[cripplecreek]

EMP attack would wipe out hundreds of millions of Americans

LOL Hundreds of millions is pretty much all of us unless we live an Nazi Pelousi's little world. Not sure an EMP would have much effect on flesh and blood anyway.

[Travis T. OJustice]

Not sure an EMP would have much effect on flesh and blood anyway.

But my Tweenage daughters would just die without their cell phones, they told me so.

[FatMax]

http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/emp.htm

It doesn’t looks so harmless to me.

[Blueflag]

An attack of sufficient power and coverage kills ALL unhardened electronics.

So ... no civilian comms like cel phones, most land line phones, radios. People are in the dark. NEwer cars won’t even start. Starbucks cash registers won’t operate. Anchor women and anchor men have no teleprompters.

Electrical grid largely shut down in the distribution lines and step down transformers. Ya got little or no civilian power

Food doesn’t get delivered. You can’t pump gas. You can’t call 911 (like that would help anyway)

The risks are a rapid loss of social order, starvation, collapse of economy .. pretty much a Charlie Foxtrot of Democratic proportions.

The challenge is getting that powerful EMP explosion as a series of airbursts or low earth orbit detonations OF SUFFICIENT POWER.

It’s a real threat. Maybe tougher to make good on than the threat-mongers will say.

[x_plus_one]

This is where we all go visit our Amish friends for a month or so...

[HamiltonJay]

The only thing that would threaten significant lives would be if clean water stopped flowing. That’s the only thing that would threaten large numbers of americans in a short enough time frame that you couldn’t get other basic services online.

No clean water = pandemics quickly, particularly in urban environments.