I would say with todays education institutions lacking, with the loss of the internet it would be at least a 250 years before we get back to at least a 1950’s lifestyle perhaps. Too many people in the beginning are going to be useless without some form of electronics. Many people can’t think for themselves let alone know what to do and how to survive. Just my two cents…

Making electricity is easy, but things like transformers that aren't protected will need to be replaced. Internet would take more time because it requires sensitive hardware. Electronics can be protected by a faraday cage or something similar.

That being said, electricity and internet would be the least of our problems because most people won't be able to feed themselves or pump gas especially in cities with dense populations, which leads to rioting and formations of clans/groups all fighting to survive.

So if this is something you're worried about then plan ahead.

Most of the USA infrastructure will be fine, so will the Panama Canal. All based on 1950’s tech.

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EMP shielding is a thing. Grid might be gone but not all facilities would be offline. I think the military would supposedly still have electricity.

But really the rest of everything would be reset and that would be alot of dead people very quickly if refrigeration didn't work.

I really don't think there is any way to speed up recovery since EMP shielding is probably expensive.

You forgot banking. Used to work in that industry, I'm not sure how protected the data is from something like this, but millions of people could lose their money in the blink of an eye. Everything is stored on servers, it was wild to me there was no paper versions of anything, literally to the point we had to destroy it if it was made.

A solar flare mostly harms large systems, not small ones. So much of the user equipment would be fine, certainly if unplugged during the warning time.

The problem would be the electric grid and other large legs. Also satellites are likely to be fried.

Anybody over 40 would survive just fine without internet. We grew up without it so it wouldn't be a big deal.

An odd form of depressing comfort.

The fact that some people were fighting over toilet paper within days of covid first hit, I think the internet would be the least of our problems as mentioned above. Water, sewerage, fuel and energy systems going down for a few days would have riots going on and most households would only have days worth of food at best with no infrastructure available to rapidly distribute essential items.

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The big power transformers at major power stations take 10 years to build and need a lot of electricity to make. Rebuilding a distributed power generation network for one country would take a generation or two. By which stage civilisation has completely collapsed and with maybe a few exceptions the knowledge of how to maintain even the most basic of cohesive social groupings will have faded.

Um no, it won't. The amount of energy pumped through the electricity network will destroy the actual physical infrastructure.

It doesn’t require advanced tech to fix, we’d have a lot of manual labor, but that’s why things don’t get modernized. The canal is an example because the local population can fix it with low tech skills

A solar flare would only hit one side of the earth if I understand correctly.

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No, you're underestimating the infrastructure requirements to make a high tension power distribution grid. You need power to make the components.

There is a recent sci-Fi book called Aurora about this

Winding copper is something that can be done by hand, and with a little bit of mechanical assistance (factory running on a diesel generator), you'd be able to rewind a grid scale transformer in a few weeks.

That's assuming the solar flare somehow damaged the transformer inside, which is highly unlikely in the first place - seeing that they're fused on both the primary and secondary sides.

But please, continue spreading misinformation! The world certainly needs more hate and distrust.

And diesel generators somehow don't exist, which are semi-portable and can be taken to factories that don't already have them?

There only has to be 1 ship full of fuel out on the ocean to be able to restart an oil processing plant.

As others have mentioned, parts of America's infrastructure is reinforced - of particular note, the internet specifically was born out of ARPAnet and substantial portions of it are still likely to reinforced. It might not even go down, just... you probably wouldn't have access to it.

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More pointedly, a lot of the actual high risk areas for such as event (the one that immediately jumps to mind is transformers) can be protected with minimal preparation, and we'd have warning (this is something that gets tracked). What this amounts to in practice is that it'd likely cause an absolutely immense amount of damage, but major areas of vulnerability would largely be able to mitigate impacts through disconnection/reinforcement/etc. As a result while it'd be a disaster the likes of which has no modern equivalent, it'd be recoverable.

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If you meant more on a personal level? It'd largely be shutting things down/disconnecting them.

The long term loss of power, transport and refrigeration would lead to anarchy. Best not to think about it. You might enjoy reading One Second After by William Forstchen.

As a physicist, in my faculty we discussed that once and we came to the conclusion that the consequences of the impact of a solar flare would be mitigated by 80% (aprox) if certain measures are taken.

There is a margin of several hours between the detection of a solar flame until it reaches the Earth; if in that time the whole humanity turned off the internet servers and all the power generators, most of the electronics could be saved. But of course, that implies a fairly large global coordination... This looks imposible because from the moment the solar flame is detected until that information reaches the public, it may be too late...

As far as I know, there are several countries that have this problem very into account and companies like Google know what they must do to avoid the destruction of their technology

Oddly enough, most oil refineries are 1950’s tech too. A lot are closing rather than modernizing, so they are just sitting there offline.

After Y2K, several groups got together and made a if the shit hits the fan file that had 99% of the important infrastructure repair and operation manuals that you could put on optical media easily and can be accessed with any hardened pc. The US Military has hardened pc equipment, and most commercial laptops should be ok if not plugged in, inside a modern home or office. Also to mention we will still have libraries that contain all our information, including massive ones like the library of congress.

Also most microwaves are essentially faraday cages, unplug it and put your electronics in the micro and they will be safe in most cases.

Transformers will be a pain in the ass, but most electric companies have a fuckton of them stored all over their regions, but it is the bigger stations that will be harder to replace. Most are custom ordered so no one has a supply on hand. They could be done manually but it will take months vs weeks. People who live in regions that have nasty weather will have generators out the wazoo, as will heavy equipment rental places, government offices, not to mention hospitals who have generators too. In a worst case many cell towers have emergency generators too that could be re-purposed to power factories to rebuild power.

The real issue is lack of transportation and refrigeration, without those none of the goods made everywhere else can make it to the cities like NYC or LA and the population of these cities are so large they have no way to feed them all. No trucks, no rail, no ship deliveries. GPS is how almost all modern ship traffic is controlled, so no navigation slows down the ships that didnt have major electronics controlling it. Tankers require computers to control the safety features like not having the correct air mix in the tanks to prevent explosions, control transferring from tanks to keep the ship stable in foul weather and more.

The real threat is the power grid failing in major cities causing fires that cannot be fought since the water is all computerized pumps, the firetrucks are electronic, so imagine drought filled california going up like a torch without air dropped firefighting since they would be fried. Rebuilding an entire state will be difficult, now imagine that on a global scale. Ever single major city in the world on fire, no way to fight it and without food.

People who have skills like food preservation skill such as canning, drying, and preserving food will go waaaaay up in demand. Farmers will be shooting looters day and night. I would think we would have a very difficult 7 or so years before things start normalizing. Local libraries have gardening books, how to do this and that books, so the smart ones will get secure then get the books they need right away. I already do a lot of canning, but never tried doing it to meat before, since that is PRESSURE canning, but I used to hunt and fish so dried a ton of meat and fish in the past, and took a class oh shit back in 97 on smoking, drying, and salting foods for preservation. Salt preservation is almost fool proof, and salt is easy to get in a lot of places, and if on the coast it is abundant and is a byproduct of making fresh water from salt water.

I suspect that most of the at least semi-intelligent people out there will do just fine, while the paste eaters will die. Global warming will be over, and the populations IQ would raise at least 30 points when the internet trolls and general morons die off. Our satellites would be a different story, since they are hardened but not in our protective bubble almost all would be gone. Now here is the issue, without control they will be like a billard table bouncing off each other leaving a massive debris cloud. The debris will take YEARS to burn up and not be a danger to the replacements we would need to send up. That could take an uncomfortably long time.

You guys aren't getting it. Any copper cabling goes up in a puff of smoke.

It’s actually only 2 to 5 years because only a few companies actually build them and they have to be ordered years in advance they can weigh hundreds of tons and can only be hauled by specialized rail cars and tractor trailers http://energyskeptic.com/2015/power-transformers-that-take-up-to-2-years-to-build/

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I don’t think that’s right on the 10 years to make large transformers

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What a disingenuous troll... No, copper doesn't disappear because of solar flares, we've got millions of years of proof for that.

Why wouldn't you just repair the damaged ones? It's much quicker.

https://resilience.acoss.org.au/the-six-steps

https://community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/urban-ag/index.html

https://www.publichealthdegrees.org/resources/help-community-health-with-mutual-aid/

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/project-using-black-soldier-flies-to-break-down-food-waste-set-to-expand-in

https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do

The XRPL can operate without the internet.

This is helpful because you’ll still able to buy things without having to lob off lumps of silver and gold.

Since it’s likely that CBDC’s will be built on a federated sidechain of the XRPL the digital dollar will be accepted with open arms

Biggest one hit Canada IIRC

Why would it harm larger systems and not smaller?

Every bank worth its salt has a significant off-site disaster recovery backup. Sure, some of them probably are not built right. But the vast majority of the money in the financial system would be known even in a worst case solar flare.

> (factory running on a diesel generator), you'd be able to rewind a grid scale transformer in a few weeks.

Do you think Ukraine is able to rebuild electrical supply "as before" after missiles' attacks even w/out spare parts?

> were fighting over toilet paper

IIRC there were instructions how to use toilet paper to make masks and there were instructions to replace masks rather often (I did neither by the way, I used one mask for weeks).

An electromagnetic storm does its damage by inducing current. This is primarily damaging to long lines and their transformers.

And why wouldn't that damage the smaller systems?

I’m not convinced that the internet has done enough good to warrant being brought back.

A solar flare wouldn’t hit the whole globe though - only half if it, if that

They’re still actively being bombed and fighting off fascists but yeah when it’s done they will rebuild.

These folks have a pretty good plan.

If you’re interested here’s today’s daily briefing with a subscription link;

FEMA Watch Center Daily Briefing 2022-11-23

Solar flare x 50km of overhead cable = 50,000 volt spike

Solar flare x 3mm of phone PCB trace = 0.03v spike

They claim restoration within several hours. Do you think they can easily replace from warehouses and repair broken to re-supply warehouses to continue for long under current conditions? I'm asking you as technology guru knowing about transformers and the like.

As I been reading claims the grid deteriorates, I wonder what parts could be damaged that cannot be repaired so easily as transformers.

Well depending on the damage you aren’t going to be able to repair them on site step 3 and 6 being very important quote from article

Production. The typical manufacturing process of an LPT consists of the following steps:

1. Engineering and design: LPT design is complex, balancing the costs of raw materials (copper, steel, and cooling oil), electrical losses, manufacturing labor hours, plant capability constraints, and shipping constraints.

2. Core building: The core is the most critical component of an LPT, which requires a highly-trained and skilled workforce and cold-rolled, grain-oriented (CRGO) laminated electrical steel.

3. Windings production and assembly of the core and windings: Windings are predominantly copper and have an insulating material.

4. Drying operations: Excess moisture must be removed from the core and windings because moisture can degrade the dielectric strength of the insulation.

5. Tank production: A tank must be completed before the winding and core assembly finish the drying phase so that the core and windings do not start to reabsorb moisture.

6. Final assembly of the LPT: The final assembly must be done in a clean environment; even a tiny amount of dust or moisture can deteriorate the performance of an LPT.

7. Testing: Testing is performed to ensure the accuracy of voltage ratios, verify power ratings, and determine electrical impedances.

Should be noted you really dont need a faraday cage to protect from EMP. EMP comes in 3 forms the 2 that are bad is the actual waves in the air. Those are travelling electrons and can be stopped solid objects like your roof. The other bad item is all of the power lines on poles act as antenna and pick up the radiated energy and travel down the lines. So anything plugged in can be fried.

The real problem is that if large transformers are destroyed by this they take years to rebuild.

The good news is that more than likely a solar EMP is only going to impact 1 side of the earth the other side will have a chance. And possibly aid the countries impacted.

You'll be too busy starving too death too worry about the internet.

If the internet were wiped out by solar flares it’d probably be a net positive for humanity at this point. The much bigger problem would be all the mass starvation that would follow

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Gonna have to deal with all the human death that’s going to happen first.

It reminds me of a post recently where a guy was worried about always online videogames after the apocalypse. Like, no. That is not going to matter at all.

Yes but wouldn't banks/branches not be able to operate? Even for a few minutes half globe blackout would mean chaos, everything is digitized these days, credit card, bitcoins, or any other type of electric payment will be out of order which would be a disaster because people wouldn't be able to pay for stuff unless they pay cash.

It legitimately would not matter. Verious types of Power plants including nuclear would meltdown and leave the earth unlivable.

It's not the actual solar flare you worrie about. It's the tail and whipping effect of the magnetosphere and ionosphere. A large enough solar flare would cause these two two parts of earths defense mechanism to become incredibly unstable and thin. Not to mention solar forcing and the ionized particals to enter and exit the earths ground.

Shit no water no gas no cars nothing. It's estimated that 300,000,000 would die within the first 2 days.

A lot of people don't know that companies like Tmobile, Verizon, At&T all have apocalypse plans. some places would be back online in a matter of weeks, if not hours.

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TL;DR - a major solar flare could end civilization as we know it, with recovery measured in decades or centuries.

A [coronal mass ejection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection) (CME) or "solar flare" like the [Carrington Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event) in 1859, or the comparable [July 2012 solar storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2012_solar_storm) that hit Earth’s orbit where we’d been nine days before, would be devastating.

From the July 2012 solar storm article linked above:

“A 2013 study[1] estimated the economic cost to the United States would have been between US$600 billion and $2.6 trillion. Ying D. Liu, professor at China's State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, estimated that the recovery time from such a disaster would have been about four to ten years.”

[1] That study was “a joint venture from researchers at Lloyd's of London and Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) in the US.”

The effects on our society of a CME and an [electromagnetic pulse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse) (EMP) are similar. The US Congressional [Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Plus (EMP) Attack](http://www.empcommission.org/) report from 2004 includes in its Overview:

"Depending on the specific characteristics of the attacks, unprecedented cascading failures of our major infrastructures could result. In that event, a regional or national recovery would be long and difficult and would seriously degrade the safety and overall viability of our Nation. The primary avenues for catastrophic damage to the Nation are through our electric power infrastructure and thence into our telecommunications, energy, and other infrastructures. These, in turn, can seriously impact other important aspects of our Nation’s life, including the financial system; means of getting food, water, and medical care to the citizenry; trade; and production of goods and services. The recovery of any one of the key national infrastructures is dependent on the recovery of others. The longer the outage, the more problematic and uncertain the recovery will be. It is possible for the functional outages to become mutually reinforcing until at some point the degradation of infrastructure could have irreversible effects on the country’s ability to support its population."

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Well, shit. None of that sounds at all good

I think the greater issue at hand is the rapidly weakening of earths magnetism and magnetic feild. Not to mention the fact we are in the middle of a geomagnetic excursion. The last time this happened was the laschamp event which is argued to be the event that killed Neanderthals.

> The last time this happened was the laschamp event

Per this paper the last time there was a validated geomagnetic excursion was Mono Lake, 8,000 years after Laschamp.

> which is argued to be the event that killed Neanderthals.

Not really an "event", as it lasted 1,000 years, but there is indeed one paper which argues this. Comments published on that paper (essentially mini-papers of their own) indicate that that is a fairly controversial claim.

However, that may not be a near-term concern, as the earth's magnetic field has weakened only 10% over the last 180 years, and is apparently not likely to flip any time soon.

The internet would be the last thing to worry about. You’d be much more concerned with food, water, sanitation, essential services first

Those transformers for substations take a few weeks to replace when circumstances are business as usual, which means a slow but steady replacement of equipment as it fails. Not in a situation where exponentially more need replacement all at once. Under those conditions, combined with the transportation issues you correctly point out, those months could become years. That puts a huge burden on those generators that keep critical services running. Fortunately, any planning for that is unnecessary since those generators will be dead within a week after using up the accessible reserves of fuel. Realistically, plan on no more then 3 days of emergency power backup…all reserved for critical systems like hospitals, fire services (which will be working overtime), water treatment, etc. Which brings up another issue, water supply is regulated and kept separate from waste water systems through large electric pumps. Once those pumps stop, the water supply becomes contaminated. We would see some pretty horrible diseases resurface quickly. Finally refrigeration loss for more then a month is a death sentence for diabetics, measured by the number of bottles they have of penicillin and the drastically reduced shelf life. 90 days would be generous if it happened during the winter. Much, much less time if it’s during the summer. Along with no food, after the initial neighborhood bbq, no water, no gas, no electricity, and limited to no communication with anyone beyond walking distance, things would get very bad very quickly. You paint an accurate picture, but I can’t see how an event like this wouldn’t come close to extinction level for the affected area.