2012 When the lights almost went off

A friend of mind came over to visit. He is former military. The subject of an EMP type attack came up. The military is retraining certain crews on how to do things the old way. The thought is that if the satellites and electronics got knocked out, they’d still able to function.

I pointed out how close we came to a solar storm in 2012 that could have wiped out the electronic age. The coronal mass ejection from the sun was estimated to have been as powerful at the storm that caused the 1859 Carrington event. Back then our most sophisticated electronics were telegraph systems. The jolt from the sun set telegraph stations on fire.

That strong of a solar storm would have sent us back to something like the 17th century.

Here’s the thing, the storm of 2012 actually did happen. We were just lucky that the earth was not in the path of the storm at the time. We missed it by something like nine days.

I jokingly pointed out that had that solar storm hit earth, we’d be having our conversations are a campfire. That caused us to pause for a bit. Then we thought . . . campfires are nice. That wouldn’t be all bad.

-Sixbears