>> A major solar event could potentially cause some huge damage and chaos and death but not to the extent of what they are hyping <<
Even if it did only ten or twenty per cent of what the article predicts, it could be a major disaster not only for the USA but also for the whole world’s economy. Might take decades to recover.
Or hours like in March 1989. "Geomagnetic storms represent an approximation to an E3-induced voltage effect. The experience to date is of events that may be orders of magnitude smaller in scope and less severe than that expected from an EMP" From the report: http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf page 43. That's pretty iffy and hand-wavy. They don't explain, for example, how the widespread nature of the EMP causes more damage. It will certainly cause a wide outage. But they do not specifically state what long term damage is caused. E3 is slow and protective devices should protect transformers (p.33) so they resort to handwaving about E1 and E2.