Killer asteroids, volcanoes, and now the SUN!?!?

[Volpone]

...we're pretty much hosed.

Powerful Solar Storm Could Shut Down U.S. for Months
Friday, January 09, 2009
By Robert Roy Britt

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm.

Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation.

The prediction is based in part on a major solar storm in 1859 that caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires.

It was perhaps the worst in the past 200 years, according to the new study, and with the advent of modern power grids and satellites, much more is at risk.

"A contemporary repetition of the [1859] event would cause significantly more extensive (and possibly catastrophic) social and economic disruptions," the researchers conclude. ...

OK. To be fair it's pretty much just gloom and doom scare tactics. Like the Killer Asteroid, it has happened in the past and it is only a matter of time before it happens again. But that doesn't mean it will happen in two years. Or a hundred. Or it could happen tomorrow.

So we've gotten more or less through the Cold War, and Global Warming has turned out to be yet another case of Al Gore being Wrong. And we can always send Bruce Willis and a team of lovable misfits in the event of an asteroid. But what do we do about a huge, honkin' solar flare? Wrap everything in tinfoil?

 

[starguard]

Doesn't matter. In the year 2012 there will be a nuclear war, the world is going to end, space aliens are coming to save everyone who believed in elvis, and the earth will be bombarded by the same type of asteriods that killed off the dinosaurs..

other than that, everything will be fine

 

[Ramen]

Sounds like that study group needs a big ass government grant in order to further study the nature of their dire predictions. :bailey:

 

[Volpone]

Heh. An interesting point, that.

 

[ctmelvital]

Yeah, just let me know in advance so I can go out in style. :bailey:

 

[WillsZenith]

launch al gore into space, his inflated mass will absorb the solar flare thus saving the earth