Except that it can't happen. It will never happen. It happened in '89 and only affected a few million people. They all had power back within nine hours.
People watch too many movies. EMPs and CMEs are frankly overrated.
Solar storms have happened in the past and will happen again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_storms
I have little doubt that a strong event could cause severe disruptions and i see no reason why it won't happen eventually.
The question is how common a Carrington event really is. You could start to find out by looking for historical accounts of aurora in equatorial regions that coincide with aurora in other parts of the world.
I've seen plenty of breathless doomsday porn on the subject, but I will go a considerable distance out on a branch to charitably assume that you did not mistake any of this for actual analysis and instead formed your opinion on the basis of something a bit more credible (or at least thoughtfully conducted). I'd be interested in reading that. Could you link me? Thanks.
If yes, a sufficiently powerful solar storm could easily destroy electrical transmission lines, fry every inductive motor on the planet and (if strong enough) permanently disable every consumer grade radio in existence.
The western world would have a very bad time.
Motors and electronics apart from ones in orbit will not be affected.
This will be enough.
Some people today estimate that you really only need to take down around a dozen key power stations to essentially take down the whole grid in the lower 48. If the Carrington event was indeed worldwide, we wouldn't be able to get back to where we were for a while. We're talking little or no electricity, little or no radio, etc.
Again, the question really comes down to "What are the odds?" The CE seems to be very, very unlikely. If there were a handful of historical accounts of aurora in equatorial regions worldwide I think we'd be much more proactive about it.
Nothing is that unshielded. Things were designed to survive lightning back then, and they are designed to survive lightning now.
The question is really how our power distribution grids will fare. And the experience with telegraph back then is very relevant.
That's where almost all the energy is. AFAIK, it doesn't start to become a problem because current antenna have an incredibly low sensitivity on that range. But well, I can easily overlook some detail.
Heck, a good solar storm could knock GPS out for a day or two -- what's the economic impact of that?