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The U.S. Just Ran a Solar Storm Emergency Drill. The Real Deal Would Be a Catastrophe (gizmodo.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"The exercise was held from May 8 to 9, 2024, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and at a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) site in Denver, Colorado."

Article refers to a PDF of the report it's based on:

https://www.jhuapl.edu/sites/default/files/2025-04/Space-Weather-TTX-Report-Summary-v3-FINAL.pdf

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I have an old safe where i keep some old tech and power banks - just junk really but the Faraday is enough for any solar flare and i think it looks cool. Not sure what good that would do if all cell towers and satellites are fried though. Even fiber is unlikely to operate as I imagine most switches are not secured.

Last time I did research on this I came out entirely unconvinced of value of prepping here. Just the usual water, gas stove and bags of rice is really best bet and invest everything else back to local communities because economies of scale kicks ass.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

During the recent Iberian Peninsula Blackout, which in practice meant a whole day without power and most of it without water, thanks to a past phase of mine as a bit of a prepper I:

Had a windup radio which I used to keep up with what was going on and some entertainment. It also works as a flashlight, so covered that side also.
Quickly concluded that the water supply of the city I live in was likely to get compromised because the pumps are powered from mains so the first thing I did when I got home was fill a bunch of containers with water, most of which I ended up using. Also I already had 10L of drinking water stored just in case.
Had some freeze dried food so wasn't worried about running out of food (though 1 day is nowehere near enough to empty normal food reserves if you keep a few cans of food around, so I never got close to having to use it).
My habbit of having some cash with me meant I could buy a bit of extra food from a local grocer which was open at the start of the blackout. If you pay everything electronically, you're not only screwed in situation were mains power goes down but you're even vulnerable to the consequences of banks having problems with their systems (which happens once in a while)

Anyway, my point is not to go full prepper, my point is that some elements of that minset and practices will cover the far more common kind of problems - which happen maybe once every few years - that leave you without power and water for a few days.

One thing I did find out is that I probably need something like a solar powered powerbank for loading my tablet since that's how I mostly read books nowadays (didn't actually need one in this blackout as it was of just a day and as it was offline the charge was more than enough for it), so I've ordered one.

Little things like that mean you don't actually get unecessary stress in a situation like this.

It's not something that is going to save you from nuclear holocaust or in general the collapse of human civilization, but it will save you from spending days without food or water or the stress of not knowing what's going on, such as in such a long and unsual blackout, a flood or other similar more frequent catastrophes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Do you replace the power banks to keep them charged to 70%? Maybe also add some ham radios and walkie talkies to the stash.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There are powerbanks with solar cells and even in a day which is not sunny, those things will slowly charge the powerbank if you leave it under natural light for a few hours (from what I read you get roughly half the rated power from solar cells in a cloudy day).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah it's a safe in my office and I often go back to it for small projects so the stuff mostly works and in good contion just instead of a plastic box its a big ol' iron safe as a lazy precaution and decoration.

One note on safe as a Faraday though is that it has to be a full metal without any rubber seals as any gaps will leak so an old safe is often perfect for this. It also needs to be closed so you want to disable the lock as it's pita to use otherwise and you'll never touch the devices there.

As you pointed out key to sustainable tech is that it has to be used from time to time as if you just put it away in a basement or something it might as well be as good as dead.