BTW, next significant solar activity date to watch is Jan 18 give or take 48 hours either side.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 11/23/2010 12:30:33 PM PST by Jack L. Lee
Do you know what an EMP is, as in an EMP bomb? Great, then you're one of the few that does, but for the rest of us let me explain. It's an "electro-magnetic pulse" and EMP's come from a highly specialized bomb that delivers magnetic radiation that can fry electrical circuits, but does little else to humans, animals or buildings.
An EMP is a common occurence in nature. When it happens we call it a CME event or a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME's come from our sun - see photo on left). Just think of it as a solar storm of sorts. A moderately large event could take out half or more of all geosynchronous satellites and not just GPS. No more satellite navigation and for many of us no more cable TV..that would be a fate worse than death!So why should should we get our shorts in a bunch over something that is hardly likely to EVER happen, right? Well, heeeeere's why: It's actually likely to happenand probably not all that far into our future! This could be a mega-Katrina.
If you want to read the whole store, it's on Post Scripts and you can follow this link to get there:
http://www.norcalblogs.com/post_scripts/
It's a special report on EMP's.
(Excerpt) Read more at norcalblogs.com ...
There are lots of facts in this article, BUT...
This is my favorite non-factual part of this article:
“Some day the sun will produce a large enough discharge at just the right moment that we will find ourselves at just the wrong place at just the wrong time and not even our magnetic shield will save us then. This is not a matter of if, but when. Fortunately we’ll know in advance if such a storm is headed our way, but we’ll only have about 8 minutes notice to take emergency action.”
8 minutes? Where does he come up with that figure? Is it based on the fact that light takes 8 minutes to get from the sun to earth? So if light takes 8 minutes, and nothing travels faster than light, and he’s clearly assuming that the EMP will reach us in a timeframe consistent with the travel time of light from the sun to earth, how the hell would we “SEE” the EMP coming 8 minutes in advance?
No, dummy. CME travels much slower. Coronal mass ejections reach velocities between 20km/s to 3200km/s with an average speed of 489km/s, based on SOHO/LASCO measurements between 1996 and 2003.
So - more time to react.
Best to take your advice regarding EMP from people who actually understand science.
BTW, next significant solar activity date to watch is Jan 18 give or take 48 hours either side.
Bump & bookmark
Never gave EMP much thought until someone on FR recommended the book One Second After . My God, the havoc it could create is unimaginable, but yet it would be hundreds of times easier to accomplish than a successful launch of ICBMs
“One Second After” Sensible Survival Book Recommendation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiYvuY3t5aM
They were the first to discovered that an airburst from a fairly small nuclear device produces enough electromagnetism that it could knock out all the electrical devices for hundreds of miles.
Amazing! Somehow our B-29s that dropped the bombs on Japan somehow escaped EMP damage and made it back!
Well, I guess I would have to give up FB and photoshop....
From what I understand about most of our systems, we’ve taken steps to harden them to EMP.
Beat me to that book recommendation by just a few seconds. The back of the book says it is riveting, and that is an understatement.
When he said everything, he meant EVERYTHING. Even if you have some appliances/nick nacks without chips, the bulk generation of electricity is controlled by computers.
Old cars/motorcycles/trucks will work... but you still have to find gas. You may be able to siphon out of abandoned vehicles a few times but... how long do you think a mob will let you have a working form of transportation?
Water? If you live in the sticks with a well and hand pump, you’ll have it... just like they did 150 years ago.
You will be toast if you are not prepared.
Read “One Second After”. I guaranty you will not be able to put the book down after you get started.
.
Define systems! Not airplanes in the sky, trucks and cars stuck on the road, grocery store refrigeration, the lights at the place where you work, and on and on - every day normal things we take for granted that are not protected, that will bring devastation to half the globe.
One comment in that book “in the afterword” I would disagree with. That an EMP attack would be like a “continental time machine that would moves us back to the nineteenth century.” I think it would be much worse than that. In the 19th century most people were farmers and new how to survive on what they grew and raised on their acreage. Things they learned from their father. Most of us today don’t have acreage and if we did the knowledge and mechanical ability to grow a years supply of food on it.
What Japan wanted to accomplish in 1941 the Chinese will accomplish in the spring of 2011 or 12. The use of EMP weapons and the emasculation of the US ability to act in the Pacific as a prelude to their own aggressive imperialist expansion. Taiwan will be gone in a week, S.Korea in a month. With no US ability to help them Japan and the Philipines will submit as Chinese vassals within 12 months.
I can remember a Captain Midnight episode from the early sixties or maybe late fifties that had an EMP blast.
Code —
You’re good at insults, but as someone who is so well educated, you know the Compton effect well enough to understand WHY the physically long wires of high voltage distribution lines ARE good receiving antennae for induced voltage of EMP.
The entire grid does not have to to fail because of EMP in order for for the network to have real issues. Cascade failures are a known issue. Yes, it’s gotten better.
Other studies HAVE shown that modern cars, for example are NOT terribly susceptible to EMP. Thus the details of “One Second After” represent an exaggeration. When you look at the vulnerabilities of a complex system, the electrical grid just happens to be one of the more vulnerable ones.
Does if take a POWERFUL EMP? yes. CAN it be caused by a nuke? YES. *IS* it possible? yes. Is it plausible? YES.
Is it likely? THAT is open to debate.
and yes, I do have a clue.
Perhaps I should send you in particular another NACK.
Agreed. This particular blog is longer on hype than it is reasonable science.
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