If a solar flare like that of 1859 would hit the Eart today, what would happen to our electrical Grid?
In September, of 1859, during a major solar maximum like we are entering into this year a huge solar flare hit the Earth. Northern lights were seen as far south as Havana Cuba and as far north as Santiago Chile. Telegraphs, the only real high tech of the day arced and sparked for days and newspapers could be read outdoors at midnight in Baltimore from the light of the aurora.
What would happe...n to today if a similar solar flare would hit the Earth in todays high tech era? National Geographic ran a good article on the Carrington effect and what would happen to our high tech civilization? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/
If the same occurred today the results could be catastrophic. Today's high tech world is terribly vulnerable to disruptions to the communications and transportation system and if the electrical grids over wide areas was smashed, by a large solar flare, then the damage could literaly, bring about a Dark Age, as the concentric systems our modern civilization collapsed in the dark and cold.
A year ago I was at a FEMA briefing and one of the speakers told me they were concerned the government wouldn't be able to survive for more then four to six weeks without modern communication which would be very degraded if not utterly smashed by a large 1859 level solar flare hit on Earth. The satelites used for the global communication would be destroyed by such a solar flare, and even worse most of the electrical; grid would be down, maybe for weeks maybe months maybe for longer (and that is if the systems could even be gotten back on line without massive repairs.
According to the FEMA speaker I took out to lunch and plied with lubricants he was very worried that in six months to a year some parts of the country would have taken 80 to 90 % or more casualties. When thinking of how dependent on transortation to provide just in time deliveries of food, purify our water and provide all the other supplies and life support needed to keep our mega cities population alive, I have to agree it would be awfully bad in any large urbanized area.
my grandpa had a saying "winter always comes" what he meant is that the hard times always happen, if you are ready, if you have plans, a full root cellar and larder, hay in the barn and plans, you would be all right, if not, well it gets cold in the winter here in the land of snow, and folks used to get in a lot of problems if they were not ready for winter. The threat of a major Carrington effect hit is remote but thanks to our dependency on modern technology probably one of the worst threats to our global technological civilization short of a asteroid strike. It is also a threat we can prepare for if forewarned and we are, we know, solar flares occur, that they can disrupt all our technological toys and send our civilization spiraling down into chaos. Since it is spomething we can do something about we need to make the modern day preperations for a hard winter by making those common sence preperations.
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