[BC] UK gets strange digital law

[rfoxwor1 at tampabay.rr.com]

We are in line for a similar event someday. Navigation has now been tied to GPS,
and the reliable backup (Loran) is being turned off and shut down.

Every few hundred years, apparently (there is no way to measure past events)
there is a super sized solar storm. The last one we know of occurred in 1859.
These are called Carrington events, after their discoverer. The last one
set telegraph stations on fire, one of the few effects that could then be
observed. You can find a good description on Wikipedia etc. This is due to
huge longitudinal electric currents induced in wiring by the solar storms.

The prediction is that the next one, will (among many other things, all bad)
burn out all the orbiting satellites, including the entire GPS system.

The Loran system could be reconstitituted in "relatively" short order. The
GPS constellation would need much longer. These are like the earthquake forecasts
(New Madrid, Cascadia subduction, Cumbre Vieja, Yellowstone etc) that could
happen in 2 days, 200 years, or any time in between, with large to unimaginable
consequences. (Cumbre Vieja is the unstable volcanic mountain in the Canary Islands,
another fascinating read. Imagine a 5-mile tsunami over the entire East Coast of
the US)

I believe that ending Loran-C was a very foolish thing to do.

- Bob

> This shows the consequences of POLITICS triumphing over COMMON SENSE. We are in line for the same thing in this country. Time and time again I read where the local (and national, for that matter) Emergency Management Agencies are equipping their staff with CELLULAR PHONES as the primary means of communications, and relying on the Internet for long-distance communications. Anyone with ANY lucidity knows that, almost no matter what kind of disaster, cellphones and Internet service are the FIRST things to quit working. They've set themselves up to be the biggest victim of a catastrophe!
> >1) Cellular phones didn't work.
> 
> >2) Digital media (Internet, etc.) didn't work.
> 
> >3) The power electric lines collapsed so... there wasn't electricity almost all over the country!!!