Obviously not an electrician...or a historian...and a rational thinker.
The telegraph wire in the 1880s was solid core and about 12 gauge. Today's modern wire (open your mind to all of the wires out there) will be stranded and can have a cross sectional diameter of less than a hundredth of what they used over a hundred years ago. Think about your I pad, your pace maker, your electronic ignition. Did you read of where some railroad ties smoldered under the heat of the charged rails?
Of course this was a test. A test of your thinking power. EVA was so caught up his personal biases that he failed to think. XNYKR failed to do some more research and also failed the test.
Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn
Actually, my background is EE, numbnuts.
And today's "modern wire" as you call it, comes in ALL sizes, not just super thin.
Main power lines are thicker than your wrist. The Quebec power outage in 1989 was short lived.
our YouTube videos are yet more superhype. Even if another Carrington occurred, most systems would continue to operate. Satellites have essentially zero protection from solar flares and yet they somehow survive. Electronics on earth are protected by the atmosphere and a lot of it is shielded/grounded. And any device that is power off will generally be fine.
We will be greatly inconvenienced like people in NY/NJ were after Sandy. But it will not be the end of the earth.
A much more likely scenario would be a high altitude detonation of a high radiation nuclear weapon that will knock out a lot of communications.