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
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