Solar Flare Disaster

Incoming!

According to The Other Wiki, a solar flare is a flash of brightness on the sun's surface that causes a sudden release of energy. In Real Life, these are quite common, and (generally) only pose a hazard to astronauts in space. While some potential dangers exist from solar flares on Earth, for the most part, they haven't caused any serious trouble in recent times.^note And most of it tends to be interfering with satellites already in orbit and other sensitive electronics. Otherwise-'ooh, look at the pretty lights! (Aurora Australis/Borealis)'

In fiction, an easy way to cause some sort of disaster is to have a solar flare kickstart the problem. The flare is usually shown as a layer of the sun itself coming off of it and frying anything unfortunate enough to be caught in its path.^note Which by then would be slightly more accurate to describe it as a coronal mass ejection. In other works, perhaps the flare causes magnetic poles of a planet to flip, which causes all sorts of trouble, either by causing it to become geologically unstable, or ruining every electronic device. In other works, some power coming from the flare causes the dead to rise, machines to come alive, or everyone to hang the toilet paper under the roll.

Generally though, in fiction: Flare + Some hapless target = Bad Things Happening.

Of course, Space Is Big and Earth is a very small target. To cause The End of the World as We Know It in real life, a coronal mass ejection would not only have to be traveling in the right direction, but also have the correct vertical orientation relative to Earth's magnetic field in order to be channeled by it rather than blocked. However, the Anthropic Principle naturally dictates that these requirements are met for this form of the trope to take place.

Compare Lightning Can Do Anything, which is another trope of a naturally occurring event causing wonky things to happen. Compare with Star Killing, a larger example where the star is destroyed intentionally to cause disasters.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Moonlight Mile: A flare hits the Galileo transport ship before it leaves for the Moon. The crewmembers of the first lunar expedition have to hide behind the Orion space shuttle and food and water supplies to shield themselves from the radiation.

Comic Books

• Buck Godot Zapgun For Hire: The Great Solar Flare caused the collapse of civilization in the 21st century and its eventual rebuilding.
• Supergirl (Wednesday Comics): An extremely unusual solar flare is driving Krypto and Streaky mad and endangering the Earth's atmosphere. As Supergirl and Mid-Nite point out, the Sun is constantly releasing solar flares, but this one is unusually dangerous because it is being caused by an alien vessel dumping dangerous materials into the Sun (it turns out that an alien species was getting rid of their radioactive weapons, unaware that their actions were harming Earth).
• Superman storyline "Brainiac Rebirth": When his super-computer breaks down due to an electro-magnetic anomaly, Superman guesses that it was caused by one Brainiac's red-sun torpedo exploding into the sun and generating a sunspot. Superman then realizes that he can beat Brainiac by luring his ship to the Sun and creating a sunspot which damages his computer brain.

Fan Works

• Bait and Switch: Defied in the first chapter. The USS Bajor is on a survey mission and is studying a star when they detect a coronal mass ejection. They power up the engines and get out of the way well ahead of time.
• Strange Times Are Upon Us: Brokosh et al. set off a solar flare to destroy a couple Breen warships, but accidentally hit Earth with it, which causes the solar storm of 1859.

Films — Animated

• Vandal Savage's Evil Plan in Justice League: Doom is to launch a rocket at the sun which will create a solar flare and a magnetic trail left by the rocket would guide the flare back to Earth, incinerating the sunward facing side. The flare would wipe out half the world's population and the accompanying EMP would stop anything more advanced than a steam engine from working. Then Savage and his Legion of Doom would emerge from their protected base and rule over the survivors.
• Inverted at the end of Rocka Doodle where a solar flare triggered by Chanticleer the rooster's crowing finally bringing up the Sun and ending The Night That Never Ends inflicted upon his farm by the evil Duke of Owls is what ultimately defeats the evil Owl once and for all, causing him to shrink down to a size smaller than a mouse and subsequently chased away by his own nephew.

Films — Live-Action

• Finch (2021): A solar flare has destroyed the earths ozone, killing most of life and left the Earth a scorched wasteland, possibly the last surviving human is Finch and his only companions are his dog Goodyear and a robot he built Jeff.
• Knowing: A solar flare is featured at the end, where it destroys all life on the planet.
• Autómata: Solar flares have decimated the human population of the planet, and are continuing to destroy the world.
• The 1990 Japanese/American co-production Solar Crisis revolves around an international space mission to go to the Sun and detonate a nuclear weapon which will make a gigantic solar flare that is predicted to cook Earth to go off early, sparing the planet.

Literature

• Shows up in Larry Niven short stories:
  • "Flare Time" is about one of these. It's about how regular solar flares force the Earth colonists to take shelter and cause Medea's native life forms to come out of hiding.
  • Inconstant Moon: The protagonist initially believes that the sun has gone nova and the world is going to end, but realizes that that can't be the case or it would have finished ending already. Instead, the solar flare just killed everything on the side of the planet facing it.
• In The Maze Runner Trilogy, solar flares and a pandemic that followed led the the demise of civilization, save for a few bases here and there.
• In James Michener's Space, a solar flare interrupts the Apollo 18 mission while two astronauts are on the moon. They're both killed; the third astronaut escapes in the command module.
• In Shea and Wilson's Illuminatus!, the disaster that destroyed legendary Atlantis is due to an artificially induced solar flare brought about by an embittered Moral Guardian.
• Suspected to be the case why Mulolowa is barren in Junction Point, as it still has an oxygenated atmosphere despite being lifeless.
• A recurring plot element in the Rihannsu novels is a Romulan-developed technique called "Sunseed", in which a starship can cause a star to produce a directed solar storm of variable yield that can also affect subspace multiple light-years away.
  • In My Enemy, My Ally, this is initially used to temporarily blind a Starfleet task force's sensors, covering the Romulan capture of the Vulcan-crewed USS Intrepid. After attacking the Romulan base where the crew is being held, the Enterprise, Intrepid, and the friendly Romulan ship ChR Bloodwing use Sunseed to destroy some of their pursuers.
  • Scotty's subplot in The Empty Chair concerns efforts to render Sunseed useless as a military tactic, eventually leading him to use Eisn, the primary of the Romulan home system, to defeat a Romulan attempt to destroy Earth with a Sunseed-derived technology. Early in the book the Romulan Grand Fleet also tries to glass the rebelling colony of Artaleirh by making their sun produce a solar flare, but the Klingons throw a Spanner in the Works.
• Spock's World by the same author as the Rihannsu series describes primordial Vulcan as a verdant planet with extensive forests and bodies of water. A massive solar flare transformed it into the desert planet of the present day, burning away forests, boiling oceans, and stripping away most of the atmosphere. "Sunstorm weather" is mentioned as manifesting periodically up until nearly the time of Surak, and the secession debate takes place in a massive shelter built against such weather.
• The Sword of the Spirits trilogy by John Christopher is apparently set in a medieval society that's arisen after a nuclear war has caused machine technology to be banned. It's later revealed that the disaster was caused by an increase of radiation from solar flares; thanks to Future Imperfect the descendants assumed this as the surviving literature all spoke of fear of nuclear armageddon.

Live-Action TV

• Farscape:
  • In "Till the Blood Runs Clear", solar flares in one system allow Crichton's pod to enter unstable wormholes. However, it needs repairs and the mechanic states that it'll be four years before the flares come again. A later episode reveals that she was lying.
  • In "Suns and Lovers", solar flares have destroyed two trade stations in a system, and now the third and last of them is threatened. It turns out that a cult which worshiped the system's star and considered the trade stations blasphemous found a way to "attract" solar flares. The solution is one of the funniest scenes in the series.
• Into the Night. The sun has started to emit lethal gamma radiation, killing anyone on Earth who is exposed to sunlight, with the radiation penetrating any normal building or underground shelter. The protagonists are on an airplane that has to keep ahead of the sunrise. There's a Turkish spin-off Yakamoz.S-245 involving a diesel-electric submarine that can only surface at night.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Shadows and Symbols", the IKS Rotarran uses its tractor beam to cause a solar eruption and destroy a Dominion shipyard.
• The Nova episode "Secrets of the Sun" analyzes the physics and behavior of the Sun in detail, including the potential damage a coronal mass ejection could do to Earth's electric grid.
• Doctor Who: A recurring issue in the series.
  • The Fourth Doctor finds humans in an ark in "The Ark in Space" due to flares making the Earth dangerous to live on.
  • A more realistic version in "Bad Wolf" — a solar flare causes a brief disturbance for the Game Station, enough for the human controller wired into the system to briefly regain sentience and give the Doctor vital information. While this is a good thing for the Doctor, it's definitely a disaster for her superiors the Daleks.
  • "The Beast Below" has them the reason being why the UK (and other nations) had evacuated to the stars.
  • "The Rebel Flesh" has it being a common problem in the 22nd century because of unknown reasons. One kickstarts the plot and causes the clones to become sentient.
  • A solar storm plays havoc with the defenses of the bank of Karabraxos in "Time Heist" causing the Doctor to realize that the heist was planned out by someone with knowledge from the future. Eventually, the solar storm incinerates the bank and perhaps the entire world of Karabraxos.
  • "In the Forest of the Night" has the Earth about to be incinerated by a truly massive solar flare, thankfully the day is saved thanks to a psychic child and some trees. This has apparently happened before, as anomalous tree rings reveal.
• For All Mankind: A large solar storm hits the Moon in the first episode of Season 2, bombarding the surface with radiation and causing the dust to move in ripples.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • The plot of "Up the Long Ladder" is kicked off when a colony is rendered uninhabitable by solar flares.
  • A variation occurs a couple of times with starships creating solar flares to destroy enemy ships, including by Klingon commander Kurn in the episode "Redemption", and by the Enterprise, manned by a skeleton crew, in the episode "Descent".
• In the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode "Hegemony", a series of coronal mass ejections in the Shangdi System do not themselves cause any harm to anything important; instead, they seem to be a trigger for a Gorn attack there and then the nearby human colony on Parnassus Beta.
• In one episode of Smallville, a coronal mass ejection causes Clark's powers to go haywire, alternately activating at random and failing to activate at all, and nearly leading to him being unmasked by a paparazzi passing through town. From this Pete guesses that Clark's abilities are powered by the Sun.
• Stargate-verse:
  • Solar flares firing up in the route of a Stargate's wormhole can lead to time travel, with three instances of this (the Stargate SG-1 episode "1969", the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Last Man" and the Direct to Video film Stargate: Continuum) affecting the cast directly. It's also used in the SG-1 episode "2010" to send a message back in time through the gate.
  • Also, the Stargate Atlantis episode "Echoes" has the Atlantis Expedition dealing with a coronal mass ejection (for once, referred to as such rather than a flare) that will completely fry the planet Atlantis is on.
• In The 100, solar flares are a regular problem for people onboard the Ark space station. Ironically, it turns out that, though they've been living in space in order to avoid the radioactive fallout on Earth, they've actually absorbed more radiation, thanks to solar flares, than they would have if they'd returned to the Ground.
• This is a major part of the backstory of Ultraman X. Ten years before the series, Ultraman X threw the Big Bad into the Sun, causing a massive solar flare that resurrected Spark Dolls worldwide as giant monsters and caused protagonist Daichi's parents to mysteriously vanish. X's corporeal form was also destroyed by the flare, turning him into nothing more than sentient computer data.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Inconstant Moon" (an adaption of the Niven short story), the first sign for those on the night side that something has happened to the Sun is that the Moon is shining far brighter than normal. Professor Stan Hurst initially believes that the Sun has gone nova and that they have only five hours to live before the entire planet is destroyed. As such, it's a relief when it turns out to "just" be a massive solar flare... though the reprieve means they have to start thinking about a tomorrow again. At the end of the episode, there is extreme flooding, but the scale of the disaster is not made clear.^note In the original Niven short story, most if not all of humanity in the Eastern Hemisphere is presumed dead, but there are at least some survivors in North America.

Podcasts

• Solar focuses on the crew of a spaceship attempting to survive and hold out for rescue after a massive solar flare leaves their ship disabled. The flare also does significant damage to Earth, effectively acting as an EMP and disabling the majority of electronics in the Americas.

Tabletop Games

• Traveller Classic, Alien Module 8: Darrians. In the Back Story, the Darrians were performing an experiment on their sun when an unexpected side effect caused massive stellar flares that burned their planet's surface like a blowtorch and wiped out their high-tech civilization.

Video Games

• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Played realistically. Flares will just disrupt communications with other civs for a set period of time, opposed to frying the surface. However, atrocities will be kept secret.
• Humanity is barely surviving in the future of A New Beginning thanks to ecological mismanagement turning the world into a wasteland and soon, the last dregs will be wiped out by a solar flare without the ozone layer to protect them.
• In Ciel nosurge, Ra Ciela's sun, Bezel, is dying. It occasionally gives off powerful flares called Wave Bursts, which travel towards Ra Ciela and kill anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast. Justified because Bezel has already reached its red giant phase^*due to the dimensional distortion caused by the interuniverse transfer that brought Nero and Ion to Ra Ciela, with Bezel receiving the distorted waves that turned it into a red giant well before its time. The planet has been fried by the radiation, except for an area in the north pole protected by an electromagnetic shield and dome, as Ra Ciela's own electromagnetic field is already unable to deflect the flares.
• Assassin's Creed. The First Civilization was wiped out when a solar flare hit Earth and caused it to become geologically unstable. The driving goal for the series up until after III is to stop this from happening again.
• Starflight. Solar flares are occurring all over the sector the game is set in, causing entire worlds to be wiped out and driving the search for planets to colonize. Investigating ruins on Earth show that this happened in the distant past as well. The cause of the flares then and now is eventually revealed to be the Ancients, who are destroying other sentient life with a weapon known as the Crystal Planet. The motive behind the Ancients doing this is that they are actually Endurium, the fuel used to power starships. However, their biology is so radically different from other life that they have no way of communicating to others.
• In FTL: Faster Than Light, you may randomly warp near a star which periodically belches out solar flares. Each time this happens, it starts fires inside your ship. Depending on your ability to keep up with the fires and where they appear, this can range from a minor annoyance to a crippling setback.
• One of the random events in RimWorld is a solar flare that knocks out all electrical devices for about a day or so. This can spell doom if it happens in a colony located in a climate and season where electric heating/cooling are necessary for survival. It's also one of the few events that can't be counteracted in any way, the only thing to do is wait it out.
• The Long Dark's plot revolves around the Auroras, that knocked out all electricity as far as can be ascertained, and even changed the behaviour of predatory animals like wolves and bears. Sometimes, in clear nights, the auroras recur, whereupon they make animals even more aggressive and glowy in a sickly green hue, and most bizarrely, restore power to the entire grid of Great Bear Island. It's not just random power either, it's perfectly in line to get computers, radios, and other sensitive electronics working normally. Even if they're not connected to anything. Loose wires also become live, with very hazardous results if touched.
• Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon: Solar Flares happen periodically on maps with nearby stars in them. Ships caught in the solar flare will receive damage and be set on fire.
• Stellaris occasionally spawns a star system with an unstable star and a tomb world at risk of being fried by superflares. In fact, the planet used to be life-bearing before said flares turned it into an irradiated hellscape. You can settle the world like any other, and a simple local research project can protect the planet from the incoming flares, but you only have a short window of opportunity to conduct the necessary research before bad things happen to your colonists.
  • You can discover a dead world with a bunker underneath it containing the last survivors of a planet wiped out by a solar flare. Once you wake them up from suspended animation, you can let them join your empire, become your vassal, or just kick them out into the wider galaxy.
• Solar flares are one of several possible Geo Effects you may have to contend with in Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2. They appear as an Advancing Wall of Doom that periodically sweep across the whole map, disabling shields and setting multiple fires on any ship they touch. Aeldari vessels are immune to flares due to their entire species' mastery of life in space, but everyone else must seek shelter in Asteroid Thickets or Space Clouds to avoid disaster.

Visual Novels

• In Double Homework, when the protagonist and Tamara are trapped in a fallen cable car on a mountainside, a solar flare is disrupting cell service, depriving them of their ability to call for help. Instead, they force the door open, triggering a deadly avalanche.
• In Robotics;Notes the Earth is currently experiencing extreme weather caused by frequent solar flares, which are also messing with electronics worldwide and causing them to malfunction and harm people. While this is all happening the main character, Kaito, finds the "Kimijima Kou" files that claim the reason for the solar flares is that the sun is about to explode, and that governments worldwide are trying to cover it up. This turns out to be propaganda by Kimijima, to distract the public while he attempts to artificially create a solar storm big enough to kill five billion people.

Web Original

• In Sagan 4, the first mass extinction event was caused by a solar flare.
• The Cyanide and Happiness short Ladder Part: 3 shows a solar flare destroying the Earth and all its inhabitants, except for a father and son who escaped using a ladder.

Real Life

• The Solar Storm of 1859 (a.k.a. the Carrington Event), which pushed both sets of polar aurorae down to tropical latitudes and caused telegraphs to fail all over the world (while some worked via induced current even after being disconnected from their batteries). If such a storm happened today, it could be devastating to the modern world.
  • Almost happened again in 2012. Luckily, it missed us by a week. Fun Fact: there is a 10-12% chance it could happen again in our lifetimes...
• The 1989 Geomagnetic storm that put Quebec into a blackout for nine hours. The effects of the storm were enhanced by the fact that Quebec sits on the Laurentian Shield, a large rock formation that prevented natural grounding. This allowed the energy to take the path of least resistance, such as the electrical transmission lines, causing the entire Hydro-Quebec network to short out.
• The main reason Mars is lifeless (as far as we know) is because its magnetic field was too weak to keep the solar wind from stripping away most of its atmosphere over time.
• Blasts of solar radiation cause the Earth's atmosphere to expand, greatly increasing Space Friction in low orbit. This forces satellites in those orbits to expend fuel, or their orbits will decay faster; either way, their operational lifetime is shortened.
• These are likely to be a problem for any planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. Red dwarfs are smaller and dimmer than our Sun, meaning their habitable zones are closer, and so any planets in them are likely to be tidally locked (i.e. the planet would rotate once every time it orbited its star).^note However, tidal locking is not guaranteed to happen Tidally locked planets are unlikely to have strong magnetic fields to protect them from solar flares. On top of that, red dwarfs (especially young ones) are very prone to flaring, and can produce big flares that put the Sun's flares to shame.
• Young Sun-like stars are known as T Tauri stars, that are known to have much more activity than our own comparatively calm Daystar, with strong stellar winds, extensive coverage of starspots, and of course flare activity. Planets in orbit around such stars are thus likely to be lifeless.

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