Malware discovered that could threaten electrical grid
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Malware discovered that could threaten electrical grid[^]
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Malware discovered that could threaten electrical grid[^]
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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It's an interesting read; well written, plausible and scary.
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Malware discovered that could threaten electrical grid[^]
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
Being a little serious: It is a pity that those completely crazy extreme-preppers have given any kind of reasonable preparation for eventualities a really bad name. I would like to be able to live a reasonably "normal" life even if the electricity blacks out, the water supply stops, the food stores are not restocked for a period of time, and oil supplies are stopped. My friends and colleagues have seen TV programs about preppers, and concluded that any sort of preparation indicates that you are a nutty-prepper-wannabe. I could possibly buy 12 tomato cans, but if I am caught buying 24 cans at a time, I will be ridiculed as The Great Prepper for weeks to come. So I keep it low that my house can be heated by wood, propane, solar collectors, electricity (when available, I use a heat pump), ... Water heating is done by solar heat in summer, or propane, or electricity if everything else fails. I just bought a new kitchen stove split into an electrical (induction) heater half and a propane part. (Here in Norway, very few people have anything but electrical, with the possible exception of a camping cooker.) For light, I will keep a few on-grid florescent tubes to provide a basic light level, but all point lights (including ceiling lamps) will be run from a couple 12VDC battery banks, charged by PV panels (and if insufficient at winter time, from the grid). The battery bank also can run my Internet inteface (the ISP has, in their end of the fiber, battery power for 12 hours of operation, after that they must switch to diesel generators), as well as for phone/PC charging. I have got a small power generator that can deliver enogh power for my freezer and fridge, but I keep a reasonably-sized store of vegetables, canned and dried food. Like my old mother did when I was a boy... If everything goes out at the same time (electricity, water, oil supply, ...) I can keep going for a few days before it affects me significantly. I can do without any one of them for a week. Not for months, but it gives me sufficient time to establish other solutions. I think this is common sense; my friends and colleagues do not. "We haven't had any power outage lasting more than an hour for years!" and "If there is a shortage of food supplies, of course the authorities must find solutions for the entire society", "Your investments will never pay back", "What a waste of nothing happens!" (yet, they do use biking helmets, have fire insurance, and loads of security devices in their cars that will never show their real
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Being a little serious: It is a pity that those completely crazy extreme-preppers have given any kind of reasonable preparation for eventualities a really bad name. I would like to be able to live a reasonably "normal" life even if the electricity blacks out, the water supply stops, the food stores are not restocked for a period of time, and oil supplies are stopped. My friends and colleagues have seen TV programs about preppers, and concluded that any sort of preparation indicates that you are a nutty-prepper-wannabe. I could possibly buy 12 tomato cans, but if I am caught buying 24 cans at a time, I will be ridiculed as The Great Prepper for weeks to come. So I keep it low that my house can be heated by wood, propane, solar collectors, electricity (when available, I use a heat pump), ... Water heating is done by solar heat in summer, or propane, or electricity if everything else fails. I just bought a new kitchen stove split into an electrical (induction) heater half and a propane part. (Here in Norway, very few people have anything but electrical, with the possible exception of a camping cooker.) For light, I will keep a few on-grid florescent tubes to provide a basic light level, but all point lights (including ceiling lamps) will be run from a couple 12VDC battery banks, charged by PV panels (and if insufficient at winter time, from the grid). The battery bank also can run my Internet inteface (the ISP has, in their end of the fiber, battery power for 12 hours of operation, after that they must switch to diesel generators), as well as for phone/PC charging. I have got a small power generator that can deliver enogh power for my freezer and fridge, but I keep a reasonably-sized store of vegetables, canned and dried food. Like my old mother did when I was a boy... If everything goes out at the same time (electricity, water, oil supply, ...) I can keep going for a few days before it affects me significantly. I can do without any one of them for a week. Not for months, but it gives me sufficient time to establish other solutions. I think this is common sense; my friends and colleagues do not. "We haven't had any power outage lasting more than an hour for years!" and "If there is a shortage of food supplies, of course the authorities must find solutions for the entire society", "Your investments will never pay back", "What a waste of nothing happens!" (yet, they do use biking helmets, have fire insurance, and loads of security devices in their cars that will never show their real
I wouldn't say it's common sense, since it's not commonly done. It's certainly not a bad idea, or an irrational one. Preppers do take the form of "build a nuclear bunker and stock up years worth of baked beans". Some people make it an obsession, so the term "prepper" tends to be used similarly to "conspiriacy theorist" now. It's a large solar flare that'll kill all the plants. The heavy-duty transformers will blow and need replacing. Multiply that by most the side of the Earth getting overwhelmed and you're not looking at power back anytime soon. I just have a little UPS that'll keep my compy running for an hour. Enough to save docs and check the internet. Not enough space to get a generator or whatnot. I wonder how those living in caravans will cope...
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I wouldn't say it's common sense, since it's not commonly done. It's certainly not a bad idea, or an irrational one. Preppers do take the form of "build a nuclear bunker and stock up years worth of baked beans". Some people make it an obsession, so the term "prepper" tends to be used similarly to "conspiriacy theorist" now. It's a large solar flare that'll kill all the plants. The heavy-duty transformers will blow and need replacing. Multiply that by most the side of the Earth getting overwhelmed and you're not looking at power back anytime soon. I just have a little UPS that'll keep my compy running for an hour. Enough to save docs and check the internet. Not enough space to get a generator or whatnot. I wonder how those living in caravans will cope...
I think that after a solar flare of such intensity that it kills all plants, you are not likely to have any worries. I do not feel resposible for whatever life remains when we are gone. I do not plan for that. We do have power blackouts. Sometimes, running water is unavailable for anything from a few hours (work on the water distribution system) to a few days up or to a few weeks in extreme cases (infections/pollution of the water that has made its way past the filtering system). Every now and then we have extreme price variations - in the extremely cold winter of 2010, electricity prices rose by a factor of 15 for a short period (and by a factor of 4-6 for longer periods), which was really bad for families having no other heating alternatives. Sometimes, we have these waves of panic when stores are empties of some product because literally everybody tries to stock up on some product due to rumors of a possibly shortage; thereby they create a really bad shortage :-) Being prepared for such situations is a question of convenience, not of survival. For some selected threats, in extreme cases it could help you survive, but that is not the main goal. The main goal is to get a hot meal every day, get a shower every day, keep the living room temperature at a reasonable level, having enough light that you can read do manual tasks. When the crisis is over, life returns to normal. That's what distiguishes me from preppers: I expect to return to a normal life within days or weeks, or months in the worst case. I just want to reduce the negative effects of that temporary crisis. I always considered "common sense" what most reasonable men would consider reasonable to do - not that they necessarily do it themselves, but what they might have done in a similar situation. In Norwegial, a common term is "sunt bondevett", literally "sound farmer's wit" or what a sober and calm farmer would have suggested.
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Being a little serious: It is a pity that those completely crazy extreme-preppers have given any kind of reasonable preparation for eventualities a really bad name. I would like to be able to live a reasonably "normal" life even if the electricity blacks out, the water supply stops, the food stores are not restocked for a period of time, and oil supplies are stopped. My friends and colleagues have seen TV programs about preppers, and concluded that any sort of preparation indicates that you are a nutty-prepper-wannabe. I could possibly buy 12 tomato cans, but if I am caught buying 24 cans at a time, I will be ridiculed as The Great Prepper for weeks to come. So I keep it low that my house can be heated by wood, propane, solar collectors, electricity (when available, I use a heat pump), ... Water heating is done by solar heat in summer, or propane, or electricity if everything else fails. I just bought a new kitchen stove split into an electrical (induction) heater half and a propane part. (Here in Norway, very few people have anything but electrical, with the possible exception of a camping cooker.) For light, I will keep a few on-grid florescent tubes to provide a basic light level, but all point lights (including ceiling lamps) will be run from a couple 12VDC battery banks, charged by PV panels (and if insufficient at winter time, from the grid). The battery bank also can run my Internet inteface (the ISP has, in their end of the fiber, battery power for 12 hours of operation, after that they must switch to diesel generators), as well as for phone/PC charging. I have got a small power generator that can deliver enogh power for my freezer and fridge, but I keep a reasonably-sized store of vegetables, canned and dried food. Like my old mother did when I was a boy... If everything goes out at the same time (electricity, water, oil supply, ...) I can keep going for a few days before it affects me significantly. I can do without any one of them for a week. Not for months, but it gives me sufficient time to establish other solutions. I think this is common sense; my friends and colleagues do not. "We haven't had any power outage lasting more than an hour for years!" and "If there is a shortage of food supplies, of course the authorities must find solutions for the entire society", "Your investments will never pay back", "What a waste of nothing happens!" (yet, they do use biking helmets, have fire insurance, and loads of security devices in their cars that will never show their real
When you live in a place where you can get snowed in, have a road washed out or regularly get news reports with headlines like: "Fire Storm/Ice Storm (insert year here)" or "Storm of the Century" and the resulting power outages because of the weather conditions, it IS common sense to stock up on things. Septic tanks and wells are awesome during times like this. You can almost have some normality during everyone's craziness.
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I think that after a solar flare of such intensity that it kills all plants, you are not likely to have any worries. I do not feel resposible for whatever life remains when we are gone. I do not plan for that. We do have power blackouts. Sometimes, running water is unavailable for anything from a few hours (work on the water distribution system) to a few days up or to a few weeks in extreme cases (infections/pollution of the water that has made its way past the filtering system). Every now and then we have extreme price variations - in the extremely cold winter of 2010, electricity prices rose by a factor of 15 for a short period (and by a factor of 4-6 for longer periods), which was really bad for families having no other heating alternatives. Sometimes, we have these waves of panic when stores are empties of some product because literally everybody tries to stock up on some product due to rumors of a possibly shortage; thereby they create a really bad shortage :-) Being prepared for such situations is a question of convenience, not of survival. For some selected threats, in extreme cases it could help you survive, but that is not the main goal. The main goal is to get a hot meal every day, get a shower every day, keep the living room temperature at a reasonable level, having enough light that you can read do manual tasks. When the crisis is over, life returns to normal. That's what distiguishes me from preppers: I expect to return to a normal life within days or weeks, or months in the worst case. I just want to reduce the negative effects of that temporary crisis. I always considered "common sense" what most reasonable men would consider reasonable to do - not that they necessarily do it themselves, but what they might have done in a similar situation. In Norwegial, a common term is "sunt bondevett", literally "sound farmer's wit" or what a sober and calm farmer would have suggested.
I believe Sortacore was referring to kill all the power plant, not the green stuff. A Carrington level event would most likely do it. Last one of these was in the middle of the 19th century so another one of these is out of the range of likely possibilities. There was a similar magnitude event in 2012, luckily for us it missed hitting the Earth. Solar storm of 1859 - Wikipedia[^]
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I believe Sortacore was referring to "kill all the power plants", not the green stuff. A Carrington level event would most likely do it. Last one of these was in the middle of the 19th century so another one of these is not out of the range of likely possibilities. There was a similar magnitude event in 2012, luckily for us it missed hitting the Earth. What If the Biggest Solar Storm on Record Happened Today?[^] - Edit - Added the all important "not"
This gave me a good laugh :-) Of course it refers to power plants. My mind was at those crazy preppers who make plans for surviving underground even after a nuclear war, so I misread it completely. Like first time I read on the cover of a vinyl record who was playing lead guitar: I was thinking of the heavy beats of the bass guitar, thinking that "lead guitar" was meant as a joking name for the bass guitar (as well as a joke on steel guitar). Another asocciation: I heard missionaries having problems making natives adopt their Christian respect for living creatures: Their language has one word for "dead" applying to humans, a completely different word for "no longer working", whether referring to a machine or an animal; they both could stop working. In their conceptual world, there is no philosophical difference between a machine stopping and an animal stopping; humans is a completely different matter. We have extended it in the other direction: We make even a power station into something living, which, as a consequence, also can die. For a generation or more we have had burial grounds for our pet animals - maybe we in the future will se burial grounds for our smartphones and iPods.
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I think that after a solar flare of such intensity that it kills all plants, you are not likely to have any worries. I do not feel resposible for whatever life remains when we are gone. I do not plan for that. We do have power blackouts. Sometimes, running water is unavailable for anything from a few hours (work on the water distribution system) to a few days up or to a few weeks in extreme cases (infections/pollution of the water that has made its way past the filtering system). Every now and then we have extreme price variations - in the extremely cold winter of 2010, electricity prices rose by a factor of 15 for a short period (and by a factor of 4-6 for longer periods), which was really bad for families having no other heating alternatives. Sometimes, we have these waves of panic when stores are empties of some product because literally everybody tries to stock up on some product due to rumors of a possibly shortage; thereby they create a really bad shortage :-) Being prepared for such situations is a question of convenience, not of survival. For some selected threats, in extreme cases it could help you survive, but that is not the main goal. The main goal is to get a hot meal every day, get a shower every day, keep the living room temperature at a reasonable level, having enough light that you can read do manual tasks. When the crisis is over, life returns to normal. That's what distiguishes me from preppers: I expect to return to a normal life within days or weeks, or months in the worst case. I just want to reduce the negative effects of that temporary crisis. I always considered "common sense" what most reasonable men would consider reasonable to do - not that they necessarily do it themselves, but what they might have done in a similar situation. In Norwegial, a common term is "sunt bondevett", literally "sound farmer's wit" or what a sober and calm farmer would have suggested.
I believe Sortacore was referring to "kill all the power plants", not the green stuff. A Carrington level event would most likely do it. Last one of these was in the middle of the 19th century so another one of these is not out of the range of likely possibilities. There was a similar magnitude event in 2012, luckily for us it missed hitting the Earth. What If the Biggest Solar Storm on Record Happened Today?[^] - Edit - Added the all important "not"
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This gave me a good laugh :-) Of course it refers to power plants. My mind was at those crazy preppers who make plans for surviving underground even after a nuclear war, so I misread it completely. Like first time I read on the cover of a vinyl record who was playing lead guitar: I was thinking of the heavy beats of the bass guitar, thinking that "lead guitar" was meant as a joking name for the bass guitar (as well as a joke on steel guitar). Another asocciation: I heard missionaries having problems making natives adopt their Christian respect for living creatures: Their language has one word for "dead" applying to humans, a completely different word for "no longer working", whether referring to a machine or an animal; they both could stop working. In their conceptual world, there is no philosophical difference between a machine stopping and an animal stopping; humans is a completely different matter. We have extended it in the other direction: We make even a power station into something living, which, as a consequence, also can die. For a generation or more we have had burial grounds for our pet animals - maybe we in the future will se burial grounds for our smartphones and iPods.
That's the problem with this silly English language. It's all (mostly) context based. For one not in the know, "Lead guitar" could mean the heaviest guitar. Then, it may sound like it has lead in it. As you mention in the last paragraph, there are some languages that have different words for different events, items, feelings, or thoughts. Even in Greek, there are at least 5 different words that express different types of love. In English, we must understand the context that a word is used to understand its meaning.