I was not in the right mood and this came to my mind, it is digital age, huge amounts of personal and business data are stored on Hard Disk Drives, Flash Memories, DVDs and CDs.
100 years ago, people would store their images and documents on paper. Either normal paper or photo papers. I still have photos my father has taken back about 50 years ago, and they are all remained intact. AS long as they are not under direct sunlight, humidity or something similar, or if they burn.
For DVD, almost all of those problems, also heat, shock, and like that. DVD are much sensitive than paper, and a little may make lots of data unrecoverable.
Worse than DVD, are hard disks. They might look a little more secure, but those are even more sensitive, and problems include mechanical failures, and Magnetic interferences.
Personally, I am always scared of losing my data, family images, documents and a lot more of electronic design and software work. That’s awful. I have lost data before, and every year, my data has grown 10s of times from the year before, and now I have started to feel very insecure.
Now imagine some military shows it has some kind of EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) ordnance. If people, those like me specially, feel their data is unsafe, what will they do? Better to ask myself first, what will I do if I am scared of losing data due an EMP attack around me?
Maybe I make copies and put them around the world? Then what? is that enough? I say no. The cost can be too much and useless, because you don’t know where in the world there will be safe place.
Another method will be to put your data in some secure environment meters under the ground, but it will possibly make no difference, how many people can dig a 100 meter or even more bunker? I cannot for sure.
Then what if I store some of my data, at least the most important ones on paper? sya printing images and documents and designs and sources on paper, just like they did for hundreds and thousands of years since this last decade?!
Although it takes a lot of space, but it is not that costly, it is viable, and will not be easily lost, as digital data does.
Then imagine part of people think like me, and imagine they are really scared of losing their data, what will happen to the world? people may rush to buy paper, lots of it, huge amounts. What will happen to the world?
I say it might lead to a chaos, to a crisis. Just like what is happening to the oil. Price of the oil is raised from about USD 14 a barrel a few years ago to more than a hundred USD, and it is awful.
Just a simple thought.
Paymaan.
This was a concern during the Cold War when it was feared that the first nuclear explosion would “fry” all electronics. EMP was often not considered in war gaming although critical electronics were later gradually “hardened” against EMP.
These days I think there is more concern about hackers 😉
Well this was just a thought. I know Nukes can create an EMP as well, but what if they make dedicated EMP weapons? just to produce an impulse to disable electronics and destroy digital data?
In case of such threat possibly only punched tapes can store digital data without being scared, and everybody knows those can only store very little!
Then back then in cold war era, I guess there haven’t been a fraction of digital data and electronics we have at the moment, which makes such a threat even scarier!
And you are right about hackers 🙂
The neutron bomb causes little physical damage but its radiation was intended to kill people (that is, an anti-personnel weapon). It would seem that the bomb’s components could be altered to also produce EMP to “kill” (or disable) electronics which have not been hardened
Fortunately, nobody has threatened others with it yet. I Believe the paper problem will be possible as soon as people feel endangered, not many people are hopfully like that, as I now.
Paymaan.
Has anyone considered the potential of an emp from the Sun?
We are entering a new cycle which is predicted to be anomolous in its activity by the solar physicists.
In 1990 it took out the Canadian power grid.
Well Rob, I have never thought about it and I doubt if I had the knowledge needed. I am not sure if EMP from Sun can be as powerful of those man-made EMP, as Sun only warms the earth and nukes can melt it 🙂
Are you sure Canadian power outage has been due Solar activities, and if it has happened before, it will happen again, considering the Earth condition is getting worse due Human activities and global warming. I don’t claim heat has anything direct to EMP from sun, but that Earth’s protection is being destroyed by us humans due global warming and green house effect.
Paymaan.