On an Earth regularly ravaged by solar storms as strong as as the Carrington Event, how would technology advance?
The world I'm thinking of is a large moon of a gas giant. It's fairly Earth-like, perhaps a bit smaller, might be a bit magical, but sits about where we sit around a star very similar to ours, except that this star absolutely loves throwing its corona around.
Suppose this world was struck by an extreme coronal mass ejection as strong as the Carrington Event every few months. What I want to happen is technology stagnates at a late 1700's early 1800's level for centuries. But that sounds unlikely. There's plenty of technological breakthroughs that don't require electricity that occurred in the late 1800's and early 1900's, like the internal combustion engine. But I'm okay with this, to an extent. I want to understand exactly what the consequences of regular devastating (from our perspective) solar storms would do to a civilization.
The biggest effect that I'm aware a powerful CME causes is frying all electronic mechanisms connected to long wires. Are there others I'm not considering?
What level of technology might they rise to, and what exceptions that we associate with the electrical era might they have despite lacking electricity?
Is this even the right mechanism to obtain the technological stagnation I'm seeking?
Most specifically, given that I want technology to stagnate at that level, what is the most "advanced" or "surprising" development they might achieve despite electrical engineering being severely stunted?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/126062. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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