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"It's not often mentioned but these pole reversals aren't sudden/instantaneous across the planet. They can take a few thousand years to complete." I've actuall

"It's not often mentioned but these pole reversals aren't sudden/instantaneous across the planet. They can take a few thousand years to complete." I've actually seen that fact mentioned quite often within articles and news regarding pole flips as a reassurance to the reader. "The magnetic field will not vanish completely, but many poles might form chaotically in different places during reversal, until it stabilizes again." The field would not vanish completely but most of the world would lack protection from massively dangerous cosmic radiations and solar particles.

AnotherGoodName 6y ago
If the magnetic field completely disappeared tomorrow the top layers of the atmosphere would start to be ionized and stripped away. There'd also be a slow change in the composition of the atmosphere due to neutron bombardment. The process would only take a mere million years or so! In the meantime the Earths atmosphere alone also blocks cosmic radiation to the extent that there's no immediate harm to life.