Magnetic Field Reversal

[pwdrive]

There's a place in the South Atlantic, the South Atlantic Anomoly, that already has a weakening of the magnetic field: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_Anomaly

Ooh yes so there is, thanks for that, apparently the reversal of the earths mag field is recorded in solidified lava of the ever expanding mid atlantic ridge.

Lawrence

[Steve_P]

This reversal has been known about for some time. It's probably a greater risk to mankind than Global Warming, mainly because it's real.

Why that bloke wants to go underground is to escape the solar winds when it disappears.

Or we can try and do what they did in Highlander 2...

Cheers,

Steve P.

[Robert Darwent]

Why that bloke wants to go underground is to escape the solar winds when it disappears.

Or we can try and do what they did in Highlander 2...

A terrible sequel, not a patch on the original film.

A much more accurate film analogy however, is 'The Core'. Remember the scene where the scientists are briefing the American military and use an apple on a fork blasted by a makeshift blow-torch to illustrate what would happen to the Earth if the magnetosphere completely vanished?

Nowhere to hide from that!

Regards

[Yorkie]

Scary stuff, but to quote Private Frazer "We're doomed Captain Mainwaring - doomed I tell ye".

As indeed we are, but I suspect it won't be the flipping magnetic field that will do for us.

'Tis all a chequer board of nights and days,
Were destiny with men for pieces plays,
Hither and thither, moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one, into the closet lays.

Omar Khayyam,
Obit 1122 CE.

He was clever!

[pwdrive]

As has been stated going underground the earths mag field for all practical purposes will be the same whatever state that field might be in above the surface, but if a large EMP were to occur by whatever means the I would guess that anything underground would be progressivly protected the further and deeper down it was situated so from the EMP point of view of that chaps original explanation then would he be correct?

Lawrence.

[Robert Darwent]

if a large EMP were to occur by whatever means the I would guess that anything underground would be progressivly protected the further and deeper down it was situated so from the EMP

If the EMP was created from an airburst by a nuclear missile, then yes going underground would offer some protection as you are distancing yourself from the source - the high atmosphere - so attenuating the effects of the EMP.

But in the case of a sudden catastrophic reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (which has never been known to occur throughout geological history), then going underground you would be putting yourself closer to the source - the Earth's core - so the effect of the EMP would be stronger!

In any case, a much easier way of shielding oneself and sensitive electronic equipment/media from an EMP, or any other sources of electromagnetic radiation, is a 'Faraday Cage'.

Regards

[pwdrive]

Yes Robert, that is what I was meaning, lets hope we don't have to drag out the Faraday cage and the tin foil...As a matter if interest the OP of this subject on the aditnow forum has had his thread terminated and he has requested that he wants his membership revoked, his own fault really as loads of wild claims but no sources/refs etc.

Lawrence.

[Yorkie]

If the EMP was created from an airburst by a nuclear missile, then yes going underground would offer some protection as you are distancing yourself from the source - the high atmosphere - so attenuating the effects of the EMP.

Regards

Mention of nuclear missiles is evocative of the cold war era and the UK government's farcical 'Protect and Survive' series of public information films. 1975 isn't so long ago - I was 36 and our kids were 11 and 7. I just saw that camapign as propaganda to scare the public witless and to justify the arms race, the defence budget and the logic of deterrence and equality of arms at the time.

Some people were indeed scared witless and even built underground fallout bunkers. Had such an event have actually happened, the risk to personal safety would have transcended radiation, and would have stemmed from civil disobedience, the breakdown of law and order and the survival of the fittest. You only have to consider what happens in America when natural disasters occur. Despite having just about the highest per capita income in the developed world, when something like Katrina happens, the national guard has to be called out in a vain attempt to try to prevent looting, violence and chaos. (Hence, the cult of 'survivalists' in the US).

The 'Protect and Survive' films presented a surreal air of calm rational thinking and behaviour, with people forming orderly queues for water and what not - 'after you old chap - no - not at all, I think you were before me'...I didn't find the films either alarming or reassuring and I didn't bother with getting in all the emergency supplies and making a 'safe place' just in case. However well-intentioned this stuff was, really, they should be laughed off the face of the planet. A life lived in fear is no life at all.

During the 'cold war' era in 1969, I was local manager for British Gas in Spalding and for historical reasons due to the location of the offices, the air raid warning sirens for WW2 were sited on the building. We had to test the 'Red Alert' and 'All Clear' sirens at a given time each week in readiness for the 'Four-minute Warnnig' in the event of a nuclear attack. I'm not sure when this requirement started or when the tests were abandoned, (we moved to Grimsby in 1970), but having heard the sirens as a child during the war until I was six in 1945, and spent many a night in air raid shelters, like many of my generation, the sounding of those sirens did rather give me a touch of the heeby jeebies!

http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/196...rnings.htm

Sorry to drift right off topic from magnetic field reversal onto 'what to do if something did happen'?

[pwdrive]

I think a lot of the underground stations etc have been recorded by subterrania britanica, they have a web site.

Lawrence.

[Steve_P]

You mean here...

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/

Cheers,

Steve P.