Last weekend's solar storm for me thinking about the sorts of things that could happen. What would happen today if a Carrington Event hit our modern world?
#^The Carrington Event: History's greatest solar storm
While solar storms rarely pose a direct threat to human life, there’s a risk they can impact safety-critical systems via electromagnetic effects — from space-based communications, navigation and weather forecasting services to electrical power distribution at ground level, according to ESA's Space Weather Service Network
It’s been conjectured that a storm on the scale of the Carrington event, if it happened today, could cause an internet apocalypse, sending large numbers of people and businesses offline. For this reason, the U.K. government lists adverse space weather as one of the most serious natural hazards in its National Risk Register, and companies have contingency plans to deal with severe events — as long as they have sufficient warning of them.
Researchers from Lloyd's of London and the Atmospheric and Environmental Research agency in the U.S. have estimated that a Carrington-class event today would result in between $0.6 and $2.6 trillion in damages to the U.S. alone, according to NASA spaceflight.
I think they really underplay this. While $0.6 to $2.6 trillion in damages sounds bad enough, you can't deficit spend some extra $T and order the replacement transformers for overnight delivery or even next month delivery. It could take months or years to replace some of the electrical infrastructure. Of course, that assumes that the manufacturing capability to replace those components still exists. If the electrical transformer manufacturing plant has no electricity, it can't make replacement transformers.
