Alaska's Food Security risks, cont'd

In addition to the earthquake and tsunami risk, there are a number of risks that can be identified rather easily. Some will seem to be of the "never going to happen", to "Yes, that's a possibility I didn't know before".

Starting outward and working in, I will first mention a not commonly known situation that is facing our solar system. Recently discovered by a NASA mission called IBEX, it is called "The Fluffy Ribbon" by laypersons. The entire solar system is moving into a dense cloud of magnetic energy, many thousands of light years across. Some suspect that this is what is responsible for the increasing temperatures on our neighboring planets. But what is most concerning to me, is the statement by the bestest and brightest that NASA has, that they basically had no idea this existed and that the information gleaned from these probes is going to rewrite a whole bunch of scientific laws. Yeah, that's comforting, isn't it?

Now, whether or not or how much this is going to affect conditions on good old Earth, I have no idea-but one thing IS certain...it will bring changes. Here is a link to a video presentation from NASA on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTnwjd8CF1c&feature=player_embedded

There is much more information available online about this subject, a simple search of "The Magnetic Fluffy Ribbon" should bring scads of results. I personally prefer going to SickScent's blog since he has gathered together much of the information there already. (Link here on this blog) There are several things to take away from this: First, that our best scientists have no idea what it all means. And secondly, that changes are occurring in our solar system because of it.

Moving further inward from the edge of the heliosphere, I'll just remind folks that there are a number of "near miss" comets and asteroids coming up. Some of them are within a couple hundred thousand miles of earth-a whisker away, really. Hopefully the resources devoted to NEO (Near Earth Objects) will be able to see, identify, and track orbits quickly-but of course there is nothing we can do to prevent a sizable impact. All the movies aside, we do not have the technology to avert catastrophe and certainly don't have the resolve to make concrete plans to do so either.

Of the threats of immediate concern to our planet, I believe that the Sun presents the largest risk. Since I cannot know just what the eventual effects of the Fluffy Ribbon might be over the coming centuries, or a "Deep Impact" (the movie) type of event, I can face the challenges of the sun's activity with some confidence.

The primary risk originates from sunspot activity. Instead of attempting to teach everyone about how the sun works and what energies it emits every second, I will focus on the main risk-CME from solar flare. CME stands for Coronal Mass Ejection. They are generally comprised of dense particles and hurled off the surface of the sun into space, and can (and have) caused major effects on our Mother Earth. Here is a link to a description of one such event in our past:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 (I don't generally use Wiki as a source, but in this case, the information is reliable)

In 1989, a similar, although much smaller solar storm, caused a power outage in Quebec that lasted for nine hours and affected millions of people. The thing to take away from both of these reports is that sunspots can give birth to coronal mass ejections, and these CME can cause EMPs. EMP stands for Electro/Magnetic/Pulse. So much energy assaults our planet that it penetrates our own magnetic field, and "goes to ground", using any means necessary. In 1859, that was telegraph wires...in 1989, it was the grid itself. 20 years later and the world is a very connected place today.....a large enough storm would pretty much fry everything electrical.

Now just think about what would happen should an EMP wipe out the electrical grid. Not just our grid here in Alaska (where we are much closer to possible effects-aurora borealis is a visible signature of these storms) but across the US. In the blink of an eye (less, actually!) the main US grid is down. So are all forms of communication, because the satellites will be casualties also. Computers, vehicles, equipment of all kinds will cease to function-anything with a modern chip, in fact. And not just the chips, it would fry all those many millions of small transformers, not to mention the large ones.....well, the end result would be this:

Alaska would be stranded well and good, for months if not years.

Years. Very troubling thought, isn't it? How many pounds of seed do you think is inside the state borders right now? How much in the way of planting supplies? Means to preserve the foods grown from them? How could it be distributed without modern transportation? Not to mention started, planted, watered, fertilized and harvested? If the thought gives you the willies, it should. There is an excellent book out by a gentleman called William Forstchen, called "One Second After" Here is a link to the Amazon listing:

http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765356864/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313174057&sr=1-1

A novel, but the author addresses many of the problems modern society might face in such an event. Naturally, there are many such works of fiction available today, in the genre...but it isn't just the gifted writer who considers this to be a huge threat-NASA does as well......

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/22jun_swef2011/


And with that I will close by saying-please let's discuss what these threats to our security (our survival here, actually) mean, and what we might do to mitigate those risks a little. Naturally, I have a few ideas about that :)