The year was 1859. A solar coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, September 1–2, 1859, aka The Carrington event. Telegraph wires melted, some stations reported the surge caused the telegraph paper to combust. All in all, not a life changing event back then.
CMEs happen all the time, it is the nature of the sun.
In 2012, although it was not widely reported by the media, we dodged a major bullet. Here is NASA report on that:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-new...jul_superstorm
Those that are aware of the topic are also aware that we are largely unprotected from such events. Most importantly, the power grid remains unprotected.
It would take Billions of dollars to fortify the electrical grid from such events and NO ONE is in a hurry to spend that kind of coin.
Today's scenario would play out very differently if we took a hit. No need to get into details but it is obvious we would have no electricity, no electronics, no cars, no trucks, no access to money, no food deliveries, no running water where it is delivered by pumps, no refrigeration, etc, etc, etc.
When scientists calculated the events that would unfold if our grid was hit, (keeping in mind it would most likely happen all over the world as the earths magnetosphere and atmosphere would act as a conductor hence wiping out most of the power grids everywhere), simple statistics show that 95-98% of the population would perish in the first year. It would take between 3-10 years to restore the power grid and humanity would have to endure shortages of food and clean water delivery for that long. Take a moment to think what it would be like to live without electricity or electronics and how it would effect everything you know and depend on today. It would be complete chaos.
Most of my friends are completely unaware of such a threat (similar scenario would be a nuke detonated in the atmosphere creating a huge EMP). I assume largely the population is also unaware of this.
Yet, we are faced with the statistical odds it may happen any day.
This threat is far more likely than an asteroid collision and we'd be tracking such an asteroid for quite some time as if we could do something about it. Not so with the CME event.
There are tons of material available on this topic. Here is just a short video on it.
https://youtu.be/DmT3pFg8sFg