The Trigger Effect".

TL;DW shit gets very, very dicey in a matter of days if the power goes out—and most of our ways of recovering with any speed rely on power so if it goes out for most or all of the world at once, that's extremely bad.

If it hit the wrong time of year, I could easily see a global power outage killing millions in the very first day. Loss of air conditioning and heating could push it into the millions all on their own.

[SirMaster]

I mean wouldn't most food spoil and tons of secondary effects of not having power for a long time?

Some people think that 90% of people in the USA would die in a year if the electric grid completed failed.

As far as I understand we don't have the parts to repair the grid in any reasonably timely manner.

https://emptaskforce.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/A-Call-to...

[dallyo]

Yeah I think that's a stretch. Likely there would be deaths from hospitals not having power etc. but I can't imagine it being at that scale. Secondary effects from the economic fallout might be worse. This kind of reminds me of the y2k non-event though.

[hanselot]

Well, I'm not a mathematician, but I will hazard that since we have a global population of somewhere around 8 billion we can ask ChatGPT (the cheap one to draw up an estimate for us). Sadly it doesn't wanna be more specific, however I am willing to entertain the number could reach millions. Just the impact on air traffic would be catastrophic, nevermind whatever happens to all the satellites that didn't exist for the last one.

```It's difficult to give an accurate estimate of the number of lives that could be lost in the event of a global-scale transformer destruction due to a Carrington-level solar storm, as there are many variables that could affect the outcome. However, I can provide some information that may be helpful in making an estimate.

A report by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) suggests that a large-scale transformer failure due to a geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) could result in widespread and prolonged power outages, affecting multiple states or even the entire country. The report estimates that the total economic impact of such an event in the United States could range from $1 trillion to $2 trillion, and that recovery could take years.

If we assume that the impact of a GMD-induced transformer failure would be proportionate to the global population, then it's reasonable to assume that the number of lives lost could be in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. This is because prolonged power outages could lead to a wide range of consequences, including shortages of food and water, breakdowns in transportation systems, and disruptions to medical care.

However, it's important to note that the actual number of lives lost would depend on many factors, including the severity and duration of the power outages, the availability of resources and emergency services, and the ability of individuals and governments to respond effectively to the crisis.```

[dallyo]

> Sadly it doesn't wanna be more specific

Typical frustrating GTP :)

That's an interesting response from it, but I would not trust gpt at all to make this kind of estimation - it will only regurgitate permutations of the information that's already out there, and I don't think anyone really knows.

But yes you are probably right that I've underestimated.

[AuthorizedCust]

I’m concerned that the repetitive, sensationalized news coverage will encourage apathy.

Again and again, headlines blare doom narratives about flares, but I am unaware of major impacts recently.

[marcosdumay]

> What wavelengths am I protecting against?

Something around hundreds of meters. It's large enough that people don't treat it like a wave. Also, it's often semi-stationary, so you have to care to make your protection long-lived, and not only surge-based.

Coronal ejecta is formed by charged particles. The ones that can move only a few meters into the atmosphere. You don't have to catch those. There is also no high-frequency EM radiation.

[evgeniysharapov]

Here's famous story about bit-flip changing/affecting results of election in Belgium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Belgium

[joshspankit]

You can mitigate most of it by using ECC memory, a good line-filtering UPS, and some type of error-checking for reads/writes/at-rest.

The last of the risk can be functionally eliminated by your off-site backup.

[egeozcan]

> off-site backup

Underground or at the other side of the planet or both?

[shagie]

Not powered, but the next room over is acceptable for a solar flare.

The issue would be that wires start getting induced current in them ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_curren... ) that arcs and shorts out the device.

However, if you've got a backup tape there's nothing from the current that will flip the bits on the tape itself.

There are good reasons to have the backup be off site (other physical calamities) - but the aurora isn't going to flip any bits on a backup. At worst, it will destroy the machinery from a surge from the grid and an extremely powerful one may destroy the machinery from arcing in the device itself (this would be extremely powerful)... but the media itself is fine.

[joshspankit]

I suspect you’re trying to be sarcastic and/or facetious, but:

Both ideally sure. The more backups and more locations the better. Diminishing returns pretty quickly but why not if the data is important.

Electromagnetic energy from the sun only has a chance of damaging equipment and only some of the bits of that equipment will be affected. You could have two servers in the same datacenter where one gets hit and the other does not. Or even two drives in the same chassis. And even then, it might not be all the data on that drive.

Of course no security is absolute (learned that early from my uncle that owned a convenience store at a lake: He spent extra on doors, locks, windows, etc and someone drove a truck through the brick wall to rob the place). Same here: if a solar event happens that would wipe out all of your onsite and offsite servers “on the surface” then there is a much bigger problem.

[egeozcan]

> I suspect you’re trying to be sarcastic and/or facetious

It really was an honest question. Thanks for the detailed response even though that wasn't obvious.

[kaivi]

> by using ECC memory ECC protects from bit flips, but aren't high-energy particles required for flipping a bit? AFAIK nothing in the solar wind interaction with our atmosphere can produce them. They'd likely arrive earlier than the wind, but I also haven't heard of gamma ray bursts to accompany solar flares...

[shagie]

They are most noticeable for x-rays, though there is an increase in gamma rays too.

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-x-ray-flux

https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radiation-solar-activity

> Solar flares are large eruptions of energy coming off the Sun containing several different forms of energy: heat, magnetic energy, and ionizing radiation. The ionizing radiation released during solar flares includes x-rays and gamma rays. These rays of ionizing radiation can damage satellites because they are in space and are not protected by the Earth’s atmosphere. Magnetic energy from solar flares can interrupt radio communication on Earth or damage communications satellites.

Unless you've got a satellite, this likely isn't impacting you.

Bit flips tend to be from from heavy charged particles. https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/what-are-bit-flips-and...

I believe you're more likely to have a bit flip from radioactive decay in the chip itself than a cosmic ray.