A paper was just released that looks into how much damage a major solar storm can cause to the infrastructure of the Internet.

Here’s my summary:

Long metal things, especially at high latitudes, are prone to more harm than anything else. Solar activity that doesn’t even make the news does harm. Large countries have longer metal things, like power lines, railway tracks and pipelines.

Add to the mix undersea Internet cables. While the fibre optics are not metal, the casing is, and the repeaters every 150kms are.

We get a 1-3 days warning of incoming solar activity, and at its worst, we can switch off power grids and (importantly) disengage transformers.

We can’t switch off train tracks and pipelines, which can be bent or break.

We can switch off the Internet, but the cables will still be harmed. Fixing them could take years.

CME Scenario – we (hopefully, there is significant room for human error, and errors of judgement, and cost mitigation) turn off the power grid, disengage transformers, and after the storm we have power back on. Damage to pipelines and railways won’t cause too much death or suffering.

Undersea cables might be harmed and take months/years to repair. However, the Internet is primarily designed around redundancies. We won’t go without the Internet, it will just be slower and more congested. Simply turning off YouTube could fix things.

Satellites are quite likely to be fried. If that brings down GPS, that is a major catastrophe, as it is used by all sorts of things, including ATMs and the stockmarket.

So – one more reason to prepare for a major solar storm, something that society is serious unprepared for. But nothing particularly new or worrying.