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Articles by Christopher Mims

Christopher Mims's dystopian non-fiction is sought after by an ever-growing roster of publications.

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Solar Flare image by NASA/GSFC/SDO

Solar flare. (Image by NASA/GSFC/SDO.)

If you’re like us, you’re totally burned out on all the absurd, disingenuous ways that marketers are trying to connect their wares to Earth Day. Perhaps part of the problem is that no one really knows what they’re talking about when they say they want to “save the Earth.” Save the Earth from what?

We’d have a better sense of our mission if we spent some time contemplating the threats. So in order to breathe some life back into the most worn-out secular holiday since Something on a Stick Day, we’ve decided to expand on Eric Roston’s list of ways the Earth could actually be destroyed. Know thine enemy!

1. Power grid destroyed by electromagnetic flux from the sun, taking our civilization back to the 19th century. Oh and all the nuclear power plants melt down.

This is a real thing that could happen tomorrow and yet who ever talks about it? I mean aside from NASA and the Department of Defense.

Basically the idea is that the sun could experience a geomagnetic storm so big that if the Earth were in its path, it would induce huge current... Read more

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