One of the problems of a lack of knowledge of science in the general community is that not only can technocrats hoodwink the public, as was done with the Covid plandemic, but genuinely dangerous events may not get the attention that more trendy things like climate change does. As far as I am aware, the Alor.org blog was the only site in Australia who mentioned the March 12, 2023 near-catastrophe of the largest solar storm to ever confront recent human civilisation. In the US, the American Thinker.com discussed the near miss that would have knocked us back to the Dark Ages:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/dodging_the_apocalypse.html
“A little over a week ago, on Sunday, March 12, a near-catastrophic event occurred that could have wrecked the lives of everyone reading this:
A Powerful Solar Eruption on Far Side of Sun Still Impacted Earth.
A massive eruption of solar material, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, was detected escaping from the Sun at 11:36 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2023. The CME erupted from the side of the Sun opposite Earth.
This was a replay of the Carrington event of September 1, 1859:
Suddenly, [British astronomer Richard Christian] Carrington spotted what he described as “two patches of intensely bright and white light” erupting from the sunspots. Five minutes later the fireballs vanished, but within hours their impact would be felt across the globe.
That night, telegraph communications around the world began to fail; there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph machines, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze. All over the planet, colorful auroras illuminated the night-time skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp and laborers started their daily chores, believing the sun had begun rising. Some thought the end of the world was at hand…
What happened on March 12 was similar to the 1859 outburst – only worse. Early estimates suggest that this explosion was ten to a hundred times more powerful than the one of 1859. Such events – if not quite so extreme -- are not uncommon. One serious difference from 1859 was that explosion took place on the side of the sun facing away from earth. If it had been facing in our direction, if the earth had borne the full brunt of that blast, we can scarcely imagine the results. It’s likely that all operating electrical systems would have been immediately destroyed, the same as the telegraph systems in 1859. Any active electronic instruments – and possibly even those that happened to be shut down – would have been fried, transformed into useless hunks of plastic, metal, and silicon. The electrical and electronic networks (e.g., the Net) that form the framework of Third Millennial civilization would have been annihilated. Once they were destroyed, all power would vanish. Industry would grind to a halt. Massive amounts of data, including almost all financial data, would simply disappear. All methods of communication beyond voice range would no longer exist. It wouldn’t be a matter of waiting to be rescued by a government of any sort. Government would have shrunk to little more than a notion. The very tools on which relief, and even recovery, depend would simply have vanished. The consequences beggar the imagination. A new Dark Age would have been the best option to expect.”
With the sun becoming more active, and solar storm more regular, it has been predicted that the probability in any one year of such a massive EMP is around 12 percent. Even lesser storms, as detailed below, pose a major threat to the internet, and the internet was not constructed to be immune to EMPs. There are movements now to try and harden the net, and the grid, but much work needs to be done. It is incredible that so much attention is devoted to myths like climate change alarmism, but the dangers posed by solar storms, are not discussed by either side of politics in Australia. Until it is “lights out”:
https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/solar-storm-wipe-out-internet
“We may marvel at the Northern Lights, but that same solar storm energy could one day create what one researcher described as an “internet apocalypse.”
“The internet has come of age during a time when the sun has been relatively quiet, and now it’s entering a more active time,” said Professor Peter Becker of George Mason University. “It’s the first time in human history that there’s been an intersection of increased solar activity with our dependence on the internet and our global economic dependence on the internet.”
Becker is the lead investigator on a project with the school and the Naval Research Laboratory to create an early warning system.
What can a solar super storm do to Earth?
“There have been a lot of (solar) flares,” Becker said. “Flares are when the sun brightens, and we see the radiation, and that’s kind of the muzzle flash. And then the cannon shot is the coronal mass ejection (CME). So, we can see the flash, but then the coronal mass ejection can go off in some random direction in space, but we can tell when they’re actually going to head towards Earth. And that gives us about 18 hours of warning, maybe 24 hours of warning, before those particles actually get to Earth and start messing with Earth’s magnetic field.”
Large blobs of plasma, or superheated matter, fly through space in a CME. A percentage hit the Earth, which distorts our planet’s magnetic field. That third prong on the electric plug, which usually gives excess electrical charges a safe place to go, becomes “like a big electrical circuit.”
“And then you get this kind of insidious thing where you could actually get current from ground,” Becker said. “So everybody thinks, ‘Oh, my computer’s grounded, I’m okay,'” but in an event like this, if you drive inductive currents to the surface of the Earth, it can almost work backwards, and you can end up actually frying things that you thought were relatively safe.”
The power grid, satellites, underground fiber optic cable with copper sheaths, navigation and GPS systems, radio transmitters and communications equipment are all vulnerable.
It has happened before
It has happened before. Becker points to the Carrington Event in 1859. That was the last time a CME reached Earth.
“It actually took out the telegraph system, sparks were literally flying off the telegraph lines,” Becker said. “Some operators got electrocuted because the wires ended up carrying high voltage, which they were never supposed to do, but the magnetic field variations became so strong it almost became a generator system and drove these currents down telegraph wires.”
The heavy-duty wires of the telegraph were robust compared to the fragile electronics of today, he said.
“So you lay that on top of the internet with its very delicate electronics, you’re talking about something that could really fry the system for a period of several weeks to months in terms of the time it would take to repair all the infrastructure – all of the electronic switches, all of these closets of electronics in all these office buildings,” Becker said. “That could all be fried. So we’re talking pretty major. And it’s not just communications. It’s economic disruption, too, obviously.”
An economic disruption to the tune of $10-$20 billion per day to the U.S. economy alone, Becker estimated.
The solar cycle is peaking making solar storms more plentiful
Tree rings and ice cores are evidence of much larger super storms in the past. About 14,000 years ago, a solar flare, possibly hundreds of times stronger than the Carrington flare, impacted Earth.
NOAA forecast the current solar cycle to ramp up and peak in 2024.
Becker said predicting solar storms is like predicting earthquakes – we just don’t have control over the situation. He said that the odds are about 10% that over the next decade, “something really large is going to happen that could potentially wipe out the internet.”
How can we protect electronics?
So he and his team are watching the sun and modeling flares. Flares, he said, reach Earth in 8 minutes. That sets the clock ticking for the possible magnetic field disruption in 18 to 24 hours.
“If we have a warning, every minute counts because you can put satellites in safe mode. You can take transformers off-line from the grid, so they don’t fry,” Becker said. “So there’s things you can do to mitigate the problem. And then, more long term, you’re talking about hardening the internet. And that’s, of course, an economic challenge because it’s sort of like an insurance policy. You may never need it, and it would cost trillions to really harden the system.”
He said most large corporations don’t have the economic incentive to harden their system at this point.”