James Woolsey: Kim May Have 'More Up His Sleeve' Than Missiles

Newsmax ^ | 29 Apr 2017

[mandaladon]

Retired CIA Director James Woolsey said Friday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un "may have more up his sleeve" than firing a nuclear missile at the United States.

"It is a little worse than that," Woolsey, 75, a former Navy undersecretary, told Don Lemon on CNN. "They can launch a satellite into orbit.

"That's actually easier to do than to hit a target on the other side of the Earth.

"If that satellite contains a small nuclear weapon — and it is detonated over some place, say the United States, it can be devastating to the electric grid.

"So, we've got a bigger problem," Woolsey said. "He may be able to detonate something inside a satellite that is in orbit — and that is extremely troubling."

[Reily]

In 1858 (I think I got that date right!) there was a natural EMP event. There was a CME - Corona Mass Ejection that was so energetic it caused earth-to-ground sparking on telegraph poles. I think I have read that some operators were electrocuted but none fatality.

That would be the nearest historical societal event that would be an analog to a serious EMP attack.

[OldGuard1]

If and only if you have a launch vehicle that can launch such a heavy payload to orbit.

Which they don’t. They don’t even have a vehicle to launch such a heavy payload onto a suborbital (ICBM) trajectory. Which is a simpler vehicle to make.

[antidisestablishment]

That’s probably the closest physical event; however society was not anywhere near as dependent on electricity at that point. Even 50 years ago, an EMP would have been largely ineffective due to technology. The US has the greatest vulnerability and we are the least prepared out of the major powers.

[Reily]

I agree!

[FreedomStar3028]

Because they were detonated over the south pacific.....Not NA.

[FreedomStar3028]

Any nuclear attack will be quickly traced back to the exact reactor that created the material.

[meadsjn]

90% of the population live in and around urban areas.
There is a three-day supply of food in any city at any particular time.
There is a 28-day supply of food in the entire nation.

Just supposing that the people outside the metro areas survive for a year, that’s the 10%.

Probably half of the doped-up, sub-human urban zombies will survive each month by eating the other half,

That means at the end of 12 months, there would be 74,707 remaining of the original 306,000,000 urban dwellers.

So only 89.978% of the population would die. Nothing anywhere near 90%.

And have you seen the level of love and tolerance, kindness and compassion, cooperation and ingenuity, etc., shown by the urban populations, the college students, the government slugs, all the best and brightest the world has ever hosted.

[steve86]

Most interesting to me was Soviet testing showing that old-fashioned generator coils were damaged (dielectric breakdown) — no ICs required! and burying equipment under three feet of soil offered NO protection. So short of a perfectly fitting Faraday cage - your stuff is going to get fried!

[Brad from Tennessee]

As disruptive and costly as an NK EMP strike would be on North America it would still be a graduated attack, leaving functional a range of nuclear weapons with which the U.S. could destroy North Korea with legal justification.

[dragnet2]

Shipping container nod n old rusty fish boat and head to LA or SF. How close would he have to get? Ten miles?

Ten miles out at sea level? That would not be a very significant attack and certainly would not worth getting yourself killed and your country destroyed over. As that is exactly what would happen to North Korea if ever attempted.

[reasonisfaith]

I think the EMP threat has been obvious for many years now, so I agree with you on that topic. It has been confirmed to me in person by a retired military commander who worked for the intelligence services during the cold war.

I was merely commenting on Woolsey himself, in the context of all the deep state shenanigans.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

EMP would wipe out many "large power transformers" in the electrical grid. These are enormous, expensive, and long-lead-time machines. The world does not have enough capacity to replace all dead LPS in a year; it would take many years to replace them. The LPT market is replacement oriented as the average age of US LPT is about 40 years. If you have sufficient capacity to replace, say, 5% of the LPT fleet every year, it would take 20 years to replace all of them.

The problem is greatly exacerbated by the fact that all the control electronics in an LPT factory were wiped out in the EMP attack. That, plus all transportation systems (rail, truck) to deliver raw materials to the LPT factory are down (control electronics wiped out) and your workers are unable to drive to work (control electronics in their vehicles were wiped out; no fuel delivered because tank trucks are dead and refineries are dead, too).

It is NOT a pretty scenario.

References:
Electromagnetic Pulse: Effects on the U.S. Power Grid
Large Power Transformers and the U.S. Electric Grid

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“One Second After” covers that scenario very well, IMO. Very quickly rogue wild gangs will form with strong leaders, will leave the city on foot, and begin foraging the nearby towns and villages. They will take the foot and water they need to survive. These coalesce in some cases to be large armies of rogue bandits. In OSA, one town created an effective defense organization to fight them off, but the battle caused extensive losses on both sides. The book spends a lot of time on the problems of social order breakdown and what takes its place very quickly. Well worth reading.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

What will it do to Canada? - Indeed, Canada would be affected.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

What if he just wants to blow up the world and go out in a blaze of glory? There are people like that...

Absolutely agree. People like him want to go down in history as THE person who destroyed Western Civilization. Nothing would please him better than that.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

You should read One Second After and the follow-up, One Year After. The books are largely about the societal breakdown and how it would likely play out. As you say, very quickly, patients on medical equipment in hospitals die without power and with emergency genset fuel exhausted. Then people die because modern drugs and medicines are no longer available (think insulin). Then poor sanitation hits and people die from diarrhea, dysentery, typhus, etc. Then people die without heat. Then, after a couple months, people starve to death.

[Freedom56v2]

You should read One Second After and the follow-up, One Year After. The books are largely about the societal breakdown and how it would likely play out. As you say, very quickly, patients on medical equipment in hospitals die without power and with emergency genset fuel exhausted. Then people die because modern drugs and medicines are no longer available (think insulin). Then poor sanitation hits and people die from diarrhea, dysentery, typhus, etc. Then people die without heat. Then, after a couple months, people starve to death.
_____________________________
Clearly an EMP whether natural or from a nuclear explosion or a cyber hack would be devastating to our country :(

Thank you for the suggestion of the book.

Several years ago, I actually bought the first book, One Second After, and read the first several chapters...perhaps half way into the book...However, I was so depressed, I just could not continue reading it at that time. Perhaps it was because I was binge reading, but seriously it is the first book that has affected me to the point that I could not finish it...Seemed like they were not going to survive before the book ended...

I hope that things get a little better if there is a “One Year After” sequel...

Some have said the TV series “Revolution” is a good program to watch...I did watch it and would agree that it shows some of the issues that survivors would contend with.

I am thinking of cracking “One Second After” open again and taking a couple chapters a day...maybe more manageable.

[Ozark Tom]

Page 33 for the high voltage medium sized unit facilities. Larger / higher voltage units are made by European facilities. Some U.S. facilities are considered sufficiently knowledgeable to produce large transformers; but, haven’t actually built any of the rail-car sized units to date.

Could likely operate transmission lines at a derated voltage / power capability, with the available locally sourced units.

https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Large%20Power%20Transformer%20Study%20-%20June%202012_0.pdf

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I won’t kid you...it IS enormously depressing. I kept waiting for some glimmers of hope and they finally do arrive a year later when relief from around the world begins to arrive in America.

It’s interesting that, with communications out, Americans do not know who hit them nor if we retaliated.

It was written as a wake-up call, but, as is the case with all warnings of dire catastrophe, it has been all but ignored by TPTB. Unfortunately, the Uniparty / K-Street / Big Business cabal has their own competing agenda to destroy America. The $9 TRILLION that Obama pissed away could have gone a long way toward hardening our infrastructure against this well-known threat.

[bitt]

‘One Second After’ was a great read - and reminded me of that great short-lived tv show, “Jericho”....

‘Alas, Babylon’
written in 1959 by Pat Frank, is amazing in it’s detail considering it was written WAY before computers and other high tech ...

also, ‘On the Beach’, by Nevil Shute - a classic and also an incredible movie..