Could a solar flare destroy civilization?

What would you do if you woke up one day and found yourself in a world without electricity, cellphones or the internet? It sounds like the plot of a science fiction film, but if a powerful enough solar flare hits Earth's magnetosphere this could become a frightening reality. Join Matt and Ben as they explore the likelihood of a solar apocalypse.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, everyone,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I'm Ben, and that makes this stuff they don't want

(00:21):
you to know. And today we're talking about the magnificent
nuclear powered sphere that's mostly made up of hydrogen and
helium and it's been burning for over four and a
half billion years, which is kind of weird to think,
you know, when you think about what a year is,
I have a hard time comprehending an entire month. Well, yeah,
that is a long time. Although it feels like January

(00:42):
came and went already, which is a little weird. Yeah,
I feel as there were time travelers are ripped them winkles.
We've become unstuck in time. But even if we were
to travel to the very beginning of Earth's origins, we
would still be running into that massive ball we call

(01:02):
the Sun. Uh. A little funny fact about the Sun,
well might be not funny to some people. It is
responsible for all of the life that we know. The
Sun's energy feeds the very it's the entry level of
the world's life forms, and without it we would not

(01:23):
be alive. So if you want to trace the origins
of your existence, uh, in you're going by the energy,
then you are going to inevitably run into uh the
solar energy that plant forms taken and it later filters
down to you and the things that you eat, and

(01:45):
that you can cause an atmosphere to form, so that
any kind of plant life or you know, even earlier
than that. Right, And so I know we're making the
sun look great here. It sounds like, you know, an
online dating profile for how awesome the sun is and
how much it will take. Karen used to be a
deity back in the day. Yeah, and it's it's all
nurturing and stuff. Uh. Also, the Sun has a dirty

(02:07):
open secret, which is that in a few billion years, uh,
this awesome stellar parent it's a pun. Sorry, somebody put
in the bad pun music. Okay, I earned it. I
will be the last one. But like one of those
awesome parents who occasionally goes on a horrific binge of

(02:29):
mass murder, the Sun will expand and destroy the planet.
That is not supervillain hyperbole. It will literally destroy planet Earth.
We've got a while before it happens. But we also, uh,
we also have some uh some other sun shenanigans that

(02:50):
pose a much more clear and present danger to steal
the title of a movie. Every once in a while
that sun gets a little angry? Will parts of it
get angry? When when I say little, I mean several
hundred times the diameter of Earth angry? Wow, that doesn't

(03:11):
make any sense, though it does make sense because it's
a way to show the scale of the Earth. A
small disturbance in the force of the Sun is uh
probably going to be several times larger than the Earth anyway.
And one one thing that we need to hit real
quick or the basic facts. Right, So, how far away

(03:32):
is the sun? The sun is about eight I think
it's around eight light minutes away from the Earth. That's terrifying. Well, yeah,
it's terrifying. It's also nice because it's warm, any warm,
we get that fresh sunlight. We're in the the old
Goldilocks zone. Uh. Then we also need to talk about
how hot or how much energy it produces. Let's go

(03:54):
with how hot. How hot is the sun at the core?
So right at the core, it's uh, it's over it's
greater than fifteen million degrees kelvin kelvin not celsius. He's
a bit the warm. And we also know that in
addition to hydrogen and helium, the Sun is composed of
some very strong magnetic fields. Yeah, that's kind of what

(04:19):
keeps the whole system going. And sometimes those magnetic fields
get a bit disrupted. You'll have it's tough to really
paint a picture, but you have to think about it
as for me, at least, this helps when you think
about it as these electromagnetic coils that sometimes, uh, they
tighten a little bit, they get a little tangled, and

(04:40):
they tighten up, and that's when you'll see something called
the sun spot, where it's a little dark on the
surface of the Sun. And if you if you go
check out the Solar Dynamics Observatory, you can get a
really good picture of what I'm talking about, UM, and
those are the places that people who observe the sun, uh, astronomers,

(05:00):
they really get a little nervous when you see, especially
a large sun spot or a sun spot that's kind
of in a cluster. Right. Yeah, we do know that
sun spots tend to occur more towards the equator of
the Sun, and we know that observation of sun spots
dates back pretty far. Several thousand years ago astronomers in
China noticed sun spots, so the twelfth century BC a

(05:24):
thing called the Book of Changes because all the good
book titles weren't taken by that point, so you can
still have really cool names like that. Uh, they recorded
a sun spot. They said the sun was yellow at
its rising, and a black vapor as large as a
coin was observed at its center. And then on the
other side of the world, the Aztecs UH ruling Mexico

(05:45):
before the Spaniards arrived, also paid attention to the Sun
and its cycles and it's sun spots. Now, sun spots
are natural thing, and human beings have been aware of
their existence, if not there um causes for a long time.
And now that we know that the causes come from
magnetic disturbances and the Sun's force, uh, we also have

(06:10):
learned a couple of other things. We've learned that they're
on a cycle, right, that the Sun has a cycle.
Every eleven years or so, it hits what's called a
solar maximum, and that's when these solar flares are much
more likely to occur in clusters right, Yeah, And and
the reason that they're a little scary is because they

(06:31):
have the potential to cause some serious harm, uh, two
planet Earth. They also have the potential to cause harm
to a lot of our electronics UM. And I guess
that's really our communications because they, like I was saying,
they coil up, and they coil really tightly, and sometimes
they'll just release and and basically nothing will happen. There

(06:55):
won't be any kind of craziness on the on the Sun.
But sometimes if it goes past the breaking point and
basically those coils snap back in place, you'll have a
solar flare. Solar flare will occur. Yeah, and a solar
flare is a the easy way to find it if
you're looking at it through a telescope, it would be

(07:16):
a sudden brightening observe over the Sun's surface or the
solar limb. And uh, this is a huge release of
energy UM. The number that I found for it was
six to six times ten to the jewels. It's yeah,
it's crazy because it's it's not only releasing light and

(07:38):
releasing X rays and raise UM. It also has the
potential to cause something called a coronal mass ejection or
a cm E. And that's where it gets really hairy
for the Earth, right, Yeah, because the Earth, like the Sun,
has its own magnetosphere, and this magnetosphere is also sensitive

(08:04):
to uh, disturbances from the Sun's magnetosphere. Because again, you know,
in the scale of the Solar System, let alone the galaxy,
the Sun and the Earth are really really close. We're
pretty much bumper to bumper, and uh, that's that's a
great spot, except when these kind of things happen. So

(08:27):
you and I did a video episode on this that
really caught both of our interests, and we did it
a while back, right, And here's the question, this is
the question we're gonna answer in this podcast, Matt. Is
it possible that a CME could destroy Earth's electronics? Yes,

(08:48):
is the answer. Okay, because a CME is essentially a
magnetic shock wave that's being sent out from from the
Sun and depending on where it's headed, if it's headed
towards the Earth, you can have some serious issues. So first,
let's think about what's floating around outside on the let's
say in space really close to Earth. We've got all

(09:11):
these satellites and modern civilization depends on these for a
number of things, right, a ton of things. And if
you have an electromagnetic disturbance that could say was powerful
enough to shut down some of those electronics, which it
can be, that's not good, right, Yeah, I would say
that's that's apocalyptic. But it's not just satellites. Uh, those

(09:34):
are important and the lack of communication would be a
terrible thing. But it also has the potential to knock
out the entire energy grid, which is pretty insane when
you think about because depending on where it hits, with
the severity with which it hits, it can it has
the potential to a cme to essentially fry some cables

(09:58):
that are going from your power plants, say, to the
rest of the grid. And if that happens, you can
have a rolling blackout, which which could be really bad
because if it if it occurs, then you can have
basically copper wire being fried throughout an entire region of
the U S. And we're just speaking about the U

(10:19):
S right now, because that's the model that I've looked at. Yeah,
and that well, we also have the North American model
that can kind of incorporate parts of Canada. So so
we know that when a grid is effective when a
power grid is affected, it's frighteningly easy to produce a
domino or a snowball effect. So because the grid supplies load, uh,

(10:42):
if it has too much of a load, then it's
just as bad as it not having enough power. When
one segment of this system is destroyed, then this means
that other segments of the system will be hit with things.
The way that the rolling blackout occurs is that different
chains of the power system are trying to fight an

(11:06):
increasing number of anomalies. You know, so we said a
domino effect, right, so when you knock out one domino,
it's next to other dominoes and a knocks him out sequentially. Um.
I don't want to scare anybody into thinking that the
entire North American power system is a house of cards,

(11:27):
but I do want people to realize that if the
right solar flare or excuse me, the right cme hits
at the right time, then we will lose terrestrial power.
And this this is where and I could get a
little apocalyptic. All right, So, so well we're talking about
disrupting power. You know, it's tempting to think, oh man,

(11:51):
what a what a crappy inconvenience. I'm gonna have to
read a book. Go outside. What is that? But what
we're talking about, uh could potentially be a disaster that
is unprecedented history. Think of all the people right now,
just in your town whose lives depend on a reliable
stream of electricity. This would be people in hospitals, This

(12:14):
would be people who are maybe even driving a car,
which is something I wanted to ask you about. Um.
And then let's look at the satellites as well, So
we said losing communication, Yeah, that could be huge. Um.
The ability to communicate using satellite is the reason that
ships don't go off course. The ability to communicate that

(12:36):
way is the reason that planes are able to uh
land without killing everyone and crashing into each other. Now,
hold on, Ben, some people might be saying, and correctly,
I thought that radio played a big part in that.
You are correct, and the X rays and UV radiation
from us c m E will disrupt the ionosphere, making

(12:57):
long term or excuse me, long range radio communication also
go caput. And this isn't just something that Ben and
I are making up. We've We've actually seen the effects
of a CMME before, one of the one of the
only major times that it actually affected life on Earth
was in eighteen fifty nine, UM, when a CMME caused

(13:18):
a massive magnetic fluctuation in the Earth's magnetic magnetosphere, which
then caused a couple of things to happen, Like I know,
the telegraph systems failed at the time, compasses wouldn't work, um.
And you know that doesn't sound like anything too crazy,
I guess right now, But you have to think about
the load that was on the electrical systems at the time. Um,

(13:40):
it probably wasn't much at all, and they probably didn't
even get to see some of the major effects that
if that would have occurred this year or in a
year when we've had our grid the way it is now,
we just haven't seen it in a long time. Yeah,
it's a it's a possible disaster that comes more disastrous

(14:01):
with time. Now, we do know that there are ways
for things to be shielded from the effects of a SEMI,
but we know that the vast majority things are not
because the potential of a SME of this magnitude occurring
is relatively rare. It's like winning a very terrible lottery,
worst lottery you've ever won, in the worst little and

(14:24):
the last that you might win. So uh, but I
just want to get back to what you're saying really fast.
That's the idea of losing communication and in a time
when you have no power. Also, um, that is one
of the great post apocalyptic scenarios where you're cut off
from everybody else. You're confused, you're scared, and you can't

(14:44):
you don't have a good way to get food, you
don't have a good way to get to wherever you
need to get to, and you just feel cut off.
And that's when the human the human brain goes a
little crazy, and that's when you have the road. Okay,
it should we really that's the movie that I think
about when I think about the possibilities of a massive

(15:05):
ceme um cannibalism, That's what I think about. Okay, yeah,
so kind of a Lord of the Flies situation. How
long would we have for before civilization collapse without the
electronic underpinnings, especially in the city. Yeah, well, the city
is always one of the worst places to be in
a natural disaster environment. And while while we are saying

(15:28):
some scary stuff, of course we did some due diligence
and said that the possibility of this occurring is relatively
small so far as we know. But here's the tricky part. Okay,
So let's compare to another natural disaster. This would essentially
be a natural disaster in terms of its effects. So
we know already that UH, people are having a great

(15:52):
deal of difficulty predicting the frequency or the strength of
natural disasters that are on Earth. Would means there much
easier to observe. UH, scientists still have a lot of
difficulty accurately predicting eruptions or earthquakes or hurricanes are rather
the path and effect of a hurricane. We have made

(16:14):
great strides in um in our search for better methods
of prediction here, but we have yet to be able
to in the time accurately predict these things. And the sun,
as close as it may be on a cosmic scale,
is far far beyond our abilities to reach it in

(16:38):
you know, in a practical scale, and especially to make
any kind of predictive models. Right. Yeah, But thankfully we
do have the Solar Dynamics Observatory now and that is
one of the best best things that to come around,
in my opinion, for a long time from a technology standpoint,
because now we really do we can almost see the
entirety of the Sun at all times. Now and before

(16:59):
we head out to fiddle away our free time enjoying
all the wonderful electronic goodies that or the Sun destroys
them all, before the Sun destroys us all, and before
we ask you some questions, Matt, Where can people go
to get more information about this? Okay? So this is
where I go every morning when I get into work
because I'm extremely paranoid about solar flares and there the

(17:23):
Sun's activity. I go to space weather dot com. It's
a fantastic source. You can look at everything from You
can get solar flare alerts from them on your on
your phone, which is pretty cool. Um. You can also
look at the severity of and possibility of solar flares
in the next twenty for our period. You can also
go to solar ham dot net h a m dot

(17:47):
net and uh, that's a really cool place. It's got
some of the best s d O images up to
date stuff. And again it's got a CMME prediction model,
which is really cool. Again, it's not really accurate, but
it's fascinated look at and it makes me feel better
knowing that I check it every morning. Yeah, and one
last thing, if you want to just check out the

(18:08):
s d O and you can look up images from
the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Go to s A d O
dotr G, s FC dot Nasa dot gov. It's kind
of a long one. Hope, hopefully you heard that. You
may have to rewind it, but check it out. You
can just search for s d O and NASA. We'll
do the address one more time. It's s d O

(18:29):
dot G, s f C dot NASA dot gov. And Hey,
while you're on a computer trying to figure out if
the sun will destroy us earlier than scheduled, why not
take advantage of the time to uh, let us know
what you think about a couple of questions. I'm gonna
fire a couple off here. Uh. First, and my favorite

(18:50):
question here, what would you do if you woke up
one day and none of the electronics worked? Matt, Do
you have a question? Yeah? I do. Uh. If let's
say you've gotten alert on your phone that there's an
imminent coronal mass ejection that's there it's thought to be
able to take out all of the electricity, and you

(19:13):
only have let's say an hour or two hours before
it hits. What do you do? What's the first thing
you do? I don't know, man, I I don't want
to give my answer away. We'll talk about this later.
Oh I'm not giving my answer away, okay. But what
I would love to give weight is the ways that
you can contact us. Matt, you and I are online

(19:36):
all the time, so that people can write to us
at Facebook and Twitter, where we are conspiracy stuff. You
guys were on the internet in so many places I
hesitate to list them all. You can find our videos
on test tube and YouTube. But if you want to
cut past all the social media stuff and write to
us directly to tell us what your plan is in

(19:57):
the event of a solar flare, we would love to
hear it. And if you ask, will even maybe tell
you our plans. I'm not going to volunteer, you met,
but I'm not adverse to telling someone if they ask
via email, I can go really general. Okay, So go ahead,
and if you want to know what we would do,
and if you want to tell us what you would do,
send us an email. Our address is conspiracy at Discovery

(20:20):
dot com. For more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon,
visit test tube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can
also get in touch on Twitter at the handle at
conspiracy stuff.