McBell
Unbound
My understanding is that the only electronics that get fried from an EMP burst are the electronic that are powered up.
Meaning that all the electronics in warehouses, dumps, stores, etc. will be fine.
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Stone Age
- Thread starter The Hammer
- Start date
Meaning that all the electronics in warehouses, dumps, stores, etc. will be fine.
What about the actual availability of the resources needed?
Tamino
Active Member
True... I think for the sake of this thought experiment, we would have to assume an event X that destroys machinery to such an extent that they cannot be repaired.
But that still would not take away all the resources and materials, since we could recycle the scraps from all of our broken machines. Event X would have to be "Aliens raid the planet and steal all electronics and all machinery" in order do seriously inconveninece us :-D :-D
It doesn't have to be just an emp. I mentioned that more in general, i just couldn't think of any other event that would completely rid us of electronics/technology without large scale warfare as the cause.
McBell
Unbound
Oh.
Well, that is different.
Though you will needs to describe what tech has disappeared.
If you want it all gone, you will need to detail what you mean by "tech"
Basically same as they were before electronics.
McBell
Unbound
I am able to accept that the how the tech "disappeared" is irrelevant and can opinion with out knowing the cause.
exchemist
Veteran Member
I assume so. These can induce currents that can trip power grids, because of the length of the lines. But I don't think they would cause a lot of permanent damage to them. And as for the motors in your fridge, washing machine, suburban train, etc., I don't believe they would be affected at all. It would be a hell of a mess at first, as so many things today are controlled by electronics, but the basic electrical infrastructure should still function, I would have thought. So once you bypassed the fried electronics and switched things on and off as we did up to the 1980s, you would be up and running again. But a lot of guys with ponytails and spiky hair would be out of a job..............we might even have to bring back the fax machine
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Tamino
Active Member
Please no!!! We have only just trained our customers out of using fax..............we might even have to bring back the fax machine
Why would such a "recovery" be desirable?
Heyo
Veteran Member
It's not just electronics, it's also electricity. Something like the Carrington Event could fry our power grids, with the repairs taking years or decades.
Heyo
Veteran Member
Not the Stone Age but a pre-industrial age, let's say the 18th century.
As the survival of most people in the modern world depends on electricity one way or the other, we'd lose a lot of the population, which in turn would delay recovery.
When the West Roman Empire fell, it took us a thousand years to reach the same level of technology again (with a little help of the church). And it wasn't that the knowledge was lost, it still existed in the East Roman Empire. But the lack of technology transfer and missing supply chains left us in the Dark Ages for centuries.
I don't suspect it would take another thousand years to recover, but it would at least take some decades, if not centuries.
My personal chances of survival are somewhat higher than average because I live in a rural area, have access to reasonably clean water and knowledge and skills built by my Living History hobby. Like @Tamino and @The Hammer, I've done some experimental archaeology, and my forge and woodworking shop would make me a valuable member of the surviving community.
exchemist
Veteran Member
You are right it is more serious that I had realised: Ask Ethan: How Prepared Are We For The Next Giant Solar Flare?
The solution seems to be to have a " strategic" supply of transformers to replace blown ones and the ability to shut down the power grid pre-emptively before the pulse arrives.
It looks as though there are people in the power grid industry who are on the case. See for instance this paper on the UK grid: https://raeng.org.uk/media/2iclimo5/space_weather_summary_report.pdf. which suggests a less severe likely impact. I wonder if this may be partly because the length of the lines on a small island like the UK is not enough to induce monster currents. But that's just speculation on my part.
It does not look to me as if we would find all our electricity would be gone for decades. But we could have very prolonged outages which would have fairly catastrophic short term consequences.
Heyo
Veteran Member
The scenario in the OP suggested "tomorrow morning".
Think about how many people depend on life-saving drugs. They have to be produced, usually using electricity, with components, usually transported from far away, out of a web of supply chains. A world-wide power outage of a month will kill ten times more people than Covid. Two months without pumped and refined water will introduce things like typhoid and dysentery in the population centres - without a steady supply of antibiotics. After three months, food will become scarce.
Sure.
We got here the hard way.
To do it again would be eased by having been there.
Industry would start up using engines that have no
electrical system at all, eg, hot tube ignition, diesel.
I'm not sure it would be.
Solar flares are not as nasty as CME.
Agreed, I just didn't know the term at the time of writing the OP
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Ehav4Ever
Well-Known Member
The problem you have with the thought exercise is that there are technologies that have been created to survive various levels of EMP. I have worked in this field before and just because an event happens doesn't mean it renders all tech useless. There are some radiation events that simply change a 1 to a 0 or the reverse and it can effect the operation of certain devices temperarely but not permantly.
Further, the Parker Solar Probe was the first spacecraft to fly into the low solar corona. It assessed the structure and dynamics of the Sun's coronal plasma and magnetic field. It analyzed the energy flow that heats the solar corona and impels the solar wind, and the mechanisms that accelerate energetic particles. In short, the probe flew through a coronal mass ejection from the sun—a powerful eruption of billions of tons of plasma and survived. It spent two days within a CME while just 5.7 million miles (9.2 million kilometers) from the solar [the sun's] surface.
Even if one wants to say that all tech could be knocked out, it would have immediate affects on planes, cars, trains, etc. anything that is in transit in the time the theoretical event happened. It would also affect hospitals, military facilities, etc. but this still doesn't mean that everyon would be in the stone age. There are two problems with the this area of the thought experiment. Appliances like a fireplace, solar oven, power tools or generators won't be affected by an EMP. These non-electric appliances don't necessarily operate with solid-state electronic controls and will probably still work when even after an EMP has blasted through your area.
Lastly, the big problem you have is - what does it mean to live in the stone age? There is a lot of evidence of technological advancement in ever stage of human history. It all depends on what you consider to be techonology. EMP doesn't affect the ability to write and transfer information using low tech methods. It also doesn't affect the ability to build sturcutres. Non-industrialized food production is still done by a number of cultures aruond the word thus one can't say that all of humanity will start from 0.