Posted on 04/07/2015 7:40:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Our entire way of life can be ended in a single day. And it wouldn’t even take a nuclear war to do it. All it would take for a rogue nation or terror organization to bring us to our knees is the explosion of a couple well-placed nuclear devices high up in our atmosphere. The resulting electromagnetic pulses would fry electronics from coast to coast. Of course this could also be accomplished without any attack. Scientists tell us that massive solar storms have hit our planet before, and that it is inevitable that there will be more in the future. As you will read about below, the most recent example of this was “the Carrington Event” in 1859. If a similar burst from the sun hit us today, experts tell us that life in America could suddenly resemble life in the 1800s, and the economic damage caused could potentially be in the trillions of dollars. This is one of the greatest potential threats that we are facing as a nation, and yet Barack Obama has essentially done nothing to get us prepared.
The technology necessary to conduct such an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States has become much more accessible in recent years. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, even rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran either already have or will soon have the capability to hurt us in this way…
Rogue nations such as North Korea (and possibly Iran) will soon match Russia and China and have the primary ingredients for an EMP attack: simple ballistic missiles such as Scuds that could be launched from a freighter near our shores; space-launch vehicles able to loft low-earth-orbit satellites; and simple low-yield nuclear weapons that can generate gamma rays and fireballs.
If a successful, large scale EMP attack ever did take place, it would be a catastrophe beyond anything that the United States has ever seen before. The EMP Commission, which was established by Congress, says that it is likely that most of us would end up dead…
What would a successful EMP attack look like? The EMP Commission, in 2008, estimated that within 12 months of a nationwide blackout, up to 90% of the U.S. population could possibly perish from starvation, disease and societal breakdown.
In 2009 the congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, whose co-chairmen were former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and James Schlesinger, concurred with the findings of the EMP Commission and urged immediate action to protect the electric grid. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Intelligence Council reached similar conclusions.
If you are a terrorist, a dictator or a fanatic that is looking for a “killshot” for the United States, those kinds of numbers would certainly get your attention.
And it was recently reported by WND that the Iranian military has already been playing around with such a scenario…
Peter Vincent Pry, who is executive director of a congressional advisory group called the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, raised the alarm as the agreement is about to be finalized.
He said U.S. military officials have confirmed such an Iranian plan.
“Iranian military documents describe such a scenario – including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States,” Pry wrote in a recent column in Israel’s main online media network, Aruz Sheva.
“Iran with a small number of nuclear missiles can by EMP attack threaten the existence of modernity and be the death knell of Western principles of international law, humanism and freedom,” he said.
Very chilling stuff.
And of course there are many, many others out there that would love to see the U.S. taken down other than just the Iranians.
Meanwhile, our power grid is far more vulnerable than most Americans would dare to imagine.
In previous articles, I discussed a recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report which stated the following…
“Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer.”
Are you starting to get the picture?
Our entire way of life depends upon electricity. If you take away that electricity, our society is transformed literally overnight.
A successful EMP would be an utter nightmare for this nation. Just consider what U.S. Representative Scott Perry had to say about a potential attack last year…
“The consequences of such an attack could be catastrophic; all electronics, power systems, and information systems could be shut down,” Rep. Scott Perry said in prepared remarks during an EMP hearing in May held by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. “This could then cascade into interdependent infrastructures such as water, gas, and telecommunications. While we understand this is an extreme case, we must always be prepared in case a rogue state decides to utilize this technology.”
In essence, suddenly nothing would work and just about everything that we take for granted would suddenly be gone.
In a previous article, I spelled out some of the implications of such an event…
-There would be no heat for your home.
-Water would no longer be pumped into most homes.
-Your computer would not work.
-There would be no Internet.
-Your phones would not work.
-There would be no television.
-There would be no radio.
-ATM machines would be shut down.
-There would be no banking.
-Your debit cards and credit cards would not work.
-Without electricity, most gas stations would not be functioning.
-Most people would be unable to do their jobs without electricity and employment would collapse.
-Commerce would be brought to a standstill.
-Hospitals would not be able to function normally.
-You would quickly start running out of medicine.
-All refrigeration would shut down and frozen foods in our homes and supermarkets would start to go bad.
And as I mentioned above, all of this can happen even without an attack.
A direct hit from a major solar storm can cause the exact same thing.
In fact, NASA says that there is a 12 percent chance that such a storm will hit us during the next ten years…
NASA is warning that there’s a 12 percent chance an extreme solar storm will hit Earth in the next decade, sending out massive shock waves that would knock out grids across the world.
The economic impact of this doomsday scenario could exceed $2 trillion — or 20 times the cost of Hurricane Katrina, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
In recent years, we have been really lucky.
There was a close call in 2012 and another one in 2013.
The following is an excerpt from an upcoming book that I have co-authored with Barbara Fix that will soon be published entitled “Get Prepared Now”…
Most people have absolutely no idea that the Earth barely missed being fried by a massive EMP burst from the sun in 2012 and in 2013. And earlier in 2014 there was another huge solar storm which would have caused tremendous damage if it had been directed at our planet. If any of those storms would have directly hit us, the result would have been catastrophic. Electrical transformers would have burst into flames, power grids would have gone down and much of our technology would have been fried. In essence, life as we know it would have ceased to exist – at least for a time. These kinds of solar storms have hit the Earth many times before, and experts tell us that it is inevitable that it will happen again. The most famous one happened in 1859, and was known as the Carrington Event. But other than the telegraph, humanity had very little dependence on technology at the time. If another Carrington Event happened today, it would be a complete and utter nightmare. A study by Lloyd’s of London has concluded that it would have taken a $2,600,000,000,000 chunk out of the global economy, and it would take up to a decade to repair the damage. Unfortunately, scientists insist that it is going to happen at some point. The only question is when.
So keep an eye on the sun.
The giant ball of fire that we revolve around has started to behave very erratically, and it has the power to end our way of life at any time.
In fact, scientists tell us that we are about to get hit with a “glancing blow” on April 7th…
A filament of magnetism stretching halfway across the sun erupted during the late hours of April 4th (22:00-23:00 UT). The eruption split the sun’s atmosphere, hurling a CME into space and creating a “canyon of fire,” shown in a movie recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory: The glowing walls of the canyon trace the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the sun’s surface. From end to end, the structure stretches more than 300,000 km–a real Grand Canyon.
Fragments of the exploding filament formed the core of a CME that raced away from the sun at approximately 900 km/s (2 million mph): image. Most of the CME will miss Earth, but not all. The cloud is expected to deliver a a glancing blow to our planet’s magnetic field could on April 7th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
The event of April 7th is not going to cause us major problems. But someday there will be a solar storm that will.
Personally, I cannot even imagine what life would be like without electricity.
Because we have become so deeply dependent on technology, most of us would have absolutely no idea how to live without it.
An electromagnetic pulse attack would be one of the fastest ways to cripple America and end the dominance of the United States in world affairs. And in this day and age, there are hundreds of millions of people around the planet that would love to see that happen.
So to not take steps to protect our power grid from such an attack is very foolish. But that is precisely what Barack Obama (and presidents before him) have chosen to do. We have technology which would mitigate the damage from an electromagnetic pulse, but rather than spend the money Obama has decided to just hope that it will never happen.
Up to this point, we have been fortunate.
But someday, our luck may run out.
“A direct hit from a major solar storm can cause the exact same thing.”
Not true. Your electronics will be unharmed from solar storm effects.
As for a nuclear emp, we know it will destroy some electronics. The grid will go down. How long it will stay down is unknown. We have no idea what the civil infrastructure impact will be.
This is an important topic. Emphasis should be placed on figuring out what will be destroyed and what will not. Hysteria about 90% mortality and 1800s life is just that.
Utilities are starting to stir on this topic....late, better than never.
What happens when EBT cards and Social Security transfers stop flowing; when traffic lights and the neighborhood power grids cease to function; when TV, radio and the Internet are no longer occupying the brains of the masses; when hospitals have only generator power to function, and people are dragging their sick/injured relatives and gang members to the ER; when gangs realize there is zero citizen potential to call for the police in order to stop raids, etc?
“The problem is that unless you use a pretty powerful nuclear device (at least in the 300+ KT range), EMP is not as effective as people think.”
This is incorrect. Emp is remarkably consistent. A 10kt nuke provides only a marginally smaller emp than a 300kt. Gamma yield is what drives emp. A hydrogen fusion weapons. Does not have a gamma yield greater than a smaller fission weapon.
No it wouldn’t. The EMP threat is grossly overblown. The range isn’t actually very good, to achieve the altitude necessary to blanket the country is actually very tough, plus of course you just put a bunch of the country out of range, and a lot of electronics just won’t be effected for various reasons. The paranoid love ringing this bell every few months, and they’re wrong every single time.
At least in the 1800s people had the skills to cope, today society would fall completely apart within hours.
There is little doubt that social unrest would quickly occur. But it would take much more than that to get a 90% mortality event.
Yes, no one really knows how much damage an EMP would do.
The grid going down is my numero uno fear. There are 9 major substations that if taken out would put the grid down. I’m more worried about that and a cyber hack than any EMP. The grid will likely go down at some point but EMP is way down on the list of causes.
Plus if the grid does go down it will likely be the NE grid. That would leave the other two in place. But even a few mos without electricity would be pretty bad.
I’m assuming we need world socialism to avoid this threat?
EMP is my personal favorite choice for dealing with a near nuclear Iran.
I think an EMP would take out the power grid in a lot of areas, as for cars I think it wouls take out about 1/2 of them, some ov the newer ones might make it just due to the fact that most cars are metal shells and most would reflect a large amount of the EMP discharge, also if they were in a grage at the time and the hosue was insulated with that foil backed insulation they would fare better.
‘Social unrest’? Bwahahaha, your penchant for under statement is amusing ... or not, in this instance.
Yes, it’s always more impressive to express hyperbole and hysteria. It makes it seem like you care more.
“The EMP threat is grossly overblown”
The threat is real. We just don’t have any idea of the actual impact. It could be minor to catastrophic. We don’t know
I agree with you. Sometimes I wonder if the people worried about EMP today, are the same ones that were telling us about Y2K.
Actually we’ve got a pretty good idea of the actual. We know the range, we know the intensity, and we know that it’s ineffective enough to have never played a serious part in either our or the USSR’s “nuclear exchange” plans.
We might be going down in that scenario, but the perps would be obvious from the isotopic signature and we would nuke the s*** out of them just to make sure the follow up didn’t occur...
Just curious - if an EMP attack is that easy and so thoroughly disables the opponent, why hasn’t anyone tried one? Or, has someone tried one and the effect wasn’t as expected?
The Soviets already did an EMP attack on their own people. It did very little damage.
I guess I need to sharpen my sarcasm skills as I don’t agree with you on either.
Operation Fishbowl.
You should bing it up and see what’s what.
EMP is real as the nose on your face. The Russians knew that before we did, actually.
Anyway, fascinating stuff.
By the way, EMP produces a sort of ‘sideband’ effect, where in you see an aurora of a nuclear blast on the other side of the equator at a distance equal to the distance between the blast and the equator.
That’s the other thing Fishbowl revealed.
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