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 ...
And that would be the only chance he would ever get as he and much of his country would be quickly destroyed.
I think any _switched on_ electronic device (a car tooling down the road) knocked out by an EMP is cooked forever. You’d have to replace it completely. A device (parked car) that was off should be okay. Anything behind lead shielding and switched off would be okay. Not sure about unshielded batteries.
I read _One Second After_ and casualties would depend on how reliant you are to electricity/electronics for the things you need to survive. It’s all about how quickly a society can literally rekindle/reboot civilization. People will be very busy putting it all back together again after an EMP attack.
To judge by his looks he’s got the contents of the whole buffet stashed up his sleeves.
The most logical suspect would of course be Kim, whether or not NK actually did it might well be another story. I don't even know if NK has submarines but would think if they did, they'd likely be quite old, diesel powered, made lots of noise in the water and our guys wouldn't exactly have a hard time hearing it.
I imagine we'd blow the thing right out of the water once it left the South China Sea too.
There are no good scenario's where the Nork's win this thing. Just impossible comparing their military to ours. The question is, is he batshit crazy enough to try and do something, and if so what?
If an EMP's out of their capabilities (and I've seen discussion both ways on this thread) then what? Dirty bomb?
They're not going to get sh*t military wise off that peninsula and headed our way. I just don't see that. If anything they'd send 500,000 through the DMZ and into South Korea before we could stop them and it becomes a peninsula war.
South Korea, China get involved, Taiwan goes on high-alert with the Chinese Military potentially taking Taiwan during the fracas, the mind can just run wild with all the possible scenario's.
I guess I'm just glad smarter people than I on these things are working on it.....
Shipping container nod n old rusty fish boat and head to LA or SF. How close would he have to get? Ten miles?
Possibly. Certainly not 1. Those who say they “know” the effect, don’t.
And if he gets that satellite up there, and we have to consider any space launch as just that, there will be insane temptation to do the EMP. He thinks it would knock out America finally. Then his master in Peking can do what eh wants in the world.
Or a laser. We have one actually of operational capability now.
But it s easier to orbit a satellite than to bull’s eye a target with an ICBM.
That’s the operant statement- “We can’t let this go on much longer.”
Repair it? how? There would be no industrial capacity beyond what starving people can build with hand tools. The generating portion of the grid and the factories can be shielded i.e EMP proofed. If we will do it. The military has been working on shielding their installations but you can[t resuscitate the nation from some military bases. The boomers would remain operational so there would be retaliation.
We don't make transformers in America. We get them from China and I don't think there are more than a couple in the country at any one time. China is not going to do anything to restore the American grid.
With a successful accurately placed EMP that knocks out the USofA the rest of the world is China and Islam.
Nuclear facilities and hydroelectric plants go away, too, with EMP unless properly shielded. Unshielded wiring gets fried. The Carrington Event way back a century and a half ago tore up railroad tracks due to the tremendous surges of induced current from the natural EMP. That is a tremendous argument for shielding our whole system Apparently it would not be relatively expensive. But it is like highway funds- The money is there but it gets dribbled away to other purposes and to foreign bank accounts.
The transformers would not be available and without power there is no capacity to make them. Even if we had lots of spare transformers, they would be fried along with everything else. We have outsourced transformer manufacture to China. China is going to rush replacements to US?
It is not just an attack that is worrisome. A natural solar event can do and has done the same thing. There is precedent for it. Carrington Event.
Actually, it’s worse than that. All modern solid state electronic devices would be burned to a crisp, regardless of state (powered on or off). Only some older analog systems would survive. The problem is we no longer have replacement parts for critical infrastructure. We couldn’t repair or replace half of the required components for the grid.
Military and some government systems would survive to a better degree, but even then, they would be severely degraded. Diesel engines and antique cars would work, and it’s probable that some small areas would be relatively intact due to geographic and atmospheric conditions.
Regardless, the societal effects would be incalculable. No one can predict the response or resultant chaos. The entire world economic system would collapse and global war would likely follow. The rush to secure resources would be immediate and violent on a scale never considered.
There is no historical precedent for such scenarios. The only way the US could achieve parity on the world stage would be to degrade other nations’ capabilities.
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