Wednesday, 14 March, 2012
EARTH’S DEATH STAR AND THE END OF AMERICA
Terrence Aym
beforeitsnews
March 14, 2012
From the British journal, New Scientist: “It is midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.
It can and will happen here, perhaps sometime between now and March of 2013—for that is the high danger window that the American space agency NASA, Europe’s ESA, and the Russian Federation’s Roscosmos have been warning about for years.
The sun is a fickle friend that has a love-hate relationship with the Earth. And we’re in the midst of a cycle where the sun really doesn’t care for us very much. In fact, good old Sol is getting a real “hate on” for our planet right now.
Experts fear the Kill Shot
Whispered at meetings behind the curtains and in the darker corners of the worlds’ solar observatories are the words kill shot. It’s spoken in hushed tones by scientists with tight faces through lips that sometimes tremble.
What does it mean? What is a kill shot?
It’s a solar X-flare greater than any human being alive has ever seen or endured. It’s a shot literally felt ’round the world that probably won’t kill off humanity, but would kill 21st Century technology, slamming much of modern civilization back to the 1800s in a matter of hours.
A solar kill shot means no electricity, no water processing plants, no food distribution networks, no office buildings, no working cities, no working plumbing, no banking, no financial markets, no mail, no computers, no telephones…in fact little of anything that everyone in a first world country takes for granted. All of it will be whisked away in the twinkling of a magnetic superstorm.
Most of government would grind to a halt ~ including the IRS (so even the greatest crisis might have a silver lining, however small).
The Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, and the Twenty-First Century, 2007 report, created by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis states:
“An EMP that results from a nuclear weapon…destroys any ‘unhardened’ electronic equipment and electric power system ~ which means virtually any civilian infrastructure in the United States. The pulse occurs when a nuclear weapon explodes…at an altitude between 40 and 400 kilometers.“The detonation of the nuclear warhead releases…energetic particles [that] scatter in every direction away from the blast. Many of the particles descend and interact with themagnetic field lines of the Earth, where they become trapped. The trapped electrons then create an oscillating electric current within the field, which rapidly produces a large electromagnetic field in the form of a pulse.“Once the pulse reaches electronic equipment, it negatively interacts with them and either disables, damages, or destroys them. An EMP generated by a nuclear weapon could affect all critical infrastructures that depend on electricity and electronics within the vicinity of the nuclear warhead blast radius. A nuclear weapon with a burst height of approximately 100 kilometers could expose objects located within an area 725 miles in diameter to the effects of EMP.“
An EMP strike puts US computer network at high risk ~ but a superflare would be much worse
Since so many consumer products today rely on computer chips ~ such as automobiles ~ they would immediately become inoperative. The entire banking system would collapse, as well as the entire infrastructure of the financial services markets. Manufacturers would be affected, all forms of transportation, many government facilities ~ especially at the state and local levels ~ and hospitals, agribusinesses, water processing plants, electrical generating plants…for all practical purposes everything would grind to a halt
When the sun becomes a Death Star ['Exploding sun' by Ombre Blanche]
Now consider that a solar flare strike could be magnitudes worse, more pervasive, last longer and more widespread. Whole nations and global regions would be affected.
Although the U.S. is a superpower, its economy and infrastructure are very fragile. The attack on 911 proved that America can be defeated if just a few things go terribly wrong: the stand down of commercial aviation for about one week was sufficient to throw the entire American economy into a tailspin.
Urban ‘graveyards’ could become potential deathtraps
A sustained X-flare burst creating a massive magnetic pulse would be far worse than 911. The economy would be thrown into a severe depression within 24 hours. Food riots would break out and martial lawdeclared across the nation. Potable water would become scarce and urban areas potential deathtraps, especially during the long, dark nights.
All radio, television and most means of communication would be out for weeks or months. A good portion of the electrical grid could be offline for years.
In one titanic blow, America would be reduced to a Third World nation…all in a matter of hours.
Abandoned power plant destroyed by solar flare pulse
Back in 2008, the National Academy of Sciences issued their dire report: Severe Space Weather Events ~ Societal and Economic Impacts. The report outlined, in excruciating detail, the potential demise of America’s 21st Century technological base ~ and the resulting havoc to the economy and society.
It also spelled out how people in the first world countries rely heavily upon technologies at severe risk from solar storms.
Some heliophysicists are having sleepless nights
The frenetic calm that’s infected scientists grappling with the odds that America will be hit by such acatastrophe is a palpable thing. Some astronomers joke they are sleeping with one eye open. Some may not be sleeping much at all.
The director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, Richard Fisher, sheds some light on the growing worry: “The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms.“
The bottom line is that America has unwittingly painted itself into a technological corner from which it may be difficult ~ if not impossible ~ to escape.
The horse and buggy…America’s future transportation?
Fisher worries aloud, “I believe we’re on the threshold of a new era in which space weather can be as influential in our daily lives as ordinary terrestrial weather. We take this very seriously indeed.“
As the calendar inches forward, and the precious days slip away, the sun marches towards its final, explosive fury. And a singular thought pervades the minds of those that keep their fingers on the pulse of the raging sun: will America survive the onslaught when it comes…and will it arrive by 2013?
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