Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you So? Back in May twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: a massive geomagnetic storm created aurora across much of the
Speaker 1: contiguous United States. Even folks in my home state of
Speaker 1: Georgia were able to see the northern lights. Sadly that
Speaker 1: doesn't include me. I missed out on it, but I've
Speaker 1: seen photos and videos of the night sky from that time,
Speaker 1: and the colors are pretty darn spectacular. But while folks
Speaker 1: were ewing and aweing over the chromatic display in the sky,
Speaker 1: others were monitoring large systems like the power grid, because
Speaker 1: geomagnetic phenomena has the potential to wreak havoc with stuff
Speaker 1: like power lines and more. So, today I thought we
Speaker 1: would talk about, you know, geomagnetic services or gmds, and
Speaker 1: electromagnetic pulses or EMPs, and what happens if there's a
Speaker 1: big enough zap applied to a region of the Earth. Now,
Speaker 1: to get into this, we need to go back to
Speaker 1: some basic earth science stuff. Our planet has a magnetic field, which,
Speaker 1: through interaction with the solar wind, which is all this
Speaker 1: stuff that's ejected by the Sun, will become a magnetosphere.
Speaker 1: But let's take this step by step. So, first off,
Speaker 1: Earth's magnetosphere is the strongest of all the rocky planets
Speaker 1: in our Solar system. At the core of our planet
Speaker 1: is a solid inner core that's made up of iron
Speaker 1: and nickel metals, and they're hot. They're like they're real hot,
Speaker 1: like surface of the Sun hot. And surrounding the solid
Speaker 1: inner core is a liquid outer core. So the Earth's
Speaker 1: core is kind of like a gusher turned inside out,
Speaker 1: except it's a gusher made of super hot iron and
Speaker 1: it probably wouldn't taste very good anyway. The outer core
Speaker 1: of molten iron and nickel swirls around this solid core,
Speaker 1: primarily due to heat from the inner core, kind of
Speaker 1: making things move around through convection and the Earth's rotation.
Speaker 1: So this churning molten goodness generates electrical currents. And these
Speaker 1: currents are huge. They can stretch hundreds of miles across.
Speaker 1: And as I'm sure you all know, there's a relationship
Speaker 1: between electrical currents and magnetic fields. In fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of our technology leverages this relationship, from dynamos to transformers
Speaker 1: to lots of other stuff. So the result is the
Speaker 1: Earth is like a giant magnet. This is why accompasses
Speaker 1: needle points the way it does. The needle aligns itself
Speaker 1: with the magnetic field of the Earth. Now that magnetic
Speaker 1: field is really complicated, and it's constantly in flux, though
Speaker 1: not always on a scale that we puny humans can perceive.
Speaker 1: But we can kind of oversimplify this and say that
Speaker 1: from space, if you were able to see the Earth's
Speaker 1: magnetic field, and if we didn't have that pesky sun
Speaker 1: coming into play, it would kind of look like the
Speaker 1: Earth was a lot like a bar magnet. You would
Speaker 1: see these magnetic lines emanating from the south magnetic pole,
Speaker 1: looping around to the other side of the Earth, and
Speaker 1: going back in through the north magnetic pole. These poles
Speaker 1: aren't lined up with the ends of Earth's axis. Those
Speaker 1: ends would actually be the true North and true South poles.
Speaker 1: If the Earth were rotating around a stick, these would
Speaker 1: be the two ends of that stick. But just note
Speaker 1: that the Earth is not actually rotating around a stick.
Speaker 1: Magnetic North is not in the same spot as true North.
Speaker 1: In fact, magnetic north isn't always in the same spot
Speaker 1: at all. It drifts over time. On average, the Earth's
Speaker 1: magnetic poles flip every half million years or so. The
Speaker 1: actual timing is random, so we can't just look at
Speaker 1: a calendar and say, huh, and Thursday, in two thousand years,
Speaker 1: the north pole is going to be on the south
Speaker 1: end of the planet. The general hypothesis is that the
Speaker 1: process of polarity reversal is well, let's call it gradual.
Speaker 1: It can last like ten thousand years, not that anyone
Speaker 1: in human history has actually observed this. We base our
Speaker 1: understanding off of lots and lots of science, with the
Speaker 1: most recent polarity reversal happening seven hundred eighty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: which you know, statistically means we're overdue, but there's no
Speaker 1: reason to believe that's gonna happen anytime soon. But the
Speaker 1: polls have swapped positions like one hundred and eighty three
Speaker 1: times over the last eighty three million years. Now. There's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of fringe theories about pole reversals that
Speaker 1: don't have much, if any scientific evidence to support them.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to dive into any of that,
Speaker 1: I'll just say that if this episode sparks your interest
Speaker 1: in magnetic fields, make sure to employ your critical thinking
Speaker 1: and look for good sources when you look into it further,
Speaker 1: because there's tons of, like I said, fringe theories and
Speaker 1: misinformation about this stuff, where you're gonna hear all sorts
Speaker 1: of crazy ideas about polarity reversal that's not really grounded
Speaker 1: in science. Also, if this episode interests you in the
Speaker 1: band that's named the Magnetic Fields, that's awesome because I
Speaker 1: love that band. Okay, So the geodetic poles, as in
Speaker 1: the true North and South poles, they also don't stay
Speaker 1: in the same spot either, because the rotation of the
Speaker 1: Earth isn't a perfect spin. It's a little bit wobbly,
Speaker 1: kind of like how a toy tops spin starts to
Speaker 1: slow down. You'll see it begin to wobble before it
Speaker 1: falls over. But the poles don't wander by a lot.
Speaker 1: We're talking less than a foot of migration in a year.
Speaker 1: But I figured I should mention that before any well
Speaker 1: actually start to roll in with me talking about magnetic
Speaker 1: North moving and geodetic North not moving. It does move,
Speaker 1: just not very much. All Right, back to science. So
Speaker 1: we've got this magnetic field of the Earth. So what's
Speaker 1: the big deal. Well, for us, the big deal is
Speaker 1: that this magnetic field serves as a kind of force
Speaker 1: field for certain types of charged articles and energies. And
Speaker 1: I think an argument can be made that because of
Speaker 1: our magnetic field, conditions were pretty darn good for life
Speaker 1: to form on this planet. Actually, when you look at
Speaker 1: Earth and you look at all the different factors that
Speaker 1: have helped contribute to life having a place to have
Speaker 1: a foothold, it's pretty phenomenal. We're the right distance from
Speaker 1: our Sun so that we can get the energy we
Speaker 1: need for life. We're not too close where the Sun
Speaker 1: would burn off everything, or too far where we wouldn't
Speaker 1: get enough energy. We also have these larger planets in
Speaker 1: the outer Solar systems, some of which have over time
Speaker 1: blocked or potentially blocked perhaps Earth destroying asteroids on their
Speaker 1: way in. Like it's almost like we've got bouncers in
Speaker 1: our solar system that protect us. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different factors at play. Our atmosphere is another one,
Speaker 1: but the magnetosphere plays a big part in this too.
Speaker 1: So without our magnetic field, we might not be here.
Speaker 1: If we didn't have the magnetic field, at the very least,
Speaker 1: I could say we would have few video streaming services.
Speaker 1: Of course, our atmosphere does help protect us from stuff too.
Speaker 1: The magnetic field also protects our atmosphere. The magnetic field
Speaker 1: kind of protects us from stuff like electrons and protons
Speaker 1: that have been fired off from the Sun, as well
Speaker 1: as cosmic rays from deep within the galaxy. A flow
Speaker 1: of charged particles and energy from the Sun called the
Speaker 1: solar wind, could really do damage to the Earth if
Speaker 1: it weren't for this magnetic field. So, for example, that
Speaker 1: atmosphere that you and I enjoy that could be stripped
Speaker 1: away by the solar wind if it weren't for the
Speaker 1: magnetic field keeping the wind at bay. That might be
Speaker 1: what happened to Mars. The red planet does have a
Speaker 1: magnetic field, but it is far less powerful than Earth's.
Speaker 1: It's a very weak magnetic field. So there's this hypothesis
Speaker 1: that the solar wind has, over the course of billions
Speaker 1: of years, stripped away much of Mars's atmosphere and left
Speaker 1: it with a very very thin atmosphere. Our magnetic force
Speaker 1: field isn't like a solid wall, however, it's flexible, so
Speaker 1: the solar wind pushes against it, and this means that
Speaker 1: the field gets shaped into what we call the magnetosphere.
Speaker 1: The solar wind pushes against the day side of Earth's
Speaker 1: magnetic field and smushes it a bit. On the night
Speaker 1: side of Earth, the magnetic field trails back with a
Speaker 1: long tail. Some people have actually compared it to being
Speaker 1: kind of comet shaped, and the night side would be
Speaker 1: the tail side of the comet. So on the day side,
Speaker 1: the magnetic field is confined to around ten Earth radii
Speaker 1: from the center of the Earth, so the Earth radius
Speaker 1: is nearly four thousand miles. So you do the math,
Speaker 1: it means the magnetosphere on the day side stretches out
Speaker 1: a little less than forty thousand miles from the core
Speaker 1: of the Earth most of the time. Anyway, the night
Speaker 1: side stretches out hundreds of Earth radii, and that means
Speaker 1: that the magnetosphere actually goes out beyond where the Moon's
Speaker 1: orbit is. Moon's orbits that are around sixty Earth radii. So
Speaker 1: on the day side of Earth, there's this boundary between
Speaker 1: the magnetic field and the solar wind that's called the
Speaker 1: magneto pause. This is really the force field thing I
Speaker 1: was talking about. Much of it as charged particles that
Speaker 1: were coming our way, and then they collect in one
Speaker 1: of two zones called radiation belts. Specifically, they're called the
Speaker 1: Van Allen radiation belts. They're named after James Van Allen.
Speaker 1: These zones have, as the name suggests, energetic particles in them,
Speaker 1: and these particles can pose a challenge for us that
Speaker 1: scientists and engineers have to take into account when they
Speaker 1: design satellites because the charged particles can really mess with
Speaker 1: electronic systems. The doses of radiation are low enough so
Speaker 1: that they pose no real serious risk to human health,
Speaker 1: which is good because we have sent astronauts through them.
Speaker 1: So it's a good thing that the radiation isn't at like,
Speaker 1: you know, a harmful level as far as our actual
Speaker 1: will direct health is concerned. This magnetopause force field is
Speaker 1: pliable and it's not impenetrable. Sometimes stuff gets through it.
Speaker 1: The Sun is constantly blasting out charged particles and such,
Speaker 1: and sometimes during particularly active solar events, the Sun might
Speaker 1: shoot a bunch of stuff our way during what's called
Speaker 1: a coronal mass ejection. That's what happened back in May
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four. The sun pooped out a whole
Speaker 1: series of CMEs toward Earth, and the National Oceanic and
Speaker 1: Atmospheric Administration or NOAH, alerted folks to it on May tenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Initially, NOAH graded this geomagnetic storm as
Speaker 1: a G four on its weather scale. G four is
Speaker 1: a severe geomagnetic storm, but the agency would later upgrade
Speaker 1: this to a G five, which is the highest on
Speaker 1: the scale it goes from one to five. Five is
Speaker 1: an extreme geomagnetic storm. The severity of a storm is
Speaker 1: part of what determines what, if any effect the storm
Speaker 1: is going to have with us here on Earth. The
Speaker 1: Aurora are one such effect. We can see this beautiful
Speaker 1: display of colors in the night sky when the magnetic
Speaker 1: field is reacting this way. But the storm can also
Speaker 1: interfere with our power systems, our radio broadcasts, satellite navigations,
Speaker 1: spacecraft operation, and more. And again this gets us into
Speaker 1: the connection between electrical and magnetic activity. A strong geomagnetic
Speaker 1: storm can push the magnetosphere around and magnetic lines get
Speaker 1: metaphorically entangled and twisted, and this in turn creates magnetic
Speaker 1: disturbances here on Earth. Another thing that happens is the
Speaker 1: storms can affect the density and distribution of density of
Speaker 1: the Earth's upper atmosphere. That includes the thermosphere, which is
Speaker 1: where lower orbit satellites are. They're in the thermosphere. There
Speaker 1: are thousands of satellites in Earth's atmosphere. Technically, the thermosphere
Speaker 1: is the penultimate layer above it's above the mesosphere as
Speaker 1: below the exosphere, which is the final layer of the
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere. The temperature of the thermosphere actually goes up
Speaker 1: as you climb in height. We often think of air
Speaker 1: getting colder as you go higher in altitude. That's true
Speaker 1: for the troposphere. That's the part of the atmosphere where
Speaker 1: we live. It's our atmosphere where you spend all your time,
Speaker 1: assuming you're not an astronaut. But it's also true that
Speaker 1: that trend of when you go higher in altitude the
Speaker 1: temperature gets colder. That's also in the mesosphere. However, the
Speaker 1: stratosphere and the thermosphere are both different. As you go
Speaker 1: higher in both the stratosphere and the thermosphere, the temperatures
Speaker 1: get warmer. It's funny because it's troposphere, then stratosphere, then mesosphere,
Speaker 1: than thermosphere, so it goes cold hot cold hot. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what's happening is in the stratosphere and the thermosphere. As
Speaker 1: you're climbing in altitude, you're encountering atmosphere that has absorbed
Speaker 1: more radiation from the Sun, including stuff like X ray
Speaker 1: radiation and ultraviolet radiation, and thus it is warmer than
Speaker 1: areas below. Okay, we're going to talk some more science
Speaker 1: stuff and then we'll start talking about how these things
Speaker 1: affect us here on Earth. But first, before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I was talking about the thermosphere and how as
Speaker 1: you climb the thermosphere the temperature actually increases. The thermosphere
Speaker 1: is also where the ionosphere is. This is a zone
Speaker 1: where the energy from the Sun is strong enough to
Speaker 1: eject electrons off of atoms, which turns them into ions.
Speaker 1: Right Like, So, if you have an atom and you're
Speaker 1: able to blast it with enough energy, you can cause
Speaker 1: it to push out an electron and now it will
Speaker 1: be positively charged, right, You'll have more protons than electrons.
Speaker 1: Protons are positively charged, electrons are negatively charged. Overall, your
Speaker 1: ion has a positive char So that happens in the ionosphere.
Speaker 1: This is also the part of our atmosphere that can
Speaker 1: reflect certain radio waves, which makes it possible to beam
Speaker 1: shortwave radio broad casts across the world, particularly at night.
Speaker 1: It works really well at night time anyway. By shifting
Speaker 1: the density and the density distribution of the thermosphere, a
Speaker 1: geomagnetic storm can create conditions that affect spacecraft passing through
Speaker 1: those regions. So if you're passing through a denser region
Speaker 1: of atmosphere, that's going to mean that you're encountering a
Speaker 1: greater amount of drag on your spacecraft. It slows down
Speaker 1: the spacecraft. So for a satellite, this could mean that
Speaker 1: engineers will have to make adjustments so that the satellite
Speaker 1: will continue to operate properly because it wouldn't be in
Speaker 1: the position it thinks it should be due to the
Speaker 1: fact that there's drags slowing it down. Or if a
Speaker 1: satellite slows down enough, well, its orbit can start to
Speaker 1: decay right because it's not going fast enough to maintain
Speaker 1: that orbit, and eventually it's going to meet a fiery
Speaker 1: end as it plunges toward Earth. So these are things
Speaker 1: that engineers and scientists have to account for. These changes
Speaker 1: can also affect how radio waves travel through the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: which means stuff like positioning information from GPS and other
Speaker 1: navigational systems can have errors and become unreliable. You know,
Speaker 1: we take it for granted when we pull up a
Speaker 1: GPS tool that we know exactly where we are, but
Speaker 1: if they're outside factors that are affecting the satellites, the
Speaker 1: information we have is not going to be accurate and
Speaker 1: it may end up being that, you know, the GPS
Speaker 1: tells us we're in a totally different spot than where
Speaker 1: we actually are. Beyond that, the actual surfaces of spacecraft
Speaker 1: can build up electrical charges due to these geomagnetic storms,
Speaker 1: and that also can cause malfunctions. The extreme magnetic activity
Speaker 1: can also induce current in electrical systems and overload them,
Speaker 1: so you can get a system to essentially get fried.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if a power surge were to
Speaker 1: fry a computer you have plugged into the wall. Like
Speaker 1: if you don't have your computer plugged into a surge
Speaker 1: protector and there's a power surge, yeah, your computer can
Speaker 1: be toasted. Well, a geomagnetic storm can do that same
Speaker 1: sort of thing by inducing a strong electric charge within
Speaker 1: the computer system or within the circuitry that your computer
Speaker 1: system is plugged into. Now that last one, as I said,
Speaker 1: doesn't just impact spacecraft in orbit. I mean, spacecraft are
Speaker 1: particularly vulnerable to this, but a strong enough geomagnetic storm
Speaker 1: can actually affect large electrical systems here on Earth as well. Now,
Speaker 1: for the most part, we're talking about big systems, right, Like,
Speaker 1: most geomagnetic storms are not going to be powerful enough
Speaker 1: to affect relatively tiny electronic systems. Like your smart watch
Speaker 1: isn't likely to go bonkers because of a geomagnetic storm. However,
Speaker 1: some of the systems that the watch is connected to
Speaker 1: could be affected, right Like, if your watch is pulling
Speaker 1: down data from a server farm, that server farm could
Speaker 1: definitely be affected by a geomagnetic storm. A really strong
Speaker 1: storm can potentially cause widespread blackouts, and transformers on the
Speaker 1: power grid can end up getting damaged as a result, severely,
Speaker 1: So sometimes transformers will actually suffer so much damage they
Speaker 1: need to be replaced. So a quick reminder on what
Speaker 1: a transformer actually is. Essentially, a transformer's job and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about electrical transformers, not the more than meets the
Speaker 1: eye robot kind. But transformer's job is to take alternating
Speaker 1: current that's at one voltage and either step up or
Speaker 1: step down that voltage, typically for the purposes of transmission.
Speaker 1: So higher voltage alternating current or AC power travels further
Speaker 1: through power lines with less loss. So if you want
Speaker 1: to transmit a lot of power from a central source,
Speaker 1: like let's say it's a power plant, you want to
Speaker 1: crank the voltage up really high to push it through
Speaker 1: the powers lines and then have a second transformer on
Speaker 1: the other end to bring the voltage back down before
Speaker 1: you deliver it to your customers. So that's what transformers do. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they do this by having two electromagnetic coils next to
Speaker 1: each other, and as current flows through one coil, it
Speaker 1: induces current to flow through the other coil. If coil
Speaker 1: number one has fewer loops than coil number two, then
Speaker 1: coil number two is going to have greater voltage than
Speaker 1: coil number one. This is stepping up. If coil number
Speaker 1: two has fewer loops in its coil than coil number one,
Speaker 1: then it's going to be a step down. The voltage
Speaker 1: is going to decrease. That's the basics. There's more to
Speaker 1: it than that, but that's the basic idea. So a
Speaker 1: geomagnetic storm, which is one that can induce massive changes
Speaker 1: in current, can really mess up an electrical system that's
Speaker 1: relying upon transformers. You can suddenly have cases where the
Speaker 1: voltage is truly out of control. Now, if you've ever
Speaker 1: been near a transformer when it overloaded, you've likely seen
Speaker 1: a pretty spectacular and scary display. I've seen it happen
Speaker 1: a few times. Often there's a very loud bang. I
Speaker 1: remember the first time I ever heard one. I thought
Speaker 1: someone had fired off a shotgun next to me. And
Speaker 1: then often there's lots and lots of sparks from the transformer.
Speaker 1: In the event of a single transformer going out, you
Speaker 1: can end up having power loss in that immediate area,
Speaker 1: and a power company can sometimes do some work to
Speaker 1: get things back in order to re route some stuff
Speaker 1: and be able to at least restore power in a
Speaker 1: region within a few hours. Replacing the transformer takes a
Speaker 1: bit longer. But imagine that we're talking about an event
Speaker 1: that takes effect over an entire region, not just like
Speaker 1: one transformer on a city block or something. We're talking
Speaker 1: about like a region that might be several states or
Speaker 1: even countries in size. Well that large a section of
Speaker 1: the power grid With that many potentially thousands of transformers overloading,
Speaker 1: that would be truly disastrous. You would have a real
Speaker 1: mess on your hands. It could take you more than
Speaker 1: a year to fix something like that. So a severe
Speaker 1: geomagnetic storm has the potential to do a lot of
Speaker 1: damage here on Earth. With enough warning, various parties like
Speaker 1: power companies can actually make adjustments that will mitigate the problem.
Speaker 1: You can also harden things against these geomagnetic storms to
Speaker 1: some degree. We'll talk more about that a bit later,
Speaker 1: but we can still experience effects here on Terra Firma. However,
Speaker 1: we do have methods to at least minimize their impact.
Speaker 1: So if we have enough warning ahead of time, there
Speaker 1: are certain steps that we can take that will reduce
Speaker 1: the impact of these geomagnetic events. But what if we
Speaker 1: could create the same sort of magnetic disturbance on a
Speaker 1: human made scale, And what if we could weaponize that?
Speaker 1: And what if we already have And I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about hypotheticals now. We didn't necessarily set out to do
Speaker 1: this initially. It was really a byproduct of looking for
Speaker 1: a way to create really huge, deadly explosions meant to
Speaker 1: kill people directly. But now that we've figured out how
Speaker 1: to do it, well, what are the implications of that?
Speaker 1: So what I'm talking about here are nuclear detonations, And
Speaker 1: I talked about nuclear detonations a bit not too long ago,
Speaker 1: But one thing I didn't mention is that they can
Speaker 1: create They do create electromagnetic pulses or EMPs. When a
Speaker 1: nuclear payload explodes. One of the many byproducts of that
Speaker 1: explosion is a release of highly energetic gamma rays. These
Speaker 1: rays truly have a tremendous amount of energy, and they
Speaker 1: can strip electrons off of atoms and ionize air molecules,
Speaker 1: which creates free electrons called Compton electrons and positively charged
Speaker 1: ions as a result. This is also where we talk
Speaker 1: about ionizing versus non ionizing radiation. When you talk about radiation,
Speaker 1: most people immediately think of nuclear radiation, but radiation is
Speaker 1: a broader term. It doesn't just mean stuff that's radioactive.
Speaker 1: Radiation is more about how the energy propagates. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: if something is non ionizing, it means that the energy
Speaker 1: contained within that thing is not sufficient to strip electrons
Speaker 1: away from atoms. So, for example, radio waves are non ionizing.
Speaker 1: They do not have the energy necessary to ionize atoms,
Speaker 1: and that's why people who are skeptical of claims that
Speaker 1: radio waves, like being near a radio tower can have
Speaker 1: a negative impact on your health. That's the big counter
Speaker 1: argument to that is that radio waves do not have
Speaker 1: the facility to ionize atoms, whereas something like gamma radiation,
Speaker 1: which has a tremendous amount of energy in it, it
Speaker 1: definitely has the ability to ionize atoms. So these charged
Speaker 1: particles will generate an electromagnetic field, and that field is
Speaker 1: extremely strong near the point of detonation, like way stronger
Speaker 1: than other areas within our magnetosphere, and so it can
Speaker 1: interfere with not just electronic systems here on Earth, but
Speaker 1: the magnetosphere itself really and it can have a really
Speaker 1: big impact on stuff like power lines, street lamps, that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. It can also have an impact on
Speaker 1: electronic systems and devices because while the Sun can do
Speaker 1: similar things like an electromagnetic pulse, can do it on
Speaker 1: a scale that's far more intense and targeted to a degree.
Speaker 1: So a high altitude nuclear detonation could do this, and
Speaker 1: in fact it has done this. This is not theoretical,
Speaker 1: we have observed it. So back in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: the United States was really getting into the spirit of
Speaker 1: the Cold War with what was then the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: So both of these superpowers had at one point put
Speaker 1: a moratorium on nuclear testing. But then the Soviet said, colmorat,
Speaker 1: we are going to test nuclear warheads again. And that
Speaker 1: was like in nineteen sixty one. And then the US
Speaker 1: responded in kind saying, well, gosh, if you're going to
Speaker 1: do it, we sure as heck are going to do
Speaker 1: it too. Because this idea of mutually assured destruction was
Speaker 1: kind of the go to for superpowers. Then, this idea
Speaker 1: that if we can guarantee that we could destroy you,
Speaker 1: you'll be too timid to try and destroy us, because
Speaker 1: we'll just all go down together. It was a cheerful time.
Speaker 1: Those of you who grew up in the Cold War
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. So a subset of
Speaker 1: the weapons that the United States tested were part of
Speaker 1: a project that was called Operation fish Bowl, which was
Speaker 1: a series of high altitude nuclear explosion tests. One such
Speaker 1: test took place on July ninth, nineteen sixty two. The
Speaker 1: US launched a Thoor rocket because boy, we're really good
Speaker 1: at naming stuff, and this rocket carried a one point
Speaker 1: four megaton thermonuclear warhead. It launched off an island called
Speaker 1: the Johnston Atoll, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It's
Speaker 1: under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force. It's
Speaker 1: been under US control since the thirties, and it's about
Speaker 1: nine hundred miles away from Hawaii. The explosion would be
Speaker 1: referred to as Starfish Prime. That was the name given
Speaker 1: to this test. So the thor rocket carried this payload
Speaker 1: to an altitude of around two hundred and fifty miles,
Speaker 1: then the payload detonated. The test was done in order
Speaker 1: to get detailed measurements about the nature of the explosion,
Speaker 1: which included the electromagnetic output of the explosion. Because previous
Speaker 1: tests had not really been thorough or well done, they
Speaker 1: didn't gather much useful data. I could argue that those
Speaker 1: previous tests were more about the US showing the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union the size of America's explosives and less about learning
Speaker 1: anything useful. That will leave it for now. The explosion was,
Speaker 1: of course spectacular, was terrifying, awe inspiring, all the things
Speaker 1: that you would expect if you've seen Oppenheimer, but imagine
Speaker 1: bigger and way up in the sky. The electromagnetic pulse
Speaker 1: was far far more powerful than anyone anticipated, and it
Speaker 1: propagated outward almost instantly because it's electromagnetic radiation, that's the
Speaker 1: same thing that light is. Light is a type of
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation, so it travels at the speed of light.
Speaker 1: And folks in Hawaii, sure as heck noticed because the
Speaker 1: MP caused street lights to fail. Remember this is nine
Speaker 1: hundred miles away, and Hawaii starts seeing like entire sections
Speaker 1: of the state going dark because the street lights have
Speaker 1: all gone out. It also shut down the telephone system
Speaker 1: between the island of Kawaii and the rest of the
Speaker 1: Hawaiian islands, so Kawaii was kind of cut off from
Speaker 1: everyone else. This blast created a temp a new radiation
Speaker 1: belt at a high altitude, and by temporary, I mean
Speaker 1: it lasted a few years, that's how long it's stuck around.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this was one that was in addition to
Speaker 1: the Van Allen Belts. This was also much much, much
Speaker 1: more intense, stronger than the Van Allen Belts, and as
Speaker 1: PBS would put it in an episode of Space Time,
Speaker 1: a third of all low Earth orbit satellites that passed
Speaker 1: through that radiation belt were destroyed due to going through
Speaker 1: it repeatedly and slowing down and the orbit decaying and such,
Speaker 1: or just having their electronics fried. Now, when you hear
Speaker 1: a third of all the satellites that passed the root
Speaker 1: were destroyed, that sounds like a lot, but keep in
Speaker 1: mind this is the nineteen sixties, so a third ended
Speaker 1: up being six satellites. We are, you know, talking about
Speaker 1: the early days of the space race. However, if the
Speaker 1: same thing were to happen today, it would mean that
Speaker 1: thousands of satellites would have been affected as they passed
Speaker 1: through this area. Tests like Starfish Prime showed that the
Speaker 1: MP effects of nuclear detonations packed way more of a
Speaker 1: wall than was originally believed, and I imagine it was
Speaker 1: also a contributing factor to world powers agreeing on the
Speaker 1: Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of nineteen sixty three that
Speaker 1: would outlaw nuclear detonation tests underwater or in space. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about more about, you know, what EMPs would do today,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: So Starfish Primes EMP was literally off the charts, and
Speaker 1: by that I mean US instruments that were intended to
Speaker 1: measure the EMP nature of this nuclear detonation essentially came
Speaker 1: back with this is way too big for me to measure, like,
Speaker 1: this is beyond my capabilities of measuring this, And that's
Speaker 1: when we started to get a real handle on how
Speaker 1: potentially devastating an EMP delivered at a strategic point could be.
Speaker 1: For example, think about two one hundred and fifty miles
Speaker 1: above Kansas, because it spreads out in all directions. You know,
Speaker 1: Hawaii was nine hundred miles away from the Johnston at
Speaker 1: all and still was affected. If you hit above Kansas
Speaker 1: at two hundred and fifty miles of altitude, then potentially
Speaker 1: you could wipe out the power grid of the entire
Speaker 1: United States, including ones that are not connected to the
Speaker 1: rest of the national power grid. I'm looking at you, Texas.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it could be a really devastating effect, and
Speaker 1: I would argue they'd be far more disruptive today than
Speaker 1: they would be in the nineteen sixties because we've grown
Speaker 1: far more dependent upon electronic systems over time, particularly computers,
Speaker 1: and as I mentioned earlier, computers are pretty delicate things.
Speaker 1: A huge electric surge could fry computer systems and bring
Speaker 1: down a lot of the infrastructure that we depend upon.
Speaker 1: Most modern cars would be impacted because lots of cars
Speaker 1: today have things like electronic ignition systems. Those could be
Speaker 1: vulnerable to it. EA, older cars would have a better
Speaker 1: chance of making it through, but there's no guarantee they
Speaker 1: would get out, you know, scott free. They could also
Speaker 1: have some issues. For one thing, you could have an
Speaker 1: electric charge build up on a metallic surface. It's a
Speaker 1: conductor after all, But not only could this pulse fry electronics.
Speaker 1: I mean when you talk about large conductors and that
Speaker 1: build up of charge. There are plenty of things that
Speaker 1: we have that could end up becoming a huge issue,
Speaker 1: like railroad tracks for example. You know miles and miles
Speaker 1: of railroad tracks. That's just miles of metallic conductors that
Speaker 1: could store a charge in them. Or you know, a
Speaker 1: network of pipes, or even metal fences, like a good
Speaker 1: long metal fence could do it. So the effect on
Speaker 1: those things would be bad. The effect on organisms, that's different.
Speaker 1: It's it's not believed that an EMP would be directly
Speaker 1: harmful to living organisms. In fact, that's one of the
Speaker 1: big attractive things about the potential for EMPs. Right. However,
Speaker 1: if all of your electronic systems fail around you, you're
Speaker 1: going to be in a pretty tight spot. Even if
Speaker 1: you personally have the capability to get along just fine
Speaker 1: without all the modern conveniences of computers and electronics, the
Speaker 1: folks around you might not be so adept at survival,
Speaker 1: and people who are in a tight spot can be
Speaker 1: pretty hard to predict, which is probably why emp's factor
Speaker 1: into a lot of science fiction post apocalyptic stories. Now,
Speaker 1: there are ways, as I mentioned earlier, to harden electronic
Speaker 1: systems against the effects of an EMP, but they tend
Speaker 1: to be inconvenient and expensive. So, for example, you can
Speaker 1: use metal shielding, which can help block the effects of
Speaker 1: an EMP, but the shielding has to totally surround whatever
Speaker 1: it is you're protecting, and you need to make sure
Speaker 1: there aren't any gaps or holes or anything in the
Speaker 1: shielding to boot in order to really protect whatever it
Speaker 1: is you're trying to harden against an EMP. The other
Speaker 1: thing you can do, because the e MPs are so devastating,
Speaker 1: particularly toward anything that's based on semiconductor technology, you can,
Speaker 1: in the design phase try to design components that are
Speaker 1: able to handle a higher current than they're typically going
Speaker 1: to handle. Right in other words, that you've built an overhead, Right, like,
Speaker 1: while this is meant to hold x amount of current,
Speaker 1: the overhead you built means it can handle X plus
Speaker 1: y and it can still function. You have to build
Speaker 1: in that capability, and you know you can't necessarily do
Speaker 1: that for the whole thing. You might just focus on
Speaker 1: the components that are going to be the most vulnerable
Speaker 1: within your system, because otherwise your costs are going to
Speaker 1: go out of control. Now, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people are going to say like, okay, so what's the
Speaker 1: likelihood of an EMP going off? And if they determine
Speaker 1: the likelihood is low, then it's hard to justify the
Speaker 1: expense of hardening things against it. Right. It would be
Speaker 1: kind of like if someone came up to me and said, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to buy some shark attack insurance? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, i live in Atlanta. I'm not close
Speaker 1: to the ocean. Atlanta is not a coastal city. No,
Speaker 1: the chances of me being attacked by a shark in
Speaker 1: my day to day activities is beyond minuscule. Well, you
Speaker 1: might say the same thing about EMPs and say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be devastating if an EMP went off. And
Speaker 1: this system went down. But at the same time, the
Speaker 1: likelihood that is so low that we're not going to
Speaker 1: spend the money to harden the system against EMPs. The
Speaker 1: prospect of developing a weapon that can wipe out a
Speaker 1: nation's computer systems and other infrastructure without causing direct harm
Speaker 1: to the population itself has tempted many nations, including the
Speaker 1: United States, to pour a lot of R and D
Speaker 1: into building non nuclear weapons capable of generating a large
Speaker 1: EMP blast. Now I can't get into detail on this,
Speaker 1: not because I don't want to, but because I don't
Speaker 1: have access to all that information because a lot of
Speaker 1: it is classified. So while I can say there are
Speaker 1: lots of countries that have worked on various E bombs,
Speaker 1: I don't have a ton of details. We do know
Speaker 1: there are there are various ways to generate an EMP
Speaker 1: that don't require a nuclear blast. So one is through
Speaker 1: the use of high powered microwaves. Another is using what's
Speaker 1: called a flux compression generator bomb. Essentially anything that can
Speaker 1: send a blast of electromagnetic energy outward and potentially, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about grand scale, potentially ionizing surrounding molecules, that
Speaker 1: does the trick Some of These weapons are designed to
Speaker 1: deliver much more focused pulses, so a military could use
Speaker 1: this to take out a specific target while leaving other
Speaker 1: areas relatively untouched. And that could be really handy if
Speaker 1: you wanted to do something like let's say you want
Speaker 1: to neutralize a military headquarters, right like, there's an army
Speaker 1: base or something, and you want to disrupt their capabilities.
Speaker 1: But you don't want that same attack to disrupt a
Speaker 1: nearby hospital because obviously that would be inhumane, it would
Speaker 1: be really it'd be a war crime, essentially, is what
Speaker 1: it would be. And to that you would need something
Speaker 1: to be much more precise than a nuclear detonation, you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles above your target, because that's going to
Speaker 1: spread an EMP that affects a huge chunk of the region.
Speaker 1: You need something that's going to be much more targeted,
Speaker 1: probably not as devastating either, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: you might be able to disrupt operations long enough to
Speaker 1: be able to carry out some other attack or operation.
Speaker 1: So you want a delivery system that can get the
Speaker 1: job done without it being an all or nothing approach.
Speaker 1: Those are the basics of gmds and EMPs, right like,
Speaker 1: this is the world we live in. Even if we
Speaker 1: didn't have EMPs, if we lived in a world that
Speaker 1: was peaceful and you didn't have various nation states and
Speaker 1: others trying to figure out how to disrupt or defeat
Speaker 1: other ones, even if everybody was hunky dory and friendly,
Speaker 1: we would still have gmds to worry about from the sun,
Speaker 1: because space is trying to kill us all the time.
Speaker 1: I've said it many times. And as we depend more
Speaker 1: heavily on complicated computer systems, we do so with the understanding,
Speaker 1: or we should have the understanding, that events, both natural
Speaker 1: and human generated, can absolutely disrupt those systems and bring
Speaker 1: them down. So one of the many concerns I have
Speaker 1: about the AI fad or trend, or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it, is that it's placing even more importance
Speaker 1: on computer systems that if something goes wrong with those
Speaker 1: computer systems, you lose all those capabilities. So if we
Speaker 1: put more and more of our dependence upon those systems
Speaker 1: and then those systems subsequently fail, will be up a
Speaker 1: creek when that happens, and the creek will not smell nice.
Speaker 1: I think you know which creek I mean. Here On
Speaker 1: that note, I think I'm going to go camping for
Speaker 1: a week and see how that suits me. No reason,
Speaker 1: you know not. I'm not saying anything's gonna happen, just
Speaker 1: it might be nice to get away from it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean, all right. I hope for those
Speaker 1: of you who were aware of the geomagnetic storm back
Speaker 1: in May of twenty twenty four, that you were able
Speaker 1: to go out and see some northern lights. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I missed it, and it really it really gets to
Speaker 1: me because I think it would have been spectacular, but
Speaker 1: I didn't even learn about it. I didn't even see
Speaker 1: the news till it was the following day, and we
Speaker 1: didn't get enough activity for me to be able to
Speaker 1: see it on the subsequent nights. So the night when
Speaker 1: I would have had the best chance of seeing something,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know anything was going on. I hope
Speaker 1: that wasn't the same for all of y'all out there.
Speaker 1: I hope a lot of you got a chance to
Speaker 1: see it. I hear that it was truly, you know,
Speaker 1: inspiring and beautiful, So I hope you saw it. If not,
Speaker 1: I hope you get a chance to see the northern lights.
Speaker 1: At some point I might plan a trip just to
Speaker 1: have the chance to see it. The trick, of course,
Speaker 1: is that you never know if you're going to go
Speaker 1: at a time when you can actually see it, but
Speaker 1: you can hope. So that's probably what I'll do. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I hope you're all well, and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
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