Of Sun Rays and Meltdowns.

It is the height of Solar cycle 25, May 15, 2022.  Big Bear Solar observatory is observing a massive sunspot when at 11:23 local time, two kidney shaped beads of blinding bright white light erupt from the heart of the solar storm. What was just observed was the start of the most massive Coronal Mass Ejection, (or CME) to ever have occured in recorded history.

Within an hour the alert goes out to the White House. President Bachmann is briefed on the impending disaster that is about to rain down on the United States. The dire news she hears causes her to have a debilitating migraine headache. She pops several Relpax and calls Carl Rove.

Rove makes the decision that a news blackout is necessary to prevent panic. A call goes out to Clear Channel Radio, Fox, CBS, and all the other major media outlets. They are told to only report that there will be a beautiful Aurora, and there might be some minor disruptions in communications especially anything that uses satellites.

Using that as cover the government shuts down any satellite transponders that broadcast foreign news. Facebook and twitter go down. All large internet providers turn on their CIA developed email filters, and any emails containing information on the CME have a 48 hour delivery delay put on them.

The next morning Aurora is seen at the equator. This is believed to be a first. The 'Good morning America' "news show" is there to record it. Beautiful photos and video of the Aurora are all over the news. Meanwhile Amateur Astronomers do their best to warn friends and family of what is coming. They meet with limited success. Grocery stores notice a slight increase in sales.

On May 17th the CME slams into planet Earth. All satellites go down. Phone lines and power lines catch fire as they are overwhelmed by the arrival of the solar energy. Multi ton transformers around the country burst into flames. Computer systems everywhere go down as their hard drives are destroyed by the massive blast of solar electro-magnetic energy. All of the hundred plus Nuclear plants around the United States shutdown, and their backup cooling systems fail. This scenario is repeated in all countries in North and South America, because by the luck of the draw that is the side of the planet that happened to be facing the sun when the CME hit.

Fukushima like disasters are set in motion across the western hemisphere, and there is no way to get the word out because all communications are down. A few of the nuke plant workers that drove old cars to work that day, cars that had no computer chips in them manage to drive home to evacuate their families. Anything that used electricity or a computer chip no longer functioned.

The United States has had it's technology clock turned back to the 1800s, as nuclear plants meltdown across the country and contaminate vast areas.

What happens next? Use your imagination, its beyond mine. Unfortunately massive CMEs are a reality. They have happened in the past and they WILL happen again some day. The last big one in 1859 set telegraph lines on fire. If one hit now, with all our technology it would be devastating. It would probably take years, maybe a decade to recover to some workable large scale society. And while that happened all those nuclear plants would continue to burn...