The high altitude nuclear shots the U.S. did to study the effects (and try for an effective ABM) did indeed kill some early commercial satellites.
This was most embarrassing, even if it was an "effect" to study.
There was an informal understanding between the Soviet and U.S. space program that no one would fire off a megaton at high altitude when there was a spacecraft and crew up there.
I wasn't around for most of the 1950's, but I believe we also managed to EMP Hawaii dark, or at least kill a whole bunch of fuses. But in the 1950's we didn't use much transistor technology; we were busy learning about it and developing it. (Please, I know that some transistorized machines came out in this era; I'm saying we didn't use them to control main power switches.)
Thanks,
Dave
"Oh, please don't turn this into a zombie apocalypse survivalist fantasy! "
No! No! DO turn it into a Zombie Apocalypse Survivalist Fantasy!!! It'll be a heck of a lot more fun to read!
If I may put a vote in
-- David
This may look like a signature, but it's only yet another buffer overrun.
I've had very good luck with a couple 6 volt "lantern" batteries, a standard 4-pin disk drive power connector, and a few alligator clips. Connect the 6 V batteries + to -. On the "+" battery, connect its minus to the center two black "ground" leads. Connect the "+" of the "+" battery to the +5 line (red) going to the drive. Finally, connect the "+" of the other battery to the +12V (yellow) wire. So we're supplying ground, +6, and +12. Heck, it has a voltage regulator on +5
Plug the drive in. Spin it up. IMPORTANT: Put it so the platters are at 90 degrees to you! In other words, put it so that if the platters explode, they won't hit you. You don't want it sitting on the ground with the platters parallel to the ground; you want them spinning at 90 degrees to the ground and to you.
Hike back a bit and shoot with a heavy slug. A slug from a 12 gauge works fine. All the rotational (angular) momentum is transferred to the frame as the platters stop almost instantly. The drive goes whirl-whirl-whirl, sometimes up in the air!
I found that the
9 mm works very well at disassembling the drives, as does
By the way, there are **absolutely terrific** magnets inside modern drives. Open 'em up and use a little acetone to unglue the magnets. They're the "supermagnets". And if you disassemble the drive with shooting, it is commonly opened FOR you!
Shooting a disk drive that crashed and lost you a bunch of work is terrific stuff. In Las Vegas there are a couple places that let you bring in your computer or whatever and shoot it with automatic weapons. Hmmmm, maybe I should try an AK-47 someday, that's a
*grin*
David Small
Think big.
Take a million car batteries. Yup, lead acid. Why a million car batteries? Because they're so cheap -- we made a hundred million of them last year, and they're one of the best recycling stories out there). Don't be clever. New tech means R&D, and that means unexpected surprises.
Store them in buildings which are above 50 degrees F so that they last a very long time (and certainly not conditions under a hood). Some place near a large interconnect.
Use an inverter, or, just hook the batteries up with IGBT switches to "thermometer" up the voltage, and then back down, making AC.
I'm aware that this is limited storage; the batteries don't like to run at load capacity for long. But also note that Fairbanks has, I believe, 25 megawatts of battery backup.
I'll throw this into the "fresh meat" bowl here
-- Dave Small
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh
