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Speaker 1: Imagine looking up at the night sky and you see

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the northern lights, that beautiful shimmering curtain of green and red.

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But you're not in Alaska or Norway. You're on a

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beach in Cuba, or maybe you're standing on a street

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in New Orleans and the sky is so bright you

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can read a newspaper by its light.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds like science fiction, doesn't.

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Speaker 1: It, as it really does.

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Speaker 2: But that's exactly what happened in September eighteen fifty nine

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during what we now call the Carrington Event. It was

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the largest base weather storm ever documented.

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Speaker 1: While that sky looked beautiful, what was happening on the

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ground that was something else entirely.

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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. The technology of the day was the telegraph

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network state of the art, and it just completely broke down.

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Speaker 1: Broke down, how like just static on the lines, no.

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Speaker 2: Much more dramatic. Operators were reporting sparks, little sparks flying

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from their equipment. Some of them got electric shocks.

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Speaker 1: Wow.

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Speaker 2: And you know, some operators even figured out they could

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disconnect their batteries the power source and the teps would

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just keep running.

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Speaker 1: We're running on what on.

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Speaker 2: The storm itself? The electrical currents induced in the wires

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by the sun were that powerful.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's pause on that for a second. Let's

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take that level of electromagnetic energy and hit our world

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with it today, right where everything, and I mean everything

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from banking and finance to the pumps that bring you

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clean water, to your phone, your internet, it all runs

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on electricity on these massive, interconnected and frankly very delicate grids.

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Speaker 2: The outcome isn't just a flicker. The consensus among risk

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assessors is well, it's grid collapse, a continental scale blackout

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that could last for months or maybe even years.

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Speaker 1: And that's not an exaggeration.

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Speaker 2: No, that is the catastrophic premise, and it is modeled.

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This isn't just the theory. It's a scenario that organizations

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from NASA to the big insurance companies have analyzed and

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they're all clear. A modern Carrington scale event, a Carrington

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event two point zero, would be a catastrophe unlike anything

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we've ever faced.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to thrilling Threads today. Ay, we're doing a critical

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deep dive into the science of extreme space weather, and

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our mission here is to cut through the hype and

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focus purely on the measured vulnerability. The terrifying reality that's

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laid out in our source material.

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Speaker 2: We're primarily analyzing the Helio's solar storm scenario from the

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Cambridge Center for Risk Studies. It's an incredibly detailed global

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stress test.

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Speaker 3: It quantifies the damage, and we're pairing that with vulnerability

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reports from US security studies like the work compiled by Freeley,

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and of course data from NASA's Monitoring Workshop reports to

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really understand the threat to our assets, things like the

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DSCOVR satellite and the eh V grid.

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Speaker 2: So the central question for you, the listener, is this

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is the threat of a solar superstorm a real, immediate

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danger to modern civilization?

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Speaker 1: And given these staggering trillion dollar costs we're seeing in

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these worst case models, are we even remotely prepared for

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the kind of long term societal collapse that many experts

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are quietly and sometimes not so quietly fearing.

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Speaker 2: I think to answer that, we have to start with

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cosmic mechanics, the three ways the Sun attacks our planet.

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To really get a handle on the danger, you have

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to look ninety three million miles away to the Sun.

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It seems stable, but its magnetic field is this chaotic,

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churning thing.

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Speaker 1: So the solar storms. They come from that magnetic acta exactly.

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Speaker 2: Imagine these massive magnetic field lines twisting and stretching until

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they get so energized they.

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Speaker 1: Just snap like a huge rubber band breaking.

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Speaker 2: It's a perfect analogy. And that release of energy comes

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at us in three distinct forms, and each one has

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its own unique hazard and its own travel time to Earth.

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Speaker 1: And that difference in speed is everything, right, It's the

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key to our warning time or really are lack of it?

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Speaker 2: It absolutely is. So the first and the fastest thing

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to hit us are the solar flares. These are just

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intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation think X rays, ultraviolet light.

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They travel at the speed of light, so they get

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here in about eight minutes eight minutes.

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Speaker 1: So what do they do when they arrive.

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Speaker 2: Their effect is immediate. They super ionize the layers of

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our atmosphere and that causes instantaneous radio blackouts on the

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entire sunlit side of the Earth. We call these R class.

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Speaker 1: Storms, and that disrupts GPS too.

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Speaker 2: Majorly for aviation, for high frequency communications. It's a huge problem.

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Speaker 1: But it is temporary, Okay, So that's the first punch.

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It's fast, but it fades. Yeah, what's next in the sequence.

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Speaker 2: Next up, arriving a little after the flares are the

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solar energetic particle events or spessex. Okay, These are streams

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of protons and electrons, really high energy stuff, basically a

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radiation storm, an s class storm. Their travel time can vary,

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but they can be here in minutes to hours.

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Speaker 1: And this is the real danger for astronauts, right, for our.

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Speaker 2: Satellites, Yes, for anyone outside the main protection of our atmosphere.

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It's a very high radiation hazard. That includes crews on

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polar flight routes. And you're right, for our orbital assets.

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This is what really hurts them in what way? These

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particles cause cumulative permanent damage. They degrade solar panels, reducing power,

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and they cause what we call single event upsets or

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SEUs in the satellite electronics. They can just flip a

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bit from a zero to a one and cause total chaos.

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They're the slow, insidious killers of our space infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: But neither of those is the main event. The thing

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that causes the global blackout scenario. That's the slowest component,

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isn't it.

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Speaker 2: It is that's the coronal mass ejection or CME. This

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is the big one, the driver of the geomagnetic.

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Speaker 1: Storm, and what is it physically?

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Speaker 2: It's a massive and I mean massive expulsion of plasma,

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a hot gas cloud of charged particles, and crucially, it

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has its own massive magnetic field embedded inside it. It

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can travel at speeds of over three thousand kilometers per second.

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Speaker 1: How long does that take to get here?

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Speaker 2: It varies anywhere from fifteen hours to a few days.

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The Carrington events CME was so fast it made the

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trip in under eighteen.

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Speaker 1: Hours, So we have a little bit of a window.

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But you said something earlier that was key. It's not

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just the size, it's the angle of the magnetic field

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that determines if this is just pretty likes or a catastrophe.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, this is the absolute critical point. It's the difference

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between a nice aurora and a grid down scenario. For

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a truly extreme event, the magnetic field inside that CME

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cloud has to be oriented southward.

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Speaker 1: Southward relative to Earth's magnetic field, which points north exactly.

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Speaker 2: Think of Earth's magnetic field as a shield. If the

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CME arrives with a northward field, the two fields basically

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repel each other. It glances off. No big deal.

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Speaker 1: But if it's pointing south.

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Speaker 2: If it's pointing south, the two sets of magnetic field

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lines can connect. They merge. It's a process called magnetic reconnection,

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and it's like opening a gate, a massive gait that

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channels all that energy and all those charged particles directly

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into our magnetosphere.

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Speaker 1: The helio scenario we're looking at, it specifically models a

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storm with that exact orientation, doesn't.

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Speaker 2: It It has to. It models a powerful, fast CME

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with that crucial, devastating southward orientation.

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Speaker 1: So it's not just the punch, it's whether the key

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fits the lock to our planet's defenses. It's just a

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terrifying element of chance.

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Speaker 2: It really is. Now when that connection happens, we see

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the consequences. The visible part is the aurora, right, the

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pretty lights, But that's just the atmosphere fluorescing as it's

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hit with all those particles. The real danger, the hidden threat,

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is what's happening on the ground, geomagnetically induced currents GICs.

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Speaker 1: Okay, break that down first.

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Speaker 2: The massive magnetic field variations from the storm induce a

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powerful electrical field across the Earth's surface. That's just basic physics.

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Speaker 1: Faraday's law and that electrical field needs to go somewhere.

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Speaker 2: It does, and it drives these huge quasi direct currents

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the GICs through anything that's a long conductor connected to

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the ground.

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Speaker 1: And those long conductors are basically the backbone of modern society.

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Speaker 2: They are the electrical grid, oil and gas pipelines, communication cables,

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even railway lines. But for the power grid, this current

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is absolutely lethal. It gets into the system through the ground.

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Neutral points of our extra high voltage are EHV transformers.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned this term half cycle saturation. It sounds super technical,

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but it seems to be the core of vulnerability. Is

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there a simple way to picture what's happening inside that transformer?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, let's try. Think of the transformer core as a

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sensitive iron ring. It's designed to handle alternating current AC,

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which flows back and forth. Right. It's balanced around zero, okay,

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But the GIC acts like a DC current. It's a

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constant push in one direction. It pushes the transformer's magnetic

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field away from that zero point and holds it there.

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Speaker 1: It's like redlining an engine. You're forcing it to operate

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way outside its design limits.

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Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. The core becomes

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magnetically saturated during half of the AC cycle, and when

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it's saturated, it can't contain the magnetic field anymore. And

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what happens then two very bad things. First, the current

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becomes really distorted. It creates massive harmonics, which is like

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electrical noise, and it causes a huge drain on something

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called reactive power.

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Speaker 1: And the laws of reactive power is what kills the grid.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the grid needs reactive power to maintain stable voltage.

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When it's gone, voltage collapses, the system trips offline to

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protect itself. You get a blackout. And the second bad thing,

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the second thing is happening at the same time, those

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stray magnetic fields from the saturated core turned directly into heat.

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The transformer starts to rapidly overheat from the inside. We're

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talking about melting internal components, boiling the oil, and permanently

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destroying the unit.

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Speaker 1: And we've seen this happen.

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Speaker 2: We have during the much smaller nineteen eighty nine storm,

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a huge transformer at the Salem Nuclear Unit in New

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Jersey basically cooked itself from the inside out. It had

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to be completely replaced.

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Speaker 1: So the transformer is trigged to black out the grid

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while simultaneously committing suicide by heat.

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Speaker 2: A very dramatic but accurate summary.

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Speaker 1: So this all happens fast. How much warning do we

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actually have when one of these massive clouds is hitted

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our way?

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Speaker 2: This is maybe the scariest part of the whole thing.

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And NAA have a fantastic monitoring network. The main instrument

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is the Deep Space Climate Observatory ds GOVR.

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Speaker 1: That's the one that says about a million miles out right, that's.

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Speaker 2: Right at the l one lagrange point. It's our early

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warning system watching the solar wind in real time.

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Speaker 1: So a million miles sounds like a lot of warning.

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Speaker 2: You'd think so, But the most dangerous CMEs are so

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fast that distance only gives us fifteen to sixty minutes

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of warning. Wait, that's it, fifteen minutes sometimes, and the

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most crucial piece of information whether it has that catastrophic

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southward magnetic field. We often can't confirm that until it's

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about thirty minutes away from impact.

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Speaker 1: Thirty minutes to tell every utility operator across an entire

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continent that they need to start taking preventive measures.

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Speaker 2: Measures like manually disconnecting billions of dollars of infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: Sir, that's not a warning system, that's a countdown timer.

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Speaker 2: That's why the focus has to be on preparing for

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the impact, because we'll never have enough time to truly

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prepare for the event.

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Speaker 1: Okay, to really understand the threat today, to look back,

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we have two key benchmarks, right, the eighteen fifty nine

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Carrington event and the nineteen eighty nine Quebec storm.

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Speaker 2: Exactly one is the gold standard for raw power. The

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other is the gold standard for modern vulnerability.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with Carrington. You mentioned it's magnitude. We measure

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storm intensity with something called the dressed index. What is

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that and what does Carrington's number really mean? So?

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Speaker 2: The DST index is basically a global average of how

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much the Earth's magnetic field is being compressed or disturbed.

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It's measured in nanotesla's or.

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Speaker 1: NT and a normal days what.

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Speaker 2: On a calm day, it's hovering around zero. During a storm,

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the field gets depressed and the index plunges into negative numbers.

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A severe storm is anything below negative two to fifty NT.

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Speaker 1: So where did the Quebec storm of eighty nine land?

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Speaker 2: That one hit around negative five hundred n T, a

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very very strong storm.

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Speaker 1: Carrington.

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Speaker 2: The estimates for Carrington put it at approximately negative eight

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hundred and fifty nt, so.

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Speaker 1: Vastly more powerful. What does that extra power translate to

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on the ground.

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Speaker 2: It translates directly to the strength of the indued electrical field.

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So a storm that's say, twice as strong in DS

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might induce GICs that are four or five times stronger

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in certain areas. It's not a linear relationship.

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Speaker 1: And an eighteen fifty nine that mint telegraphs on fire.

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Speaker 2: In some places. Yes, the induced currents were so strong

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they literally set the paper tapes and the telegraph machines

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on fire. But because society was still mostly powered by

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steam and muscle, the damage was contained. It didn't bring

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civilization to a halt.

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Speaker 1: Okay, Now, let's fast forward to nineteen eighty nine, a

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storm that was significantly weaker than Carrington, but it still

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managed to cause a complete systemic failure.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the nineteen eighty nine Quebec storm is our modern

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dress rehearsal in Neck, a five hundred NT storm, and

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it completely took down the hydro Quebec grid.

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Speaker 1: Walk us through that failure. What was the chain of events?

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Speaker 2: So the GICs from that storm flowed into their EHV

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transmission system that caused the half cycle saturation in their

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big transformers that we just talked.

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Speaker 1: About, draining all that reactive power instantly.

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Speaker 2: The system tried to compensate. It had seven big static

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var compensators, which are like the grid's voltage stabilizers. They

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all tripped offline automatically within seconds. And then without those

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stabilizers and with the transformers sucking up all the reactive power,

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the system voltage just plummeted. The whole thing cascaded into

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a total shutdown in less than ninety seconds.

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Speaker 1: Ninety seconds, six.

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Speaker 2: Million people were without power for about nine hours.

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Speaker 1: That's just a textbook cascading failure. You mentioned the.

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Speaker 2: Cost relatively small by today's standards, about six point five

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million dollars in equipment damage and a total economic cost

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of around thirteen point two million dollars. But it was

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a massive wake up call.

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Speaker 1: And it wasn't just in Quebec right that sandstorm hit

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the US grid.

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Speaker 2: It did, and that's where we get the Salem, New

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Jersey data point. That nuclear unit transformer that overheated and

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destroyed itself. That proves the physical vulnerability of the assets

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even when the grid itself doesn't collapse.

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Speaker 1: So that one destroyed unit is the key. It takes

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this from a Canadian problem to a continental catastrophe waiting

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to happen.

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Speaker 2: It does because the core issue and the helio scenario

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hammers this home is our incredible dependency on EHV transmission.

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Our entire just in time globally connected economy is built

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on one single.

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Speaker 1: Assumption that the power will always be.

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Speaker 2: On always, and that dependency amplifies the risk. It turns

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what was a curiosity in eighteen fifty nine into a

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potential civilizational threat today. Our complexity is our Achilles heel.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So when the risk modelers at places like the

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Cambridge Center for Risk Studies look at this, they don't

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focus on the power lines. They focus on the bottlenecks.

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Speaker 2: The big EHV transformers.

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Speaker 1: Right, because losing one of these isn't like blowing a

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fuse in your house. It's the difference between a bad

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day and a multi year recovery.

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Speaker 2: The scale of the vulnerability is, while it's sobering, across

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the entire US, there are roughly two thy three hundred

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and thirty nine of these grid connected EHV transformers.

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Speaker 1: And how many spears do we have?

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Speaker 2: Two one hundred and twenty two stored around the country.

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Speaker 1: Two hundred and twenty two spares for over two thousand

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critical units. That seems low.

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Speaker 2: It's extremely low, especially when you consider the real bottleneck,

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which is manufacturing.

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Speaker 1: These aren't things you can just buy off the shelf

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at home depot, not at all.

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Speaker 2: They are custom built, massive pieces of equipment. They can

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weigh hundreds of tons. The Department of Energy says the

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average lead time to build a new one is five

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to twelve months.

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Speaker 1: That's if it's built domestically, right.

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Speaker 2: If you have to source it internationally, you're looking at

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six to sixteen months. And if a big storm hits

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and everyone is trying to order new transformers at the

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same time, that lead time could easily stretch to eighteen

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to twenty four.

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Speaker 1: Months two years to get one replacement.

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Speaker 2: Part, to get it built, shipped, and installed. So the

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supply chain for these specific items becomes the single point

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of failure for the entire recovery.

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Speaker 1: It's like losing all the major airport hubs in the

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country at once, and each one takes two years to rebuild.

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Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy, and this catastrophic potent is why

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you see such wide disagreement in the risk assessments.

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Speaker 1: Right, you mentioned the Kapaman report versus the Jason Report.

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Why do they disagree so much on how many transformers

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are at risk?

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Speaker 2: It's a crucial debate. The early Mettech report by John

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Kappenman in twenty ten was hugely influential. It modeled a

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very intense storm and estimated that three hundred and sixty

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five US transformers were at risk of permanent damage.

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Speaker 1: Three hundred and sixty five. If that happens, we're talking

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about a national multi year blackout exactly.

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Speaker 2: But then subsequent reports like the Jason Report for the

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US government and a Royal Academy of Engineering study in

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the UK, they pushed back. They suggested that worst case

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scenario was not plausible on what grounds. They argued that

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newer transformers might be more resilient and that the GIC

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intensity might be more localized, creating hot spots rather than

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a continental wide wave of destruction. So the UK study,

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for example, estimated maybe thirteen of their six hundred transformers

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were at risk.

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Speaker 1: So we have experts arguing over whether we lose thirteen

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assets or three sixty five. That's a massive range for

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devastating to completely apocalyptic, and.

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Speaker 2: That's where a stress test like the Helio scenario comes in.

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It doesn't try to resolve the debate. It just models

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the outcomes. It asks, what if the worst case is true.

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We're focusing on their most extreme model, the X one scenario.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so what does the X one scenario assume in

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terms of physical damage to that US fleet of transformers.

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Speaker 2: It applies a high damage profile. It assumes that thirty

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three percent of all transformers are tripped offline, another fourteen

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percent sustained minor damage, three percent get major damage, and

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zero point two percent are completely destroyed.

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Speaker 1: Okay, point two percent doesn't sound like a lot, But

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if twenty three hundred units, that's still five or six

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critical hubs just gone.

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Speaker 2: Gon, plus another seventy or so with major damage, and

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the immediate result of that asset loss is a massive

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blackout affecting one hundred and forty five million US citizens

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right off the bat.

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Speaker 1: Nearly half the country goes dark instantly. And the real

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horror of the X one scenario isn't the initial blackout.

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It's the restoration timeline. Isn't it that?

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Speaker 2: It is the core The X one scenario models the

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worst case recovery assuming maximum supply chain delays, So for

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the transformers that just tripped offline, it's about ten days

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to get them back manageable.

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Speaker 1: But for the damage ones, that's.

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Speaker 2: Where the numbers get terrifying. For a unit with minor damage,

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the model assumes one hundred and fifty two days five

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months to repair it if you don't have a spare

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five much and for the very few that are completely

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destroyed the point two percent, the model uses that maximum

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lead time three hundred and sixty five days a full year.

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Speaker 1: So the entire duration of the crisis for a whole

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section of the country is dictated by the manufacturing time

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of a handful of assets.

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Speaker 2: Yes the vulnerability of specialization, and because of this, the

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X one scenario projects that fifteen percent of the total

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US population remains without power for more than three days,

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and for many of them the lights won't be coming

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back on for months or even a.

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Speaker 1: Full year, and the economic modeling points to specific states

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getting hit the hardest.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely places like Illinois and New York. They combine that

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high risk geographic latitude with incredibly dense, high value infrastructure.

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The model projects direct economic losses for them of around

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one hundred and seventy billion dollars and one hundred and

395
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fifty billion dollars respectively.

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Speaker 1: And that's just the direct loss which brings us to

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the financial shockwave.

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Speaker 2: The physical damage is one thing, but the economic fallout

399
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is where you see how electricity is the absolute bedrock

400
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of modern society. It's a global shockwave.

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Speaker 1: So let's put a number on it using the global

402
00:19:26,720 --> 00:19:29,839
economic model. In that Helios report, what's the total five

403
00:19:29,920 --> 00:19:33,200
year damage assessment for the extreme X one scenario.

404
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Speaker 2: The metric they use is GDP at risk And for

405
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the X one scenario, the five year global economic loss

406
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is up to one point one.

407
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Speaker 1: Trillion dollars trillion dollars, and.

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Speaker 2: The US share of that is estimated at six hundred

409
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and ten billion dollars.

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Speaker 1: How does that compare to other disasters who we're familiar with.

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What does it mean for the insurance industry?

412
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Speaker 2: It's on a completely different scale. The report estimates the

413
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US insurance industry would face losses of up to three

414
00:19:55,400 --> 00:19:58,119
hundred and thirty three point seven billion dollars. To put

415
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that in perspective, Hurricane Katrina was about forty five billion

416
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dollars in insured losses. Superstorm Sandy with thirty five billion dollars.

417
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Speaker 1: So this is an order of magnitude worse than our

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biggest natural.

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Speaker 2: Disasters easily, And here is the most critical insight from

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that number. The vast majority of that three hundred and

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thirty three billion dollars is not from paying to replace

422
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the broken transformer.

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Speaker 1: It's from business interruption.

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Speaker 2: Exactly less than one percent is for direct physical damage.

425
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Over ninety percent of the loss comes from service interruption clauses.

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It's every factory, every company, every data center that can't

427
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operate for months because they don't have power.

428
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Speaker 1: That just perfectly frames the vulnerability, doesn't it. Our economy

429
00:20:38,759 --> 00:20:41,839
doesn't fail because the parts are expensive. It fails because

430
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it cannot tolerate the duration of the outage.

431
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Speaker 2: And that outage immediately triggers these cascading failures through the

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entire economy. The Freely Security reports are really clear on this.

433
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Loss of electricity means you lose water, sanitation, communication, transportation, healthcare, finance,

434
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everything within hours or day.

435
00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:03,160
Speaker 1: Can you quantify that domino effect, the difference between the

436
00:21:03,200 --> 00:21:04,640
first hit and the ripple effect.

437
00:21:04,839 --> 00:21:07,200
Speaker 2: The models do that the direct shock the businesses that

438
00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:09,920
immediately shut down is estimated at one point two to

439
00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:12,319
three to two trillion dollars in the X one scenario.

440
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But then the indirect shock, the ripple effect that travels

441
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down the supply chain to their customers and suppliers, that's

442
00:21:19,559 --> 00:21:23,160
another one point one four seven trillion dollars. Domestically, the

443
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two are almost equal in size.

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Speaker 1: So a power outage shuts down a specialized chemical plant,

445
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and that then shuts down the pharmaceutical companies that need

446
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those chemicals, which then creates a healthcare crisis.

447
00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:36,839
Speaker 2: That's the chain reaction, and it hits certain sectors harder

448
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than others. The most affected are the ones that are

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high labor and can't just work from home. So we're

450
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talking about healthcare, educational services, and government. Their direct shock

451
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value is over sixty percent of their total value. They're

452
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just completely dependent on functioning physical infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: And all of this is happening while a simultaneous attack

454
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is happening on our infrastructure in space.

455
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Speaker 2: Yes, we can't forget the digital fallout. A Carrington two

456
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point zero would also devastate our satellite and GPS network.

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Speaker 1: We're not just talking about losing your TV signal here.

458
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Speaker 2: Not even close. We're talking about losing the precise positioning,

459
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navigation and timing P and T signals that our entire

460
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modern world runs on the model's estimate, between ten and

461
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one hundred satellites could be permanently lost, costing anywhere from

462
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four billion dollars to two hundred billion dollars.

463
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Speaker 1: How are they being damaged? Specifically?

464
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Speaker 2: Three main ways. First, for satellites in low earth orbit

465
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like starlink, the store heats up the atmosphere and makes

466
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it expand This increases atmospheric drag, slows them down and

467
00:22:39,079 --> 00:22:42,079
operators can actually lose track of them they can deorbit.

468
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Speaker 1: Okay, what's the second way?

469
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Speaker 2: That's the direct radiation damage from the SAPs we talked

470
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about earlier, Those high energy particles. They cause those single

471
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event upsets like what happened to the Skytara I satellite

472
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in twenty twelve, a solar storm hit it and forced

473
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a complete, high risk, three week system reboot.

474
00:22:59,319 --> 00:23:01,720
Speaker 1: And they also just degrade the hardware over time.

475
00:23:01,839 --> 00:23:04,039
Speaker 2: They do they damage the solar panels and can cause

476
00:23:04,039 --> 00:23:08,119
electrostatic discharges that just fry the electronics permanently. The studies

477
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:10,519
are clear we need way more shielding on our satellites

478
00:23:10,519 --> 00:23:11,839
than we typically use and.

479
00:23:11,759 --> 00:23:14,119
Speaker 1: The third thread is to the GPS signal itself.

480
00:23:14,359 --> 00:23:18,519
Speaker 2: Right, the storm pumps up the electron content in the ionosphere,

481
00:23:19,079 --> 00:23:21,640
the GPS signal has to travel through that and all

482
00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:25,079
those extra electrons slow the signal down. That corrupts the

483
00:23:25,079 --> 00:23:26,400
timing calculation.

484
00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:28,119
Speaker 1: Which leads to positioning errors.

485
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:32,319
Speaker 2: Yes, but more importantly timing errors. Our financial networks are

486
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:35,839
power grid, even our traffic light systems, they all rely

487
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:39,960
on microsecond synchronization from GPS. If that timing is off,

488
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:42,359
you get chaos. We saw this during the two thousand

489
00:23:42,359 --> 00:23:46,039
and three Halloween storms. It disrupted aircraft navigation all over

490
00:23:46,039 --> 00:23:46,839
the world.

491
00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:49,039
Speaker 1: So this all brings us back to that really scary

492
00:23:49,079 --> 00:23:52,799
headline concept, the idea that society hits a tipping point

493
00:23:52,799 --> 00:23:56,039
within about two weeks of a prolonged blackout. Where does

494
00:23:56,079 --> 00:23:57,359
that two week number come from?

495
00:23:57,559 --> 00:23:59,839
Speaker 2: It comes from the battery life of our backup systems

496
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:02,359
when the power goes out. The Internet and phones don't

497
00:24:02,359 --> 00:24:05,640
die instantly, but the local distribution nodes for fiber and

498
00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:08,680
cable they run on battery backups. Those fail in eight

499
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:11,359
to forty hours on cell towers. Cell towers last about

500
00:24:11,359 --> 00:24:12,640
eight to twenty four hours on their.

501
00:24:12,559 --> 00:24:17,400
Speaker 1: Backups, so within two days, you've lost most modern communication, most.

502
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:20,559
Speaker 2: Of it, yes, and even the old robust landline phone

503
00:24:20,599 --> 00:24:23,440
network the PSTN that starts to fail within three to

504
00:24:23,519 --> 00:24:26,400
seven days as its support systems run out of fuel.

505
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:28,599
Speaker 1: And the two week mark is when the whole system

506
00:24:28,799 --> 00:24:29,640
just breaks.

507
00:24:29,839 --> 00:24:33,279
Speaker 2: That's the tipping point because once you've lost communication, finance,

508
00:24:33,279 --> 00:24:36,839
and logistics, the ability for government to coordinate any kind

509
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:41,440
of response, to distribute food, medicine, fuel, to maintain order,

510
00:24:41,599 --> 00:24:42,839
it just evaporates.

511
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:45,200
Speaker 1: And we have data from previous blackouts that shows the

512
00:24:45,279 --> 00:24:47,039
human cost spikes immediately.

513
00:24:47,279 --> 00:24:50,039
Speaker 2: It's very sobering. After the two thousand and three blackout

514
00:24:50,039 --> 00:24:51,920
in New York City saw one hundred and twenty two

515
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:55,599
percent increase in accidental deaths. Disease related deaths went up

516
00:24:55,599 --> 00:24:57,920
twenty five percent, and that was for an outage that

517
00:24:58,000 --> 00:24:59,119
lasted a couple of days.

518
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:01,119
Speaker 1: So if you extend that to months or a year,

519
00:25:01,559 --> 00:25:03,640
like the X one scenario models.

520
00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:07,759
Speaker 2: The freely analysis is blunt. Societal institutions themselves, law enforcement,

521
00:25:07,799 --> 00:25:11,000
local government could become ineffective. You're looking at a fundamental

522
00:25:11,039 --> 00:25:13,640
breakdown and reorganization of society itself.

523
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:17,039
Speaker 1: Okay, we've laid out the threat the mechanism, the vulnerability.

524
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:19,359
But the huge question that's hanging over all of this

525
00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:23,559
is are we do What does the science of probability

526
00:25:23,599 --> 00:25:24,400
actually tell us?

527
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:27,480
Speaker 2: That is one of the most difficult and contentious questions

528
00:25:27,519 --> 00:25:30,480
in the whole field. We know these storms are tied

529
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:33,880
to the Sun's eleven year cycle, but predicting the truly

530
00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:36,200
extreme events is incredibly complex.

531
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:37,119
Speaker 1: Why so hard?

532
00:25:37,279 --> 00:25:40,079
Speaker 2: The main reason is our data set is tiny. We've

533
00:25:40,079 --> 00:25:43,839
only been systematically collecting the hourly dressty index data since

534
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:47,480
nineteen fifty seven. That's a little over sixty years of data,

535
00:25:47,519 --> 00:25:48,039
and we're.

536
00:25:47,839 --> 00:25:50,119
Speaker 1: Trying to predict an event that might happen once every

537
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:53,000
hundred or two hundred or five hundred years exactly.

538
00:25:53,319 --> 00:25:56,319
Speaker 2: We're trying to predict a true black Swan event from

539
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:58,920
a very short historical record. So you have to use

540
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:01,599
statistical extrapolis. You have to take the data you have

541
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,079
and extend it out to thresholds we've never actually seen

542
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:07,599
in the modern era, like Carrington's negat eight fifty nt, and.

543
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:09,839
Speaker 1: Standard probability models don't work well for.

544
00:26:09,759 --> 00:26:12,960
Speaker 2: That not really. A simple model like a Poisson process

545
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:16,519
assumes events are random and independent, but extreme events often

546
00:26:16,559 --> 00:26:18,960
follow us called a fat tail distribution, where the really

547
00:26:19,039 --> 00:26:21,079
big ones are more likely than you'd expect.

548
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 1: So what kind of models do they use.

549
00:26:22,759 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 2: They tend to prefer more sophisticated models, like a wible

550
00:26:26,079 --> 00:26:29,119
renewal process. It's used a lot for extreme events like

551
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:32,279
large earthquakes and solar flares because it does a better

552
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:35,880
job of capturing the likelihood of those rare, high magnitude events.

553
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:37,599
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, it's still a

554
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:41,920
statistical guess. We can't physically model the sun well enough

555
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:43,640
to predict when the next big one is coming.

556
00:26:43,759 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 2: We can't, and that uncertainty about when it will happen

557
00:26:47,599 --> 00:26:50,839
is exactly why the conversation has to shift to resilience.

558
00:26:51,279 --> 00:26:54,680
We have to weigh the uncertainty of the timing against

559
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:56,720
the certainty of the catastrophic impact.

560
00:26:57,279 --> 00:26:59,680
Speaker 1: So what is the current state of our resilience? What

561
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:01,119
do we actually doing to prepare?

562
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:05,920
Speaker 2: It breaks down into three areas, warning, hardening, and redundancy.

563
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:09,000
For warning, as we've said, we have dsg VR. Those

564
00:27:09,079 --> 00:27:11,519
few minutes of warning are absolutely.

565
00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:13,920
Speaker 1: Critical because it lets operators do what It allows.

566
00:27:13,599 --> 00:27:16,680
Speaker 2: Them to start emergency procedures. They can shift power loads

567
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,079
around the glid bring backup generational online and in a

568
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:24,119
last dish effort, manually disconnect the most vulnerable transformers to

569
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:25,599
save them from being destroyed.

570
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:28,920
Speaker 1: But the core vulnerability is still the replacement time for

571
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:33,319
those transformers. Are we making any progress on that specific bottleneck?

572
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:35,759
Speaker 2: Actually? Yes, this is a real point of hope in

573
00:27:35,799 --> 00:27:36,200
the story.

574
00:27:36,319 --> 00:27:36,599
Speaker 1: Yeah.

575
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 2: The US government funded a project called the Recovery Transformer

576
00:27:40,319 --> 00:27:41,240
or RECKX.

577
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: And what's special about these.

578
00:27:43,039 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 2: They're designed for rapid deployment. They are smaller, modular, and

579
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:49,680
can be moved and installed much more quickly than a

580
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:51,359
traditional EHV transformer.

581
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: How much more quickly the.

582
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,680
Speaker 2: Prototype was transported over a twenty five hour road trip

583
00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:59,720
and was made fully operational in less than six days, six.

584
00:27:59,519 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 1: Days compared to the eight weeks you'd normally estimate just

585
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:04,000
for transport and installation.

586
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:08,079
Speaker 2: It's a massive breakthrough, a complete game changer for reducing

587
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,160
that long term outage scenario.

588
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:11,160
Speaker 1: Okay, so what's the catch?

589
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:14,839
Speaker 2: The catch is scale. The technology is proven, but it

590
00:28:14,839 --> 00:28:17,319
will take years to build up a large enough fleet

591
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,400
of these RECX units to respond to a disaster that

592
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:23,240
affects the entire country at once. If you have three

593
00:28:23,319 --> 00:28:27,000
hundred damaged transformers and only a dozen rapid replacement units.

594
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:29,720
You still have a very long crisis.

595
00:28:29,319 --> 00:28:31,519
Speaker 1: Right, and what it for our satellites? What's the plan

596
00:28:31,599 --> 00:28:32,759
there for space?

597
00:28:32,839 --> 00:28:37,480
Speaker 2: It's all about hardening and redundancy, building satellites with more radiation,

598
00:28:37,519 --> 00:28:42,680
hardened electronics, more shielding, and also shifting towards smaller, keuper

599
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:46,279
redundant satellite constellations that can be replaced more quickly if

600
00:28:46,279 --> 00:28:46,920
some are lost.

601
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 1: So the technology to mitigate this exists. The ultimate roadblock

602
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:54,160
seems to be policy and investment. The sources all point

603
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:57,039
to this lack of consensus on how bad the threat

604
00:28:57,079 --> 00:28:57,599
really is.

605
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:02,359
Speaker 2: That is the enduring policy gap. Have utility companies, government agencies,

606
00:29:02,359 --> 00:29:05,160
and academic researchers, and they all agree the risk is real,

607
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:09,839
but there's no single, unified consensus on the precise impact,

608
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:13,799
and that paralysis prevents the kind of huge, continent wide

609
00:29:13,839 --> 00:29:15,240
investment that's truly needed.

610
00:29:15,519 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: The experts in these reports are basically calling for a

611
00:29:17,759 --> 00:29:21,559
unified body, right, an institute to actually quantify the risk properly.

612
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 2: They are they want an organization, a society and Space

613
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:28,000
Weather Institute or something similar to finally do a definitive

614
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:29,279
cost benefit analysis.

615
00:29:29,359 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 1: It seems obvious. If the disaster costs a trillion dollars,

616
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:35,079
spending a few billion to prevent it seems like a

617
00:29:35,079 --> 00:29:36,039
pretty good investment.

618
00:29:36,279 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 2: It is the core argument. The cost of a Carrington

619
00:29:39,279 --> 00:29:43,839
level event vastly, overwhelmingly outweighs the cost of preparation. But

620
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:46,640
to get that investment, you have to overcome the fractured

621
00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:50,720
policy landscape. Until we do that, our greatest vulnerability isn't

622
00:29:50,759 --> 00:29:53,880
the sun. It's the complexity and fragility of the interconnected

623
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,880
world we've built hashtag tag tag outro ARCore.

624
00:29:57,359 --> 00:29:59,799
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just try to summarize the sheer gravity of

625
00:29:59,759 --> 00:30:02,799
wa we've unpacked here on thrilling threads. We've established that

626
00:30:02,839 --> 00:30:05,279
a Carrington event two point zero would be at least

627
00:30:05,279 --> 00:30:07,400
one and a half times stronger than the nineteen eighty

628
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:09,880
nine storm that took down Kobec's entire grid.

629
00:30:09,759 --> 00:30:13,119
Speaker 2: And our most extreme models, like the Helios X one scenario,

630
00:30:13,319 --> 00:30:15,519
put a number on that risk, a one point one

631
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:19,279
trillion dollar global economic loss, driven almost entirely by the

632
00:30:19,319 --> 00:30:20,519
length of the service interruption.

633
00:30:20,799 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 1: We confirm the physical week point is our fleet of

634
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,480
massive EHV transformers. If enough of them are damaged, it

635
00:30:26,519 --> 00:30:28,519
could take up to a year to replace them, leaving

636
00:30:28,559 --> 00:30:30,839
millions of people in a multi month or even multi

637
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:32,039
year recovery.

638
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 2: And our best early warning system DSCOVR, gives us minutes

639
00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:38,240
of warning, not the days or weeks you'd need to

640
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:40,079
properly prepare for something on this scale.

641
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: I think the biggest takeaway here is that the danger

642
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,359
isn't just the Sun's raw power. It's what one of

643
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:49,839
the sources called our creeping dependency on these hyper interconnected systems.

644
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:53,599
Speaker 2: Exactly. We plan for hurricanes, we plan for earthquakes, but

645
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:57,240
those are localized. A solar superstorm has a footprint that

646
00:30:57,359 --> 00:31:01,200
is massive and simultaneous. There is no outside help coming

647
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,400
when the entire continent is dark.

648
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 1: Because electric power isn't just another utility, it's the fundamental

649
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:13,759
system that enables all other systems. Without it, everything else, communication, finance, logistics,

650
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:16,319
law and order begins to crumble within days.

651
00:31:16,559 --> 00:31:19,400
Speaker 2: The recovery is then defined not by our will to rebuild,

652
00:31:19,799 --> 00:31:23,599
but by the slow physical pace of manufacturing highly specialized

653
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:24,880
heavy equipment, which.

654
00:31:24,759 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: Leaves us with a final and I think a really

655
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:29,440
provocative thought for you to consider, given that the sign

656
00:31:29,519 --> 00:31:32,400
says we are exposed to a catastrophic event that could

657
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:36,039
require a multi year recovery for our electrical grid, taking

658
00:31:36,039 --> 00:31:39,519
out water, sanitation, and almost all forms of electronic communication.

659
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,279
What essential non electric system would you rely on most

660
00:31:43,319 --> 00:31:44,799
for that first year of recovery.

661
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 2: What's the one thing you couldn't live without. We'd love

662
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:48,839
to hear your thoughts.