We're approaching a solar maximum, and a massive once every millennia solar flare is predicted which will destroy every electronic device and erase every digital recording on the planet.

There are now more photos on Facebook alone than have ever been printed in the entire history of mankind. Every last one will be lost unless someone prints a hard-copy.

Likewise with software, websites and video - every hard disk will be magnetically erased, every flash drive will be melted and the fine metalic layers in DVDs and CDs will explode. Only hard-copy on stacks of paper or celluloid will survive.

What will you save?

all my electronic goodies thanks to the lead lined cellar with its internal faraday cage

LOL I was expecting to at least get to page two before some smart-arse said that

I was reading over some of the posts on the photography forum when I pondered this question. I bet a lot of people have personal photos they'd rather not lose, but I was wondering if there was anything else on the Internet worth saving lest it all disappear in a flash of light.

I can understand HDDs etc being wiped. But how will CDs and DVDs not be destroyed? And if it's severe enough to destroy them, won't we also be destroyed?

well this is a tecy/geeky forum and thus the chance of a smart alec response would be very high

all the porn

Actually this problem affects satellites all the time. So apart from the fact that they are hardened especially the military ones, they are turned off. Without much in the way of currents running through the devices they do not build up enough static to do much damage. So what I would do is turn everything off and unplug them. Long cable lengths allow a damaging current to be induced in the cable that will do the damage.

I wonder if the long promised pole reversal could be triggered by this mega flare. That'd make things interesting when things come back online.

I thought the pole reversal occurred because the inner solid core is surrounded by an outer liquid core?

AFAIK, nobody's certain what triggers it.

Bobbdobbs; I think the porn is about all I would really care about at first. My printer would pretty much be on full time producing life-sized likenesses of Japanese idols. With that saved, nothing of real value (to me) would be lost


It's a hypothetical psychological question about the value of electronic media, not a scientific one.

Let me rephrase it: "Evil Inter-dimensional aliens come and eat all our internets and other techi stuffs."

*sings Blondie - Rapture *

It occurs to me we could easily make more porn. I think I'd want to save something that was a bit more unique and irreplaceable.


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That's unlikely, how did these aliens survive travelling through a black hole, and if they were in possession of such technology, why were they interested in destroying the data on our hard disks. It seems so petty for such an advanced civilisation

Perhaps teenagers are interdimensional.
Thing that strikes me, most tech is useless without other tech. As for real physical things, probably my cameras and negs.

Actually areas under the surface already have patches where they've reversed.

Over the past several hundred years one area in particular has gradually grown and moved, weakening the field which now lays above parts of South America. It's why some of Hubble's instruments have to be switched off while it passes the region as it leaves the protection of the magnetic field.

As to what triggers the changes that have happened and are happening, well, the core is a strange place. It's not entirely clear how it's shaped what is solid and what isn't and there appear to be crystaline structures that grow within it. The magnetic field below the surface is nowhere near what it is like above it.

They're also performing a social experiment - or like the Prof says; it's just teenagers doing it for the lols