Posted on 01/24/2006 4:52:36 PM PST by ChristianDefender
Now, I'm afraid I must move on to a very downbeat topic: EMP. You may not know what those letters mean, but you will eventually be bombarded with more doom and gloom articles about them than you want. If you were looking for an uplifting column this week, I recommend you stop right here and click into some nicer columns by my esteemed WND colleagues.
EMP refers to Electro-Magnetic Pulse weaponry, high-yielding atomic bombs that are enhanced to exaggerate their circuitry-destroying effect and minimize their human-destroying effect (quite possibly to the point of zero casualties even with an urban target).
To get right to the point: Iran could soon develop and deliver one of these things and detonate it over the United States. With some deniability.
One is all it would take. According to a third party, India's Institute of Defense Studies, "A study conducted in the U.S. during the late 1980s reported that a high-yield device exploded about 500 kilometers above the ground can generate an electromagnetic pulse on the order of 50,000 volts over a radius of 2,500 kilometers around the point of burst ..."
While the immediate casualties might be very minimal, the loss of all electrical devices could produce tens of millions of deaths within months, especially in winter. According to my understanding, the "electronic fatalities" would include all cars and trucks, telephones, computers, gas pumps, refrigerators, radio-TV broadcasts, printing presses, commercial and military aircraft, and power-generating plants. Think: No electrical anything.
As fire-fighting equipment would not function without water pressure or fire engines, some entire cities could go up in smoke. After canned goods were gone, we would all be out hunting and gathering, harvesting dandelions from our yards and so forth. You get the picture. Pure doomsday stuff.
In case you're clinging to some vague hope that this is rumor or conjecture, you may make a quick check on any search engine. You will discover that every major government in the world is aware and concerned. Worse, Iran has been using its intermediate-range Shahab-3 missiles to test their delivery capability. They've shot non-nuclear, self-destroying test warheads into an arc high over the Caspian Sea.
Because the missiles never reached full height, some U.S. defense people have called them failures. On the contrary, Iran has called them successes. Why? Because they're not trying for an ICBM-range test. All the Iranians need to do is load one of these things into the hold of any friendly ship, get within 100 miles of the U.S. coast, and fire it way high. They don't have to be accurate at all. One EMP over Kansas or so, and it's over. What's our response? Nuke the entire Middle East?
My guess: We'd be too busy gathering roots and boiling them for dinner.
Do I think all this is going to happen? Not really ... though it is disconcerting to note that in Ezekiel 38:5 Iran is mentioned, in ancient terms, as one of those countries united against Israel at Armageddon.
I have two main hopes: One, that the United States will noisily stage an EMP demo over some Pacific atoll (stocked with demo electrical equipment). And if that doesn't slow down Iran, we stage another demo over a lonely Iranian oil field – within days.
But my overriding hope is that the current growing wave of united prayer will rapidly snowball into Christians taking the initiative in warding off this evil before it even reaches the demo stage.
Before you totally dismiss it, take a gander at the link Dallas59 posted in #3. The claim has been made that an EMP can be produced without a nuclear device. PopSci had an article on this a while back, and Dallas59's linked page describes it in detail.
Sorry for double post.
The US carried out dozens of such tests in the Pacific to see what would happen.
EM communications were knocked out for a few hours.
The EMP threat is vastly (and I mean way extrememly vastly) overestimated.
It is is not going to fry your computer or your car's electronics or the power systems. They are not going to work for the few seconds that EM radiation overwhelms them when a bomb explodes but that is it.
EMP is not a new threat. Scientists and engineers have known about this since the nuclear age began at White Sands. The signifigance of this article is the fact that "consumer electronics" would be heavily damaged, however, critical military and government equipment are well shielded.
>How about the threat of one over Europe?
Europe? Why Europe? Europe isn't Iran's enemy.
If Iran explodes one such device, they'll explode it over their arch enemy Israel, not the Continent of Europe. But I don't think Iran has the gulls to do any such a thing. They're just bluffing.
>EMP has been know about since the 1950's but unless a nation has an ICBM, there is no way to get a nuclear warhead over the United States high enough to create a continent wide EMP.
The United States is not Iran's enemy - Israel is. Not only is Israel their number one enemy, but it's also an easier target.
Iran is bluffing. If they had the capability they would have used it long ago.
I doubt that Iran is even blithering about using an EMP weapon. This all comes from the kooky mind of another World Nut Daily writer, Joseph Farah. He has been predicting some kind of nuclear attack on the U.S. for several years now. So far, the Iranian EMP hasn't happened, the 30+ al-Qaeda nukes haven't happened, nor has any of his other predictions.
He sounds like a prophet of doom wishing the United States and Israel's annihilation.
Bingo!
And how many communication/data systems were dependant on transistors then? How about microchips? And there were how many embedded computers controlling what???
"That Muke stuned my beeber seriesly hugh!"
Mukes are Mega Nukes. Yeah thats it, I meant to type that.
That is even less significant
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