The axiom in real estate is location, location, location. So too when it comes to solar flares. Thankfully the earth was not in the cross hairs of the sun when it belched on April 2, 2001. If we had been there would have been no September 11, 2001 to worry about. We would be more into building wood wheeled carts- those of us that were left.
Most eveyone is familiar with our hurricane categories. A one is no big dea; however, a CAT 5 can remove everything in it"s path. The same holds true with tornadoes. But what about solar flares, which are different than coronal mass ejections (CME"s). CME"s are heated electrified plasma that takes around 48 hour to travel to earth whereas a solar flare is radiation (of various forms) that can reach the earth in eight minutes!
A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. Radiation is emitted across virtually the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves at the long wavelength end, through optical emission to x-rays and gamma rays at the short wavelength end. The amount of energy released is the equivalent of millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time! The first solar flare recorded in astronomical literature was on September 1, 1859.
Since then solar flares have been measured on a five letter ranking: A,B,C, M, and X. The most violent storms got the X ranking. Within each of those five letter though was a 1-20 ranking. On April 2nd, 2001, the most violent solar flare in recorded history short forth from the sun at an x+ level causing scientists to create a new measurement- the Y class!
There"s a lot of reasons that our life can be ended in minutes and one of them has to do with solar flares!
The worst case scenario is a violent CME that accompanies a solar flare with both coming at us in a 1-2 punch during the suns peak activity cycle. Can you say 2012? Scientists are concerned that what is now the low sun spot activity cycle (40% higher than normal) might be 40% higher than normal at the peack activity level. But, worst of all what that might mean come 2012?
By the way, you can but converter kits for your tornado shelters (into solar flare shelters). No kidding! :-)