Can a anti static bag save electronics from solar burst?

reply to post by Romanian


ok, I have no idea what the strength of the Carrington event was. (from what I have read, it was anything between a X17 and X45!) If it was an X45, you would have had roughly 70V on the antenna I used earlier as an example. (Just remember, that if your antenna is connected, and a lightning storm is a couple of kilometers away, it can induce kV's on the same antenna)
But let us assume, the wires on the IC's is at max. 5mm long (I know, that is way too long, nowadays it is a lot shorter), then they will be efficient antennas at around 15GHz. your Carrington effect would induce about 3.5mV on the wires!!!! And then we have to add atmospheric absorption too, which is is quite difficult to predict at those frequencies, because it varies with the amount of humidity, etc. (have you ever heard people commenting, especially digital engineers, that RF is black magic? Now you know why), but as a rule of thumb, we can say the pulse would have been attenuated by roughly 200dB through the atmosphere. That gives you a couple of nanovolts. There is no way even the Carrington event could have influenced individual chips.
Yes, if your equipment had long wires connected to it, it would have been different, but our cell phones doesn't have antennas that are long.

I read that you can use galvanized aluminium garbage cans, make sure nothing is touching the can. Put your stuff in a non static bag and fill the sides of the can with paper. Good to bury this can too, I read. Not only your electronics but your batteries, led lights, flashlights etc. Also, I have electronics I have bought that are still in their packing boxes. All you do there is wrap the boxes in layers of foil. That should protect them.

Your darn tootin it would -- but with the energy released by a solar flare - there are other things that would be just as suitable, a sandwich bag, a paper bag, a Subway wrapper, a pair of silk (not nylon) panties, you could stick it in an old shoe, under a pillow, in a hat, an old sock - I am certain you could think of more They would be all equally protective.

We are not talking emf levels of energy, we are not talking static levels of electricity. We are talking barely measurable.