Scene Context: John explains that almost all of humanity's digital history was wiped out by a massive solar event, and data regarding Les's expedition survived only on physically resilient media.
Essence of the Phenomenon: Powerful solar events pose a catastrophic threat to electronics, communications, satellites, and digital infrastructure. However, optical data etched into quartz or fused silica does not rely on vulnerable magnetic memory and is virtually immune to radiation and electromagnetic disasters.
Scientific Basis: NASA heavily documents extreme space weather as a source of single-event effects, radio blackouts, ionization disturbances, and systemic risks to avionics and power grids. Concurrently, optical archival technologies utilizing femtosecond laser etching in fused silica already exist today, designed for ultra-long-term data storage in extreme environments. History has recorded solar events of this magnitude, most notably the 1859 Carrington Event, which caused telegraph systems to fail and spark. Because civilization was far less dependent on electronics then, the consequences were minimal compared to what they would be in the modern digital age.
Current Limitations: While real science has yet to witness an event that literally "burns the vast majority of databases" to this exact degree, it is a highly grounded extrapolation based on the very real vulnerability of global digital infrastructure to extreme space weather. The premise that physically etched quartz archives would survive such an event is scientifically well motivated.