Posted on 04/29/2017 7:45:14 AM PDT by 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
"In July, 1962, the US carried out the Starfish Prime test, exploding a 1.44 megaton bomb 400 kilometres (250 mi) above the mid-Pacific Ocean. This demonstrated that the effects of a high-altitude nuclear explosion were much larger than had been previously calculated. Starfish Prime made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a microwave link.
Starfish Prime was the first success in the series of United States high-altitude nuclear tests in 1962 known as Operation Fishbowl. Subsequent tests gathered more data on the high-altitude EMP phenomenon.
The Bluegill Triple Prime and Kingfish high-altitude nuclear tests of October and November 1962 in Operation Fishbowl provided data that was clear enough to enable physicists to accurately identify the physical mechanisms behind the electromagnetic pulses.
The EMP damage of the Starfish Prime test was quickly repaired due, in part, to the fact that the EMP pulse over Hawaii was relatively weak compared to what could be produced over the northern U.S. with a more intense pulse, and in part due to the relative ruggedness (compared to today) of Hawaii's electrical and electronic infrastructure in 1962.
The relatively small magnitude of the Starfish Prime EMP in Hawaii (about 5.6 kilovolts/metre) and the relatively small amount of damage (for example, only 1 to 3 percent of streetlights extinguished)[11] led some scientists to believe, in the early days of EMP research, that the problem might not be significant. Newer calculations[10] showed that if the Starfish Prime warhead had been detonated over the northern continental United States, the magnitude of the EMP would have been much larger (22 to 30 kV/m) because of the greater strength of the Earth's magnetic field over the United States, as well as its different orientation at high latitudes. These calculations, combined with the accelerating reliance on EMP-sensitive microelectronics, heightened awareness that EMP could be a significant problem.[citation needed]
That means, no food or fuel delivery to cities. No clean water, no medicine, no hospitals.
Are you calling BS on the ability of an EMP to destroy the grid or the effects of destroying the grid?
It’s a “going out with a bang” thing. Dictators can’t retire. Kim’s country is starving, He cares nothing about his people, they can be easily sacrificed. The only way he leaves much of a mark on history is to do something big, even if it’s foolish. Will he? We don’t know, I don’t like taking that chance. I have wondered if he has already slipped a nuke in a harbor or something. Could he hide a nuke in a shipping container and pass it through another country? Could that weapon be shielded and not detected? I don’t know the answer to those questions.
Agreed. And why now is the time to act.
I’ve been reading about surprise attacks and subversive things lil Kim could do. I don’t think a surprise attack is possible. Too much intelligence would give it away before the army can mobilize. We already shown we could detect launches as well as shoot stuff out of the sky. A cyber attack is probably the way to go, but even then I do not believe that our cyber is worse than theirs.
It really comes down to whether the USA has the intestinal fortitude to launch a first strike.
While the norks may be able to get a satellite up in the sky, they've got to figure out how to get them to work. The norks second observation satellite launched early last year was another failure since it failed to transmit any data.......
Three EMPs, East coast, West coast, Kansas, would destroy America.
me too
Would the damage last that long? I understand how serious the “domino effect” of everything going down, especially in big cities, but what time frame would be needed to repair such an outage?
Yup. Too bad people here are too lazy to research this topic. There are dozens of videos describing what it is, does, and its effects.
Like me, probably BS on the blanket statement that you refined.
They will not side with north korea very long. they will be dead
“”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.””
It would be the last thing he ever detonated in his short, miserable life. So the open question is: “is he a closet Muslim looking for his 72 virgins?” And my question is why have we tolerated the Kims for all these years? It would have been easy back when the Korean War was going on, to “fix” this problem, and I think MacArthur had the right idea. Too bad we had that worthless a$$hole Truman (my father always equated him to an automatic transmission, both were shiftless) for president. We have had sooo many worthless presidents since WWII. Trump’s better than all of them put together including Ronald Reagan (and I dearly love and respect RR).
Most of us would starve to death, die from impure water or get killed after we run out of ammo by the hordes wanting what we have.
The rest would die of boredome and withdrawal from their smart phones, facebook, texting and game playing.
Yes!
Play out the H Bomb by air scenario. How does NK survive after that, either, though? Not seeing his long game. (Like we can clearly see the insidious, slow world domination of Islamicism)
Solution: Shoot down anything he launches.
“I really don’t understand what motivates them to want to attack the USA.”
Dictators always have to have a boogey man. Just look at what Maduro is doing in Venezuela. Here we are, the place the rest of the world “hates” but the same place where they’d all like to settle. Go figure! And I think for all these years, not unlike the ME with the “Palestinians,” the Norks have been used by China as a foil against us. Now though, I think Xi may get the message that this president isn’t going to “roll over” for their Chink Crap line any longer. And now that they have an industrialized economy, he knows that effing with us could bring a complete collapse of his country economically and bring about the end of the Communist Party there.
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