well i would first do what i could according to where i was and what i had out of the list of things they told me to do. then i would withdraw all the money i could from my bank. luckily i have a credit card, so you know i would make a superhero out of that when i immediately rush to the grocery store and buy canned foods and fishing poles and water purification tablets and tons of medicine.

id try to make an alliance with some people at the store so that we could work together to get as much as we could out of the place without fighting each other. then i would head on home and dump the supplies and repeat that as long as i could until the stores were empty or the CME hit and my credit card stopped working.

once that would happen, i would have to walk i think since my car would stop functioning, so id go to a place where i could purchase a bike or just jack one from some kid and a red wagon too so i have something to carry supplies with when i travel around. then the next place i would go to is a something like home depot where i can purchase some lead sheets and some plants and a lot of seeds. then id go to a weapons store and buy a bow and a good amount of arrows and a beginners guide to carving up your own arrows. from there id go home and build a lead house (instead of a green house), leaving the front completely open so the sun can still penetrate but the plants can be mostly protected from the massive spike in radiation that would otherwise murder them. once i planted the seeds and stuff i would have a beer to relax. gardening is tough labor.

after this i would cry a little bit probably out of fear, but then i would recollect myself and check what degradable food i have. id start a fire outside and cook most if not all of it and eat that for the next few days and start trading it at the same time for canned goods or water or anything that would help. i am a good chef so the flavors and aromas of the food would help to entice people to give me their stuff. with all the food canned and medical supplies i think me and my family plus an extra 2 dogs and id say 3 stragglers could survive comfortably for 3 months. but to save supplies id do a lot of fishing, so i could make the canned stuff last longer. so each day i would at least have to catch about a dozen fish if i wwanted to refrain from using my canned goods and keep that for an emergency. that reminds me i would dig up a basement or cellar in my backyard and store the goodies there and hide it somehow so no one could raid my home and jack it all. though my plants would still be victim. plus i would have a bow and arrow so i think id be alright for sometime. to be honest, id rather live in the days of a CME. as long as i have a lot of sunscreen im fine. idk about my dogs though, which is sad to think they would get fried. lead would help a lot though.

Well, since I don't have any lead-lined boxes laying around, I suppose I'd just do what the broadcast says. Not alot you can do- not enough time to go to the store and stock up. Luckily I'm on a well that uses a pressure head so I can still get water and I have enough food stocked for at least a month- more if I ration it well. I'm not sure unplugging anything will do any good, as it would still overload the circuits from what I understand. My stove is completely propane, fed from a small tank( and I have 2 backups) so I don't see how that would be effected. I live in a small trailer, so I can run lights off my battery for at least a month (as long as the only electric I use is for lights), but then I also have candles so I don't have to. I alos have a gas generator to charge my batteries if/when I need to. One thing I DON"T have yet is a good amount of backup fuel just in case, I need to do that.

So I guess the first thing I'd do is get all my food together and ration it out for as long as I think I'll need to stretch it, then I"d hook my trailer up and go drive up into the mountains near where I live just to be safe, bringing my BOB and rifle/ammo to hunt if I need to (TONS of deer around here, so easy to find you'd be stupid to starve-a perk of living in a small town in SW Montana).

I've long believed that another Carringtion Event is the most likely SHTF scenario we are really pretty likely to see before the end of the century. Yeah, you may not be around to see it, but your kids or grandkids will be.

Get on with my life without power, I would move obviously since New York City needs to have its food delivered to us.

The 2003 blackout was pretty tame, no riots or anything.
There were 6 fatalities though.
"Two were deaths from carbon monoxide, two from fire, one as a result of a fall from a roof while breaking into a shoe store, and one man died of a heart attack in his neighbor's apartment after climbing the 17 flights to their floor."

Everyday stuff that would have been avoided if there was electricity.

I have a 74 Nova, and nothing electrical works on it anyway. At least i could drive places till it ran out of gas, then again it only gets 8 mpg so that wouldn't last long anyway.

first I'd use metal garbage cans as a Faraday cage for anything electronic I could fit them, going with a radio, and the laptop first, then short wave antennas, then turn off the power main, then I'd go outside with a fire extinguisher and watch the power and telephone lines carefully. If I had time to go to the store to grab a load of chili cans, batteries, and bottled water, I'd do so, but not at the cost of leaving my home at risk from fires due to melting power lines or wiring.

If we had a decent disaster plan as a society it would be really easy to mitigate the damage from an event.

However, instead what we have is everyone coming up with their "own plans".

Notice above, a very typical response is to Panic and do Irrational things.

Step #1 : Withdraw all money from bank account.

Now wouldn't that actually turn a nice 2 day vacation from civilization into a bank meltdown now?

Talk about turning a decent day into a bad one.

So in reality, a blitz on the grocery stores is inevitable. Everyone has their "own plans". To withdraw all their $ and go on a spending spree at the last second.

That will cause the stores to be overflowing with masses of people, who are in shock, full of panic, fear, etc.

Then the event will start. And the stores lights will go out. And the scanners at the check out lines will not work. So then they can't "sell" anything. Doing it by hand will take 30min per customer... lol. In the dark mind you.

This will cause people to just start rushing out the door impatiently, while the panic and fear keep rising in the situation. Thats when massive theft occurs.

The isles will be empty soon, and people will start fighting over the last stuff on the shelf. Violence begins.
People will be going in the back to look through whats in stock. By this point the store "workers" will either have fled the area, find themselves injured, surrounded by shouting people, or actually becoming part of the mob. Order will have collapsed entirely.

Police will get trigger happy and make a bad situation tragic, and prolly unload on the crowds of panicing fools.

So that's why I keep at least 2weeks of canned food around at all times. Dry goods also. Pastas, Rice, etc.
If you don't have a water well or clean source of water nearby, than get bottled water.

And create a logical disaster plan. Basically like figuring a strategy to unplug everything quickly. Simple.

Another Carrington Event would be a cakewalk if people didn't panic or act irrationally.

Just go to the store tomorrow and buy 30 or 40 cans of stuff you like + some bags of rice and pasta. 50$ and you will be loaded down.

Remember the grasshopper and the ant? The ant survived the harsh winter because he planned ahead and gathered supplies during the summer. The grasshopper died in the winter because he did not plan ahead or gather supplies during the summer.

Don't be a grasshopper.

Based on my reading, including the articles I linked in my original post, it seems that even with a CME on the order of the original Carrington, event, a lot of personal electronics and computers might be functional. From what I've read, the problem is for networks, which have long miles of conductor that act as a sort of antenna for the energy created by the flare as it warps the earths magnetic field. This means that the biggest problems would be for:

Satellites (which are up in the magnetosphere anyway.)
Electricity distribution networks with high power lines
transformer installations that serve a whole community
phone lines
non-optic fiber links
transatlantic cables ( these seem to be the most sensitive of all)
pipelines and railroads (both systems use electronic monitors, which might be permanently destroyed by energy similar to static electricity)

Many smaller systems would work in several days, after the CME has passed. The real damage would come from transformers, and sensing equipment on piplines and power grids, that would need to be replaced. Canada experienced this in the 1990's, and it took up to a year to replace every single damaged transformer, which must be specially made to order and can take 12 months each.