Free Republic

Imagine a world where you couldn’t call or text anyone, you couldn’t put gas in your car, you could pay for things, and there was no tap in your water. A nightmare, right? ... Hollywood actor Dennis Quaid is warning that such a scenario isn’t a foreign possibility. During an interview with Tucker Carlson, Quaid highlighted the dangers of a solar storm that could kill more than 90 percent of the population within a year. “Basically, there is a 100 percent probability that our sun, generating what they call a GMD, which is a solar storm, that hits hard, hits...

We live in a world created in 1945. The United States is the world’s dominant political, economic, and military power. We treat those facts as if they are somehow immutable. They are not. We are standing on the brink of losing it all. The Biden administration continues to blunder forward with its reckless policy of escalation in Ukraine treating the entire enterprise as if it were a video game of some sort. There are in the minds of these men and women no consequences for their actions. Only the other side takes losses. Only the other side feels pain. ......

Releases: Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Program Status Report WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues to prepare against ever evolving threats against the American homeland, most recently highlighting efforts to combat an Electromagnetic Pulse attack which could disrupt the electrical grid and potentially damage electronics. Today, the department is releasing the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Program Status Report as part of an update on efforts underway in support of Executive Order (E.O.) 13865 on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulses. E.O. 13865 establishes resilience and security standards for U.S. critical infrastructure as a national priority. EMP weapons have the...

Dr. Peter Pry is the Executive Director of the EMP Task Force. Pry explains there are three sources of EMP: the sun, nuclear weapons, and non-nuclear weapons. The entire world would be affected, putting “electric grids and critical infrastructures” as well as “billions of lives” at risk. Pry believes it is “inevitable” that we will be struck by a Carrington-class geomagnetic storms, for “it’s not a question of if, but it’s a question of when will that happen.” A second EMP threat stems from nuclear weapons “detonated at high altitude” of 30 to 400 kilometers. “A single nuclear weapon detonated...

The United States is vulnerable to a devastating electromagnetic pulse event caused by a high-altitude nuclear blast or solar superstorm, according to a recently published book. Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst and author of the book EMP Manhattan Project, is urging the government to rapidly harden the U.S. electric power system against EMP similar to the three-year crash program to build the first atomic bomb in 1942. "Today the United States and the world faces another existential threat—from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) catastrophe that can be caused by nature or man, and topple the technological pillars of modern electronic...

The EMP Commission was established pursuant to title XIV of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (as enacted into law by Public Law 106-398; 114 Stat. 1654A-345). Duties of the EMP Commission include assessing: - the nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years; - the vulnerability of United States military and especially civilian systems...

As the latest round of negotiations between Iran, the U.S., and Europe fails to yield any meaningful nuclear concessions from Tehran, a gathering of experts in the fields of defense, national security, and foreign policy convened in Washington D.C. on Tuesday (Nov. 19). Held on the eve of the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the event sought to contrast and compare JFK’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis to President Obama’s response to the current impasse with Iran, and to see what lessons the former might hold for the latter. The threat posed by the rogue Middle...

The reality of protecting all electronic equipment against EMP from a nuclear explosion over our shores is becoming imminent. We now live in perilous times. The information to follow on building "Faraday cages" is timely indeed. A single atmospheric nuclear detonation releases enough electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to equal 100,000 volts per square centimeter on the ground. A single detonation 200 to 400 miles over the center of the continental United States would fry every unprotected computer chip from coast to coast, and from the middle of Canada to the middle of Mexico. And we are now into Solar Cycle 23,...

Exclusive: Joseph Farah warns of 'Red Dawn' scenario becoming real-life catastrophe Have you seen “Red Dawn”? I don’t mean the old movie starring the late Patrick Swayze. It was good. But I’m talking about the more recent version. I hesitated watching it for a long time, mainly because I thought the producers of the movie sold out when they opted to substitute a North Korean invasion of the U.S. for what was originally planned as a more likely Chinese invasion. Supposedly they did so because the Chinese movie market was too lucrative to pass up. But, having seen it recently,...

WASHINGTON – U.S. officials quietly are expressing concern that North Korea could use its “space launch vehicle” to explode a high-altitude nuclear device over the United States, creating an electromagnetic pulse that would destroy major portions of the U.S. electrical grid system as well as the nation’s critical infrastructures. The concern is so great that U.S. officials who watch North Korea closely are continually monitoring the status of the North Korean “space launch vehicle,” whose status could suggest a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States. They are aware of the three-stage missile North Korea launched last December that also...

WASHINGTON – The United States now is facing two serious national security challenges, but they aren’t expected to be addressed effectively because of the serious budgetary headaches Congress has created, and a virtually deadlocked legislature on just about every issue pending, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. And the White House apparently isn’t paying attention. The first is the growing concern of the impact that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, event – either natural or manmade – could have on the national grid system, on which the Department of Defense has a 99 percent dependency. The other concern...

The first thing that we need to look at is the distinct lack of information available about EMP and its effects. Most of what we know is from nuclear tests, both American and Soviet, in the 1960s. Data and information after that period is still highly classified, so all we have to go on is what has been declassified from this earlier era of tests. However, this information, along with a few pieces of recent data, is enough to make some reasonable projections. The second thing we need to understand is that a HEMP attack on the United States is...

National Security: A new TV series demonstrates graphically how vulnerable our society is to an attack using weapons our enemies, including rogue state Iran, could use tomorrow — and the importance of missile defense. Set in a future "where every single piece of technology — computers, planes, cars, phones, even lights — has mysteriously blacked out forever," according to the promos, the drama series is fiction, but the threat it depicts, the end of technological society and life as we know it, is a frighteningly real possibility. We've warned of the threat many times, but the damage an electromagnetic pulse...

Most Americans do not know this, but a single EMP attack could potentially wipe out most of the electronics in the United States and instantly send this nation back to the 1800s. If a nuclear bomb was exploded high enough in the atmosphere over the middle part of the country, the electromagnetic pulse would fry electronic devices from coast to coast. The damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11. Just imagine a world where nobody has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can make any phone...

A Dangerous Gap in Our Defenses?An EMP attack is a terrible threat, but countering it is affordable. For several days in early November, a series of U.S. government agencies were either unable or unwilling to explain what had produced a vapor trail that had illuminated the Southern California skies. Public speculation abounded, first that it was a missile, then that it was in fact the condensation trail (contrail) of a plane. Controversy continues in the blogosphere and elsewhere. The absence of a cogent official explanation reveals a dangerous gap in our defenses, specifically in our warning systems. Our surveillance systems...

What appears to be of particular concern to the EMP commission is the scepter of terrorist groups or so-called “rogue” nations carrying out such an attack. As outlined by Dr. Pry, one of the commissioners, before a 2005 Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, “[a] nuclear missile concealed in the hold of a freighter would give Iran, or terrorists, the capability to perform an EMP attack against the United States homeland, without developing an ICBM, and with some prospect of remaining anonymous. Iran’s Shahab-3 medium-range missile… is a mobile missile, and small enough to be transported in the...

[Granted, this article is 4 years old, but it seems to cover the issue in pretty good detail. I post it as a follow-up to the 7/1/08 FrontPageMag article I put up yesterday. Since that one received so many varied responses (~60) and close to 1000 views, I thought it would be interesting to see what folks had to say about this one. Some people seemed to dismiss or greatly minimize the threat. Others said there was nothing new about it (~50 yrs old), suggesting many people today were already aware of the details (many people today can't find Iraq...

December 27, 2006: Iran continues to predict the imminent destruction of Israel, and promises to do what it can to help make that happen. Israel responds with dark threats of countermeasures that will prevent Iranian plans from working. Most people think that the most likely Israeli response is air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. But Israel has another weapon available, but one with serious side effects. Israel has a satellite launch capability that could put a nuclear weapon in low orbit (about 200 kilometers up). Once over Iran, the nuclear bomb could be detonated, and create an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse),...