You didn't actually see the Sun.

It's not a small yellow ball.

Standing on the shore of Lake Erie on a cold windblown April day, I was reminded of the fury of nature. Our ancestors were in far better touch with their environment.  As far as we know, their civilizations were almost always erased by natural disasters. 

We speak of our defenses.  We brag about our seawalls.   A good example was last week’s eclipse.  We planned for a worse case scenario.  Which was all about the inconvenience of crowds and cell phone connections.  We sounded very brave.  There was advice against  looking directly at the sun, and we were given free dark glasses. 

Spoiler Alert! That yellow ball seen through the glasses is a atomic furnace, a giant ball of nuclear explosions, thousand per second.  An unimaginable storm of elemental particles that can fling billions of tons of matter across space in all directions.  You didn’t tame it with dark glasses. 

Actually, it is right now an imminent threat to our world far worse than a mere epidemic (although, it may just seem that way, since our last few pandemics were virus-mild events compared to what is possible when viruses—or “Chinese” labs—get serious). 

As a NASA study puts it: “Besides emitting a continuous stream of plasma called the solar wind, the sun periodically releases billions of tons of matter called coronal mass ejections. These immense clouds of material, when directed toward Earth, can cause large magnetic storms in the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere. Such space weather can affect the performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems.

“Space weather can produce solar storm electromagnetic fields that induce extreme currents in wires, disrupting power lines, causing wide-spread blackouts and affecting communication cables that support the Internet. Severe space weather also produces solar energetic particles and the dislocation of the Earth’s radiation belts, which can damage satellites used for commercial communications, global positioning and weather forecasting.”

Now it isn’t like to hit next Wednesday and neither the Mayan calendar nor Nostradamus predicts it.

It is just something to look forward to every 100 to 200 years, causing simply a “catastrophic failure of commercial and government infrastructure in space and on the ground.” (again Nasa)

And of course we have elected a Congress of able men and women who are keenly aware of such events, as inevitable as an eclipse, and they, serving as always the public interest, have made all the necessary preparations, “strengthening vulnerable infrastructures in space and on the group and developing advanced forecasting capabilities.” (NASA recommendations)

Or they will, just as soon as they get organized or run out of “enemies” to investigate or impeach…or get reelected. 

Ancient civilizations knew it.  On the shores of a great sea or ocean you can sometimes feel it.  At the foot of an erupting volcano it might seem real.  Nature is not what you find in a greenhouse or arboretum.  Even this planet is fragile.  That period you probably didn’t see as you scanned the last sentence.  That’s us in an imaginable large library of print in unknown languages, if we can even call them languages. 

We live on the edge of an abyss.  Some call it the future. 

Of course, government is the problem, not the answer.  Until it is.