Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I wonder what a huge Carrington solar storm would do to humanity. If electricity went out everywhere, transformers burned up all over, electronics fried. If this caused transport failures, mass starvation could follow. I really hope a severe solar storm would not be as bad as that and hopefully someone could enlighten me on this.



> If this caused transport failures, mass starvation could follow.

The good news is that a substantial chunk of the world's cargo transportation runs on diesel (or other combustion setups similarly not reliant on electronics), so in a pinch it could probably keep going. Same with agricultural machinery. Might need to replace or refurbish some ECUs, but I'm sure there are enough clever mechanics out there willing and able to bypass those in an emergency that we'd be back up and running pretty quick on that front.

ICE 1, electric 0 ;)

It's refrigeration that'd have me more concerned, since pretty much all modern refrigeration is electrically powered (last I checked). Diesel generators might come in clutch there, assuming the refrigeration units themselves don't rely on any fancy electronics.


>I wonder what a huge Carrington solar storm would do to humanity

Worst case it sets us back to 1870ish, maybe. Depends on how fast things go to crap vs how fast things can be rebuilt.

Likely case you'd basically get a "purge" because society as we know it can't keep on rolling with the kind of economic breakdown something like that would cause so there's be a lot of dying in the interim but if you don't starve or get shot in the first 6mo you're probably good with the very old, very young and unproductive bearing the brunt of it (same as every other disaster) It would be like the black death, but global and all at once. Balance of power globally would definitely be altered in unforeseeable ways but the overall net result is things would bounce back hard.


Killing literally every single human being is not easy. Sure, killing off half of humanity is pretty easy to conceive, but to kill all of humanity it takes a lot more work.


Luckily, we have great minds working on this problem: https://www.appliedeschatology.com/




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: