The so-called Carrington event, more properly known as the solar storm of 1859, induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 for more.
Obviously this happened while electric use was essentially confined to telegraphy. While no similar (in magnitude or scope!) impacts of a coronal mass ejection on earth have been recorded since, there have been other geomagnetic storms with lesser impacts since. However, suppose a Carrington event equivalent occurred:
Obviously this happened while electric use was essentially confined to telegraphy. While no similar (in magnitude or scope!) impacts of a coronal mass ejection on earth have been recorded since, there have been other geomagnetic storms with lesser impacts since. However, suppose a Carrington event equivalent occurred:
- Circa 1910: universal telegraphy; increasingly common telephones; beginnings of domestic electrification; widespread use of electricity for industry and mass transportation
- Circa 1925: all of the above plus more widespread telephones and domestic electrification; beginnings of civilian and military radio use
- Circa 1942: imagine the impacts during World War II, with the first uses of radar
- Circa 1953: worst of the Cold War (the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight); universal telephones, electrification and radio; widespread TV; radar; beginnings of electronic computing
- Circa 1962: at the Cuban Missile Crisis...
- Circa 1984: latter-day coldest time of the Cold War (ironically, just a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union)