Posted on 05/15/2018 9:47:05 AM PDT by Perseverando
As a prepper and avid reader of post-apocalyptic fiction like One Second After, Alas Babylon, and Going Home, an EMP has long been on my mind as one of the most catastrophic threats we could face.
After reading numerous reports from the Congressional EMP Commission, I figured that the reality of such a threat was a given. So when I recently wrote about making Faraday cages, imagine my surprise when I saw this comment:
I appreciate the attempt to help people prepare for all kinds of disasters, but I’m going to have to throw a conversational bomb into this room, so to speak.
EMP is a total scam. See here: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/02/david-hathaway/emp-hoax/
Not only is EMP a scam, nuclear weapons are probably a scam. Certainly they were at the time of abhorrent and immoral destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both cities victimized by fire bombing like all the other Japanese cities.
I suppose protection against lightning might be useful, a system of lightning rods being an alternative. I wouldn’t lose sleep at night over this EMP nonsense, especially when there are real dangers we face every day.
What?????
I was really surprised to see this. I went to read the article at the link and discovered the author of it had written an entire book on the topic called EMP Hoax. The book had a forward written by Lew Rockwell, for whom I have the deepest respect. Mr. Rockwell wrote of a nuclear detonation over the Pacific Ocean in 1962:
One purpose of the blast was to study the impact, if any, of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) effects. One incident is alleged to show such effects. Based on this incident, the government concluded that hostile powers could use EMPs to disable the electronic infrastructure
(Excerpt) Read more at theorganicprepper.com ...
The destructive effects of EMP have to do with the length of a conductor in relation to the EMP wave as it intersects. The longer the conductor (as in telelphone/electric transmission wires), the more current is produced. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Daisy Luther’s “great admiration” for Lew Rockwell is somewhat disturbing. That guy’s nuts are not all tightened to the Manufacturer’s specifications to his bolts.
That said (and being 100% opinion - mine), EMP is a very real scientific phenomenon - produced by the VERY REAL nukes that we, the Russians, the Chinese, etc. have in our respective national arsenals. The Russians, not exactly given to irrationality during the Cold War, constructed the Mig-25 Foxbat with vacuum tubes. It was designed that way ON PURPOSE, specifically because this Mach 3+ interceptor was designed to shoot down B-70 (and slower) bombers in a nuclear environment. There is simply no way, no how that EMP is a hoax if the Soviets - who were no slouches in technology - designed a critically important aircraft at very great expense around the concept of being essentially immune to EMP.
For those that do not know, we got ahold of a Mig-25 in 1976, when a Soviet pilot of one kindly defected to Japan with his aircraft. The Soviets loudly complained that we had to return their property (funny, that, coming from a bunch of Communists), which we did - months later, in a bunch of boxes and crates, dismantled down to the last screw and rivet. So we KNOW what made that aircraft tick...and had quite obviously “interviewed” the pilot for other details about its mission, etc.
EMP is real. How much effect it will have depend on MANY variables:
1) Whether the nuke in question is tuned to maximize the production of gamma rays (which sets off the EMP pulses);
2) The altitude of the detonation;
3) The strength of the Earth’s magnetic field at the point of detonation and within line-of-sight of same;
4) The strength of shielding of devices, lines and transformers exposed to the EMP; and
5) Others of which I am likely not aware...but suffice it to say that “it depends.”
It COULD be utterly devastating to our (or any other 1st World) economy, if done just right. Remember that we have, in the name of efficiency, eliminated any robustness from our system, courtesy of “Just in Time” inventories. There are no Cold War-like huge reserves of just about ANYTHING.
Note that the best producer of EMP would be a purely fission (Atomic) bomb with a thin casing, tuned to maximize the production of gamma radiation - NOT, NOT, NOT a huge, multi-megaton bomb the likes of which probably only the 5 primary nuclear powers (and maybe Israel) can produce. The big bombs are best for producing the E3 pulse, which is similar to a geomagnetic storm (like the Carrington event - look THAT one up to see if EMP means nothing). We are much more worried, for these purposes, about the E1 pulse, which is so fast that standard surge protectors will be useless to even ameliorate it AT ALL (and, in fact, they will likely be damaged by the E1 pulse such that they’ll be unable to function well enough to stop the E2 pulse, which is far more akin to a lightening strike). For more information (and we could ALL use that, right?), please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse
I would caution against underestimating opponents - that is a classic mistake of the arrogant, and a US that has been on top of the world for the last 70-odd years, technologically and economically, fits that bill. Maybe North Korea cannot produce a maximally-effective, tuned EMP nuke and launch it to the correct coordinates 250 or so miles above Kansas...but they can certainly hire and/or threaten scientists who can (and there are a bunch of unemployed former Soviet nuclear scientists out there). Iran is, IMHO, far more capable of doing something like this without any outside help, but they’re also far more capable of hiring the help if they do need it.
In short, we don’t know for certain what the effects of an MEP strike would be. However, I’d rather overestimate the damage from an EMP strike against this country, and prepare for it, than the opposite. For those claiming that there’s some kind of an EMP-industrial complex, the amount necessary to substantially harden our electrical infrastructure is a pittance compared to what we spend on the military or education or environmental compliance each year - and the EMP expenditures would be over 5-10 years.
It’s probably just a coincidence that the answer to the problem is a program that they say would cost 500 billion, so more likely that we would see a 1.5 trillion dollar reality.
It’s also a coincidence that the grid would now be centrally controlled.
On EMP, this is more governmental indians waving blankets to spook the taxpayer buffalo herd off the cliff.
Well stated. And then of course, there is the awkward moment where you just shot a nuke or two above the USA, all the world saw the telemetry of you getting it up there...but you forgot about the boomers out prowling the oceans who felt no effects and all their nukes are in fine working order.
The ultimate scoffer’s scoffer — calling nukes a scam. LOL
The Nation that attempts it will end up in the Stone Age...
The hysteria over nukes was somewhat of a scam. Remember movies like “On the beach”. The thinking then was that a nuclear exchange would end all life on earth. The dim bumb Carl Sagan revived it with nuclear winter in the 80s.
It would have been very bad, but most of humanity including the entire southern hemisphere would have hardly noticed it even happened.
An idiot. If the author had spent a few days serving our country, he or she would have known that EMP is real enough.
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She never said it wasn’t real, only that nobody really knows how real it could be.
EMP is fickle, it depends on a lot of environmental conditions to be effective. The fix for protection from potential EMP is not terribly expensive and is a wise thing to do anyway to protect from a large solar flare.
The major threat of an EMP is supposedly what it would do to our electrical distribution system, the “Grid”.
If you really are afraid of an EMP go put a bunch of solar cells on your roof and a bunch of batteries in your basement. While that would be expensive to do enough to replace the grid it is not terribly expensive for minimal backup power to keep the frig going and charge your phones.
I went whole hog with 12KW on the roof because I like my A/C in the summer and my heat pump in the winter. Most people don’t have the understanding it takes to maintain and operate something so large. To some it would seem too complicated, to me it is just fun.
I don’t think we will ever be subjected to an EMP unless it is in concert with bombs dropping all over the place, it that event EMP will be the least of our worries.
USS Columbia SSBN-X woot!
You are correct. It takes a wire to pickup EMP, very much like an antenna is needed to pick up radio signals.
“largely scare-porn crap”
It is. EMP has always been a boogieman that was never understood by all within the military, so it was protected against just in case.
However, those that work with designing nuclear weapons, nuclear warfare plans, and have participated with exoatmospheric testing know that EMP has an extremely limited effect. So much so that current planning doesn’t include much shielding from it. We went from a solid welded 3/8” steel building to a standard mason and steel frame building for NORAD facilities. The EMP pulse is just too weak not to be thwarted by simple grounding measures.
You know it. I agree with you, EMP is a real effect, but what we are witnessing is scare-hype so that the anointed ones can dip into the taxpayers pockets yet again.
The posted piece also proves a fact about comparisons between average brain weights.
;-)
Agreed
Ah. A scoffer's scoffer here at Free Republic thinks nukes are a scam. :-)
We've never been to the moon either and the earth is flat too!
Dripping sarcasm ....
“The ridiculous level of centralization of our power grid means that even if EMP is over-rated, it doesn’t have to be that much to throw the power grid into a tailspin.”
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I believe this is true, as evidenced by the great northeast blackout of August 2003. Losing on area and a glitch in switching & balancing during high loads was enough to take down entire regions of the US & Canada.
The problem is, these power companies are not in the business of losing money during outages. They aren’t going to be sitting around for a year on their thumbs unable to bill customers. The motivation isn’t even Nat.Sec or public welfare. Profit motive will be all that is needed to assure that ridiculously intense levels repair would be occurring.
The average lightning strike releases about 1 kiloton of energy. According to
Keep it in mind that electromagnet waves decrease in strength with the square of the distance.
The average location in the U.S. experiences a strike less than one mile out.
we’ve all heard the static from a thunderstorm on an AM radio. We’ve probably lost electronic equipment from lighting.
However, do the math regarding the square of the distance part... It will ease your fears.
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