What can we do to protect electronics from solar storms?

You don’t need to. The Earth does it for you.

@Caravanfan the carrington event
Could will happen again.
Solar storm of 2012

The 2012 event was a CME. If we suffered an impact of sizeable force, there would be nothing we could do except watch it come toward us for a couple of days before impact.

Edit to add, can you imagine, it ran telegraph lines without earth power source! That sun we take for granted is a mighty impressive ball of fire.

@RedDeerGuy1 What could we do? Shield our critical electronics, reduce our reliance on the electrical grid, maintain non-electric machines in good working order as back-ups, and harden supply lines and information distribution services against the sudden loss of modern conceniences. We could also begin working towards local community self-reliance by decentralizing services like health care, agriculture, power generation, and small scale manufacturing.

What will we do? None of that. It’s estimated that if the Carrington Event was to happen tomorrow, it would take upwards of 100 years to repair the current electrical grid—assuming it could be repaired at all when technological civilization collapses suddenly and without warning.

For nearly 20 years experts on every side of the political landscape were sounding alarm bells in the wake of SARS and MERS that we are unprepared for the next pandemic which they said was definitely, absolutely, 100% going to happen, and sooner rather than later. You see the result. Even as it’s happening people are protesting in the streets to end what few protections were scrambled to blunt the impact.

Just pray that it’s the next generation which has to drink the bitter dregs of prophecy and not you.

If solar radiation could effect electronics because earth lost its magnetosphere we would have bigger problems to worry about than electronics not working.

We’ll have some warning because we have technology to monitor this now. You can simply unplug your devices, no need to shield them. The slight concern is power surges from power grid instability. The grid is more protected than people think but a direct CME hit will likely shut down parts that have yet to be upgraded or rely on satellite communications for control.

According to the Wikipedia article on the Carrington event, such solar storms occur once every few milennia, with the previous one occurring in the year 774. In the meantime we should concentrate on global warming.

@LostInParadise They don’t happen on a schedule. The Sun’s behaviour is stochastic, particularly lately. The Sun has cycles of minimum and maximum output, but over the last couple of decades the Sun has become increasingly unpredictable. Many astrophysicists wonder if something unexpected or at least not well understood is happening to the Sun. Whether or not we get clobbered with a direct hit from a CME isn’t just a possibility, it’s certainty approaching 100% over a long enough period, and could happen at any time.

@SmashTheState you’ll make a good Eugene to my group. Great answers, sir!