How a massive solar storm could fry our entire grid

In today’s Big Story podcast, depending on your mood, it sounds either terrifying, or like a sweet release from modernity.

But solar storms hit the Earth all the time, and it’s only a matter of time until a truly gigantic one fries us—it’s happened before, and will again. Our modern reliance on electricity leaves us much more vulnerable to solar flares, and we really don’t know how the grid will handle the power of such a storm.

Christopher Mims is a technology columnist with the Wall Street Journal. He says there’s reasons to be optimistic in terms of the way scientists are mobilizing to prepare for the worst-case scenario. “It’s just been so long since we’ve been faced with an existential threat where it felt like people were actually doing the right thing about it,” says Mims.

So how should we test our electrical grid’s resilience without turning it all off and then back on again? Should we do that?

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