That's not the end of the bad news. The power grid in North America operates at near capacity. It wouldn't be able to handle the increased electrical load from a solar superstorm. Power lines could sag and even snap as a result. Massive power outages could affect much of the continent. The magnetic fluctuations would interfere with radio signals, and communication and satellite systems would collapse as well.
It could take weeks or months to repair the damage. During that time, people would have no way to find out what was going on. Emergency services would face serious challenges. While the magnetic fields would probably not short out individual electronics devices like cell phones or computers, communications systems could fail regionally. In other words, small devices would still work but would lack the services they require to be useful.
Lew:
Thank you for shedding some sanity on this discussion. It isn't about
indestructibility, an unfortunate attribute of everything, it's about
reasonable archival practice. For prints the key is atmosphere, temp, rh, &
light exposure, for digital media it's storage, software, & hardware. If
the archivist neglects any of these, losses will occur.
Again I belabor the point - one of these though and digital is all gone. the whole mass of the planet it's self has proved an inadequate shield in the past. OK we'd have bigger problems than some snaps from the kids party last year sure.
We had a near miss only 2 years back:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/
"calculated the odds that a Carrington-class storm would hit Earth in the
next ten years. The answer: 12%"
I raise this over and over as it IS a real threat and it's one few seem aware of.
