He missed something about the Carrington event: Nobody died, and only a few telegraph offices burned down because they were the only buildings with wires on them, which just went straight to the telegraph machines, so there weren't that many wires.

Today, every building in the first world is full of wires, in every wall. As a consequence, if we get hit by a big enough solar flare, there will be massive fires everywhere at once in the West. Millions will die from that alone, and civilization will be over at that point.