What if a solar superstorm burns out power grids for months?
A super-Carrington event blacking out grids for months is a real-economy heart attack, not a 'tight financial conditions' crypto-liquidity story: bid gold and long-dated bonds (Fed forced to ease into a supply collapse), short industrials and copper as demand evaporates. The closest analogue is the 1859 Carrington event scaled to a wired civilization — no clean market precedent, so size it as a fat-tail hedge, not a base case. The current crypto-beta cascade badly understates the hit; transmission is global and simultaneous, so diversification fails.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the Tail risk horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A solar event beyond Carrington induces continent-scale transformer burnout, blacking out grids for months across hemispheres. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Global growth ▼ · Geopolitical risk ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ · Industrial demand ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▲ +7.1% hist +0.57–+8.18% · other way -0.14% (n=11) |
| 2 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -3.5% hist -2.29–-0.96% · other way -0.16% (n=11) |
| 3 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -2.3% hist -4.43–+2.82% · other way -3.28% (n=10) |
| 4 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.4% hist -1.14–+0.21% · other way -0.02% (n=11) |
| 5 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.3% hist -1.76–+3.78% · other way +30.92% (n=11) |
| 6 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.29–+0.14% · other way +3.27% (n=11) |
| 7 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.48–-0.45% · other way -0.37% (n=12) |
| 8 | Hyperliquid (HYPE) HYPEon Hyperliquid | Crypto | ▼ -1.8% model prior · unmeasured |
| 9 | Ether ETHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -1.6% hist -6.52–+2.25% · other way +6.79% (n=10) |
| 10 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.4% hist -1.03–+0.32% · other way +6.07% (n=11) |
| 11 | Bitcoin BTCon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -1.3% hist -2.83–+0.47% · other way +7.78% (n=10) |
| 12 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -1.86–+0.03% · other way +0.39% (n=11) |
| 13 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -1.71–+3.1% · other way +2.35% (n=11) |
| 14 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -1.86–+0.06% · other way +0.15% (n=11) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade: NOC's -4.5% leans on 1991-coup and broad-risk windows, MU/SMH/SPX positives are tariff-window beta and AI-capex; none sample a continent-scale grid-burnout shock, so base rates are unreliable.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +4.6% · 5d +5.5% | 69% | 28 | 0.34 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -2.2% · 5d -0.9% | 68% | 26 | 0.30 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLK XLK | LONG | +0.9% · 5d -0.4% ↺ fades | 66% | 26 | 0.25 | ⚠ differs |
| MSTR MSTR | LONG | +4.2% · 5d -2.7% ↺ fades | 68% | 26 | 0.25 | ⚠ differs |
| INTC INTC | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -1.9% | 65% | 33 | 0.25 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XLF XLF | SHORT | -0.9% · 5d -0.3% | 64% | 26 | 0.24 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XPT XPT | SHORT | -1.9% · 5d -0.9% | 62% | 26 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| TRY TRY | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d +0.9% ↺ fades | 65% | 25 | 0.21 | ✓ matches cascade |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +7.8% · 5d +0.7% | 62% | 10 | 0.20 | ⚠ differs |
| JPM JPM | SHORT | -1.8% · 5d -1.1% | 62% | 33 | 0.20 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AMD AMD | SHORT | -1.1% · 5d -0.6% | 62% | 33 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AVGO AVGO | LONG | +3.5% · 5d -0.8% ↺ fades | 60% | 24 | 0.17 | ⚠ differs |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -5.5% · 5d -6.5% | 61% | 16 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.2% · 5d -0.1% | 57% | 26 | 0.14 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
Beyond-Carrington grid-killing event extremely rare; solar max waning by 2026; structural tail. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.