Most of civilization's electricity is generated far off-site from where it's delivered. This is because you don't want to be running and refueling coal/gas/nuclear plants inside cities, hydraulic/wind power can't be moved, and solar panels are cheaper to install on flat desert terrain than on cities:

So in practice this means running power over hundreds or even thousands of kilometers. E.g. here are the Chinese long-distance lines:

Gemini 3.1 Pro-preview in AI studio American long-distance lines:

These are simplified maps meant to illustrate how insanely long power lines get. The true shape of solar storm vulnerability looks like a spiderweb overlayed on population density (see below), which you can visualize on this website.

The fact that civilization finds it economical to generate its electricity hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from its population centers is rather mind-blowing given the infrastructure involved. For example, the Tucuruí line spans the Amazon rainforest and the Amazon river to supply the Brazilian coast with inland hydropower:

China's Zhoushan Island crossing involves lattice pylons taller than the Eiffel tower and spanning 2.7 kilometers of open sea:

These transmission lines respectively power 2.4 and 6.6 GW, which is insane. The [...]

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Outline:

(05:46) Solar storms can cause LPTs to violently, messily explode

[... 4 more sections]

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First published:
March 8th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ghq9EwiXbRbWSnDzF/solar-storms

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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