Reply #19: Before the field realigns it fails...

[soulcore]

The best analogy I've heard is dropping a rock into some water... The field will wax and wain, and then fail.

Which leaves the Earth unprotected from cosmic radiation. Over the next century or so the field will fluctuate, turn, twist and generally be a bloody mess ... with multiple, roaming North and South poles.

The Aurora would be beautiful I imagine, as the Northern and Souther Lights occur in multiple places simultaneously, while moving with the fluctuating field.

A few hundred years later the field would stabilize, compasses would work once again, and anything that didn't die out gets a second shot at life.

Again, check out the PBS documentary Magnetic Storm, it tells the story better than I ever could.