Preppers, or those preparing for an apocalypse, may already know, but in 1859, the sun belched trillions of tonnes of plasma at our small pale blue dot, causing major disruptions to primitive telegraph poles.
The Carrington Event is the largest reported geomagnetic storm, or coronal mass ejection (CME).
According to astronomy.com, ‘The operators of the telegraphs reported receiving electrical shocks, telegraph paper catching fire, and being able to operate equipment with batteries disconnected’.
An even more massive geomagnetic storm occurred around 774 A.D., writes author David Wallace, which is known as the Miyake Event.
‘Ice core samples have shown evidence that large-scale geomagnetic storms with similar intensities as the Miyake and Carrington events occur at an average rate of once every 500 years’.
And on October 13, 2023, www.astronomy.com’s Paul Sutter wrote, ‘Scientists have found evidence of a solar flare that happened 14,300 years ago that had to be at least ten times more powerful than the Carrington Event’.
According to www.livescience.com, a huge burst of plasma and magnetised particles erupted from the sun on October 28, 2021.
‘The massive solar outburst washed over Earth, the moon and Mars, bathing them in radiation. And, for the first time, instruments on all three bodies measured the same event almost simultaneously’.
The irony of course is that humans have developed the technology to measure such events, but will be completely knee-capped by the next big one.
Professor of Applied Statistics in the School of Mathematics at the University of Leeds, Tim Heaton, told astronomy.com, ‘Extreme solar storms could have huge impacts on Earth. Such super storms could permanently damage the transformers in our electricity grids, resulting in huge and widespread blackouts lasting months. They could also result in permanent damage to the satellites that we all rely on for navigation and telecommunication, leaving them unusable’.
It’s incomprehensible, but try to think of how tech-reliant humans would fare after the complete wipe-out of all electrical circuitry.
Nuts and berries
Clearly, the non-tech-reliant humans would not be so affected, as long as there were enough nuts and berries for all of us.
Such a scenario makes gradual climate change seem somewhat benign, and the pointless wars over religion, land and resources myopic.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) would simply vanish, and no longer loom over us.
Perhaps a large solar burp would reset our oversaturated primitive minds and restore some much-needed collective sanity and empathy?
Hans Lovejoy, editor
News tips are welcome: [email protected]
There a quite a lot of regularly repeating catastrophies, such as pole reversals, that cause speices extinction, but somehow our ancestors dealt with all of them. Makes you wonder. We are so massively capable, even without our new technology. Go team!
Be interesting when the magnetic poles flip which science tells us is due. That’ll be fun too.
Our primitive minds and collective insanity is gradually wiping us out anyway. We need a revolution in conciousness. Then we might better handle natural disasters and contribute less to them.
We did have ‘revolution in consciousness’, it was called the Enlightenment. People who spout critical theories and the like, are attempting to undo it. Deaths due to natural disasters have dropped by two orders of magnitude over the last century, despite the massive population increase. It is not what the ‘Experts’, that people appeal to, will tell you.
I suppose climate change, global warming and our boiling planet will cause all of this as well. The lefty alarmist handbook says so.
Greg (Yipes, Shock-Horror!)- so after all that money & effort to make ‘clean & green energy’ to “save the Planet” it could all be totally wiped away in just a few years?
This natural phenomenon surely puts all our puny human efforts over climate to shame.
‘What me worry’ !
No Greg, you can relax, you must be reading from the wrong handbook as well as completely missing the point. Climate change is caused by anthropogenic emissions not solar emissions. Despite the detailed scientific knowledge we have of the climate, and our the planet and solar system, as yet we’re still unable to influence or predict solar flares, magnetic pole reversals, earthquakes, volcanoes & nutjob commenatators. But those lefty alarmists working for a liveable planet seem to be a good target for everything else you fear and dislike!
A debate at Oxford, strayed off into what you are talking about. It may enlighten you. youtube: ‘Konstantin Kisin: Woke Culture HAS Gone Too Far – 7/8 | Oxford Union’