Another Carrington Event?

.....they say that a solar storm the size of the "Carrington Event" hits earth on the average, once every 500 years. They say not to worry about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

From spaceweather.com this morning:

Sunspot AR1339 is crackling with M-class solar flares, unleashing at least five of them in the past 24 hours.

Even bigger eruptions are possible before the weekend is over. AR1339 has a delta-class magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class flares. The sunspot is turning toward Earth, so the odds of a geoeffective flare are increasing.

A strong X-class flare, directed at earth, could have the following events:

frying the electronic circuit boards of a healthy percentage of all satellites in earth's orbit. this would effectively end tv and radio communications, military communications, many telephone communications, weather information, GPS communication, affecting millions of surface navigation devices including the instant position loss of all airplanes and most large ships.", and of course, all ATM machines and in fact virtually all "money" transfers and trades of any kind larger than, say, buying a pack of cigarettes ....

setting up huge arcs at many, many electric grid substations, effectively shutting down the grids all over the world and, in the process, damaging a healthy percentage of the very large, costly, and difficult-to-replace transformers which are essential for the whole system to process.

Here's what that can look like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=vqgNrj6oEdc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngiPk6sTBs&feature=related

In effect, ending all electric use, worldwide.

These days, that could have "interesting" effects .....