America is always facing new threats. We face threats of terrorism of both the foreign and domestic varieties. We face threats of the economic variety, always having to make sure someone doesn't manipulate the system and cause havoc for everyone else.

This may seem like a fairly comprehensive list of threats we face, but don't party just yet, ladies and gentlemen. We face a serious threat that often gets ignored in the public sphere, the threat of an electronic collapse in the United States. This could be caused by two different things, an electromagnetic pulse blast or a solar flare.

If Iran detonated a nuclear weapon above the United States, it would wipe out our electronic hardware. We could also have our electronics wiped out by a solar flare. Wikipedia defines a solar flare as a large explosion in the sun's atmosphere and, even though it's Wikipedia, that's really not a bad definition.

Solar flares have the potential to wipe out satellites and cause all sorts of havoc for those of us on land, largely because of the insane amount of energy that such an explosion would release into space.

We don't really know exactly what a solar flare would do to the modern world because we haven't experienced a major one recently. Solar flares happen all the time, but they are usually very minor occurrences. Occasionally, however, a major solar flare will happen and really can do damage to our electronics. We have been pretty lucky so far, but eventually our luck will run out and a major solar flare will happen. And when it happens, it will affect us. Here are the questions we should be asking: How will it affect us? Will we be prepared?

Luckily for us, avoiding most of the damage that could be caused by one of these attacks could actually be fairly easy, but at the moment, we are still woefully unprepared for an attack on our electronics.

Clifford D. May points out in his article, "The Sun Also Flares" (published in the National Review on Jan. 28, 2010) the National Academy of Sciences has suggested we could protect ourselves from the brunt of the potential damage here for only $100 million.

That seems like a lot, but it works out to about 34 cents per U.S. citizen. Let's round it up to 35 cents here just to play it safe. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm more than willing to throw down a quarter and a dime to protect myself from having to ever enter the stone age.

May's explanation for this is that we can make spares of the parts that are absolutely essential to things like communications and electronics that would be necessary in an emergency – let there be no doubt, if someone detonated a nuclear weapon above the United States, it would be an emergency – and we could keep these spares in convenient locations that would be easily accessible during a catastrophe.

$100 million isn't a large amount of money compared to how much our government spends on a daily basis, and this money would create some new, high-tech jobs for our citizens while also preparing us against an imminent threat from both man and nature. This isn't a cause for the right or the left to rally around, it's simply a pragmatic step the United States needs to take.

That seems like common sense to me. I don't know about you, but I'm willing to add this plan to my list of things I'd like to see happen, right below season four of "Dexter" coming out on Blu-ray. For 34 cents an American, this is a steal.