Really hard to fry one of these suckers.
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.
Let's say a 1 MT nuke went off in the center of the US. One megaton is about 4 * 10^15 joules. Over a circle with a 2200 km radius (area 1.5 * 10^7 sq km), that's 2.7 * 10^8 joules per sq km, or 266 joules per meter. This assumes even distribution of energy, which won't happen -- much more than half the energy will be radiated into space.
I'm not sure how much actual damage that will do.
“The giant ball of fire that we revolve around has started to behave very erratically ...”
The answer to all the hoopla about climate change.
“serious part in either our or the USSR’s “nuclear exchange” plans.”
Not true. It is a big part of military planning. There is a big effort to harden military command and control facilities.
The area of influence of an emp is in fact as big as has been discussed in the article. But there is more to the story.
look up Mil-std-188-125-1 and check your own logic about emp not being part of military doctrine
I didn’t recognize it as sarcasm. I thought you were one of the enlightened ones. It is interesting to read all of the old FR Y2K threads. There always has to be some something out there that will take us back to the 1800’s....
I am more worried about the fireballs over our cities then a voltage spike.
Hardening targets you expect to get hit is one thing. But EMP wasn’t part of our attack plans, If it was really that effective we wouldn’t have needed to invent the neutron bomb.
People talk about the low information crowd, those on food stamps, welfare, and such. The way I look at it, most of those people are too lazy or inept to make it on their own and need - desperately - someone to take care of them.
Than there are those who do know how to survive when the shinola hits the fan. I firmly believe these types live more in the outer suburbs to the country.
Those who need someone to look after them will gravitate to those who they think will take care of them. In the urban areas of the cities, the thugs and gangsters will take charge and use these people as cannon fodder. In the outlying areas, those who have the knowledge and skills to survive can afford to pick and choose.
The survivors can pick those who can work - the able-bodied and so on. They will teach these people to survive, to hunt, fish, shoot, cook, fix things, mend, trap, track, ambush, kill, etc. They will discard the less able-bodied - send them back or kill them outright. If you can't work, you can't live here. Also, they will teach people what made the country worked in the first place - hard work, Christian beliefs, charity.
The gangsters will hold up in the cities and meagerly exist. They will at times make excursions into the country for supplies and people - slaves. But they will fail because they will not have the knowledge - or tactical knowledge - in how to fight and win.
Just thoughts off the top of my head.
I always go back to one of my favorite shows of all time, Connections, and this scenario....I remember watching this back in the early 80s and it really was sobering to comtemplate, and that trap is now even tighter than ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw
EMP lenses off of the ionosphere. The EMP itself shakes electrons loose and lenses them back down to the earth in massive quantities. There are three aspects to the attack, which include a ‘long wave’ that uses long conductors to transmit the energy to transformers and generators which can melt the windings.
This wouldn’t be all that bad, but we don’t make the transformers and generators here in the US that can replace them. They come from Asia now.
And the locomotives used to move them? Diesel electric now.
Also, there are nukes and their are nukes designed to maximize gamma yield.
You can design a fairly small nuke to maximize the gamma yield. The less high explosive you can get away with, the better. It’s the gamma yield that shakes the electrons loose.
The only damage that counts it the damage done to the electrical grid, particularly to transformers and generators. We already know it’s going to be hell on capacitors and IC’s.
We live in a ‘just-in-time’ supply chain now. Let the local Safeway run out of food and see what happens in a week.
ULF comms were justified particularly because you can harden them against EMP. The nuke triad ensured that if you did try to take us out with EMP, our subs would do the same, and worse. We could use ULF to communicate with the subs to ensure it happened. They’d be the eyes and ears figuring out who did what to whom.
One Second After is an excellent novel based on very good research on the topic. What’s funny about it is that it is likely optimistic. Good book.
I think it was less skills, than that it was the way of life, all of life, shops, utensils and tools, and supply systems, manufacturing, the food industry, transportation, communications, medicine, was geared to living in the 1800s.
If you sent a car back to the 1800s it would be useless, because there was no infrastructure to support it. In the 1800s you didn’t need to know how to build an oil lamp, or a harness for a horse, or a plow, instead you just went to the store, and the selling and caring of horses was like everything that takes care of cars today, horse feed filling stations, horse dealers and horse factories breeding new horses, horse repair shops, horse related shops making fine saddles, every household and every business designed for you to walk up with your horse and need to water and tie it up.
To suddenly be thrust into the 1800s today, means something totally different, where would people shop for a two man saw, or a horse, or a plow, or a manual coffee grinder, or coffee for that matter, since the long distance haulers no longer have the same methods of transporting goods from origin or farm, to market, that they had in the 1800s.
Today people should have enough food and the means to get water, to keep themselves going for a long time, while society would figure out work arounds to find a new way of dealing with things.
Government speak for "we have no idea".
“Hardening targets you expect to get hit is one thing. But EMP wasn’t part of our attack plans, If it was really that effective we wouldn’t have needed to invent the neutron bomb.”
You are very much technically misguided On many fronts. You don’t appear to have any actual knowledge on the subject of emp. I sent you a reference. Please look it up and then if you would like to have a serious discussion about the topic, I would be pleased to do so. Until then nobody should take anything you post on the subject seriously.
I’ve done enough research to know it’s quite simply not the threat people keep insisting it is. If it was that dangerous we’d have gotten nuclear tests out of Nevada almost immediately.
I have learned the hard way that sarcasm in print can be exceptionally difficult to detect. Even in speech it can be elusive to some. I have said outrageous things, secure in my belief that no one could possibly take me literally, only to be met with scorn and derision from someone who took me seriously. Such people usually consider themselves too intelligent to fall for that absurd statement they just heard without realizing that the fact that they took it as an attempt to make them believe something so absurd rather than recognizing it as sarcasm only proves their own gullibility.
I do agree that EMP is no the 800 lbs gorilla it is made out to be but more like the 500 lbs one. Yes, it might not take out your car, transistor radio, home generator and even your computer but the downside is it will affect the grid and we have so many people depended on that, that is the true problem we have. As an individual, you could ride it out with preparation and enough gas/diesel or perhaps solar/wind, but the key here is society itself. Just think if the system goes down ,the EBT cards will not work and it will be Katy bar the door.
“I’ve done enough research to know it’s quite simply not the threat people keep insisting it is.”
You need to do still more research. There is lots of unclassified data out there that you should read. Until then, you are simply spreading wholly incorrect information for reasons only you understand.
Nothing shows you have no facts like going after the person. Since that’s all you’ve done for multiple posts now we both know the facts don’t back you.
Y2K is like someone warning of a potential devastating flood people skeptical at first, but after a while they get it and a damn is build, sure enough the flooding rains come, but because the damn was built no real damage is done, so does that mean no damn needed to be built?
Y2K didn’t happen because it couldn’t it didn’t happen because business took it serious and at the cost of millions of dollars they had programmers rewrite millions of lines of code.
The goal is to minimize the damage and the long term effects and total casualties from those fireballs, and to maximize survival, and minimize recovery time.
Recovery is all important after any catastrophe, and not only is it important for the people needing water, food, and medical treatment, and a recovered economy and work, but it is needed for our military. If America is weakened in a major nuclear/EMP strike, then enemy ground troops could be following.
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