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NASA: Revisiting Our Vulnerabiity To Solar Flares
Elliott Capital's Paul Singer has previously raised his concerns that "there is one risk that stands way above the rest in terms of the scope of potential damage adjusted for the likelihood of occurrence" - an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Different initiators of EMP have different pulses and different effects. But the bottom line is that EMP fries electronic devices, including parts of electric grids. In 1859, a particularly strong solar disturbance (the “Carrington Event”) caused disruption to the nascent telegraph network. It happened again with similar disruptions in 1921. Now, as Dr. Lika Guhathakurta discusses, "to bring our modern society to a halt, I don't think we need an event that is as large as a Carrington Event. It could be much smaller, simply because of the connectedness of our power grid and also the entire technological system."
The biggest sunspot on the face of the sun in more than two decades unleashed a major flare on Friday (Oct. 24), the fourth intense solar storm from the active star in less than a week.
Submitted by Adam Taggart via Peak Prosperity,
Last year, we recorded a fascinating interview with Dr. Lika Guhathakurta, NASA astrophysicist and heliophysics expert, to understand the science behind coronal mass ejections (CMEs -- also commonly referred to as 'solar flares) and the potential havoc a large one could wreak on our technology-dependent society. The largest CME recorded in modern history, the Carrington Event, occurred in 1859 and it's charged particle wave brought down the then-new telegraph system across the US.
Dr Guhathakurta returns to the podcast this week to discuss a large-scale CME that nearly hit Earth back in July of 2012 (a direct hit missed us by about 1 week), as well as to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the warning system we have in place to alert us to such dangers, and the continuing vulnerability our system have to such an event:
To bring our modern society to a halt, I don't think we need an event that is as large as a Carrington Event. It could be much smaller, simply because of the connectedness of our power grid and also the entire technological system. We don't know how to operate without our GPS system.
What's interesting is that we used to think that this kind of low-probability, high-impact event happens every 100 years or so. Some researchers are doing calculations that suggest that the probability could be much higher: 10-12%. Now, that probability that they are referring to is that a solar storm will be that severe. But as to its impact -- we still know very little about that.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Lika Guhathakurta (35m:02s):
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Oh Jesus H Fucking Christ. We all know about this shit already, but sure as shit need another fear based meme to distract us just before the elections.
Look, a Unicorn!
Well of course we can protect you plebes, just pony up more moolah and we'll create a Department of No Solar Flares Fucking Up Your iShit, and everybody'll be happy. Of course, we'll have to be able to read your mail and listen to your communications real time to know if they're being interfered with, right? And of course, if they do get too interfering, we can all shunt you off to the safety of a nice Camp.
Wasn't Mr Tesla a genius!
Everybody should be so proud he was a nationalized American citizen!
Joyous happy and free!
Look, another Unicorn!
The biggest problem is the failure of the OP and the video bullshit link to properly analyze the Carrington Event for what it was. It was after the solar peak and in fact as the sunspot numbers began a rapid decline. I would not be shocked at the risk of the Carrington Event type flare in early 2015 but not before. Then again, who cares. A CME/EMP event would be welcome to get the Fed and Washington, DC to STFU!
I think it's going to be honey bee colony collpase syndrome. No more food supply.
Or maybe the radiation from Fukushima will kill off all the plankton and then the rest of the food chain above it collapses.
Nah, who am I kidding? We all know where this is headed. We're all going to nuke ourselves over some false-flag event.
Check out this youtube channel. The best for solar flares/activity:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKAeXCfK2fSYgYDBxXe3J2g/videos
our system, poly phase, invented by tesla is susceptible to damage because it is over 100 years old. no fundamental understanding of what is the nature of electricity has occurred since tesla, because of the stifling effects of those in control of the current system. had tesla had support we would be in a much different place and more in harmony with the earth, with no need to make swiss cheese out of it and burning its innards.
EMP!!!!
See what I mean about horses now you mooks!!??
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-27/historic-shift-nato-member-pola...
But never mind those wimpy ass solar flares
Cause it's the Yellow Stone Super Volcano that's really gonna get ya!!
Either that or a cosmic gamma ray burst!
Or Fukashima radiation!
Or Ebola!
Or you get hit by a fucking bus!
But what's really fucking hilarious is that the Sun is going into another Maunder minimum phase now
Which negates a massive solar flare killing us
But ushers in another fucking Ice Age!
The images/movies are amazing. Been checking back to them for years. Best. Wallpaper. Ever.
http://www.isf.astro.su.se/gallery/
Regards,
Cooter
Is this why no QSO?
George Noory's EMP Protection campaign
http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/end-is-near-radio-star-launches-emp-warning/
Sun spots and weather events. Daily updates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnyLJiRBc7c&index=1&list=UUTiL1q9YbrVam5...
I don't like you much, but your right the ice age cometh, better figure out a way to heat the hut middle class bitchez..
no, it is susceptible to damage because the grid companies are held at gun point by their share holders who haven't read the book one second after.
Basically, a solar flare puts 1 to 10 volts per mile of DC on top of the high tension AC lines which are strung above ground. the lower tension lines are strung on shorter poles so they get less volts, and they are also shorter in length (miles, instead of hundreds of miles), which means less current.
That DC voltage pushes dc current through the transformers, driving them into saturation. --basically, as long as you can turn the power off within 30 seconds, no chance of failure. but realistically, its going to take about 10 times that long from the moment the dc current is measururable, to the point the oil starts boiling in your transformers.. so 3 minutes is plenty of time. long enough to tell their consumers to perform graceful shutdowns on certain equipment.
what it comes down to: is the power grid companies are too cheap to buy 50 million dollars worth of capacitors and place them in series between the neutral wire (WYE connection, neutral grounded on both ends of the transmission lines) and the ground rod.--they want congress to pay for them.
"too cheap to buy 50 million dollars worth of capacitors and place them in series between the neutral wire" ... not capacitors, resisters. Just enough to bleed the current and limit its peak to less than the windings.
you would want a capacitor in this case, not a resistor.
a capacitor is an electrical device that opposes a change in voltage. Also a capacitor will pass AC voltage but will block DC voltage. since an EMP event will induce DC voltage into electrical wiring, capacitors installed inline with the system will prevent damage to electrical grids
@Four chan
There has been work on understanding this. Steinmetz did a lot of work back then but much of it was lost as quaternions were converted to vectors. Modern day has seen Dollard carry on the work of Tesla in versor algebra although many either don't follow or call it quackery. From what I have read and seen there does appear to be something to it but I am not qualified as I am neither an electrical engineer nor a physicist. I do try to understand though. There is much more to electricity than AC and DC. Look at the 4 quadrant theory and see what you think.
Oh look! My solar powered calculator still works fine! Bought if back in 83 for a buck!
HONEY BEES, RADIATION, PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS Fuck all... What will kill us is totalitarians planning to off us. Who the hell is falling for the red blue shit these days.. Jeb Bush, are you fucking serious? Fabians have decided these 8 years have been a big enough bite at the apple time to calm the proles down with a term of neocon WTF?? Cruz, Lee, Gohmert where the hell are you guys? More fucking kabuki thats where... Edit: oh yeah econ, buy some fucking gold, get rich in the collapse, mansion full of 20 yo nymphos, cuz the elites have not figured that one out..
Maybe we could start by banning divorce and go from there.
Whoever nukes first wins give or take a couple hundred million casualties
Since the Russians know that we always attack 'pre-emptively' it is 100% certain that they will pre-empt our pre-emptive attack If they wait until we attack they will lose most of their counterstrike ability We need to take them out now before these boiling mushroom clouds rise above our fair cities
No time to dilly dally
But isn't that gonna make them pre-empt our pre-emptive, pre-emptive, pre-emptive attack??
Why yes, I'll have the spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans and spam please.
Ease up on the beans
No time to dilly dally
I was with you until you mentioned the inconsequential American mid-term election. Only 5% of the country gives half a shit about that election and the results won't change anything in this smelly turd of a political system.
How about a bloody turd?
If the grid goes down, nuclear plants will have to run their back-up diesel generators to supply enough electricity to keep their cooling systems operating, otherwise the reactors will melt down. A bigger problem are the spent fuel pools, which have to be continuously cooled for years. Hard to do with generators designed to run for maybe a few weeks (current worst case scenario in the minds of the NRC Commissioners).
Each spent fuel pool contains more radioactive cesium than was released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests combined. They will boil off without cooling, the fuel rods recently out of the reactor will then rupture or ignite, when exposed to steam or air.
Imagine scores of simultaneous reactor melt-downs and fuel pool fires.
No worries, right?
I have been trying to make this point for years, without Yucca Mountain we are all well and truly screwed.. Forget everything but the nuke plants, if it happens all the preps in the world will not help. Planet of the cockroaches..
we're still screwed; check this out;
http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whyyuccawillleak.htm
Sounds massively cool like a bigger version of Burning Man.
They'll be fine in Arizona. Those are cooled in sand. Plus what about hydro? Those generators are encased in a billion tons of concrete. That sounds safe to me.
Even if that's the case, the others melting down will contaminate all of us
the diesel generators very likely will not work in an EMP event. about a 99% chance every single one of them are computer controlled, plus the voltage regulator circuits in the generator itself will be destroyed as well.
about the only thing that would be EMP proof would be to install hand cranks to the pumps so you could manually turn the pump without any electricity needed.
The deisel generators are in hardened cement vaults. Worry all you want but there are better uses for your time.
You got some of that right Perimetr. I don't think it will be as bad as you expect and you did get one thing wrong. The fuel is uranium oxide. Oxides do not burn because they are already oxidized. The metal cladding will melt but there won't be anything burning. You might be thinking of Chernobyl. That plant used graphite (carbon) as a moderator in the reactor. US plants do not have carbon in the reactor. If there are no fuel trucks to bring in deisel for the generators they will have a problem but it won't be as serious as you think. After a week they won't need to run the large reactor coolant pumps to keep the reactor cool. The residual heat removal system will be adeuate and that can be run by much smaller generators. You may think that no one has thought out such scenarios but they have and preparations for them are adequate.
We need a Solar Flare Czar.
NASA? LOL! They are a joke like the CDC. The staff is as competent as the Post Office. They are all a joke like the USA and the US Military that kisses Obala's arse.
C'mon Freddie, more Muzzie outreach will save us all from the vengeful PC Gods...
oh hell, that means the martians may already have ebola
I like Solar Zar better, has a nice ring to it.
Holiday shopping crippled by solar flare, film at eleven. Negative, film was vaporized. Um, turn on your radios....... Oh, never mind.
Anyone got any playing cards?
Playing cards my ass. I'm bringin' my slide rule.
Slide rules did the engineering and mathematics on the Saturn V rocket development project. Still the only rocket system without a failure in the history of space flight.
Show some kid a slide rule and watch his head explode sometime. They won't believe such a simple analog device could do math.
What is "math"?
"What is 'math'?"
http://truthinamericaneducation.com/common-core-state-standards/common-c...
Whew, talk about exploding heads!
I'll bring a pencil, notebook paper and some matches from my MRE's.
You can do calculations by the fire while eating the Wheat Bread Snack w/ Tabasco.
I have dibs on the Enchilada Meal
Long Mcintosh power amplifiers.
Replace the vacuum tubes...crank up the Led Zepplin!
Album Three! "Baby you need coolin'! Baby I'm not foolin!
Gonna send you...BACK TO SCHOOLIN!
You must walk to work.
"One of the factors that stands in the way of the world returning to an era productive enterprise and honest money is Paul Singer" Me
The world is already ending.
I just saw Tommy Chong on dancin wid da stars.
P.S. ADVISORY - PREPARE TO DIE!
My hen just told me that Charlie Daniels is playing on the same show.
Shit. Tommy Chong was funny back in the day. Probably just needs some dough.
And Charlie Daniels is an amazing muscian. Also probably needs the dough.
But, alas, I don't own a TV.
Guess I will just watch/listen to the old stuff. Gotta contribute to deflation and all (Fuck you BernankeYellin!).
Regards,
Cooter
"AND PHUCK YOU TOO WALL STREET!"
Rearguards, Alan Greenspan.
No one is worried that communications will be interupted globally but they are worried that it will be interupted locally and the unaffected regions will take advantage.
Now that, is distrubing.
I only down voted you because someone else did too. I have no idea why though. I hope I don't get voted down for this. It makes me laugh at some of the down votes in here. - ok, fixed +1
Typical OBushma-ism: "I only down voted you because someone else did too. I have no idea why though. I hope I don't get voted down for this. "
I like that new word, distrubing.Greenie on ya man !!!
/Distrubing: A disturbing rubbing. Used in a sentence: A man on the train distrubed me when I bent over to pickup my backpack...
Dude, chill out. The exchanges are everywhere, so it doesn't matter when it hits or how long it lasts. Algo's have totally priced this in.
Regards,
Cooter
The internet was made to withstand an actual nucleara exchange. That says to me "good luck disrupting that."
For communications, I want to get my ham radio license and radio with a faraday cage. Others should do the same. We can swap stories about how fucked up everything is.
carrington is the only solution to apply for global correction. it fixes finance, economy, overconsumming, everything.
no more shit MSM, no more tv, no more i_fuck, just the basics: firecamps, grow food, farms, barns, no more polution, no more false flag, no more islam djihad fucktard animals, no more debt, no more ebola.
The most advanced technological societies will be the most damaged. Subsistence farmers raising crops or livestock in Honduras or Afghanistan won't even know it happened.
I guarantee the concept of the powerful ruling over the powerless will be reinvented very quickly afterwards. As will the concept of war.
Neither will the completely intoxicated
So drink up!
Yeah but tell me that Twitter and Pintrest will still work. If not then life is not worth living.
War is going to be outlawed soon, or did you not hear correctly.
"Subsistence farmers ... won't even know it happened"
They will when the technologically disabled Zombi hoards begin lurching their way.
Even X class flares can barely get off of the sun's surface at this time. We are in a solar shutdown where you can get large sunspots but very little ejecta. Some of you out there can imagine for a star just how intimidating that can be. Anyhow, doesn't mean that we are safe because huge filaments can still launch towards the earth. And with the earth's magnetic field shutdown a catastrophe could happen at any time. And, besides anyhow, the sun is entering into the Maunder minimum and its about to get freaking cold over the next few years. Then is will begin to warm up again in a hundred years or so.
The statist cocksucking EMP snakeoil salesmen keep saying "there is a simple solution", but they ALWAYS neglect to say who the solution is for.
THEIR PROPOSALS ONLY only protect the transmission of electricity to THEIR hardened facilities. Unless you have your own hardened facility - "the grid" will send your home and office back to the pre-industrial age in the event of EMP event.
YOU LITTLE SERFS ARE TO BE SACRIFICED (and on top that-- taxed up the ass to pay for their uninterrupted electrical service).
Old hat .
See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2010/05/solar-shield-ii.html
Proper Hysterical Focus and you will be as safe as light brown toast .
Since the Tylers do nothing about Bruce pumping his blog here several times each day, others like Andre post their billboards at least once on most every thread.
It's just business.
In my generation it was On The Beach and Alas Babylon that queued us in on what it would be like to waltz through a nuclear war. Now we have One Second After for this generation to consider the impact of the grid going down.
Can you imagine what the east and west coast would be like in three days without power? When Miami losses hope the golden horde will head north and west.
Miami losing hope? Oh you mean the Miami Heat losing hope because LeBron left.
Florida has plenty of other shitty cities like West Palm, Orlando and Jacksonville. Tampa ain't no party either. I sure as hell do not want to be near Atlanta or the western desert formerly called California or Mansonville.
Escape from LA with Kurt Russell will look like a beach party.
Yeah but the question is - will a lot of retards off themself because they cannot check their Facebook page?
Florida is one of the shittiest places I've been to (up there with, or down there, more accurately, with Vegas), and I'm speaking even about the "nicer" places within Florida, such as Boca, Naples & the plusher enclaves of Miami.*
It's full of scam artists, foreign "business people" & promoters running con games & get rich quick games, and fast talkers and bullshit artists like no place else in the US that I've been to.
The humidity is horrendous, there are tons of giant ass bugs everywhere, they have pill mills, racinos, tent cities everywhere, and everything is polluted, including the tourist industry.
*Miami proper is one giant suckhole of a city that is legitimately more dangerous than some third world ghettos,
Here are several charts of the effects of various solar events.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales/
They give accurate descriptions of the effects of solar weather if you will.
If you think a serious solar flare event is disastrous you might not want to consider a gamma ray burst. Energy off the scale from the creation of a black hole or a couple neutron stars merging. If close enough and aimed just right good old earth goes off like a match head. You will need to be buried very deep to survive.
Grimaldus
These smaller events are really nothing compared to the unbelievable impact of the upcoming intergalactic freeway interchange ...
Don't forget your towel.
Shit, I'm not scared I know the answer..... 42, I win..
I'm sorry. What was the question?
And thanks for all the fish!!!
al gore and goldman sachs can fix this
One Second After
http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765356864/r...
Good fiction read, especially on how the loss of modern technology affects "civilized" society.
I love "end of the world" shit :)
"Lights out" was better
One of my problems with it was all the vehicles that were running... I didn't know they kept magnetos around that long??? I mean, sure. For rope pull lawn mowers and such... but cars?
Solar Flare With Earth To Scale
Click on the above link to see how small we are compared to ................
Sobering.
No comment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oepGQkm6zc
Not just youtube. See also: http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/
Lots of free stuff, and even better stuff for just $20/year support.
There's also Suspicious Observer on the Utube. He gives daily space weather and terra weather overviews daily and does a great job of informing and educating.
Trying to put the link here...https://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers
Give him a look and a listen about 4 minutes a day.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
Pop quiz time!
Q: NASA announces that a solar flare might burn the Earth to a lifeless cinder sometime in the next few years. How does that affect your investment strategy?
A: It doesn't. Either the flare hits Earth and kills us all, or it misses and life goes on as usual.
Q: Zero Hedge predicts an economic collapse. How does that affect your investment decisions?
A: Well, you might stockpile food and ammo in a bug-out cabin, but the big boys are betting that the Fed will keep stock prices rising forever. Because if the Fed can't do that, the whole financial system will flash into nonexistence.
So isolation has effects .
Rather ho-hum
See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2011/03/solarstorms-of-2012-and-political....
If you insist
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2014/06/kilonova-update-i-extinction-level...
In a major surge, a lot of devices and switches will be damaged. Many smaller transformers would be overloaded and damaged, and maybe even some larger devices. Think of the damage caused locally by a hurricane, and then put that over the 50 states. Our problem is for the most part, we've just been coasting on our old system, doing the minimum maintenance it requires. A strong EMP could do a number on all this old stuff, which was not really designed with EMP in mind. Since we don't sit on stockpiles of spare parts, it could be months to get everything back up and running. Not good. Think of no elevators in cities, no refrigeration for food, and so forth. The possibility is quite real.
One potential source on proactively resolving the impending crisis:
http://www.realityzone.com/blackstart.html .
If others know of something functionally comparable that is accessible to non-technical folks, please post.
Ummm... Scuse prego... we just HAD an X class solar flare. Screwed up the HF RF bands for a while, but no other damage. We get X class solar flares all the time. they do little to no damage n the surface. It's the CMEs that will screw up your cheerios.
CME takes out hundreds of nuke plants.
Silverer is right. Back up power to nuke plants fails. Pumps fail to the cooling ponds.
Fukushima X 100+
Reason for the HUGE secret underground Bunker beneath Denver Airport, among many hundreds of other locations for the elites.
After the EMP comes Nuclear MeltdownOoooo! GREAT disaster porn... but like most such stuff not true. Nuc plants are mega-shielded. They'd still be functional - but wouldn't have any way to distribute the electricity they could generate to anywhere outside. But they would be able to make electricity to keep those cooling pools cool... and if all else failed, they could scram the main generator pool and run the back-up diesel gens to keep things going for quite a while.
The biggest bonus of a solar flare and a EMP is the damage caused to cellphones and satellites . I would love to see people try to talk to a mobile phone that doesn't work . In a single stroke the Alphabet agencies would be without power and forced to put people in the street ..... The cellphones have been the biggest gift the morons from the spy agencies have received from technology
Where do I pay my solar flare tax, that will help right? Just like the carbon tax will help "now" climate change... Its all those useless eaters, they exhale too much
Waaaay too much ignorance out running around on ZH today!
1. A solar flare would not produce a "Carrington event" (CE)for the simple reason that it's not a CME. (A solar flare could CAUSE a CME - but solar flares can occur without producing CMEs. They may be causationally connected sometimes, but are not the same thing.) A flare is a high freq radio pulse that doesn't get past the outer atmosphere. Flares screw up HF radio transmissions. We just finished a week or so of HF radio interference/shut downs due to repeated strong flare events on the Sun that was geoeffective.
2. A "Carrington event" is the result of a "CME" ("Coronal Mass Ejection") which is when the sun actually BLOWS A CRAP LOAD OF PHYSICAL SOLARSTUFF OFF THE SUN!!! If it's pointed at the Earth, it is like a huge cloud of tiny meteors - only with strong electrical charges that hit the planet's surface.
Someone above said that CMEs damage electrical stuff because they induce voltage in power lines and said something like your're okay if you unplug stuff within 30 seconds. ROTFLMBO!!! REALLY? So the CME stuff that's hitting the power lines and frying the line transformers is the boogerman that can't get through a locked door if the curtains are closed?
Someone else said they should install capacitors in the lines to insulate the system... Ummmm.... and where would these capacitors DISCHARGE their collected charge? Fuses might be momentarily if they are big enough... but the main problem with that is that the CE doesn't just travel along the wires... that would be like putting an umbrella over part of the sidewalk and expecting the whole city to stay dry.
No. The major long-lasting damage to the electrical system would be done by the frying of the line transformers in the distribution system, ANd by the frying of isolated transformers in equipment, house wiring, radio windings (think AM antenna). And the starter/generator in your car is essentially a long wire... wrapped around a core... ie when a strong electrical field hits it, it's a transformer. And the diodes that "transform" the DC voltage into AC voltage to run your car are electronic doo-dads that are friable by surges... so they fry. everything in your world that has electronics in it is gone - fried by overload.
Every piece of electronica that's not proteted by a Faraday cage gets fried. The computer you're using? Toast... literally. Your emergency SW radio? If it's not in a Faraday cage - toast.
So... to sum up - a flare is not a CME. HF radio waves are not ejected nuclear plasma.
There ae some really good, dumbed-down for the common-non-Electrical Engineer person sites on the net that tell you how to make cheap Faraday cages. Like take a metal GI can, line it with a non-conductive material (to electrically insulate the stuff inside from the charged surface of the can and keep the stuff from physically contacting the metal sides of the can) and ground it, then put your stuff inside. Viola! And your microwave oven is an instant Faraday cage.
And never underestimate the power of procrastination. I know about Faraday cages. I know that the CME with our name on it will be along at any random date in the future, and after it hits, it's too late to do anything. But still... I have a generator... unshielded. I have radios... unshielded. So if the Big One hits, my tech is probably toast too. But I know how to build a steam boiler and an electrical generator... do you?
46.4% of Americans have a diagnosible mental illness.
18.2% of Americans are treating their mental illness with regular medication.
6.0% of Americans have severe mental illness, requiring medication to function, and at least half of those would have been involuntarilly committed 60 years ago as a danger to society.
In a scenario like this where the supply chains break down, it isn't going to be pretty.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales/
Check this out - it's like watching the weatherman on the toob... only it's about space weather. Might take some learning to figure out what it all means... but it's real information. (As opposed to disaster porn.)
In the intro to the interview above, "Adam" writes
The largest CME recorded in modern history, the Carrington Event, occurred in 1859 and it's charged particle wave brought down the then-new telegraph system across the US.
and in so writing, proves that he shouldn't be doing this article or the interview 'cause he didn't do his homework. No. The Carringon event did NOT "bring down the then-new telegraph system". There was damage, but it wasn't destroyed. Some of the effects were things like burned through wires out West (where the wires ran for long distances) that started prairie fires, and a lot of operators were disconnectng the batteries from their telegraph sets and running without them - using the induced voltage from the event for power. They didn't know what was going on, but there were many comments from the operators that the system was working much better and more efficiently without the batteries than with them. (ie their sets were more powerful.) And some operators experienced strong electrical shocks, and they could hardly have noticed these effects if the "system" were "brought down."