Remember the Mayan apocalypse? The one that did not happen, at least not in any way we noticed in 2012. According to a news story reported on various sites online and attributed to CBS News, we may have been a lot closer to an apocalypse of sorts than we originally thought.

The doomsday prophecy could have been fulfilled six months earlier on July 23, 2012, but fortunately the Earth was one week ahead of a solar storm that released the largest and most destructive solar flare in 150 years.If that flare had occurred only seven days sooner, we would have been in line for a direct hit and all electrical devices on this planet would have been fried, throwing us back to the 1800s.Most of us do not lose sleep over this possibility. We like to believe we are invulnerable to the natural world. What amazes me is the amount of money that has been spent fighting over climate change and the insanity that defies mathematical logic as to whether the earth is warming or cooling in ignorance to the facts that the earth has undergone several tropical periods and subsequent ice ages before we were here.The egocentric nature of humanity compels these people to argue over something for which they really have no control ultimately. Yes, we can stop burning fossil fuels and live like cavemen, but what will we do when that massive caldera under Yellowstone Park erupts and spews more ash in the atmosphere in the span of several hours than the entire history of the Industrial Revolution did in two hundred some years.The sun's ejections are a direct and imminent danger to our way of life and our dependency on electricity. It is important to know that we can prevent such a cataclysm with some proactive maintenance on our electrical grid.The problem is no one seems to want to invest the money we need to prevent a major worldwide disaster. We are too busy pursuing pointless initiatives and squandering our money to apparently care.It is important to note that the light energy from a solar flare is not the issue, but the expulsion of related magnetic, X-ray and gamma particles that accompany the flare, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, is the threat with which we need to be concerned.These CMEs usually are preceded by an electromagnetic shock wave that would hit the earth first. If either of these made a direct hit on us as a flare did in 1859, it would be devastating today. Back then, there was no electricity other than telegraphs which were fried, so the overall effect was minimal. This is not so today.Anything run by computers would also be burned out if they are attached or come in contact with these electromagnetic waves of energy. Astronauts and people flying in high altitude airplanes would be bathed in high amounts of radiation.The energy would overload the sensitive electronics in all our technology. The electrical grid would become overloaded and it would burn or blow out. Massive transformers the size of houses would be destroyed.Computers could be wiped out if they are not protected. The circuitry in cars and planes could be compromised if the intensity of the shock waves are intense enough. Such disruptions would have indirect effects on shipping, navigation, travel, public safety and logistics.This would affect our food supply distribution, all of our communications and potentially anything else that uses electricity or is plugged into the grid simply because of our reliance on technology.We have been very lucky so far, but scientists say our luck may soon run out as it is only a matter of time before a flare or CME hits us in our orbit instead of missing or glancing off our atmosphere. Most scientists agree the odds are this could happen in the next eight to twelve years. If we do not invest in the grid to protect it, we will find out what the early 1800s were like all over again for at least several months to possibly many years.There is the possibility that we will have up to about 15 minutes warning about this danger and it might be possible to disconnect transformers from the grid manually (cutting the wires), but it may not be enough time to fully protect the grid, and there is a good chance several people could die in attempting to protect the transformers.To me it makes more sense to use technologies we already have like Faraday cages to insulate sensitive equipment and essential components to hopefully minimize the effects of this natural disaster.The government worries about some strange things and has actually written disaster plans for things as outrageous as the zombie apocalypse, but they do not take this threat seriously or do not seem willing to invest the money to protect us.This type of disaster is more likely to occur in the scheme of things than a large meteor or asteroid strike, alien invasion or zombie attack. Hopefully someone will take this real threat as serious as the unlikely zombie attack scenario before this happens.Time will tell. Of course, it might be educational and teach us a lot about what our ancestors were challenged with to have to live without electricity. It would be like Amish farmers without the cheats (cellphones in garages, etc.).I do think that instead of wasting money on all these superfluous projects politicians use to buy votes, they may want to consider doing something that will prevent us from returning to farming as our primary industry. Of course, a slower, simpler world might be more refreshing, but I'm not sure how I will finish Angry Birds.Till next time …