2012 Nearly Was An Apocalypse, According to NASA

youji itami

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nathan-dts said:
youji itami said:
TheAngryDM said:
"Do you think we'll be hit by a catastrophic solar flare in our lifetime?"

I expect to live another 4 decades. If the chance of being hit by a catastrophic solar flare in one decade is 12%, that means the odds are 48% I'll see one in my lifetime. That's a really easy question. You should have been able to figure it out yourself.
It's been a 155 years since the last time we were hit by a solar flare. The big ones don't happen that often and one missed only 2 years ago I would by $1000 on no solar flare hit this century, easy money.
You'd lose $1000 given that they happen roughly every thirty years. Last time was 2003.
"Had the massive 2012 solar flare event not been a "near miss," the Earth would have been knocked back to the 18th century."

So it's a total click bait article as the solar flare would do nothing after all the 2003 one happened and no one noticed that apocalypse.
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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martyrdrebel27 said:
So, the Mayans were pretty close to being correct then? That's cool. I was really banking on 12/21/12, and was disappointed.
No, the Mayans never predicted the end of the world. More to the point, their calendar would have ended well before 2012, but the people who spread this sort of thing don't seem too hung up on facts.

J Tyran said:
I like the Facebook comments "how would losing electricity be an apocalypse?" Unless power was restored within a week developed nations would be on the brink of economic collapse, cities would be almost uninhabitable, food and water distribution would slow to a trickle and mass transit and the road networks wouldn't function.

The likelihood of restoring it within a week is remote too, there are only a limited amount of facilities and resources to effect repairs. Even with every single electrical engineer making repairs and every single factory around the world making parts it could take years to get everything working again, triage measures for only critical infrastructure would take many weeks.

Many people don't seem to understand just how dependant we are on energy and how fragile the systems that provide it are.
Yeah, I don't think they're thinking it through. They're thinking in terms of small scale power outages. I can deal with a week without power easily on a small scale--I've done it before. But if much of our production and distribution infrastructure was harmed? Yeah, I, and a lot of people would be fairly screwed. And as you say, a week is really optimistic. And even if it was a week, I bet there would be riots, panic, looting, suicide.

It's not just a break from internet or TV or whatever. It's a radical change in a lifestyle we've gradually developed over centuries.
CaitSeith said:
Knowdlege that's stored in 21th century computers and mostly useless without 21th century technology. Oops!
Pretty sure we haven't gotten rid of books just yet.
 

Something Amyss

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youji itami said:
"Had the massive 2012 solar flare event not been a "near miss," the Earth would have been knocked back to the 18th century."

So it's a total click bait article as the solar flare would do nothing after all the 2003 one happened and no one noticed that apocalypse.
No, the 2003 one was felt and it wasn't even aimed at us.

And that's kind of the point here: had the time frame been slightly different, we would have been in the path this time.

Don't make accusations when you don't understand the subject material.
 

gamegod25

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Eh we are just on borrowed time until the sun burns out and destroys the world anyway.
 

michael87cn

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Does it matter? The world is ending in 40 years since that's when we run out of oil.

According to random documentaries and news articles.

I sure hope they're wrong.
 

NuclearKangaroo

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fuck you space!

i think some sort of backup plan should be in place in case this ever happens, 12% is way too high for an event that would have so much impact
 

cathou

Souris la vie est un fromage
Apr 6, 2009
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i'm not so sure it would be that apocalyptic, at least in north america. in Quebec we were hit by a massive solar flare in 1989 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm )our power grid went out 9 hour. i know that since them, we've implement fail saif to protect the grid from such event. are they powerfull enough to resist a major event ? maybe not completely, but i dont think that everything would blow up.
 

Denamic

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A powerful electromagnetic storm would probably kill a lot of electronics, but that's hardly enough to set us back 300 years. Even without electronics, we still have the knowledge and means to rebuild. Worst case scenario, even if all electronics die, which is completely impossible, we would have a global economic collapse. Nothing even close to an apocalypse.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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May 15, 2010
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Denamic said:
A powerful electromagnetic storm would probably kill a lot of electronics, but that's hardly enough to set us back 300 years. Even without electronics, we still have the knowledge and means to rebuild. Worst case scenario, even if all electronics die, which is completely impossible, we would have a global economic collapse. Nothing even close to an apocalypse.
I believe you're forgetting human panic mode. If enough of the current infrastructure is disrupted, people would panic and cause more destruction and chaos. Cascade effect and the human penchant for being stupid in droves. Say there was a disruption in communications (TV news outlets, cellphones, loss of power in major cities), you forget or overlook that a majority of the human population who would be affected by this are so dependent on technology they hardly realize it. Once it is gone the people would riot, loot, etc. And those who're unable to survive on their own would die off which is a lot more than you might think. Failure in sewage treatment can lead to backups of sewer systems, failure in water treatment can lead to undrinkable water and without reliable communication can lead to many people drinking deadly bacteria. Hospitals would quickly be unable to handle the amount of people showing up with illnesses and injuries, aside from dealing with similar issues of water and power.
Enough disruption in the power infrastructure isn't a good thing, and like I said a majority of humans already dependent on tech are missing the skills needed to survive without it. Also if the flare were to destroy or disable enough satellites, that could disrupt communications enough to panic people.
We're really not far from total chaos.
 

Super Cyborg

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Mortuorum said:
nathan-dts said:
Not how odds work.
Roughly 60% chance that we won't have any in the next forty years.
32.7% chance of having one in the next forty years.
6.7% chance of two happening,
0.6% of three happening
0.02% of four.

That's all assuming that the guy was right with a static 12% chance every decade and it indicates that we should have one roughly every thirty years which a quick Wikipedia check seems to agree with.
Thanks for running those numbers. Carrying forward, the chance of it happening in the next 50 years is 47% and the next 60 years is 53%.

Funny thing is, if the 12% figure is correct and constant, the chances of it having happened within the last 60 years are also 53% and the chances of it having happened within the last century are 72%... but it hasn't happened.

So, have solar pattern changed recently or have we just been lucky? (Or is the 12% figure for a Carrington-class event overblown?)
How did you get those numbers? I'm really rusty on how odds and statistics work, and I've come to terms with how ignorant I am, which is why I'm asking this question. If it's to much to answer, just point me somewhere I can read it to learn.

As far as the story, that is quite interesting. If it had happened, even if it was slightly earlier than the projected time, I wonder what the people who believed the world was going to end would be saying. Some people are definitely underestimating the damage it would cause, but it could be said that it might've benefited humanity in the long run, at least possibly. I wonder how many people go through life not knowing how close the world was to having a meltdown. It's safe to assume the majority. All that I can say is that thank God it didn't happen.
 

J Tyran

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Denamic said:
A powerful electromagnetic storm would probably kill a lot of electronics, but that's hardly enough to set us back 300 years. Even without electronics, we still have the knowledge and means to rebuild. Worst case scenario, even if all electronics die, which is completely impossible, we would have a global economic collapse. Nothing even close to an apocalypse.
Okay well the problem isn't that they could just kill electronics a big enough storm will actually destroy power grids, it would destroy all the converters, current regulators and transformers because of the currents it induces in them. That kind of equipment is actually fairly delicate and there is a lot of it, seriously a lot of it and if enough of it failed there can actually be dangerous and uncontrollable chain reactions that jump from facility to facility. If enough of it was damaged there are simply not enough spare parts to repair it (which takes a while at the best of times) and there are not enough factories in the world to build replacements fast enough, it would take years to repair it all. We are not talking about a few offline computers and cell phones here. Every part of the network that brings power from the power stations to homes and businesses could literally be destroyed and repairing it would be a monumental task, maybe an impossible one.

Then you have the effects of that, think of a big city like New York. It uses over 1,000,000,000,000 gallons of water a day, consequently it needs to dispose of 1,805,000,000,000 gallons of sewerage a day during dry weather.

The system is so complex and parts of it are so old that its boarding on failure at the best of times despite billions of USD invested into it because there are tens of thousands of miles of pipe and hundreds of pumps, overflows, catch basins and all the other engineering needed to operate it.

Where do you think the power that runs all comes from? Its true parts of the network have diesel and gas turbine backups as well as connected to the power grid but they are reliant on fuel, in a long term nationwide blackout getting the fuel to those plants would be problematic. Resources would be spread thin and the infrastructure that provides that fuel would be suffering and maybe knocked offline.

How do you provide water for millions of people? Bring it in on trucks in bottles or tankers? Good luck with that even at rationing levels, then keeping the trucks running would be difficult too as there are only so many trucks and the road network would be congested with refugees and where do you get the fuel for the trucks? Then what do you do with the waste? Trucks? I don't think so, so do you throw it in the river? Okay, the people during the 19th century learned the results of that the hard way and as people became desperate enough to drink river water you would have countless thousands of sick people.

I will not even go into food and civil disorder because I should have made my point by now.
 

alj

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Nov 20, 2009
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Whist it is a concern for sure i don't see any evidence at all of this causing worldwide failure of electronic systems other than them saying " oo it will be bad"

Any critical device will have EMI shielding coming out of its ears and will be intrinsically safe ( if it fails it will fail safely and not cause a fire or whatnot), that's for electronics anyway. i don't know about high power electric distribution but this type of event has been known about for a long time and there will be protection in pace of some sort how effective it will be i would not hazard a guess but i would think more modern installations will be fine its the older outdated stuff we need to worry about.
 

Panzer Camper

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Odd question. Would only the side of the earth facing the storm be electrically wiped? I mean if half the world is still working they could seriously help the other side get back on its feet.
 

FalloutJack

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Nov 20, 2008
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Oh come on. All that bologna hype about 2012 everyone in the world was shovin in our faces and then this comes up? You can't hit us with this. It's not even a worldwide kill-everybody death-and-destruction event! I am sorry, but you can't throw that at us like that. Machines getting burnt out be solar flares is bad, but I refuse to rate it with the same doom-'n-gloom people were shouting at the top of their lungs. Tragic and horrible, yes. Extinction level even, no.
 

Doclector

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Panzer Camper said:
Odd question. Would only the side of the earth facing the storm be electrically wiped? I mean if half the world is still working they could seriously help the other side get back on its feet.
But would they? Really, would they? Knowing humanity, would they actually help?

Anyways, looks like I picked a damn good time to get into tabletop gaming.
 

Mortuorum

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Super Cyborg said:
Mortuorum said:
nathan-dts said:
Not how odds work.
Roughly 60% chance that we won't have any in the next forty years.
32.7% chance of having one in the next forty years.
6.7% chance of two happening,
0.6% of three happening
0.02% of four.

That's all assuming that the guy was right with a static 12% chance every decade and it indicates that we should have one roughly every thirty years which a quick Wikipedia check seems to agree with.
Thanks for running those numbers. Carrying forward, the chance of it happening in the next 50 years is 47% and the next 60 years is 53%.

Funny thing is, if the 12% figure is correct and constant, the chances of it having happened within the last 60 years are also 53% and the chances of it having happened within the last century are 72%... but it hasn't happened. (...)
How did you get those numbers? I'm really rusty on how odds and statistics work, and I've come to terms with how ignorant I am, which is why I'm asking this question. If it's to much to answer, just point me somewhere I can read it to learn.
The math is actually pretty easy. First, you need to calculate the odds of a storm not hitting us in the next 10 years (which I'll call one "time period"): 100% - 12% = 88% (or 0.88 probability, which is easier to work with). To calculate the odds of a storm not hitting in the next 20 years (two time periods), multiply 0.88 x 0.88 = 0.774. So the chance of a storm not hitting in the next 20 years is 77% and the chance of a storm hitting is (100% - 77% =) 23%.

To continue over successive decades, keep multiplying. To get nathan-dts' "roughly 60% in the next 40 years" figure, calculate 0.88 to the fourth power (it helps to have Excel open): 0.88^4 = 0.599695. That's a ridiculous amount of precision, given that the original probability was only provided to two digits, so round to 0.60 or 60%.

This site has a pretty good primer on basic probability: http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/probability-events-independent.html
 

Panzer Camper

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Doclector said:
Panzer Camper said:
Odd question. Would only the side of the earth facing the storm be electrically wiped? I mean if half the world is still working they could seriously help the other side get back on its feet.
But would they? Really, would they? Knowing humanity, would they actually help?

Anyways, looks like I picked a damn good time to get into tabletop gaming.

Yes without fail. Russia may be basically a bond villian at this point but everyone else with economic power would be at least a little helpful. If you look at the Hati disaster or the big tsunamis that fucked with Japan and the Philippines everyone came together to help. Was it perfect? No, but I think most 1st world nations would help as best they can. People normally just don't want to get invovled if civil war or humanitarian abuse is the reason for intervention.

Side note. Isn't that odd? If you're starving due to a flood we'll help you out and get little to no objection but if someone is trying to ethnically cleanse a segment of the population or something we are wayyy more isolationist. I get the reasons why with how when you help one side they will just be the bad guy in a few years but still. Odd.
 

Super Cyborg

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Mortuorum said:
Super Cyborg said:
Mortuorum said:
nathan-dts said:
Not how odds work.
Roughly 60% chance that we won't have any in the next forty years.
32.7% chance of having one in the next forty years.
6.7% chance of two happening,
0.6% of three happening
0.02% of four.

That's all assuming that the guy was right with a static 12% chance every decade and it indicates that we should have one roughly every thirty years which a quick Wikipedia check seems to agree with.
Thanks for running those numbers. Carrying forward, the chance of it happening in the next 50 years is 47% and the next 60 years is 53%.

Funny thing is, if the 12% figure is correct and constant, the chances of it having happened within the last 60 years are also 53% and the chances of it having happened within the last century are 72%... but it hasn't happened. (...)
How did you get those numbers? I'm really rusty on how odds and statistics work, and I've come to terms with how ignorant I am, which is why I'm asking this question. If it's to much to answer, just point me somewhere I can read it to learn.
The math is actually pretty easy. First, you need to calculate the odds of a storm not hitting us in the next 10 years (which I'll call one "time period"): 100% - 12% = 88% (or 0.88 probability, which is easier to work with). To calculate the odds of a storm not hitting in the next 20 years (two time periods), multiply 0.88 x 0.88 = 0.774. So the chance of a storm not hitting in the next 20 years is 77% and the chance of a storm hitting is (100% - 77% =) 23%.

To continue over successive decades, keep multiplying. To get nathan-dts' "roughly 60% in the next 40 years" figure, calculate 0.88 to the fourth power (it helps to have Excel open): 0.88^4 = 0.599695. That's a ridiculous amount of precision, given that the original probability was only provided to two digits, so round to 0.60 or 60%.

This site has a pretty good primer on basic probability: http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/probability-events-independent.html
Thanks, that was simple, so simple that I can't believe I forgot how it worked. At least if anybody goes through this thread now and doesn't remember how probability works, there's a post now to help them. I thank you again for helping this simple fool.

Well the odds are in our favor for a while, but if Fire Emblem has taught me anything, 99% chance of success can still fail, as 1% of success can still succeed. SO we should be on our toes despite the odds.