Posted on 09/25/2011 1:30:34 PM PDT by IbJensen
Most Americans do not know this, but 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. The damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11. Just imagine a world where nobody has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can make any phone calls and virtually all commerce across the entire country is brought to a complete stop. » If you like this article, please subscribe to our daily newsletter
Life-After-An-EMP-Attack-No-Power-No-Food-No-Transportation-No-Banking-And-No-Internet-250x150A nation that does not know how to live without technology would be almost entirely stripped of it at that point. Yes, this could really happen. An EMP attack is America's "Achilles heel", and everyone around the world knows it. It is only a matter of time before someone uses an EMP weapon against us, and at this point we are pretty much completely unprepared.
The sad thing is that we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars hunting down "terrorists" in caves on the other side of the globe and we have been told that because of "national security" it is necessary for our private areas to be touched before we are allowed to get on an airplane, but our government is doing essentially nothing to address what is perhaps our biggest security vulnerability.
What would you and your neighbors do if the power went out and it did not ever come back on? What would you do if an EMP attack happened in the middle of the winter and you suddenly were not able to heat your home any longer? What would you do if all the electronics in your car got fried and you simply could not drive anywhere? What would you do if all the supermarkets in your area shut down because food could not be transported across the country anymore? What would you do if you were suddenly unable to call your family and friends for help? What would you do if you were suddenly unable to get the medicine that you needed? What would you do if your debit cards and credit cards simply did not work any longer and you could not get any of your money out of the bank? What would you do if all of these things happened all at once?
A single EMP attack would be the worst disaster that the United States has ever seen by far. An electromagnetic pulse could potentially fry the vast majority of all the microchips in the United States. In an instant, nearly all of our electronic devices would be rendered useless.
Yes, the federal government knows all about this. The following excerpt is from an April 2008 report by the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack....
“The consequences of lack of food, heat (or air conditioning), water, waste disposal, medical, police, fire fighting support, and effective civil authority would threaten society itself.”
Most of us have become completely and totally dependent on electricity and technology. Without it, most of us would be in huge trouble.
The following is how an article in the Wall Street Journal described the potential consequences of an EMP attack....
No American would necessarily die in the initial attack, but what comes next is potentially catastrophic. The pulse would wipe out most electronics and telecommunications, including the power grid. Millions could die for want of modern medical care or even of starvation since farmers wouldn't be able to harvest crops and distributors wouldn't be able to get food to supermarkets. Commissioner Lowell Wood calls EMP attack a "giant continental time machine" that would move us back more than a century in technology to the late 1800s.
It wouldn't be so bad if we had the knowledge and the infrastructure to live the way that they did back in the 1800s, but today that is simply not the case.
Dr. William Graham was Ronald Reagan’s science adviser and the chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. Dr. Graham believes that in the event of a large scale EMP attack, the vast majority of Americans would either freeze, starve or die from disease.
Food Storage SystemAccording to Graham, in the aftermath of an EMP attack life in America "would probably be something that you might imagine life to be like around the late 1800s but with several times the population we had in those days, and without the ability of the country to support and sustain all those people."
Would you be able to survive?
All of those big bank accounts may never be able to be recovered after an EMP attack. Your money might be instantly fried out of existence.
The following is what Graham believes would happen to the financial system in the event of an EMP attack....
“Most financial records are stored electronically. ATMs, which depend upon both power and telecommunications, would not be available; banks, which try to back up records but in general aren’t strongly aware of the EMP problem, would face the problem of unprotected storage and computer systems”
This is the danger of having a financial system that is so dependent on technology. We may wake up one day and find that all the money is gone.
But if an EMP attack actually happened, the biggest concern for most of us would be trying to figure out how to survive.
The president of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, is convinced that a single EMP attack could result in the deaths of the vast majority of the population of the United States....
"Within a year of that attack, nine out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can't support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity"
Are you starting to get a feel for the scope of the problem?
The sad thing is that so much could be done to protect this country from an EMP attack.
Right now, most vital U.S. military infrastructure has at least some protection from an EMP attack.
But the general population has been left completely and totally vulnerable.
It has been estimated that the entire power grid could potentially be protected for about 20 billion dollars. Considering the fact that we have spent over 400 billion dollars in Afghanistan, I think that we could afford it.
We have spent our national security dollars very, very badly and someday it is going to come back to bite us in the rear end.
Right now, other nations around the world are working feverishly to develop EMP weapons. The following is from a statement by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry to the United States Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security on March 8th, 2005....
Russian and Chinese military scientists in open source writings describe the basic principles of nuclear weapons designed specifically to generate an enhanced-EMP effect, that they term "Super-EMP" weapons. "Super-EMP" weapons, according to these foreign open source writings, can destroy even the best protected U.S. military and civilian electronic systems.
But it is not just Russia and China that have been developing "Super-EMP" weapons. According to Newsmax, it is believed that North Korea may have tested a "Super-EMP" weapon back in 2009....
North Korea’s last round of tests, conducted in May 2009, appear to have included a “super-EMP” weapon, capable of emitting enough gamma rays to disable the electric power grid across most of the lower 48 states
Remember, all it would take is one strategically placed EMP attack to wipe out this nation.
But an EMP weapon is not the only danger that can produce this type of effect. The truth is that a really bad geomagnetic storm could also potentially produce almost as much damage.
This is something that everyone knows is one of our biggest vulnerabilities and it is something that we can make preparations for.
Yet the Bush administration and the Obama administration have just stood there and have done nothing.
Our idiocy is astounding.
General Eugene Habiger, the former head of U. S. Strategic Command, has said the following about the possibility of an EMP attack in the future....
“It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.”
Remember, this is something that could cause millions times more damage than 9/11 did.
Instead of molesting old ladies at airports and chasing goat herders around the mountains of Afghanistan, perhaps we should be addressing our largest security vulnerabilities.
But that would require using some common sense. Sadly, common sense seems to be in very short supply in Washington D.C. these days.
So if the government is not going to do anything about it, that means that it is up to you to prepare yourself and your family. This world is becoming very unstable and disasters can strike at any time.
We all saw what happened after Hurricane Katrina. The government response was a nightmare. An EMP attack would be millions of times worse and the federal government probably would not even be able to get you and your family any assistance.
You would truly be on your own.
So are you ready?
This is yet another reason why the number of preppers in the United States is exploding. A lot of people can see how the world is changing and they understand that the federal government is not going to come through for them when the chips are down.
An EMP attack could end life as we know it at any time.
It is a glaring security vulnerability and the entire world knows that it is there.
I hope that you are getting ready, because the government certainly is not.
See End of the American Dream Website
“Aircraft wouldn’t even close to even noticing an EMP attack. Their systems are hardened against even a lighten strike and you want to claim EMP, which you know nothing about, will slip right on in and damage the airplane.”
Code Toad, I’m calling you out on a huge mistake. I’ve seen several posts of yours on this thread comparing EMP to a lightening strike. FYI, EMP generated by a nuke are composed of 3 specific types of pulses: E1, E2 and E3. E1 is the pulse to be worried about - it is extremely fast, far faster than a lightening strike or other surge that normal surge protectors are designed to stop. It is over and done with completely in a microsecond, with most of its damage done within 200 nanoseconds and its peak strength at roughly 5 nanoseconds. The electronics of planes are generally not designed to deal with that at all - with military aircraft a possible exception. I sincerely cannot comment on the “8,000 planes falling out of the sky” scenario, so I won’t - but I DO say that comparing EMP to lightening in its effects is DEAD WRONG. Simply put, protection against lightening strikes and other common electrical surges will be wholly inadequate to protect against the E1 surge.
Now you do have E2 being roughly comparable to lightening - and lightening generally produces stronger such strikes than a nuke, so I don’t think that most people who understand EMP are really worried much about E2. It lasts from about 1 microsecond to 1 second after the beginning of the EMP strike - after all of the E1 damage is done. E3 is roughly equivalent to the pulse from a geomagnetic storm - it lasts from tens to hundreds of seconds. No one is much worried about nuke-induced pulses of this type - again because the main damage a nuke-generated EMP would cause would be due to the E1 pulse.
Don’t believe me? Then look it up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
So PLEASE stop inaccurately comparing nuke-generated EMP effects to that of lightening - that’s not what ANYONE SERIOUS is talking about.
marked
I agree, an EMP attack on Iraq or especially North Korea would harm our nearby allies far more than the target countries! An EMP attack on Nork would hurt Japan far more.
And we have the capability to carry out such an attack using proven tech, while the Nork’s would be winging it.
I’ve seen trade studies in which the North Koreans pop an EMP device over their own territory to take out Japanese assets and space assets from several countries, with little fratricidal damage to North Korea. WHY they would do so was beyond the scope of the study, I was told.
“E1 is the pulse to be worried about “
Yup, you are correct. It’s the rise time. Fuses and breakers and normal EMI filters have limited ability to mitigate this. You need a dedicated design.
Don’t sell commercial avionics short, there are systems with the correct design, especially the ones used by both military and civilian customers.
And yes, it all looked like something out of a zombie movie, right down to almost appearing to be in black and white.
When I got home, we fired up the fireplace, my grandson helping chip firewood out of the ice that had formed when the wet snow blew in sideways, filling the spaces between the wood. We kept warm, cooked on a Coleman stove, and even had coffee, but there was no local news on radio, no TV, and I got about 2 hours total of checking e-mail on dialup internet before the batteries in my laptops all ran dry.
One gas station got generator power to the pumps and made change out of a box, but they had so many drive-offs they shut down again. I’m not completely sure why people didn’t just go in and make arrangements to pay later if they absolutely had to have the gas and had no cash, but they didn’t.
You don’t need an EMP to have problems, and I’m sure people who have been hit with hurricanes or flooding or been in a major disaster know what I’m talking about. I’ve been through a couple of hurricanes and two tornadoes and one major flood, too (I make a point of avoiding areas of known volcanic activity and high seismicity).
Water was on and OK in town, you were fine if you had a hand pump at the farm, but the basic vulnerabilities of not being able to get water, and the thought of that situation for the long term were indeed thought provoking. Melted snow would have worked for a while, but what would you do in summer if something caused a disruption?
Many of our neighbors did not have woodburning fireplaces. Some used gas stoves for heat (even though you are not supposed to), some took the kids out to the car and warmed them up. Some cooked on their grills outside, using up whatever meat they had in the fridge first
But with an EMP, the same electrical controllers which eventually control the flow of natural gas will quit, the pipeline compressor stations will stop. Even oil wells will shut down (North Dakota estimated a loss of five million dollars a day in just extraction taxes as pump jacks run with electric motors stopped pumping oil.)
All our normal means of refrigeration, freexing, and cooking--electricity and eventually gas would be gone in fairly short order.
Keep in mind that for most of the people involved, this was short lived--three days to a week. There was plenty of snow around to pack freezer contents in and keep them that way, and the weather was warm enough (20s to 30s above) that no one froze to death in their homes.
Had it been an EMP and not just a localized (and somewhat surreal) experience, had panic set in, things would have been considerably worse, and with no end in sight, conflict, even in a relatively civilized area, would only be a question of when, not if.
Food for thought.
I’m not selling survival gear, I haven’t written any books, and I don’t have any skin in the game except the survival of like minded and decent people with a minimum of loss.
I’m not the one living in the fantasy world. But go ahead and keep insulting those that disagree with you. After all, the rest of us have been brainwashed and are part of the Government misinformation conspiracy, and you are the only one that knows the truth.
Oh, and I found this in an online science journal that backs our side of the argument better than yours.
• The extent to which airplanes would fall out of the sky because of an EMP is a big unknown. The Boeing 777 and newer airliners are “fly by wire” systems, with all control of the aircraft done by computer. Older aircraft such as the Boeing 737 are nearly impossible to control without electrically-assisted hydraulics, but do not rely on computers for the most basic control functions. Some military aircraft even have “fly by wire” systems that are not EMP hardened. (The stealth bomber is EMP-hardened — but the F-117 stealth fighter is not, and is completely impossible to fly with inoperative computers.) Although all of these aircraft have considerable electromagnetic shielding, the civilian airliners have not been tested for EMP resistance. If a cell phone presents a danger to an airliner, a nuclear electromagnetic pulse would present a severe danger. Aircraft flying at high altitudes are much closer to the “source region” where EMP is produced. In the lower atmosphere, the EMP field strength is fairly uniform over large regions; but at high altitudes, the EMP strengths could be much larger.
What some one needs to write on top of the survival information is where all of us like minded individuals can find each other. Starting with a means to communicate that the animals roaming the streets can’t tap into, and then an easily defensible area where we can attempt to gather and begin rebuilding society.
I’m sure many of the rest of you feel the same. If the unthinkable happens, we need to put ourselves in a position to begin reclaiming our way of life. Not the electronic goodies or any of that but just the security that the guy next to me won’t try and cut my throat in the middle of the night and vice versa.
With the amount of intelligence I’ve seen displayed amongst my fellow conservatives, we should be able to reform a civilian government, take control of the military, and begin purging the country of the ones who turned into savages, and took advantage of the situation for their own gain and gratification in fairly short order. Then the rebuilding of the society as a whole could begin in earnest.
I hope someone is thinking along those lines, or we would be doomed to exist a clannish and feudal territory of little Fiefdoms for decades. Places where weak succumb to the strong regardless of right and wrong.
United and strength in numbers should be OUR mantra should the SHTF scenario play out.
What part of Gilligan, the Professor and Mary Anne did you miss?
Well, ok, the Professor and Mary Anne. Sex AND beer . . . . probably made from old tires and coconut juice.
::-)
Then apply the golden rule retroacticively. Shoot first.
No muss, no fuss, explain to the neighbors that the dog hacked up a hairball last night.
But never, ever, ever let the bastards get the upper hand.
Freedom isn't free. And it comes to us, sometimes with blood on it.
/johnny
Thanks for the ping!
/johnny
mark
When I was a child much of what today is considered necessary, I didn't have growing up and neither did most americans....we lived in a city of over 1,000,000...... a pot belly stove can provide heat, just need to collect the wood...but I do believe city living people will be SOOL in many cases today..
tbw2 said: “* They take 18 months to make”
CodeToad said: “P.S. That little ditty has been passed arounf the Internet and is an old, tired, myth designed to support the idea of zombification after an EMP attack. The fact is there are loads of transformers all over the US and they are easy to make. In fact, I watched one being made and it took all of 12 minutes. Where the survivalist nerds get “18 months” is just out there.”
Toad, we’re not talking about the small transformers that are on telephone polls across the country, or even the neighborhood transformers that can fit on the back of a pickup truck. We’re talking about the roughly 365 ultra-large transformers that are scattered around the country, each of which has to be custom-made. FYI, we don’t make any more in the US, they’re all manufactured somewhere else.
Further, the most important factor is that in the case of these transformers, it is the E3 pulse (the one lasting tens to hundreds of seconds) that do the most damage to transformers, the damage of which is readily transmitted over long lines, and which therefore can affect large transformers literally hundreds of miles from the peak effects of an EMP event.
It should also be noted that an nuke-produced E3 pulse would be far more dangerous than its roughly-equivalent geomagnetic storm - because we would know that the geomagnetic storm was coming many hours, perhaps even days, beforehand, thus allowing the shut-down of those transformers and the nullification of that effect. An EMP attack would, presumeably, be a surprise. No warning = no shutdown = full impact of the E3 pulse on those large transformers.
For more details on this see: http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-notes.html
I agree. I don’t have a lot of time right now to reposnd, but will try to tomorrow, but off the top of my head, I wanted to give you these two sites:
The American Preppers network:
http://www.americanpreppersnetwork.com/
On the bottom (middle-ish) left hand side, you can find the state pages, and they list what’s going on there, and also there is the “Freedom Connector” where you can probably find some like-minded people (conservatives, not necessarilly preppers), this site was talked about by Glenn Beck (Maybe he started it, I’m not sure).
The Freedom Connector:
http://connect.freedomworks.org/
Good luck, you might even find someone you know. Take care, and God bless.
To some, that may seem over the top, but they are out of sight, sealed and secure, waiting in case they are ever needed. If I am in an outbuilding, I know where to go, what is there, and how to use it. If I never need it, thank God. If I do, thank God it's there, wherever 'there' might be...
Nostrovia.
Or le chiam, depending on which side of the gun you were on.
/johnny
If no one thinks you are any better off (or even worse) than they are, usually they won't mess with you. They often view something well set up as a challenge and a worthy prize. It might be better after the SHTF to take a little spray pAoint to the windows and make the place look burned out. People will still be squeamish about shelter, not wanting to lay on charcoal, smell the burnt stuff, and maybe (in their expectations) spend the night with a couple of fairly fresh crispy critters...
If they don't attack, you can conserve your ammo and keep quietly doing what you do.
From painting windows to stacking charcoal, to squeamish folks griping about the recent incoming burnt stuff...
Mazel tov.
j/ohnny
A few, a few.
While I understand that many people tend to see that the sky is falling all the time, there are also people on the other end of that spectrum - the ones who stick their heads in the sand and refuse to believe that anything bad can happen because “the government would never allow it” or “the government has to have known about this for a long time and has made plans to protect us” or some such BS. Well, if that were true, why did 9/11 occur? Government is NOT omniscient or omnipotent, and even if every person in government was fully dedicated to our safety (which I certainly don’t believe), occasionally they would fail at their jobs.
Anyhow, I am neither Chicken Little nor some ostrich on the issue of the effects of EMP and regarding who could, or would want to, use such against us. I try to be as realistic as possible - and the evidence of what EMP can do (especially if bombs are tuned correctly) combined with the increasing reliance of our society on both delicate electronics and electrical power, make my skin crawl. We don’t imagine for 1 minute that a piece of crap country like North Korea or Iran could harm us, particularly when we could utterly destroy them in literally 1/2 hour, and that is exactly what makes such an attack more likely, and also more likely to succeed. It is our arrogance, our willing blindness, that allows for it, and what disturbs me more than the closed-mindedness of people in that regard is the absolute unwillingness to actually DO SOMETHING to reduce our vulnerability to the possibility of such an attack. Maybe, just maybe, if we spent the $20 billion to harden up civilian infrastructure and to buy critical spare equipment it would make our enemies think twice about the success of any potential attack. Maybe THAT would deter them more than the threat of our retailiation.
I sometimes feel like Diogenes looking for an honest man.
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