If America Lost Its Electricity: An Electromagnetic Shock
On July 23rd 2012 particles from a much larger solar ejection blew across the orbital path of Earth, missing it by days. Had it hit America, the resulting geomagnetic storm would have destroyed perhaps a quarter of high-voltage transformers ..
.. America runs on roughly 2,500 large transformers, most with unique designs. But only 500 or so can be built per year around the world.
.. Eventually, months later, about three quarters of the benighted area has power for at least ten hours a day. It would have been worse had 41 countries not dismantled transformers for reassembly in North America. (The most generous donors have to accept rolling blackouts.) Martial law ends six months after the original energy surge. Roughly 350,000 Canadians and 7m Americans have died.
.. The sun probably poses a greater risk of a sustained outage than hackers or saboteurs
.. a complete collapse of the grid could probably be prevented by protecting several hundred critical transformers for perhaps $1m each.