[Jedediah]

This actually seems to meet the description ?! I have never heard of this term before thank you for sharing it !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection

[dangus]

Really? Because coronal mass ejections don’t cause widespread death and destruction like you prophesied. They cause Northern Lights, cell phone disruptions, etc. I don’t see at all how they fit with water turning to brine, building being burnt to the ground, etc.

[aruanan]

See this link. I think you'll enjoy the paper by Tony Peratt, a plasma physicist at Los Alamos: Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity (the link is to a PDF of the paper)

A page of links to other papers of related interest is found HERE.