Originally posted by UberL33t
Okay, I took the responses so far that were in the US. The Red is the compasses where North is off and appears East, and the Green are compasses that are true North. Maybe a pattern forming

Some hypotheses suggest that the effects of the pole reversal may have terrible consequences in a short period, and others predict that it may be more gentle and take more than a hundred years, if it happens over a longer period. Since human beings have never been through a pole shift that they know of in our recorded history, no one really knows how a pole shift is going to work or what the results will be. Geophysicist Rob Coe of the University of California at Santa Cruz, may have however found a lava record in Oregon that charts magnetic mayhem that ensued during a previous period of reversal. Without a doubt GPS satellite and navigation systems all over the planet would become chaotic.

I think that possibly the worst outcome predicted as a hypothetical possibility that I have read, is that the geomagnetic force and consequently the protective magnetosphere breaks up into multiple haphazard poles or even ceases to exist altogether for a period of time and the sun's radiation, solar winds and cosmic rays have no obstacle to shield them from reaching some parts of the planet, causing the surface of the Earth to possibly become temporarily uninhabitable. Without this protection hypothetically many plants might not be able to grow, animals could die, and so possibly could any humans who were left on the surface. Let’s hope that these hypothetical worst case scenarios are wrong, if however they turn out to be right then those old mines, underground caves and railway lines and nuclear bunkers may come in very handy.