Bill Nye Reveals The Disaster From The End Is Nye That He's Most Afraid Of Happening - Exclusive
Throughout history, people have stocked up in fear of the world ending. (Remember the toilet paper shortage at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic?) Today, scientist and television personality Bill Nye has even set out to prove that a massive disaster is completely avoidable if the world listens long enough to take action.
In his new series "The End Is Nye," each episode portrays a natural disaster that has the capability to eradicate all life on Earth. Luckily, it isn't all doom and gloom. The second half of the episode takes a step back from the disaster, and from a scientific standpoint, Nye explains exactly what we need to do in order to keep the episode's apocalypse from happening. "It's all optimism with science," he said during an exclusive interview with The List.
The series covers everything from a massive comet hurtling toward the Earth to an out-of-control dust storm. Yet there's one disaster that Nye is most afraid of actually happening. "The one that really has me thinking is the coronal mass ejection," he admitted in an exclusive interview with The List.
It would be a big deal if the world lost all its electricity
Creating the third episode of "The End Is Nye" left Bill Nye feeling concerned. If a solar flare from the sun actually came hurtling toward the Earth, the world would be in a whole lot of trouble. "These charged particles — the energy in the charged particles — would interact with the Earth's magnetic field and turn off all the lights," Nye told The List. "All the electricity in the world would shut down."
It turns out, this catastrophic event has happened once before in human history. In 1859, a man named Carrington made the connection between solar flares and fires that were spreading all over the Earth. Many of these were causing telegraph offices to completely shut down. "Now, there are so many wires running everywhere all the time," Nye said. "If we had a couple of these mass ejections back to back, like the Earth spun 12 hours and it happened again, all the electricity in the world [would] shut off."
A repeat of the Carrington Event today would make it impossible to microwave our meals or even watch "Bill Nye the Science Guy" on our TVs. "No more refrigeration, no more cars, no more virtual movie interviews," Nye said. "It would be a drag really fast."
To find out how we can avoid solar flares from causing a complete disaster, watch "The End Is Nye," streaming now exclusively on Peacock.