—Stephen King
—John A. Eddy, "The Sun since the Bronze Age" (1976), from Mysterious Universe: A Handbook of Astronomical Anomalies, compiled by William R. Corliss, pages 18 and 26.
—Isaac Asimov, A Choice of Catastrophes: The Disasters That Threaten Our World (1981), page 122.
—Splendora
This website makes use of a free downloadable font for aesthetic value. The font is Denmark Regular, which has a nice Star Trek-like sci-fi flavor. It is available at this webpage, among others.
"Daylight" is a shared-multiverse setting for Daria fanfiction. Rather than being an actual world, the setting is a timeline of events depicting a long-term disaster scenario with a science-fiction theme. The events occur on and around Earth in the writer's chosen Dariaverse.
For unknown reasons and with little warning, the Sun destabilizes and becomes highly eruptive and moderately hotter for a relatively short period of time (several decades minimum, though at the writer's option it can last up to a millennium, easy). This has profound consequences for human civilization, to say nothing of the rest of Earth's biosphere. The disaster unfolds in logical stages over time, throwing down new challenges at a rapid pace on top of the old. A brief chronology of the disaster follows.
Warning of the event is scant. Minutes after Earth-bound observers notice white flashes across the Sun's disk, indicating coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are taking place, solar-monitoring spacecraft report changes in the Sun's temperature, luminosity, and magnetic field. Astronomers begin making phone calls and sending e-mails to government and industry, warning of the eruptions. A severe geomagnetic storm is anticipated, with possible damage to power and communications systems across the globe. As the calls go out, even more flashes are spotted—but the satellites have stopped reporting.
Normally, CMEs take hours to reach Earth. This time the first blast arrives 51.3 minutes after being sighted, offering almost no worthwhile lead time before it slams into the magnetosphere.
Hard radiation saturates space everywhere around the Earth and Moon. All satellites and spacecraft suffer irreparable damage to solar panels, sensors, power plants, and computer circuitry. Communication with all space vehicles ends in seconds. Astronauts and cosmonauts caught in space quickly die from spacecraft fires, life-support system failures, or radiation sickness.
On Earth, the Industrial Age and its offspring (the Atomic Age, the Space Age, and the Computer/Internet Age) end in a matter of minutes as monstrous geomagnetically induced currents produced by solar storms completely destroy almost all wiring, transformers, and microchips on Earth. Power lines, cables, fences, antenna towers, and railroad tracks develop stupendous electric charges, electrocuting bystanders, destroying traffic, and overheating until they melt, creating infernos across whole continents. Nearly every building on the planet with more than 10 meters of conductive wiring, cables, or pipes catches fire. Elevators and air conditioning fail. Pipelines filled with oil or natural gas overheat and explode. Hospitals, government centers, military buildings, factories, hydroelectric stations, pumping stations, water and sewage-treatment centers, and power plants go up in flames. Back-up generators fail for the same reasons the primary power supplies failed. Nuclear facilities lose cooling capabilities and melt down. Oil, gas, and chemical refineries vanish in titanic fireballs. Entire cities burn.
All vehicles dependent on computers or electronics suffer power overloads and circuitry burn-outs. Vehicle batteries and alternators fry. Traffic lights go out. Navigation and guidance systems, including all GPS operations, are destroyed. Aircraft develop on-board fires, lose power, and crash; very few get the chance for a glide-in landing. Missiles and rockets in flight become unguided and go off course; conventional warheads detonate on impact in most cases, atomic warheads rarely do, though their conventional charges explode and scatter radioactive material. Only sailing ships and oared craft retain seafaring abilities; powered ships now drift, many on fire. Modern transportation and all services that depend on it cease. Enormous numbers of passengers in transit are stranded, if not made casualties.
Also destroyed is every electromagnetic communications system in existence. Radios, televisions, computers, telephones (including cellular phones), telegraphs, and the like become useless as earth-orbiting satellites burn out, power-station transformers explode, power lines spark, and microchips short-circuit. Compasses spin madly. Magnetic media such as tape recordings, music cassettes, and the strips on the backs of credit cards, debit cards, and electronic door keys are grossly damaged or wiped clean. ATM machines do not function. Bank personnel cannot open electrically locked safes. Cash registers and produce scanners do not work. Every stock market in the world is down.
On the Earth's nightside, the above effects are more limited and some degree of semi-reliable use may be had from electronic items, at least until they approach the terminator of daylight. A number of people (astronomers and space technologists in particular) are likely to realize something very bad has happened on the dayside, after all communications with that side of the world are instantly lost. If the Moon is visible, it will increase slightly in brightness, signaling that the Sun itself is suddenly brighter. Colorful auroras so intense that people can read by them will cover the sky from poles to equator. Mass panic is highly likely if word of the disaster slips out, especially as dawn approaches. Many might wrongly believe the sun has gone nova.
The crash of civilization’s technological infrastructure prevents any meaningful emergency response from police, fire, or medical personnel, even in their own parking lots. Wildfires spread and unite; fire storms are literally everywhere. The skies in many areas turn black from soot and ash, which discolors rainfall and makes it acidic, damaging paint and corroding metal finishes. Huge amounts of sulfur particles in the upper atmosphere make the Moon appear blue for days. Smoke inhalation and burns become common forms of death.
Regions where large numbers of petrochemical plants and oil refineries operate become toxic infernos spewing lethal clouds into the air for days or weeks. The American Gulf coast from Texas to Louisiana is especially poisonous.
With the loss of refrigeration, everything from frozen foods in groceries to chilled medicines in pharmacies begins to spoil, if not already lost in the fires. Nearly the entire population of the Earth is dislocated and in chaos, except those areas so primitive as to have no industrial conveniences. Among the few technological devices that will work are small battery-powered devices with only a few meters of wiring at most. Flashlights, Geiger counters (slightly elevated background readings), old hand-cranked or battery-operated radios (which produce nothing but static), and small internal combustion engines are examples. Some old-model cars might still operate. Horses, bicycles, skates, and the like work perfectly, of course. So do firearms.
As a side note, terrorists who attempt to take advantage of this turmoil discover they have lost as much technology as everyone else. It is possible that geomagnetic currents will detonate wired explosives being prepared for sneak attacks. This tech loss also applies to military forces. ICBM bases are unable to operate. Submarines with armored circuitry have a chance to operate, but any missiles they launch will be ineffective in the atmosphere. Aircraft on the ground remain on the ground for good. Only infantry, unsupported by air or armor, is as good as before.
As each day after the catastrophe passes, it becomes more difficult to cope with the deteriorating crisis. Food cannot be transported or processed as it once could. Medicine runs out. With so many home and buildings burnt to the ground, shelter is in short supply. Makeshift communities appear across the world, places that offer the comfort of being around others but little safety. People may gather in surviving parks and fairgrounds, in athletic fields and intact sports arenas, and on unused airport runways. Garbage and human waste begin to accumulate. Theft and looting begin, even under thread of execution. With so many travelers left in limbo when transportation systems went down, no other option appears except to walk, bike, or ride horses home. Long trains of homeless refugees and displaced business people fill back roads and superhighways.
Any surviving long metal rails, cables, and pipes still conduct enormous charges of geomagnetic current and are dangerous in the extreme. Over time, these objects will corrode and rust away. Brilliant auroras illuminate nighttime skies everywhere.
Cities that depended on special equipment to keep them operational encounter more difficult problems. New York City’s pumping stations, for instance, no longer operate, so the subway tunnels and sewer systems begin to flood.
Most people may think the "crash" (Hell Day, Judgment Day, Black [insert day of the week], etc.) is only temporary and local, being unable to see the broader reality. Only a few people understand that if the breakdown in technology is more widespread than believed and continues for much longer, everyone is in deep trouble. Little news is available anywhere on the causes or magnitude of the crisis, but rumors are rampant. Many fear a religious apocalypse is at hand; a few begin to act on this supposition.
About a week after Zero Hour, many food supplies grow short or give out. Hunger becomes rampant and turns into famine. The Earth’s six billion people cannot all survive without the complex technological infrastructure created over the centuries to feed them. Food riots engulf whole nations in less than a month. Mobs storm any place believed to contain food. Infantries and civilians who looted armories use up ammunition at a furious rate. The dead number in the millions from warfare, murder, starvation, and local outbreaks of disease in the filthy, garbage-strewn camps of the homeless. Armies, police forces, civilian militias, and criminal gangs have the upper hand with firepower, but against countless attackers all is useless.
In less than a month, humanity begins a thorough looting of every nook and cranny on the planet in a mad search for food, threatening to exterminate every animal species larger than a dog. Only creatures of the open sea are relatively safe, though ashfall from forest fires pollutes the waters. Landfills and garbage dumps are raided. Massacres occur as armed groups attempt to seize remaining resources. Cannibalism appears. Starving masses eat even leaves and grass toward the end, to no avail. In a year’s time, over half of mankind has perished. Few bother to bury the dead. There are simply too many.
Barter appears spreads between groups that elect not to kill each other outright. Items traded for include nonperishable food, propane tanks, tools, small internal-combustion engines, chainsaws, gasoline, oil, medicine, horses, meat and dairy livestock, puppies and dogs, durable clothing, tents and canvas, sleeping bags, sexual favors (i.e., prostitution), working vehicles, bicycles, roller skates, reliable news, precious metals, gems, jewelry, firearms and ammunition (extremely popular now), knives, axes, machetes, body armor, helmets, boots, souvenirs, labor, nonperishable artwork, bombs and explosives, small batteries, good vehicle batteries, telescopes and telescopic sights, laboratory equipment (often for moonshine stills or meth labs), marijuana, alcoholic drinks, tobacco, sunscreen lotion, insect repellent, shopping carts (for pushing along roads), wagons, and garden-grown foods.
A year following Zero Hour, particularly during the first spring after famine has taken its toll, humanity is extremely vulnerable. Most medicines are gone. Wastes, rotting bodies, and garbage are everywhere. Insects like mosquitoes are making a comeback (see “Mass Extinction” below). The survivors are weakened by suffering. The time is ripe for the next Horseman: pandemics.
Diseases that few in the civilized world even recall existed break out in thousands of places. Yellow fever, typhoid fever, bubonic plague (the Black Death), cholera, typhus, pneumonia, influenza, and dengue are rampant and unstoppable. Horrors like Marburg, Ebola, and Lassa fever burn through Africa. Those with HIV can no longer put off the disease with medical “cocktails.” Only smallpox never returns, destroyed by humanity in an earlier, wiser time.
Though not quite as devastating as the above, many forms of cancer, particularly of the skin, are on the rise. Radioactive releases from nuclear-plan meltdowns and toxic chemical clouds are the cause, eating away at the health of the survivors. An increase in ultraviolet light from the sun (UVB) is responsible for the rise in skin cancer with most sunscreen supplies gone, though it is the least of anyone’s worries. The ozone layer is intact and will resolve the problem in time.
By the second year, too, a change in weather patterns becomes apparent, caused by the warming Sun. Storms become more violent and unpredictable, though with faster-moving fronts leading to shorter spells of bad weather. Without technological weather prediction systems in place, dangerous storms can hardly be predicted. Hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones take extraordinary tolls of human and animal life. Further inland, many areas are stricken with long-term drought, creating more famine and hardship.
Animals have already noticed the climate change. Broad migrations of land animals toward the north (in the northern hemisphere) and south (in the southern) take place as they seek cooler lands.
Though it is of little interest now to anyone, low-orbiting satellites begin to fall back to Earth. The warmer Sun has caused the atmosphere to expand, creating more drag on low-orbiting spacecraft. “Shooting stars” become briefly more common as a result.
The first creatures to suffer from the Sun's eruptions are those animals trapped in the massive fires that spread across the land. Many more will be caught in the clouds of chemical poisons and radiation resulting from factory, storage, and refinery explosions. Untold numbers of birds perish that flew near or roosted on power lines.
As hunger sets in, humans with guns and traps go after all remaining wildlife that can possibly be eaten. Zoos and wildlife refuges are raided. Moose, elk, deer, buffalo, and bighorn sheep are hunted into extinction in North America within a decade. Similar situations take place in Africa, South America, and Asia. Elephants, rhinos, large apes, and more disappear forever. Fish make a partial comeback in large lakes and seas as industrial fishing ends.
Subtler damage is also done. Migratory birds that can detect magnetic fields no longer know where to go as the seasons change, and most become extinct within two years after Zero Hour. Shifts in climate doom many species, like polar bears, that were already on the ropes from dealing with the ravenous human race. Scattered poisons resulting from chemical fires and nuclear-plant meltdowns may produce odd creatures here and there, such as albinos or beasts with too many limbs or heads (a fate sadly true for humans, too).
As some species die out, other species take their places. Rats, mice, coyotes, feral cats, snakes, opossums, raccoons, and other small omnivorous animals make a huge comeback even with the larger herbivores being slain by humans. Dogs, however, do well only when humans are around; domestic canines cannot compete with other predators in the wild. Luckily, humans find they will always have a need for dogs, though many breeds (like the toys) disappear in time.
One type of creature does better than all the others put together. Without chemical poisons to check their numbers, insects of every sort multiply, providing food for many surviving birds and small mammals. Among the insects, however, are mosquitoes: the most notorious disease carriers of all time. They do extremely well, feeding on mammals and birds as well as people. Pandemics are in the making everywhere.
As early as one of two years after Zero Hour, it becomes obvious to those living on oceanic coasts that the sea is rising. In the first year, a rise of about 15 cm occurs, the amount doubling every year after. Global warming has gone into overdrive as the hotter Sun brings the temperature up, particularly in the polar regions. Ice melts at an exponential rate. As permafrost is melted in the north, vast quantities of trapped methane are released into the atmosphere, accelerating the temperature change. Whereas the polar caps and Greenland would have taken millennia to melt beforehand, now the process will be completed in about 10 years. Humans can outrun the rising waters even at the end, but many are likely to be trapped on slowly shrinking islands that once were hills and mountaintops.
The total amount of sea-level rise in the first decade will be 80 meters. In the last year of melting, the seas will rise about 40 meters as ice melts everywhere. As the seas warm up over the decade, water expands and takes up even more space than mere melting would have produced, further raising the level to 100 meters. Vast sections of the southeastern United States go under. California develops an enormous inland sea; even larger ones appear in the Amazon Basis, Argentina, northern Europe, Siberia, and central Asia. Bangladesh disappears. For a brief period the oceans are filled with icebergs, then those melt and vanish as well. Many cities like New Orleans, Houston, and London vanish entirely.
The rising seas will make storm surges from hurricanes extremely dangerous. In a short time, hurricanes will become larger and more powerful, with hypercanes (winds over 250 mph) developing after the end of the first decade. Some hypercanes will have enough power to cross relatively narrow lands and continue onward over new oceans, only moderately reduced in power, showering fish sucked from the oceans across the middle of continents.
The increase in atmospheric methane will continue to warm the world beyond the 10-year flooding period. Europe, reduced to cold only a few years earlier, will begin to warm again. Within two decades, Earth will achieve a greenhouse state equal to the hottest part of the Eocene period 55 million years ago, when the polar regions enjoyed a subtropical climate. The shift in climate will produce even further extinctions, until the biodiversity of the planet reaches an all-time low rivaled only by the Permian extinction. Storms become extremely violent; deserts become extremely dry. Even if the Sun were to cease erupting after a single decade, the damage has been done, and reversing the climate changes will take centuries at least.
A decade after the old world ended, humans still fight for survival even when reduced to 500 million or less without other intervention, a drop in population of over 90%. Slowly but surely, life will begin to improve. Farms will raise crops for local markets. Swap meets will be held for barter. Small businesses will appear for manufacturing clothing, tools, and weapons. Contracts will be signed and kept. Someone will figure out how to make new guns. Trade caravans will begin moving from one community to another. Schools will open. Religious services will be held. Lawbreakers will be hunted and punished.
Everywhere around them, people will see the ruins of the old world. Their children will wonder. Stories will be told of the old world, though the old ways will disappear. Life goes on regardless, and to the best of its ability, mankind will too.
Last updated 10/26/08