Starlink

rekees4300 · Oct 29, 2020

Diggin It said:
Land based FO systems use a substantial amount of electronic and electrical components and are in no way immune to EMP.

STUFF HAPPENS...does that mean we should all stick our heads in the sand and stop living? An EMP from one nuke over St. Louis or another Carrington Event would destroy the whole USA electrical grid. Folks would have much more important things to worry about than Internet access, for example food, water, and shelter access. EMPs aren't on my list of considerations when pondering Starlink usage.

Carrington Event - Wikipedia

LouNY · Oct 29, 2020

Diggin It said:
Land based FO systems use a substantial amount of electronic and electrical components and are in no way immune to EMP.

But much easier to repair and restart.

kcflhrc · Oct 29, 2020

LouNY said:
But much easier to repair and restart.

If you can get your vehicle started to get to the CO

LouNY · Oct 29, 2020

rekees4300 said:
STUFF HAPPENS...does that mean we should all stick our heads in the sand and stop living? An EMP from one nuke over St. Louis or another Carrington Event would destroy the whole USA electrical grid. Folks would have much more important things to worry about than Internet access, for example food, water, and shelter access. EMPs aren't on my list of considerations when pondering Starlink usage.

Carrington Event - Wikipedia

May not be on your list of considerations, but it is a subject that should be considered in many aspects.
It does not need to be the size of the Carrington event there have been many smaller ones which have has some effect,
and it will happen again.
No wheres have I advocated sticking our heads in the sand and to stop living.
But people need to anticipate that many modern "necessities" are fragile and need maintenance and care.
My wife is one of them, she can't understand why I keep written "printed" reference materials around.
Her stock answer is you can get it off the internet,
she doesn't like it and can't seem to comprehend that it can fail and crash for no apparent reason and for no known time.

kcflhrc · Oct 29, 2020

I think we can all agree that we have become way too dependent on the internet and could have disastrous consequences if we don't find alternatives to make it more stable. One idiot on a backhoe can cause a huge outage. I have seen it time and time again. Fortunately we have pretty good response times to cut fiber but it still takes time to repair.

LouNY · Oct 29, 2020

kcflhrc said:
I think we can all agree that we have become way too dependent on the internet and could have disastrous consequences if we don't find alternatives to make it more stable. One idiot on a backhoe can cause a huge outage. I have seen it time and time again. Fortunately we have pretty good response times to cut fiber but it still takes time to repair.

Back before the internet and cell phones and towers I was living and working in West Texas.
Had an electrical job to do part of which entailed running a trencher and laying in com cable for about 1/2 a mile,
this crossed at right angles and then paralleled for a few hundred feet one of the major trans continental phone cables.
I was amazed at the amount of supervision that was around that day and it had taken several weeks to get every thing arranged to do the work.
Well over a dozen people standing around watching me on that Ditch Witch putting down 4 foot deep trench while I was any where's near the marked routing of that cable.
As soon as we got that one section done and re buried they all disappeared.
It was kind of like "thank God and Greyhound she's gone". :laughing:

Diggin It · Oct 29, 2020

LouNY said:
But much easier to repair and restart.

We're going off thread here, but no. Localized ice or wind storms that bring down poles, towers and lines can take many days to restore. Those items are generally readily available and stocked. A widespread EMP event could take months to recover from. Items that would need to be replaced include transformers and other substation items. Those are not stocked. They are usually built to order and can take weeks or longer.

Consider what we've been talking about on other threads where home generator components are taking 8-12 weeks from order to ship. Those items should be available, but are not due to demand. If there were to be a mass scale event that required dozens or hundreds of substation scale transformers and control components, there could be a substantial wait.