A huge solar blast occured 2 days ago

[BADecker]

And here I was hoping we would get something to thaw the winter cold. But we weren't that lucky.

[BADecker]

This thread has nothing to do with bitcoin, which contrary to popular belief, doesn't even need the internet or computers or electricity to survive.

How can the Bitcoin system realistically survive without electricity?

We still have a few blacksmiths around, who could repair the generators with hammer and anvil.

 

[stevenh512]

Good old pencil and paper + carrier pigeons.

Yeah, ok, let's all start mining with pencil and paper. Realistically, it isn't going to happen, you could do maybe a couple hashes a day assuming you worked at it 24/7 and in a real survival situation nobody is going to have time to do that. Nobody has time to do that now, that's why computers do it for us.

Now, let me turn that question around: How can you survive without electricity? If the world loses electricity, you wouldn't be worried about bitcoin, you'd be worried about survival.

Seriously? You don't believe people are going to be able to survive without electricity, but you believe Bitcoin will survive without electricity because everyone will just mine with pencil and paper? How are all these dead people going to find time to do something that even living people today won't do?

As far as how I'd survive without electricity, I've done it before and I could easily do it again. I have, or can easily obtain or make, the four basic necessities of survival.. water, food, shelter and fire. I also have the means to defend those necessities against anyone who would try to take them from me. I don't need anything beyond that, everything else is a luxury. I would be (and have been) quite bored at times without some of the luxuries electricity provides for me, but I have no doubt I would survive.

We still have a few blacksmiths around, who could repair the generators with hammer and anvil.

All jokes aside, blacksmithing (or metalsmithing in general) is a good skill to learn and can be a very enjoyable and profitable hobby. I learned the basics of blacksmithing years ago from a friend who happened to work as a blacksmith at a local amusement park, and lately I've been getting into silversmithing and goldsmithing.. not because I need to, but because it's a fun way to relax and because I get the satisfaction of making something with my own hands.

[koelen3]

It passed and didn't hit us , so it's all fine

[tss]

In my understanding, as long as internet is up, bitcoin will survive. If internet gets destructed, that would be more catastrophic than bitcoin's destruction.

Which isn't entirely possible (or at least very unlikely). If the internet gets destroyed, something much worse is in for us.

there will always be some sort of connectivity.  unless all our electronic devices are non functional, there will always be a way.  transactions may take time to post across the world but would still be more effective than any commercial options.  bitcoin value would skyrocket.

[calme]

Well if global electricity went out, Obama, Putin, Ji Xinping and other world leaders would make an address to the world on TV. "People of the world, in the wake of the world recently losing its electrical power, we held this emergency global summit to decide the fate of BTC w/o electricity existing. Even though we technically can't be on TV right now, since the world has no power, we're here to tell you to just go on and use an IOU system or whatever to represent your bitcoins. We trust that each of you will be honest about how many BTC you had before the global power loss."

[Twipple]

It passed and didn't hit us , so it's all fine

But it can always happen in the future again and we all should be ready for it .

[desired_username]

I think the centralized structure of the power grid in the US and in many other countries is a lot more worrying and imminent threat.

CMEs are a known threat for ages.

Some people seem to think that it will erase every digital information and destroy the whole power grid without any way to repair it. Which is complete BS.

While it would be disruptive a decentralized network can continue to function as soon as the infrastructure is restored.

[nikona]

This thread has nothing to do with bitcoin, which contrary to popular belief, doesn't even need the internet or computers or electricity to survive.

How can the Bitcoin system realistically survive without electricity?

How can the fiat system survive without electricity? It would be a chaos since all markets operate under electricity these days, the stocks would collapse.

Well the banks would collapse, but they will obviously be giving you fiat incase something like this happens.

I dont think there will ever be electricity shortage..atleast for the next 50 years..still finding out new ways to generate elec. SO I think we should stop thinking about elec concerns..n start putting more effort into BTC related stuff..

Everything will collapse if Elec collapses..so we cant do much about it anyways.

[SargeR33]

These kind of videos. I like the way the guy says it will send us back to the stone age... How many times, since the beginning of earth have we been sent back? These are the same people who come up with scientific sounding crap about the magnetic field flipping and everything turning to shit. He doesn't know what will happen. Its never happened before and been observed.

[Q7]

I presume you expect the price to go up because of chaos? Something like a a doomsday prediction and the effect on bitcoin price. Anyway, there was a similar topic created few month ago. Search for doomsday.
Anyway, just out of curiosity if this does happen, my first priority would be to stock up food, clothing, materials to build shelter and stuff.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I presume you expect the price to go up because of chaos? Something like a a doomsday prediction and the effect on bitcoin price. Anyway, there was a similar topic created few month ago. Search for doomsday.
Anyway, just out of curiosity if this does happen, my first priority would be to stock up food, clothing, materials to build shelter and stuff.

Don't forget firearms and the skills to use them effectively or you are just getting the stuff ready for the guy who will take it from you.

[BillyBobZorton]

I presume you expect the price to go up because of chaos? Something like a a doomsday prediction and the effect on bitcoin price. Anyway, there was a similar topic created few month ago. Search for doomsday.
Anyway, just out of curiosity if this does happen, my first priority would be to stock up food, clothing, materials to build shelter and stuff.

I don't think a doomsday would make the price necessary go up, in a doomsday scenario the ones with firearms and the most food storage are the winners, i don't think people will be up for bitcoin trading while shits going down.

[Beymond]

If a doomsday coming!
I need by Zombie's please

[ebliever]

Contra Beliathon, there'd be no point to having bitcoin around in a scenario where we lose all internet and almost all electronics. We'd all have much more pressing issues on our mind at that point anyway. Barter and a return to gold and silver would suffice for a generation or so at least.

But as others pointed out, a Carrington Effect class event probably wouldn't take out everything. Significant portions of the internet would survive, although we might lose all satellites, and that with other damage would make things haphazard for a while. But bitcoin _could_ survive, if there was a community left to support it. It's possible such a civilization-shattering event might refocus everyone's priorities on such a huge scale that many social projects, even of the scope of bitcoin, might be essentially abandoned in the reconstruction efforts and potentially wars and worse in the aftermath.

I wouldn't count on it though. As best as I can tell, while the risk of a Carrington Event is real and probably higher than most realize, the impact of it is somewhat overstated. We'd most likely lose a bunch of satellites, but even if no one observed the flare the loss of satellites should give a few minutes warning time for power plants etc. to shut down the grid, preventing a lot of catastrophic damage to infrastructure. Everyone loses their Ipods and lots of other cheap electronics, and transportation would be iffy for a while due to blown ignition systems, but it ends up being more a speed bump to civilization than a back-to-the-stone-age type event.

[Mikestang]

What  is your opinion about such an event hitting the earth? Is the bitcoin network going to survive? What about the human infrastructure? Is this a substantial risk for the mining farms, exchanges or even cold storage? What should be done for the protection of the bitcoin infrastructure in case something like that happen?

Someday a large solar discharge will hit the Earth, it's not a question of if; it will happen.  Just like another large asteroid/comet will hit the Earth again, wiping out the majority of species.  Will either happen in our lifetimes?  Less likely than solo mining a block, but it could happen.

Bitcoin is dead without electricity, SHA256 calcs by hand would be.....difficult.

[Beliathon]

We'd most likely lose a bunch of satellites, but even if no one observed the flare the loss of satellites should give a few minutes warning time for power plants etc. to shut down the grid, preventing a lot of catastrophic damage to infrastructure. Everyone loses their Ipods and lots of other cheap electronics, and transportation would be iffy for a while due to blown ignition systems, but it ends up being more a speed bump to civilization than a back-to-the-stone-age type event.

Well said. As usual the fear is way overblown.

[Lauda]

Well not exactly.  First difficult wouldn't adjust downward until 2,016 blocks are completed and then it only adjusts downward by a factor of 4.  So just to get back to difficulty 1 would require more than 32,000 blocks to be completed.  The first would be at the current difficulty and difficulty would only decline slowly.  Mining even the genesis block by hand is simply not possible.    Difficulty one requires an average of 4 billion hashes.  Completing even a single sha256d hash by hand is measured in hours (more realistically a day or more).

Still the good news is that only half of the earth is facing the sun at any given time so destruction of the entire planet's computing resources would multiple solar storms on a massive scale.  The other thing to consider is that under any civilization ending solar storm you will be to busy fighting and killing for clean water and sufficient food to worry about the bitcoin network halting.

I've always wondered why people are bringing this up. If such an event happens, everything would probably collapse. Gold, diamonds, Bitcoin and similar valuable "items" wouldn't be worth anything the 'day after'.

Someday a large solar discharge will hit the Earth, it's not a question of if; it will happen.  Just like another large asteroid/comet will hit the Earth again, wiping out the majority of species.  Will either happen in our lifetimes?  Less likely than solo mining a block, but it could happen.

Bitcoin is dead without electricity, SHA256 calcs by hand would be.....difficult.

Nothing surprising there. Almost everything would be dead without electricity, there is no need to specialize the situation with Bitcoin.

[H1N1]

I'm good.

I got guns for every situation, close up and personal, concealed, reach out and touch somebody, heavy hitters, etc. at least 1k rounds for most. Water and water filters/treatment, food, shelter, a vehicle that will survive. Bitcoin will be the least of my worries.

I do have some precious metals for trading, but I'm guessing other things will be worth more, initially at least.

[koelen3]

It passed and didn't hit us , so it's all fine

But it can always happen in the future again and we all should be ready for it .

Though safety measures and prevention is good but let's not really focus too much on what might happen in future!
If you do that , first start with keeping your coins out of exchange's