Many people across America were excited to see the northern lights in states where they’re almost never visible. But Glenn points out the terrifying reason WHY the light show happened. “We really dodged a bullet,” Glenn says. The massive solar flare that caused the aurora borealis to be visible in even southern states could have caused “a blackout situation.” Glenn breaks down what it would mean if all our tech was to go down, or even just our GPS systems, and also asks why the government hasn’t taken the steps to protect our infrastructure from something like this.
TranscriptBelow is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Well, I know this is probably not on anybody's charts. But seeing the aurora borealis. Is a very big story that nobody has been talking about. Everybody is like, look at the sky. It's so pretty. Sure. But why is it pretty? Why is that happening? This is the first time in 20 years that we have seen the aurora borealis as low and as South as possible -- or, as it was. But we had an event and I talked about it in our meetings, Stu, last, I think Monday. A week ago Monday. And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. I said, there's a huge CME that just happened. There's a huge solar flare that just happened.
Luckily, it was on the side of the sun.
But it was coming our direction.
But not directly.
It was the biggest solar flare since the Carrington Event in what, 1860, or whatever.
STU: Yeah. 1860, sure.
The Carrington Event you're talking about? That's, yeah, 1860.
PAT: How many times have we talked about the Carrington Event? We're all over the Carrington Event.
STU: Well, Pat just started a new podcast called Pat and the Carrington Event.
GLENN: Pat, wait a minute. I'm trying to look, to see through my eyes. But are you wearing a I'm a fan of the Carrington Event?
PAT: Yeah. I am. I do. I have it available in different colors.
GLENN: Available at Patisajerk.com.
So the Carrington Event happened in the 1860s. And we were hit by a massive solar flare. And at the time, the only -- we didn't really have electricity or anything. But we had telegraphs.
Telegraph wire all over the country, burned up. I mean, literally started on fire. From the telegraph, all the way through all of the poles, it just burned out.
And that is, you know, a significant problem with today's electricity and all of our wires.
That -- that could have been a -- a blackout situation.
An EMP. We dodged a bullet. It could have shut down power companies. And power lines all over the country.
All over Europe as well. For at least a year.
The problem we have is: All of our power transformers, it takes them, I think it's a year to build and replace giant transformers. And we don't have extras.
Nobody is thinking about this stuff.
PAT: And we haven't protected our infrastructure.
GLENN: No.
And it would be very expensive
Bret Weinstein wrote a great article on this, last week. About, you know, he was kind of making fun of how everybody was saying, oh, look at the beautiful sky that will happen next week.
And he was like, it would take so little to protect our infrastructure. And nothing is protected.
We really dodged a bullet.
PAT: Well, this is a few years ago. But they were talking about not just a solar EMP. But an EMP from, you know, a foreigner. A foreign adversary.
And how we could protect our infrastructure from it, for it seems like it was only a billion.
GLENN: I think it's under 5 billion now.
PAT: Yeah. It's dirt cheap in comparison to what we would lose if it actually happened. And they won't do it.
GLENN: You know, that's one of those low probability, high -- what do they call those things?
STU: High impact.
GLENN: Yeah. High impact.
This impact, if we were hit by an EMP. And it takes three nuclear weapons. Launched into space.
Iran could probably do it. You know, when they get their missiles.
PAT: North Korea, yeah.
GLENN: North Korea. All you have to do is put two barges. One on the east coast and the west coast.
You fire two on one. One goes over the middle of America. One goes over the west coast. Then you have another on the east coast.
It takes three missiles, detonated at the right altitude, above America. You would shut us down. And in the first year, 95 percent of our population would die.
PAT: Yeah. Because we're back to the cave time.
GLENN: Stone Age!
PAT: You don't have refrigeration. You don't have transportation.
GLENN: And you cannot repair it fast enough. Because we didn't protect anything.
This is one of the craziest things.
Congress. You're spending money on so much. A turtle tunnel. Spend $5 billion to protect the infrastructure.
PAT: It doesn't make sense not to.
GLENN: No. It doesn't.
STU: It seems like one of the basic things that government is designed to do. There's a lot of things they're doing that they're not supposed to do. Wouldn't this be something that falls into the category of must do?
GLENN: Yes. Yes.
PAT: Yes. And how often do they talk about infrastructure and bridges? We have electronics that could be protected, and they're not being protected.
GLENN: To an that this -- this solar event could have knocked out all of Elon Musk's satellites. They were afraid of those. And all of our GPS.
PAT: Jeez.
GLENN: Do you know what would happen if we lost all of our GPS?
PAT: EMS.
GLENN: So the GPS. Our magnetic field is so far awry right now, that it's about a 30 -- a 30-degree switch, and so it's drifted about 30 degrees.
Okay. So it's not up at the poll. At the top and the bottom.
It's 30 degrees off.
And because of that, it's causing all kinds of holes and thinning of our ionosphere.
So, you know, all of this stuff, can come through.
And we have such a problem with it. It's moving so rapidly, we used to have to adjust our GPS I think it was every five years. Now it's every two years. Because our polls are shifting, it's then a year. It's now every six months, we have to reset our GPS satellites. The poles are moving that rapidly.