Effing Cool

[Yegolev]

I forgot: SIGNE IS THE COOLEST.
After me, of course.  And maybe Righ.

[Roac]

I don't know everything about EMP, but how exactly would it erase hard drives?  My understanding is it would knock out anything electronic that is running at the time and that is it.  My thought was that the information would still be stored.  Just reboot and you're back in business?

It wouldn't remove magnetism on a platter, but it would kill circuitry in the disk itself, not to mention the PC it sits in.

The biggest problem with a global EMP-like hit wouldn't be whether informaiton exists or not.  Even if 90% of the stores of information were destroyed/inaccessible, that's still plenty of places to go to read about it, and I only need to see *one* store of information before I can learn it and teach others.  The largest problem is that such a hit would destroy means of production and infastructure.  No electricity.  Very few cars would work, but no gas lines would transport fuel.  No food.  No running water.  No lines of communication, so no functional government.  Imagine New Orleans, but with no one ever showing up to help, and nowhere to evacuate to.  No one would air drop food, or hijack a school bus to pick you up.  A sizable, and most likely significant majority of the population would die within a few years.  Social structure would collapse entirely, and with it almost all traces of higher education, trade, and production.  Any books would be subject to burning to keep from freezing to death, unreadable, or simply unusuable.

[Lantyssa]

Any form of EMP strong enough to devastate the world would likely fry humans and most other life as well, whether directly or from residual effects.  Having back-ups of any form at that point is rather worthless.

[CmdrSlack]

Any form of EMP strong enough to devastate the world would likely fry humans and most other life as well, whether directly or from residual effects.  Having back-ups of any form at that point is rather worthless.

Ah, but you're forgetting the roaches.  They could use that information to build a great roach society.

[Strazos]

It wouldn't remove magnetism on a platter, but it would kill circuitry in the disk itself, not to mention the PC it sits in.

The biggest problem with a global EMP-like hit wouldn't be whether informaiton exists or not.  Even if 90% of the stores of information were destroyed/inaccessible, that's still plenty of places to go to read about it, and I only need to see *one* store of information before I can learn it and teach others.  The largest problem is that such a hit would destroy means of production and infastructure. 

Thanks, that's what I was getting at.

[Margalis]

You're like that old guy in Big Fat Greek Wedding. 

Never seen it, I have no idea what you are referring to. I will assume the old guy was super awesome, smart, young and handsome.

I'll take the Roman viewpoint on things.  They may have been clever, but they were effeminate degenerates who deserved to pass under the yoke.

So the ancient Greeks were...liberals?

[Ironwood]

You guys seem to be forgetting about paper entirely.  My point still stands.

[stray]

You're like that old guy in Big Fat Greek Wedding. 

Never seen it, I have no idea what you are referring to. I will assume the old guy was super awesome, smart, young and handsome.

Here are some quotes:

Gus Portokalos: There are two kinds of people - Greeks, and everyone else who wish they was Greek.

Gus Portokalos: Where are you going?
Toula Portokalos: I'm taking a pottery class.
Gus Portokalos: Ah! The Greeks invented pottery.

Gus Portokalos: Give me a word, any word, and I show you that the root of that word is Greek.

Gus Portokalos: Kimono, kimono, kimono. Ha! Of course! Kimono is come from the Greek word himona, is mean winter. So, what do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe. You see: robe, kimono. There you go!

[Sky]

You guys seem to be forgetting about paper entirely.  My point still stands.

But what about when the sun envelopes the earth and burns away all that paper? Huh? What about that!

[Strazos]

From a historical standpoint, paper is a problem because it can deteriorate over time, at least much faster than stone.

Different problem...just felt like pointing it at.

[Roac]

You guys seem to be forgetting about paper entirely.  My point still stands.

No, I specifically referenced it.

[Margalis]

Most of our knowledge also exists in the heads of smart people. As long as an EMP doesn't kill them we'll be ok.

[Trippy]

Most of our knowledge also exists in the heads of smart people. As long as an EMP doesn't kill them we'll be ok.

If we lose the schematics/blueprints/instructions/etc. we'd still be in big big trouble. It's one thing to have personal knowledge about how to, say, forge steel from raw materials. It's another if you are trying to build a semi-conductor fabrication machine from memory.

[bhodi]

First, there isn't a pulse invented that could take out the world. It's a purely line-of-sight weapon. It doesn't go through the earth. The best thing we've got is a nuclear blast to create the thing, presumably we can create a casing to amplify the EMP effect. Now, effects in the lower atmosphere don't radiate much farther than a few dozen miles (air or groundburst at under 10km) so it probably isn't going to be your main focus when you're actually hit with a nuclear weapon. That leaves an orbital detonation.

To hit the west coast and the east coast of the US at the same time, you're looking at higher than the international space station, if it was detonated above Kansas. 300 miles. All major military electronics/installations are TEMPEST shielded (in faraday cages) and are not affected, and would switch to diesel generation with on-site fuel for days or weeks. Communication between them is handled by fiber, which is also unaffected. Satellites would almost certainly be damaged, except possibly military satellites that have been created to specifically resist the damage. If they are in line of sight.

On the ground, anything with integrated circuits (computers, cell phones, power stations, etc.) are completely fucked, turned on or not. Fuel injected cars won't start. If anything has an antenna connected to it (any conductive wire of virtually any length) the effects are greatly magnified. It will induce a current in anything conductive, which includes coiled wire within a motor. Things like step transformers (a critical piece of our power infrastructure) would almost certainly explode, melt, or both. The current it induces can melt the material if it's strong enough. It doesn't have to be, though. Destruction of ICs removes our power grid and motorized transport.

All solid information is heavily classified, but you can find some decent reports linked on wikipedia if you're interested.

In short, if something like that hits, welcome to amish country for a while while the government rebuilds. Fortunately, a non-nuclear pulse generator's emission radius is very small, and even nuclear-generated EMP has a short (comparatively) range thanks to our atmosphere. It's only dangerous if a really big nuke was set off really far off in space, and while it could be as bad as New-Orleans in some areas, not only humanity but likely the US would survive. It's no superweapon; I don't think of 'devastation' but we would probably be crippled. The chances of that happening are obviously pretty fucking remote.

As for the original point, data storage, remember not only is optical media completely unaffected and also that our major electronic manufacturing plants are, well, on the other side of the earth :)

[Strazos]

Well, sure the platters themselves would be fine....if the readers didn't crash into them. That's besides the point that all the stuff that would be used to read a hard disc would be fried.

Amish Country, indeed. We'd be boned. We wouldn't have the capability to do much of anything. Sure, the nukes might not get launched by accident, but pretty much everything else would be zapped.

Also, since the bulk of financial records are stored electronically, most everyone's accounts would be wiped. Have fun with that.

[Trippy]

I don't know everything about EMP, but how exactly would it erase hard drives?  My understanding is it would knock out anything electronic that is running at the time and that is it.  My thought was that the information would still be stored.  Just reboot and you're back in business?

Electromagnetics was my worse subject in school (apparently the right hand rule was too much for my brain to handle) so I could be off but basically a nuclear explosion generates a huge electromagnetic pulse which in case is a very powerful travelling electrical field. Anything that can conduct electricity that isn't properly shielded will generate a current when the field passes through it. In the case of semiconductors, the field, if it is strong enough, will cause the chips to heat up and short or literally melt from the current surge. I don't know if the magnetic fields that are created as the pulse passes through a typical PC case (electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin) would be enough to actually scramble the bits that are stored on a hard drive but like Stratzos said it would fry the circuitry if enough current was generated by the pulse.

[bhodi]

Also, since the bulk of financial records are stored electronically, most everyone's accounts would be wiped. Have fun with that.

Actually, if we got working computers, we could likely restore from backup a majority of our critical data. DLT tapes, for example (the most popular backup medium,) are not actually effected unless the field was unreasonably strong. They are vunerable to degaussing (think bulk eraser), but that is not the same as a single pulse. It's not actually enough to scramble the actual hard drive platters either. The hard drive circuitry would be destroyed, but the data would still be there, unable to be accessed. Most of the actual damage comes from inducing a current which causes the material to heat up, just like a giant resistor.

We're actually lucky that we've moved to optical cable. Even the biggest EMP can't even take down the internet, not only because it simply can't do damage to a large enough area, but also because a lot of the hardware is shielded. It would take out local infrastructure, your cable modem, for instance, but even the internet would survive and heal. We are much less vulnerable than we were 10 years ago in that regard.

Your cars are still fucked, though. You'll probably be more concerned with finding where to get food, but having communications infrastructure that survives is absolutely critical to the rebuilding.

Edit: yep, I very much like working out disaster scenarios. I'm not sure why. I guess I'm morbid. I read the stand and then researched the minimum number of people that could survive (from a genetic diversity standpoint) if the superflu happened. It turns out that the math for a minimum viability index is dauntingly complicated, but the answer is we'd only need between 1k and 10k to repopulate the earth. We are pretty resilient.

This site is awesome, if you've never seen it.

[Strazos]

Ah, ok...

It's interesting to just think about what's ifs sometimes. Think of the Anarchy - it would be like the Rapture for angry.bob or something.

[Ironwood]

Batman would save us.

Sigh.

[raydeen]

An EMP pulse would fry circuitry and destroy data. Ever leave a disk near a monitor or speaker? It was probably wiped a few hours later. Same principle on a larger scale. As for how we lost all that cool pre-tech tech? It was called the Catholic Church and the Dark Ages. Or just blame it on religion in general. You had a group of people who had power through knowledge and were afraid of losing that power so they kept everyone else dumbed down. It could also be that when the Roman empire fell, the economic and social orders collapsed in such a way that education wasn't feasible. Tack on wars, plagues, what-have-you, just trying to survive became the most important thing in your day to day life. It was enough to know how to build a hovel, grow a potato and have a kid or three. Granted, this only accounts for Europe. But had it not happened, holodecks for sure. And Inquisitor.

Now poke holes in my logic as this is all off the top of my head with no real research or study involved. I'm sure I'm wrong on something.

[Chenghiz]

Literacy through the Dark Ages was preserved almost solely by Catholic monks. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[Strazos]

Particularly Irish monks, who were some of the sole protectors of any kind of scholastic knowledge for quite a while.

[schild]

I'll teach you to read if you do your learnin' from this here bible.

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