Solar storm 2024: What should you do to prepare?

The sun continues firing off solar flares during what has been a period of intense activity. The ‘most serious IT outage the world has ever seen’ sparked global chaos today – with planes and trains halted, the NHS disrupted, shops closed, football teams unable to sell tickets and banks and TV channels knocked offline.

‘I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history,’ said Troy Hunt, a respected security consultant, in a social media post. ‘This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time.’

Short of destroying the sun, there’s nothing humans can do to prevent solar flares—but you can still know what to expect, and prepare accordingly.

What is a solar flare?

According to NASA, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), or solar flares, are “giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high speed particles into space.” If the Earth happens to be in the path of one of these ejections, and the ejection is powerful enough, things could get very crazy, very quickly.

The charged particles from the sun entering Earth’s magnetic field would cause geomagnetic storms, lighting up the sky with a brilliant aurora borealis that would be visible all over the Earth. Beautiful, for sure. But massively disruptive to our power system.

How bad is it when a solar flare hits earth?

The most recent solar flare from sunspot AR3738 occurred Tuesday morning (16 July 2024) at 9:26 a.m. EDT (1326 GMT). A shortwave radio blackout in conjunction with the latest event was reported over mostly the Atlantic Ocean and also noted across much of Africa, Europe, and parts of North and South America.

With more than a thousand flights cancelled globally, passengers were seen sleeping in passageways at Los Angeles International Airport, huge queues formed at terminals across Spain, and in Delhi staff set up a makeshift whiteboard to record departures.

Shops in Australia shut down or went cashless after digital checkouts stopped working, while in the US emergency services lines went down in Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Ohio.

Cyber security company CrowdStrike has admitted to being responsible for the error that hit Microsoft 365 apps and operating systems and said a ‘fix has been deployed’. The American firm said it was caused by a ‘defect found in a single content update’ and insisted the issue ‘was not a security incident or cyberattack’.

Windows is the most used operating system in the world, meaning the outage is affecting almost every part of the global economy – with supermarkets and cafes, including Morrisons, Waitrose, B&Q and the bakery chain Gail’s, unable to take card payments. There have even been warnings workers may see a delay to their paychecks.

Technology experts have said the disruption is at the scale expected from Y2K or the ‘Millennium Bug’, a computer programming shortcut that was forecast to cause chaos as the year changed from 1999 to 2000 but never materialised.

Solar flares hit earth all the time, and it’s usually no big deal. Sometimes they cause relatively minor issues, like the one that hit in August 2023 and disrupted radio and navigation signals across North America. You probably didn’t notice—things returned to normal quickly—but a larger one could be catastrophic.

In 1859, the biggest geomagnetic storm ever recorded hit Earth. The Carrington Event lit up the sky so brightly that people thought dawn had come. The “Northern Lights” were visible as far south as Cuba, and the nascent telegraph system went down, with telegraph operators reporting being shocked by their machines, or being able to send messages, even though their power supplies were disconnected.

It ultimately wasn’t disastrous in 1859, but in the present day, when everything relies on power and data, a massive outage and the loss of internet (undersea data cables are particularly vulnerable) would throw the world into considerable chaos.

The power grid would likely go down, as long-distance power lines would be overwhelmed with electrical currents, leading to transformers exploding. GPS systems would be useless, as satellites would be shorted out. Planes might crash into one another, as they’re essentially flying blind. The internet could be down for months, and estimated financial losses would likely be in the trillions.

A disruptive solar flare event will probably happen in your lifetime

The sun sloughs off material regularly, but it usually doesn’t hit Earth, just by chance. Our luck has to run out eventually, however. Scientists estimate there’s around a 12 percent chance of a massively disruptive coronal mass ejection hitting Earth every 10 years. That’s about the same likelihood as a massive earthquake hitting California.

The Bad news about solar flares

The sun continues firing off solar flares during what has been a period of intense activity.

Sunspot AR3738 might be making its exit as it rotates out of our view on the sun’s western limb, but not before firing off a powerful X-class solar flare, the strongest of its kind.

The solar flare from sunspot AR3738 occurred Tuesday morning (July 16) at 9:26 a.m. EDT (1326 GMT). A shortwave radio blackout in conjunction with the latest event was reported over mostly the Atlantic Ocean and also noted across much of Africa, Europe, and parts of North and South America.

How should you prepare for a massive solar storm?

On an individual level, preparing for a massive solar flare striking our planet is refreshingly doable—this isn’t a zombie apocalypse or a nuclear war we’re talking about. First, remember that the storm won’t hurt you, so the worse result is that your power and your ability to communicate with others would be fried for a bit. Maybe for a few days. Maybe for a month. (Also: Your 401(k) would probably tank as the economy reels.)

How to protect your household electrical system from power surges from solar flares

You can’t do anything about transformers exploding from magnetic storms, but you can protect your household electrical system. Make sure your home is surge-protected with both a whole-house surge protector and run-of-the-mill power-strip surge protectors. This is a good idea for both massive, worldwide magnetic catastrophes and everyday power surges.

Prepare a basic disaster survival kit is essential

Like making sure your house is surge-protected, putting together a basic disaster kit is a good idea even if a solar flare never hits—loss of power could come with earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and some drunk guy driving into the pole across the street, so you want to be prepared. There’s no way of knowing how long the power would be out due to a magnetic storm, so exactly how much you should prepare is a personal decision. The basic survival kit guidelines laid out by the government seem like a good place to start.

You should not overlook having some cash on hand, though. If international communication systems fail, you likely won’t be able to use the ATM, and hard currency could prove very useful, especially if the outage persists over time.

I’m sure many disaster preppers think the government’s list is crazily inadequate, but I’m an optimist. I don’t think a massive worldwide power outage would plunge the world into chaos—I’m more in the short-term disruption camp. There’s no real way of knowing, however.

What to do the day before a solar flare

Unlike earthquakes and nuclear attacks, we will likely have warning of a coming magnetic storm—the 1859 Carrington Event was observed 19 hours before it hit Earth—so you should have at least half a day to brace yourself for the coming unpleasantness. Even if you didn’t prepare ahead of time at all (lazy!), you’ll still be able to fill containers with water, hit the grocery stores for non-perishables, and otherwise mentally prepare for a week or so without being able to play Apex: Legends.

This is the time to charge all batteries and contact your family and make sure everyone else is prepared (even though they will probably think you are crazy.) If the systems fail, you won’t be able to get in contact with anyone, and you definitely don’t want to travel while this mess is going on.

The final step: Unplug everything and wait for the lights in the sky.

While disaster movies might suggest chaos and a run on all stores once the coming disaster is announced, judging from how unusual the threat is, and the “whatever” attitude everyone had in the days leading up to the pandemic taking hold in the United States, I’d put my money on the masses not freaking out until the night sky lights up like noon and TikTok goes down.