the Lights

[xxfinebeanzxx]

As we all know Aurora Borealis is caused when charged particles from a solar flare hit the atmosphere but how big of a solar flare could have caused this catastrophic damage?

 any thoughts? 

[stratvox]

Google "Carrington Event". Also google "coronal mass ejection" and/or "CME".

At some point our electrical and telecom systems are going to get completely destroyed by the sun (assuming we haven't seen ourselves off first via desertification permian-style). The scope of destruction is entirely possible, and in fact it's possible that it could be worse than depicted in the game. Cast an eye on how close that bullet was just this past March, for example: https://www.iflscience.com/the-earth-just-dodged-one-of-the-fastest-coronal-mass-ejections-ever-67962

I understand that current thinking is that the Carrington Event (which took out the nascent international telegraph system) was a middling-sized CME, but I'm far from an expert on solar events like this.

[xxfinebeanzxx]

16 hours ago, stratvox said:

Google "Carrington Event". Also google "coronal mass ejection" and/or "CME".

At some point our electrical and telecom systems are going to get completely destroyed by the sun (assuming we haven't seen ourselves off first via desertification permian-style). The scope of destruction is entirely possible, and in fact it's possible that it could be worse than depicted in the game. Cast an eye on how close that bullet was just this past March, for example: https://www.iflscience.com/the-earth-just-dodged-one-of-the-fastest-coronal-mass-ejections-ever-67962

I understand that current thinking is that the Carrington Event (which took out the nascent international telegraph system) was a middling-sized CME, but I'm far from an expert on solar events like this.

The Carrington Event seems very similar to the lights as two telegraph operators were able to operate on the auroral current alone much like how the flashlight works when the aurora is around as both worked fine with no battery at all. 

[stratvox]

There's no question that a CME is the basis for the world posited by TLD.

[xxfinebeanzxx]

30 minutes ago, stratvox said:

There's no question that a CME is the basis for the world posited by TLD.

that's true but the size means a lot in terms of a CME as some CMEs aren't big enough to affect things much like the CME in TLD

[stratvox]

The great thing about fictional settings is the CME can be just as big as the game needs it to be