Electromagnetic Pulse: An Avoidable Disaster

GOPUSA ^ | January 4, 2005 | Paul M. Weyrich

[MD_Willington_1976]

They are using a similar system, a joint venture between Israel and The USA to take out airborne ordinance...Mortars, missiles.

They've also mounted a similar device on a humvee, it is aimed at a crowd and makes your skin feel like it's being stuck with needles...

MD

[blackdog]

When it comes to disasters either manmade or natural, when all is said and done, the potential upside is quite something. While I share the sadness of the Tsunami victims and feel their undescribable agony over family losses, I bet world coffee prices are going to go thru the roof and I bet many of those ruined fishermen and their survivors may become coffee growers. Killer quakes give us building and infrastructure leaps in technology. Hurricanes are producing housing designs and materials which are astonishing in their durability. Giant waves which capsize boats are giving us self righting ocean going vessels in the event of a capsizing. Mine collapses gave us Haliburton designed drilling rigs to rescue people buried alive at a few hundred feet. Space vehicle disasters give us feedback for future designs which will take us farther and faster. The Tsunami will bring cranes, bulldozers, and heavy equipment along with construction firms teaching new skills to a people who may take a new direction on where they want to head as a society.

Humans are best when things are at their worst. Without Dickens-like hardships, we go nowhere.

[MD_Willington_1976]

The US military began "hardening" electronic systems against EMP attacks in the 1970s. Critical systems are already protected.

They did the same thing with the backup for NORAD in Ontario Canada...you should see the pics of the rebar cages they built...

If NORAD goes down in the USA, it's still running in the GWN..

MD

[null and void]

Please put me on your "We're all gonna die!!!" ping list...

[Inge_CAV]

"My old diesel car might be worth it's weight in gold in such an instance, if I could roll it downhill or somethng to get it started."

An air starter, powered by compressed air could be considered. However you would have to have a source for compressed air.

[null and void]

The problem is the GRID.

No it's not. Just ask underscoreJim...

[blackdog]

I have a huffer here. I've sent it out twice on a flatbed to start military jets which landed at airports without one. Kind of like a $500 jump start. Never needed it here. Not a very big runway. I bought it at an auction for $300. Cool toy! I've got old ground power units too. They'll provide good steady DC current and take some pretty good demand surges too. They used to support 727's.

[Blueflag]

I'll agree to your point about not fretting. Death by vehicle accident is more likely.

But you'd need a lot more than a stick to relieve me and my family of any food stocks ;-).

[Swede Girl]

"God help anyone who actually does this to us. Even the liberals would be on board for retaliation (for about 24 hours) if someone took out their means of making lattes."

LOL!

[Inge_CAV]

Not sure but I think some of the old ground power units had an engine similar to aircraft engines. You got a good deal on yours though.

All I have is a couple of old diesel tractors and trucks. They have the mechanical injection pumps. The key would be to get them started.

[RaceBannon]

Actually, I meant electrons! :)

[Nowhere Man]

My old diesel car might be worth it's weight in gold in such an instance, if I could roll it downhill or somethng to get it started.

I think the metal in the car's body would act as a shield to protect any electronics in the engine. The radio, being connected to the antenna would be another matter though.

[rmlew]

Split the cost by running power and fiber-optics along the same dig, but differe wires?
Our current power grid is in bad shape and has problems with dealing with a hot summer day. We need to replace or supplement it anyway.

[blackdog]

I've got a Detroit Diesel GMC 2500 that has a nightmarish pump, injection distribution curcuitboard that is.......The weakest link!

The huffer is a beast. It weighs like 6000 pounds. The tug ground power units are just little four cylinder industrial engines, like in forklifts. The item to make sure of isn't the engine, but the generator/governor link.

Airstart systems for military jets ain't light duty. Those monsters push some air. I've loaned it out to dairy farmers when their barn ventilation fans go down. The cows look like they're behind prop wash from C-130's. Tails straight out from the velocity and volume. It's got a series of compressor fans/blades that are all housed inside a shroud for safety, but I wouldn't want to get ten feet from the intake once the gate is opened feeding the tube.

Not a common use item with much value except in very few situations. Much like me I guess.

[blackdog]

Uhm........not so. The metal chasis on the frame is poorly grounded. Sure there is some carbon in the synthetic rubber tires to do some good, but from a technical standpoint to techno-geeks, your car is just a giant capacitor during an EMP and it will go "POP" when the pulse charges it up. It cannot discharge that fast.

I've been hit by lightning while flying and can tell you that energy will really do some interesting things. It made pinholes where it hit, but then inside it made what I can only describe as ball lightning which would seek corners where it would sort of oscillate and then dim. It lasted about five full seconds before the skin managed to discharge in the air.

[Nik Naym]

"The military always radion hardened it's electronics although I think that mil-spec policy changed under klinton."

Bingo. I suspect that this is also why the military switched over to diesel powered everything. Trucks, hummers, pumps, you name it. No ignition system to get toasted. They might not have lights, but they can still RUN the bloody things.

[blackdog]

Other than the fact that PLC's handle all the distribution work and that there are very few competent operators who know much in the event of any emergency, we're fine. Technology thru proramable controllers has a down side. That being that the idiots that work for you can perform their job because clever minds wrote programs to do the job day in and day out. That is until someone redefines a really bad day...............Like with an EMP or catastrophe. Then they are clueless and we're all going to suffer.

[Arthalion]

I think the metal in the car's body would act as a shield to protect any electronics in the engine. The radio, being connected to the antenna would be another matter though.

The body metal MIGHT help if the body were grounded, but the bodies of most cars are probably too thin and radio porous (windows, under the engine compartment, modern plastic door panels) to effectively shield against anything.

By the way, if anyone happens to remember the old Fox show Dark Angel, it was built around this exact scenario. In that show, much of the US was EMP'd by terrorists and it basically threw the country back into third world status. When the power and transportation grids had been restored it was discovered that the pulse had not only wiped out the memories of every computer in the country, but also the backups. This may be bad for home users, but is an unimaginably damaging situation for a major corporation...imagine a company like Walmart, IBM, Merrril Lynch, or even Ford losing all of their payroll records, their inventory records, their AP records, their customer records...everything.

Nobody gets a paycheck, the companies can't collect on their debts and go bankrupt, and the whole economy collapses as a result. According to that story, it took years for the American companies that managed to survive the pulse to get back up to speed, and most of them discovered that foreign competition had filled their vacuum during that time and that they no longer had viable markets. It may have been fiction, but there was NOTHING implausible about the scenario.

[blackdog]

Clintoon scrapped MIL-461 in favor of COTS(commercial, off the shelf). Navy ships are a city of wiring, comparable to a population in a town of 10,000 people. When deck apes rig some stuff and a hot and neutral get reversed, life gets interesting. A good hint is to never grab any table or door/chair/handle with a tight grip. It'll light you up real good considering you're standing on a metal plate floating in salt water.