Except that the DIMM is inside a metal box (the computer case) which is inside a building with steel reinforcements and there are other metalic structures nearby cars, phone boxes, street lamps, lighting conductors and it is one of millions of buildings in the US.

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If you can get a phone signal, an EMP can penetrate. No one lives in a Faraday's Cage .

Also - were exactly will they get giant SHV step transformers from on very short notice ? Ones from high output facilities and large switch yards can be over 15 meters tall ...

So far I have gotten about 2 actually answers. Haha. To settle the dispute over whether or not any catastrophe could or would do or not do harm, let's assume the worse happens.

Let's say it all went down with nothing left to speculation. If our communication is shifting to mostly internet based, and most people don't have landlines anymore (cell phones via cell towers), the lack of efficient means of communication disappears. No Google maps? Hope you have a paper map and know how to use it. No cell phone communication? Ehhh, smoke signals? No electricity at all? Fire anyone?

This might be a western issue, but I fear for most who are born into this technological bomb boom who think milk comes from Kroger.

Some kind of "Hand pump", like the ones I've seen kicking around in pretty much every electrical utility service garage I've ever been to.

Pft, a few places I've been in America people are too lazy to fill their own cars, never mind use a hand pump. Self service was uncommon at mom'n'pop gas stations.

You'd find that lots of unscrupulous looters would be stealing your gas with a hose pipe and some ingenuity rather than try and hand pump it out of the reservoir of the gas station...

Otto, here's the, uh... credit card.

Pft, a few places I've been in America people are too lazy to fill their own cars, never mind use a hand pump. Self service was uncommon at mom'n'pop gas stations.

It may be different north of the border in canuck land, and here in the UK it's worse than that, many of the petrol stations are unmanned or only manned part of the day, and you need to put a credit card in the pump to vend fuel.

Every USA gas station I've ever been to has been like that (fully electronically automated - better hope VISA's credit card servers are up!) - from suburban California, to densely urban Kansas City, to rural Missouri. Usually the cash-register can order the device to pump X gallons, for cash-paying customers, but that still requires electricity.

It's a pity gasoline can't be stored long-term without requiring additional additives - and even then it can't be stored any real significant amount of time.

You'd find that lots of unscrupulous looters would be stealing your gas with a hose pipe and some ingenuity rather than try and hand pump it out of the reservoir of the gas station...

Even without looters, people have siphoned gas from us in California multiple times. Nothing screams "siphon me!" like an older-model 15-passenger van. Solution: Locking gas cap, requiring a key to access (just toss it on your keyring with your car keys).
For teenagers, that stops them.

In emergency situations though, I bet a locking gas cap would just lead looters to crawl under the car and puncture the tank itself to drain it.

So far I have gotten about 2 actually answers. Haha.

That's what you get for asking this kind of question. Lots of side questions and discussions can follow.

To settle the dispute over whether or not any catastrophe could or would do or not do harm, let's assume the worse happens. ... Let's say it all went down with nothing left to speculation.

Assuming "the worst" is easy. Extremely massive coronal ejection. Larger than ever seen from the Sun, extremely improbable but still theoretically possible, our magnetic shielding cannot protect us, and we lose a good chunk of our atmosphere. Most of humanity dies.

Alternatively, another "the worst" scenario, a massive space rock (think Dinosaurs-ending) or rogue planet crashes into ours. The rogue planet may even be larger than Earth. Let's say upon hitting a browser refresh we see on all the news that a rogue planet was detected by astronomers and it will impact the Earth in 35 years, 2050. In the near term there is no foreseeable action we can take to avoid it. The space programs of the world get massive boosts to funding and a few people leave the planet. Maybe Mars gets colonized quickly. For everyone else, that is "Goodbye, World!"


Let's go a little more likely for a 'worst case'.

A once-in-a-millennium type of solar storm with multiple interplanetary CMEs that directly hit Earth. Everybody all over the world enjoys a few days of the aurora, even more spectacular because widespread power outage mean no light pollution. Pretty.

I'm going along with your "Let's say it all went down with nothing left to speculation" by voluntary shutdown.

This massive storm with multiple CMEs would be detected coming toward Earth. Scientists sound all kinds of alarms and warnings. Nearly all areas of the globe heed the warnings and take action to minimize damage.

Because the smart people listen to the warnings, all power plants that are able to be shut down do so, and those that cannot shut down are reduced to their safest possible states and have 2-3 days to gain whatever protection their money can buy. A near-total global electrical shutdown.

Satellites that are able to would take action to 'turtle' (or whatever they call the equivalent) to protect their electronics. Some would live, many would be destroyed, but overall human life would be minimally interrupted. On the ground, hopefully most experts would understand the severity and shut down the power grid before the storm hit.

There would be an immediate panic by most people, but power would be restored to the masses within a day after the event ends.

Some regions would have damage to the lines needing expensive repair, but apart from small-scale outages the bulk of society would be functioning within two days of the event ending.

Many wires and interconnects are roasted, some areas require weeks to months to regain power, but overall life returns to normal within a few weeks.

Some satellite-powered services are gone for years until new satellites are launched, others will never be restored, but people will adapt quick enough. It may take several years, even a decade or two, but within a generation the event becomes a historical note.



Alternatively, nobody listens to the scientists, and a similar event happens.

Scientists shut down their satellites because they have experience with those things. The same number as above survive.

Even though prior events have taught facilities to shut down when these events happen, for some reason none of them bothered to listen or take action this time. We'll say half of the power grid lines are destroyed and short out. We'll also say 1/5 of the power plants around the world are dead, the others were smart enough to shut down when they saw early news reports about widespread power outages.

Most of the world follows the pattern shown above, since they took emergency action and reduced their power grids after the event started, and they were not the first ones impacted by the CME hitting Earth. Those few areas that are affected only have enough ability to restore a small number of power plants. It may take weeks or months before infrastructure recovers. In those areas distribution networks are gone, so people need to survive without modern conveniences for a few months. Those people who do not have sufficient water and food storage or are not prepared for the weather will have some deaths, and there will likely be some civil unrest in more populated areas. Those who are closer to living off the land, such as farmers and rural areas with food and water storage, will be just fine. It may take some months, but power and infrastructure will be restored.

That's what you get for asking this kind of question. Lots of side questions and discussions can follow.

I'm enjoying it actually. Haha. I like full discussions.

If you can get a phone signal, an EMP can penetrate.

An EMP can penetrate. Not would. Some people would be lucky and some not.

It does annoy me when companies (e.g., Google with their Chromebooks) say you don't have to backup, because it's all stored online.

Also related to backup options (on a less catastrophic scale): http://www.gamedev.net/topic/664745-ever-completely-lost-a-game-and-its-source-code/

You can kill all reasonably modern electronic devices which aren't hardened or in a bunker relatively easily. But you can't prevent people from rebuilding them or buying replacements from another location on the globe. You can erase a great deal of information that is stored on digital media, but you won't be able to erase all (there's fortified underground archives for that exact reason), and you can't erase what's in people's heads (short of killing them).

It's easier if it's just one nation (though depending on the nation and companies affected, there could be a big knock on effect).

But for rebuilding, a problem is that a lot of modern technology is layered on top of a big stack of older technology - we use technology to build technology. So this would make it hard to simply rebuild things. Whilst a lot of information is in people's heads, for specialised areas they won't necessarily remember everything that's involved to rebuild something (either software or hardware) from scratch.

Also as you say yourself, in the short term people will have bigger things to worry about like survival. So what happens in a few decades time when things have stabilised, and it's time to start rebuilding - a large number of experts are either dead (either old age, or that technology can no longer support such a large population), or have long forgotten many details.

True, this wouldn't be the stone age, rather pre-industrial at least. Being blasted back to medieval times would still be quite severe.

So far I have gotten about 2 actually answers. Haha. To settle the dispute over whether or not any catastrophe could or would do or not do harm, let's assume the worse happens.

Let's say it all went down with nothing left to speculation. If our communication is shifting to mostly internet based, and most people don't have landlines anymore (cell phones via cell towers), the lack of efficient means of communication disappears. No Google maps? Hope you have a paper map and know how to use it. No cell phone communication? Ehhh, smoke signals? No electricity at all? Fire anyone?

This might be a western issue, but I fear for most who are born into this technological bomb boom who think milk comes from Kroger.

Are we talking "no Internet" now, "no electronic devices" or "no lectricity"? These are very different things.

Internet down? Teenagers and internet addicts all over the world would scream in terror. Most would just look less on their phones every day, and spend more time with more important things than posting cat pictures on facebook. Office spaces would fill with newspapers and magazines again as office workes could no longer procrastinate with reading internet news. Smart arses would again need to lug around big books instead of looking up stuff on wikipedia on their phones. You would again have to wait for AGES for japanese anime to be translated to english and be distributed as DVD or Blueray in the western world instead of watching fan-subs on streaming portals. And that wait might be forever....

Thats about it. We only had the internet for what? 20 years? I don't think humanity as a whole is already that relient on the internet that it cannot go back. Some services would need to be switched back (voice over ip phone, goodbye), some outages might be annoying (no e-banking? Now that most brick and mortar banks are even starting to phase out ATM machines?), and some would be a blessing (no stupid facebook fanatics anymore)

No electronic devices? No GPS means less cars that end up in rivers, lakes, buildings, thin air.... good. Car drivers would watch the road again instead of their GPS devices and mobile phones. And while we are at it, people would look where they are going instead of looking on their phone, annoying females wouldn't keep talking to their cellphone for a one hour train ride without even stopping once, they would have to bring their best friend with them on the train to annoy the rest of the passengers. Music would go back to unplugged instruments, singers would have to be able to sing again, and concerts would have even more audience now that you cannot listen to CDs anymore. Lights would have to be switched on manually again, instead of relying on some motion sensor...

Yes, humanity would feel that for sure. Without any electronics, we are set back 80 years into the past. Especially entertainment would suffer, medical treatment, a lot of comfortable services would be lost.

Besides some medical treatments, most services could be switched back to brick and mortar equivalents.... and the entertainment.... well, all the stupid stuff people kill themselves in their freetime with still work, so back to basejumping and free climbing... yay

No electricity? Now we are back in the 19th century. A lot of things would not work anymore.... until they would be switched to working mechanically... because the most important technical stuff still works with mechanics at its heart. Engines, Guns, Cars... all mechanical devices with some electrical helpers. How do you start a car without a battery? How about handcranking? Most guns still are gas loaders, and seeing the complexity and weight engines add to turn them into chainguns, that will most probably not change in the foreseeable future....

Factories had to go back to, you know, employ human workers instead of just installing robots to do the job... that might actually be a good thing for some people.

using fires, oil lamps and candles for nightlights might be one of the biggest changes.... but then you cannot waste your whole night in WoW farming things you don't need when there is no electricity, you need to read a *gasp* book, so most probably after 2 hours or so of reading, you would gladly go to bed anyway....

Still no Mad Max in sight, if you ask me.... worse has to happen for that than just some of our modern comfort being taken away.

Thats about it. We only had the internet for what? 20 years? I don't think humanity as a whole is already that relient on the internet that it cannot go back.

This is the point of the post. In the past 20 years alone, so much has changed, and certainly in the last 80 years. Old systems will be too "costly" to resurrect so soon. It feels like a major push to digitize things without having more reliable (take it as lightly as you will) backup plans.

Whole systems rely on computers now, and without them, the systems don't really have any old school backup methods. I worked in retail for a number of years. We had those magnetic blocks that you run your card through to get it ink stamped onto a receipt. They got rid of them and upgraded the computers. One day the generators get a surge and the whole system goes out. No phones, no computers, cash registers offline. Coolers down. We couldn't even take money the old fashioned way (know how to count change without a smartphone)? Those blocks weren't around. Everyone just sat there looking dumb.

I doubt the old systems will just sprout back up. For a good while, things will just sit in limbo.