Product Review

It may be counterintuitive: periods of high solar activity and high sunspot numbers – which are associated with a stable and more favorable climate – are also periods of increased mass excitability, war and genocide. In fact, throughout the last millennium, there were 4.6 times as many deaths from war, genocide and persecution during Grand Solar Maxima than there were in Grand Solar Minimum. In contrast, Grand Solar Minima - the ‘bad-weather periods' - were times of relative peace, reason and of improvements of human rights.
In the 1920s, the Russian scientist Alexander Tchijevsky discovered that social excitability, wars and rebellions unfolded primarily at the peaks of the 11-year solar cycles (Schwabe- cycles).
I found that within the past 1000 years, what is true for the 11-years cycles, also applies to the non-periodical cycles of Grand Solar Minima and Maxima, recurring roughly every 200 or 400 years.
Not only were most mass killings committed during these Grand Maxima, but the corresponding uprisings and rebellions mostly ended up in collectivist, totalitarian systems, that appealed to group ideologies, violent mob rule and imperialism. The narration of the history of this period is intended to illustrate this pattern and to warn of future repetitions. In addition to the multi decadal trends of wars and atrocities, we even find singular battles and mass hysteria in connection with the visible manifestations of high solar peaks, solar storms, visible sunspots and aurora.
This book is about our future as much as it is about the past, as we are likely entering the next Grand Solar Minimum within decades. If the trends of previous centuries continue, when the next Grand Solar Minimum begins, we can expect not only some inconvenient material adaptation processes, but ultimately also a social mood of increased reason, relative peace, rationality and the protection of human rights.
This can give us a time window of between several decades and a hundred years to find out how we prevent the next round of mass killing and collectivist extremism in the future Solar Maximum. If we succeed, future generations may live in a world more peaceful than ever.