On July 23 2012, an unusually large and strong coronal mass ejection (CME) event took place. The strength of the solar eruption was comparable to the 1859 Carrington event, which caused damage to electrical equipment (mostly consisting of telegraph systems at the time) and caused visible auroras around the world, even at lower latitudes very close to the equator, such as in Colombia. Those over the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. were reportedly so bright that the glow woke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning, with people in the northeastern United States able to read a newspaper by the auroras' light. Estimates of the storm strength range from −800 nT to −1750 nT.
However, we were fortunate- this coronal mass ejection missed the Earth with a margin of approximately nine days, with the rotation of the Sun on its axis ensuring that the region which produced the outburst wasn't pointed directly towards the Earth at that time. The eruption did tear through Earth's orbit though, striking the STEREO-A spacecraft, which survived the encounter (being far enough away from the Earth not to be exposed to the strong electrical currents which would've been induced in the event that it had hit Earth's magnetosphere) and provided data on the event- confirming that the eruption consisted of two separate ejections, which were able to reach exceptionally high strength because the interplanetary medium around the Sun had been cleared by a smaller CME four days earlier. If it had indeed hit the Earth, it's believed that the Solar Storm of 2012 would have inflicted serious damage to electronic systems on a global scale, just as the Carrington Event did in 1859. A 2013 study estimated that the economic cost to the United States alone would have been between US$600 billion and $2.6 trillion, 3.6%>15.5% of its GDP; whilst Ying D. Liu, professor at China's State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, estimated that the global recovery time from such a disaster would have been about four to ten years.
So then, what if the CME event had indeed occurred 9 days earlier, and struck the Earth directly on July 15th-16th 2012 (effectively fulfilling the infamous 2012 phenomenon doomsday prophecy, but several months ahead of schedule- or, alternatively, lending credence to the prospect of total global destruction on the 21st December as prophesied, the geomagnetic reversal theory in particular)? There'd have been a window of roughly 17hrs, at most, for astronomers to see the CME, work out its trajectory, realize it was on course to hit the Earth, and warn everybody about it- how much would any of the world's governments have been able to do about it before it hit? And how much of a global impact would it have had- who'd have been hit the hardest, and who'd have had the easiest time recovering from it? How radically different from our own TL might this TL's world look by the time it recovers from the solar storm (at least 4yrs later, with a distinct possibility that they still wouldn't have been able to do so by the present day, since it's still been less than ten years since it happened)?
However, we were fortunate- this coronal mass ejection missed the Earth with a margin of approximately nine days, with the rotation of the Sun on its axis ensuring that the region which produced the outburst wasn't pointed directly towards the Earth at that time. The eruption did tear through Earth's orbit though, striking the STEREO-A spacecraft, which survived the encounter (being far enough away from the Earth not to be exposed to the strong electrical currents which would've been induced in the event that it had hit Earth's magnetosphere) and provided data on the event- confirming that the eruption consisted of two separate ejections, which were able to reach exceptionally high strength because the interplanetary medium around the Sun had been cleared by a smaller CME four days earlier. If it had indeed hit the Earth, it's believed that the Solar Storm of 2012 would have inflicted serious damage to electronic systems on a global scale, just as the Carrington Event did in 1859. A 2013 study estimated that the economic cost to the United States alone would have been between US$600 billion and $2.6 trillion, 3.6%>15.5% of its GDP; whilst Ying D. Liu, professor at China's State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, estimated that the global recovery time from such a disaster would have been about four to ten years.
So then, what if the CME event had indeed occurred 9 days earlier, and struck the Earth directly on July 15th-16th 2012 (effectively fulfilling the infamous 2012 phenomenon doomsday prophecy, but several months ahead of schedule- or, alternatively, lending credence to the prospect of total global destruction on the 21st December as prophesied, the geomagnetic reversal theory in particular)? There'd have been a window of roughly 17hrs, at most, for astronomers to see the CME, work out its trajectory, realize it was on course to hit the Earth, and warn everybody about it- how much would any of the world's governments have been able to do about it before it hit? And how much of a global impact would it have had- who'd have been hit the hardest, and who'd have had the easiest time recovering from it? How radically different from our own TL might this TL's world look by the time it recovers from the solar storm (at least 4yrs later, with a distinct possibility that they still wouldn't have been able to do so by the present day, since it's still been less than ten years since it happened)?
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