Well, This is Terrifying....

Apparently, the "experts" (I put it italics because I'm not sure that anyone is a true expert in forecasting space weather) were greatly surprised over the solar storm earlier this week. 

See article here. There are a number of useful items in the comments. 

We've talked about this too many times to count: if we have a major Carrington Event (named after a violent solar storm in 1859). If that would occur today, we would go back to 1860 without the infrastructure of 1860. Deaths will be in the tens of millions -- conservatively. 

Yet, the U.S. government worries about everything but the really important problems.