Is your datacenter safe from the next X-class solar flare? The devastating potential posed by solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other space weather are well publicized. These storms have been known to snipe satellites and disrupt power grids, but the risk to datacenters isn't as well understood. But according to a recent report published by Uptime Institute, there's no reason …
As good as we all like the B-film-worthy scenarios, these are all events with minuscule probabilities.
The daily threats are still the obvious ones: 1) Human stupidity, 2) human Stupidity and 3) human stupidity. This includes not locking the door (properly) and leaving the cabling accessible in the pit outside. Then you have the Who Me? scenarios of someone flipping a switch. Oh, did I mention this class of mistakes... did I now?
And let us not forget generic number 4): Most of our infrastructure can be "handled" with a hammer, wrench and hacksaw from the outside. See recent cable cuts in Germany downing all trains in northern part of country. No need for the sun to play an important role.
That's up there with the post-rapture pet care plan that someone cooked up a few years ago.
Two guys offered an insurance plan where you could pay a nominal fee, and they'd take care of your pets here on Earth if the Rapture should occur, removing you from this mortal realm.
Their reasoning was:
1) (most?) Christian dogma states that pets don't have souls, and will not be taken into heaven with their owners when the Rapture occurs.
2) even though they won't enjoy eternal salvation, it would be nice to ensure your pets are cared for during the balance of their lives.
3) one of the co-founders was Jewish, the other was an atheist, therefore they were guaranteed to be left behind, free to take care of your pets.
I guess you could also imply that it was well guaranteed they'd follow through because if they didn't:
4) if they failed to uphold their agreement, there would be a lot of lawyers available to sue on behalf of the departed policy holders.
.... that suitcase or vehicle based EMP fell into the same category as binary liquid explosives. They have both been proven in the lab, and if you're a state level actor that throws a HUGE amount of money at it you might be able to come up with something .... that was about as effective as a much cheaper solution (e.g. C4, or even a hammer). But that for the terrorist on the street they were both a non starter.
But then Hollywood love(s|d) the idea of both of them, and as previously pointed out they have become a nice script element for B movies.
I haven't yet seen any EMP related rules from the likes of the TSA, but binary liquid explosives are one of the reasons that you are not allowed to take more than 100ml of liquid/gel/paste onto planes.
A big Carrington event has the potential to insert large voltages into everything that conducts electricity and we have a lot more things these days than we did 170 years ago, the power lines might cook and virtually every house has electrical lines running through the building - you can think that fibre-optics would be OK but they have lots of electrical components too so it would probably quit too. So everyone's cell phone might catch-fire (the battery getting charged with 80 volts via USB) and Tesla's could start flying across the yard.
Basically virtually nothing is constructed to survive a Carrington event these days, it's not expected to happen even though it might.
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