Prepare for the worst day in modern human history, ladies and gentlemen. Not if, but when.

The day a Carrington Event-level solar storm (or storms; the Carrington Event was two coronal mass ejecta, back-to-back) occurs in modern society is the day population centers, electrical/data infrastructure, municipal and federal governments, law enforcement, large and small businesses, academic institutions, and healthcare providers are all brought to their knees.

Please take a moment to let that information sink in.

Although some, recently-built electrical transmission infrastructure would prevail against a highly energetic geomagnetic storm, many municipalities would look on in horror as overloaded electrical lines seize up, high voltage breakers are tripped, and many handheld devices are irradiated beyond function or repair.

Back-up generators at hospitals, schools, and some government buildings would kick on, more/less immediately, but without the ability to dispense gasoline, those generators would be subject to extremely limited timelines.

Electronic devices not powered directly by solar or other renewable energy sources would quickly be drained of their battery life.

It’s difficult to imagine a situation with more potential for food chain supply disruptions, widespread panic, rioting, looting, and injury/death.

Of course, the impact area of the geomagnetic storm (based upon which direction the auroral oval distorts) would factor heavily into the outcome of this event. Unfortunately, one section of the planet would be disproportionately affected by this cataclysm, and would come to rely heavily on countries not effected for disaster relief and rebuilding support.

In 1859, the telegraph service was largely isolated to North America and Europe. Now, data transmission infrastructure as well as electrical power grids cover nearly the entire planet.

If such an event impacted one section of the US, while sparing another, the Department of Homeland Security will have in place a National Response Framework, aimed at managing the logistics of relief, damage, loss of life, and/or mass evacuation.

Realistically, the comparable scenario for such an event would be a very large earthquake or an accidental/intentional detonation of a high-yield nuclear device.

FEMA would coordinate the response, hopefully with greater urgency than was exercised during Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 landfall on the city of New Orleans.

Immediately, convalescent and ICU wards of healthcare providers would begin reporting casualties. Other possible casualties would include passengers on commercial and military transport aircraft who would be without ground station support or radar guidance.

How would electrical infrastructure inside wide body aircraft respond to flying through aurorae/clouds of ionized particles? Good question!

When the International Space Station passes through aurorae, the electronic hardware is prepared, already designed and built to the tolerances of operating in the low-Earth orbit environment, unprotected by Earth’s electromagnetic field.

Satellites are also “rad-hardened” to withstand high loads of radiation, which is, in part, why they’re so expensive.

Are airplanes rad-hardened? Not quite so much.

In short, cars, planes, buildings, personal electronics, computer hardware, and more would all be either without electricity or fried completely.

It’s possible that rail services might still work, but most modern trains run on diesel fuel and would be subject to the same or similar supply chain problems as cars and airplanes.

Sound pessimistic? Sorry.

I do have great faith in the ability of humans to work together when faced with real danger. The problem is we’ve never faced this kind of disaster before. There are many unknowns.

While we still have time to ponder this as a hypothetical, it would be wise to write an email or put in a phone call to your local government representative and remind them that a more robust electrical transmission system would only cost tens of millions as a hedge against a multi-billion dollar disaster brought about by a highly energetic geomagnetic storm.

Short answer – some serious localized outages, but no mass apocalypse.

Longer answer:

Uhhh, folks, those of us who are engineers are very aware that major disruptions in the atmosphere are a significant possibility. Actually, the people that operate most of these systems, for example, satellite designers, airplane builders, rail transportation authorities, power companies, cell phone service providers, etc. are even more aware, because they’re responsible for providing service 24/7/365.

And they write the specifications we design the systems for.

Since we’ve known about solar storms, EMP issues from nuclear explosions, etc, for somewhere between 50 and 100+ years, we actually design for Electromagnetic susceptibility. We actually know quite a bit about what’s able to go wrong, and we generally protect the expensive investment. (Duh!)

It’s written into each spec, and it’s handled in fallback fashion. We actually do environmental testing on equipment where we put a large field around the equipment, and directly inject high power signals into the equipment to make sure it doesn’t blow up or blow out.

We also design for lightning strikes in terms of infrastructure with surge arresters, proper grounding, and packaging to handle random fields.

Using a subway car as an example, the propulsion system is directly connected to a power source that is somewhere between 480 and 1000 kWatts. When you drive through a rail gap, or the catenary (the overhead wires) “bounce” you disconnect from the “line.” This causes the power that is in the system to have to go somewhere and it generates a large field, and a large current. The signaling and propulsion and braking systems are almost fully contained in a very large metal box that has all electrical entries optically isolated, and protected by fusing.

The box and the isolation protects the sensitive electronics from any fields that can induce a damaging current, and optical isolation protects fusing/circuit breakers provide protection against direct discharge. This isolation is driven by what’s called the AREMA standard in the US (one of those horrible Federal Regulations you hear so much about,) and is how everything on the railroad is designed.

If you look at medical equipment, it’s also at least somewhat protected – look at your CPAP machine. You’ll see a good old UL or CE mark on it. It’s tested to make sure EMI/EMC susceptibility is met. You’ll see the same thing on your cell phone, and similar techniques used in your car. Airplanes regularly get hit by lightning, and power stations get hit in their transmission lines.

Will all of the protection work in a huge solar storm? No, just like a big EMP will cause localized problems, and trip breakers all over the place, requiring reset (of course, those people really need to worry about the actual explosion and fall out that’s going to go along with the EMP.) But the fixes will take days or weeks, not years. You may need to replace your cell phone, you may be a couple of days/weeks without heat or AC, but no mass apocalypse.

This stuff make great headlines. If you listen to the flacks from, for example, the Power Companies, they love to use this to justify upgrading older equipment that needs to be upgraded anyhow because they can’t actually get replacement parts for it. But the end of civilization as we know it?