Scientists at NASA have been warning for some time of the dangers of space weather affecting the earth, and particularly the danger of solar storms. With the sun due to reach the top of both its 22-year magnetic energy cycle and 11-year Sunspot cycle in 2013, there’s real danger of magnetic energy damaging electronic equipment.
“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be”, Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, told the Daily Telegraph, adding that preparations were similar to those in a hurricane season, where authorities knew a problem was imminent but did not know how serious it would be.
The 11-year solar cycle is only an average, and sometimes lasts 9, or sometimes lasts 13 years. The last time it peaked, in 1859, it wasn’t such an issue because the earth wasn’t anywhere near as technologically developed. This time, however, with a mobile phone in every pocket and a PC in every home, the damage could be rather more severe.
So here’s Wired’s six top tips for keeping yourself, your family and your data safe during a geomagnetic storm.
Buy a Faraday cage
A Faraday cage is an enclosure of conducting material that blocks out external static electric fields. If the conductor is thick enough, and the holes are smaller than the incoming electromagnetic radiation’s wavelength, then that radiation won’t be able to pass through. This is the reason why phones don’t work in some buildings and lifts, why microwaves don’t cook you, and is why some shoplifters line their pockets or bags with tinfoil to confound RFID detectors.
So make or buy yourself a Faraday cage, and if you’ve got a computer or external hard drive you just can’t be without, then keep it inside. The only problem, though, is that you can’t plug it in. Any wire that runs from the outside to the inside can be used as an aerial, and transmit the very electromagnetic radiation that you’re trying to avoid. So keep things unplugged unless you absolutely need them.
Stuff all your cash under your mattress
Almost all modern banking is conducted electronically. While every bank has vaults full of ingots and other valuables, your cash actually exists in a database, albeit one that’s backed up in multiple locations across the world, so that a disaster that’s confined to a local area can’t cause too many problems that won’t be resolved by a swift restoration of a backup.
However, that policy doesn’t work for global events. If that database, along with all its backups, gets wiped by a particularly nasty solar flare, then so does your money. Get it out of the bank, and in a safer, more physical, place instead. Bury it in the garden, hide it in your roof, or stuff it under the mattress. Just get it out of that database.
Get yourself a generator
The power grids of northern Europe, especially Britain, are particularly flaky. A well-aimed and timed flare could easily knock out power to large areas of Britain for days, and potentially even large areas of the whole world for months, depending on the damage. A 1989 storm, which was rather less powerful than the 2013 event is likely to be, knocked out the Hydro-Québec power grid, sent satellites spinning out of control and halted all trading on Toronto’s stock market.
So grab yourself a petrol-powered generator, and stockpile some fuel for it. Alternately, hook up a bicycle to a dynamo and a battery. Either way, you’re going to need to be able to still make heat and light in the event of the power being shut off for months at a time.
Don’t plan any holidays
Far more likely than getting stuck at home without power is the risk of getting stuck in a foreign country unable to travel home. While the inside of an aeroplane is essentially a Faraday cage, severe deviations in the Earth’s magnetic field would cause haywire in an aircraft’s navigation systems, making it difficult or impossible for planes to get where they’re going, except by flight.
You thought the ash cloud was bad? The magnetic storm could prove far, far more disruptive for airlines.
Walk everywhere
Similarly, an electrical shutdown could come at any time without warning, meaning that travelling in a large, fast vehicle is a risk that you just don’t want to be taking when traffic lights stop working, street lights go out, and your onboard computer fails.
Far safer is to just buy yourself a comfortable pair of boots and get used to walking everywhere, ideally not too close to the edges of roads. Even if the electrical apocalypse never arrives, you’ll be fitter and know your city better than ever before.
Look up
Lastly, any strong geomagnetic storm will come with extraordinarily intense aurorae. This won’t be just visible at the poles — during the 1989 storm, the aurora borealis was seen as far south as Texas, and the auroras of 1859 are thought to be perhaps the most spectacular ever witnessed throughout recent recorded history.
Such a display could also prove useful as a warning of incoming magnetic disruption. So be sure that you’ve got a camera — not a digital one, obviously, pointed at the sky so that you can show your kids how you lived through the great geomagnetic storm of 2013.
