An official with the Space Weather Prediction Center is admitting that a massive solar flare striking Earth could fry the planet’s electronics and send the world back to a new stone age.

“We’re much more reliant on technology these days that is vulnerable to space weather than we were in the past,” said Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He told Gizmodo, “If we were hit by an extreme event today, it’d be very difficult to respond.”

A “solar storm” is the catch-all phrase for x-rays, charged particles and magnetized plasma released by the sun.

“Solar storms originate in magnetic features that erupt from the surface of the sun,” explained space weather scientist Joe Gurman, speaking to Gizmodo from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center. “We call these active regions, or sunspots. When they’re big and ugly, that’s an indication that the magnetic field is changing rapidly. And when the magnetic field changes rapidly, that appears to be the cause — or related to the cause — of solar activity.”

The Smithsonian reported that scientists believe stars like our sun emit an extreme solar flare in a cycle between 250 and 480 years, meaning the Earth is currently within the window for one to take place. And as reported on Jim Bakker Show News earlier this year, the scientists estimate the Earth would have about 12 hours notice before the storm would strike the planet.

The storm would essentially burn out power grids because they are not designed to handle the kind of electromagnetic impact the storm would have on the ground.

“This generates huge electrical currents in upper atmosphere of Earth,” Berger said. “Depending on how conductive the ground is, you can get large currents getting picked up by power stations and fed into the grid.” And that’s bad news, because “our grid isn’t designed for huge amounts of current coming out of the ground.”