The United States and British governments are finally moving to tackle the very real threat that a solar storm might knock out communications and electricity grids across the earth, causing trillions of dollars of economic damage.
Next month, the US and UK will issue a join statement on the threat from so-called space weather. The news comes after scientists from around the world gave their strongest warning yet of the dangers space weather poses during a symposium at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Helena Lindberg of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency said at the weekend: "I'm not talking about days or weeks, but several months without electric power, blackouts, across large regions of Europe and the US."
"To my mind, there are few emergencies today that require such a close cooperation across the Atlantic as that of the geomagnetic storm."
Scientists have been warning of the threat from solar storms for several years now. The sun periodically shoots out solar flares – explosions in its atmosphere – which sometimes are associated with a coronal mass ejection (CME).
A CME ejects huge quantities of electrically charged gases into space. The gas cloud hits the earth about three days later and causes a geomagnetic storm, which people at polar latitudes see as the Aurora Borealis. If a particularly bad geomagnetic storm hits, these 'Northern Lights' can appear as far south as the UK, as happened last week, when the sun unleashed its biggest solar flare in four years.
A nasty side-effect is the interference such storms cause to electrical equipment. Last week, there were disruptions to communications in the Pacific and Asia, and flights across the Arctic were rerouted.
The sun goes through cycles of activity and we are now emerging from a period of relative calm. The 'solar maximum' is due in 2013 and we can expect severe solar weather for a few years after that.
While there have been many solar maxima through human history, this one comes at a moment when we are more dependent than ever on global positioning satellites and mobile communications. The US government estimates a really bad storm could cost us $2 trillion.
The chief scientific adviser to the UK government, Sir John Beddington, told the Times that he has persuaded the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat to move the issue
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of space weather higher up the agenda, comparing it to the disruption of air travel caused by last year's eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyafjallajokull.
"There is an analogy here with volcanic ash. It's a natural event which has a certain frequency. With 20-20 hindsight, we should have recognised the chance of disruption from volcanic ash, given the frequency of eruptions in Iceland, and we didn't. We need to learn from that experience... Space weather could be significantly more problematic, so we need to be prepared."
Next month, Beddington will give a joint statement on the threat of space weather with his US counterpart, Professor John Holdren and Beddington said that by the end of this year there will be a working space weather operation at the Met Office, which will collaborate with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – owners of the only satellite that can give early warnings of space weather. Meanwhile, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire has begun work on determining what can be done to prevent disruption from space weather.
"There are two things we need to do. If there's a space weather event, we need to have some degree of early warning. The second thing is complementary: we need to think about how to make infrastructure less vulnerable."
Meanwhile, there's no need to stockpile ammunition and tins of Spam just yet. Stephan Lechner of the European Commission's Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen appealed for calm from his fellow scientists at the weekend's space weather symposium, pleading: "Please don't panic. Please don't leave the room and tell everybody that space weather will kill us tomorrow." 
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