Posted on 12/14/2011 4:56:03 AM PST by Kaslin
Gingrich's opinion on electromagnetic pulse events is well-informed. The Times' is not.
Writing in the New York Times, William J. Broad portrays GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich as a loon for his view that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is one of the most dangerous threats we face as a nation:
Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful, wants you to know that as commander in chief he is ready to confront one of the most nightmarish of doomsday scenarios: a nuclear blast high above the United States that would instantly throw the nation into a dark age.
In debates and speeches, interviews and a popular book, he is ringing alarm bells over what experts call the electromagnetic pulse, or EMP — a poorly understood phenomenon of the nuclear age.
The idea is that if a nuclear weapon, lofted by a missile, were detonated in outer space high above the American heartland, it would set off a huge and crippling shockwave of electricity. Mr. Gingrich warns that it would fry electrical circuits from coast to coast, knocking out computers, electrical power and cellphones. Everything from cars to hospitals would be knocked out.
“Millions would die in the first week alone,” he wrote in the foreword to a science-fiction thriller published in 2009 that describes an imaginary EMP attack on the United States. A number of scientists say they consider Mr. Gingrich’s alarms far-fetched.
The sci-fi thriller that Broad alludes to is William Forstchen’s One Second After, a book similar to others in apocalyptic fiction genre, such as David Crawford’s Lights Out, James Howard’s What So Proudly We Hailed, or Michael Turnlund’s The Raggedy Edge. All of these novels focus on what would happen after the collapse of the power grid in the United States.
I’ve seen the power grid up close, having mapped a fraction of it with a GPS and ATV in the mountains and bogs of upstate New York as part of a crew working for CH Energy Group. I’ve seen firsthand how something as simple as ice, a fallen tree, or even a scared bear can shut down power for hundreds of thousands.
You would be amazed at how poorly defended this hemisphere’s power grid is to physical attacks on key installations such as substations and transmission lines. Not to mention the network attacks noted in the Grey Goose Report, and the electromagnetic pulse events the bi-partisan EMP Commission Reports detailed to the House Armed Services Committee in 2008.
I’ve read the work of Yousaf Butt that Broad cites in his article, and like Dr. William Radasky and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, I find him frankly unqualified to speak on the subject authoritatively:
Although Dr. Butt holds a Ph.D. in physics, served in NASA, belongs to the Union of Concerned Scientists, and obviously did a quick study of EMP for his article, Dr. Butt is professionally unqualified to offer competent opinions about EMP, nuclear weapon designs, and the other specialized national security issues in his article. Unlike the EMP Commissioners, Dr. Butt never worked professionally in the Department of Defense or the Intelligence Community on the subject matter addressed in his article, nor has he had access to classified information indispensable to forming competent judgments about the EMP threat. Because Harvard University’s prestigious The Space Review published Dr. Butt’s article, we are concerned that the article will misinform the public and scientific community on a vitally important issue of national security policy, and so seek to correct the record with this rebuttal. The rebuttal offered here is ours and is not an official response from the EMP Commission.
As one example of the quality of Dr. Butt’s research, he asserts that, “The methodology and conclusions of the EMP commission have already been criticized a few years ago.” To substantiate his claim, Dr. Butt references articles such as “The Newt Bomb” in The New Republic — none are serious scientific studies but merely political cartoons, authored by persons who have no competence to judge the EMP Commission’s work, and who obviously never even read the EMP Commission reports. For example, these articles condemn the EMP Commission for advocating National Missile Defense and preemptive war against Iran. Yet the EMP Commission never made any such recommendations.
Board and his sources admit the fact that China, North Korea, and Iran are perfecting EMP-optimized nuclear weapons, but are so short-sighted as to think they would have to be launched from those countries.
The Missile Defense Agency has every reason to claim that the scenario of an ICBM launched from halfway around the world would be an easy target for them to destroy. Unfortunately, the most likely avenues of attacks are locally launched missiles from submarines or freighters in the Gulf of Mexico or off either coast, where distance to detonation from launch is measured in seconds, and which are not the focus of our outward-facing early warning and detection systems. Such vessels could be easily scuttled after launch, and the rogue agent responsible for the attack may not be found until well after the attack is over, rendering our nuclear counterstrike abilities utterly moot.
And then there is the far more mundane, but every bit as real possibility of the threat our own sun offers to our fragile electrical grid.
The 1859 Carrington event, were it to happen today, could be even more destructive than a nuclear weapon, frying power grids worldwide.
Broad and the Times have gone out of their way to fabricate a “warmonger” theme. The article portrays Gingrich as someone angling for preemptive military strikes based off of one off-the-cuff comment by Gingrich. Gingrich has primarily advocated for nothing more than cost-effective hardening of critical infrastructure components so that our grid has a better chance of surviving any sort of electromagnetic surge that strikes our grid, be it man-made or natural in origin.
Gingrich may be the only adult in the room when it comes to discussing the steps our nation needs to take to harden an electrical grid that is showing its age, piecemeal construction, and fragility, and at a fraction of cost of the present administration’s abortive and wasteful spending binges.
Gingrich makes sense. No wonder the Times was to smear him.
It used to be the case that sensative equipement was hardened...but that is no longer the case. When I first got into the military back in the 80's...that was the case. It's not the case anymore.
It is also not the case that lighting applies more energy to the grid. Sure...at a very localized level it does...but not when you are talking about every power line across America acting as a conduit. Lightning will produce more voltage per meter than EMP (1 megavolt mer m2 vs 50K volts)...but less wattage (6 megawatts for EMP per m2...as opposed to 1 megawatt for lightning). But remember...with lightning...you are really only talking about an area the size of 1 sq meter. With EMP...you are talking about millions of square miles...all feeding into the large transformers.
The "grid" is composed of the whole system...not just wires and poles. That includes the tranformers...which is what is mostly in danger because the big ones have to be made to order. When a couple go out...you can work around the grid and find a fix...but when hundreds go out...you are in the dark.
The 1859, 1921 aqnd 2003 solar storms were just a small sample of what a full fledged EMP would be like. 1850 and 1921 had no grid or a loose grid to speak of. 2003 was a strong storm but not near as bad as 1859...and it did a lot of damage to the grid. An EMP would make these look like a Sunday picnic.
AGW's little sister? I don't think so.
Thank whatever, that the New York Times knows that there are no threats to the USA except for radical WASPs.
The Carrington event was much stronger than the 2003 Halloween Storms and would cause much more damage to the grid.
Have been beating that drum a long time.
Derision is still common.
Thanks for posting the truth.
It is not the total energy content that matters, it is WHERE that energy is spread in frequency/time.
The energy in a lightning strike is spread over more than 500 MICROseconds, an EMP distributes its energy over about a 1 MICROsecond timeframe ... and achieves its peak after a few NANOseconds.
An EMP also distributes its power over twice the bandwidth of a lightning strike.
I think the Ruby gal on youtube about the USA splitting into 3 parts is more or less accurate.
This EMP will be devastating . . . and part of a basket of horrifically devastating factors, events, crises, disasters
—quakes
—WWIII
—terrorist attacks with chemicals in our water etc.
—attacks on nuke generating plants
—volcanoes
—. . .
—. . .
One source given a lot of dreams and visions about China attacking decided he’d see how many Chinese restaurant staff/owners realized that in his local area in Virginia.
ALL of them did. 100%. They just don’t know when but consider it more or less likely at any time.
Actually, I think it will be primarily Russia et al on the East Coast.
The most infamous thing in the NYT article was the flip assrtion that, hey, we can just shoot down any missile over the United States.
Besides that being completely untrue, the NYT has spent decades ridiculing and impeding missile defense in every way imaginable. One of their favorites is to say there is no way on earth it can be effective.
Next to a full nuclear attack, EMP attacks are at the top of the list. EMP attacks have long been considered to be a key threat (since the 50s) and has always been a major threat factor in strategic nuclear planning. It would severely cripple the general economy and all non-hardened communication nodes, which is most every communication and electronic device we rely on day to day. Hope the journalist does not have a pacemaker because if there were an EMP event he would tach out.
I have a news flash for the NYT. NASA’s number 1 concern is an EMP. My fiancee’s nephew works as a high level consultant for NASA and he told us they are terrified we will experience an EMP.
The main threat to the grid is the large transformers which are vulnerable. They are not manufactured in the US and it takes about 2 years to get replacements. If we lose a certain percentage of the transformers a good portion of the country will be in the 1800’s for 4-10 years. We could lose over 70% of the population. Its very serious.
An EMP or a large solar flare would produce enough of a jolt to make lightening strikes look like child’s play. I used to sell surge suppression systems and we have one on our house. The average lightening strike on the power lines is about 3,000 volts. It takes 12,000 volts to fry my system. An EMP or solar flare would be significantly more intense than that. But again its the transformers that you have to worry about. Wires, circuit boxes etc could easily be replaced. We don’t have a bunch of extra transformers sitting around in a warehouse as backups.
NASA has put out several reports warning of the likelihood of an EMP. It only costs a couple hundred million to harden the system but the legislature has no intention of doing it. If we experience an EMP or a solar flare the only people that will be living with any modicum of normalcy will be those that have an alternative electrical system that is not tied to the grid. Everyone else will be in misery.
"The Missile Defense Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that maintains an arsenal of ground-based interceptors ready to fly into space and smash enemy warheads, says that defeating such an attack would be as straightforward as any other defense of the continental United States."
This is absolutely not true. There have been a few successful tests, but there is definitly no "arsenal of ground-based interceptors ready to fly into space and smash enemy warheads" that could knock out an ICBM.
I guess the guys at NYT didn’t see NCIS-LA last night....
“With EMP...you are talking about millions of square miles...all feeding into the large transformers. “
Millions of sq miles, huh?
From a single blast?
BS.
“The smaller storm of 2003 caused severe damage to the grid. Millions of people were without power across Canada, the northeast US and Europe.”
Where can I find info on that?
NYT would benefit from an EMP strike -— no Internet competition and they avoid bankruptcy.
William J. Broad
Thanks for the ping!
EMP is complete bull&hit. Nucellular explosions are PINT
He was projecting when he called Gingrich a loon
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