Internet Outage Could Last for Months Following a Solar Storm

Imagine an internet outage lasting for months.  According to a new research paper, this is exactly what might occur if a large solar storm battered our planet.  The good news is that the probability of normal solar winds escalating into a full-blown solar storm is unlikely, something that would only be expected to occur perhaps every 100 years or so.  But that bad news is, well, you know what the deal is with “100-year storms” these days.

How a Solar Storm Could Create a Lingering Internet Outage

Simply put, according to the research paper, our infrastructure is not prepared for a large-scale solar event.  At least, that represents the current line of thinking, but nobody really knows for sure – although I’ve written about space weather before, a large solar storm (AKA coronal mass ejection) is very rare so its exact impact is unknown.

In fact, only 2 such storms have ever been recorded, one in 1859 and one in 1921, but although these events caused a “geomagnetic disturbance” on Earth, we obviously don’t have any data on how this might have impacted modern infrastructure.  However, a smaller solar storm in 1989 caused a power outage in Quebec, Canada that lasted approximately 9 hours.

Despite the fact that the impact of these events on modern infrastructure is unstudied, the research paper took a shot at assessing the vulnerabilities.  On the plus side, regional connectivity would probably not be impacted because the regional cables tend to be fiberoptic cables that are immune to the effects of geomagnetic activity.

Unfortunately, the repeaters that boost the strength of the long, intercontinental undersea cables that connect nations are vulnerable.  These repeaters are placed 30-90 miles apart, and if one goes down it could render the entire cable useless.  If this happens to multiple cables serving the same region, an entire continent could experience a lingering internet outage.

From a utility emergency preparedness perspective, a long-lasting internet outage would obviously be problematic during recovery efforts (not to mention during “blue sky” days).  Although workarounds could be employed, generally speaking this situation would make person-to-person and machine-to-machine communication difficult.  Let’s hope we never have to find out for sure!