How to Survive a Solar Catastrophe

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“The Likelihood of a severe geo-magnetic event capable of crippling our electric grid is 100%.” -Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Senior Member House Homeland Security Committee

In 1859, before the technological era, the earth was faced with the biggest solar storm in history, a solar storm so powerful it would have knocked out every power source on the planet, if we had technology back then. Now, we face the same danger as the sun reaches its 22-year magnetic energy cycle and its 11-year sunspot cycle this year. 

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be” -Dr Richard Fisher, Director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division.

NASA has been quietly telling the public that a big solar storm is coming, a storm that will affect all electrical devices and power grids on a global scale. The government has been preparing for mass riots, when we are all sent back to the stone-age, where electrical power ceases to exist. The U.S. government has been stocking up on MREs, water, and bullets. You may have heard about Homeland Security and other government agencies buying up billions of hollow-point bullets, now you know why.

“We are only one act of madness away from a social cataclysm unlike anything our country has ever known.” -Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ), Senior Member House Armed Service Committee

The collapse of the power grid means power plants, chemical factories, pipelines, sewage plants, water delevery systems will all be shut down. No running water, backed up sewage plants, and not to mention the collapse of the economy. The world could turn into a madhouse, people defacating everywhere, people killing for food and water, we would go straight to the dark ages, a true savage nation.

The U.S. government has no interest in publically warning every American what will eventually come, many Americans are unprepared for a nationwide blackout and will suffer the consequences as society collapses. Having food, water, first aid kit and a reliable source of portable energy are the only things that are needed to avoid disaster.

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Get a faraday cage – A faraday cage, or EMP static bag will protect any mobile electronics from external static electric fields such as a powerful blast of electromagnetic radiation from the sun. All phones and just about any electronic device will stop working once a large-enough electromagnetic blast from the sun penetrates the atmosphere.

Stuff all your cash under your mattress
Almost all modern banking is conducted electronically. While every bank has vaults full of ingots and other valuables, your cash actually exists in a database, albeit one that’s backed up in multiple locations across the world, so that a disaster that’s confined to a local area can’t cause too many problems that won’t be resolved by a swift restoration of a backup.

However, that policy doesn’t work for global events. If that database, along with all its backups, gets wiped by a particularly nasty solar flare, then so does your money. Get it out of the bank, and in a safer, more physical, place instead. Bury it in the garden, hide it in your roof, or stuff it under the mattress. Just get it out of that database.

Get yourself a generator
The power grids of northern Europe, especially Britain, are particularly flaky. A well-aimed and timed flare could easily knock out power to large areas of Britain for days, and potentially even large areas of the whole world for months, depending on the damage. A 1989 storm, which was rather less powerful than the 2013 event is likely to be, knocked out the Hydro-Québec power grid, sent satellites spinning out of control and halted all trading on Toronto’s stock market.

So grab yourself a petrol-powered generator, and stockpile some fuel for it. Alternately, hook up a bicycle to a dynamo and a battery. Either way, you’re going to need to be able to still make heat and light in the event of the power being shut off for months at a time.

Don’t plan any holidays
Far more likely than getting stuck at home without power is the risk of getting stuck in a foreign country unable to travel home. While the inside of an aeroplane is essentially a Faraday cage, severe deviations in the Earth’s magnetic field would cause haywire in an aircraft’s navigation systems, making it difficult or impossible for planes to get where they’re going, except by flight.

You thought the ash cloud was bad? The magnetic storm could prove far, far more disruptive for airlines.

Walk everywhere
Similarly, an electrical shutdown could come at any time without warning, meaning that travelling in a large, fast vehicle is a risk that you just don’t want to be taking when traffic lights stop working, street lights go out, and your onboard computer fails.

Far safer is to just buy yourself a comfortable pair of boots and get used to walking everywhere, ideally not too close to the edges of roads. Even if the electrical apocalypse never arrives, you’ll be fitter and know your city better than ever before.

Look up
Lastly, any strong geomagnetic storm will come with extraordinarily intense aurorae. This won’t be just visible at the poles — during the 1989 storm, the aurora borealis was seen as far south as Texas, and the auroras of 1859 are thought to be perhaps the most spectacular ever witnessed throughout recent recorded history.

Such a display could also prove useful as a warning of incoming magnetic disruption. So be sure that you’ve got a camera — not a digital one, obviously, pointed at the sky so that you can show your kids how you lived through the great geomagnetic storm of 2013.