August 25 2013
77 + 77
At the time I never gave it a thought. When my grandparents’ farm, after the war, got electricity, their beautiful oil lamps were discarded as useless, thrown into the garbage. The age of energy via a magic wire originating from somewhere in the provincial capital would forever ban that smelling kerosene and eliminate fire hazards, but it also meant that something natural had vanished and a piece of the ‘world’ had been imported, the first small step on the path to complete mechanization and surrender to the money god.
My maternal Opa and Oma had two of these colorfully crafted lights, one in the living room and the other in the “pronk kamer”, the ‘show-off room’, the place only used when important people came visiting such as their church minister, or, on Sundays after church when relatives came for coffee. There, in the most spacious room of the farmhouse, the best furniture, the heirlooms, were located, all in immaculate condition, gleaming from the wax and polish.
I remember also that after the church Sunday coffee hour I would get a sugar crystal, a transparent candy rock that made cracking sounds when hot liquid was poured over it. This was before the war, of course, in the Dirty Thirties, during the deep depression, supposedly never to return.
What if?
The then new electric grid is now the Achilles heel of society. The ancient Greek hero had only one vulnerable spot on his body: his heel, and that’s how his enemy slayed him. We can cope for one hour without that miraculous power source – short interruptions happen all the time; we can cope without it for a day perhaps, as long as the weather is not too hot or cold; but weeks on end? Yet that happened not too far from where we live when freezing rain buckled the arms of the hydro transmission towers from which the hydro lines were suspended. It took weeks to repair this damage.
Everything now runs on electricity-powered computers, which are beautiful tools but also extremely vulnerable. They can run a few hours on battery power, but that’s it. Without electricity nothing works and everybody who is anybody realizes that without that magic current that is delivered to our home 24/7/365, everything stops. Without “hydro” as we call it in Ontario, no gas pump works, no refrigeration is possible, no meals are cooked, no groceries available, no water on tap, no heat in the house. In Canada we simply freeze in the dark. In the USA we fry in the summer without air conditioning.
People are realizing that we have a problem. Here is what the New York Times reports:
“The electric grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11.
This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical – and cyber attacks that could take down large sections of the power grid. They will practice for a crisis unlike anything the real grid has ever seen, and more than 150 companies and organizations have signed up to participate.
77+77
On September 1 1859 – exactly 77+77 years ago – Richard Carrington, an amateur astronomer from England, observed sunspot activity: next he noticed two brilliant spots of light twice as bright as the sun lasting about 5 minutes. Early the next morning much of the world witnessed a massively bright display of the aurora. At the same time telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, spraying out sparks from telegraph poles and causing widespread fires. Then the telegraph was the only high technology of that day, archaic by today’s standards. It was brought to a complete standstill by the invisible force of the sun.
What if?
Today in North America there are some 6000 major power plants and some 500,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, controlled by a staggering mix of devices installed over decades. A solar storm as occurred early September 1859 would completely destroy all that. What if this happens next week, 77 + 77 years after it happened before? Does that number indicate the fullness of time? A solar storm would melt all transformers. Worse all wires would fry to a crisp, causing a universal conflagration. Imagine a world without electricity, a world that depends for every action on hydro-electric or coal-generated or nuclear- power induced current. Is that how our world will end? A recent movie “The World’s End” mocks this prospect, yet it is another indication that the End is near. When? Only God knows. It will come totally unexpected, but the countdown has started.
Even if a melt-down does not occur, computer security experts say they believe that there is software- known as malware – that can disable the electrical systems or destroy their ability to communicate, leaving the operators blind about the positions of switches, the flows of current and other critical factors.
Of course it is good that people start realizing the tremendously vulnerable system we have devised. Given a solar storm of the magnitude experienced in 1859, nothing can protect us from such an event. Life could be extended by a few weeks with diesel generators, given that these people or institutions also have a large cache of food and water, but in essence it would be the End. Period.
A few books have been written depicting such scenarios. One is the 2009 novel “One Second After”, by William Forstchen. The author describes an attack on a quaint North Carolina mountain town, where a retired Colonel is living a peaceful life as a widowed professor with children when one day the lights go out and don’t come back on. Food deliveries cease and so does water supply. Through the next few days people there start to realize that something much larger has happened. What they eventually learn is that multiple solar storms have gone off over the US and over other strategic countries around the globe and everything immediately stops. Fortunately local leadership and a good community bring a small town together.
Another more recent publication, also a novel, with the apt title of “Gridlock,” describes an attack initiated by a rogue Russian agent working for Venezuela and Iran in which he helps hackers to disable the grid.
Authorities realize that such an attack could cause 10,000 times more devastation than the terrorists’ strike on September 11 2001.
I believe that’s the reason why neither Israel nor the USA has dared to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities is the fear that Iran might retaliate with just such a countermeasure.
There are also other threats, perhaps minor compared to the paralyzing of the grid but also more immediate. A recent article in TIME Magazine describes “A World without Bees” which would imperil a wide range of our favourite foods. Here are some quotes from that TIME article: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the globe, man would have no more than four years to live………What is really scary is the fear that bees may be a sign of what is to come, a symbol that something is deeply wrong with the world around is….. “If we don’t make some changes soon, we’re going to see disaster,” says Tom Theobald, a beekeeper in Colorado. “The bees are just the beginning.”
Why are people not worried?
There certainly is no reason for complacency, yet that is the general atmosphere out there. People carry on as if there is nothing to fear, and that too is understandable. We are like the proverbial frog who, when dumped in hot water, immediately jumps out but who, when sitting comfortably in water that is slowly heated, blithely boils to death. This is exactly what is happening to us: we fail to perceive gradual changes as opposed to rapid shifts. Climate change is a case in point: it is occurring so slowly that our minds do not adjust to it which makes it a deadly threat: it fails to trip the brain’s alarm, leaving us inertly passive in front of the TV set.
The first step is to acknowledge that there is a problem which is not easy since half of the US population even denies the fact of Climate Change. Canadians are a bit smarter in that regard, though very few either here or in the USA are cutting down on airplane trips or eating less red meat or walk and bike rather than drive. Yet we say we do care for God’s earth. So it’s not a lack of compassion for the planet: I think we find the conflict too painful to bear. Our apparent apathy, writes one psychiatrist, is just a defense mechanism in the face of this psychic pain. Still we have to come to terms with the reality that this planet of ours has an expiry date, which is rapidly approaching. We must make it socially acceptable to discuss this and prepare ourselves, probably more mentally than physically, even though the two are interlinked. It is God’s creation after all, and anything that affects God’s beloved earth also affects our spiritual status.
The world is waking up to this. Somehow the church is loath to alarm its declining membership. They have enough problems already, or so they reason, erroneously I believe. After all creation is God’s Primary Word. We conveniently ignore that whatever harm we do to the cosmos is a direct trespass of the third commandment, which says Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
We are paying the price of taking God’s name in vain. The changes we see in Our World Today are its direct consequences. God’s signature is evident throughout creation; his name is written on each species, especially on our own body, created in his image.
What must we do?
We must take the warnings seriously. We must urge our church fellowship to prepare for the return of the Lord.
One of my favourite sayings is that “we can’t do anything without God, and God won’t do anything without us.” We have a total partnership with God. That also means that we can’t be idle when these matters appear imminent. Jesus urges the people of his day to ‘flee to the mountains’ (Matthew 24:16). You do well to read that entire chapter because much of what Jesus mentions there is taking place right now.
What can we do? We can’t be passive. We must at all times be ready to help ourselves and others: love your neighbours and yourselves.
If you have a rural property and are on a well, buy a hand pump. In Tobermory, the most northerly town of the Bruce Peninsula, is a firm which ships frost-free hand pumps all over North America. They are priced in US dollars. Those who are on city water, and living in a single family dwelling, get a few rain barrels. Water is just as essential as food. Also have a thousand or so dollars in small bills tucked away and a supply of emergency food. Also keep your gas tank topped up. If you are ready for retirement, sell your city home and settle in the country with some land and woods. Seek a supporting community.
The dangers I have outlined are not imaginary. For our very eyes we see the conditions Jesus outlined in Matthew 24. For the churches to ignore these issues is irresponsible.
Next week: Will ‘fracking’ free us from trouble?