I figure I'll be able to start my diesel, after I bypass this and that. And the wind won't stop. And I have new sails.
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
Why was comment #39 removed? I thought it was very germane to the conversation.
That anything that uses electricity instantly melts and is forever unusable from that point on?No one is making such a ridiculous statement.
There are two major problems caused by EMP.
One is modern digital electronics, which are very sensitive to static electricity. If you've every installed memory chips in a computer, you were probably warned by the vendor to take precautions to avoid generating any static electricity. A shock too small for a person to even notice can and will destroy digital electronics. Note that many chips have special circuitry to protect against shocks being applied to the pins of the chip. However, an EMP would generate "sparks" inside the chip itself. This wasn't a problem prior to microelectronics, since old-fashioned vacuum tubes are practically immune to the problem.
The other problem is very long conductors, such as power lines, and cable TV and phone lines. The induced voltage and current from an EMP is proportional to the length of the conductor. Since these lines can be miles long, a huge spike would be generated on the lines, enough so that even devices without sensitive electronics could be damaged or destroyed.
China and Russia would have surrender if they could not move, shoot or communicate with their Armed Forces - not so for the USofA. Our capacity to "disarm" and decouple Enemy Governments (read Russia + her Allies and China + her Allies), they will accept cease fire and surrender terms; for China proposed Terms are a break up into 9 differnt nations under US-UN Supervision.
The US has the capacity to protect vast numbers of electronic components, and we also have the ability to produce electronic components after an EMP war which would destroy Asian production. Can you imagin a world where the US becomes a power broker in Electronic Components which are worth their weight in gold one the production facilities and trade routes destroyed and disrupted? We could re-supply ourselves (economic boom) and the Friends/Allies of the US.
EMP is a way to win wars without actually killing populations and armies or fighting.
Stop worrying.
If everyone had to replace computers, Microsoft and Intel is the stock to own. Unemployment would be 0%.
I figure I'll be able to start my diesel, after I bypass this and that. And the wind won't stop. And I have new sails.
A propane generator would work until the propane ran out. Then....nothing.Maybe, assuming it didn't have any microelectronics in its controller.
Nowadays, it's hard to find anything that is microchip-free.
How long do you get out of a propane delivery? 3 Months?
I agree, read One Second After. Then panic, because most of us won't survive 3 months. :-)
Sadly, I must agree.
People stand outside of Walmart during those middle of the night sales and trample other people when the doors open to save $10 on a tv.
I shudder to think what would happen if things came down to survival.
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
China and Russia would have surrender if they could not move, shoot or communicate with their Armed Forces - not so for the USofA. Our capacity to "disarm" and decouple Enemy Governments (read Russia + her Allies and China + her Allies), they will accept cease fire and surrender terms; for China proposed Terms are a break up into 9 differnt nations under US-UN Supervision.
The US has the capacity to protect vast numbers of electronic components, and we also have the ability to produce electronic components after an EMP war which would destroy Asian production. Can you imagin a world where the US becomes a power broker in Electronic Components which are worth their weight in gold one the production facilities and trade routes destroyed and disrupted? We could re-supply ourselves (economic boom) and the Friends/Allies of the US.
EMP is a way to win wars without actually killing populations and armies or fighting.
Stop worrying.
How long do you think gasoline containing ethanol will remain useable?
>> My concern is the ship launched missiles being tested by Iran.
An EMP attack requires a heavy lifter. You need to get an extremely large fission bomb 300-500 km about the surface of the Earth. Nothing ship-launched can do that. Even if they did launch something that would be a regional attack (e.g. an EMP attack against the NY-Philly-Boston metroplex) requiring a lot less altitude, we have satellites that would pinpoint the launch location. We couldn’t stop the launch but we would certainly know who to retailiate against. In addition to satellites, any Iranian naval vessel that starts heading towards the US probably gets some surface and undersea escorts for the entire trip.
Read the book “One Second After”
Anyone with a missile carrying a nuke that could be detonated over the continental US could do it. Check out Russia’s missile in a container.
The US has the capacity to protect vast numbers of electronic components, and we also have the ability to produce electronic components after an EMP war which would destroy Asian production.Sources?
I don't think we have the capacity to produce much in the way of microelectronics now, let alone after such an attack.
Don't forget, that all those factories completely rely on microelectronics to run. After an EMP attack, those factories will be as dead as the personal computers.
The military has been protecting their assets against EMP since the 1970s at least. However, the vast majority of civilian assets have no such protection.
An interesting aside: My brother manufactures electrically-isolated rooms, primarily for medical scanners (CAT, PET), but they also can be used to protect what's inside from EMP. They are seeing a significant increase in business from companies that want to build such rooms to house their servers and backups.
Is there anything, any type of material, that can shield electronics from an EMP blast? I’m serious here, not asking a stupid question, Ihope.
Look for the book “One Second Later”, its a scary thing.
Say, you're not employed as an investment counselor are you?
If you were I'd take your word and move my entire investment portfolio into your capable hands. Then I could stop worrying. Of course taking the word of a perfect stranger would mean that I was ready for padded room.
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