eli5 If solar flares basically EMP electrical infrastructure, why can’t we turn it off before it hits?

Question

Like how you can fry your electronics if they’re plugged in when the power comes back on from an outage, why can’t we “unplug” everything so to speak?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

EMP doesn’t come from the wires, it comes from the air and you can’t unplug something from the air. The only way to “unplug” is to have equipment in bunkers