Two years ago we almost all got hit by one hell of a storm and no James Spann warning or going to our safe places would have been able to help us.
That is because the storm missed us. And when I say "us" I mean all of us as in all of us on Earth.
This was a solar storm and scientists now believe that the Earth narrowly avoided catastrophe.
"If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," physicist Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado tells NASA.
"It" in this case was two massive clouds of plasma the sun unleashed on July 23, 2012. They barely missed a catastrophic encounter with the Earth's atmosphere. These plasma clouds, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), comprised a solar storm thought to be the most powerful in at least 150 years.
"I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did," Baker tells NASA. "If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire."
NASA offers this sobering assessment of what might have happened:
Analysts believe that a direct hit ... could cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps.
According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers damaged by such a storm might take years to repair.
Here is the link to the full story in Thursday's Washington Post, along with some cool photos and a video.