The Cascading Event

On the morning of September 1, 1859, the Sun unleashed the most powerful geomagnetic storm in recorded history. A massive solar flare and coronal mass ejection — known as a CME — struck the Earth with such force that telegraph systems failed across the world, and in some cases burst into flames. Auroras blazed as far south as Hawaii. Scientists would come to call this the Carrington Event.

Fourteen thousand years ago, the Sun released a CME estimated to be ten to twenty times more powerful than the Carrington Event. We know this because the evidence is written into the natural world itself — in spikes of carbon-14 preserved in ancient tree rings, and in traces of beryllium-10 and chlorine-36 locked inside polar ice cores. Scientists call events of this magnitude Miyake Events, after the researcher who first identified them.

Should a Miyake Event strike today, the consequences would be swift and cascading. Power grids would fail across the globe. Satellites would be destroyed, taking GPS and worldwide communications with them. Industrial production would halt. Agricultural systems, dependent on electricity and logistics, would collapse. The resulting famine would kill not thousands but millions — perhaps hundreds of millions — before recovery could begin. Scientists estimate that rebuilding could take years. Some believe it could take decades.

If such an event happened today, would civilization survive?