The U.S. Ran a Solar Storm Emergency Drill—It Was a Messy Failure

The U.S. government recently released a report detailing a first-of-its-kind nationwide space weather emergency drill. It didn’t go well.

If there were a massive coronal mass ejection (or CME) tomorrow that decimates global satellite and energy infrastructures, the United States would be woefully unprepared, as it seems to be for most things nowadays.  

In May of 2024, a slew of federal agencies, including NOAA, FEMA, and DHS, gathered under the banner of the Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation task force, menacingly acronymed as SWORM. The mission was to run a tabletop exercise simulating a solar storm severe enough to mess with satellites, GPS, power grids, astronauts, and every piece of modern infrastructure we take for granted.

The fictionalized scenario was set in 2028, with a series of massive solar flares targeting Earth, while one crew of astronauts headed to the Moon and another was already up there. The simulation unraveled through four modules covering everything from blackouts and radiation exposure to total satellite outages.

The results were not encouraging. But failures like these are how we learn what not to do. Hopefully, some lessons are going to be learned that can be applied to generating better outcomes in the future.

We Are Not Prepared for a Potential Solar Storm Emergency

Turns out, most agencies have a thin understanding of what space weather is and does. Many don’t have proper Continuity of Operations, or COOP, plans for this type of threat.

Even the ones that do are vague on when to activate them. The SWORM report suggests that both government staff and the general public need a crash course in what a coronal mass ejection is and why it might fry our infrastructure here on Earth.

One of the most informative but also slightly scary takeaways that we learned is that if a massive solar storm should bombard the Earth, we’ll get a 30-minute warning, at best, before it hits. That’s because we can’t measure how nasty a CME is until it’s already about a million miles away, which, in solar terms, is like hearing the fire alarm after the flames have engulfed your couch.

The report calls for more space weather sensors, better satellites, global collaboration, and a public education campaign so citizens of the Earth don’t assume World War III has started when our electrical grid blinks out because of a CME.

In the ultimate irony, the day after the exercise occurred, the Earth got smacked by the worst geomagnetic storm in two decades. The universe has a sense of humor, it seems.