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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Solar activity in the SR world

Posted by: Talia Invierno Oct 24 2003, 07:47 PM

Oh, what a G3 solar flare could do to the UCAS SIN network!

Posted by: Shadow Oct 24 2003, 07:57 PM

Think about how vulnerable the corprate court and the Gbank are up there in a high orbit. Sure the magnetosphere is protecting them, but there essentially naked.

Posted by: nezumi Oct 24 2003, 07:59 PM

Most likely not a huge amount. This sounds a lot like a LOT of threads created about mixing EMP and cyber.

By 2050, fiber optics have largely replaced copper wires and silicon. As far as I'm aware, that makes them largely invulnerable to x-rays and magnets. Satellites will have significantly better resistance than we have on ours now, and repairs in space will be significantly easier. Radio waves are probably still used, and would be disrupted temporarily, but I'm pretty sure the SIN network would work just like credit card servers do today. Not all of your credit card transactions actually go to the servers; there's a feature built in that, if for whatever reason, the server doesn't respond, credit transactions can continue within certain criteria.

What'll happen? Your international television shows might be blocked, mister super rich might not be able to buy his new mercedes on credit quite as quickly. Your local military installation may temporarily lose contact with headquarters 5,000 miles away. Rest assured, with the amount of cash and power lying in that network, there'll be plenty of redundancies to make sure the world keeps rotating. (Although, it could make a great excuse for a run, sort of like the server reboot in Entrapment).

Posted by: Cray74 Oct 25 2003, 12:01 AM

QUOTE (Talia Invierno @ Oct 24 2003, 07:47 PM)

Oh, what a G3 solar flare could do to the UCAS SIN network!

How do you figure? Since 2005, SR electronics...optronics, really...have been immune to EMP effects.

And even today, most satellites (high and low orbit) hardly notice the flares. Operators take precautions, but aside from the odd hiccup, there's rarely problems. With the redundant and flexible communication networks of today...or tomorrow...calls and signals are mostly just rerouted.

Posted by: Kanada Ten Oct 25 2003, 12:04 AM

Isn't the electrical grid suppling power is still vulnerable, however, to surges from Solar flares?

How would these affect Microwave Satellite power output?

Posted by: mfb Oct 25 2003, 02:32 AM

no more than it is today. i admit, i don't know how vulnerable our grids are to solar flares, today, though the relative rarity of power outages leads me to believe that the answer is "not very".

Posted by: Herald of Verjigorm Oct 25 2003, 02:38 AM

If you can see an aurora, there is a chance a circuit breaker on a line will flip and down a section of the power grid. Yes, this means very northern and very southern regions are most vulnerable. Most of the time, even where you can see an aurora, the effect is too small to cause any perceptible effect.

Natural storms and manastorms are both drastically more likely to cause a power outage than solar activity.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 25 2003, 03:04 AM

Oh, it would play hob with a lot of things, it just wouldn't be that hugely bad.

~J

Posted by: Cray74 Oct 25 2003, 12:42 PM

QUOTE (Kanada Ten)

Isn't the electrical grid suppling power is still vulnerable, however, to surges from Solar flares?

How would these affect Microwave Satellite power output?

The electrical grid is vulnerable if the corps haven't updated things since the 1960s (which seems to be the case in North America today

), but only as vulnerable as it is today - which isn't much.

As for solar power satellites...yeah, I could see they might be vulnerable, but they don't seem to be used to supply power to North America (Seattle seems to be fully fusion, fission, and geothermal powered, and California seems to emphasize fusion). And, frankly, SPS's are another improbability about SR that I don't like, so if they were baked by solar flares, I wouldn't mind.

Posted by: Nath Oct 25 2003, 01:32 PM

Concerning power grid failure, the precedent was set by a solar flare in 1989 that caused a shutdown of the Hydro-Québec power grid for nine hours (I let you google on that one).

Posted by: Talia Invierno Oct 25 2003, 03:46 PM

Things remain rather more vulnerable today than is generally believed - which may be a factor as to why there is no perceived need to upgrade networks to current technology possibilities. Given the bottom-line perspectives of so much of the SR world, I can't see priorities being much different.

Still, experience personally the everyday effects of destruction of a primary communications satellite (it's happened!), and you might have an entirely new perspective on reliability of even basic things such as landline networks ... which, I suspect, could complicate SIN verification exponentially.

Posted by: Talia Invierno Nov 3 2003, 06:51 PM

Add one more (which could potentially be more disruptive than equipment failures ... especially during a run ): interference with radio waves.

* radios (cyber and external)
* wristphones
* wireless connections of any kind ...

Posted by: Cray74 Nov 3 2003, 07:26 PM

QUOTE (Talia Invierno)

Add one more (which could potentially be more disruptive than equipment failures ... especially during a run

): interference with radio waves.

* radios (cyber and external)
* wristphones

We just had a monster solar storm and I had no trouble with my cellphone or radio reception. My cable and power were stable. Japan lost a pair of satellites, but that didn't affect the Japanese public.

Given the high EMI environment of SR cities, I doubt commgear would notice anything. They already operate in EM-aggressive environments. A flare is nothing when a city has a hundred wireless EM sources for every inhabitant.

QUOTE

* wireless connections of any kind ...

Any kind? Like laser or IR wireless?

I think you're really over-exaggerating the whole solar activity threat to SR. The writers went through the trouble of making electronics in SR immune to a nuclear bomb's EMP, so I don't think they expect society to turn inside out for a little stellar hiccuping 150 million kilometers away.

Posted by: Talia Invierno Nov 3 2003, 10:03 PM

I can only go by http://www.avweb.com/newswire/9_44b/briefs/185959-1.html and what I've experienced. I'm also going by Seattle's rather closer geographic location to magnetic north (by some thousands of miles) than Eurasia and most of the continental United States.

I also did assume that SR wireless would be based on radio-band technology, perhaps similar to the [url]Bluetooth system[/url] (albeit at a slightly more developed stage). So you are correct, "any kind" would be a misnomer (it wouldn't affect infrared at all, I don't think), but most radio-based communications would have at least the potential to be disrupted.