Enhancing National Preparedness to Space-Weather Events - White House Release????

So here is one that I have seen nothing about until today and I find it really odd.

Source

Enhancing Preparedness for Space-Weather Events

Our Nation’s security, economic vitality, and daily functioning depend on the reliable operations of satellites and aircraft, communications networks, navigation systems, and the electric power grid. As these and other, similar technologies and infrastructures become increasingly ubiquitous and interdependent, the United States – and indeed, the world – faces greater risks from the threats posed by space weather events.

Space weather refers to variations in the space environment between the sun and Earth (and throughout the solar system). In particular, space weather describes the phenomena – solar flares, solar energetic particles, and coronal mass ejections – that impact systems in orbit and on Earth. In recent years, the Obama Administration has played an active role in maintaining and advancing the Nation’s ability to forecast and mitigate the various impacts of space weather. This work has included taking steps to replace aging satellite assets essential to monitoring and forecasting space weather, proposing space-weather standards for both the national and international air space, developing regulations to ensure the continued operation of the electric grid during an extreme space weather event, proposing a new option for replacing crucial Extra High Voltage (EHV) transformers damaged by space weather, and developing domestic production sources for EHV transformers.

Here is the actual document from the White House outlining the strategy:

Source

And the paper outlining the action plan:

www.whitehouse.gov...

So....is there something coming that the government actually knows about and is not telling us? The release and docs were just done on October 29th. I am shocked I did not see more about this here on ATS. This seems like it is right up the old conspiracy alley with the Kill Shot and all being discussed on there all the time.

Take a read over the docs...they are very interesting.

DOOM ON!!!!!!

Haha, this is interesting to say the least, but I think their just moving on to bigger things, understanding/controlling the earths weather must not be enough for the scientists of today

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I have read mumblings about this over the last few years from time to time. It is probably because we are vulnerable digitally to flares from the Sun. Our reliance on electronics mean that the Sun can produce solar flares powerful enough to burn out micro electronics. It has been on the cards for some time to develop strategies. Quite astute really as people might starve as a result of severe damage to the communication and operation web that is building globally and becoming increasingly dependent on its diverse units.

Thanks for posting..A few do believe that space weather effects us much more than we realise. I subscribe to a youtuber who does a top forcast every day 'Suspicious Observers' I will add todays forcast from Ben below..


Will add the WindyMap link for anyone interested..

www.windyty.com...,-2.549,3

Its about damn time the US takes a serious look at hardening the electrical grid. If the grid goes down due to a Solar flare, EMP, or other event, its bye bye to the Economy, and millions of peoples lives. It takes almost 2 years to manufacture the massive transformers used around the nation. While hardening the grid, it would create jobs, enhance our ability to keep the grid alive, and deter any rogue nation from using an EMP device to knock out the grid. Time to wake up, Its not if a solar flare will hit, just a matter of when and how big. The carrington event was not really that big of a solar flare, compared to some that have come of the sun thousands of times bigger, and the Carrington event, fried telegraph lines, lit the poles on fire, just imagine what that would do today.

According to the docs they have a VERY aggressive timeline for having all of this done within 1 year. That seems unfeasible to me. Almost all components of the Action Plan and Strategy are to be completed within one year of the date of issue of the docs which was October 29th.

The conclusion on the Strategy part reads:

Conclusion
Space-weather events pose a significant and complex risk to the Nation’s infrastructure and have the
potential to cause substantial economic and human harm. This Strategy is the first step in addressing the
myriad challenges presented when managing and mitigating the risks posed by both extreme and
ordinary space weather. The six high-level goals and associated objectives outlined in this Strategy
support a collaborative and Federally-coordinated approach to developing effective policies, practices,
and procedures for decreasing the Nation’s vulnerabilities associated with space weather. By
establishing goals for improvements in forecasting, research, preparedness, planning, and domestic and
international engagement, this Strategy will help ensure the Nation’s resilience to the effects of extreme
space-weather events.

Now the Conclusion from the Action Plan:

Conclusion
The activities outlined in this Action Plan represent a merging of national and homeland security
concerns with scientific interests. This effort is only the first step. The Federal Government alone cannot
effectively prepare the Nation for space weather; significant effort must go into engaging the broader
community. Space weather poses a significant and complex risk to critical technology and infrastructure,
and has the potential to cause substantial economic harm. This Action Plan provides a road map for a
collaborative and Federally-coordinated approach to developing effective policies, practices, and
procedures for decreasing the Nation’s vulnerabilities. By specifying tasks that will lead to improvements
in forecasting, research, preparedness, planning, and domestic and international engagement, and
identifying the responsible agencies, this Action Plan will help ensure that the Federal Government and
its domestic and international partners are able to withstand and quickly recover from effects of
extreme space-weather events.

So the action plan conclusion leaves me a bit baffled because of one particular line:

Space weather poses a significant and complex risk to critical technology and infrastructure,
and has the potential to cause substantial economic harm.

So this whole Strategy and Action plan is really just about the economic impact? If something like this happened, millions would die soon after, yet the human impact is not mentioned in the conclusion at all...just seemed off to me.

Think there's any correlation to the announcements today about Mars?

It's official: Mars' atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds

From the live briefing above, we now know that Mars' atmosphere was stripped by solar winds, which blast out from the Sun at around a million miles per hour. Earth is protected from these by our magnetic field, but Mars no longer has one, and so the ions in its once rich atmosphere were stripped away by the Sun and blasted out of the Solar System.

There was a solar storm back in 1989. It took out the power grid in North America and Canada. When I was living in Scotland, transmissions of Northsound Radio were disrupted by Norwegian FM radio stations (all we heard was strange jabbering, and the jingle NRgeee). Before mdnight we had green sheets of light that would cover the sky, along with a reddish/greenish t shape centred on the opposite point of the sky where the Sun would be.

originally posted by: raedar
Think there's any correlation to the announcements today about Mars?

It's official: Mars' atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds

From the live briefing above, we now know that Mars' atmosphere was stripped by solar winds, which blast out from the Sun at around a million miles per hour. Earth is protected from these by our magnetic field, but Mars no longer has one, and so the ions in its once rich atmosphere were stripped away by the Sun and blasted out of the Solar System.

Oh..good catch. I bet the data from NASA had long been available to the White House and it is very likely they are related. You deserve lots of stars...

originally posted by: Glassbender777
Its about damn time the US takes a serious look at hardening the electrical grid. If the grid goes down due to a Solar flare, EMP, or other event, its bye bye to the Economy, and millions of peoples lives. It takes almost 2 years to manufacture the massive transformers used around the nation. While hardening the grid, it would create jobs, enhance our ability to keep the grid alive, and deter any rogue nation from using an EMP device to knock out the grid. Time to wake up, Its not if a solar flare will hit, just a matter of when and how big. The carrington event was not really that big of a solar flare, compared to some that have come of the sun thousands of times bigger, and the Carrington event, fried telegraph lines, lit the poles on fire, just imagine what that would do today.

The grid is about the most crucial thing, if anything happened to that on a big scale from a solar EMP there's the chance of many damaged or wrecked transformers, but no chance of replacing them for years, at least that was written about years ago. I don't know what the situation is as of now.

This is an extract from a pdf prepared by Lloyds in 2013, so it's recent.

"The total U.S. population at risk of extended power outage from a Carrington-level storm is between
20-40 million, with durations of 16 days to 1-2 years. The duration of outages will depend largely on the
availability of spare replacement transformers. If new transformers need to be ordered, the lead-time is likely
to be a minimum of five months. The total economic cost for such a scenario is estimated at $0.6-2.6 trillion
USD "
www.lloyds.com...

This is an article by The Guardian for UK preparedness from July 2015,

www.theguardian.com...

a reply to: Vasa Croe

The telecoms industry has always been worried about solar weather / storms. The satellite insurance industry is always quietly terrified of a massive solar event knocking out one or several satellites. Good to see that the White House is taking it seriously as well to be hones.

originally posted by: smurfy

originally posted by: Glassbender777
Its about damn time the US takes a serious look at hardening the electrical grid. If the grid goes down due to a Solar flare, EMP, or other event, its bye bye to the Economy, and millions of peoples lives. It takes almost 2 years to manufacture the massive transformers used around the nation. While hardening the grid, it would create jobs, enhance our ability to keep the grid alive, and deter any rogue nation from using an EMP device to knock out the grid. Time to wake up, Its not if a solar flare will hit, just a matter of when and how big. The carrington event was not really that big of a solar flare, compared to some that have come of the sun thousands of times bigger, and the Carrington event, fried telegraph lines, lit the poles on fire, just imagine what that would do today.

The grid is about the most crucial thing, if anything happened to that on a big scale from a solar EMP there's the chance of many damaged or wrecked transformers, but no chance of replacing them for years, at least that was written about years ago. I don't know what the situation is as of now.

There's always a lot of rolling capacity in the system. Lose that reserve however and it might be bad. There has been a really good recent report on threats to the US power system, from the cyber angle.

originally posted by: AngryCymraeg

There's always a lot of rolling capacity in the system. Lose that reserve however and it might be bad. There has been a really good recent report on threats to the US power system, from the cyber angle.

I would say the event of a EMP out of a CME is potentially much worse than a controlled shutdown since it would overload a system that's operational, that already happened to North America in the recent past, so that it's being prepared in advance that's the main issue now. Had the 2012 CME hit Earth it would have been a major disaster, with the power system destroyed and much else not working,

More reading, (while the article seems a bit dramatic, it's likely pretty much dead on at the time of writing)

www.extremetech.com...

I believe this is one the most important topics to be addressed for mankind, short of Nuclear bombs and may outweigh that. People think that just shutting off the Grid and other electrical devices would protect the components from a Solar flare inbound, Nope, from what I've read and heard is that the amount of energy from a Big solar flare, would cause the energy to jump and arc from one internal component to another completely frying the devices. And it is truly insane how little people know about just how fragile our way of living has become. In the 1800's when it happened, people were not effected to badly due to how little electricity was used for living, but with everyone and everything running off electricity today, it would be the Kill switch for society. The only way to ensure would be a good warning system, the Electrical grid completely shielded,and extra transformers and other essential components stored in safe areas that were also shielded and grounded. Many Astronauts and people who have gone in space, always comment on how stunned they were to see just how thin the Atmosphere really is. So I could see were a massive solar storm/ flare would strip the atmosphere away, We are in a tiny bubble protecting us from the space, and people take that for granted.

originally posted by: Vasa Croe

originally posted by: raedar
Think there's any correlation to the announcements today about Mars?

It's official: Mars' atmosphere was stripped away by solar winds

From the live briefing above, we now know that Mars' atmosphere was stripped by solar winds, which blast out from the Sun at around a million miles per hour. Earth is protected from these by our magnetic field, but Mars no longer has one, and so the ions in its once rich atmosphere were stripped away by the Sun and blasted out of the Solar System.

Oh..good catch. I bet the data from NASA had long been available to the White House and it is very likely they are related. You deserve lots of stars...

Agree. And you do, too, so...S&Fs.

Yeah, the U.S. power grid has been probably one of the least protected in the world. Maybe they're finally taking some steps to improve that situation.

The U.S. Congress just hasn't been willing to pass a bill, called the SHIELD Act. Here's some old stuff...

www.govtrack.us...

www.shieldact.com...

And a more recent iteration...

www.congress.gov...

They've been dragging their feet for YEARS. I'm sure I posted a thread or in a thread about this many moons ago. I will see if I can find it. [here]

And [here] was a follow-on thread.

a reply to: smurfy

Did you read my link? The Lloyd's report is on something far worse than a controlled shut-down - it's about a deliberate attempt to wreck the power transmission system of the USA on the Eastern grid by making the power generators malfunction, wrecking them. It's unlikely but it's possible - and the economic affects would be devastating.

Not to mention that we'd have Fukushima level events happening everywhere there is a nuclear power plant.

If there is no power to run the cooling pumps, boom!

Anywhere near, or down wind, one of these places would not be where you wanted to stay:

originally posted by: AngryCymraeg
a reply to: smurfy

Did you read my link? The Lloyd's report is on something far worse than a controlled shut-down - it's about a deliberate attempt to wreck the power transmission system of the USA on the Eastern grid by making the power generators malfunction, wrecking them. It's unlikely but it's possible - and the economic affects would be devastating.

I did.