the "sea urchin" lightning-rod, and the "peer-to-peer" electric
power distribution, are my inventions. all the other stuff are not
my ideas, just me putting two and two together in things that can
save us from EMP.
PART 0 - BASIC PREMISE - DIRECT LIGHTNING HIT IS JUST AS BAD AS EMP
this helps me to think and research about EMP and Solar Flare
because lightning was studied a lot more.
i base this assumption on two sources, the first is the
article about EMP in Wikipedia where lightning is the first
type of EMP and the only restriction is that lightning is longer:
"Lightning is unusual in that it typically has a preliminary
"leader" discharge of low energy building up to the main pulse,
which in turn may be followed at intervals by several smaller
bursts."
the other source is an article titled: "Differences Between
Lightning and Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Interactions"
by Edward F. Vance and Martin A. Uman in IEEE Transactions on
Electromagnetic compatibility vol 30 No. 1 February 1988 (page 58) :
"Most comparisons of lightning interactions with structures have
dealt with small bodies of roughly the size of aircraft.
These comparisons indicate that a severe natural lightning can
deliver a larger peak current and more charge to a small system than
can the HEMP (high altitude nuclear explosions). Until recently,
because of the lack of wide-band lightning measurements, it was
thought that the HEMP produces much larger rates of change of fields
and induces much larger rates of change of current than does LEMP
(electromagnetic transients from lightning) . However, recent
wide-band measurements of lightning current waveforms on a research
aircraft as well as other evidence to be presented in Section IV-E
indicate that rates of rise of the same order of magnitude as those
reported for HEMP may be possible for lightning currents and
fields."
in other words for an average house lightning is at least as
"strong" as an EMP from a nuclear bomb. so i base everything that
follows on the principle that if it's good enough for a direct hit
by lightning, it's good enough for a nuclear EMP. (solar flare is
like EMP happening all at once above every place in that half sphere
of our planet).
PART 1 - HOME PROTECTION - "SEA URCHIN" LIGHTNING ROD, ONE WAY DIODE
as you can see in Wikipedia the problem is not technical but
economical, you don't get enough lightnings in the same spot, and
each one of them doesn't carry enough energy to make it worth it.
but now we are talking about saving lives so we don't care about
money.
see for example this annoying* video by Adam Savage Catches
Lightning in a Bottle - Unimpossible Missions by Adam Savage’s
Tested:
* (because it only refers to another video which is unavailable)
ok so after we agree that it can be done technically, and that the
EMP / SF is just many lightnings over a large area all happening at
once, then the first part of the home protection solution is
trivial:
put many lightning rods, not just from above but in all directions
of the building and ground them all to the Earth! so this is what i
call "sea urchin" lightning rod.
how can we make it better? if you have one lightning then the Earth
can take it no problem, but if there are many lightnings (EMP / SF)
it might be full of charge and electrify the house instead.
Web Originals : Ask History: Ben Franklin and his Kite | History
so what i suggest each person will do is build a Leyden Jar which is
very simple:
SHOCKING Science with a Leyden Jar by The King of Random
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spuXN0ccRQ8
Yes. You can make a Leyden jar with some simple stuff. by Rhett
Allain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBsFiBqn1EI
Make a SUPER HIGH VOLTAGE Capacitor by Mehdi Sadaghdar from
ElectroBOOM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjW-isgOijs
in these demos they make a small one, but you should make a big one
for example a big bucket or water tight barrel.
you should put it in a hole in the ground near the house and cover
it with soil, and a thick electric cable protected with coating
should conduct the electric charge from each lightning rod to its
own Leyden jar.
how can we make sure it will no discharge from the Leyden jar back
to through the cable and into the house (Leyden jar is a capacitor
that we just charged and it can discharge) ?
we need to connect the last half a meter or so of the cable using a
very thin wire, for example take an empty 1.5 litres family size
soft drink bottle made of plastic. puncture a small hole in the
bottom and in the cap, and pass the thin wire through them.
so in a sense the whole bottle thing is used as a one direction
diode. after the air in the bottle becomes conducting plasma and
takes the electricity into the Leyden jar, the bottle explodes and
the the electricity cannot go back so the house is safe. this is why
the bottle should not be burried in the ground, because after it
explodes we want the plasma to scatter. and it's made of plastic and
it's relatively small because we don't want anybody to get injured.
PART 2 - HOME ELECTRIC STORAGE - DEEP CYCLE BATTERY, BATTERY ROOM
here is a quote from an experiment what happens in an EMP to the
power plant (destroyed) to the power lines (shut down) and to over
voltage protections (burn) :
"The Soviet scientists instrumented a 570-kilometer (350 mi) section
of telephone line in the area that they expected to be affected by
the nuclear detonation in order to measure the electromagnetic pulse
effects. The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) fused all of the
570-kilometer monitored overhead telephone line with measured
currents of 1500 to 3400 amperes during the 22 October 1962 test.
The monitored telephone line was divided into sub-lines of 40 to 80
kilometres (25 to 50 mi) in length, separated by repeaters. Each
sub-line was protected by fuses and by gas-filled overvoltage
protectors. The EMP from the 22 October (K-3) nuclear test caused
all of the fuses to blow and all of the overvoltage protectors to
fire in all of the sub-lines of the 570 km (350 mi) telephone line.
The EMP from the same test caused the destruction of the Karaganda
power plant, and shut down 1,000 km (620 mi) of shallow-buried power
cables between Astana (then called Aqmola) and Almaty."
the simplest solution is that each house in a hot area will buy
(every time i say do something means ahead of time) solar panels or
in cold places wind turbine, or in moderate climate both. every
house will install them in his yard and on his roof and will provide
enough electricity for himself. for example people who live in off
grid in Alaska do this (they have a diesel generator and diesel only
for backup).
of course we need to protect the sensitive parts (the electronics
etc) with Faraday cage, and make sure that normally these solar
panels or wind turbines are never connected to the grid or else the
EMP will fry them.
(also i suggest we protect even the non electronic parts as much as
possible, using partial Faraday cages like metal grids or nets or
meshes, for example let's say we have rectangle solar panel on the
ground, we can put it on four building blocks so it's above ground,
and stick four metal stakes close to the solar panel corners and tie
a metal grid (like the ones used in construction sites) so the Sun
can come through but the EMP will hopefully electrify the metal grid
and be routed into the ground with the metal stakes. a similar
solution for the wind turbine is more complicated but maybe we can
sew a metal net like the ones people put in the windows against
mosquitoes around each blade of the turbine and improvise metal
brushes that will rub against another metal net on the supporting
pole that will take the EMP to the ground.)
since the power from the Sun and wind is not available all the time,
each house needs a battery to store all the energy during the day
(or when it's windy) and use it during the night (or when it's not
windy).
BUT as you will soon see this Autarky (self-sufficiency) is not
always ideal. what if for example you have a lot of area for solar
panels but you don't cows and chicken, so you have a lot of
electricity but no food. and lets say your neighbor has the opposite
situation, they have a lot of tasty food but no electricity. to make
a long story short you want to trade electricity.
so one way to do this is of course giving one of your full batteries
to your neighbor and he gives you an empty battery in return. but
what if you don't live next to each other?
PART 3 - CITY ELECTRIC GRID - "PEER-TO-PEER", PULSED DIRECT CURRENT
wouldn't it be great if each house could give and take electricity
from his few close neighbors? what if we could scale this up to a
whole structure like an internet of electricity?
as you know the internet was built for exactly this problem. the USA
was afraid that one or a few bombs could take out all its computer
communication, if the control center was hit. so the internet is
made so that there is no one center, there is the backbone, but in
theory you cannot bring down the entire internet because even if the
best route to the destination is not possible, the message can
always take another longer route (through the computers that did
survive) and reach its destination. this is done using the IP
protocol which means Internet Protocol.
maybe a better example for most people is the Peer to Peer (which is
abbreviated P2P) architecture. let's say you want to download a
movie in torrent, but the movie is not stored in one central server,
because then the law authorities will shut that server computer
down. but instead the movie is copied between many little people and
each of them becomes a server, so the system is resilient.
so we want to do the same with electricity. we want to keep it
ourselves and pass it around. but we face two problems.
the first problem is in the words of Grady Hillhouse from Practical
Engineering:
"electricity can't be created STORED and used at a later time. the
instant it's produced it's used, no matter how far the producer is
from the user."
but if each of us will have an array of batteries at home they act
as a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
the other problem is resistance: it's very hard for the Direct
Current (DC) from the battery to move in the electric cable. this is
because Direct Current (DC) travels through the whole volume of the
cable, while Alternate Current (AC) travels along the surface of the
cable so it doesn't suffer from resistance. (AC tackles impedance
but it's not as bad as resistance).
Why Use AC Instead of DC at Home?? by ElectroBOOM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7C5sSde9e4
but there is a solution that can solve all our problems, it's a kind
of current that is something between DC and AC and it's called
Pulsed DC, or Pulsating Direct Current (and anyway in short PDC).
and there Wikipedia has another very very nice line:
"Along with MPPT maximum power point tracking, it is one of the
primary methods of reducing the output of solar panels to that which
can be utilized by a battery."
so this kind of special current Pulsed Direct Current (PDC) can pass
from house to house like AC but without all the transformers that
you need for the AC
(because we can't have transformers between each two houses to crank
the voltage up and then down again)
OK so where do we get this wonderful Pulsed Direct Current (PDC) ?
that's the beauty of it, it's a by product of the peer-to-peer (p2p)
system!
on each node (which means each utility pole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_pole
) we will install, after the EMP , an electronic card that will be
able to do the smart stuff which means implementing the IP (internet
protocol) of that city. like if Alice wants to send a packet of
electricity from her house to Bob's house, each smart card will know
all the IP addresses and all the different routes the packet can be
sent. also the electronic smart card will activate an actuator to
make it happen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuator
but instead of for phone lines for electricity lines.
let's imagine the mechanism next to Alice's house. it has a round
dial like a clock's face, and the electrical cable from Alice is
connected to the hand of the clock (with a metal brush). and the
hand on the clock can go around. but in our clock it doesn't show
time, instead it just spins and spins endlessly.
so remember that Alice wants to send a packet to Bob.
let's say in this example that there are 3 possible routes: through
Carol, through Dan, through Erin.
the actuator pushes these peoples numbers, let's that their numbers
are 1 , 2 , 3 .
so now each of these numbers get an electric packet and the electric
packet come in short bursts which is effectively the Pulsed Direct
Current (PDC).
now suppose Carol's and Dan's houses have burnt cables from the EMP,
but Erin still is functioning, then Bob will eventually get
electricity through Erin.
to make this complete we want to encode on each packet (like in
Morse code) who it's from and who it's going to just like the
packets in the internet, and then we can track them better.
one last thing you might see in Wikipedia about PDC:
"Devices and circuits may respond differently to pulsating DC than
they would to non-pulsating DC, such as a battery or regulated power
supply and should be evaluated."
but remember that in my scenario everybody is using their battery
which means what gets to your house is PDC, but inside your house
you use DC.
PART 4 - CITY GRID PROTECTION - LIGHTNING ARRESTER , P2P
SWITCH, WATER PIPES
this is just to finish of the previous part, if you say ok what
happens if there is another EMP, does everything burns again?
the smart cards indeed burn again they are delicate, we need to make
backup of copies of those but electronic cards are cheap to make.
but the expansive hardware of power lines is more robust, because
the grid is not all connected all the time.
this is because the hand of the clock doesn't touch all the numbers
on the clock all the time.
also i suggest we use lightning arrester which is a bigger version
of surge arrester and if there is a lightning it takes it to the
ground instead of allowing it to burn the wire.
lightning arresters' component silicon carbide was first made by
Acheson process from mixture of clay (aluminium silicate) and
powdered coke (carbon) in an iron bowl that you pass electricity
through, so it can't be expansive. you can see in this nice video of
Edward Goodrich Acheson in action (i guess it's a docudrama
(dramatized re-enactment) although the motion-picture camera was
invented in 1888 so maybe it is him?)
another option is to make the lightning arresters from zinc oxide
which is made by melting zinc and zinc is a pretty common metal with
low melting point so this can't be expansive as well.
yet another option is the cheapest of all: to make a spark gap which
is like what we did in the plastic bottle for the one-way
"lightning-rod to Leyden-jar" but without the exploding wire.
what if all of the power lines are down?
i suggest that we then use something that is conducting and reaches
each and every house by which i mean non-plastic water pipes
(meaning steel and copper pipes).
this requires the population to be careful because for example in
the night time the city will supply power over the water pipes. this
protects children who might use the tap and die.
to use the plumbing we need to isolate it from the ground which is
hard because most of it runs underground and inside walls (although
a wall doesn't necessarily conduct to the ground).
the water themselves contain ions and are conducting (distilled
water are not conducting), but if we use the Pulsed Direct Current
(PDC) the current will flow on the pipe (the outside) and not in the
water (the inside).
since pipes need to be sealed for the water pressure, we can't
disconnect them and connect them in their present condition so this
requires reinforced plastic nodes to be used between the houses or
between every few houses at max, so that we have individual "blocks"
of emergency electrical distribution.
PART 5 - FOOD TRANSPORT AND COOLING - OLD TRUCKS, HEAT PIPE
ok so the people have electricity but where will they get all their
food and water?
everything is moved by trucks, but the problem is that all the new
vehicles have a computer and electronics and the EMP will fry that.
so again it's pretty trivial but the solution is to save as many old
trucks from 1980 or earlier in good condition that we can and
maintain them in good condition.
we also have to take them for a ride once in a while so their
battery is full and so on:
the rest of the time (which is 99%) they should be in special
emergency garages which are made with metal walls which will act as
Faraday's Cage and protect the trucks.
on the trucks there will be one solar fridge or more if possible and
on the roof of the truck will be mounted the solar panels for the
fridges:
but where will we store all the supermarket stuff after it reaches
its destination?
i suggest next to every existing supermarket we dig ahead of time a
small tunnel that we will use for the storage of refrigerated foods
that need to keep cool.
the temperature a few meters below ground is already pretty cool
which will save energy costs in the long run.
the extra cooling will be done "passively" by heat pipe which is a
technology that doesn't require energy, it works "by itself". the
heat pipes will take the heat from the tunnel through the ceiling of
the tunnel to the surface. we should use a liquid in the heat pipe
that boils in a lower temperature than water.
so we should use either ammonia (213–373 K), alcohol (methanol
(283–403 K) or ethanol (273–403 K).
PART 6 - OIL REPLACEMENT - MICROWAVE AND LASER, ELECTRIC CAR
CONVERSION
but i hear you asking what will the trucks run on and here we get to
the last section.
the trucks will run on electricity. i know i said we will use cars
from 1980 or earlier, and back then there were no electric cars at
all.
so what we will do is we turn the trucks in their special garages
into electric trucks.
i don't know anything about mechanics but there are many videos on
youtube about this so i'm sure it's possible and affordable:
example #1:
Electric CAR Conversion! From GASOLINE to ELECTRIC car in ONE video!
by George Bolton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5amE5HVy08
example #2:
Karmann Ghia Conversion to Electric (The Process) by Botts
Fine Vids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrT5dbgSx4E
but what if there is not enough surface for solar panels / wind
turbines for all the things we need, like for example if we need to
manufacture something which requires great heat, or we have to drill
for resources etc?
then we come to the last part of my plan which is help from
neighboring areas or even other countries. this is done by laser or
microwave beams:
"The rectenna survived and was operable after a direct lighting
strike on the tower in 1980, and which destroyed equipment on the
ground."
it's hard to know what's the current capabilities of such
technology, because i get the feeling it didn't advance at all. the
U.S. army is making "pain rays" for crowds, and weapons against
drone swarms.
all the drone needs is a little mirror to defend and even take out
the weapon!
this can gives New York very little electricity in December. what
happens if the EMP strikes in December?
so my idea is to equip airships (we can fill the balloon with helium
so that we don't get the Hindenburg disaster all over again) and zig
zag the light with huge mirrors from more sunny areas like Florida.
it would be even better if we can create concave and convex mirrors
(possibly by pasting small mirrors on a lightweight surface maybe
PVC) so we have concentrated beam of light which might be easier to
point to the next "solar relay" which is the next zeppelin on the
line.
by the way i just bumped into an article in Wikipedia which refered
to
which can help a lot in the section that we talked about how to
store the solar energy, this can be like a battery for the whole
city and used for bigger clients like industry manufacturing or
resource excavating and things like that.
SPACE (FUTURE TIME)
about harvesting solar power in space, sadly it's far in the future.
i gather this from Japan saying it will be in 2030, and more
recently China saying it will be in 2050.
Space Solar Power Project by caltech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtNwYweL6hY
when we do have the ability to transmit and receive energy from
space, i think each country should have agreements with countries on
the other side of the world like here:
so like New York and Australia can be in an agreement, and Russia
can be in an agreement with Argentina and Australia and so on.
in case of a Solar Flare, half of the globe suffers more and halr of
the world suffers less. so if you are in the lucky half then you can
help your unlucky friend country that you are in mutual contract
agreement with.
what can the lucky country do to help its friend? let's say that New
York is completely fried by Solar Flare but Australia survived the
SF , and let's suppose we can transfer power to and from sattelites.
Australia can divert half of it's energy to send it to New York via
satellites that can create a chain of relays, like the airships idea
but over long range and with microwave or laser.
Most HVDC links use voltages between 100 kV and 800 kV. A 1,100 kV
link in China was completed in 2019 over a distance of 3,300 km with
a power of 12 GW. With this dimension, intercontinental connections
become possible which could help to deal with the fluctuations of
wind power and photovoltaics.
notice the nice word: INTER-CONTINENTAL !
PART 7 - WATER AND WASTE - GO BACK TO GRAVITY ASAP
"Traditionally, water infrastructure - including tunnels, pipes, and
other water delivery systems - was gravity fed by design. More
recently, however, a large portion of this infrastructure has
become electricity dependent. The pervasiveness of the electric pump
has allowed cities to exist in areas previously uninhabitable due to
a lack of gravity fed water. However, disruption of electricity as a
result of an EMP attack would cause the failure of any systems
reliant on such machinery, including those associated with water
purification and delivery. Water sanitation processes, which are
vital for human survival, would also be impacted. "
i didn't think about it, but this is super serious and especially
with all the diseases that non functioning sewage will cause. the
only solution i see is to evacuate cities that rely on electrical
sewage pumps into other cities and subsidize the relocation for
them. there is no way that people will be able to use chemical
toilets on for a long time on the scale of a whole city. composting
the feces etc also requires energy and space for gardens etc which a
dense urban area simply doesn't have. in the third world people use
human waste burn it for energy and make bricks etc, but these people
don't have the density of an American city, and where they do they
face a lot of disease like in India for example. the water problem
is multiplied if we add dehydration from diarrhea.
THE ONLY WAY TO GO IS TO UNDO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE - RELOCATE THE
PEOPLE NOW BEFORE THE DISASTER STRIKES!
PART 8 - HYPOTHETICAL IDEA - ANTI RESONANCE
there is a thing called anti-resonance which means is a special way
of resonance where one oscillator moves A LOT and the other moves
very little.
in this video it's in a mechanical system (but the same can be done
in an electromagnetic system)
Two degree of freedom spring-mass system: Anti-resonance
by
ubcmechdal
(The University of British Columbia)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPIrrhfI7yQ
here are two cool examples of electric synchronization
Huygens' Synchronization - Electrostatic Oscillators
by Ami Varsano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eXgSL96-Cc
Huygens Synchronization with Revolving Balls
by Ami Varsano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvyXgqfa1SQ
please notice that this is NOT anti-resonance, i just want to
visually show electric things has properties of coupled oscillators
like two pendulum clocks that are hung on the wall next to each
other and after a while they synchronize to each other spontanously.
WIKIPEDIA ON ANTIRESONANCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING:
Antiresonance in electrical engineering
In electrical engineering, antiresonance is the condition for which
the reactance vanishes and the impedance of an electrical circuit is
very high, approaching infinity.
In an electric circuit consisting of a capacitor and an inductor in
parallel, antiresonance occurs when the alternating current line
voltage and the resultant current are in phase. Under these
conditions the line current is very small because of the high
electrical impedance of the parallel circuit at antiresonance. The
branch currents are almost equal in magnitude and opposite in phase.
so if we put 2 identical power lines instead of 1 in the same
direction and connected to each other, and they both get the same
input (the EMP) but in a specific phase gap between them, then one
of them will be conducting and one will be conductor and one will
become insulator. so the conductor one will fry but he will
sacrifice himself to save the insulating one.
then after the EMP passed the former insulating power line that
survived will get his normal conducting properties back, because it
is no longer coupled to anything, and we will use it for
electricity.
how do we make this phase gap? this i hope engineers can calculate,
but i guess we need "a capacitor and an inductor in parallel" like
Wikipedia says.
if this isn't possible than we need to assume the EMP will come from
above, and make a lightning rod with specific length that the
engineers will tell us, and so one wave will travel a distance X and
the other wave will travel a distance X+LightningRodLength and if we
get the LightningRodLength just right, it's like you make an antenna
for your field radio from a piece of wire in the right length for
the radio wave that you want to transmit or receive.
another concept if it's possible to implement logic gates in high
voltage (again i don't know how, you need to ask an engineer) is to
make an OR logic gate: putting two wires and if they both conduct
then don't pass electricity. this again assumes that without a
lightning rod the EMP will hit the two wires at roughly the same
time. on the other hand if we use just one of the wires then the OR
gate will allow the electricity to pass.
perhaps using something like this: High-voltage DC circuit breaker