“And they went up on the breadth of the earth,
and compassed the camp of the saints about,
and the beloved city:
and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

Revelation 20. verse 8.

Some say the ancient Mayan Calendar predicts that our world will end on December 21st, 2012 A.D. I don’t care about this and neither should you. Transposing the Maya Calendar with our Gregorian Calendar causes speculation and screwed up predictions.

Without wishing to offend Christians I’m also unconcerned that the Book of Revelation predicts that the earth will be destroyed by fire any day now.

The facts are that many pious Christians have attempted to predict when the world will end, or the second coming will occur, and have proven to be wrong.

Computer experts worried that the whole darn financial system would collapse in the year 2000 because computers wouldn’t be able count to beyond 1999 digital fingers. Computers used their toes!

The giant caldera under Yellowstone National Park has yet to explode plunging the earth into three years of solar night, in which we will freeze, or starve, or suffocate as clouds of microscopic glass-like shards invade our lungs.

No, even though the science of our day suggests that these were, or are, possibilities, after I touch my head in lieu of wood, I can now safely type all to date have failed to manifest.

But I confess to still being a teeny, weeny, bit perplexed.

2012, The Situation May Be Critical But Not Urgent?

According to astronomers, for the past four years sunspots have been moving out of remission. Sunspots occur on a regular eleven year cycle. It’s difficult to predict the intensity of the solar storms that accompany them. In 2012 they could be at their zenith.

On Friday September 2nd, 1859 just before dawn skies all over our planet erupted in brilliant red, green, and purple auroras so that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii. Telegraph systems went berserk. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.

NASA is very clear. ‘Solar flares will not destroy our planet’, they state that in their most recent update. But, solar activity may: “temporarily alter the upper atmosphere creating disruptions with signal transmission from, say, a GPS satellite to Earth causing it to be off by many yards. Another phenomenon produced by the sun could be even more disruptive. Known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), these solar explosions propel bursts of particles and electromagnetic fluctuations into Earth’s atmosphere. Those fluctuations could induce electric fluctuations at ground level that could blow out transformers in power grids. The CME’s particles can also collide with crucial electronics onboard a satellite and disrupt its systems.”

The NASA report goes on to equate the impact of a solar storm as being similar to Hurricane Katrina, as if the Katrina was just small beer?

In June, 2010 Richard Fisher, the director of NASA’s Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph: “It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigation, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.

“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.

“Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth in a way that is rapid and like a lightning bolt.”

The National Academy of Sciences warned two years ago that power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications could all fail due to intense solar activity.

It claims a powerful solar storm could cause ‘twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina’. That storm devastated New Orleans in 2005 and left an estimated damage bill of more than $125bn (£85bn).

The figure is an estimate for the United States alone.

Mausumi Dikpati of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) said: “The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one.” If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958, when a radio blackout cut the US off from the rest of the world. Voltages in electrical telegraph circuits exceeded 320 volts in Newfoundland. Intense red glow gave way to shimmering draperies of light. It was so intense over Europe that people wondered about fires or even the bomb!

What does this mean for us today? There are several possible scenarios.

Option one, the sun will this time be lazy with respect to cosmic flares, or perhaps shoot them in a different direction, as frequently happens.

This would be good, but even the most optimistic scientists don’t expect us to avoid the impact of solar storms for ever, so neither should you.

Option two, the sun will create the kinds of flare that occurred in 1958, or even 1859. Then the flares had little impact because electrical technology was more primitive, and not essential to the fabric of society. The result was that a few wire cables glowed with heat in a few places. No biggie then, but today much of the U.S. National grid could suffer shutting down water-pumps, mains electricity, sewage farms, petrol pumps, and telecommunications. Banking would, no doubt be affected, and since real money is a thing of the past in today’s digital economy, there will be lots of room for manipulation, the freezing of accounts, ATM timeouts, credit card failures, and the like that bankers can attribute to solar activity.

Prolonged solar flare activity must eventually impact the integrity of satellite communications.

Option three, a large flare will hit the hole detected by  NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft in Earth’s magnetic field which is ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to “load up” the magnetosphere more powerful geomagnetic storms.

Should fires break out, they will be difficult to fight because many water supplies rely on electric pumps. If areas of forest are destroyed carbon di oxide creation would occur on a huge scale, and take years to be reabsorbed.

Some are even predicting a huge Tsunami capable of covering the entire American continent. These people are clearly neither scientists, nor Bible scholars.

It’s easy to pass off concerns about solar flares as unfounded and carry on business as usual. There’s evidence that the U.S. government, however, is planning if not for a solar flare meltdown, some other catastrophe.

Lots of people claim there’s an underground city under Denver International Airport that’s aims to be an Ark in the event of cosmic, or other, emergencies. Additional military bunkers with seven foot thick blast proof doors are a reality. They are designed to remain functional for months, if not years, for core personnel. These are new, or refurbished, installations, not relics from the cold-war.

It’s true there are wealthy people who have invested in the redundant ICBM sites, turning them into underground condos. I’m not kidding. These babies are designed to maintain their integrity if flooded for over three days, and to withstand extremes of temperature.

Tragedies occur for most families at some stage in their life cycle. Loved ones die. Wars, or natural disaster destroy property. We know this and accept it.

What we find less believable is that our secure world of networking, iPads, credit cards, transportation and hypermarkets could crumble leaving us penniless, and reliant upon street- smart, or back-woods, skills.

Were the second, and most likely scenario, to take place severe disruption will occur.

As to the date? We cannot be sure. In a series of papers dating from the early part of the century NASA has been pushing the date of an impending solar based emergency backwards. A few years ago 2012 was thought the strongest possibility. Today the prediction is for May, 2014.

According to NASA today it will be a walk in the park. How different from what was being said 18 months ago!

Do I think 2012 is still a possibility? Sure I do!

In the film ‘Trading Places’ Dan Ackroyd plays Louis Winthorpe III a successful businessman who is deprived of his wealth by the two brothers who employ him. His credit cards no longer work, his bank account is frozen. In this film everything works out in the end, but not before Winthorpe spends time homeless living on the street.

In Dr. Zhivago Alexander Gromeko is a well to do man with an aristocratic background. In the film he was played by Sir Ralph Richardson. As the Russian revolution gets under way we see his fortune change from one in which he lived in elegance, warmth and security to having to share his house with workers who burn anything combustible for heat. Later when he travels into the Urals, it is in a crowded cattle truck, rather than a first class carriage.

Such scenes are, of course, works of fiction, but they also point to how life may be, for many, should our planet be hit in the wrong place today by a large solar flare.

Of course I could be wrong?