Pillars of incandescent green writhe like gigantic serpents across the skies. Sheets of orange race across the horizon during the most spectacular display of the aurora borealis seen in southern England for 153 years. And then, 90 seconds later, the lights start to go out. Not the lights in the sky - they will dazzle until dawn - but the lights on the ground.Within an hour, large parts of Britain are without power. By midnight, every mobile network is down and the internet is dying. Television - terrestrial and satellite - blinks off the air. Radio is reduced to a burst of static. By noon the following day, it is clear something terrible has happened and the civilised world has plunged into chaos.
A year later, Britain, most of Europe plus North America is in the grip of the deepest economic catastrophe in history. By the end of 2013, 100,000 Europeans have died of starvation. The dead go unburied, the sick untreated.
It will take two decades or more for the first green shoots of recovery to appear - recovery from the first solar superstorm in modern history.
This catastrophe is not some academic one-in-a-million chance scenario. It is a very real threat which, according to a report in the latest issue of New Scientist, remains one of the most potent, yet least recognised, threats to the future of human civilisation. (The source of this 'scaremongery: Daily Mail)
