As I write this article in April 2020 the majority of the world is shutdown and more than 80% of the entire United States is staying at home because of a global pandemic. No one could have seen this coming. We definitely didn’t have any movies coming out foretelling this like: Contagion, Outbreak, or you know a Netflix documentary literally released in January called “Pandemic; How to Prevent the Next Global Outbreak”. We didn’t have the richest person in the world to warn us, or a similar outbreak in 2003, 2009, and 2012.
Time Traveler Bob: I COME FROM THE FUTURE TO WARN YOU!
General Public Sam: OH MY what is it?! Godzilla??? Aliens?? No no – it must be that future humans went on to create intelligent machines that had the goal of creating as many paperclips as possible, and then that machine started using all of the resources around it – THEN within a short time the whole universe became just one mountain of paper clips!
Time Traveler Bob: Uhh no… In the year 2020 the world had to be shutdown because of a virus outbreak in China – you need to start washing your hands more and make sure people don’t eat bats.
General Public Sam: HA! I KNEW YOU WEREN’T A TIME TRAVELER. That’ll never happen.
The sad truth is – as a species we are not doing very much research on preventing the extinction of ourselves. It’s like how most people know they need an emergency fund, but only 18% have 6 months tucked away Don’t take it from me either – listen to Anders Sandberg, a researcher at the prestigious Oxford Institute, “There are more academic papers on dung beetles than the fate of H. sapiens.” Although I am sure there are some potential dung beetle disasters festering right now as well.
This article isn’t going to talk about the 1 in 1,000,000. Yes asteroids, quantum vacuum accidents, or gamma ray bursts could take us out. But I’m going to focus on another major world calamity that “no one” sees coming.
Solar Flares.
Solar flares and what they produce – eerily named coronal mass ejections are likely our next disaster.
Scientist Sally: Alright guys time to name another thing that might kill us all. Any ideas?
Scientist Tom: Hmm *looks around the room* uhh corona..something..
Sally: Tom did you just look at the beer you were drinking and try and come up with the name of a potential global disaster??
Tom: uhm.. Yes
Sally: Is that what you did when we named that virus??
Tom: Yeah sorry about that
Sally: Whatever, these things wont ever happen anyway! No one will ever know.
A coronal mass ejection is essentially a solar flare on steroids. The damage they create won’t likely melt our skin away – or give us all a sick summer tan in an instant. The damage will be from a large Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) pointed right at our nice little planet. The intense radiation emitted from powerful solar storms can get through earth’s magnetic shield and wreak havoc on electrical equipment on Earth. This disaster is similar to a major fear of the military that a country would detonate a nuclear bomb high in the sky above a target area. Nuclear bombs create those high intensity gamma ray waves that can fry electronic equipment. That makes sense – the sun is essentially a constant exploding nuclear bomb. In fact every second the sun’s energy output is equal to about 100 TRILLION Hiroshima bombs exploding… every single second. Thankfully the Sun is far away, space is vast, and that energy doesn’t get concentrated and pointed at us…. until it does.
You see the sun has a solar cycle. This solar activity has been tracked for more than 300 years and it’s ridiculously predictable.
Roughly every 11 years solar flare activity on the sun increases. The above chart references “sun spots” which are like freckles on the sun. Those spots are actually cooler because strong magnetic forces on the sun trap the energy. However – this leads to HUGE explosions when that energy finally escapes. This activity is the most powerful force found in our solar system.
I highly recommend looking at this 30 second clip to see a visual of this occurrence and how it can slip through our magnetic shield: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/solar-activity/en/
So basically – the biggest bomb you can possibly imagine explodes on the sun – if we are unlucky that energy is pointed at our very tiny earth. Depending how powerful the blast – we could have a minor annoyance like losing our LTE for a second and sitting there for 2 minutes watching that blue bar stall on the top of our text message. OR it could be powerful enough to blast through to Earth and disrupt some or almost all our electronic equipment on earth. Fun stuff.
How Bad Is that Really?
So how bad could this really be? Really Really bad. There is almost no upper limit to how powerful the CME could be. Projections show that it is possible that the radiation could be strong enough to melt copper wires from overload and knock out half or more of the world’s grid. Our world relies on technology. There is no doubt without computer and electricity this planet would not be able to support the 6 billion people on it. Think about if every grocery store and payment system had no power for weeks – or even years. The panic to get cash causing banks to collapse. Supply chains could not use computers for logistics. Cars would not work because although the engine is powered by gas – nearly every car needs their on-board computer and electronics to run.
You will have no access to food or water. You will have no access to the information needed to create your own food and water. Government will try it’s best to maintain civility but there will be no way to disperse information across large distances. For a period of time – you will be literally on your own. This would have devastating economic impacts that would take decades to fully recover. But, even if the impact is just on a single city or two the pandemonium would still be enormous.
How Likely is This?
So an entire global outage is very unlikely, but worldwide effects could still be likely. If you remember the sunspot chart above – it shows that every 11 years we hit peak activity. That brings us to between 2023 and 2026 for our next peak. Of course, you could have a bad flare anytime. A pretty recent historical example is the Carrington Event. This powerful solar flare produced a CME in 1859 that caused telegraphs around the world to catch fire. Technology was extremely primitive in 1859 from an electrical standpoint, but it still caused mass confusion with delayed telegraph communication for weeks. If this happened today it is estimated that it could knockout most of the US grid on the east coast. This is because this grid is highly interconnected. This type of storm happens around every 150 years. We are overdue.
Like the recent pandemic -the cosmos have been giving us ample warning shots. In 1989 parts of Quebec Canada lost power for almost an entire day (for the ENTIRE city). In 2012 a solar storm barely missed earth that was as powerful as Carrington. If the flare had occurred just one week earlier, the world would still be recovering.
Spooky Trivia Fact! A 2009 disaster movie titled “2012” about the Mayan Calendar prediction that the year 2012 marked the end of the world came out. The plot of the movie was that a Solar Flare of epic proportions caused heating of the earths crust (not very scientifically possible) causing volcanoes and earthquakes and such. Still though… we were one week away from actual apocalyptic consequences from a real solar storm in the yer 2012. I’m hoping the Mayans didn’t actually mean 2021.
Even more terrifying is that we could be unlucky and get a “1000 year” solar storm at any time. No details needed on that. It ain’t pretty.
What can We Do?
So now that we are all freaked out about solar flares and the angry sun, do we just accept our fate? Good news – all major world governments are highly aware of this potential danger. Just 6 months ago Trump signed an executive order putting more funding into monitoring and preparing for such an event. We are starting to use deep learning AI techniques to more accurately predict a storm before it happens. The sun is currently being watched every second. At best we can possibly give ourselves 3 days of warning by carefully monitoring potential activity. At worst – it takes electromagnetic radiation 8 minutes to get to Earth. Critical systems can be be powered off. The grid can be disconnected and airplanes grounded before losing GPS. Global leaders have to work together and make a critical decision with limited information and even more limited time. Yeah, we are doomed.
How do I Prepare?
Let’s list out a few bullet points of things to do to be better prepared. We don’t need another toilet paper war…
- Have a healthy stash of all batteries. EMPs will not damage batteries not in a circuit.
- Bacteria/Virus/Chemical purifying water pitcher may be crucial. You potentially will be filling up bathtubs with water to drink for the next weeks with only 24 hour notice. This Water Pitcher will keep you alive no matter how dirty your water might be.
- You can make something called a Faraday Box. Essentially take a cardboard box and line the outside with aluminum foil. This will shield whatever is inside against radiation. People already use these to prevent wireless carjacking . You can buy one here. It’s still unlikely that small electronics not wired into something would be destroyed.
- Buy a Generator and potentially think about buying solar panels. As long as your solar panels are disconnected prior to the EMP – they’d likely be fine.
- Always have plenty of matches, and gasoline at the house
- Keep a healthy storage of survival food that lasts 10+ years. This is helpful no matter what kind of disaster happens. FOOD AND WATER are the two things you need to stay alive. If you can make a fire to boil water, this survival food with a 30 year shelf life can save your life. If you are worried about having no heating element – you can actually buy old army MREs or more economical ones
- No survival list would be complete without mention of Guns and Ammo
- You will almost certainly not be able to get any cash from a bank as panic over electronic currency ensues. How much cash you decide to keep secretly stored in your house is up to you.
- Discuss contingency disaster plans with your friends/family/loved ones. Imagine a scenario where you are separated without communication. Have an action plan when travelling separate on how you’d get home safely.
- Print out survival information and store it. Wouldn’t you hate to not be able to google anything? You can also a buy a survival book like this.
There are countless more things you can do to be prepared. Just know…. when it finally happens and everyone is saying “no one could have seen this coming”. You’ll smile at your well stocked and prepared self and say “I did.”
The Breakthrough 