Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012
I wish the article spent some time discussing how we can defend against the effects of storms like this. It mentions a 12% chance of getting hit by one in the next 10 years (and I assume that percentage is much higher for a probability space of the next 50 or 100), but makes no mention of potential mitigation strategies.Can you imagine how disastrous this would be? People would likely wake up without power, and think little of it at first. "Oh, it's a power outage. Better light some candles and wait it out." Then hours, days would pass. There would be no internet, television, or even newspapers to report what happened. We would be reduced to hearing the news from Shakespearian harriers!I wonder if this would cause mass revolt. What happens when you completely disable modern technology on all of earth? If this is as likely as they say it is, there needs to be some serious research into mitigation strategies not only of the immediate technological effects, but also of the sociological effects.Edit: maybe not all of earth, as the NASA page compares this to a localized blackout in Quebec. Can anyone comment on the geographical range of damage?