<story><title>The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines</title><url>https://daily.jstor.org/the-carrington-event-of-1859-disrupted-telegraph-lines/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Turskarama</author><text>The big risk is a bunch of transformers blow up, essentially taking the grid down.  Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the advantage of the grid... this would likely set civilization back pretty far, a new dark age is far from impossible.</text></item><item><author>dskrepps</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve wondered for a while. Lots of people seem to think a Carrington Event will simply fry all small electronics and make everything stop working, but from my understanding all it&amp;#x27;ll actually do is cause power surges in long transmission lines and disrupt wireless signals. Apparently telegraph lines sparked and shocked people. So what effect will that actually have now? Will a massive power surge go through my house and destroy everything plugged in, and thus indirectly my desktop computer? Will every house on the grid catch fire, destroying all modern cities? Or will substations and transformers be destroyed but shield homes themselves from catastrophic damage? Will wildfires destroy every forest anywhere near modern infrastructure?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ianburrell</author><text>I read that it is fairly easy to protect equipment by grounding it. But that requires properly grounding lots of gear, and the power companies aren&amp;#x27;t willing to spend the money.&lt;p&gt;Also, the Carrington event has plenty of notice before arrives at Earth. It would be possible to shut down the grid, and maybe disconnect all the transformers. It would require a cold start, but better to shutdown for a day than forever. The problem is that this requires the power companies to practice for a shutdown and cold start.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Carrington Event of 1859 disrupted telegraph lines</title><url>https://daily.jstor.org/the-carrington-event-of-1859-disrupted-telegraph-lines/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Turskarama</author><text>The big risk is a bunch of transformers blow up, essentially taking the grid down.  Since we would have to bootstrap the grid again without the advantage of the grid... this would likely set civilization back pretty far, a new dark age is far from impossible.</text></item><item><author>dskrepps</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve wondered for a while. Lots of people seem to think a Carrington Event will simply fry all small electronics and make everything stop working, but from my understanding all it&amp;#x27;ll actually do is cause power surges in long transmission lines and disrupt wireless signals. Apparently telegraph lines sparked and shocked people. So what effect will that actually have now? Will a massive power surge go through my house and destroy everything plugged in, and thus indirectly my desktop computer? Will every house on the grid catch fire, destroying all modern cities? Or will substations and transformers be destroyed but shield homes themselves from catastrophic damage? Will wildfires destroy every forest anywhere near modern infrastructure?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hattmall</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t modern transformers have surge decoupling devices? The same thing happens with lightning and long transmission lines and isn&amp;#x27;t that why lights will flicker during storms.</text></comment>