The CME Threat

Brother Iain shared a prophetic word on our forum:

I told Ed about my long held weird attraction to the possibility of a catastrophic CME hitting Earth. I did enough research to understand that it would be a cataclysm. Well, I have it on the Highest Authority … it’s gonna happen.

He goes on to mention how his experience with prophecy is appropriately challenging. It’s not fun and games. That has been my experience, as well.

CME is the abbreviation of Coronal Mass Ejection: a sunspot the spits a lot of energy and particles into space, particularly when that wave of stuff hits the earth. It’s also referred to as a Carrington Event. It’s a type of catastrophe, not specifically a matter of how bad it is. In the context he indicated that the strength would be enough to damage a lot of electronic devices, if not all of them. However, he offered no timeline. I have no reason to doubt this is a valid warning from the Lord, all the more so since it echoes in my convictions.

So what’s left is first to query your own convictions as to what God wants you to do about it. Finally, you can query the human knowledge of such things. Science is uniform in stating that we are headed into another solar activity period, which means that we are coming up out of a low period, and the cycle is well established on this. The peak will come in 2025. On top of that, science uniformly notes that our planet’s magnetic field of protection is weakening dramatically. It wouldn’t take much of a CME to do some damage in the current setting.

It is significant to note that, for the time being, every time the sun spins around to point sunspots at us, they keep going relatively quiet. I haven’t heard a convincing explanation from scientists on why this is so. The best explanation for this is our Lord keeping things quiet until He decides otherwise. Given the context of His wrath on the world right now, that means only that it will be a surprise when He drops His protection. We won’t get much warning.

For now, all I can do is share my own convictions. Of course, the previous post is where I asked for help finding a typewriter. I’ll very much miss having a screen and decent software with spellcheck and all that. I confess I’ve gotten lazy about spelling because of it. Right next to my typewriter I’ll keep a dictionary.

But I’m also investing in writing materials. I always carry a notebook and pen on my rides so I can write stuff down and not forget those fine inspirations coming into my consciousness. Even if I don’t look at the notebook later, writing stuff down makes it easier to remember. I’ve got some good Zebra pens and some lined pads, too, along with an old-fashioned leather folder for those lined pads.

For your amusement: I seem to recall reading somewhere about computer hardware when it encounters electrical/magnetic energy fields. It was some time ago, so it noted that floppy disks and tape drives fail first. As the field intensifies, Bluetooth and Wifi chips come next, followed then by miscellaneous micro-processing chips. CPU, GPU and memory (like SSDs) fail next. Proper spinning hard drives fail last (unless you count cooling fans).

But more broadly, in terms of a CME severity, smaller devices and newer devices die first. Electronics die before plain electrical systems. The fatter, and better shielded wiring lasts longer. So, older cars will ride it out better than newer ones. At some point, the energy field overwhelms anything that conducts electricity at any level, and they can burn or melt. Longer wires catch it quicker, because they create a field of their own that invites interference. Exposed electrical grids (up on utility poles) will fail before buried lines, but the transformers tend go before either of them.

Think about this: How dependent are you on this stuff? What part of your mission and calling will change when cellphones, tablets and computers are all fried? What if the broader Internet goes down, or various types of utilities? Iain suggested that you should make a paper copy of anything important to you. Even if memory/storage devices survive, the means to read them may not.

Even more so, think about how it will effect government activities. Surveillance will take a huge hit, as the cameras will fry early. On the other hand, the propensity of government agencies to lag behind civilian technology trends might save them some trouble. Still, if the CME is big enough, life as we know it will change dramatically.

Keep in mind that there will likely be clusters of CMEs. They tend to come in batches. Also, we’ve already just missed some pretty big ones recently. This is how we know that sunspots tend to weaken right now when facing the earth, because huge CMEs burst out the far side and were detected by satellites.

Again, query your own convictions. Be aware how this kind of thing will affect your mission.