Kralizec – Long-foretold "Typhoon Struggle" or final "battle at the end of the universe".
I woke up the morning of May 11 to a miracle: the Northern lights in the British sky. There they were, right through my screen, all over my feed. At first, I was envious that I missed them. Then came the dread. It was unnatural. These lights were a beautiful consequence of something. I read up on every source I could.
Geomagnetic storms are caused when explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun's corona are directed at Earth, where they can trigger such aurora displays.1 —
NOAA has been tracking the explosive bursts of radiation known as solar flares since Wednesday from a sunspot cluster that's a whopping 16 times wider than Earth.
The solar flares have unleashed at least five coronal mass ejections – clouds of plasma and charged particles – that are now making their way toward our planet at a breakneck pace, said Brent Gordon, chief of the space services branch of the Space Weather Prediction Center.
By releasing solar particles and electromagnetic radiation toward our planet, the coronal mass ejections are what drive the geometric storms toward Earth. Such electromagnetic activity will only increase as the sun continues to reach the height of its 11-year solar cycle, which NASA said is expected to be in 2025.
—This is from usa today. Take from it what you will, I’m not citing this for believability but rather just so we are all on the same page.
We forget the planet is a pebble in space. We forget the sun is the hyperdense-supercharged generator that powers our existence. Science aside, the sun is what gets me up every morning. Lately, the news has been telling me that one killswitch level CME released from it could alter my life as I know it. I live abroad. Geomagnetic storms have the power to disrupt power systems and all forms of electronic communications. If you cannot read this, assume it has happened already, and the only light I have left is the sunlight streaming through my window. This morning, I considered myself one deathly solar flare away from losing contact with my whole family. While I got my coffee, I thought about how long my relationship would last if the power grid forced me to go no-contact. I think, and yet I do nothing.
This year has birthed many unprecedented events: Two earthquake tsunamis, both extreme in death toll and magnitude.2 Water breaches control everywhere, floods in Brazil, Kenya, and South China, and rain in the UAE. The world experienced the warmest January on record, with an average of 13.14°C. It’s obvious this is a decline rather than an improvement. We seem to be hurtling towards a world of extremes without hesitation.
Extreme meaning:
existing to a very high degree
exceeding the ordinary, usual, or expected.
The face-off of all opposing concepts
Radical forces coming into play
the rise of uncontrollable and unbridled circumstances
When the Solar eclipse happened in April, I laughed. It was as if the universe was pulling out every trick in the book to say we were no longer dancing on the fulcrum of fate. There is no return point. Only forwards—towards black swan events every year and an increasing sense that the world as we know it is unravelling right before our very eyes.
I pondered the symbolism behind eclipses. The dark sun, midday night. The moon intercepts the light that runs our lives as we know it. There is a halfness about eclipses. The crescent shadows are a transient feature. Eclipses herald dreadful change. They are harbingers of sorts. Under the eclipse, our very shadows grow in power.
Throughout history, eclipses have been seen as a disruption of the natural order, and many groups have believed them to be bad omens.3 The time of darkness is unwelcomed in all factions of humanity and warded off with great displays of loud sounds and chants.
Many cultures spoke of celestial beasts consuming the sun. It must have seemed like the only plausible way for the sun to disappear so suddenly. Eating was the only way to make something disappear without a trace immediately.
It seems only natural that the appearance of the northern lights in the lower hemisphere carries the same apprehension. There is no myth to explain it—just because it has never happened before. If you saw those lights, you may have just witnessed the great shift with your very own eyes. There are alternate theories as to why the aurora became so potent. Whispers about Earth’s weakening geomagnetic field return back into the loop4. Fear over the great pole reversal grows. 5
People catastrophize, and I am people. There is no evidence that this solar storm is actually wreaking havoc. Our communications have stayed intact; I can still thrift on Vinted. I still wake up every day. Unfortunately, this does not stop the catastrophizers. Over the past few days, I have seen multiple videos about the end times and news about people who are secretly happy they will finally be able to live out their doomsday preppers fantasies when the grid goes down. Like the average person, I am reliant on the grid. I am tied to my urban post with nowhere to run to if civilisation splits in two tomorrow. So I write. From my bed in the tiny apartment I do not own, eating well is the only luxury I give myself. I still have exams to pass and lunch to cook.
As much as we want to believe it, there is no Kralizec. Every generation thinks its war is the Kralizec, and every generation thinks its tragedy is a black swan event. Frame it however you like; you will still have to wake up tomorrow and then the day after that.
-swan
Japan Ishikawa, 7.5 —XI (Extreme), 245 dead.
Taiwan, Hualein 7.4—VIII(Severe), 18 dead.
Petruzzello, Melissa. "The Sun Was Eaten: 6 Ways Cultures Have Explained Eclipses". Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Aug. 2017, https://www.britannica.com/list/the-sun-was-eaten-6-ways-cultures-have-explained-eclipses. Accessed 12 May 2024.
https://www.science.org/content/article/earths-waning-magnet
https://geomag.bgs.ac.uk/education/reversals.html#:~:text=In%20any%20event%2C%20we%20can,pole%20becomes%20a%20North%20pole.
being drawn to the world's theoretical end because it's entertaining. We see profound social phenomena like this happen every day; you've caught a glimmer of this before it was lost in headlines.
I have to study the way you do endings. If all is run by the currency of karmic debt, I think we all have much left to pay.