Weather Wham from Outer Space: Our Next Big Threat

on't throw away those typewriters and land-line phones just yet. The next decade or so could be a bumpy ride, if the bigshots over at NOAA are to be believed.

Seems the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is going on about the increasing frequency and severity of space storms coming in the next several years. A particularly nasty (read: crackling with geomagnetic disruptive power) storm could play havoc with the world's communication and computer systems, sending our newly wired societies into a tailspin that not even Twitter could help us out of for a few hours if not days.

This is serious stuff. I mean, if we can't tweet about this kind of thing, what good are those mobile phones, smartphones, websites, cell towers, and GPS devices? Who's going to tell the world that the big solar storm is on? How will we know?

Oh, wait. We'll figure it out.

It is rather serious, actually. The scientists — it's not the NOAA administrator but a whole pack of bright guys and gals gathered for the annual of the American Association for the Advancement of Science — are warning that critical computer systems could be disrupted. And by critical they mean financial systems, communication systems, and potentially even weapons systems.

See, it is serious.

Solar flares and other kinds of space storms are nothing new. We Earthlings have been buffeted by them for years. Every once in awhile, a big one hits and the cell towers shudder and the network goes down for a few milliseconds and lots of people get nervous in a Dr. Strangelove kind of way. But things always go back to normal, largely before anyone but the most senior circle of secret-seekers is the wiser. Still, it goes without saying that we're going to run out of luck one day. And the chances of that happening are a good sight better than the chance of being hit by a rogue asteroid (even if you leave out the Bruce Willis factor).

Electronic disruption due to space storm is a reality. Whether we like it or not, we're going to have to get ready for "the big one." We can start by doing simple things like these:

• writing down all those phone numbers on your mobile phone
• making printouts of critical files and storing them in an easy-to-access place like a filing cabinet or a box under the bed
• updating (or, in some cases, creating) a disaster preparedness plan akin to "What to Do in an Earthquake/Tornado/Flood," with a special focus on what to do if electrical power isn't an option for an extended period of time

All kidding aside, we should be ready for something like this because even if we get some sort of warning, the damage is likely to be severe.