Massive solar storm to hit Earth in 2012

[Medic]

My thoughts?

Since I'm one of the few people left in the country able and willing to read a roadmap instead of GPS I'll be the only one who isn't lost.

Most likely, some fools will run around in a gibbering panic. Me, at most it will be an annoyance, and I'll just keep sailing along.

I'm with Broomstick.

The most FUN I've ever had, if you could call it that, was navigating San Antonio for the 1st time. I had no map and no GPS myself; I had the worst combination in the world: I was basically blind and following someone with a TomTom, which had the endearing habit of only telling you to take a particular off ramp in about a 2 second time limit. At 60-80 mph and plenty of traffic, that was oh-so-fun. I've never driven like such a reckless asshole before. (or since)

Once I got a map, I studied it in detail, drove the roads a bit and I now know the city of San Antonio better than I do San Diego, where I grew up. (Texas's roads are just easier to navigate though IMO)

Plus there's the phenomenon Stuart's pointed out where people in their lackadaisical, suggestive brainwave state listen to these things, take their instructions... and drive off roads, into buildings, on red lights. Something I've yet to and am not eager to do. No thanks.


But seriously. It will suck losing the internet for a few hours.

[Medic]

[DOUBLE POST] pos

[starslayer]

I've heard of speculation regarding an ozone destroying solar flare, but is our Sun normally even capable of such an event (i.e, from regular solar flare activity), or would it take some unusual changes in it's behavior to produce something of that magnitude.

Read my post again; the Sun is not, and has never been, capable of creating such a CME. To give you an idea of the magnitude of what would be involved, imagine the 1859 event for a second, which as I stated, would cause catastrophic damage to the electrical grid if it occurred today, and is the strongest flare on record. I'd bet good money that while stronger solar storms have happened, particularly in the Sun's very early history, none of them would be hundreds of times stronger or more. Even a flare that strong would be nowhere close to doing anything significant to the Earth's atmosphere, certainly not strong enough to provide the enormous gamma ray flux required to destroy the ozone layer.