The Sun's Loaded Gun: The Carrington Event 2.0 – It’s Not If, But When! By Professor X
Let's get one thing straight: The sun tried to end civilisation in 2012. It tried again in 2023. And it will try again. And when it does — not if, when — the next Carrington-level solar superstorm will not just knock out your Wi-Fi. It will vapourise every satellite in orbit, fry the global power grid, erase financial systems, and plunge the planet into a darkness that makes the Middle Ages look like a tech expo.
You didn't hear about the near-misses? Of course not. The media was too busy fear-mongering about climate models, plastic straws, and whatever viral outrage du jour was trending. Meanwhile, the only outlet that actually sounded the alarm on the 2023 event — a CME 10 to 100 times more powerful than Carrington — was American Thinker, in a piece titled "Dodging the Apocalypse" by J.R. Dunn. Extract below. Everyone else? Crickets.
But now, in October 2025, the European Space Agency (ESA) just ran a doomsday simulation that confirms what Dunn warned about two years ago:
"The immense flow of energy ejected by the sun may cause damage to all our satellites in orbit… an explosion of the magnitude of the Carrington Event would leave no spacecraft safe." — Jorge Amaya, ESA Space Weather Modeling Coordinator
And the kicker? It's not a question of if — it's when.
The Carrington Event: 1859's Dress Rehearsal for Armageddon
September 1, 1859. British astronomer Richard Carrington is sketching sunspots when — BAM — two blinding white fireballs erupt from a Jupiter-sized blemish on the sun. Five minutes later, they vanish.
Eighteen hours later, Earth gets hit by the fastest coronal mass ejection (CME) ever recorded.
Telegraph wires spark and burn. Operators are electrocuted.
Auroras light up the tropics — so bright that gold miners in Colorado start breakfast at 1 a.m., thinking it's dawn.
Compasses spin uselessly. Birds sing at midnight.
That was 1859. We had telegraphs.
Now? We have 7,000+ satellites, $20 trillion in annual digital commerce, cloud everything, and power grids linked by copper veins that act like giant antennas for solar plasma.
The Near-Misses You Never Heard About
2012: The Shot Across the Bow
July 23, 2012: A CME with Carrington-level energy erupts from the sun.
Earth misses it by 9 days of solar rotation.
NASA later calls it "the solar superstorm of the century."
If it had hit? $2 trillion in damage. Global blackouts lasting months.
Media coverage? Zero.
2023: The Monster That Missed by a Hair
March 12, 2023: A CME 10–100× stronger than Carrington explodes from the far side of the sun.
Detected at 11:36 p.m. EDT.
Auroras seen in Florida. Radio blackouts over the Arctic.
One writer's PC crashes mid-article. Server goes down.
J.R. Dunn at American Thinker is the only one to connect the dots:
"If the earth had borne the full brunt of that blast… all operating electrical systems would have been immediately destroyed… A new Dark Age would have been the best option to expect."
ESA's 2025 Doomsday Simulation: "No Satellite Is Safe"
Fast-forward to October 2025. The ESA runs a tabletop war game for the upcoming Sentinel-1D satellite launch. The scenario? An X45 solar flare (5× stronger than anything this solar cycle) followed by a CME at 4.4 million mph.
Result?
Every satellite in orbit — from Starlink to GPS to weather to military — is either fried, deorbited, or crashing into each other.
And that's just space. On the ground?
Ground Zero: What Happens When the Grid Dies
When a Carrington-level CME hits, it induces DC currents in long power lines and pipelines. Transformers — the size of houses, custom-built, 18-month lead time — melt from the inside.
Timeline of Collapse:
| Time | Event |
| T+0 sec | CME plasma hits magnetosphere → geomagnetic storm |
| T+1 min | Transformers explode across continents |
| T+1 hour | 90% of US/Canada/Europe blacked out |
| T+1 day | Water pumps fail (no power = no pressure) |
| T+1 week | Food spoils (no refrigeration) |
| T+1 month | Starvation, riots, martial law |
Cost?
2013 Lloyd's study: $2.6 trillion in North America alone
Planetary Society: "Beyond the scale of comprehension"
Reality: Irreplaceable. There are only 3 factories in the world that make EHV transformers.
The Satellite Apocalypse: 10,000 Falling Stars
By 2030, we'll have 100,000 satellites in orbit (thanks, Starlink). A Carrington event?
Atmospheric drag increases 400% → satellites rain down like meteors
GPS gone → no navigation, no precision farming, no Uber
Comms gone → no internet, no cell, no 911
Military blind → no drone strikes, no missile defence
Rebuilding?
Factories on Earth? Fried.
Launch sites? No power.
Supply chains? Collapsed.
We're not replacing 10,000 satellites in a year. Try a decade.
Why This Isn't Science Fiction
Carrington events happen every ~500 years.
We're 166 years overdue.
Solar Cycle 25 (now) is one of the strongest on record.
Peak activity: 2025–2026.
Odds this century?
12% — ESA estimate (That's 1 in 8. Russian roulette has better odds.)
The Silence Is Deafening
Why isn't this front-page news?
Because:
It can't be blamed on humans → no carbon tax, no UN summit
No one makes money preparing for it → unlike "green" tech
Governments are broke → can't afford grid hardening
Media needs clickable panic → "Solar storm" doesn't trend like "Trump" or "Kardashian"
So we sleepwalk toward a preventable apocalypse.
How to Survive the Solar Killshot
For Governments:
1.Harden the grid — Faraday cages, surge arrestors, spare transformers
2.Stockpile EHV transformers (like nuclear warheads)
3.Mandate satellite shielding (radiation-hardened electronics)
4.Build ground-based backups — fibre optics, shortwave radio
For us:
72-hour kit → water, food, cash, hand-crank radio
Faraday bag → protect phone, laptop, car ECU
Paper maps, cash, barter goods
Learn analog skills — fire, water purification, first aid
Final Thought: The Sun Doesn't Negotiate
The sun is not angry. It's not political. It doesn't care about your pronouns, your portfolio, or your politics.
It just fires plasma bombs every few centuries.
We dodged one in 1859. We dodged one in 2012. We dodged one in 2023.
The next one won't miss.
So while the world argues about 1.5°C of warming, the real existential threat is 93 million miles away, charging up for a shot that could reset civilisation to 1859 — permanently.
Prepare. Or pray the sun rotates just right.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/dodging_the_apocalypse.html
Dodging the Apocalypse
By J.R. Dunn
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 nighttime 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.
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