Well known physicist Michio Kaku joins the Fox Business News Channel to discuss the probability of a serious solar flare event and what effects it may have on society.
(Video follows excerpts and commentary)
Every 11 years the [sun’s] north pole and the south pole flip, releasing a burst of radiation. But, every 100 years or so, a monster Tsunami from the sun emerges which could literally cause trillions in property damage.
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It could paralyze the economy of the planet earth. In 1859 we had a gigantic solar storm which knocked out telegraph wires back then, 150 years ago. If that had happened today it would knock out almost all our satellites, knock out power stations, there would be food riots around the country because refrigeration would stop, airplanes would probably crash without radar.
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And again, this is a once in a century, once in two centuries storm…
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We do have them and we have to worry about them.
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We’d be thrown back 100 years.
Among the many naturally occurring SHTF / TEOTWAWKI events that could happen, we may not rate a solar Tsunami EMP event as a global killer like say, an asteroid the size of Texas, but it would definitely rate a 9 out of 10 on our SHTF severity scale.
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As individuals, families and communities we may not be able to survive an asteroid impact, super volcano, or pole shift induced geographic earthquake, but a solar flare is something we can actually prepare for.
Our biggest concern with food will not necessarily be because of a lack of refrigeration, but an inability of our current just-in-time delivery systems to transport goods. A strong enough flare could potentially knock out the electrical components in the trucks that transport our food, the computers used to manage the inventory, and the ability for businesses to transfers payments to and from each other.
If the electrical grid in the United States were to be taken out by a solar flare we can expect months, not days, of downtime. In 1859 the fall out was limited to telegraph systems, because those were really the only electrical components of any significance.
Today, our entire world is intertwined by electricity, satellites, routers, switches and computers. Even a minor disruption to some of the components, like our GPS networks, could wreck havoc.
We’re not sure what the odds are of a solar flare taking out society as we know it, but we trust the views of some of the world’s leading scientists like Dr. Kaku and researches at NASA. Some of the brightest minds in the world have indicated that this is a real and present danger, so we’re going to store some reserve rations (and other preps) just in case.
Related: NASA Plans for Large Scale Failure, Power Grid is “Particularly Vulnerable to Bad Space Weather”
Dr. Michio Kaku Discusses the Probability and Effects of Solar Flares:
