“The curious paradox at the heart of space forecasting is that the satellites and supercomputers that empower the observations are themselves vectors of vulnerability.”

Solar storms pose an unprecedented threat to modern technological civilization. While historically harmless to pre-industrial societies, extreme geomagnetic events could now devastate interconnected infrastructure—power grids, satellites, communications, and GPS systems—potentially causing cascading societal collapse across multiple nations simultaneously. As one space forecaster puts it: “A solar flare is the flash of ignited powder. The CME is the cannonball.”