If another Carrington Event happens, will I be able to resolve this?
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Ṁ1560
2150
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Wikipedia article for the Carrington Event

For the sake of the question, "another Carrington Event" is defined as a storm with a Dst of -1000 nT hitting the Earth.

Resolution criteria (provisional):

If I'm ever able to resolve this market after another Carrington Event happens, then this market will be resolved YES as soon as that happens. Otherwise, this market won't resolve until there's a clear consensus about what the hypothetical result would be in the case of another Carrington Event (currently there isn't, as far as I'm aware). In that case, at least one Manifold poll with a majority vote would have to pass before me deciding to resolve this market. For example, one like:

/singer/is-there-a-strong-scientific-consen

If I die before any Carrington Event like incident occurs, this market will resolve to N/A. Same if Manifold becomes defunct before such an incident occurs.

Related:

/singer/if-another-carrington-event-hit-the

/singer/if-another-carrington-event-occurre-rcv868itnl

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Curiously, you don't say how this market will resolve if there's a clear consensus about what the hypothetical result would be. Will it resolve in accordance with the consensus?

Your linked poll doesn't even require respondents to specify what the consensus is.

Will it resolve in accordance with the consensus?

I'm sorry, but are you suggesting that I would resolve the market to the opposite of whatever the consensus is? It's an interesting idea, but not what I had in mind.

It would be helpful if you state in what period after the storm are you able/unable to resolve this? Like 1 day or 1 year?

I'll add that, thanks.

Thank you for the clarification. So if you die before the next Carrington-like event happens, then it's an automatic NO, right?

I'll add a clause about that. N/A sounds more natural to me in that case.

Depends on your latitude. If you live closer to the equator, your electrical equipment will have higher survivability than if you live in the polar circle.

While that's true, the breakdown of global logistics seems like a bigger bottleneck here than having to call the local electric company.

bought Ṁ10 YES

How would this ever resolve NO?

I'm currently trying to figure that out myself. Suggestions are welcome. Here's a similar discussion from another similar question.

I'd say it should be time based. Internet infrastructure will likely be restored eventually even if severely damaged in the event (otherwise the idea of resolving markets is moot). A more interesting question would be if you are able to resolve within some amount of time, otherwise resolves no when (and if) manifold is back up.

@ProjectVictory I like your idea. It's a better framing than the one I had made earlier.

For the record, I believe it's unlikely that the civilian-facing internet will be ever restored to working order if a storm is able to globally disable it, not for any technical issue but simpy because the majority of the users and operators will be dead.

Why do you think they would be dead?

The thing is, a storm would likely only knock out power. Most of the actual data would probably be perfectly fine. Getting the internet at least mostly back up and running would probably be easier than getting most people's refrigerators back up and running.

@ProjectVictory

Why do you think they would be dead?

Because I think most people would be without access to food and water for at least a few weeks.

@ForTruth

The thing is, a storm would likely only knock out power.

If it knocks out power for more than a few days, a lot of people are going to be dying, especially in densely populated areas.

@singer Even if people are starving in the streets, that doesn't stop you from going wherever you need to go to get internet access to resolve this market YES.

Strictly speaking, it's practically guaranteed that going somewhere will give you sufficient capability to resolve this market, even if you would have to physically travel to the location of the database server with a generator and manually run commands. It really becomes more a matter of how much effort you'd be willing to put into trying to resolve this market, as well as the odds of you getting yourself killed after a Carrington Event occurs but before you resolve this market.

The only way I see this market ever truly resolving NO as it's currently formulated is if you get in a freak accident shortly after a Carrington Event occurs, and there's a consensus that you cannot be brought back to life.

I think saying internet wouldn't come back because everyone's dead is a big exaggeration. I live in a city and I could survive without any food, power water or heat for a month, (and I'm not even a doomer), it wouldn't be fun but it's unlikely to be deadly. A lot of people will die due to infrastructure collapse, but not to the point where we start loosing big parts of infrastructure permanently.

I'd compare it to COVID, a lot of people died, but not t enough to be a significant percentage of total population, leading to existential risk.

@ProjectVictory What is the minimum number of days that you believe it would be before power would be restored to the Bay Area, or New York City?

@ForTruth

Even if people are starving in the streets, that doesn't stop you from going wherever you need to go to get internet access to resolve this market YES.

I'm having a hard time imagining your mental image of where I am. How is public transport going to be taking me to another place if I don't own a car and the bus driver is dying of dehydration?

Depends on how well organized the effort is. I'd say minimum is about a month for having full grid power back, but you could start trucking in drinking water and food, running hospitals and other life critical stuff of diesel generators day 1, and maybe restore water supply in about a week with off-grid power sources.

@singer

Are you on some remote island? I'm having a hard time imagining why you think all forms of transport would immediately collapse, or just how lowly you consider your own resourcefulness.

It's all a matter of priorities.

If you lose your personal electronics, do you have your Manifold login info memorized for later use? Do we need to take stuff like that into account too?

@ProjectVictory

You compared the scale of the disaster to COVID. But if more than half the world had to go weeks without power, water, and communication (which I believe is what a Carrington Event would cause nowadays), it would be the most devastating disaster in human history. I don't think there's enough diesel generators being kept around (or enough diesel) to make that a quick fix.

Some countries would fare better than others, but all countries would be under martial law. There would no longer be private enterprises, or an economy. It would probably be a decade before industry returned to 20th century levels.

@ForTruth

If I was living on a remote island, I'd be much safer than in the middle of a densely populated city.

@singer There are currently multiple countries where over half of their population are without power and water. I have no idea why you think radio would suddenly stop working. Claiming that all countries would be under martial law is just ridiculous.

Plus keep in mind that <25% of global energy consumption is electricity, and that a Carrington Event would only knock out all power grids at most, not most electrical power generators. I've been trying to figure out why you thought you might never have internet access again, but you seem to think that blowing some transformers is irrecoverably fatal for almost everyone.

@ForTruth

There are currently multiple countries where over half of their population are without power and water.

I was thinking about the world population as a whole. I'm pretty sure more than 50% of people rely on electricity to get their water.

Carrington Event would only knock out all power grids at most, not most electrical power generators

My conclusion doesn't depend on generators being destroyed, just the inability for people to have water, heating, communication, and trade, and food, the internet, and whatever else uses electricity. It's hard to repair anything without electricity. Repairing an entire electric grid is probably going to take a long time even if you already had electricity, even if there was no disaster going on.

I have no idea why you think radio would suddenly stop working.

Very few people are HAM radio operators who have large backup batteries.

What do you think the global survival rate will be after six months have passed, if there was a Carrington Event tomorrow? From my light reading, 95% seems to be an optimistic prediction for the US. At the time of writing the market on that same question is at 72%, which I think is closer to the truth. But even at 95%, extrapolated globally it would be 400 million deaths, which is worse than any single disaster in history.

What's your price for what preparations would be needed to prevent things getting even worse than that? Here's the related market:

/singer/how-many-billions-of-dollars-would

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