Ready for a shock?  The above people, the Amish, have it right.  They will survive it ok-ish.  They will be impacted by it, as will those of us who have for years been bewildered by the Amish - and maybe end up becoming just like them - and compete with them.  Sounds just incredible, doesn't it?  The simple Amish, going about their lives very simply, building barns, tilling the land, planting crops by hand, and harvesting what nature provides...and we're going to be just like them...if you're lucky, if you survive the coming carnage and murders.  Of course, here in the UK, there are no Amish.  There are people living very simply, and they will be the lucky ones.  The real Amish are a religious group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships, with Swiss and Alsatian origins.  They shun the vast majority of what is modern life.

 

We have built, over the past 200 years, an incredible society.  Largely thanks to Britain and the industrial revolution, mankind has advanced faster in the past 200 years than in the last 20,000.  We've gone from writing to typing, from plunging swords into each other to nuclear weapons, and from growing crops to working in an office.  Drop someone from 200 years ago into modern society and they would probably die from shock.  Your whole life is technology: your phone, your car, your TV, your computer, and certainly your job.  It's all built on technology.  If you took it away, you wouldn't have your life as it is, if you had one at all.  Even your health care is built on technology.  The meal you ate earlier all depended on it (unless you unlikely pulled something from your garden).  And it's all going to end.  Again, not if, but when.

 

We have become very used to relying on things just being there.  You flick a switch and your lights come on.  You turn your phone on and you are in touch with your family.  You switch your computer on and you are in touch with most of the world.  Technology keeps you warm in the winter.  It keeps you safe from nutters.  It provides your drinking water.  It will save your life.  But it's all false.  It's there like a hologram, it's not real...because it relies on something we all take very much for granted - electricity.  Electricity has been phenomenal.  It has given us almost everything we have.  It has been the one discovery which has propelled us to where we are.  Without it we are lost.  And we will be.  What's coming is a 'Carrington Event', or worse, a 'Miyake Event'.  Either of these will end all that we have.  Though you had better hope that it's a Carrington Event and not a Miyake Event.

 

In 1859 - before we had electrical supplies - the world experienced what the Sun can do, a powerful coronal mass ejection - magnetic storms of charged particles from the Sun.  Compasses at sea failed to work, causing some ships to become lost.  Telegraph networks experienced disruption, with some telegraph lines even catching fire.  It was all over fairly quickly and no one lost their life...for one good reason: there was virtually no electricity anywhere.  No one relied on it like we do, now.  We were pretty much Amish - we grew crops the 'old' way and talked to each other by using our mouths.  Almost no one's job relied on any electricity at all.  The invention of the telephone was still almost two decades away.  It was a very simple life, free of anything electrical.  So the huge coronal mass ejection went almost unnoticed.  Now, imagine that happening today - imagine the colossal impact on absolutely everything...your entire life, law & order, government, water supplies, healthcare, defence, and electricity.  Everything you do would be off, not just for a few hours, but possibly months, years, or even for the rest of your life...which could be cut short.  This is because society will completely break down.  At the moment, you can go and get a loaf of bread from the shops.  WHEN a Carrington Event happens, you won't be able to that.  All the food will be gone in two days.  Governments will try and restore some sort of order, but they won't have any electricity to aid them doing it.

 

The life you know and have always known will be gone.

 

All you will have is the food left in your cupboards.  All the food in your freezer will have defrosted in three days.  You won't have any drinking water because the pumps rely on electricity.  They can be run by diesel generators, but they rely on someone going there and starting them up.  That man will have his own personal concerns, not his job - which he won't get paid for any longer because all payment is electronic.  You won't have any access to all of your money, not that it would be much use, anyway, as all shops will have been looted within a week.  Look how people reacted (and fought each other) over toilet rolls during covid.  Law and order will break down within hours, with almost no one to keep you safe.  You won't be able to get petrol or diesel, and your electric car will only run for a couple of days on its stored charge.  Not that it will be safe to go anywhere, anyway!  Within a day, you will be collecting rain water.  You won't sleep much, as the shouting in the streets will terrify you and your family.  You will arm yourself.  Your survival instincts will kick in quite quickly - they are there in your animal brain, despite how you currently live.  If you're really lucky, the army will visit your street with bread and provisions.  There may even be rudimentary healthcare for those in need - but you would have to be at death's door to get it.

 

Scary, isn't it...and it WILL happen.

 

Coronal mass ejections from the Sun have happened for billions of years.  But until we built a life 100% reliant on electricity, it didn't matter.  Now, it does.  They happen every 100 to 200 years.  We're 166 years from the last one.  If we're really lucky, we will know it's coming.  Governments will shut down their electricity grid supplies (the entire country) while it hits.  When it has passed, hopefully, the grid can be re-started.  However, the internet will be gone for a VERY long time.  All the life you know that is reliant on the internet will be over.  If we're not lucky, and we don't know it's coming, then it is nothing short of the disaster I outlined above.  Your life, as you know it, is over.  Panic and utter mayhem will ensue.  Many will die from various causes.  But there's something MUCH worse than a Carrington Event...

 

There's something called a Miyake Event.  Originally, this was thought to be cosmic rays from space - big ones!  However, it is now said to be an event occurring on and from the Sun.  To be honest, in researching this, I found conflicting statements made on it, so it's one of those things in science which they 'dunno where it came from, mate'.  The thing we do know is that we don't want one.  The bad news is that we WILL get one.  The last Miyake Event was in the year 993.  There was a huge one in 774, and another in 660.  Those spacings are random, as the one prior to 660 was in 7176 BCE - nine thousand years ago.  There have been seven over the past 15,000 years.

 

Miyake Events are seriously bad news for us - think a Carrington Event on crack.  The Carrington Event of 1859 didn't get recorded in tree rings, but Miyake Events most certainly do!  The one in 774 was a biggy.  There is even a suggestion that such events can be 80 times 'bigger' than the Carrington Event.  Such magnetic storms of charged particles from the Sun will do serious damage to out technological infrastructure.  Computer chips - even on computers switched off - could be fried.  Satellites would be fried and would eventually fall to Earth.  And don't forget that computers control our nuclear power stations.  That's a worry.  And we don't know how long they last.  It could be a day, but it could be weeks.  As with a Carrington Event, if we know it's coming, we can go to some lengths to protect vulnerable equipment, but we don't know for certain if we can know hours in advance.  If it hits out of the blue, then we're finished.  First of all, power grids would be damaged for years, but more than that, due to its knock-on effects on so much of our lives, society could well break down completely, with food on ration and a major breakdown in law and order.  If you have money invested, that would be gone, unless you have a paper back-up of what you had.  And banks have been going paper-free for years.  You only know what's in your account by looking online or on your phone.  Both of those would be gone.  All of our records would be gone - who owns land, property deeds, and your health records, along with everything else.

 

In all likelihood, a Carrington Event will be what we get next, though there is no pattern, so we could get a Miyake Event tomorrow, or not get one for hundreds of years.  But a Carrington Event could be enough to tip us all back to Medieval times, or rather, how lots of Africa and the Amish still live - simply, without electric.  It will be grim and, as I have said a number of times, it IS on its way.  Can you prepare for it?  Yes, if you want to live without dependence on electricity, and trade in gold rather than money.  There are some 'preppers' in the US and Europe who 'prepare' for a coming major natural or man-made event.  Some of them like to install solar panels, so that they are independent for power.  Well, they won't be any good - they will get fried, too!  A wood burner would help, and to stock up on hundreds and hundreds of canned foods...though probably best not to tell your neighbours!  Don't ask to borrow a can opener.  You can collect rainwater for drinking, and it might be best to prepare to defend yourself, your family, and your property.  Grasp how to make basic necessary food like bread.  You can make bread using wild yeast from the air by creating a sourdough starter, which captures the natural yeast and bacteria present in your environment.  But it would be wise to find out how to do that right now, rather than wait until you've lost half your weight.  Getting flour may be an issue, though.  Hopefully, it would be part of a government rationing system.

 

We've all cleared our gardens of vegetables and fruit.  Most gardens today resemble a kids play area (with trampolines) or are paved over with a barbeque stuck in the corner.  When I was a child, our garden was literally full of all kinds of vegetables and fruits.  This was just after WW2, and the idea of fending for yourself was still inherent for many.  We would do well to start that up again.  Half of our food is imported.  If we have a severe Carrington Event, we can look forward to serious food shortages for some time.  I grow simple stuff in my garden - tomatoes, potatoes, and some fruit.  But really, we should all go back to how are gardens were in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.  Many don't even know how to grow anything from seed, but we should all learn.  We could have an exchange - you grow potatoes, your neighbour grows broccoli.  Both have too much for their own consumption, so you exchange some of it.  Meat-eating would disappear.  We don't have gardens large enough to rear farm animals on.  Almost everyone would become vegetarian or even vegan, as supplies of milk and eggs would be like gold dust.  As long as you have a fireplace, keeping warm shouldn't be a problem, even if you have to forage for dried wood.  However, those in flats (apartments!) would be completely buggered.  Flats weren't around before the war.  They have been yet another modern idea to move us away from coping individually.  Flat-owners had better hope that a Carrington Event happens during summer!

 

But buggered we will all be.  Your cosy life with lights at the flick of a switch would be gone for a while, maybe for a long time.  So the Amish have had it right all along.  Cast off your luxury electric life and be ready to cope with a changed life that you hope would be for only a few months - maybe.  But no matter how long it would last, life really would be changed forever - with the internet gone, for starters.  Maybe that's not such a bad thing: no Facebook, no YouTube, no Twitter, no Googling.  Huge companies would go bust and never come back.

 

It's a worry, isn't it?