LONDON: Last time it happened, in 1859, the world’s telegraph machines sparked into life on their own—setting fires and electrocuting their operators. Next time the results could be truly devastating.
The next super solar storm could paralyze the world’s electricity supply, down communications, disrupt trains and planes, and halt navigation devices.The British government now warns that we may only get 12 hours’ notice, and “much more needs to be done” to protect ourselves.
These powerful solar eruptions are almost impossible to accurately forecast, but their impact could be similar to the Electromagnetic Pulse weapons that were successfully tested by the U.S. Air Force earlier this year.
The Carrington Event of 1859 bombarded Earth with the most powerful solar flare-related X-rays and radiation storms on record as well as a Coronal Mass Ejection.
This ejection followed a violent eruption on the surface of the Sun and sent an immense cannonball of magnetized particles hurtling towards Earth at more than a million miles per hour.
In those days, telegraph operators were about the only people to notice anything beyond an unprecedented aurora borealis dancing in the skies as far south as Cuba.
The sudden shutdown of today’s interconnected global web of computers and electricity would bring us to our knees.
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