Stormblood said:
I think it's safe to assume that, if a solar storm actually manages to get past the Earth's protections (magnetic field, ozone layer, etc), we are all dead, never mind internet apocalypse. If a storm manages to hit us like that, it would have to completely destroy the magnetic field and the ozone layer, which means death for all life. It's unlikely it only affects internet and electronic stuff lol
Very correct. We can see the effects of Earth's magnetic field being out of commission because it has flipped polarity at random times (every 500,000 years on average), the last being about 40,000 years ago. During a flip, which takes years to complete, the field is essentially nonexistent, and some of these events have been linked to mass extinctions in the fossil record, such as the Triassic-Jurassic extinction.
It's not good for life at all.