Quite true. And most (if not all) of what people spend their lives worrying about never happens anyway. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take care where practical (such as not unnecessarily adding to greenhouse gasses), but beyond that one just has to accept what fate offers up and deal with it.
To be honest, there’s enough threats we have to worry about (to our lives and others) that such potential eventualities are low on the priority list. You could die being hit by a car, you could get cancer, you could suffer one of a million different things that’ll ensure you won’t give a hoot about solar output. It’s a very real issue that the earth could potentially be hit by an asteroid which would wipe out all life on the planet, there’s the potential that overpopulation is going to put such a strain on resources that the world will go into a famine, there’s the potential that some killer disease (that’s drug resistant) could do like the plague and wipe out most of the human population, it’s even possible that global warming could trigger something catastrophic which would do some serious damage to earth’s inhabitants. What’s the point in spending your days worrying about every potential issue when there’s enough thing’s going on in most of our lives that require dealing with now - real world issues. If you spend your days getting hysterical and paranoid about stuff like this and try planning for everything - you’ll just have a psychological breakdown.
No offense, everyone, but this seems a reflection of our society. The implications can be so overwhelming, nobody is doing anything. For instance, nobody really seems to want to acknowledge that the threat may be a partial one, in which case, restoration procedures might be more feasible.
Under the emp/solar scenario, how will people communicate? How will people on the outskirts even come to know that it took place? A large number of people still aren’t even aware that this type of threat exists. Talk about a fragmented society.
As a sidenote, clearly I wasn’t only referring to websites in this post. What about the case where patient records/medical histories are stored. Hardening these files, whether they reside at the local hospital or a pc, could mean potentially a life or death situation. Just one case, among many where data is critical.
I’m sorry, but by saying ‘yeh, but the sky would be falling’ may be quipped, but it would, in no way, help anyone in that situation. Then again, what we are talking about may be a physical trigger for ‘come up hither’. Maybe that’s what some of us secretly want.
For those that are fortunate enough to have food – what will you do – when hungry and starving mouths need some of yours? Will you give it all away?
So did I…
‘Trivial’ being the word mate, a point I was also making but perhaps not so obviously. Maybe I should get you to copywrite my posts for me.
I more worried about a random lightening strike taking out my PC than an EMP event but even then, all the important files are sitting on ISPs and can be easliy retrieved.
Alex, I hate to make your perspective on this look a little blinkered and polarised to the extreme minorities but if this actually happened on a catastrophic scale (strong enough to kill a wheel chair or a pacemaker for example) and every non-military unhardened CPU on the planet got fried we’d have a little more to worry about than losing people with pace makers. We’d have no communications, no power, no emergency services (and there would be a LOT of fires from wiring shorting out), no food distribution, no drinkable water, no gas, no medical services, not even short wave radio so the few days it would take to reduce most of the population to starving hordes rioting and looting would cause the early casualties perhaps to be regarded as the lucky ones.
Anything less than that probably wouldn’t harm PCs let alone pacemakers, instead just causing widespread damage to the power grid with potentially long term consequences, like years of reduced or non-existent power supply. So the pacemaker owners would get to survive to watch the rioting…
Exactly, so let’s get back to the incredibly pressing question… HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SAVE YOUR CLIENT’S HTML FILES?
Heheh, thanks for the thread guys. I found it fantastically chuckle-inducing.
Perhaps we should start printing everything we produce, then we will have a hard copy for once the EMP hit’s, when all the chaos is cleaned up we can scan everything back into the machine and rebuild everything using OCR software to convert it back to binary (if we print out all the source code). 
To be fair though, I think there’s people out there who are less worried about saving data and more worried about saving lives… an EMP would surely wipe out a lot of people who have artificial pacemakers or are on life support or those who depend on wheelchairs (Stephen Hawking would be totally screwed).
Obviously JJMcClure, but I didn’t feel it was worth reiterating what other people had already mentioned in the thread. I therefore decided that it was worth pointing out that an EMP would have immediate implications on people which would be of early concern (adding something original to the thread rather than just stating the immediately obvious). It’s entirely possible people can survive without electricity or water-on-tap - humans managed it for quite a long time, though of course the riots and the extreme outbreaks of disease and crazed panic would probably make the western world like Zombieland so perhaps as you said, the early ones would be the lucky casualties. But if the EMP hit there’s going to be a number of people who would have more immediate issues to deal with than “where’s the food truck” or “OMG NO INTERWEBS”. Not that (of course) humanity in general wouldn’t also have some other serious issues (not to mention aircraft dropping out of the sky).
And I’m pointing out that it was not only not worth pointing that out Alex but it was a typically blinkered and badly thought through. If you don’t get why I’m saying that then read my post again.
No I won’t, you might. Paranoid doesn’t come into it, why would you even use that word? A paranoia is an irrational fear or worry, this quite clearly isn’t irrational as it’s very likely to happen at some point. Again, please try to think things through before posting.
I’m not. If it’s not a big enough event to fry my pc it’s not likely to fry the ISP where the other set of files are kept so I’ll still have two perfectly safe copies. If it Is strong enough to fry my PC we’ll have much bigger problem to worry about than websites.
Thought I said that in my orginal post.
Sounds like that would be pretty easy to “take out”, though. The problem here is that we base too many essential services on systems that are fragile and too easily disabled. So many basic facets of life are being computerized these days, I hate to think what will happen when the electricity turns off. People won’t even know how to ties their shoelaces, let alone feed and clothe themselves.
I was first aware of the mistake we were making many years ago when the university library put the book catalog online. The next day (to my great annoyance) they threw out their card catalogs, which had been built up over a hundred years. Literally the day after that, the computers went down, meaning there was no means of searching for books (other than walking up and down the isles, of course).
Yeah I’m with TKE if someone detonates a nuclear device inside the US. The last thing you’ll be concerned about will be your computer or the data stored on it. I mean you might on occasion think back to the good times you had when there was electricity, running water, computers, stores with stocked shelves, money with value, no riots and no military in your life.
I’m just going to use the tin foil left over from making my hat to make a farraday cage.
Kidding, I take this stuff pretty seriously but where there is adveristy there is also opportunity. If all my clients site’s got fried, I’d be swamped with new work and all I need it internet access (assuming there is still an internet cos is there isn’t then this is all moot anyway) and a text editor, sweet.
BPartch,
I understand what you’re saying, trust me. Where I live in the mideast, I pray this does not happen in the winter months, since people would literally freeze to death if they had enough food to get by on.
Actually, it sounds as if little if nothing is being done to prepare in all sectors of life, save certain military applications. But I’m trying to promote an effort that can help respond. – You don’t believe that the devastating effect can be lessened though widespread preparation?
Right now I’m thinking, satellite isp would probably be better, available quicker.
I don’t see why. If it is as bad as you describe all (or most) ISP’s will be fried as well. What’s the use of having a website if you have no-one to cater it to?
From a theoretical/philisophical point of view it would be very interesting to see what would happen indeed! However, I think that if this happens, a lot of companies and countries will go bankrupt within a week, causing all sort of mayhems.
By the way, aren’t most datacenters built using weaponed concrete, and doesn’t that server as a sort of faraday cage as well?
I’ve worked in an electronics store for a few years, and the building was built out of weaponed concrete, and I remember we couldn’t get any AM/FM signals inside the building. To me that says faraday cage.
D’oh! Where else?! Thanks Tommy. I’ll check it out. 
There’s an article about the Faraday cage on Wikipedia.
Interesting. Do you have any links to back up these concerns? I hadn’t heard of any of this. (Personally, I think it would be quite funny if the whole internet fried up overnight—and the sooner the better, as we are far too dependent on it. That’s not to say I’m hoping for it, of course. 
)
Do you have any info on what “putting together a Farraday cage” would entail? Adding such info would help a post like this not just seem like a Domesday rant.
I’ll use my stockpile of guns and ammunition to protect it while those people who worried about hardening their PCs starve to death.
It’ll be ten to fifteen years until the world recovers enough (best case scenario) so saving your website data is going to be pretty useless.
If you want to push widespread preparation then you should be encouraging people to hoard food, water, guns and ammo not hardening their computers.
By the way, aren’t most datacenters built using weaponed concrete, and doesn’t that server as a sort of faraday cage as well?
I’ve worked in an electronics store for a few years, and the building was built out of weaponed concrete, and I remember we couldn’t get any AM/FM signals inside the building. To me that says faraday cage.
Don’t think so. Since these are gamma rays but that may depend on the concrete.
What’s the use of having a website if you have no-one to cater it to?
To preserve your work, enable a future internet, and help promote survival through communications.
I operate a number of sites and couldn’t imagine doing them all over again from scratch. The answer to this, however, may be in how quick everyone including hosts, transmission centers, etc, could repropogate. If it’s ever to be used again. Does anyone have site editors, ftp clients, php, mysql and all the languages and software that are needed hardened & stored somewhere safe? Then there is the question of who would resupply all the new hardware, not to mention re-establish the entire infrastructure? Probably the other side of the planet.
Then there is the case where it is not an all-or-nothing proposition, but rather a partial major incident, where everything is not entirely wiped out. Say a major coronal ejection from the sun happens to end off partways through the U.S. at that point in time.
The solar idea is not that far fetched and these have happened in the past. Then there are some of the major military mights that have emp weapons ready for use, in the event of war.
Not that I want any of this to happen. Realistically though it might. This is something that many people just don’t want to hear about, or deal with, and so they turn a blind eye. But the implications are devastating. Living in denial is so common nowadays. Most everything is externalized.