As you will recall, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a intense burst of energy generated by an atomic bomb which, if detonated high enough over Kansas, would send the USA back to the Stone Age due to the frying of all electronic equipment and the resulting chaos.
Unfortunately, our friend the Sun can also create a huge EMP event. Periodically, the sun ejects billions of tons of highly energized plasma into space in what is called a coronal mass ejection. Should Earth be in the path of this ejection, virtually all electronics would be trashed and there would be no mass communication and virtually no transportation. Like the Roman Empire, most citizens of first-world countries have a high lifestyle due to the elaborate network which brings products to them from all over the world. Also like the Roman Empire, when such a network collapses, so does society. Compared to the panic and fighting for resources which would result, the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina would look like a picnic.
In short, in such a situation, the survivors would consist of those who possess Model A Fords, precious metals, ammunition, and friendly Amish neighbors.
The odds of the earth encountering a coronal mass ejection are not all that miniscule. There was such an ejection in the spring of 2012 which would have hit the earth directly had it occurred a week later than it actually did. There was a direct collision with the earth of a coronal mass ejection in 1859 which melted out telegraph equipment and caused fires in telegraph offices. In other telegraph offices, the operators unplugged their batteries and ran the devices solely on the current induced by the solar event. As the telegraph was virtually the only electrical device in use at the time and was simple and could be easily repaired, the impact to society then was minimal.
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