• Nawor3565@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    One of these hit Earth in the late 1800’s, and it was wild. Telegraph lines were setting on fire and people would get shocked just from touching the telegraphs. And that was when we had just barely started to wrap the world in conductive wire, if this happened now we would be majorly screwed.

    • SandbagTiara2816@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Would we? I remember reading Ted Koppel’s book Lights Out a few years ago, but I’d assume that utilities, grid operators, and governments have been making efforts to improve grid resilience

      • itsprobablyfine@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah but the power going out is what is supposed to happen. Its a good thing. It means the fault was cleared and the area made safe. The issue with one of these events is were not currently protecting against it in a lot of places. So real bad things have the potential of happening WITHOUT the power going out. No breakers tripping (or not tripping fast enough) means more equipment damage. It currently takes over a year to build a HV transformer, and that’s with power. What happens when 500 all explode at the same time (cause the power didn’t go out fast enough) and we need to replace them all at once? Without power?

        • can@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah but the power going out is what is supposed to happen. Its a good thing. It means the fault was cleared and the area made safe.

          No, it means a tree fell on a power line.