June 10, 2021 • 22 mins
Less than 18 hours after Richard Carrington noticed something screwy on the sun’s surface, chaos erupted. Telegraph operators found their machines literally aflame. The Northern Lights were visible from Cuba. People and plants across the globe became convinced it was daytime. Centuries later, Ben and Noel explore the consequences of the Carrington event and — perhaps most importantly — what this may mean for the future.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always
so much fortuning in This is part two to to
two of our two part series on the infamous Carrington
Event of eighteen fifty nine. Shout out to our super
producer Casey Pagram. Shout out to our super producer, the
(00:47):
one and only Max Williams and spoiler alert, Steve Bushemy
was in armageddon. Yes, facts that we learned as was
been affleck Ben, I know you listened to this story
as a fellow. Bit. I'm sorry. I will do a
better job of memorizing your uh what filmography. That's filmography.
(01:08):
So let's join our ourselves already in progress. They had
known that there would be regional disturbances could affect the system,
but no one had ever experienced a disturbance of this magnitude,
a global disruption like a lot of telegraph lines across
the North American continent went out a service on the
(01:29):
night of August as the first of these solar storms struck.
And we have accounts of at least two people who
saw this disaster firsthand in the telegraph office. One was E. W. Colgan.
He was a telegraph manager in Pittsburgh, and he said
the currents flowing through the wires were so powerful that
(01:51):
they almost melted the platinum contacts they used, and streams
of fire were coming from the circuits from the miche jeans.
And one guy was actually almost electrocuted. That's right. A
telegraph operator by the name of Frederick W. Royce got
a nasty shock to the forehead actually because a ground
wire that had been knocked loose kind of brushed against him,
(02:15):
and some onlookers noted that it created an arc of
fire that jumped from Royce's head to the telegraph equipment itself,
and other telegraph stations similarly reported massive, powerful power surges
that caused the telegraph paper itself to just catch fire,
(02:36):
go up in flames and disintegrae. I mean, it's a
hectic day at the office already. If you if you
work at I want to say telegraph factory. That's not true.
These are telegraph stations. Telegraph factories would actually make the telegraphs.
But I like the idea, and as you can imagine,
people have thought, this has got to be the worst
(02:57):
that could happen. Right. Stuff is literally catching fire. Good thing,
we made it through. But they didn't. They were wrong,
because on the morning of September two, the mayhem and
chaos resulting from that second storm made even more problems
for telegraph operators. The American Telegraph Company employees arrived at
(03:20):
their office in Boston around eight am, and then they
discovered that nothing was working. Was as though some gigantic
invisible switch had been turned off, and the atmosphere in
the area was so charged that operators discovered something astounding.
If they unplugged their batteries, they could still just based
(03:44):
on the atmosphere charge, transmit messages to Portland, Maine from Boston, Massachusetts,
at thirty intervals, just using the auroral current. That's pretty crazy.
That makes you wonder how much of that stuff is
going through you right. Luckily it didn't last forever. By
(04:06):
ten am on September two, the magnetic disturbance had quelled
at least enough so that stations could reconnect their batteries,
but for the rest of the morning, transmitting messages was
still a dicey proposition. Oh and also, wires on poles
had enough energy caught enough energy at least to light
(04:27):
themselves on fire. The damage was pretty serious. By the
time the storm was over, millions and millions of dollars
in damage had been inflicted on the telegraphs. And we
say millions of dollars, we mean millions of dollars in
eighteen fifty nine. So if we do a little bit
(04:48):
of inflation calculation will get a sense of the damage.
Bo Oh, well, I think her calculator is feeling a
little bit melodic today. No, you know, it sounds like that,
sounds like take me on a trip somewhere. Yes, that's perfect.
(05:13):
Let's let's I hope it does that again in the future. Well,
here's what that lovely little two resulted in. One million
dollars in eighteen fifty nine is equivalent to over thirty
two million dollars today. And remember this is multimillions dollars
worth of damage in eighteen fifty nine. Yeah, it was
absolute chaos, very very disruptive. And we're gonna get to
(05:37):
what this would be like today a little later, I mean, thankfully.
You know. This was what he was referred to by historians,
sort of tongue in cheeckenly as the Victorian Internet. Right,
this network a very rudimentary technology, but it really did
kind of tie the world together and in many many
ways in terms of being able because you know, it's
important how quickly you can transmit news that as people
(06:00):
the advantage in many situations, it's very important. Think of
how many movies the plots and the twist wouldn't have
even gone anywhere. People could only just pick up the
phone and make a call. That used to be the world.
You know, I used to not be able to let
anybody know about anything any quicker than like sending a
letter or like you said, Ben, a carrier pigeon would
have been the quickest route. Oh yeah, yeah. Like for
(06:20):
a more modern example, one of my favorite things is
the cell phone problem of Seinfeld. It's a great show.
They're very lucky they wrote it when they did, because
most of the most of the plot complications in episodes
of Seinfeld would have been easily solved had someone had
a cell phone. Yeah, and there's probably lots of other
(06:41):
examples of that in pop culture. And so, as we said,
this disturbance was catastrophic but temporary. The telegraph system was
not extinct, was just damaged. It did eventually come back online,
and so you think maybe things would calm down, but nol.
It feels like it turned out that the telegraph system
(07:02):
actually made people more panicked when it started to work again. Oh,
no doubt, because, like we said, the speed at which
this news was traveling contributed to the panic itself, because
they were filled with these very elaborate descriptions of this
(07:26):
light show that was going on in the sky, all
of the chaos that people were witnessing in terms of
the sparks and the arcs and all of that. Let's
not forget that the telegraph network was what fed news reporting.
So once it went back online, you started getting these
headlines popping up in newspapers across the world, from literally
like Europe to Australia, and there were all of these
(07:47):
descriptions that were now starting to kind of get into
the public imagination. You had one report from the Charleston
Mercury on South Carolina from a woman on Sullivan's Island
who said the eastern sky appeared of a blood red color.
It seemed brightest exactly in the east, as though the
full moon rather the sun were about to rise. It
extended almost to the zenith. People really spoke well back then,
(08:09):
didn't They've been the whole island was illuminated. The sea
reflected the phenomenon, and no one could look at it
without thinking of the passage in the Bible which says
the sea was turned to blood. The shells on the
beach reflecting light resembled coals of fire. Yeah, yeah, and uh,
here's what happened. Basically, everybody was panicking, and the panic
(08:31):
was exacerbated as they heard stories from other parts of
the world via the telegraph system. People in the southern
part of the US were incredibly disturbed by the northern
lights because they went so close to the equator that
you could see them in Cuba and Jamaica. This is
not normal, by the way, Elsewhere, there appeared to be
(08:54):
like some genuine confusion. We talked about people getting up
thinking it was morning right in the middle of the night.
In South Carolina, in a town called Abbeyville, brick Mason's
awoke and they went to their job site and they
started working until they realized, holy smokes, we're in the
wee hours of the day. Let's go back to bed.
(09:16):
And it happened again in Belton, Virginia with larks. They
woke up at one am and started two warble. Unfortunate
note for those larks, there was a conductor at the
nearby Orange and Alexandria Railroad who also woke up, and
he shot three of them. He just didn't deal with
(09:37):
stress very well, I think, which is surprising for a
railroad conductor that always seemed a very stressful occupation to
be yes, stress the occupation, but also requiring a cool
head to prevail to keep trains running on time. You know,
you don't really think of a railroad conductor as someone
that's like super on edge all the time and freaking
out because they got to keep their their stuff together.
(09:57):
All our railroad conductors are hired primarily on the basis
of their emotional instability. These guys are unhinged at Orange
and Alexandria and people love it. People love it. And
the effect of this was was so astonishing and so
let's fire in the sky kind of quality that some
folks actually believe that cities nearby are other locations that were,
(10:20):
you know, within a stone's throw, were actually on fire. Yeah,
and they and obviously they weren't happy about it. People
were legitimately scared, and they had reason to be scared.
They had reason to be panicked and alarmed and confused.
And here's the kicker, if we have a little bit
of an epilogue for this. It's been about a century
(10:40):
and a half since Richard Carrington made his observation, and
in the time since, solar scientists following Carrington's path have
studied what is now known as the Carrington Event, and
what they found was that so far, all the other
(11:02):
evidence of similar storms hitting Earth that they could find
is in the storms were much less powerful than the
eighteen fifty nine storm. In fact, the Carrington Event is
believed to have been twice as big as any other
solar storm in the last five hundred years, at least
the ones that hit Earth. So, Ben, does that mean
(11:25):
we're like, do for one of these things? Hey, it's
a casino baby, roll the dice? Do we have to?
And we don't really have a choice. Right here we are, UM,
and here we are in this world that relies so
heavily on technology and things way more advanced and interconnected
than this UM. You know, kind of almost like cup
and and string approach, that is the telegraph system. I mean,
(11:47):
it's more than that. I'm simplifying it to the extreme,
but I mean, think about how much people freak out
is when like Twitter goes down for five minutes, you know,
I mean really they're like, I can't even I am unconnected, untethered, adrift,
not to mention things like e trade or like the
stock market, like like literally these massive institutions that we
depend on that run on the Internet and require these
(12:10):
systems to function in order for us to go about
our daily lives. I always think of it's a terrible movie.
But Escape from l a the sequel to Escape from
New York, you know, a Snake plisk In and like
a you know, post apocalyptic Los Angeles spoiler alert for
a very bad movie. First of all, there's a scene
where Snake Pliskin is surfing and shooting a machine gun
(12:30):
or something that is very clearly on a green screen
and it's like they just didn't even try and clean
it up and looks so bad. But it ends with
him doing some kind of E m P type situation
or it's some kind of satellite. It's like death ray
satellite that kills all electricity on Earth, including batteries. I
remember that detail is that it was also gonna kill batteries.
(12:51):
I don't know how that scientifically works, but you know,
essentially plunging the planet into the dark ages. This wouldn't
do that. Obviously, there's systems in place that would you know,
back up and all of that, but it would absolutely
cause mass panic and chaos if this happened to us today.
Oh no, kidding, We almost got close in If you
(13:18):
are up on your dystopian disaster news, then you might
have heard of this solar flare. It missed earth sorbit
by only nine days. And no, you are absolutely right
in a way, the Victorian era was better prepared for
this eventuality than the modern era. Max, could we get
(13:39):
some dystopian music? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly the kind
that's like, um, the little known third film in the
Escape franchise, Escape from Atlanta, which is entirely about snake
trying to make a left turn on Peach Tree. It's
three hours long, but I love that regional that was
(13:59):
pa reuely worth it. Um. But no, man, I mean,
it really is something that we need to you know,
kind of not like live in fear of. I mean,
as we've talked about on stuff that I want you
to know is that's really no way to live. And again,
I mean you know, scientists are aware of this phenomenon.
We know that to quote Babs, I believe from BBS
and but how to America, the sun sucks, but it
(14:21):
also is like the source of all life on the
planet Earth. But it is a very powerful thing that
we have no control over whatsoever. And Max, thank you
for keeping that movie music going. Here's what happens. According
to expert estimates, a Carrington Class CME today would cost
between point six and two point six trillion dollars worth
(14:45):
of damage in the US alone and could possibly wipe
out We would definitely wipe out huge swaths of the
global electric grid, but it could plunge the entire world
into darkness. New England in the US is especially vulnerable.
Like you said, no electronic payment systems at grocery stores,
(15:07):
gas stations, de'll crash post pandemic. A lot of people
are operating cash less, so you wouldn't be able to
access the things you use for your daily life. A
t M S wouldn't work. Television signals would be disrupted,
satellites would be disrupted, Planes flying over the ocean would
have communication blackouts. They would all the sudden be flying blind.
(15:31):
Astronauts you might think would be especially vulnerable, but it
turns out they have planned ahead. They have radiation hardened
little uh almost like solar panic rooms at the International
Space Station, and if they had enough time, enough of
the lead up, they could also just enter their individual vehicles,
(15:53):
leave the I S S and come home. But like
you said, ma'am, we can't really live in fear of this.
We just have to know that it's always in the cards,
like a gamma ray blast, which is not going to
turn us into planet full of holts. That would just
that would end us very quickly totally. But Ben really
(16:13):
just to throw this up. I mean, we're pretty much there.
But the magnetosphere, right, we talked about that at the
very top of the show. That is the naturally occurring
guess you know, most of the protections on planet Earth
are and all the things we're talking about today are
barrier around the planet that shields us from radiation like
from the Sun. And yet these mass ejections are able
(16:35):
to kind of just cut right through it like a
hot knife through butter What why is that? Uh? And
and and and is there is something that we should
be more concerned about about the depletion of of the
you know, this magnetosphere. Yeah, so the magneto sphere is
incredibly important to life on Earth. It does protect us
(16:57):
from radiation, It protect excess from a lot of the
plasma emitted by the Sun, which is you know, for
convenience sake, one au away from us. You can see
simulations of how the solar events affect the magnetosphere on
places like NASA, Space dot gov. So here's what happens.
(17:19):
When the same is moving towards Earth, right and it
reaches it, There's this shock wave of traveling mass because
remember this is tons of stuff, and this disrupts Earth's
magnetosphere by compressing it on what we can call the
day side and then extending it on the night side,
(17:42):
extending its magnetic tail. And then when the magnetosphere reconnects,
it releases power on this terra watt scale and that
is directed back towards Earth's upper atmosphere. So that's what
he's doing. It's pushing the magnetosphere. I got it. So
definitely not you know, obviously the ozone is its own thing,
(18:05):
but we're probably relatively safe overall from the Sun's radio activity, right, well,
as safe as we can be. You know what I mean.
The Sun is also my ancient nemesis, so I never
trusted it. But you know, it's done good work. It
has done good work. That's inarguable, and if anything, this
lets us appreciate how fortunate we are in so many
(18:29):
of our our day to day lives. Right now as
we speak, a lot of scientists spend a great deal
of time trying to better predict the possibility of the
solar events and also to figure out ways to better
protect humans and all our human toys from an angry,
(18:51):
tantrum prone son. Yeah, and it's one of these things where,
you know, we'd like to believe in the past, you
know that science has kind of been the voice of
reason and in the room with this kind of stuff,
and that people in charge listen to scientists. But unfortunately
we've spent a long time in a society and in
a period where scientists have kind of been shoved aside,
(19:12):
right and maybe not listened to as they should. Hopefully
we're moving away from that a little bit, but this
stuff matters, right, Yeah. Absolutely. We are currently on solar
cycle twenty five, or the sun spots cycle, is believed
to be about eleven years long. Cycle twenty four, the
(19:34):
one that just ended, was kind of weak. It had
fewer sun spots than usual, and this has led experts
to believe that CYCLED twenty five may uh Cycled twenty
five maybe the big one. It may actually be the
strongest on record. And these again or experts, these aren't
(19:56):
quacks who are saying this. One of the biggest predictions
is that things could be especially dicey as we reached
the solar maximum in so we've got some time to plan. No,
we've got some time to plan our action movie characters.
I want an ipatch? What about you? Um? Yeah, you
(20:16):
could be the snake plisken to my Steve Bushmy, he
does have an ipatch? Got about that? Yeah? Was Steve Mishammy?
Who else was in? Who? Wh who's the crew in Armageddon?
There's definitely Bruce Willis? Yeah? Was there Steve Bushemy? And?
Why am I losing my mind here? All the second
Armageddon cast? I don't want to miss a thing? Ben Affleck,
(20:37):
Ben Affleck, he's a good looking one, Thorn. He's also
pretty good looking. Admittedly, we've got live Tyler, isn't it?
But I sweart of got there was some kind of
there was a ragtag band of these of these dudes.
Let's see, we've got Billy, Bob, ben Affleck Lift, Tyler,
will Pest, Steve but Shemmy as Rockhound. Yes, so I
will be. I'll be the rockhound to your snake Plisken.
(21:00):
And there we have it. We'd love to hear what
your plans are for what action movie character you would
be in this dystopian but hopefully temporary scenario. Oh no,
I said the S word, nol. We've got to wrap
it up. Thanks to everybody so much for tuning in.
Shout out to our superproducers Casey Pegram and Max Williams.
(21:20):
Huge thanks to Alex Williams the uh uh, the Owen
Wilson to Max as Luke or vice versa, whichever. I
don't know. We'll have to let them decide. Um who
composed our theme Alex did in fact hughes thanks to
Christopher hasciotes here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Coats, Jonathan Strickland,
the Notorious Quister who shall be returning very soon. Though
it really has nothing to do with anything that we
(21:41):
want or don't want. He's kind of just something that
happens to people, you know, like as cme and of
course thanks to our own angry son, Gabe Bluesier. No,
this was a good one. And you know, I'm glad
we took the time to make this a two parter
because we're literally talking about the end of the world
as we know it. I'm just glad it took the
(22:04):
time to make it an acceptable and reasonable two parter.
So now we don't have to do another episode. We
always want to do another episode, and why not do
some more about the end of the world. Let us
know your favorite end of the world stories ridiculous at
i heeart media dot com. Swear to god it works
this time, y'all. We've tested it and double tested it,
(22:27):
and it in fact does transmit information to both Ben
and I and Max. In fact, and speaking of end
of the world scenarios, a little tease for our next episode.
It involves something kind of resembling a plague of locusts. Um,
let's leave it at that. We'll see you next time.
Books For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the
(22:54):
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always
so much fortuning in This is part two to to
two of our two part series on the infamous Carrington
Event of eighteen fifty nine. Shout out to our super
producer Casey Pagram. Shout out to our super producer, the
(00:47):
one and only Max Williams and spoiler alert, Steve Bushemy
was in armageddon. Yes, facts that we learned as was
been affleck Ben, I know you listened to this story
as a fellow. Bit. I'm sorry. I will do a
better job of memorizing your uh what filmography. That's filmography.
(01:08):
So let's join our ourselves already in progress. They had
known that there would be regional disturbances could affect the system,
but no one had ever experienced a disturbance of this magnitude,
a global disruption like a lot of telegraph lines across
the North American continent went out a service on the
(01:29):
night of August as the first of these solar storms struck.
And we have accounts of at least two people who
saw this disaster firsthand in the telegraph office. One was E. W. Colgan.
He was a telegraph manager in Pittsburgh, and he said
the currents flowing through the wires were so powerful that
(01:51):
they almost melted the platinum contacts they used, and streams
of fire were coming from the circuits from the miche jeans.
And one guy was actually almost electrocuted. That's right. A
telegraph operator by the name of Frederick W. Royce got
a nasty shock to the forehead actually because a ground
wire that had been knocked loose kind of brushed against him,
(02:15):
and some onlookers noted that it created an arc of
fire that jumped from Royce's head to the telegraph equipment itself,
and other telegraph stations similarly reported massive, powerful power surges
that caused the telegraph paper itself to just catch fire,
(02:36):
go up in flames and disintegrae. I mean, it's a
hectic day at the office already. If you if you
work at I want to say telegraph factory. That's not true.
These are telegraph stations. Telegraph factories would actually make the telegraphs.
But I like the idea, and as you can imagine,
people have thought, this has got to be the worst
(02:57):
that could happen. Right. Stuff is literally catching fire. Good thing,
we made it through. But they didn't. They were wrong,
because on the morning of September two, the mayhem and
chaos resulting from that second storm made even more problems
for telegraph operators. The American Telegraph Company employees arrived at
(03:20):
their office in Boston around eight am, and then they
discovered that nothing was working. Was as though some gigantic
invisible switch had been turned off, and the atmosphere in
the area was so charged that operators discovered something astounding.
If they unplugged their batteries, they could still just based
(03:44):
on the atmosphere charge, transmit messages to Portland, Maine from Boston, Massachusetts,
at thirty intervals, just using the auroral current. That's pretty crazy.
That makes you wonder how much of that stuff is
going through you right. Luckily it didn't last forever. By
(04:06):
ten am on September two, the magnetic disturbance had quelled
at least enough so that stations could reconnect their batteries,
but for the rest of the morning, transmitting messages was
still a dicey proposition. Oh and also, wires on poles
had enough energy caught enough energy at least to light
(04:27):
themselves on fire. The damage was pretty serious. By the
time the storm was over, millions and millions of dollars
in damage had been inflicted on the telegraphs. And we
say millions of dollars, we mean millions of dollars in
eighteen fifty nine. So if we do a little bit
(04:48):
of inflation calculation will get a sense of the damage.
Bo Oh, well, I think her calculator is feeling a
little bit melodic today. No, you know, it sounds like that,
sounds like take me on a trip somewhere. Yes, that's perfect.
(05:13):
Let's let's I hope it does that again in the future. Well,
here's what that lovely little two resulted in. One million
dollars in eighteen fifty nine is equivalent to over thirty
two million dollars today. And remember this is multimillions dollars
worth of damage in eighteen fifty nine. Yeah, it was
absolute chaos, very very disruptive. And we're gonna get to
(05:37):
what this would be like today a little later, I mean, thankfully.
You know. This was what he was referred to by historians,
sort of tongue in cheeckenly as the Victorian Internet. Right,
this network a very rudimentary technology, but it really did
kind of tie the world together and in many many
ways in terms of being able because you know, it's
important how quickly you can transmit news that as people
(06:00):
the advantage in many situations, it's very important. Think of
how many movies the plots and the twist wouldn't have
even gone anywhere. People could only just pick up the
phone and make a call. That used to be the world.
You know, I used to not be able to let
anybody know about anything any quicker than like sending a
letter or like you said, Ben, a carrier pigeon would
have been the quickest route. Oh yeah, yeah. Like for
(06:20):
a more modern example, one of my favorite things is
the cell phone problem of Seinfeld. It's a great show.
They're very lucky they wrote it when they did, because
most of the most of the plot complications in episodes
of Seinfeld would have been easily solved had someone had
a cell phone. Yeah, and there's probably lots of other
(06:41):
examples of that in pop culture. And so, as we said,
this disturbance was catastrophic but temporary. The telegraph system was
not extinct, was just damaged. It did eventually come back online,
and so you think maybe things would calm down, but nol.
It feels like it turned out that the telegraph system
(07:02):
actually made people more panicked when it started to work again. Oh,
no doubt, because, like we said, the speed at which
this news was traveling contributed to the panic itself, because
they were filled with these very elaborate descriptions of this
(07:26):
light show that was going on in the sky, all
of the chaos that people were witnessing in terms of
the sparks and the arcs and all of that. Let's
not forget that the telegraph network was what fed news reporting.
So once it went back online, you started getting these
headlines popping up in newspapers across the world, from literally
like Europe to Australia, and there were all of these
(07:47):
descriptions that were now starting to kind of get into
the public imagination. You had one report from the Charleston
Mercury on South Carolina from a woman on Sullivan's Island
who said the eastern sky appeared of a blood red color.
It seemed brightest exactly in the east, as though the
full moon rather the sun were about to rise. It
extended almost to the zenith. People really spoke well back then,
(08:09):
didn't They've been the whole island was illuminated. The sea
reflected the phenomenon, and no one could look at it
without thinking of the passage in the Bible which says
the sea was turned to blood. The shells on the
beach reflecting light resembled coals of fire. Yeah, yeah, and uh,
here's what happened. Basically, everybody was panicking, and the panic
(08:31):
was exacerbated as they heard stories from other parts of
the world via the telegraph system. People in the southern
part of the US were incredibly disturbed by the northern
lights because they went so close to the equator that
you could see them in Cuba and Jamaica. This is
not normal, by the way, Elsewhere, there appeared to be
(08:54):
like some genuine confusion. We talked about people getting up
thinking it was morning right in the middle of the night.
In South Carolina, in a town called Abbeyville, brick Mason's
awoke and they went to their job site and they
started working until they realized, holy smokes, we're in the
wee hours of the day. Let's go back to bed.
(09:16):
And it happened again in Belton, Virginia with larks. They
woke up at one am and started two warble. Unfortunate
note for those larks, there was a conductor at the
nearby Orange and Alexandria Railroad who also woke up, and
he shot three of them. He just didn't deal with
(09:37):
stress very well, I think, which is surprising for a
railroad conductor that always seemed a very stressful occupation to
be yes, stress the occupation, but also requiring a cool
head to prevail to keep trains running on time. You know,
you don't really think of a railroad conductor as someone
that's like super on edge all the time and freaking
out because they got to keep their their stuff together.
(09:57):
All our railroad conductors are hired primarily on the basis
of their emotional instability. These guys are unhinged at Orange
and Alexandria and people love it. People love it. And
the effect of this was was so astonishing and so
let's fire in the sky kind of quality that some
folks actually believe that cities nearby are other locations that were,
(10:20):
you know, within a stone's throw, were actually on fire. Yeah,
and they and obviously they weren't happy about it. People
were legitimately scared, and they had reason to be scared.
They had reason to be panicked and alarmed and confused.
And here's the kicker, if we have a little bit
of an epilogue for this. It's been about a century
(10:40):
and a half since Richard Carrington made his observation, and
in the time since, solar scientists following Carrington's path have
studied what is now known as the Carrington Event, and
what they found was that so far, all the other
(11:02):
evidence of similar storms hitting Earth that they could find
is in the storms were much less powerful than the
eighteen fifty nine storm. In fact, the Carrington Event is
believed to have been twice as big as any other
solar storm in the last five hundred years, at least
the ones that hit Earth. So, Ben, does that mean
(11:25):
we're like, do for one of these things? Hey, it's
a casino baby, roll the dice? Do we have to?
And we don't really have a choice. Right here we are, UM,
and here we are in this world that relies so
heavily on technology and things way more advanced and interconnected
than this UM. You know, kind of almost like cup
and and string approach, that is the telegraph system. I mean,
(11:47):
it's more than that. I'm simplifying it to the extreme,
but I mean, think about how much people freak out
is when like Twitter goes down for five minutes, you know,
I mean really they're like, I can't even I am unconnected, untethered, adrift,
not to mention things like e trade or like the
stock market, like like literally these massive institutions that we
depend on that run on the Internet and require these
(12:10):
systems to function in order for us to go about
our daily lives. I always think of it's a terrible movie.
But Escape from l a the sequel to Escape from
New York, you know, a Snake plisk In and like
a you know, post apocalyptic Los Angeles spoiler alert for
a very bad movie. First of all, there's a scene
where Snake Pliskin is surfing and shooting a machine gun
(12:30):
or something that is very clearly on a green screen
and it's like they just didn't even try and clean
it up and looks so bad. But it ends with
him doing some kind of E m P type situation
or it's some kind of satellite. It's like death ray
satellite that kills all electricity on Earth, including batteries. I
remember that detail is that it was also gonna kill batteries.
(12:51):
I don't know how that scientifically works, but you know,
essentially plunging the planet into the dark ages. This wouldn't
do that. Obviously, there's systems in place that would you know,
back up and all of that, but it would absolutely
cause mass panic and chaos if this happened to us today.
Oh no, kidding, We almost got close in If you
(13:18):
are up on your dystopian disaster news, then you might
have heard of this solar flare. It missed earth sorbit
by only nine days. And no, you are absolutely right
in a way, the Victorian era was better prepared for
this eventuality than the modern era. Max, could we get
(13:39):
some dystopian music? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly the kind
that's like, um, the little known third film in the
Escape franchise, Escape from Atlanta, which is entirely about snake
trying to make a left turn on Peach Tree. It's
three hours long, but I love that regional that was
(13:59):
pa reuely worth it. Um. But no, man, I mean,
it really is something that we need to you know,
kind of not like live in fear of. I mean,
as we've talked about on stuff that I want you
to know is that's really no way to live. And again,
I mean you know, scientists are aware of this phenomenon.
We know that to quote Babs, I believe from BBS
and but how to America, the sun sucks, but it
(14:21):
also is like the source of all life on the
planet Earth. But it is a very powerful thing that
we have no control over whatsoever. And Max, thank you
for keeping that movie music going. Here's what happens. According
to expert estimates, a Carrington Class CME today would cost
between point six and two point six trillion dollars worth
(14:45):
of damage in the US alone and could possibly wipe
out We would definitely wipe out huge swaths of the
global electric grid, but it could plunge the entire world
into darkness. New England in the US is especially vulnerable.
Like you said, no electronic payment systems at grocery stores,
(15:07):
gas stations, de'll crash post pandemic. A lot of people
are operating cash less, so you wouldn't be able to
access the things you use for your daily life. A
t M S wouldn't work. Television signals would be disrupted,
satellites would be disrupted, Planes flying over the ocean would
have communication blackouts. They would all the sudden be flying blind.
(15:31):
Astronauts you might think would be especially vulnerable, but it
turns out they have planned ahead. They have radiation hardened
little uh almost like solar panic rooms at the International
Space Station, and if they had enough time, enough of
the lead up, they could also just enter their individual vehicles,
(15:53):
leave the I S S and come home. But like
you said, ma'am, we can't really live in fear of this.
We just have to know that it's always in the cards,
like a gamma ray blast, which is not going to
turn us into planet full of holts. That would just
that would end us very quickly totally. But Ben really
(16:13):
just to throw this up. I mean, we're pretty much there.
But the magnetosphere, right, we talked about that at the
very top of the show. That is the naturally occurring
guess you know, most of the protections on planet Earth
are and all the things we're talking about today are
barrier around the planet that shields us from radiation like
from the Sun. And yet these mass ejections are able
(16:35):
to kind of just cut right through it like a
hot knife through butter What why is that? Uh? And
and and and is there is something that we should
be more concerned about about the depletion of of the
you know, this magnetosphere. Yeah, so the magneto sphere is
incredibly important to life on Earth. It does protect us
(16:57):
from radiation, It protect excess from a lot of the
plasma emitted by the Sun, which is you know, for
convenience sake, one au away from us. You can see
simulations of how the solar events affect the magnetosphere on
places like NASA, Space dot gov. So here's what happens.
(17:19):
When the same is moving towards Earth, right and it
reaches it, There's this shock wave of traveling mass because
remember this is tons of stuff, and this disrupts Earth's
magnetosphere by compressing it on what we can call the
day side and then extending it on the night side,
(17:42):
extending its magnetic tail. And then when the magnetosphere reconnects,
it releases power on this terra watt scale and that
is directed back towards Earth's upper atmosphere. So that's what
he's doing. It's pushing the magnetosphere. I got it. So
definitely not you know, obviously the ozone is its own thing,
(18:05):
but we're probably relatively safe overall from the Sun's radio activity, right, well,
as safe as we can be. You know what I mean.
The Sun is also my ancient nemesis, so I never
trusted it. But you know, it's done good work. It
has done good work. That's inarguable, and if anything, this
lets us appreciate how fortunate we are in so many
(18:29):
of our our day to day lives. Right now as
we speak, a lot of scientists spend a great deal
of time trying to better predict the possibility of the
solar events and also to figure out ways to better
protect humans and all our human toys from an angry,
(18:51):
tantrum prone son. Yeah, and it's one of these things where,
you know, we'd like to believe in the past, you
know that science has kind of been the voice of
reason and in the room with this kind of stuff,
and that people in charge listen to scientists. But unfortunately
we've spent a long time in a society and in
a period where scientists have kind of been shoved aside,
(19:12):
right and maybe not listened to as they should. Hopefully
we're moving away from that a little bit, but this
stuff matters, right, Yeah. Absolutely. We are currently on solar
cycle twenty five, or the sun spots cycle, is believed
to be about eleven years long. Cycle twenty four, the
(19:34):
one that just ended, was kind of weak. It had
fewer sun spots than usual, and this has led experts
to believe that CYCLED twenty five may uh Cycled twenty
five maybe the big one. It may actually be the
strongest on record. And these again or experts, these aren't
(19:56):
quacks who are saying this. One of the biggest predictions
is that things could be especially dicey as we reached
the solar maximum in so we've got some time to plan. No,
we've got some time to plan our action movie characters.
I want an ipatch? What about you? Um? Yeah, you
(20:16):
could be the snake plisken to my Steve Bushmy, he
does have an ipatch? Got about that? Yeah? Was Steve Mishammy?
Who else was in? Who? Wh who's the crew in Armageddon?
There's definitely Bruce Willis? Yeah? Was there Steve Bushemy? And?
Why am I losing my mind here? All the second
Armageddon cast? I don't want to miss a thing? Ben Affleck,
(20:37):
Ben Affleck, he's a good looking one, Thorn. He's also
pretty good looking. Admittedly, we've got live Tyler, isn't it?
But I sweart of got there was some kind of
there was a ragtag band of these of these dudes.
Let's see, we've got Billy, Bob, ben Affleck Lift, Tyler,
will Pest, Steve but Shemmy as Rockhound. Yes, so I
will be. I'll be the rockhound to your snake Plisken.
(21:00):
And there we have it. We'd love to hear what
your plans are for what action movie character you would
be in this dystopian but hopefully temporary scenario. Oh no,
I said the S word, nol. We've got to wrap
it up. Thanks to everybody so much for tuning in.
Shout out to our superproducers Casey Pegram and Max Williams.
(21:20):
Huge thanks to Alex Williams the uh uh, the Owen
Wilson to Max as Luke or vice versa, whichever. I
don't know. We'll have to let them decide. Um who
composed our theme Alex did in fact hughes thanks to
Christopher hasciotes here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Coats, Jonathan Strickland,
the Notorious Quister who shall be returning very soon. Though
it really has nothing to do with anything that we
(21:41):
want or don't want. He's kind of just something that
happens to people, you know, like as cme and of
course thanks to our own angry son, Gabe Bluesier. No,
this was a good one. And you know, I'm glad
we took the time to make this a two parter
because we're literally talking about the end of the world
as we know it. I'm just glad it took the
(22:04):
time to make it an acceptable and reasonable two parter.
So now we don't have to do another episode. We
always want to do another episode, and why not do
some more about the end of the world. Let us
know your favorite end of the world stories ridiculous at
i heeart media dot com. Swear to god it works
this time, y'all. We've tested it and double tested it,
(22:27):
and it in fact does transmit information to both Ben
and I and Max. In fact, and speaking of end
of the world scenarios, a little tease for our next episode.
It involves something kind of resembling a plague of locusts. Um,
let's leave it at that. We'll see you next time.
Books For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the
(22:54):
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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