Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything

by Michio Kaku

The Carrington Event happened when the Electric Age was in its infancy. Since then, there have been attempts to reconstruct the data and then estimate what might occur if another Carrington Event were to happen in modern times. In 2013, researchers at Lloyd’s of London and Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) in the U.S. concluded that another Carrington Event could cause up to $2.6 trillion in damages. Modern civilization could come to a grinding halt. It would knock out our satellites and the internet, cause short circuits in power lines, paralyze all financial communications, and cause global blackouts. We would be thrown perhaps 150 years into the past. Rescue and repair teams would fail to come to the rescue, because they too would be caught in the global blackout. With perishable food rotting, eventually this could trigger massive food riots and a disintegration of social order and even governments, as people desperately scavenge for scraps of food.