What Would Happen if a Massive Solar Storm Hit the Earth?

What Would Happen if a Massive Solar Storm Hit the Earth?
We all know that major storms can wreak havoc, flooding cities and decimating infrastructure. But there’s an even bigger worry than wind and rain: space weather.
If a massive solar storm hit us, our technology would be wiped out. 
The entire planet could go dark.
“We’re much more reliant on technology these days that is vulnerable to space weather than we were in the past,” said Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
He told Gizmodo, “If we were hit by an extreme event today, it’d be very difficult to respond.”
“Solar storm” is a generic term used to describe a bunch of stuff the Sun hurls our way, including x-rays, charged particles, and magnetized plasma.
A massive solar storm hasn’t hit the Earth since the mid-19th century, but space weather scientists are very worried about the possibility of another.
A solar storm usually starts with a solar flare — a giant explosion on the surface of the sun that sends energy and particles streaming off into space.
...One of the most powerful flares measured with modern instruments took place during a solar maximum in 2003.
It was so large it maxed out our satellite sensors, which registered an X-28 (28 types larger than an X-1 flare, which itself is 10 times greater than an M1 flare).
...But even that 1989 storm looks puny in comparison to the Carrington event, a geomagnetic storm that zapped the Earth 156 years ago.
At the time, the damage wasn’t too bad.
But a Carrington-sized storm today could spell disaster.
The Carrington event of September, 1859 is named for Richard Carrington, the English astronomer who saw the sun flare up with his own eyes.
In the days following Carrington’s observation, a series of powerful CMEs hit the Earth head-on, igniting the northern lights as far south as Cuba.
Currents electrified telegraph lines, shocked technicians, set telegraph papers on fire, and caused widespread communications outages..."

A map showing the at-risk transformer capacity by state for a 4800 nT/min geomagnetic field disturbance. Regions with high percentages of at-risk capacity could experience long-duration outages extending for several years. Image Credit: J. Keppenman, Metatech Corp