Today, such a superflare would be civilization-ending.

In the year 774 AD, an enormously powerful blast of matter and energy from space slammed into Earth. Nothing like it had been felt on this planet for 10 ka. A mix of high-energy light and hugely accelerated subatomic particles, when this wave impacted Earth it changed our atmospheric chemistry enough to be measured centuries later. Such an event happening today would be catastrophic. It could take out numerous satellites — the particles and high-energy radiation can short out even hardened electronics — and cause widespread blackouts. Those could take a long time to fix, since the bigger transformers used by power grids cannot be mass-produced.

2022-01-29: An even bigger EMP happened in 9125 BP. It was 2x bigger than the 774 AD one.

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