Scott Dorsey wrote about a supposed Carrington event in 1972. I won’t dispute that. Maybe the solar activity was on that level.
I don’t think he meant to imply that due to our getting through the 1972 event, we have nothing to worry about now; but it is still important to point out that communications technology then was nowhere near as fragile and vulnerable to induced voltages on conductors as it is today.
The number of satellites in orbit at that time was relatively small. GPS was not in use or didn’t even exist.
Consumer electronics still consisted of a lot of vacuum tube circuitry. And telephones were all on twisted pair copper from central offices with Western Electric equipment, everything built to survive an atomic bomb blast.
Just look around right now and you’ll see that today we are substantially more at risk.
Submit letters to the editor at r[email protected].
