Actor Dennis Quaid joins Tucker and Jasmine to discuss the possibility of a massive solar storm that could destroy our entire power grid and bring us back to the Stone Age, and how we could prepare for such a disaster. Dennis has been in over 150 movies over the past 50 years, and he has a new project he's working on called "Grid Down, Power Up" that could be a game-changer in protecting our power grid from such an event. He also plays the lead in the hit TV show "The Office" and is an accomplished musician. This episode is brought to you by CBS Radio and produced by Riley Bray. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. All rights reserved. Used by permission. See linktr.ee/griddownpowerup for preferred Testo pricing. Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Rate, review and subscribe to our new podcast, The Dark Side Of, wherever you get your shows. Thank you so much for your support, we really appreciate it. Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What would you do in the event of a major solar storm? 4:30 - What could we do to prepare for one? 5:00- What would we do if one hits us? 6:40 - How would we survive in a major event? 7:30- What is the worst thing we could do to protect our grid? 8:20 - How could we be prepared? 9:15 - What are we prepare for it? 11: What are our options? 14: What would be the worst case scenario? 15:15: Is there anything we could we could be prepared for? 16:40- What do we do in response? 17:15- What are the best thing we can do? 18:00 19:20- Is there a solution? 21:10 - Is there any way to prepare? 22:10- What s an alternative to a solar storm 23: What s our best chance of surviving in a storm like that s going to happen? 25:00 +16:30 + 17: Is it possible? 26:10 +17: Can we get ready for a nuclear attack 27:10 Is there is a solution to a nuclear disaster 29:40 + 35:00+
00:00:00.000Dennis Quaid is one of the most famous actors in the world, he's been in about 150 movies spanning almost 50 years and he is at the same time a really interesting and engaged person with a lot to say who thinks a lot and thinks freely.
00:00:25.000He's also an accomplished musician, but he has a project coming up that you probably ought to know about.
00:00:30.000We thought it was definitely worth telling you about.
00:00:32.000And so we're grateful that Dennis Quaid is joining us on set right now.
00:00:38.000So, I mean, I could ask you a million questions, but I want to get right to the project that's coming up right now about our power grid that you did.
00:00:47.000Can you just give us a quick overview of what this is and why did you do it?
00:00:50.000Well, it's called Grid Down Power Up and it's about an issue which concerned me really for quite some time.
00:00:58.000They did a segment on 60 Minutes about this, but basically there is a 100% probability that our sun generating what they call a GMD, which is a solar storm, that hits our Earth and the magnetic field that we have around the Earth and can fry everything that is electric above the ground, including our entire grid.
00:01:27.000And this would happen organically, naturally?
00:02:09.000The trillions of dollars that it would take to replace all that.
00:02:12.000Plus there wouldn't, we wouldn't even get to spend those trillions of dollars because the, it would take out not only the electricity, but you know, all of our entire infrastructure and our society runs our electricity.
00:02:28.000We don't, we don't know how to live without it.
00:02:31.000You know, you turn on, there wouldn't be any water in your tap.
00:02:34.000There wouldn't, you couldn't get gas for your car because the, the whole system is broken down.
00:02:40.000Everything that we rely upon would be gone.
00:02:44.000The food would melt in our refrigerators.
00:02:48.000There would be a, and they predict within a year, about 90% of the population would be dead from starvation, disease,
00:02:57.000or, you know, people, it gets back to the stone age again.
00:03:11.000I mean, I just sort of, I'm adding that to the Armageddon file that's growing.
00:03:15.000Nobody's, nobody's really talking about it.
00:03:17.000And, and in fact, President Trump actually signed an executive order to, to harden our grid to protect ourselves against an event like this happening.
00:03:31.000Obama tried to get that going as well.
00:03:34.000And it, it's stuck in these regulatory agencies that, you know, and lobbyists because money needs to be spent.
00:03:45.000Most of our grid power companies are privately owned and you can understand them not wanting to spend money on something that might occur.
00:03:53.000But this is definitely going to occur.
00:03:56.000And so it would mean, and this is not from a foreign adversary.
00:04:09.000This is, you know, our, the sun that we rely upon every day.
00:04:14.000And these solar storms that happen and they, they happen with, you know, frequency and you've seen, everybody's seen, you know, pictures of the sun where, you know, the storm is happening and these flares come out and they're ejected out into the, into the solar system.
00:04:31.000And we just, you know, like in packets and we, I think it was 2014.
00:04:39.000We barely missed one by, uh, five days that went across our path of orbit around the sun.
00:05:12.000There, there are simple things that we could actually do, uh, to, uh, that could be built in that would, you know, not only for the military, which we'll get to, but, uh, civilian, uh, infrastructure to protect it.
00:05:28.000That, uh, relatively inexpensive compared to what it would cost.
00:05:34.000If, uh, an event like this happened and overall over time, it'd probably be about a hundred billion dollars, about the same that we just gave to Ukraine.
00:05:47.000So, you know, to protect them from the Russians, uh, and, uh, it'd be money spent.
00:05:54.000Plus also, uh, the, you know, the process of doing this, we, you know, it's like a space program.
00:06:02.000You find out all kinds of other things that actually, uh, help society and advance us in our technology.
00:06:10.000But, uh, it's basically relays, uh, protective relays that could be put in our, our substations and transformers that, in an event like this happens, uh, kind of similar to kind of a surge protector that you have in your computer.
00:06:25.000That, that since that, you know, there's a surge like that and cut it, cut it off to protect it, frying our, uh, transformers.
00:06:35.000Would, uh, pardon my total ignorance on this topic, I'm embarrassed.
00:06:39.000Um, but would such a solar storm hurt people or just electrical components?
00:06:45.000Uh, in fact, it, uh, it's, uh, it's only like the, you know, transistors, uh, and, you know, anything electrical and you can melt it.
00:06:57.000And these transformers that we have, uh, I think there's, uh, there's, you remember the, the blackout that happened in New York, uh, not too long ago.
00:07:10.000And, uh, that it, you know, it took, it was trees that were hanging over a power line just like that, which caused, you know, a surge of power and upset the balance.
00:07:20.000And it all relies on these transformers that, uh, get overheated and they, the, if you need to replace one, you don't just replace one.
00:07:31.000They weigh about 500,000 pounds to begin with to get them.
00:07:35.000It takes, if you want another one, it takes two years to get one.
00:07:38.000We just don't have them sitting around, uh, uh, just ready to replace either.
00:11:56.000You could definitely rig one of those up and hook it to a, uh, a Scud missile, put it on a cargo ship just off the United States, uh, coast.
00:12:04.000Send it up to a certain altitude, explode it.
00:12:08.000And, uh, how that would have, what they call a super EMP, which is electromagnetic pulse.
00:12:47.000But the gamma rays, which are thrown out from that, would encompass most of the United States and take out this very same grid.
00:12:58.000And within, which could cause a power outage all across the United States up to months, even a year.
00:13:11.000And we'd have the same scenario that we described before.
00:13:14.000So if, I mean, you, you hate even to game it out, but like, if that happened, if huge parts of the United States had no power for a year, I mean, that, that would be an extinction event for a lot of people.
00:13:24.000Yeah, they'd done a study and 90% of the population would be dead within a year.
00:13:31.000You know, in 18, during this Carrington event, I mean, one thing, we didn't rely on electricity, you know, and everybody had a cow if you wanted milk and you had a horse if you wanted to drive.
00:14:03.000Not only that, you're not, you're not killing people.
00:14:08.000And so, that makes the decision to use them a little, you know, it's not, you don't have to, you don't have to wrestle with your, your morals.
00:14:23.000And just like, because there are so many actors doing this, and you know, there are terrorist subgroups as well, who do you retaliate against if it's, if it's done from a cargo ship?
00:14:39.000And you don't even know where it came from.
00:15:55.000I really would think so, but it's, uh, and indeed the, uh, you know, the Russians and the Chinese have,
00:16:03.000have done so much more to harden and to protect their infrastructure than we have.
00:16:10.000And so it, it gets down to that whole thing about survivability.
00:16:15.000You know, being able to survive an attack and, uh, to attack someone and then being able to survive the, uh, when they retaliate.
00:16:26.000And, uh, they've got that going for them.
00:16:29.000And it also makes somebody like, you know, Iran, who, it, it's a fraction of what they, their military budget is.
00:16:38.000And they know they can't defeat the United States.
00:16:41.000But, I mean, even a, even a simple terror group, you get their hands on a Scud missile and a, and a nuclear device, you can really do some damage.
00:16:50.000And I don't know why that our government has not been informing us more about this.
00:16:59.000Back during the Cold War, when I was a kid, I was, you know, in the fourth grade, we, we kids were informed about what could happen, what to do if, if something happened.
00:17:48.000This really definitely, this has to, well, they would be affected too, you know, of course.
00:17:53.000But it's, it's, you know, it's, that's all about the fuel that comes, you know, to the power agency or, you know, whether it be coal or wind or whatever it is.
00:18:04.000But if, if you knock out the, these relay stations, the power can't go anywhere.
00:18:21.000It'd be easier to live in the country, of course.
00:18:23.000And people who live in the country, you know, would probably have better ideas, better knowledge of how to survive after an event like this.
00:18:32.000But, uh, it's, it's a scary proposition.
00:18:37.000I mean, there needs to be education and, and there needs to be something done about it.
00:18:44.000I mean, these, these protective relays that, that could be installed in the transformers, starting with that.
00:18:50.000I mean, we have the technology, we know how to do this.
00:18:53.000It's not something mysterious that we have to get involved in.
00:18:57.000What we do need is something like a Manhattan project that we had back during World War II, where, you know, the Germans, we knew that the Germans were trying to develop a bomb.
00:19:09.000And so we, we, we got there quicker and somebody to cut through all the bureau, bureaucratic, uh, red tape and be vested with the authority to just to get this done.
00:19:24.000We could do, we could do it in a couple of years.
00:19:27.000So you mentioned FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
00:19:31.000I mean, that would be, wouldn't that be the agency that would be thinking about this?
00:19:34.000They, they, yes, you would think that, but it, that's not the way it works.
00:19:39.000It, you know, Obama, like, sent this to Congress, I mean, to, to get it done.
00:19:44.000And then it gets caught in FERC and NERC because they're controlled by, uh, the lobbies, the, you know, the lobbies of, uh, the energy lobbies that it, it's about, they'd have to spend money.
00:19:59.000And, um, which they don't necessarily want to do because, you know, it costs a lot.
00:20:07.000I think the government should, should, uh, help in this.
00:20:11.000And there's so many of them too scattered across the United States.
00:20:16.000You know, they're locally owned, most of the energy companies.
00:20:20.000Uh, there's a energy company in South Carolina that is, uh, really doing something about it.
00:20:27.000And there, there have been some cases where, uh, you know, we've had energy companies that are, uh, making moves to protect the grid, but that's only one little part of the grid.
00:20:39.000You know, it's, uh, when it comes down to it, they, they depend on the, on the one next door to them and the one next door to them.
00:20:46.000It would cure the AI problem pretty quick though, right?
00:21:15.000You go back to, basically we go back to that current event.
00:21:19.000The world goes back to 1859 and we're all in the dark and the lights are out.
00:21:24.000So you'd think, and you would think that all these other sectors, the economy would be lobbying because they all are dependent on electricity.
00:23:06.000You know, that seems like a very remote, in fact, is very remote.
00:23:09.000Uh, and, um, but this is, you know, whether from the sun or a bad actor, this is something that a hundred percent chance it's going to happen.
00:23:21.000And we are just no, nowhere, no way prepared for it.
00:24:01.000And, uh, asked me if I wanted to be involved and I'd seen that 60 Minutes episode, you know, about the geothermal event happening like that.
00:24:10.000And it's, I just said yes, because I remember it really, uh, frightened me when I saw it.
00:24:16.000And I, like everybody else, had just gone on and forgotten it because you have, we have so many threats that are right in front of us.
00:24:32.000And it's always, it's, it's always the one you, you don't see, you know, it's the, they get you.
00:24:37.000It's, it gives us feet of clay, basically.
00:24:40.000You know, we may be the big, bad, great, greatest nation on earth, United States with all our, uh, it's, but in some ways, all of this technology, uh, this highly industrial, uh, complex that, that we've built is,
00:24:58.000is, has feet of clay because of this little simple thing.
00:25:04.000It's kind of perfect though, isn't it?
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00:27:03.000Because it was when I grew up in Houston, I wanted, you know, John Glenn went up.
00:27:09.000I was in the second grade that rolled the TV and everybody that replaced wanting to be a cowboy, everybody wanted to be an astronaut back then.
00:27:17.000And so, you know, I grew up wanting to be.
00:27:21.000And then along came the book and I read it like in two days and wanted to play Gordo Cooper because he was my favorite astronaut back then.
00:28:19.000So you said, you were saying off camera that when you started, I think your first movie that you were in or around was 1975.
00:28:26.000It, like how long did it take to make a movie then?
00:28:30.000It was at least, at least three months, you know, to make a movie back then.
00:28:36.000Because, because of the cameras, you know, you shoot one side of a scene and then you got what they call turn around and shoot the other person going the other way and seeing the background the other way.
00:28:46.000And the lights and the cameras that we had at the time meant that it was at least, you know, a two to four hour turnaround.
00:28:54.000So you just sit in your trailer, wait for that to happen.
00:28:57.000Now all that happens like in 15 minutes.
00:29:00.000And so movies just moves really quick.
00:29:04.000But if you're on, if you're taking, you know, months out of your life to go to a location far from your home and you're in this like biosphere with the other actors.
00:40:09.000You know, you know, it's like, I've been really, I, my autobiography is going to be called My Lucky Life.
00:40:16.000Because I have really gotten a chance to do so many kinds of things that I never would have thought I could have done.
00:40:24.000And at this point, you know, my movie career, which has been so fantastic, so fulfilling, really, I enjoy it so much more now, making movies, because I'm not trying to get anywhere.