“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
Note: “Would Be a Catastrophe” even back when the agencies involved in mitigating the disaster still existed.
Oy. I really don’t want to see what happens when we’re faced with an actual challenge. This is… yikes.
I would get a case of beer and go to the library and read until the internet was back on. You can’t stop my escapism that easily.
You know those stories where the world is reduced to a post-apocalypse after a natural event? What if that’s only what happens in the US, and the rest of the world recovers with ease due to extant rescue services?
If it wasn’t for the stupid Darrel Dixon show, my head canon of the walking dead only affecting America would still stand.
They literally just walk, and it would be pretty obvious that everyone is infected after the first year or so of people dying from the flu and shit. Any country with competent leadership could have squashed the zombies in a couple months.
After experiencing the covid-19 outbreak I am now fully convinced that a zombie apocalypse is feasible, there would be people denying the existence of the zombie virus, just going to the infected an getting bitten because they wanted a pizza or something, that and people just drenching themselves in bleach or something because they heard that keep the zombies away from some dude online. Stuff like that.
Stuck having to go to work in a zombie apocalypse because you’re an “essential worker”.
Isn’t that the case in the 28 X later series? Like England fell to a zombie apocalypse but the rest of the world is doing fine?
Wellllll the implications of the ending of 28 weeks later is that the rest of the world had a reprieve but are fucked eventually…
Any country with competent leadership could have squashed the zombies in a couple months.
True but you underestimate people stupidity.
I’ve always thought that if I’m in a zombie apocalypse im just gonna carry super soakers filled with hydrogen peroxide
…and simply agrees to never, ever, set foot in North America.
I’m in.
Not sure, though, how this ploy would work out for our fine fellows in South America, Mexico, and Canada, the ones currently belabored with being the closest neighbours to The Wastelands.
Not sure, though, how this ploy would work out for our fine fellows in South America and Canada, the ones currently belabored with being the closest neighbours…
Fuck Mexico, I guess.
My sincere apologies, Mexico is definitely on the good list.
Just uhhh… Build a wall, I guess?
Oooh, so that’s why apocalyptic movies are almost always only US oriented
I remember a Tumblr (maybe) post with a similar concept, but about Australia and the Mad Max series.
There are A LOT of BIG countries with big electric grids in the world today. Which countries GRIDS get hit the worst depends on which side of the Earth is facing the ‘hit’. Could the West (US, Brazil) or Europe or the East (China, India).
It is a little more complex than that. You cannot only consider how big is a country or how big is its grid.
If the Europe would be hit by a solar storm, assuming that not all of it was hit we can recover the grid in about a month and the blackout would not be longer than maybe a week.But a solar storm would destroy also everything else, so how big is the grid is really irrelevant when you basically have every other piece (excluded the few hardened enough) destroyed.
lol we couldn’t even prepare for fascist takeover of the country. why tf would anyone think we’d be prepared for a solar firestorm
Invest in metal stoves and big tents today!
I’m not a doomsday prepper, but stuff like this makes me want to sequester some gear…
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.
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.
Do you replace the power banks to keep them charged to 70%? Maybe also add some ham radios and walkie talkies to the stash.
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).
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.
the Faraday is enough for any solar flare
Faraday cages are useful. But CMEs are not solar flares. They are very different (though sometimes loosely correlated) phenomena.
I don’t think it will matter. We need modern logistics to produce and get food to people. Without that 90% of people will starve in the first few months.
It’s good to have supplies for regional disasters and events that only last a few weeks or months. But if the national grid is going to be out for a year or more and things like fuel and food can’t be transported and stored at key locations then it’s all going to shit.
you cab use it unless you have it.
get what you need, take what you want.
They said we weren’t prepared for a pandemic, either.
Shit we gotta fix this.
Man you know it’s bad when you’re rooting for this or a civil war or nukes. Just to reset everything. I’m so over being an American.
If it makes you feel better, even if you migrate to another country and gain citizenship, you still have to pay income taxes to the US.
You won’t have to pay anything unless you’re pulling in the equivalent of >$126,500 USD in foreign income. Then you’re taxed on what you make above that. My H&R Block lady here in Germany told me all about it when I file every year. And boy howdy is fuuuuucking stupid that I’m having to file US taxes every year. I could stop, but then everything falls apart for me.
This is news to me and so fucked up for a country that considers itself “land of the free”. I hate it here.
If you want to renounce your US citizenship to get away from that onerous requirement, you have to pay a fee (about $2k) and also get screwed on a lot of US taxes on investments (forcing you to treat all capital gains as realized, for example). Part of my definition of freedom is that you don’t have to pay someone money for permission to leave.
That $126,500 number refers to the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE), but it’s not a hard threshold below which you’re totally off the hook. U.S. citizens abroad still have to file a tax return if their income exceeds the standard filing requirement (around $14k+ for single filers). And the FEIE only applies to earned income, not investment income or retirement income. It’s not automatic, you have to qualify under the bona fide residence or physical presence test, and file the right forms (like Form 2555) to claim it.
Even if you’re making well under $126k, you still have to file, and you might owe something depending on your situation.
I’ve filed for 7 years straight and never owed a cent. Oddly, got a little back, 2 years straight. Might have been the covid money, which even more laughable as I didn’t set foot, much less work, in the US for the entirety of the pandemic. Single, no property or other taxable assets and no additional sources of income outside my monthly paycheck from my Euro employers. If I, me broke that $126k threshold, then I’d have to pay something. Getting there. Let’s see if the USA doesn’t collapse on itself first*
(* I hope not.)
If the country has a bilateral tax agreement with the US and your income is not high by middle-class standards, you can deduct the foreign tax from the US tax. Foreign tax is typically higher if you’re anywhere in Europe of the developed world (leaving out the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia). You still have to file in the US, which is an inconvenience and an expense, but you’re unlikely to be double-taxed.
Don’t look up
good thing we got rid of fema in 2025 then
im just not gonna worry about the sun
It’s gonna get you!
Im starting to think the fermi paradox is based around what philosophy it follows. “Efficiency” like lean or robustness like six sigma.
If a transmissions company tried to spend money preparing for a disaster like this, their shareholders would sue them into the ground and lobby to make it illegal to acknowledge the existence of the sun.
I mean, having a tested and proven DR/BCM plan is kind of an important part of being a serious business…
Prior to Trump and his saboteurs getting into office, US grid operators were pretty good at planning for these events.
