This comes under the category of "Mother Nature". Unfortunately, the general public is blissfully unaware of the extent of damage that another Carrington Event would cause to our modern civilization. And it's not "if", but "when".
This article talks about what can be done to harden the ground based grid and the estimated 4 billion dollar cost (which should be an immediate priority, IMO), but doesn't mention what a Carrington class CME would do to satellites. Another factor, not mentioned, is the reality that earth's protective magnetosphere has been weakening, leaving us even more vulnerable.
This isn't a tin foil, black helicopter fantasy. It's a reality that will happen, and we need to prepare. Read the whole article at the link below...
foxnews.com
The sun is stronger than our electric grid — and we are defenseless against it
The Carrington Event literally shocked telegraph operators. A repeat could shock an entire civilization into the pre-industrial age.
Imagine being a telegraph operator in September 1859. You’re sitting at your station, using cutting-edge technology to tap out messages hundreds and thousands of miles away. Suddenly, brilliant auroras light up the night sky from the tropics to the poles.
Then chaos.
Sparks shower from your equipment, shocking you with a jolt strong enough to knock you out of your chair, while igniting your telegraph message papers. You later find out that some of your fellow operators could still send messages even after disconnecting their batteries — not knowing that the telegraph wires were being energized by massive currents induced in the wires by the most powerful geomagnetic storm in recorded history. (edit: evidence exists that even more powerful solar storms have occurred before records were kept)
That storm, triggered by a colossal solar flare observed by British astronomer Richard Carrington, unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME) that slammed into Earth’s magnetic field. Such a massive solar storm is known as a Carrington Event.
A telegraph operator in 1859 could only wonder at today’s technology — technology that is far more vulnerable to the sun than was the case then... |
