Coronal Mass Ejections: Living in the Dark

This a follow-on to my post Coronal Mass Ejections: Are You Paying Attention?. In that post I discussed the ongoing space "storm" and the threat such geomagnetic phenomena have on a civilization that is, and seems to be becoming evermore, dependent on electronic systems and devices. As I write, a 7th CME is making its way to earth in this current storm cluster. It is not expected to be civilization-ending, but what has been surprising about the latest storm is how much of a punch it has given as it is much smaller than some past storms that did not have that effect. The conclusion is that the Earth's magnetosphere is weakening. Which, if so, means that CMEs of smaller intensity will have greater and greater impact going forward. Within this context one has to contemplate how one will live in the event your location is de-electrified by a geomagnetic phenomena. What strategies can you, should you, employ?

In our lifetimes we have seen natural disasters -- earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, wildfires -- occurring over and over again. The impact of such events, devastating as they may have been, is generally relatively short-lived at a societal level. Survivors recover. Aid of various sorts is provided by governmental and international bodies. Buildings are rebuilt and life returns to some sort of pre-disaster "normal". The length of time over which this occurs is variable and certainly affected by politics, finance, and media attention. (Just ask the people of Maui why their homes haven't been restored, while California homes were?) But the fundamental capacity to restore was always present.

Shift your attention now to the effects of a CME on a weakened magnetosphere: If the "ground zero" of such an event is in a limited area, particularly with a sparse population, the capacity of the affected government or its friends might well be sufficient to re-wire and replace infrastructure and electronic devices. But as you increase density and electronic infrastructure, the task of restoration begins to overwhelm the capacity to restore at a rate that avoids extensive death and harm to residents. Say the city of Orlando and surrounding towns were de-electrified, what would be the options? Mass evacuation or quarantine. Evacuation allows re-integration of the population into the electrified world but has its own challenges in housing and strains on services. For a given population X that would be the obvious choice. But for population Y it would not be obvious. And for population Z it would not be doable.

For population Z it does not matter that elsewhere in the world an electrified civilization exists. Maybe for the fittest and cleverest who can scheme a way to get to, and be accepted into, that world. But for most of population Z, they exist in a world of their own and are subject to the basic needs for human existence — food, shelter, temperature —and the means to obtain and control them. For the leaders and people living outside the electrical "dead zone," they have a terrible choice to either do something, or do nothing. But the unavoidable reality is that nothing they can do will prevent anarchy, predation, and massive death. They can do food drops, but who will get it? They can do medicine drops, but will the people in need receive it? They don't need to send shelter because it is abundant but without power. They can send weapons, but who should get them? They can send volunteer experts to educate the residents on how to survive a de-electrified world, but would those experts survive and, if so, not be monopolized by strong predators?

The de-electrified world is one of barter. Digital money is gone. Sovereign currency is no more valuable than any other means of exchange. Slowly, too slowly, population Z will develop a form of money that facilitates exchange better than barter, but that will not happen until the population falls to a level where a stasis exists between the surviving predators and the now-organized producers who are both capable of production and self-defense against predators. For population Z that stasis may also be the point at which the electrified world can be extended to them again. In other words, the experience of population Z is the best case, of the worst-case scenario.

So the questions come back to how do you live in a dark world? Your best chance comes from having thought it through and making some preparations consistent with your expectations. We are all told to have emergency supplies — food, water, batteries, first aid — to take us through a natural disaster while awaiting help from outside or restoration of power and services. Many of us also believe that having weapons in the home is necessary even for a short-term disaster because you never know what yahoo will try to do something to take advantage of the situation, limited in duration though it may be. All of this should be done in response to what we know are recurring phenomena.

But a different mindset is required for the permanent loss of the electrical grid. In the immediate aftermath having a working radio and batteries is useful to determine the extent of the affected areas. You need to know whether you are in a population X, Y, or Z scenario. For any of those you have to be prepared, at a minimum, for a longer period without outside help than that expected for a typical natural disaster -- more food, more potable water, a plan for waste elimination, a pre-identified group of mutual support. Either individually or within the group the following is needed, scaled to the potential duration of imposed self-sufficiency:

1. Books on living skills in a de-electrified world. There is a great loss of contemporary expertise in the skills of hunting, planting, harvesting, plant medicines, carpentry, water recovery and purification, sanitation, and the like. Books are a means of knowledge transmission and important references.
2. Physical tools needed for those skills.
3. Weapons to protect assets required for sustaining life.
4. A plan for detecting and defending against predation.
5. Books to cultivate the soul and spirit. Like a wildflower in a Soviet gulag, there is always something to lift the spirits and remind us we are human regardless of the challenges we face.

The first thing to remember is that you can't plan and prepare for everything. But thinking it through and making some form of effort to prepare will aid in handling the shock and disorientation that such an event generates. The eldest of us will be unlikely to survive an event of extended duration. But we can be a source of comfort and focus for those who have the potential for survival. And our preparations can contribute to the survival of the capable. We all will die, but the obligation of one generation to the next is to give them the skills and knowledge to survive to produce and train successive generations.

Humans have existed on this planet for millennia without telephones, the internet, and digital money. We should encourage parents to have their children acquire or preserve the skills of camping and living in the out of doors, hunting, and fishing. We should celebrate and encourage cooking from scratch, gardening and animal husbandry in our young people. We cannot allow these skills to die out or become dependent on the latest gadget to make it easier and quicker. The importance of self-sufficiency never dies out, lest humans themselves become extinct.