The researchers note that this geomagnetic spike is similar to another that occurred in the 10th century BCE. Data from the 10th century spike and this 8th century one indicate that such events were probably localized, not global. That said, they write that “the exact geographic expanse of this phenomenon has yet to be investigated, and the fact that these are very short-lived features that can be easily missed suggests that there is much more to discover.” They compare the scope of these spikes to the South Atlantic Anomaly, a region where the planet’s Van Allen radiation belt dips down near the surface of the planet, trapping radioactive particles and causing problems for satellites cruising nearby.
Ancient peoples like those in Judah would not have been troubled by a localized geomagnetic field spike, but people in the same region today would call it a disaster.
Scary stuff if true. It would probably not be a EMP by itself but would make all the electric equipment vulnerable to solar storms.
It is important to distinguish between EMP and geomagnetic storms. One is transient, the other is a long-lasting DC phenomenon. What the article describes is not an EMP.
I recorded magnetic field strength variations in Northern Virginia over the course of the Halloween Storms. At one point I got a 700 nT variation from the norm, which is pretty extreme. That's out of around 60,000 nT. They can get much worse.
I've noted with some amusement that a geomagnetic storm that would cook the North American power grid would probably go unnoticed in Iraq, with its short runs of power lines that rarely work anyway. This is true of much of the world. Geomagnetic storms affect very long conductors, not short ones, and the primary mode of damage is cooking transformers with high DC current to earth ground. Rewiring to an ungrounded delta configuration is the solution.
A really severe geomagnetic storm could render compass readings useless. I recorded the effects of the Halloween storm because I was using Earth's magnetic field for an outdoor magnetometer calibration. The compass readings would have been "a little flakey" but not unusable.
Reminds me of the evidence presented in Velikovsky's "Earth in Upheaval" and a few of his other books. If the spike's higher than what the earth is supposed to be capable of, then...?