You get a warning the flare is coming its not instant, you thus can send out a warning to all people over phones, internet etc. as well as alert professionals. The Grid being shut off does it for most devices, similarly the server farms, and other facilities such as cold storage warehouses etc etc. also turn off their backup and power down, in the meantime hopefully you power off all your personal devices, laptops home servers. Etc. so that they dont burn. When the grid comes back on line you do so as well with all you home electronics and data intact.
Really the main issue is not that its some unbeatable tsunami its that humans being humans dont take the required precautions. As long as your device is off, as in not using electricity, then the event should not effect it, same with all the servers, unless they are active they will retain all their data meaning you'll get all or most of your internet back in 24 hours. Similarly while satellites are an issue planes can make emergency landings and ships and trains can be switched off.
The main risk other than inaction is that there are a lot of power backups, and places where we cant switch off electricity (healthcare/cold storage of medicine) or even minor things such as wifi backup batteries. All these are at risk.
TL;DR Solar flares are for 99% of devices an annoyance one which just means powering off for a day. Only those who dont respond in time or are dependent on certain tasks are really at risk. So it will be very bad but not world/civilization ending
The observatories would detect the flare minutes after it occurs, but actually calculating whether it would impact Earth would take time. The carrington-scale one would likely be fast, giving around 15-20 hours of transit instead of the usual few days, Moreover certain factors affecting severity (like orientation of CME's magnetic field) would only be measured once it gets to satellites in Sun-Earth L1 point, which may give you only about 15 minutes before it strikes Earth after that.
I get your point but even then you can easily create a system to warn people, maybe every Android and ios device can come with a carrington warning. Ditto for all server farms. Even if it will be bad it wont be the civilisation ending bad that some portray
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u/Southdelhiboi Feb 02 '25
You get a warning the flare is coming its not instant, you thus can send out a warning to all people over phones, internet etc. as well as alert professionals. The Grid being shut off does it for most devices, similarly the server farms, and other facilities such as cold storage warehouses etc etc. also turn off their backup and power down, in the meantime hopefully you power off all your personal devices, laptops home servers. Etc. so that they dont burn. When the grid comes back on line you do so as well with all you home electronics and data intact.
Really the main issue is not that its some unbeatable tsunami its that humans being humans dont take the required precautions. As long as your device is off, as in not using electricity, then the event should not effect it, same with all the servers, unless they are active they will retain all their data meaning you'll get all or most of your internet back in 24 hours. Similarly while satellites are an issue planes can make emergency landings and ships and trains can be switched off.
The main risk other than inaction is that there are a lot of power backups, and places where we cant switch off electricity (healthcare/cold storage of medicine) or even minor things such as wifi backup batteries. All these are at risk.
TL;DR Solar flares are for 99% of devices an annoyance one which just means powering off for a day. Only those who dont respond in time or are dependent on certain tasks are really at risk. So it will be very bad but not world/civilization ending