WILL TECHNOLOGY KILL US?
The Digital Revolution along with nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence are examples of technology that can result in human extermination. The reports below from the London Telegraph illustrate how technology has become the Black Plague of today.
Note: The solar storm of of 1859 named the “Carrington Event” only affected the telegraph system. Imagine what would happen if such a solar blast occurred today. — RH
Telegraph
The truth about Hard Sun’s solar apocalypse: just how scared should we be?
Tristram Fane Saunders
7 JANUARY 2018 • 7:00AM
You might not have noticed it, but two years ago an event took place which might just have brought about the collapse of modern civilisation.
In July 2012, an enormous flare burst from the far side of the sun. Had it happened just one week earlier, it would have been pointing directly towards the Earth, causing the worst geomagnetic storm in over 400 years.
As Reuters reported at the time, the resulting magnetic disruption could have “fried the world’s electricity grids and left hundreds of millions of customers without power for months or even years”.
Next time, we might not be so lucky. A new BBC series, Hard Sun, imagines a similar solar phenomenon. Two London coppers (played by Jim Sturgess and Agyness Deyn) stumble across a USB drive containing a secret digital dossier, counting down towards an “extinction level event” in five years time.
In early episodes, there is some doubt about the cause – “Did it refer to a meteor, or a comet?” one character asks – but it doesn’t take Scotland Yard’s finest to figure out the truth: the drama begins with the sight of giant flares leaping from the surface of the sun.
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