This article first appeared in New Dawn issue 167, March - April, 2018. © Brett Lothian
Global Blackout: What Happens When The Power Goes Out.
Imagine, if you will, being awoken by a thunderous crack,
being violently thrown from your bed, the very earth shaking and heaving
beneath you. You look out the window to see the night skies illuminated by
strange green, red and purple streams of glowing light in amongst the
threatening dark of storming clouds all around. Lightning crashes into the
giant old tree beside your home, sparks fly all over as a massive branch begins
to creak. As if in slow motion it
careens into your tiled roof, smashing through with howling winds and pounding
hail, landing on the very bed you were lying in just moments before. You feel a
sharp pain in your lower leg, looking down you realize that you have a deep
gash in your calf that is bleeding out fast, you grab a towel and wrap it
around your leg in an effort to stop the bleeding. You hear screams in the
distance as the pouring rain pelts in with the hail, your home now resembling a
bomb site as you desperately search for your mobile phone to call for help, you
pick it up from amongst the debris, only to realize that it is dead, you try
your laptop, nothing, you try the landline and the same, nothing, you try to
turn on your television, but there is no power, there’s no water, no gas, nothing…
You decide to wait for help, being scared out of your mind
and unprepared to brave the prevailing storm. The ground stops shaking and you
look outside, seeing people in the street panicking, many just looking up in
bewilderment. Remembering a documentary that you had watched a few months
earlier, you realize that the lights in the sky are the aurora, but you have
never seen it before with your own eyes. You see the faint orange glow of a
bushfire on the horizon, despite the pouring rain and you can’t help but think,
are we under attack? You hope that soon enough the emergency services will be
on the scene to render assistance, but with so much chaos going on all around
you have to wonder how long that will be. After just three days you have run
out of food and water, your leg has become badly infected and help is nowhere
in sight. The rain that was keeping the fires in check has now stopped and
smoke fills the air. You decide that you have to try and limp out into the
world and look for help and supplies, you open your front door to see a large
angry looking man holding a shot gun pointed directly at your eyes, when you
hear, “give me everything you’ve got!” Now, what do you do?
You may think that that is a fanciful situation that could
never actually happen, perhaps I’ve been watching too many dystopias or too
much Walking Dead. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but then again, maybe I’m
not. This is the type of scenario that will face millions, if not billions of
people, if and when another massive solar flare and/or coronal mass ejection slams
directly into the earth. Everything that relies upon electricity will fail,
satellites, the internet, banks, ATM’s, vehicles, petrol stations, water
treatment plants, telecommunications, GPS, heating and cooling, refrigeration,
artificial intelligence and the list goes on. Today, only 4% of all monetary
transactions rely upon paper money, everything else relies upon electricity,
especially the new cryptocurrencies. The entire economic system will be
obliterated in one foul swoop. The thing is, an event that would cause exactly
this type of situation has happened before numerous times in the past and will
happen again, it is only a matter of time. Scientists from all over the world
are warning of exactly this type of situation occurring and yet, our society is
doing nothing to safeguard against it, outside of building secret deep
underground bases for the elite. So, when will it happen again you might ask?
Put simply, we have no way in which to predict such an event at all, all we
know is that it will happen and potentially very soon.
At 11:18 am on the first of September 1859, the English
astronomer Richard Carrington stood in his private observatory recording
sunspots on an image of the sun projected through his telescope onto a small
screen. “Two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out,” he wrote
in his report, “Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun,” for the
journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “My first impression
was that by some chance a ray of light had penetrated a hole in the screen
attached to the object-glass, by which the general image is thrown into shade,
for the brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct sunlight.” What he was
witnessing was the largest solar storm to hit the earth in recorded history, the
storm that would go on to be known as the Carrington Event. The Carrington
Event solar storm of 1859 was so powerful that brilliant auroras lit up the
night sky all over the world, reaching as far north as Queensland in the
southern hemisphere and as far south as Cuba in the northern hemisphere. The
telegraph lines of the time surged with electrons causing them to fail, spark
fires and electrically shock their operators. Other than that, at the time it
was seen as a mere curiosity, a novel event that did not actually do a lot of
damage, but what if it happened again, today? Would our technologically
dependent world be able to recover or would we be plunged straight back into
another stone age, one that may take us thousands of years to recover from, if
ever?
Dr Joseph Pelton, former dean of the International Space
University, made a stark warning about the threat of solar storms, the
scientist warned that if satellites go down across the plane in a huge space
weather event it could render guidance systems on planes "inoperable"
with potentially devastating consequences. Dr Pelton added a big enough hit
could affect "billions" of people and warned "it is just a
matter of time" before there is a big enough eruption. The scientist said:
"The current biggest threat to our planet in probability is probably the
solar storm. There was the Carrington Event of 1859, which if that happened
today it could probably take out all the world's power grids and impact our
telecommunications networks, knock out the internet on the ground, and take
down GPS systems." Dr Pelton continued "These storms, with ions
travelling at millions of miles an hour, when they hit the Earth's atmosphere
basically it slams way out and all these systems go down. Power systems go
down, pipelines go down, for me this is the biggest threat in the next 50
years, and on top of that the Earth's magnetic field is shifting and that
affects the Van Allen Belts which protect us from these solar storms. There are
some projections which say in the next 50 years these will be down to just 15%
of what they are today. So in terms of real threats from the cosmos, that for
me is number one."
A study in 2015 suggested that even bigger solar flares have
reached Earth in the past. The scientists behind this study found evidence of
two massive solar storms in tree rings dating back 1,000 years-at least five times
more powerful than any other solar storm on record. The new study measured the
magnetic field of super-flare stars out in space. They calculated that the
Sun’s magnetic field is indeed capable of producing ‘small’ super-flares--100
times the size of a Carrington Storm. We have never observed a super-flare here
on Earth in recorded history, so scientists do not know exactly what to expect,
should one occur. One major consequence could be damage to the ozone layer,
says Christoffer Karoff, from the Department of Geoscience at Aarhus
University, Denmark. "The ozone layer protects us from ultraviolet
radiation from the sun, and we would receive dramatically more radiation and
see more cases of skin cancer if it is reduced. But it’s actually a huge
unanswered question--what will an increase in radiation mean, here on
Earth."
If that wasn’t bad enough, scientific researchers are now
linking massive solar storms with major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions,
including the recent earthquake in Mexico and the volcano threatening Bali at
the time of writing this article. In the last few decades research papers
started to appear in the scientific press that clearly show a correlation
between cosmic-solar radiations and destructive geological events like earthquakes
and volcanic eruptions. These research papers are supported by statistical
evidence that go back hundreds of years. Started in 1967 a study published
with the Earth and Planetary Science Letters found solar activity plays a
significant role in the triggering of earthquakes. In 1998 a scientist from the
Beijing Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Science, found a
correlation between low solar activity and earthquakes. Another recent
research, carried out by The Space and Science Research Center in Florida, US,
showed strong correlation between solar activity and the largest earthquakes
and volcanic eruptions within the continental United States and other regions
around the world. The study looked at the data of volcanic activity between 1650-2009
CE and seismic (earthquakes) activity between 1700-2009 CE, and then the
recorded data was compared with the sunspots record (solar activity). The
results of this study showed very strong correlation between solar activity and
the largest seismic and volcanic events, within the continental US and
globally. The correlation for volcanic activity was bigger than 80% and for the
largest earthquakes it was 100% of the top 7 most powerful, versus solar
activity lows. Additionally, the research concluded the existence of a strong
correlation between global volcanic activity among the largest of classes of
eruptions and solar activity lows. With the 80.6% occurrence of large scale
global volcanic eruptions taking place during solar activity lows and with
87.5% occurring for the very largest eruptions during major solar minimums.
We are currently in the midst of the fastest decline in
solar activity in 9,300 years, which could signal a descent into Maunder
Minimum-like conditions, in other words, a mini ice age. “The recent prolonged
solar minimum and subsequent weak solar cycle 24 have led to suggestions that
the grand solar maximum may be at an end,” says a recent study on nature.com.
The study, published in 2015, looked at past variations of solar activity. In
2010, the study found, scientists estimated a mere 8% chance of a return to
Maunder Minimum-like conditions within the next 40 years. However, “the decline
in solar activity has continued, (to the time of writing) and is faster than any
other such decline in 9,300 years.” “If this recent rate of decline is added to
the analysis, the 8% probability estimate is now raised to between 15% and
20%,” the paper continues. Many think the chances are far higher than that.
“Numerous studies have identified links between past climate and solar
variability,” the paper points out. “During the Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715,
very few sunspots were seen despite regular observations. The Maunder Minimum
coincided with more severe winters in the UK and continental Europe,” the
researchers agree. “On longer timescales, a grand minimum of solar activity,
the Homeric Minimum (∼2,750–2,550 years
before present), affected climate conditions through Western Europe.” The
authors foresee a gradual descent to Maunder Minimum-like conditions, which
will last from a few decades to more than 100 years.
With our current technology it is estimated that (at most)
we will have only 20 hours warning of another Carrington level event on the
way, leaving precious little time for a society to prepare, if they are even
informed at all. In our current world ruled by a sociopathic elite, who
unashamedly make it known that their ideal human population is under one
billion and perhaps as low as half of that, I am willing to bet that instead of
warning the general populace, the elite would simply abandon us all and retreat
to their deep underground bases that have been built all over the world, for
just such an event. The elite have long been prepared for events like these and
their plans do not include the rest of us. Informing the general public would
create mass hysteria and panic, making the logistics of the elite’s escape all
the more difficult, if not impossible. I highly doubt that the elite will
sacrifice themselves to help any of us, especially when they are blatantly
trying to cull our population as it is. For the advocates of the Depopulation
Agenda, a Carrington level event would be nothing short of a boon. We will
truly be on our own.
The thin veneer of our “civil” societies are held together
by a belief in the “system,” whatever system that may be. There are conventions
and institutions in place to reinforce all these beliefs, but social order
primarily exists entirely as a psychological function. This psychological
system can easily collapse under the right conditions, like another Carrington
Event. Under the typical conditions of a natural disaster, humanity almost
always brings out its best. We rally together to help each other out, whether
by directly volunteering on the ground or by sending donations and aid. But
that is entirely dependent upon a greater society being intact and capable of
sending that help. When a Carrington type event happens again, it will be the
entire industrialized world suffering the natural disaster/s. There will be no
one capable of sending large scale organized help, it will simply be
impossible. It will not take long for the world to descend into chaos. The
cages in our minds that are our societies “laws” will have no one to enforce
them and our baser instincts will once more rise to the fore. After all, a
man’s got to eat, and when you’re hungry or thirsty enough, you will do almost
anything to acquire what you need, even kill.
Nothing could be as sudden or dramatic as the failure of the
worldwide power grids. When the electricity stops, everything stops and its
effects will be felt almost everywhere. Almost everyone will notice it at the
same instant. Usually an outage is just a temporary situation and people will
treat it as such. They’ll sit tight and wait for the power to come back on.
Most likely thinking a tree fell on some power lines, or perhaps a transformer
blew up somewhere in the neighborhood. But the power isn’t coming back on, and
without power everything will shut down within hours. A worldwide power outage
would cascade across the entire infrastructure faster than any other problem
and create total havoc. Most people take electricity for granted and are
completely unaware of our dependency upon it. Many people will take the rare
opportunity to loot valuable goods and merchandise. This is exactly what
happened during the famous New York power outage a few decades ago. The social
order will become weaker and weaker as the power stays off. Without power the
entire industrialized world will be brought to a halt. Nothing will work, the
microwave, the heating, the fridge, the oven, your phone and pretty much
everything else you depend on won’t work.
Some buildings and hospitals will have generators with several days’
worth of fuel but in no time at all, that fuel will be depleted.
The water treatment and delivery facilities as well as the
sewage systems will fail, the results being very grim. People can live without
food for prolonged periods of time but water is required on an almost daily
basis. You can only go for about 2-3 days without it. Most cities are built
near water due to its necessity but will you be able to purify, carry and transport
several litres of it daily, potentially over miles of chaotic streets? If you
have a water tank you will at least have a limited supply of water but for most
people in the cities their access to water will be gone. Compounding the
problem will be the lack of sanitation as people will have nothing to remove
their waste as the toilets no longer flush. People will be forced to use
buckets or whatever receptacles they can find to relieve themselves, but then
the problem remains, what then do you do with it? Many will throw their waste
into the nearest river or creek, polluting the now scarce water supplies. Or
simply throw it out into the streets, making the densely populated areas a hot
bed for disease outbreaks.
Communication with the airlines and shipping companies will
be impossible, with aircraft and shipping also no longer being able to rely on
GPS to guide them, major accidents would be inevitable. The electronic pumps at
the fuel stations will no longer work, almost immediately the road/rail network
of distribution would cease to function, with the city roads quickly becoming
clogged with accidents as the traffic lights aren’t working, the highways would
become littered with abandoned cars and trucks that have run out fuel. And that
is before the panic fleeing of the major population centers has set in, which
will only exacerbate the problem. The rail networks of today in most countries
are entirely electronic and will have ground to a halt. Remember, the cities
depend entirely on food shipped in from the farms and food processing companies.
The entire food supply system will have completely broken down within hours.
Life as we know it would completely stop, and be replaced with a Darwinist
survival of the fittest.
In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine
meals between mankind and anarchy.” Since then, his observation has been echoed
by people as disparate as Robert Heinlein and Leon Trotsky. The key here is
that, unlike all other commodities, food and water are the two essentials that
cannot be postponed. If there were a shortage of, say, shoes, we could make do
for months or even years. A shortage of gasoline would be worse, but we could
survive it, through mass transport, or even walking, if necessary. But food and
water are different. If there were an interruption in the supply of food and
water, fear would set in immediately. And, if the resumption of the food and
water supply were uncertain, the fear would become pronounced. After only nine
missed meals, it’s not unlikely that we’d panic and be prepared to commit a
crime to acquire what we need. If we were to see our neighbor with a loaf of
bread, and we owned a gun, we might well say, “I’m sorry, you’re a good neighbor
and we’ve been friends for years, but my children haven’t eaten in days – I
have to have that bread – even if I have to shoot you.”
Water and food are so essential that people will do almost
anything to get them as the crisis continues to escalate, people will start to
get anxious and begin looting the nearest stores in search of supplies, very
soon there will be nothing at all left on the shelves anywhere. Some shop
owners may try to defend their stores, but it will be a futile effort under the
weight of so many people. Some resourceful people will hunt pigeons and rats,
others will eat bugs but most city dwellers won’t be able to stomach it. Civil unrest and the collapse of social order
is by far the greatest risk of being in a city. As food and water becomes
scarce, looting of the neighborhood and from others will be next, this is when the
violence escalates (when people start competing for resources). It usually
takes about two weeks for violence to become rampant as the resources become
more and more scarce. Armed gangs like the outlaw motorcycle clubs and
organized crime syndicates will rule the streets, their members will group
together in order to compete for resources and survival, with the rest of us being
forced to either fight or flee for our lives.
You’re going to see people in a mass-exodus away from the
cities as the armed gangs begin to take over, using violence to get what they
need to survive. Take a look at the events of New Orleans after hurricane
Katrina, the city was flooded with water but it wasn’t drinkable, people were
actually fighting and killing each other over clean water! Perhaps the greatest
example of social breakdown happened during the L.A. riots following the Rodney
King trial verdict (which caused a breakdown in the belief of justice and
equality). The citizens of L.A. set fire to their own neighborhoods and pulled people
from vehicles and beat them to death. There were even reports of people firing
guns at the firemen attempting to save their own buildings! During the well
documented example of social breakdown in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in
New Orleans, even the police were looting! The only thing that got L.A. and New
Orleans back in order was the intense and overwhelming presence of the National
Guard. But this time the army isn’t coming to bring order, and the rampant
violence will only increase. Would you be able to protect your family from
gangs of armed, hungry looters?
After all local supplies are depleted and there is no hope
of food coming over the horizon, they’ll too leave the city and start pillaging
the nearby towns and villages using violence, bringing with them the now rife
diseases of the cesspool cities. Small communities will try to band together to
protect their dwindling resources from the bands of invading raiders, the
spirit of charity being replaced by the fear of not having enough and the fear
of disease. Some small remote communities may be able band together and remain
relatively unharmed, but the fight for survival will still be on in earnest. For
even amongst the farming communities, we have become overly specialized in our
skill sets, largely due to mono-culture agriculture. But in saying that, in
general it will be the country people who fare better than the city folk, with
there not being such a high density demand upon available resources and at
least a basic knowledge of how to live on the land.
The sad fact of the matter is that today, so very few are
actually capable of even identifying the difference between poisonous and edible
plants, let alone successfully growing them or hunting and gathering. The few
that are skilled in the ways of survival like the doomsday prepper community
will still have to worry about everyone else trying to take what they have. And
then there is the problems of rampant disease and our medical needs. The amount
of people with the sufficient knowledge of medicinal plants and how to use them
correctly is even less than those who can identify food. With massive
earthquakes, volcanos, increased radiation exposure and potentially a new mini
ice age to contend with on top of all this, it will not be long before there
are very few of us remaining. In a matter of weeks, billions will be dead and
those who remain will be so caught up in the daily struggle to survive, that
the rebuilding of our former society will be last thing on anyone’s mind. In
fact, we will cannibalize all that remains of it. The dead will go unburied and
litter the streets, compounding the problems with disease. For whoever remains,
it truly will be a nightmarish new world.
Many who remain will be enraptured with extreme religious
fervor and zeal, believing it to be the end times, the apocalypse or god
punishing us for our sins. Australia is home to far more religious cults than
most would expect, with many living on private compounds relatively
self-sufficiently. These groups are well organized and ever opportunistic (and
skillful) in recruiting the traumatized. Their ability to brainwash their
victims will give them a distinct advantage over the criminal organizations who
will have to successfully manage power struggles and a lack of social decency
amongst their members. For the religious groups and cults, they will be able
control their membership far more easily, being able to achieve large scale community
projects such as erecting defenses in a quick and orderly fashion. Some of
these groups are well armed and potentially extremist militants, thanks to the
divide and conquer tactics of the elite that has social unrest and mistrust at
an all-time high around the world. In a matter of months they may very well be
the dominant forces to contend with as we have seen how quickly ISIS took hold
in the power vacuum of Iraq and Syria.
The only people who will not be directly affected are those
who are still living without the modern conveniences that we have become so
accustomed to and reliant upon, like the Amish in America and the traditional
hunter gatherer societies that have been pushed to edges of our modern world.
For them, they would get to enjoy the lightshow at night, perhaps asking their
elders or shaman what it all means and life would continue the next day just as
it had before. Essentially nothing would change for them, unless they were in
close proximity to a volcano or modern society, which would in no time be
looking to take what little they have, likely missing that the greatest
resource these traditional societies have in the knowledge of how to survive in
our environment. In our modern arrogance many of these societies have been
deemed to be uncivilized, savages and even as being sub-human, but it is they
who will have the last laugh. Nature will soon take back what is left of the
cities and towns, with most of them crumbling to dust in merely a few hundred
years. The earth will return to its natural state without the wholescale
terraforming of the industrialized world, at least until the elite return from
their deep underground bunkers…
If you are a student of history you will know that all
modern forms of civilization rise and fall, it is simply a matter of when and
how. It has been said from ancient times that the world ages end either by fire
or ice, for us in our technologically dependent world, it may very well be by
both. The false security our societies supply from the forces of nature is an
illusion, we are not the masters of this planet that we think we are. In
today’s age we have been made into specialists, only knowing one tiny area of
expertise, effectively making us completely reliant upon the greater society
for our needs. We have created a society where each individual is reduced to a
mere cog in the greater machine (that only truly benefits the elite) and that
machine runs on electricity. It is the very life blood of our modern system,
that is why it is called power. Most are largely unaware that we are in fact completely
dependent upon the very system that enslaves us, that we were born into
invisible chains. Even fewer seem to realize that, the system that we depend
upon for our basic needs, quite simply cannot last. Our electronic modern world
is in no way prepared for what our environment can dish out, because despite
what we may think, our environment extends far beyond the earth. The fact of
the matter is, we live in a house of cards, just waiting for the right solar wind,
to scatter our society, like so many autumn leaves…
So what can we do to prepare ourselves for just such a
‘worst case scenario’ event? Whilst many in the doomsday prepping community
will advise storing as much food and water as is possible, in my opinion that
is merely kicking the can down the road, at some point in time your stores will
run out even if you’re able to properly secure them, so what do you do then?
The one commodity that people really need to stock up on is knowledge, because our
environment provides everything that we may need, if you have the knowledge and
skills to take advantage of it. Learning how to find, clean and purify water,
even in the most arid conditions is an essential to life. Learning how to
identify, forage and grow edible plants is a basic must and the same goes for
medicinal plants. Learning how to hunt, fish and trap animals will also be
essential. Being able to make fire and build shelter will also be necessary. A
basic understanding of human psychology, body language and defense tactics will
also be important, because you will have to deal with other people, quite often
armed desperate people. Perhaps the most essential thing that we must learn is
about ourselves, we need to test ourselves and consistently push the limits of
our abilities, we need to know that we have what it takes to survive and to in
fact thrive without the safety net of our industrialized slavery. Our
indigenous brothers and sisters managed to survive here in Australia for over
60,000 years without our mod cons, and we can too, if we relearn how to live in
the real world.
References:
Solar storm of 1859. Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
157 years ago, a massive solar storm rocked our planet and
we barely noticed. Today, it would be devastating. By Rafi Letzter
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/massive-1859-solar-storm-telegraph-scientists-2016-9?r=US&IR=T
What If the Biggest Solar Storm on Record Happened Today?
Repeat of 1859 Carrington Event would devastate modern
world, experts say. By Richard A. Lovett
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/
'Planes will fall from the sky' Huge solar storm could
plunge Britain into darkness: A MASSIVE solar storm could cause plane crashes,
plunge cities into darkness, knock satellites out of the sky and trigger total
chaos. By Henry Holloway
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/555604/Solar-Storms-Flares-Space-Weather-Plane-Crash-Black-Out-Satellites-Downed-GPS-Internet-Out
Cosmic-solar radiation as the cause of earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions. By Jamal Shrair
https://watchers.news/2015/06/09/cosmic-solar-radiation-as-the-cause-of-earthquakes-and-volcanic-eruptions/
Fastest decline in solar activity in 9,300 years. By Robert
https://www.iceagenow.info/fastest-decline-solar-activity-9300-years/
Civil Unrest and the Collapse of Society. By URbanSn
http://urbansurvivalnetwork.com/civil-unrest-and-the-collapse-of-society/
Nine Meals from Anarchy. By Jeff Thomas
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-22/nine-meals-anarchy
The Sun has the potential to emit massive ‘superflares’
every 1000 years, say scientists. By Charlotte Price Persson
http://sciencenordic.com/sun-can-emit-superflares-every-1000-years
Global Elite Prepare For Imminent Solar Storm Apocalypse:
Thousands Flee To Underground Antarctica Bases, According To Conspiracy
Theorists. By John Thomas Didymus
https://ascendingstarseed.wordpress.com/2016/12/24/global-elite-prepare-for-imminent-solar-storm-apocalypse-thousands-flee-to-underground-antarctica-bases-according-to-conspiracy-theorists-video/
