Seems highly unlikely. EMP would not destroy the entire infrastructure, just the local area.
Too bad we can’t run a simulation to test the theory.
An EMP would destroy EVERY local area.
Water purification plants would shut down - no water. Most cars would quit running - almost all trucks. Trains would stop and planes would fall out of the sky... The power grid would fail. If your house caught on fire, 911 wouldn't work - the firetruck wouldn't start, water would not flow to the hydrant... But IT would be local.
Every city and town would have the same situation - so there wouldn't be 'help' coming from out of the area... I think half the population would die in the first 20 days... lack of water would take out the first bunch...
For instance, what field strength at the surface do the EMP models predict? Pushing enough magnetic or electrostatic field through a metal surface, like the hood of a car, in order to generate an internal current in a semiconductor installed deep in the car sufficient to damage it is very hard.
And its pretty hard for me to imagine generating by capacitive or inductive coupling into a power line from 500 miles away as much energy as a single bolt of lightning puts into a power line.
“Seems highly unlikely. EMP would not destroy the entire infrastructure, just the local area”
Yeah, I think the threat from EMP is sometimes overblown.
Long haul internet lines are generally fiber optic, and immune to EMP.
On the other hand, not many vehicles will start today without their ECU. Even diesels.
Does anyone here (other than doomsday scare type people) have any real data on the threat radius from the best EMP burst thus far?
Seems highly unlikely. EMP would not destroy the entire infrastructure, just the local area.With a decent-sized nuclear warhead, it would effect everything in line-of-sight of the explosion. The Starfish Prime test over the Pacific, did considerable damage in Hawaii, 800 miles away from the spot under the explosion (and that was before microelectronics came in to common use).
A 100KT bomb about 200 miles above Kansas would cover the entire continental United States.
Here is a good summary of the EMP effects from nuclear bombs.
And it would have to be a highly specialized nuclear device to do it.
That said, I’m not discounting that our enemies have the desire and the resources to do this. It might be highly unlikely, but the slim chance that it might happen would be devastating, even to a localized area. The effect would ripple and affect areas other than that directly affected.
It would sorta hurt the US if it was on Wall St. in NYC.
Oh, just BTW, EMP doesn't require a nuke, and EMP doesn't 'destroy' anything visible to the naked eye. Just those pesky little junctions in transistors in chips. And long wires (like power lines)
The last big EMP pulses that affected society were during the mid/late 1700s when telegraph wires caught on fire, and the big power outage in the NE in the 1970s. Those came from the sun.
/johnny
Yeah, but our sub launched rockets would counter attack any nation who tries a stunt like this—we might just hit any nation who MIGHT have attacked us with a similar weapon. Because its so new it might not be as complete as we think—it might only wreck some places but not all. Under this attack we might strike any and all who might even have been behind it—Like Iran, North Korea, China, etc... With the USA not buying oil and stuff the would would be plunged into a world wide depression—what if the USA starts to re-build and re-arm under a command system—like Fascism? What if we some being Mr. Nice Guy and start an Imperialist World Rule with a New America in total control? Then who wins?
“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.”
Which is it - COULD or WOULD? Nobody really knows. This is BS.
Hi all,
Here’s a link to the unclassified test results conducted on Johnson Island of Starfish, Checkmate, and one other device. All were nuclear weapons enhanced to boost the 100MHz emissions from the blast to create the highest degree of coupling over the largest possible range.
This electromagnetic coupling with powerlines and other types of conductive devices spikes the power faster than a lightening strike would, and causes the winding damage and other ill effects everyone is talking about on the thread.
Fact is, you’d have to have it burst somewhere about 500 KM above ground in order to mess with electronics nationwide.
Moreover, while it would be tough in the first four hours or so, within about 8 hours regular phone calls would seem to have been restored over land lines.
Anyway, here’s the link to the data. The really interesting part is that this high microwave yield device was conceived of and created around the same period of time as the Neutron Bomb - which is something most people don’t talk about any more.
They are very similarly built, which raises an interesting question - why do the one and not the other?
If you are going to perpetrate an act of war this massive on the US, would you not just go the whole way and set off a couple of neutron bombs to get the population down?
The Russians and Chinese could be patrolling the major cities by breakfast the following day without much trouble at all if they wanted to.
