[thedoc (OP)]

We rely increasingly on computer networks. If a solar storm or malicious  virus hit the network, could our current civilisation dependency on  computer networks be damaged irreversibly? Plus we ask, what is a comets tail made up of?
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[chris]

I don't think we'd wean ourselves off computers ever, but the potential impacts can be huge - just look at how much their recent computer glitch has cost Natwest.

[William McCormick]

I don't think we'd wean ourselves off computers ever, but the potential impacts can be huge - just look at how much their recent computer glitch has cost Natwest.

Yes and no, although most equipment today has chips and transistors, much of that is non-software type programming. It is just logic circuits, and has no communication system to allow someone to reprogram it, from off site. You might be able to shut it down from off site. Or even turn it on from off site. But you cannot reprogram it. Most are made to be bypassed in an emergency. However more and more today I see the use of more and more complex systems.

Some companies in order to save money and stop their employees from cross firing heating and cooling systems. Have hired outside companies energy management companies to come in and take control of the heating and cooling units by satellite controlled systems. I installed many of them years back, with coworkers here in the Metropolitan area and on Long Island. We cut into thermostat wiring, so the people in the store cannot control the system. We monitor the amps the compressors and fans draw, we monitor the return duct temperature, and the supply duct temperature. Basically we take control away from the people in the store. And let a computer in California manage it. It is wild, when I am done hooking a system up, I call California and ask them for a packet 96, and in about five seconds, eight huge rooftop units, shut down with a powerful clunk. Showing that they have control of the system. Pretty scary that the workers were wasting on average about $3,000 a month, having some of the systems in the same building calling for heat and others calling for Air conditioning. Some workers are cold in the summer and some are hot. Some workers are cold in the winter and some are hot. Madness. 

Now they are making city stairwells, what they call positive pressure stairwells. They run ducts up the side of the building to the roof of the building, and penetrate each floor into the stairwell, to supply a gentle positive pressure in the stairwell. The systems that they are installing, have a fan cooled logic system, with a plastic housing. That gets partially mounted in a stainless enclosure. And is partially exposed to the outside weather. A fellow had noticed that on a hot day, on the roof, that the temperature of the equipment is probably too high for any kind of long term survival.

There is also a duct smoke detector installed inside the cabinet to shut the system down incase smoke is detected entering the air inlet on the roof. It seems like a cool idea, I just doubt the new technology is up to the task at hand. Plastic in sunlight is not my first choice it warps. Even the high heat in the stainless steel Hoffman cabinets will probably cause distortion of the duct smoke detectors housing. Chips getting cooled by outside or outdoor air is also not my first choice. 

You would be surprised how useless many computer systems are today for critical applications. Many systems get bypassed and what you see when you walk into a control room, is a fancy display of lights, led's, and piezo buzzers. With humans actually monitoring the equipment on site. Almost the whole control room is bypassed. You have no idea of the collapse of our infrastructure. Often the most complex computer systems and control panels, end up being a timer, or dry contact activated, single input alarm.   


Electromagnetic pulses would probably wipe out civilization as we know it. Because they would or could, send an abundance of particles of electricity, to gates in triacs shutting some transistors off prematurely. Or create a shortage of particles of electricity to the gate, and turn them on prematurely. More then likely frying a lot of transistors and chips either way. We see this all the time from ARC's in electronics systems. The smallest ARC from low voltage, can wipe out an entire system.

It is pretty wild out there.

I was just working in a place that has a problem with corrosion. There are no more working emergency phones in the most critical of places. There are no more fire alarm pull stations that work near these areas. A couple of the phones were ripped right out of the boxes by people probably frustrated that they found an emergency phone not working. It is a scary place out there.


                      Sincerely,

                            William McCormick 

 

[evan_au]

To some extent, the internet was originally conceived as a resilient network which can route around broken links and routers.

However, a widespread impact from events such as you describe could disconnect large sections of the population from communications. Our city-based society is rather fragile, and working on very lean margins - the average supermarket only stocks a few days of food. Without effective transport, communications, electricity, water/sewage and banking systems, things could get very bad, very quickly.

Geomagnetic storms can damage the electricity grid and cause widespread blackouts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm#Electric_grid
Military actions could cause EMP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
...and terrorists are always looking for vulnerable spots in the fabric of society.

Fortunately, the military has equipment designed to be used off-grid in electrically hostile environments, so they could do some coordination in many of these conceivable scenarios.

[William McCormick]

To some extent, the internet was originally conceived as a resilient network which can route around broken links and routers.

However, a widespread impact from events such as you describe could disconnect large sections of the population from communications. Our city-based society is rather fragile, and working on very lean margins - the average supermarket only stocks a few days of food. Without effective transport, communications, electricity, water/sewage and banking systems, things could get very bad, very quickly.

Geomagnetic storms can damage the electricity grid and cause widespread blackouts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm#Electric_grid
Military actions could cause EMP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
...and terrorists are always looking for vulnerable spots in the fabric of society.

Fortunately, the military has equipment designed to be used off-grid in electrically hostile environments, so they could do some coordination in many of these conceivable scenarios.

You can knock out most military planes with electronic weapons. Certainly with parabolic radio transmitters. The military has a bunch of junk. We could have made really cool stuff for our boys, back in the late fifties and early sixties, when the whole plant was on the same page with reality. Today though most people are half in the boson, cyber world and half in reality. It takes the minds of everyone in a plant to plan out a good project, and everyone has to be on the same page.

You need the equivalent of at least three walls of steel to block out a magnetic pulse. There has to be enough space between the walls to accomplish the re-acceleration, or positive acceleration, of the magnetic field you wish to protect against, back to natural ambient radiation levels. The old black box flight recorders were built and designed by a fellow I worked for, and they had three walls of steel. And they always made it home.

                      Sincerely,

                            William McCormick

[Rohit Kashyap]

I am really very satisfied with this site and conversation too as it made me understood in a clear way about computers a lot